Political Storm

Take due note of high-profile scandals
that inevitably break free to be publicly
aired when one pressed unduly to set
aside her moral authority once assigned 
to an official post of seeing justice done 
in all its glorious potential, takes umbrage
happens to be resolute and faithful to the
premise that law and order must reflect 
equal status of justice meted out to all
so dare not promote interest of self over 
justice. Presidents and Prime Ministers 
have fallen over time in reflection of just 
such attitudes of entitlement in the interests 
of evading justice on behalf of the powerful 
that have their willing ear balanced 
against the threat of economic damage 
difficult to sustain in the face of looming
unemployment as elections draw near.
For there are some, once faithful whose 
outrage will not be pacified in the face 
of urgent solidarity while planning perfidy. 
And to those unwilling to compromise an
entire public, informed, is eternally grateful. 

Yazidi Torment

Feared and despised in equal measure
the loathsome warriors of Islamic
conquest in searching for victims
identify the minority sects, unarmed
and innocent of harm to anyone
as a signal to the world of their
rapacious appetite for death, rape
and adherence to sacred scriptures
justifying the slaughter of those who
fail to surrender their souls to a loving
god who has amplified the message
of faith in jihad exploiting the
vehicle of terror to send their virulent
message of hatred and contempt for
all those who resist their conquest
of a civil world order. The pathology
of entitlement to uprooting the
defenceless from their ancient home
and heritage, of bloodshed and its
gory celebration in honour of Islam
is exceeded only in their zeal to
'spare' women and children from
immediate death in favour of slavery
to be sold and bartered, beaten and
raped then finally beheaded and
buried in a mass grave of despair.

Time and Memory

Each day becomes an ephemeral wisp of time
the months fleeting, but not inconsequential
in the grand strategy of years that come 
and go marking episodes and significant 
milestones to be remembered. The seasons
are frequent visitors in nature's clockwork
mechanism of existence, space and time 
on this planet. On a winter day the elements 
assemble like a sublime chorus of heavenly 
voices to offer theatrics unparalleled by 
any human agency to produce an ocean 
of blue in the quivering cold rivalling those
that host a dark night in the stratosphere
but within that ocean our sun the source of life's 
comforting warmth sprays its dazzling
filaments of light to capture the eye of the 
spectator as wind rustles dried foliage in 
a forested landscape of enchanting presence.
The lens of that eye absorbs the captivating
scene appraising its spectacular dimensions
and living beauty then tucks it all securely 
into the mind's memory in the subconscious
from where it can be called upon to surface 
briefly, a faint, wholly memorable replica 
of the original reminiscent of a shooting star.

Defying Humanity

There is not much new to report on the
extent of mankind's departure from civil
normality in favour of depravity for what 
is old is once again new though there are 
the exceedingly distraught who prefer to 
believe that the debased humans who 
carry out atrocities are in fact not at all 
human. Reality is the shame inherent in
their humanness that they are all-too human
a distinct part of humanity, yet not to be 
confused with a fearsome anomaly of 
psychopathy become at some stale date 
in history a viral phenomenon coursing 
through the accursed minds of the afflicted 
to enable them to pursue an agenda of 
mass extermination in genocide, but a 
horribly recurring psychosis afflicting 
those who are amenable to the belief that 
they are superior and entitled to destroy 
the lives of sub-human inferiors whom 
they describe as unfit to live. So that 
even while mass graves are still being
uncovered from the Holocaust years 
unearthing men, women and children 
of Jewish origin, at the very same time 
eighty years later other mass graves are
discovered, their victims much newer
the defenceless and the friendless whose 
lack of presence the world once again 
handily overlooks as yet another sordid
unfortunate lapse in humanity while 
the world is pre-occupied by far more 
pressing matters requiring attention.

