Sinister Events Abroad

They are young and zealously passionate in
the depth of their beliefs those hundreds of
initiates converged on the Eternal City to make 
their pilgrimage to the Holy See. Attendance 
at this annual study in commanding evil to 
depart and release its grasp on the innocent
and the vulnerable is a serious matter and the 
attendees and their instructors give it the 
attention it fully deserves one group leading 
the other understanding their acquired skills 
in exorcism will be much in demand for all 
too many of the church's unfortunates have 
been victimized by the Angel of Evil whose
exploits throughout humanity infiltrating and
gaining authority over the weak souls whose 
psycho-corporeal essence has been sacrificed 
in the realms of greed, suspicion, threats and 
vicious venality dominating society. The 
ambitions of the attendees is to correct a course 
and redirect humanity to the path of divine
righteousness. The rumour that stealthily
exudes its essence of blame draws attention 
to the advance toward the devil of the Shepherd 
of Christ whose encounter with the blessed 
Spirit has been as evil confronting God, now
requiring an exorcism of primary precedence.

Pros and Cons

In your considered opinion those of your
peers who reached those experienced years
of life wracking up the wisdom of the ages
foolishly surrendered cognitive capacity to
the sloth of mental fatigue allowing others
the freedom of authority over their free
agency to deliberate and to reach decisions
advantaging themselves, slumping toward
toward the convenience of leaving decisions
to those known as smooth operators, have
abandoned their lives to the possibility of
victimization. Predators roam everywhere
constantly scheming, expensing the well
being of victims to their extravagant will
to defraud. Each must man their own
protective barricades you harrumph in the
self-satisfied knowledge that your wits are
capable of sensing when your assets are
palpably endangered. Bear in mind that it
will be your grey head in contest with the
sharpness of a mind well versed in the kind
of technological sleight-of-mind confusing
to those of your generation, when a practised
and conscienceless scammer decides it's your
turn and you realize no one is immune for
the conceit you rely upon offers no shelter.

Delusional Futility

There is a strange synergy
between me and my computer
a symbiotic struggle for
dominance between me who
animates an inanimate object
and the object whose animation
produces in me an ambivalence
in realizing our relationship
as to which of us controls
the other. The computer has
as yet no emotions of its own
but it manages to invoke in
me powerful emotions of
inadequacy, irritation and
profound insecurity on occasion
leavened to a degree by an
anger that achieves nothing of
any note for it is well known
that the innocuous presence
in one's life of a computer is
an aid to achievement yet the
reality is its presence and
dominance in one's life is the
cause of our collective fading
cognitive capacity as we fail
one test of control after another.

His Eminence

Liars, character assassination, every one,
pronounced the beloved celebrity father
figure so well known to audiences far and
wide, with the self-assurance of one who
commands attention and respect, the very
respect given him by the unsuspecting
women now confronting him in a court of
law wondering whether justice would prevail.
They had the strength of conviction that their
experience with belittling disbelief would be
overcome by their very numbers, each
giving comfort to the other by their
determined presence to reveal humiliation
and predatory assaults by a man practised
in disarming, charming and drugging his
targets leaving them vulnerable to his
unrestrained lust. He had the considerable
weight of universal acclaim as a beloved
comic and actor whose reputation was
solidly intact by support refusing to concede
their hero could be implicated in behaviour
too sordid to contemplate. His wealth
ensured the practised expertise of lawyers
casting doubt on the veracity of the accusers
giving him confidence he would prevail. A
confidence that the verdict was soon to
irreversibly refute laying his arrogant
entitlement to rape open to the world.

