He Lives Alone

 

He lives alone although he was once married

to a woman who was, he told us, a good cook.

He lives far from his place of employment

so that it takes over an hour on public transit

to arrive at work, and the same to end the day

back at his home. He is a man who has lived

many years, his face deeply runnelled by time

and a life lived at the edges of poverty. His

face resembles that of the former president of his 

home country, the Philippines. One day, without

warning he suddenly found himself unable to

move, his body unresponsive and he feared

the worst. The ambulance paramedics calmed

his fears, but he was right; it was his heart

warning him of impending mortality. Aided

by a social worker after recovery from surgery

he's long been back at work, lugubrious at times

his wry sense of humour intact. He informs us

as familiar faces of various facets of his life. 

We see him as often as we do the weekly grocery

shopping and seek him out at the check-out cash

he is assigned to for he is a diligent worker. We 

empathize with him, value our friendly relations

while admiring him for his work ethic. Last week

we saw him animated when a woman shopper was

at his cash check-out and he spoke with her in

Tagalog, a blessed fellow Filipino. When he turned

to us, he momentarily beamed an unusual smile.

Islamophobia

They decry what they have themselves created, a predictable 

reaction to the violence that emanates from strict readings 

of the religion's sacred book and its exegesis held by 

believers to be the word of God transcribed for piety in 

adherence to its commands. Foremost, the command 

to the faithful to exercise jihad in all its excessive forms.

The resulting violence and its sheer barbaric inhumanity

impressed in people's minds. Living in Western Christian

-dominated societies of liberal democracies where 

all religions are held in equal respect, the brazen display 

of Muslim communal prayer in public venues to 

command attention defies public order, restraining areas

from  their original public purpose. Defiant arrogance 

that distances Muslims from others in an exercise of 

dominating entitlement that draws revulsion toward

them and the societal non-conformance they represent in 

deliberate rejection of prevailing social mores of mutual 

tolerance and respect that labels them unwanted outsiders.

Defensively and obtusely interpreted by Islamists as 

rejection and disrespect for Islam, hence 'Islamophobia'.

Phobia of deliberate disruption and dominance.

Reaching Beyond

The Brothers Grimm's folk tale of a fisherman

and a magical fish that granted wishes told of a

wish too far; when king, emperor, palaces, wealth

were granted the demand became pope, then god

and all was reversed.  Now the spectacle of a 

latter day Pope for whom the downtrodden and

oppressed has particular resonance has himself

chosen to reach beyond his purview to emulate

god. Historically popes were unmoved at the plight

of the world's premier 'untouchable caste' eternally

charged with fomenting all the ills of the world.

When a genocide took place the moral influence

and power of the world's foremost religious figure

close to the heavenly figure forbore to censure the

slaughter for they were only Jews suffocating in gas

chambers, shot down in droves into corpse-full pits

rounded up by willing Europe to travel in cattle cars

to slave labour camps, death camps to rid the world

of a pestiferous tribe. The memory of the six million 

Jewish children, frail elderly and adults who perished 

haunt us evermore. That was genocide. The genocide 

bandied about in accusations against Jewish Israel for

temerity displayed in refusing to sacrifice themselves to

satisfy the venom of psychopathic challengers to Judaic

tradition, memory and land reveals a different scenario

of a Jewish military that fights to secure a Jewish future.

That response is cursed by those whose endless enmity

equates defense with intent to harm innocent lives viewed

through a prism of virtuous condemnation of Jewish 

survival upheld with the conviction of a pope swift to

declare support and belief in the charges of genocide

courtesy of a Jewish state left to fend for itself in a bleak

sea of swarming, slithering serpents of dysfunctional hate.

Financial Insecurity

 

You know you've lived a long time

when  you read with incredulity that

those earning upwards and well beyond

$100,000 a year cannot make ends meet

complaining of the skyrocketing costs of

living in burgeoning metropoli and you

cast your mind back, back, back to raising

three infants on your husband's annual

salary of $2,500, in financial precarity

to pay two mortgages on a house bought

for $12,500 with a 'box' on the side for

milk deliveries, concerned over paying

the weekly account for that dairy-delivered

milk of the past. And how upscale you

felt when ten years later that second

house you acquired was $24,000 with a

single mortgage and you believed if that

salary were to leap to $5,000 a year the

future would guarantee financial security.