Nature's Limitations

The true puzzle of existence is that
human life throbs with the passion of
being. Nature has designed us, just as
all else that exists in the great Universe
answers to her inexplicable blueprint.
That Nature itself exists is beyond mere
postulation, that we ourselves exist we
exhibit in our generations. Nature is a
builder, a designer, an engineer, a clever
and manipulative force uniquely capable 
of bringing all that is into being. As an 
all-powerful force of original existence 
there is this about Nature; her focus on
producing life where none was, despite
a seeming lack of interest its preservation.
We are devised and then left to our very
own devices. Nature is non-committal
in that existential sense and though we
claim Nature to be indifferent, is she?
Surely more to the point the ultimate 
power invested in Nature is yet without
awareness, much less self-awareness for
this is the attribute she has invested in her
creatures. Those she endows with the
cardinal existential motivation of survival.
We indulge in introspection; she cannot.

On The Wild Side

Make no mistake, what you see before
you is indeed a forest, a natural preserve
beloved of those accessing it to breathe 
its primal purity, view its landscape, admire
the seasonal gifts on the forest floor and
experience the freedom to lope along the
many trails that generations have forged
through the woods. It is a place of refuge
where deep contemplation of life in a
serene setting beckons. It is an arras of
unsurpassed beauty in all of its variability
and seasonal displays. Within its confines
there is wildlife; think deer, coyotes, foxes
raccoons and the smaller denizens of
such places, along with birds of exotic
frame and girth like herons, hawks and
dabbling ducks that come to the waterway
coursing through its ravined hillsides. No
it is not a wilderness, though 'untouched'
by human habitation for the wilderness is
confined to the streets of the nearby city
where a different kind of wild life exists
intimidating, threatening, dangerous and
crowded with distrustful dwellers who 
seldom ramble within such graciously green
and temperate sanctuaries as this oasis.

Fellow Citizens

You don't choose your neighbours and
assuredly the opposite is also true. If, by
chance you have been puzzled on occasion 
by the election signs the fellow down the 
street drives into his lawn with brazen audacity 
during an irritatingly prolonged period of 
marked political eruptions when federal 
politicians have been given the opportunity 
by chance to flaunt stupidity of a truly  
egregious nature and still anticipate that the 
broad spectrum of the electorate they feel 
ever so entitled to consider their supporters 
you might think of getting to know this
neighbour a little more intimately. Knock
on his door and casually query his choice.
Introduce yourself as a concerned person
anxious to determine his balance of mind
just in case, as a charitable gesture, he might
require help accessing the closest mental
hospital. Diplomatically, of course; choose
your words carefully, indicate preparedness
to discuss the fate of your country's near
future in good faith. Then stand back and
let it rip, and it will as your good neighbour
ventilates his contempt for your untenable
position through sheer ignorance. There see? 
You have been made privy to the poor man's 
state of mind and can now judge him a cretin. 
For his part, he can dine out quite handsomely 
on a practised parody while animatedly 
narrating his amazing encounter with a
certifiably politically illiterate provocateur.

The Urban Forest

How utterly perfect a setting, the very
idealization of nature in harmony with
itself, sedate and still, not a whisper of
sound anywhere well cushioned by a 
deeply layered snowpack, dense on the
forest floor, surrounding trees gripped in 
winter sleep and a well tracked series of 
forest trails beckoning beside a frozen
stream, to satisfy the subconscious urge 
of city dwellers to renew their ancient 
compact with nature leading an elderly 
couple to invest time and energy leashing 
their tiny terrier to accompany them on 
a treat of a foray into the winter woods. 
The other side of this tale is the sudden 
ominous emergence of a brace of canids 
huge and muscled rampaging toward them 
and in one fell swoop before the panicked 
pair could react, surrounding them, briskly 
nuzzling the terrified terrier whom the man 
barely managed to swoop into his arms at
risk of losing his footing when the weight
of the mastiff leaned in curiosity against
him the better to inspect the cowering
little dog. The couple in desperation viewed
the white, undulating landscape of treed
hills for a human form, a voice calling off
the monsters, to no avail. Yet the black
menacing Dane with its red eyes and the
Mastiff turned with disinterest and swiftly
departed, leaving the pair and their charge
unable to move, transfixed with terror.

