Dreams

The twilight times between pre-sleep
and when deep slumber descends
appear as I grow further into my
elderly years, to expand and in response
my thoughts turn to many matters not
under any deliberate influence from me
it seems, but in random exploration of
the things that have impressed my mind
over the course of the days, weeks, months
and years of my life. Then, when sleep
finally descends I enter another universe
entirely, one not quite rational nor
readily explicable, but drawing me to
its alter-reality where I do not necessarily
revisit the past, but the past intrudes on
the present and within that landscape
the ghosts of yesterday present themselves
as though the intervening years had no
impact whatever as they casually resume
their lives in the most pedestrian of ways
and I simply accept the strange normalcy
of it all for in that alter-reality their
presence appears expected and time
and intimate personal history irrelevant.

Simulacrum Extraordinaire

The biosphere is a living wonder
exquisitely designed by nature whose
creations reflect complex organisms
endowed with brilliantly-conceived
existential benefits meant to enhance
survival. Creatures large and small
whose creation, primally conceived and
engraved in endless time whose existence
either failed or succeeded in establishing
their presence through a laborious and
time-absorbing experiment of rejection
or acceptance as evolution prescribed.
The humble sea cucumber expels its
viscera to deflect a rapacious predator
itself surviving to regrow substitutes.
Butterflies with 'eyes' on their wings to
unsettle swooping birds' appetites.
Plant life exuding noxious fumes to
dissuade animals intent on consuming
them. Animals whose powerful scented
spray sends intended predators scrambling
to escape. Others capable of injecting
sharp quills into carnivores. Nature is a
living, unequalled marvel of industrious
design. Equipping humankind with a
prodigious brain she created an adversary
challenging her devices. That bug you
see over there ... and there a bird, they
are, you see, watching you. Controlled
remotely through the agency of a human
mind they send back surveillance videos
and live sound, employed by a sinister
force to monitor all that you do and are.


 

Nature's Vitriol

Man proposes, Nature disposes ... this is
the natural order of things, that in all
matters of existence it is nature herself
that has the last word. Given a choice who
wouldn't prefer to live by the sea, alongside
a forest, in a valley in the shadow of majestic
mountains? Somewhere in the world there
are those who haven't a choice and this is
where they live, within forests, under the
shade of a sleeping volcano, beside the
endless ocean in exotic landscapes where
when the earth itself shrugs its submerged
plates tsunamis emerge in response, and
when the pressure of the planet's interior
heat builds to a crescendo, fiery hot lava 
spumes over the landscape no less than
do tropical monsoons dredge the sides
of mountains loosing boulders to produce
deadly rockslides.... These are, after all
Nature's precincts where her creatures live
and in so doing become vulnerable to her
vibrantly volatile wrath on those occasions
when she sets aside her benevolent nature.
Those among us who choose to live by the 
sea, mesmerized by its rhythmic murmuration
or at the cusp of a forest, loving the sight of
venerable trees and the mysteries of imagining
the creatures we share the landscape with also
become vulnerable to unstoppable wildfires
scorching everything and everyone in their
path, to voluminous rainfalls without end
swelling lakes and rivers so scenic otherwise
becoming a threat to life and property, in 
revealing such lifestyle choices' propensity
to irritate the elements doing Nature's bidding.

Launch and Orbit

Little wonder China considers itself
the model that none but itself can achieve
for this ancient land bred society, industry
science and art and finally revolution. A
land which in antiquity was civilized while
all around was savage, requiring a massive
fortified wall to enclose its glories from
the ravages of the primitive hordes eager
for conquest. If the music of the spheres
sound grace and harmony, the concept is
one that China has embraced, its aggregate
demanding fealty from all. There can be
no harmony when claques and cliques
feel entitled to disrupt the synchronicity
of purpose. The Great Wall defended its
sovereign sanctity yet now the nation is
impelled toward the global conquest it
once defended from, a leader in trade and
innovation, its military might prepared to
absorb the civilizations surrounding it to
achieve its final status as world power none
other can equal in aggressive prowess
persuading other nations' inventive genius
to become its very own hell-bent toward
its aspired "One Belt, One Road" the viral
perpetual motion machine without peer.