Testimonial

We live in an era where so much of the
world around us has been examined, studied
explored and explained so that existence and
the nature of all things become explicated
leading to great scientific findings making us
so much wiser than we were before. Leading
science to peer more closely now at the free
agency we assume is ours as we set about
our lives making judgements and courses of
action through free will. Only to discover that
brilliant minds now believe there is no free will
that our subconscious reacts instantaneously
when faced with situations requiring decision
making and it is not our considered decisions
that guide us to how we behave but instinct and 
the acquired primal inheritance of our species 
instructing our actions before our brain has the
opportunity to assess and determine. Everyone 
now has a defence; the consequences of their
'choices' are not theirs alone to atone for.
Though they may be the authors of dread carnage
they cannot be held totally responsible for their 
actions for they are but automatons responding 
to inner urges beyond their cognitive control. 
Add to that  their formative environment and
exposures responsible for character development
and the formula is there for monsters among us
to run amok and be forgiven for they know not
what they do in destroying the lives of others.

Terror-Suicidist

The driver is grimly focused as the event
he has practised night after night in his
dreams through a desperate pantomime of
release from the demons that plague him
transforms a busy thoroughfare and the
shoppers thronging sidewalks into mere
objects obligingly placing themselves in
pre-arranged positions his vehicle veers
toward one after another as they are struck
down, crushed, pinned against walls
and though their mouths open wide in
paroxysms of screaming fear and their
eyes glaze into nothingness as their blood
splatters everywhere and they crumble
into senseless, briefly throbbing vessels
of searing pain, they are soon stilled and
no sound reaches the dimmed consciousness
of the man steering the vehicle toward yet
other victims, his attention fully engaged
in keeping accurate score, oblivious to
the pandemonium as traffic stops and
people disbelievingly view once-living souls
caught by the carnage themselves hardly
conscious of the high-pitched sound
of police vehicles assembling as the
blood-letting subsides and the killer pleas
repeatedly to be shot dead but there is 
no release for the man who asked
no permission from those whose lives
he took to enable him to claim his own.

Rage and Conquest

Random and anomalous as lightning
strikes they represent the new terror of
our time. From Kabul to Kamloops
Paris to Berlin the venomous hatred of
humanity inherited and promulgated
through the auspices of a supreme power's
influence over the faithful manipulated
over their lifetime to obey and never
question the onus to surrender their own
lives in the greater glory accruing to
Islam through the quality and quantity
of slaughter carrying no greater acclaim
for those who heroically end life and
claim those of others in martyrdom
pledging on the lofty plain of jihad in
the name of peace, where no place is 
immune as the dread pathology of 
vengeance in the name of tribal antipathy 
and ancient sectarian threats commit to a
vast bloodletting to cleanse insults to
Islamic decrees leaving a vast charnel
house of the dead to satiate the appetite
of a divinely-inspired monstrosity now
and again turning its savagery toward
the task of exterminating non-believers
in their never-ending goal of conquest
achieved through unremitting destruction.

Hidden Treasures

The crystalline beauty of ice refracting
a winter sun, and the overwhelmingly
breathtaking landscape of pristine white
in the wake of a winter snowstorm have
their place in the canon of evanescent
exquisite beauty nature is so inordinately
skilled at presenting, yet these are
phenomena of atmospheric conditions
that take their toll on all that lives
whose onslaught butterflies and birds
flee while those that cannot migrate take
measures to safeguard their existence in
the animal kingdom. The absence of plant
life enlivening the landscape when the
verdant pleasure of lush foliage and grasses
depart and floral offerings wither and die
leave a vacuum we barely take note of
until their prolonged absence strikes that
subconscious blow of deprivation. This
too shall pass when the season grows long
and its cranky presence decried until the
agonizingly delayed presence of spring
when the discovery of renewal reminds
us of near-forgotten rituals and the burst
of disbelief and joy when garden soil
relents and releases its captives finally
thawed and anxious to thrive as they
have done since time immemorial. 