Process This

It is, yes, a dilemma of distinct and
troubling proportions. Presenting societies
of western democracy with a non-choice
over which equivocation will do nothing
whatever to solve the issue. The issue?
Precisely; for having absorbed into their
communities of diverse beliefs, heritage
ethnicity and culture there arose among
them those of their issue who have abruptly
and happily shunted aside the bromides of
equality for the much more attractive call
to the faithful under Sharia to cleave to
their obligation to jihad. And when men
and women among them, children and
adults alike flooded away from civilized
havens of comfort and aspirational success
leaving behind bemused and disbelieving
authorities unable to divine why it might be
that any citizen would become amenable
to be a part of a Medieval thrust to take
humankind back to a time of slaughter and
slavery, little did they imagine they would
one day be faced with the greater irony
of reclaiming those citizens steeped in the
experience of witnessing and committing
ghastly atrocities against innocents and
combatants alike. That time has come when
governments are faced with the prospects
of returnees, men committed to jihad and
women nursing their Islamic State-derived
offspring, clamouring to be rescued from
the courageous groups they had themselves
persecuted and now the conquerors of the
caliphate that set out to rule the world.
There is, of course, a solution, one that
the jihadis would have no problem in
implementing, withheld by humanitarian
scruples they have no interest in at all.

Winter Skyscape

Winter in the cranky throes of its element
the ferocity of the storm refused to abate
its focus on exhausting its stores to
muffle the landscape in layers of new
snow. As night fell and light from a city
illuminating the dark hours while all within
slept, glancing off the clouds shedding
their burdens the wind scattered snow in
luminous skeins of icy crystals, the dark
hours of night fled and the sky became a
festive ballroom whose decor reflected
the Milky Way, an immense space of
luminous beauty with light catching and
reflecting off heavenly objects dancing
in the immensity of space and time as
though mirroring the cosmos in a micro
second of the imagination bewitching the
eye of the beholder privileged to view the
phenomenon as much imagined as seen.

Winter's Refugees

Your intelligent mind informs you to
simply ignore that uneasy feeling emanating
from your subconscious that on the evidence
of your eyes and ears the street you call
home has been transported to a grim
medieval winter village, residents huddling
fearfully in their huts seeking warmth
and comfort from the fearsome winter
elements ravaging the landscape. There
may be some truth in this since it has been
quite a long time since you've seen any of
those neighbours out and about. Are they
still there? Are they shuddering in fear
of the monster Grendel who made his
dreadful reputation in Beowulf and has
transferred his presence to your sleepy
street burdened by impassable snow and ice
assailed by ravaging wind and ice-storms
transforming the street to a medieval
fiefdom of fire-breathing beasts slithering
from house to house while residents shiver
and shake within? Miraculously garbage
is set out, the empty cans retrieved and no
one seen to furtively engage, so perhaps
there is, after all, a rational explanation?

Love Is....

He never ceases to amaze you, for
within the first few soft chords of a
fifty-year-old song he knows the title
and whispers it in your ear and as you
stand by the counter preparing dinner
circles your waist, turns you around
and you begin dancing while you recall
every word of that song you hum in
perfect synchrony as you spin around
the kitchen floor your two little dogs
in arrested motion their black eyes
quizzically alert and uncertain. There
is a certain formula that exists which
might be useful to those who look at
photographs of elderly couples locked
in an ancient marriage, wondering just
what it is that keeps these dried-apple-
faced frail people together in a love
compact whose conditions are unknown
to all too many failing to acknowledge
the place of mutual respect, patience
tempered with undying gratitude for
the good fortune of stable and loving
relations from courtship to the very
end drawn snugly in a tender comforter
of warmth and caring so that later the
very notion there could be an end to all
that is familiar and loving would be to
plunge into a abyss of utter emptiness.