 

Islam Is The Solution

How can it be doubted that Islam is truly
a religion of peace as its fervent faithful
claim it is? Any who doubt based on the
evidence they claim exists on every issue
of all media sites around the world basely
accuse Islam and its followers of ungodly
acts of violence and to them will befall the
fate deserving of such blasphemers. Call
them Islamophobes. The tribal, sectarian
violence of which Muslims are accused is
in and of itself clearly slanderous meant to
diminish the people of the faith as much as
the faith itself. To take as evidence the
vicious medievalism of torture imposed on
those slated to die to ensure ultimate pain
imposed prior to death is merely just desserts
for those who displease Allah. His warriors
on the other hand, fear not death for as
celebrated shaheeds they glorify in their
obedience to the wisdom of the Prophet 
who took such pains to faithfully transcribe 
the tenets of Islam as spoken to him by the
only true God in his unequivocal words
urging followers to cleave to jihad in the 
greater glory of imperial Islam's conquest.
As for the Yehudi and the unbelievers
there will be no mercy, slaughter them all!

"O People of the Book! Why do you argue about Abraham, when the Torah and the Injil were not sent down till after him? Have you no sense? (3.65) You have argued about things that you have knowledge of, so why do you argue about what you have no knowledge of? Allah knows and you do not know. (3.66) Abraham was not a Jew or Christian, but he was upright, a Muslim (someone who surrenders to God), and he was not one of the polytheists. (3.67) The people who are most worthy of Abraham are those who followed him, this Prophet (Muhammad), and those who believed [in Muhammad]. Allah is the patron of the believers. (3.68)" Qur’anic Studies

That Seasonal Ritual

We share no common language
yet they spoke directly to me perhaps
anticipating communication of such
dramatic moment was an imperative
even from one species to another. They
spoke in fact through the medium of
that language representing their primal
inheritance ensconced deep within their
DNA, and mine responded in kind.
I had no real need of experiencing all
too soon the drama of their nighttime
flight, the chatter of warblers migrating
south, a ritual as ancient as existence.
My own interior resources recognized
the waning of daylight hours, that
dusk arrived now all too swiftly, the sun's
abrupt departure, the cooling nights
and expiring plants, all harbingers of
seasonal change, informing all the
creatures upon this globe that summer
is swiftly departing. So, no, it was not
that I was oblivious to this transition
just that hearing their plaintive calls to
their collegial formation lest any be lost 
that inspired in me an intimate sense of 
pensive loss, a pervasive melancholy.


 

Memories of Times Past

Interspersed between events of great human
brilliance in discoveries, enterprising humankind 
has made progress in shaping the world in
a form that pleases humanity's vision of
ownership of the globe upon which we
live alongside other creatures which
nature endowed this place in space with.
In her design she appeared to give free
reign to the human brain and its emotional
turmoil inhabiting the cranium of her
human creatures. From primitive antiquity
to the present the progress has been
afflicted with the sinister proclivities of
the collective to visit the evil of atrocities
upon one another; torture, destruction,
looting, rape, slaughter as enclaves viewed
others with loathing, faulting them for
envying what others have, determining to
destroy lives that would challenge their
own aspirations. These vicious and wholly
violent realities are what we know as
history; documenting the existence of
life as it has been replete with the enormity
of gross imperfections. The victims of
these dread events have long inherited
memories which they call upon to heart
rending effect casting blame for the past
on the present, demanding reparations and
never-satiated humble apologies, yet in a
spirit of unrelenting victimhood righteously
demanding history's reversal, rampage in
a rage of destroyed memorials, ceremonial
statues of the symbolic past, monuments
to glory and valour, pain and pensive
recollection, all stained with the venom 
of unforgiving, sanctimonious accusations.

 

At Rest

In observable nature there are
lessons we are exposed to reflecting
the values that express the meaning of
life itself. Inexpressible beauty exists
for the very purpose of existing, for
beauty fulfills its own promise, one
all life venerates, and alongside beauty
there is the momentum of industry, for
without industry there is no forward
motion, nothing accomplished, and
no reason for nature's creatures to
aspire to fulfilling their potentials in 
any achievement they are equipped to
reach toward. In an interconnected world
where species are interdependent the
industry that balances need with impulse
results from symbiosis and ultimately
production, nature gave us the bumblebee.
And that tiny, industrious creature gives
us unstintingly its labour producing for
all that exists the compulsively helpful
spur to fertility. Accomplishing greatly
whereas the hummingbirds visiting the
same founts of living elixir match beauty
for beauty, the tiny perfect bird feeding
its inexorable hunger fuelling its frantic
flight and incomparable loveliness. And
while the hummingbird remains in
perpetual motion in a conceit of self
availment, the sturdy little bee sacrifices
self for the universal need it fulfills.
Look there, the exhausted bee, at rest.

