In Malice The Forethought

 

 

To be held in esteem

to be loved and cherished

to have someone with whom

you can feel emotionally free

to divulge all the discomfort

and discomfiting incidents

in one's life is everyone's goal

for we are human and our

generic nature is to seek out

those like ourselves whose

temperaments and values can

reflect our own in the creation

of a fluid and warm cocoon

of togetherness. People differ

and so do their circumstances

and their compass in life and

how they adjust to others in

their lives. How very fortunate

it is when two people harbouring

the fantasy of victimhood and

resentment in their juvenile

emotional state of estrangement

and petulant wish to cause harm

and pain to others discovered one

another to found their celebrity

team of malevolent misery.

 

The Enemy Within

 

From primal generation when apes

descended from their lofty perches

on high to perambulate permanently

upright upon two legs below the tree

line the single human race that birthed

itself to become homo sapiens turned

out to be less wise than nomenclature

would have us believe. From the primordial

to the present, existence for humanity

equated with a beating heart, a reasoning

brain, eyes and ears, emotions and language 

creating a biological identity with no 

variations other than those inevitably

socially transmitted and inherited to

divide the unity of biology into a vast

multitude of factions each claiming 

unique characteristics each viewing

the others as beyond the stream of

belonging, creating of humanity a sad

network of threatening adversaries in an

endless drama of violently lethal upheavals.

 

 

Where? Russia, Iran, Turkiye, China

 

In liberal democracies there are costs to

defying the authority of government but in 

reflection of their political values citizens 

are free to speak as they will of their opinion 

as the governed. Granted there is a price to pay 

in the sense of being regarded as anti-social 

misfits, ingrates and the worst slurs of all -- racists

and homophobes, placing government critics

in the realm of unsavoury company and that

irrespective of their actual personal values. In

dictatorships on the other hand there are those few 

whose principles cannot be the least compromised 

by concerns of personal dignity besmirched for 

those are not the instruments of punishment meted 

out to the unworthy citizen who campaigns against 

corruption, exploitation, racist belittlement and 

violence. For these stalwarts their sense of caution 

for fear of retribution stands resolute against the 

fervour of their condemnation of the autocrats 

and tyrants who wage external war and violate 

human rights at will, praising and inciting terror 

groups who do their will as ancillary defense of 

the indefensible. Moral outrage leads these people 

of conscience to shunt aside fears in favour of 

broadcasting to the world the outrages of their 

leaders, whom the world soon enough discovers 

have been executed by firing squad or hung, or 

beheaded or crucified as penance for decrying evil. 

And the world shrugs looking elsewhere in a fit of

boredom for its latest titillating, unusual events.

 

 

Anniversary

 

I'm glad, really glad that you

were there where I had been but

remember, I was there before you.

I'm glad too that you were going

my way and so we went there together.

Wasn't that neat? Out of nowhere

there you were, even though I

recognized you and you had no idea.

You thought it was funny something

to laugh about but it was true. You

came in my dreams and then one day

there you were and I used my wiles

and you were trapped. So then we went

forward together sharing that far

and long destination. Didn't we enjoy it?

Lots to talk about now isn't there? 

You, the realist and me, the fabulist,

Seventy years and more to come!

 

Inscribed in the Book of Life

All religious devotees are piously instructed

to prize life as all religions extol themselves as 

purveyors of peace and good fellowship

emphasizing the ways of the sacred in the

divine path of the Almighty who in infinite

wisdom conferred existence upon the

universe and smiled kindly at the lifeforce

ingrained in humanity frowning only when

that creation spurned the commandments

impressed upon their consciousness to treat

others with the dignity reserved for the Spirit

who invested a spark of its own immortality

in each living thing. Somehow the messages 

to the faithful have been corrupted by those

of faint faith who portray themselves as the

arbiters of the faith's tenets as they persuade

their fellows to surrender their lives for the

greater glory of God and in the process offer

the lives of those who fail to follow their way

to God's favour. While powerful theists governing

the land declare those protesting their tyranny

to be in breach of God's divine instructions thus

forfeiting their lives as apostates, in service to God.

 

 

Going Back Where They Came From

 

When the parents react with amused contempt

at the panic in the target community when

their children face being confronted by other

students with the demeaning derogative of

humanly inferior ethnicity fit for a gas chamber 

to eliminate the world's undesirable human 

trash with the declaration that kids will be kids 

and they're just having a good time you can bet 

that they were patterned on the 'good time' their

parents were observed to have in discussions 

about the presence of Jews in the community and 

the unfairness of the misery of the Arab community 

in the Middle East suffering the indignity of 

having their land wrenched from their grasp 

treated as second-hand citizens, forced to live

under Jewish laws so patently unfair to non-Jews. 

Now, they sneer, their own Jewish community 

within the larger community in which they are a

 minority must suffer the tedium of Jewish complaints. 

It's just that siccing the police and the guardians of 

'anti-racism' on their kids for posting swastikas

is a step too far to tolerate and they won't have it.

 

 

Do You Remember? I Do!

 

 

Remember once waking up in a strange

place in complete darkness and silence

wondering where your mother was and

suddenly struck with the thought that 

everyone had died and so had you? Remember

when as a toddler you were taken to a place

where nuns in habit looked after small children

whose mothers worked in garment factories?

Remember hearing a loud street band with

brass musicians in uniforms of an army

calling itself Salvation? Remember when

horse-drawn delivery wagons brought ice

blocks to your street, house-to-house for the

kitchen ice box? Remember your 'uncle'

smothering you as you lay in bed? Remember

strangers stopping you in the street to ask where

you were from? Remember your mother taking

you to a sweat shop to work the summer months

at age 13? Remember a year later working for a 

toy factory stamping out tin toys? Remember

how hushed and joyful it was when you were

married at 18? I remember all that. I remember

my father was orphaned at 13 and became a refugee

farm worker. I remember my mother's squint as an

eye injury from a bomb tossed into her parents'

Pale of Settlement home. I remember and think

how very fortunate I am and how kind life has

been to me for I had little and now have much.