 

All Is Forgiven

This, more than any season, becomes
a test of faith; belief that nature has not
abandoned or forgotten us, the frustratingly
tardy arrival of spring is an anomaly she
will soon notice and amend, we have but to
wait, and as we do, convince ourselves
that the ground below our feet will soon
thaw, the snow and ice melt, and the flora
we so adore will return. Thus it has always
been, no reason to believe that the eternal
ritual has been forsaken, even though we
feel that we have been. Transitions of the
seasonal magnitude that is nature's purview
take time and all too frequently a fully
unproductive adversarial situation arises
when winter has grown old and misery
minded, a cantankerous, grumbling, fully
weatherworn and irascible elf whose hoary
presence once hailed, no longer charms
yet remains resistant to pleas to depart.
We of tenuous faith despair, but we need
only look about and count the symbols of
spring with longer days and returning migrant
birds anxious to resume life in our warming
climes even though vexatious ice storms 
and ravaging winds have claimed their
right to rampage across our landscape before
finally fading into memory as sun and rain
and gentle breezes nudge gardens awake.

A View of Depravity

Barbarity in the treatment of women
and girls, their sexualized objectification
the violence meted out to them as helpless
pawns in a male-dominated universe where
they are viewed as objects of desire while
valued for their fertility, jealously kept as
possessions to be guarded, shielded from
public view, threatened and violated within a
signal tribal, clan custom of ancient heritage.
But it is also codified and regulated in the
sacred texts of Islam where slavery and
sexual possession are assured gifts of
conquest, and where the faithful in jihad
can envision being spirited to Paradise as
heroic figures upon whom wait the passions
of nubile virgins for their sole delectation.
Mutilation, rape, humiliation, drudgery
marks the lifespan of women who accede
while stoning and honour killings reward
those who defy the authority of men who
cite the Koran and the Hadiths. Girls are
groomed for a lifetime of childbearing as
dutiful faithful in Islam although boys too
are not exempt from the pain and misery
of slavery to slake men's carnal appetites.
This, the bleak existence of those born to
their fate held in the steel grip of custom
and entitlement within the religion of peace.

With This Ring I Thee Wed

It can be none other than the delicately
exquisite refractive beauty of pure
light we view through the prisms of
that rarest of minerals, valued and
sought after, held in such inestimable
esteem, worn with pride, the envy of
those awaiting their own opportunity
to hold and to have this universal
symbol of evanescent delight presaging
the virtue of human devotion. In its
presence we experience the visceral
certainty of proximity to eternity in
recognition of its atomic density and
ancient origins at the brink of time
so little wonder it is symbolic of the
primordial event of cataclysmic upheaval
introducing all that exists, its process
heaving the presence of energy into
the vast desolation of emptiness that
was space absent of place and being.
Fitting that diamonds are visualized as
the medium by which the covenant of
marriage is sealed, redolent of time and
space, place and immortal light to guide
us through the labyrinth of shared life.

Judgement Call

Yes, yes I know, hard not to notice
how you've never been able to understand
why some people gamble, believe in
astrology and the supernatural, waste
their time in admiration of popular
celebrities, yearn to be wealthy and
admire those who are, steeping themselves
in a funk of unachievable goals that make
their lives a misery of resentful discontent
in their focus on specious values when
the world is full of opportunities and
learning situations waiting to be noticed
and taken advantage of. You wonder
about yourself at times, why it is any
business of yours how people disport
themselves, what they hold dear and how
they spurn what you consider targets of
high value. Who are you to sit in judgement
and why bother feeling frustrated at the
waste of energy invested in spurious
pasttimes that no one gains anything from?
Even as the virtuous, entitled to their
superiority of choice sneer at the faults
and foibles of others irritate the hell out
of you, where do you place yourself?