The Measure of a Man

Truly, isn't it quite amazing how very
idiosyncratic people can be with a vast
variety of personality types interacting
with one another mostly civilly and
mostly in observance of the unwritten
social contract, a code whereby all
those traits often opposed to each other
manage to tacitly acknowledge differences
yet skirt by them and on the surface at
the very least get one with one another
managing to co-operate -- and so is a 
society formed. Imagine, if you will a
character type, an amalgam of civil
absent civility bordering on misanthropy
a certifiable hermit of a man whose
social skills are non-existent preferring
to move about the world as though he is
its sole inhabitant, a true recluse genuinely
and most thoroughly disinterested in the 
presence of others preferring at all costs 
to simply ignore and get on with his 
personal life absent personality. Such 
a man you might think representing the
absolute pinnacle of sociopathy could
never be interested in much less find a
suitable mate, but you'd be wrong for even
a woman who is an extrovert is keenly
aware of her body's best-before date able
to overlook surface inconveniences to see
in such as he possibilities for her future.
And so the outcome is the replication of
those two disparate types; a girl just like
her bubbly-lively mother and patterned
after his father a boy with all the requisite
personal attributes to award the world in
the persona of another society-hostile spirit.

Snowstorm

Snow arrived in great billowing 
sheets of countless stars as though 
the universe had moved into the forest 
bringing with it its infinite array of 
brilliant stars, a Milky Way of endless 
shimmering objects lifted, blown
spiralling over the landscape by a 
massive solar wind carrying the 
sparkling frozen mass above and 
beyond the forest canopy to spiral
onto the forest floor enveloping the 
whole in a bouffant embroidery of 
scintillating white. Twilight entered 
and dusk began to shade the light 
doing little to diminish the glow of 
that comforter muffling the woods 
and with it sound where before the
storm the staccato of woodpeckers 
and call of chickadees and whistle 
overhead of hawks in flight animated
the now-blanketed sleeping forest.

The Zionist State

Nations, priding themselves on their
qualities often set standards for themselves
in the full knowledge that so many other
nations exist for whom the sole standards
are those that materially benefit their
oppressive dictators. One nation stands
alone in a very special box into which
others have placed it, to live up to those
standards which others obligate it to
even while its self-regulation as a human
rights-observing country is undeniable
as is its commitment to an egalitarian
lawful society respectful of others and
demanding little of the world other than
that it be permitted to live in peace to
enable it to defend the aspirations and
security of its people. This, a nation of
antiquity and diaspora beset since ancient
times to the present with a viral pathology
of hatred by others whose goal is to inflict
maximum violence, was once derided for
going like sheep to a mass slaughter where
six million lives were exterminated while
the world looked on. The world still looks
on now condemning that nation which no
longer permits itself to be dominated and
threatened with oblivion, tut-tutting that
Jews now have the mighty instrument of
a state to defend their existential interests.

Rabble-Rousing

Does anything quite delight the super
extroverted zealot promoting an unsavoury
ideology like the attention she effortlessly
musters with each and every statement
teasingly geared to outraging the ardent
sensibilities of those committed to a sane 
world of order and equality when their very 
values are adopted then adapted to reflect 
the values of fascism cloaked in support of 
the public weal? While the rude and ignorant 
vibrate to promises skillfully veiled as geared 
to their needs in the guise of fundamental 
civil action yet recognized by the astute as 
attacks against all conservative normatives 
of conscience by those proudly identifying as 
'progressives', their attention and rejection 
serves only to highlight the gloating success 
of the advocate of sowing divisions along 
racial divides throwing in economic advantage 
for good measure. Raging denials of the lack 
of clarity in a staged protest purporting to 
defend common values while in the process 
managing to offend and distract, diffusing 
rampant bigotry by cunning design begets 
denials of outraged standard-bearers of civil 
decency all drawing attention to the assumed 
status of the ideologue for whom attention is
glorification of views and statements the
very oxygen upon which deceit prospers.