 

Exempt from Civil Law While Demanding Special Dispensation

Make it illegal, a criminal offense under

your charter of rights and freedoms, Muslim

associations established in the West urge

those governments. It should be recognized

as a crime to denigrate or hold in contempt 

Palestinians, a racist, human rights assault on

the dignity of a people. And one wonders how

dignified it is and how can it be construed

as a right for Palestinians to commit riotous

acts of civil disobedience in a constant display

of denigration of another people as they gather

in explosive fury at a nation of Jews responding

to barbarous crimes against them perpetrated by

none other than the Palestinian people simmering

with indignant hate blaming others for their

close-held state of victimhood that entitles them

to rape, mutilate, slaughter and abduct Jews in a

murderous paroxysm of racist hate. Jews, the

very indigenous people of Judean lands hotly

contested by Palestinians who speak of themselves

proudly as the inheritors of land never theirs

to claim. That too is cited as criminal, to doubt

Arab patrimony of the geography described by

Roman occupation as the province of Palestine 

the land of the Jews. In their diaspora the wandering

Jews live in harmony with the values and culture

of other lands. Palestinians and their Muslim allies

wreak havoc instead, marching in serried ranks 

shouting imprecations, threatening Jews, waving

foreign terrorist flags, harassing communities and

closing down streets and intersections to mass prayer

spurning mosques for the allure of the symbol of

religious conquest, quelling dissent, insisting on

their civil right to demean others while declaring

universal rights to self-defense by those under lethal

attack tantamount to genocide, labelling such the

very people Palestinian terror seeks to destroy.

Whistling in the Wind of Hate

It has its origins deep in the mists of time.

A subliminal urge, a primal force of hatred.

It lurks deep within, awaiting the opportunity

to burst through the deep well of consciousness.

It prowls discreetly, awaiting the time that will

eventuate, for it always does, when it is safe

to express that loathing born of the other, a time

when events have broken the barrier inviting

the rank hatred to evince its putrid presence.

Slowly the creeping menace advances while

the target, with its inherited memory shivers

in nervous anticipation until finally the curse

rescues itself from its dark oblivion and Jews

are once again hunted by ravening mobs who

seek blood. The haunting ghosts of yesterday

sacrificed to the bloodlust of predators seeking

out the vulnerable, eternally-hated target in an

endless game of pursuit and destruction. So, no

it appears that there is no sating the lethal rage

that creeps, then thunders across the globe as

one pogrom after another seeks to outdo the last.

 

With Eyes Wide Shut

 

This is a shout-out to you credulous denizens of the

civilized democratic West belatedly arriving at

the realization that the warm self-congratulations

you basked in when your governments persuaded you

that it would be the ultimate of good deeds to agree

compassionately that hordes of migrants illegally

reaching your shores should find a helping uplift

in accepting their appeals for haven desperate to find

a refuge, to join your numbers in search of liberty 

and justice and equality for all. Too late you discover

their sheer numbers, those whom you have fed, clothed

housed, given medical treatment, allowed to freely

practise their faith, are now challenging your values

and customs, your heritage and your laws, demanding

their own inherited by birth, steeped deep in concepts

alien to your own, be recognized in favour of

disowning your own. Throngs of their faithful now

dominate the streets and byways of your cities in

cries of impolite jihad, voicing their opposition to

the civil presence of minorities that had long

preceded their arrival to be isolated and threatened

jubilant when their ethnic/cultural/religious counterparts

so despised are raped and massacred, a time of great

celebration and inspiration for similar atrocities to

be adopted in the democracies that opened their arms

to the victims' enemies. These are now your fellow

citizens who with confidence in numbers now demand

you and your numbers indigenous to the towns and

cities they now overwhelm surrender to Islam or face

the consequences. So terribly sorry; it was all ordained

by pitiless fate, and you with your eyes wide shut.