Individualism

Not too many dull moments, always
something to anticipate as the world
of tomorrow surges its way into our
consciousness, true marvels of ingenuity
where enterprise and invention labour
to benefit the world's consumers - and
they are (almost) everyone. Imprinted 
within our shared subconscious is that 
timeless urge to discover products not
hitherto known to exist but which now
instantly transform our lives as we gain 
untold control of all that matters; material 
gain augmented with the conceit of
inclusion. Convenience and contact that 
in brilliant and manifold manifestations
enrich us, invariably leaching away any
semblance of value judgement much
less independent thought as we grasp 
the reality that we cannot exist as 
meaningful creatures of any social
environment if we deign not to do as 
others, the symbolism of discernment
attitude of entitlement to rank among
the cognoscenti of acquired brands; the
irresistible goal to set us apart and above
those whose insensibility to the impulse
to gather and to preen marks them as
pathetic nonentities we would not become.

Defensive Survival

Oh. You prefer reality, unburnished
and raw. The truth wherever it leads.
Not, you say, to judge, merely to know
to be informed. Things happen and there
are details surrounding these events that
can be scrutinized and evaluated and
from that understanding follows. It also
follows that once the revelations lead
to that conclusion there are impressions
that can be most unfortunate. Which is
why so often survivors have their own
reality whose perspectives may distort
truth in a neutrally objective sense, but 
in the very subjective lead to survival. In 
every mind a deep subconscious delves 
into possibilities of various positions and 
views instructing the mind to nudge memory
in a primordial recall that does its service 
to its instinct for survival. Belief in events
beyond one's control in prevention and
sorrowful attestations of consequences
of unintended magnitude expressed in
weeping regret exert their powerful emotive
sympathy which absolute truth cannot and
so that alternate truth offers itself in
sacrifice to reality, in the process
offering salvation to another victim.

Object Lessons

Culture does not necessarily equate
with civilization although where
civilization has taken firm root
the culture of demeaning and
violating others is less visible to
the naked eye for tribalism has
been surmounted by a social
contract that holds it to be a
desecration of human rights to
view the rape of women and girls
as springboards to the restoration
of honour. And nor do societies
believing in equality hold council
meetings where the majority agree
that group rape to shame one who
defies tribal convention and the
tyranny of the majority to humble
and disgrace the offending clan
is morally justified. Much less 
teach tribal lessons to those 
whose cultures clash with
one's own by abducting a child
to torture, rape and murder her as
an object lesson to those who
disobey limits to their freedom.

Teaching Moments

It should be forbidden
for grandchildren to be
in possession of 
greater knowledge than
their grandparents. At
the very least that
knowledge shielded
from the frail elderly
for whom the shock
can prove fatal. Is it
too much to ask that
those whom grandparents
bundled with care against
the cold, spoonfed with
patience, watched over
as they slept
fretted when they were ill
accompanied on their
first day at Kindergarten
and encouraged to
attend university hoping
they would star
academically and join
a profession though
nothing would make
grandparents prouder
than they already are
might take the trouble
to be sensitive to  the
opportunity given them
and denied the other
stifling the impulse to
teaching moments?

Beware Jewish Plots

In the final analysis the issue around the
Final Solution is a mere misunderstanding
an error of understanding in interpretation
which often happens when translating from
one language to another though the lingua
franca in this situation like none other is
that of parsing hatred, a loathing so intense
that all the participants intended was to
protect the world from the threats set out
in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So
that when the Iranian Ayatollahs express
doubts on the Holocaust and its numbers
what they mean is their expression of vast
disappointment in the finite total leaving
alive enough Jews to procreate and get on
with those nefarious plans to rule the world. 
As a pure Aryan race in total sympathy 
with the Nazi selfless ambition as candidates 
for a new world order, lamentably failed in 
design and purpose leaving an unfinished
legacy of six million Jewish lives destroyed
the Islamic Republic of Iran is horrified 
to discover the recovery of Jewish existence 
to its current 14.5 million. Hardly, in retrospect
a job well done they bitterly decry of trust 
in German efficiency even if in 1930 16.5 
million Jews existed globally; a paltry 
reduction to the present of two million 
a numerical error Iran plans to rectify.