Life's Serendipity

Veritable and verifiable polymaths
serendipity brought them together. 
How else explain that in a world of
potential companions two discovered
one another, each of whom harboured
a wide range of interests, experience
and expertise in so many areas, from
music performance, to languages
proficiency, to researching archaic history
and astronomy; one now a clergywoman
for whom pastoral services are integral
to her being, the other engaged and
totally engrossed in research and outreach 
both devoted to one another and their full
lives together in a world where intimate
relationships invariably fail more often
than they succeed, these two revolve
about one another like two stars of
equal attraction, magnetic and compelling
in a symphony of perfect synchronicity.
Knowing one another's innermost
thoughts in a delicate dance of mutual
regard they represent a symbiosis of
existence yet perfectly comfortable in
professional separation even while
casually deferring one to the other.
Consanguinity could bring them no closer
to each other, nor wrench them from
that intellectual and emotional binary
state they know to be their very own.

 

The Secret Society

This secret, unseen garden is ours
alone representing a covenant with
nature permitting us the privilege of
imagining and planting then nurturing
and enjoying what has become our 
hidden gem for our eyes alone to
admire and pamper, to dreamily 
perambulate, an evanescent, living
and thriving hermitage of colour and
form, the very texture of which sends
us into rhapsodies of praise, a space
unknown to those oblivious of its
presence. A landscape of our own
where sun and wind and rain are
familiar, the garden residents eagerly
responding to their prompts to flourish
achieving an accord of pride in their
symbiosis, from the architecture of
the trees to the support of the shrubs
and the succession of flowering
attracting bees and butterflies, birds
brilliantly singing their praise of
the random elements, charming our
senses glorifying this, our garden.

 

  

Nature's Contraption

Mystified and terrified in equal measure
primitive shamans once pleaded with
the gods not to devour their source of
light, heat and life itself. In the process
gaining added respect, awe and reverence
from frightened villagers who knew of a
certainty that those prayers and their loud
lamentations aroused the gods to pity.
As the compassionate gods spat out the
contested sun fears were allayed and
humankind indulged itself in an orgy
of grateful celebration in the intercessions
that gained their return to complacency
beloved of the Lords of the Universe
reversing their insatiable appetites. Now
thanks to the wisdom of human genius
and our besotted belief that we are the 
lords of the Universe, astronomers capably
studied the heavens and astrophysicists
weighing the cosmos's interminable
variations and our own limited galaxy
we veer directly toward celebrating what
science has interpreted so logically, as
the great mechanical wheel of the Universe
turns, foolishly abandoning our terror.


 

 

The Way It Is

Kyra is as close to perfection as a small
creature can come, with her glossy
black Lab coat, physical conformation
and sweet, trusting personality. She
would not know and no one will inform
her that she is named after another little
dog quite unlike her in breed but loved
and now gone. And nor would she
understand that those she trusts and looks
to look to her to ease the bereavement
the death of her predecessor imposed
on them so agonizingly recently that
tears still spring unbidden. But her new
movements about the house though 
barely resembling those of the large
dog before her, gives comfort to those
who brought her home. And Kyra is
swiftly learning all about life and the
way it is so that by the time she grows
into her awkward paws it will all figure.
Like her introduction on a woodland trail
to two noisy, cocky little dogs challenging
and intimidating her so she crept into the
bracken until she decided to assert herself
because puppies love to play and she
chased the three-year-olds disconcerting
them no end and proving to herself that
boldness incites bullies to run off before
they return and reciprocate playtime.

 

The Mind of the Creature

How like human nature and forensic 
psychology it is to be oblivious to
the obvious. Paleontologists focus on
discovering our human roots and the
development of homo sapiens, timeless
passage of primitive man to become what
we now know as 'man the wise' hoping
through painstaking archaeological digs
to find evidence that a strain of early
man existed of whom no previous
knowledge was discovered. Anthropologists
pride themselves on professional acumen
and experience, probing here and there
examining minute pieces of cranium
to measure the cavity containing the
brain for that is the seat of the spirit
the soul and the mind of the creature.
How they manage to overlook, in their
zeal to strip the past of its secrets, the
existence of a new strain of humankind
is beyond belief for its existence can be
viewed everywhere that Algerians flood
into France and Belgium, where Moroccans
migrate as refugees to Spain, where vast
numbers of Muslims invade Europe
and nestled within their numbers lurk
Islam's dark brood, never heretofore given
recognition as humankind's newly
discovered branch, a race against time
to disable civilization, committing
murder and mayhem as manifestations
of the destiny of which they are harbingers.