Summing Up

Sensitivity born of a civilized mind
concerned with how others regard
your emotional attachment to life 
serves no actual purpose other than to
struggle against nature's survival
imperative. In the best interests then of 
existence it benefits those who understand 
this simple equation to dispense with 
pleasing others, all the more so when to 
please others one's own well-being is 
imperilled. The simple fact being on 
the evidence and there is evidence in 
abundance to sustain the simplicity of 
the fact that ethnic groups struggling to 
assert their human rights entitlements 
to thrive and prosper do so nonetheless 
at the viral displeasure of a wide cross
section of the world's population. In the
instance of world Jewry whose numbers 
saw a steep wholesale decline while the
world looked on with studied indifference 
the remainder intent on safeguarding 
the survivors do so with the confidence 
that they have regained a state of their
very own once more whose purpose is 
survival, capable of meeting antagonistic 
violence head on while still puzzled in 
the process that an unfriendly world 
leaps to censure each and every decidedly
successful push-back in its defence 
while labelled the deadly aggressor. 

Centre Stage

We may enjoy reading novels but
on the other hand we may be hard-wired
for short stories. And we may in fact
be walking, talking libraries. Our busy
brains, that is. Triggered by our ingrained
sub-conscious propensity to dredge our
sleeping minds for interesting tales to be
experienced at one sitting as it were
albeit in the usual sleeping position
in our beds, not to be viewed chapter by
chapter but in one fell swoop. So short
stories it is, stories familiar and unfamiliar
with a changing cast some of whom we
know others absolute strangers and on
occasion we take the starring role ourselves
but whose ending all too often eludes us
since the timing seems always geared to
missing the conclusion in favour of
suddenly awakening and no amount of
think-back or hopes the drama will 
continue on succeeding nights avails when the
stage of our dreams draws back the curtain
on that other life we live asleep as opposed
to the one we experience awake is once
again prepared to take centre stage.

Be Advised

The Dowager Marchioness of Tweedle
is horribly offended and aghast at
the presumptuous impudence of the
public in stating their unwanted opinion
on social media of the richness of
bland character and critical physical
appraisals of the physiognomy of
their betters. She will not have it that
the great unwashed have opinions fit
to be read to begin with, much less that
they exhibit such vulgarity as to rate
the poise and apparel of their betters
for they should be aware that in so
doing they impinge criminally on the
privacy of the royal family who surely
deserve much better from those they so
selflessly serve. It should be public
knowledge that the royals so wedded
to the public weal give their all in a
constant state of noblesse oblige, so it
would suit the situation well for those
feeling entitled to critique and swoon
over a lifestyle they will never attain to
to simply shrink into their unworthy
little lives and finally shut the hell up.

Man The Wise

For most of human history existence
equalled the never-ending search for a
food supply without which no life would
be possible. Nature endowed humankind
as she did all her creatures with the will
to survive, the assurance of which would
be proven in sourcing food of any and all
varieties available wherever humankind
settled or wandered in its migration to
cover the globe, savaging the environment
in the endless sourcing of sustenance.
How humankind has prospered in that
universal search stripping nature of its
fecundity in service to humanity. And
now that an abundance of food is assured
we invest emotional agony to determine
which to indulge in. Where once humans
ricocheted from full belly to starvation
the cornucopia of hunger-satiating foods
abound in those geographies unsaturated
by conflicts disrupting agrarian pursuits.
In this era of plenty premature death is far
more likely to result from over-consumption
than from malnourishment as obesity
stalks the planet with its accompanying
stalwarts in the march toward early death
triggering critical body organs to fail, the
result of once non-existent choices now
bedazzling the intemperate appetites of 
the gluttons among us savouring greed.