Worlds Apart

In India distraught parents are
inconsolable in their pain and grief
where life on a high geological plateau
will never be the same again after a
school bus driven carelessly veered
off the mountain into the abyss below
and twenty-four rural children will now
miss their life-lessons permanently.
In a Canadian prairie town a hockey
team setting out for another town where
boys of 18 and 20 test their skills and
mettle against one another, their bus
collides with a tractor trailer and fifteen
are dead, others in dire medical condition
and the nation responds echoeing the
shocked loss of that distant town.
And surely for those parents one of
whom declared of his son paralyzed
neck down that at least he is alive
and life is all parents want for their
children. Then it transpires the coroner's
office misidentified a dead youth in
stark error for all the players were
formidable in the youthful vigour of
their appearance despite the carnage
inflicted on their bodies. Two sets of
parents identified their offspring through
their haze of grief and the twisted and
damaged condition of their loved ones
but each verified another's child not
their own. Now one youth accepted as
dead is not, but in parlous condition
and the one identified as having
survived his dreadful ordeal is dead
and the parents, somehow coping. In
Syria children die as a blood-hungry
dictator sends chemical weapons to
destroy them, simply because he can.

Thou Shalt Not

Indignant and conscientious parents
know they have a duty to civil society
to tame the little wild beasts they bring
into this world to ensure the survival of
their genetic inheritance and they perform
this duty with gratifying gusto whenever
their offspring deny truth and invent
whoppers to cover their indecent little
arses. No threats, no bullying, behave
have respect. How proud those parents are 
when the fruit of their labour mature into
admirably responsible men and women
a credit to their parents and the society in
which they were raised. And then there
is the stark contrast of the world's exemplar
of human aspirations to govern our emotions
and strive to act honourably on the world
stage, nation to nation. An institution
whose purpose was to act as a global
reminder of gentle persuasion inviting all
its member nations to act in the best interests
in all matters pertaining to human rights
to reflect upon that esteemed body invested
in achieving world order looking to the high
ground, chastising those that fail and
praising those that succeed, somehow in
the process managing to turn right and wrong
praise and censure completely inside-out.

The Enigmatic Mind

Have a care, do. Oh, you've heard that
one before and chose the charity of your
fellow humans to judge your character?
Well, then, that certainly was your choice
one of your own free will, without doubt.
Was it the allure of attention, the frisson
of a moment in time approximating the
only kind of celebrity your life will ever
experience? The instant gratification that
comes with applause, the warmth of the
empathy exuding from your audience as
you disclosed matters about yourself you
had previously shrunk from associating
with though they did reflect your actions
despicable as they were. Comforting
however, the signals gleaned that they
couldn't have been that awful if others
on hearing their disclosure fail to shrink
from you in disgust. Might it mean that in
their own experiences they have done far
worse? Is there no shame? None; all is
meant to be aired, declaimed, owned and
oh yes, forgiven. Though a word to the
wise advised caution, it is well to recall
that wisdom would have averted the very
unsavoury acts you now reveal. Nothing
now is too intimate and shame-provoking
not to declare for aren't we all human and
don't we all commit crimes against honest
decency? Your confidence has engendered
admiration for courage in confessing and
you are one among many in the company
you keep for whom there is nothing to be
kept secret, yet among whom outrage
billows on hot red paroxysms of betrayal
when a platform upon which all is casually
divulged is revealed to have betrayed 'trust'.

 Nature's Progeny

Who can know the unknown, arcane
ways of the mind, when humanity
has been endowed by nature with an
endless and forever evolving synthesis
of ferocious emotions and genetic
inheritances guiding our lives with
pressures and proclivities few can
foresee much less understand. When
a child born with a deadly corruption
of cells striking the frail vessel of his
body while his mind remains intact
struggles to maintain life through
his years of intense pain and suffering
never once despairing always full of
hope for his personal future never
to be realized, his joyful persona giving
hope to others, while fortunates born to
wealth, health and clarity of purpose
regard all around them with contempt
and snarling rage, indifferent to the
anguish they cause by their psychotic
drive to benefit their narrow personal
desires. The child never to become a
man dies in vain obscurity, the man
driven by his demons becomes a
dreadful scourge upon society gaining
notoriety and celebrity while in
the process of destroying lives
and commanding an army none
dare oppose him, he conquers life.