Death's Ghouls

The vicious menace that is terror is
determined to impress upon the aghast
world that Islam's conquest is their
dedicated imperative and there is no
escape from their grasp as they reach
their tentacles of sacred commission
to the faithful, helpfully established now
in every geographical place on the planet
to recruit the willing in the achievement
of their world order consecrated to the
Prophet's admonition and expectation
that fealty to the faith impels jihad.
The world is now impressed with the
spectre of violent death making its
entrance wherever the innocent congregate
where tourists are tempted to visit, where
populations seek pleasure, where the
wary live their lives no longer with
the complacency of the past but with the
acceptance of an odious reality that now
targets men, woman and children
wherever they happen to be engaged in
life, to introduce them peremptorily to
an afterlife denied, held in escrow for
the honoured warriors of Islamic jihad.
From Israel to Britain, the United States
to Italy, Sweden to Germany, Australia
to Belgium, France to Nigeria, Egypt
to Spain, civilization is under lethal siege.

 

Rehearsal

We are all agog, readying ourselves
for an exciting sneak preview of the 
original Greatest Show on Earth though 
the host is the Universe and we 
but hangers-on. The light of our lives 
will be undergoing a major play 
with an understudy or at least one 
that feels it has gained that status.
Immeasurably influential, its luminously
powerful and violently impressive
birth and subsequent life gave us ours.
Its ultimate death spiral in an agony
of obliteration will of course serve
to hasten ours, swiftly and with a 
grave finality we might never have 
imagined. But wait; this is but a dim
rehearsal, it is a reprieve, merely the 
moon eclipsing the sun, an insignificant
satellite aspiring the expiration of a
titan. We will gather to enjoy our
front-row seat in this splendid display
of nature flexing her creations' capacity
to mount heavenly suspenseful dramas
of timelessly fearful Sturm und Drang.

His Natural Talent

It is a prideful nation, audacious,
inventive, bold and loudly fond of itself.
A nation whose teeming population hails
from here and there and everywhere
adapting with ease to the prevailing
culture of sanctimonious belittling of
anything and anyone not of America.
Assertive and combative, it is the hero-bully
of the global schoolyard, yet from its midst
have come stars in the galaxy of science
art, music and philosophy. A nation riven
by polarizing views on ideologies and
its historical racist malfunctions upon
which it grew to great wealth. America,
where anyone might aspire to greatness or
lurk in the shadows of odious and sinister
beliefs parading their racist bigotry in
displays of White Power decrying the
presence of Jews and Blacks and other
dregs of humanity. This is, after all a
nation priding itself on convincing 
doubters that they too can become the
temporarily most-powerful entity on Earth
did they but make the effort, and many
have, from actor to community organizer
peanut farmer to CIA head, haberdasher
to general, and finally and to date, circus
barker whose felonies past and ongoing
are legendary as he hurls the White House
into the Best Show in Town without
breaking a leg or even breaking into a sweat.

Authority Oppositional Disorder

It's perfectly all right. Relax. Just go
ahead and ask yourself how many times
does it take? Well, to transition from an
unfortunate but understandable event
resulting from irreconcilable values, opinions
priorities. It happens, it happens to the best of
them. Your mother instinctively thinks of you
her child, as among the best of them. And she
mourns time and again when you become
emotionally drained by circumstances
beyond your control. Look, once it's a
misfortune, twice even worse, but once
it becomes habitual as it were, it transcends
mere incompatibility. Those intimate liaisons
years in the making and in the living
together, all falling by the wayside of
rejection. It's about even, the times she
rejected him and vice versa. They were
always very nice young men until they
became, mysteriously, tyrants. And each
time they became older with baggage of
their own to bring along just as your
daughter grew older with each of those
dedicated last-time romances that a few
years of togetherness aged so badly. Think
it's time to relieve yourself of your conclusion
and ask her if she might consider that on
occasion those countless breaks in relations 
might be linked to her own dysfunctional 
inability to surrender to the occasional 
give-and-take? To loosen the power struggle? 
Do that, my dear to prove her point that 
you represent the original tyrant to her 
inherited oppositional personality disorder.