In Memoriam

Truly, it's a dangerous world out there
and always has been, from primal times
to the very present mandating caution be
practised in defense of threats seen and
unseen but realized the moment they
strike. It is why nature saw fit to imbue
her creatures with the instinct to survive
and in the jungle that comprises our
environment one must be aware and
prepared to react accordingly. Those
instances when wild animals seeking their
own survival would hunt down humans
have been superceded by civilization in
all its inventive guises persuading us to
surrender bow and arrow. Even so it is
well to remember that humans prey on
other humans and to place distance
between ourselves and the psychopaths
that prowl dark avenues of opportunity.
Here's where technology enters when
scheming offshore calling centers do their
utmost to persuade the gullible to send
cash so the fortune left by an unknown
relative can be received, or one's computer
'fixed'. Even one's trust in computers is
mislaid since the Internet can lead the
trusting to corrupting disaster. And here's
where technology and our own stupidity
and lust for attention leads us to become
our own worst enemy with the derring-do
of selfies on the cusp of cliffs looming
over endless space when to emulate a
spirit of adventure, lethal danger offing
focus dominating nature leads, so sad
to the instant termination of life itself.

Cultural Tyranny

How perfectly civil Democracies tend
to be, beyond virtuous in their regard
for sensitivities distinguishing all people
as qualifying for equal rights and pursuing
that agenda relentlessly, persuaded they
have the key that will unlock the perfect
world to benefit all of humankind. How
perfectly sociopathic tribal societies tend
to be with their tyrannies of entitlement
their dictators and casual disregard of all
human rights, viewing askance as enemies
all those collective nations willing to 
accept them and their bigotry and violence
as intrinsically equal however misguided.
The dictatorships of the majorities and of
the minorities enforcing their personal
rules of imperial judgements enslaving
and belittling, persecuting and imprisoning
warning, torturing and besieging their
own along with neighbours' in conflict
shed their troublesome populations like
lice cleansed from their body politic in
the assurance their refugee plight will 
move the compassionate spirit of those
populations and their governments who
rule by just laws in a wholesale transfer
of people escaping with their lives and
little else yet bringing with them the very
culture and historical enmities that have
enabled their tormentors to power as
they become restive in the new environs
allowing them liberty to do as they will
and they will in time rebel, demanding
their due to restrain equality extended to
those they deem unequal to the privilege.

Peace In Unity

A wisely ambitious man was that thoughtful
merchant urbanized in a desert geography
where tribal Bedouin exercised that most
basic of human endeavours committing
to never-ending conflict over scarce resources
the difference between prospering and 
indigence so wars of conquest prevailed 
between tribes and clans and believers in the 
gods of pagan faith until this man, raiding 
the sacred texts of two dominating regional 
religions mounted his own conquest of the 
wildly violent tribes using the persuasion of 
the bloody scimitar to gain adherents in
their turn committing to endless conquest
taking the Middle East through a storm of
slaughter, moving on to Europe, Africa and 
Asia to mount upon the weak in battle a 
belief in surrender to an inexorable divine
whose solution to rejection was execution.
Peace be upon those who surrendered
freedom and autonomy, to all others a
death warrant. Succession in a budding
dynasty brought disagreement eluding a
concordant satisfying all factions and 
from that sundering came a sectarian
storm that has never abated as one sect
slandered and slaughtered the other in an
endless cycle of religious fervour dedicated
to a faith whose purpose purported peace. 

Your Birthday

A day like any other in a long succession
of days that make up a year for a year
is as long as it takes for your birthday to
come around, and the day began as it always
does with a hug and a snuggle, smiles and
routine where I set the table for breakfast
and you take our little dogs out to the
backyard on a day like most winter days
where the garden is white with hoar frost
and there's an ice fog smothering the
atmosphere. It's your birthday, my love.
We shower together, have breakfast, recall
the speckled trout you caught on our
honeymoon that the lodge cooked for our
dinner that night. We talk about our early
years, our families, our children, our sole
grandchild because just because and it's
your birthday and somehow it seems so
important that we review all these chapters
in our long life together because my dear
it's your birthday. Friends ask what we've
planned for the day and we smile. The day
plans itself for it's your birthday and though
it's a day like any other our quietly hushed
celebration of memory and love suffice.