Survival: I Am

Nature in her thoroughness and
attention to detail has equipped her
organisms for survival, at the very least
to live out the days quite singularly
allotted to them and she was particularly
generous with humankind, prescribing
the faculty of thought. We are aware
because we can think, we are able to
view our surroundings and our place
within them and introspection leads us
to knowledge. We are attendant on
the primal urge to procreate and in so
doing preserve ourselves. We are also
imprinted with the awareness of what 
is good and what is not. No religious 
devices crafted by man need apply in 
this sphere intersecting knowledge and
emotion. Our survival instinct compels
us to strive that our genomes will
continue long after we have departed
completing that instinct's assigned
purpose. Yet another mystery of the
human condition arises when some
among us respond to the urgency of
obeying a deep-seated and rare call to
ensure that their very thoughts survive
and to that end construct for the avid
digestion of others a sacred text and
vision of a supreme being whose appeal
ensures a faithful throng's devotion
treasures the contrived thoughts of
that theist progenitor projecting it into
a future where it thrives, forevermore.

Missed Understanding

Little wonder the poor man is so
furious, for with my rebuttal as an
ignorant woman I have thrown in
his face the obvious; he has wasted
the discreet effort of many years
of quietly assiduous reminders of all
we have in common, he and I. Just
neighbours perhaps it's true but in a
philosophical sense, he never failed
to remind me, much in common
through our shared heritage, he from
Bangladesh and I born in this country
of immigrant stock fleeing the
European charnel house of Hitler's
Holocaust. We are, he was so fond
of propounding, linked historically
through Abraham. Strange, thought
I, a Jew and a Muslim 'linked' through
that ancient Old Testament prophet
what had his legend to do with that
of Mohammad's? So I said nothing
allowing his unctuous persuasion
until that time when he mentioned
Medina after I had educated myself 
about Islam. Medina, he said where 
Jews and Muslims lived in harmony 
in ancient times believing in the very 
same god. I cited passages from the 
book I'd read by an esteemed Muslim 
scholar who hadn't shirked describing 
the mercilessly triumphant slaughter
and this man enraged, informed me
I was nothing but an ignorant woman
wasting his time for nothing, so awful!

The Windstorm

It's an evil-tempered, raging
ravaging wind that blasts
the landscape with its
chaotic anger
howling down chimneys
flinging sleet against
frozen windowpanes
etched in patterns of ice
and races down highways
thrusting, toppling vehicles
while in the forest
the canopy of tree masts
moan, groan and thrum
in a prolonged agony
of bending to the will
of a beast that cannot be
appeased, ripping branches
and limbs apart, tossing
them below and fortune
be with any who happen
in their path. Above, gulls
are lofted and hurled
ravens shudder and
hold fast to their eyries
weathering the gales.

The Social Covenant

Fundamental to our purpose
in life it seems is regulating
and identifying what is
meaningful and what is
without purpose and to that
end there are reasons why
societies enrich their cultures
with certain principles whose
purpose is to guide their
members into the absolute
correct manner in which they
can pride themselves as
superior to those of all others.
Through the ages from the
past to the present there have
been the People and there have
been all others whose existence
bears little significance. The
cults, classes and symbolism
of the privileged and the
slighted live in a struggle
one in protest the other in the
assured conceit of the upper
class glancing down at the
pathetic mewling of the
unfortunate disinherited. There
are always reasons in support
of such hierarchies despite an
absence of rational reasoning
for the species divides itself
just as nature designed cells to
divide endlessly creating life.
For nature the heresies inherent
in her organisms deeming
themselves authorized to
recognize others as unauthentic
to her purpose is an amusement.