Be Forewarned!

We may have good enough reason
to doubt that human intelligence is
well enough developed in the greater
global population to be assured that
it has reached the limits of its potential
in fact has faltered and declined leaving
the vast majority as dregs of intelligent
and rational will, yet the arrival of 
artificial intelligence to intercede in 
decision-making in ways large and small
quotidian and quaint; severely disruptive
and with far-flung consequences seems
no longer to hover on the far horizon. 
Its presence, subtle but ubiquitous 
has the obvious potential of eroding 
the grey matter skulking in the craniums 
of those more than willing to surrender 
their resolve to that of a supranatural 
force of human ingenuity. But for others
the cumulative effect of reliance on such
an artificial agency for simple decisions
wrenches them from the fallacy that we
remain masters in our own house. It
is quite demoralizing, as a perfect
little example of the innocuous but
telling presence of pervasive AI, that
my new and technologically advanced
washing machine persists in ignoring
and over-riding my deliberate choices
presumptuously reverting to its own
against my better informed judgement.

Nature's Whimsies

The bewitching yet fearsome
force that is nature surely must have
a robust sense of mischievous humour
that time and again between hefting
her weighty powers, she indulges in.
As, for example, this afternoon as
we strolled at our leisure through the
forest despite the forecast of rain.
Through the canopy of the forest we
could see darkly ragged clouds above
but no rain to trouble our walk and
nor did our two little dogs behave as
they often do, when thunderstorms
threaten. Soon enough the clouds
moved on leaving space for the
late-summer sun to warm the cool
atmosphere and glitter upon what was
left from last night's rain on foliage.
We four traversed the trails at our
leisurely pace, assured that the sun's
presence obviated the risk of rain, an
assurance that lasted as long as the rain 
despite the sun came lightly clattering
down though no clouds appeared above.
Happily, the fully-leafed canopy gave
us complete shelter. Once again at home
no longer vulnerable to the vagaries
of weather, rolling thunder shook the
house as our pups trembled and barked
while drenching rain splattered our 
windows and we exchanged glances of
wonder that the hail and rain so
benevolently had awaited our return.

The Ultimate Living Laboratory

Though their instantly irradiated corpses
the essence of life struck to oblivion
made indelible impressions wherever
they fell, it is as though that time and
place where a one-of-a-kind disciplinary
action from a powerful instrument of
death and destruction has made little
impression on the consciousness of a
world that has since gone about its
business of being and doing and conflict.
Those innocuous, harmless and oh-so-cute
titles given the instruments of that so
very final solution gave no hint of the
terrible power unleashed on an unaware
and vulnerable city, first Hiroshima and
then Nagasaki whose populations might
never in their wildest nightmares have
imagined themselves the unfortunate
subjects of an experiment that succeeded
beyond the wildest dreams of those who
ordered they be used. The innocence of
those names, Enola Gay and Bockscar
one a tribute the other a juvenile's toy
matched with a Little Boy and The Fat
Man, merely a play on words and whimsy.
Merely an unstoppable goal for the world's
most malevolent and vicious tyrannies.

Her Ghostly Figure

What could be more puzzling than
the abrupt disappearance of a long-familiar
figure? A chasm of absence and a haunted
expectation of that figure appearing just
around the next corner follows that strange
absence. The cessation of existence is not
a concept readily conveyed to creatures
accustomed to greeting and cavorting
with one of their own, a calmly settling
figure whose dignity and demeanor set
the standard for all her admirers, large and
small who now, viewing her human companion
in the distance on a woodland trail where her
loping gait and white figure made her the
ghost of the forest beloved by all who there
ventured failed to alert her old friends that
she would no longer appear at that tall man's
side during their daily hikes in the urban forest.
His own aching acknowledgement of a warm
and trusting companion no longer there to
share pleasure and action surrenders time and
again to the delusion that she is still there
in the woods, snuffling about and soon to
rejoin him on their habitual circuit, and his
heart races, then lapses into the despair of his
loss. As her old friends sighting his arrival
rush to greet the one they anticipate will be
beside him, their anxiety somehow soothes
his, and he bends toward them comfortingly.