Expulsion? Just ... Because

 

It was because they were Jews and it may not

have been just but that's the way it was, no one

really cared. Give the world something to get

morally exercised over, on the other hand -- but

that's a different story. That's the story of a motley

assortment of settlers who migrated to the scene

of an ancient exile to live among the pious Jews

who had never left, settlers from Egypt, Syria

Lebanon, Jordan arriving to search out a livelihood

aroused to fury when a mandate for Palestine by

the League of Nations led to a Partition Plan by

the United Nations and a new exodus was born

and the world turned its attention to 'refugees' who

required empathy and financial support ad infinitum.

Itself leading to a renewed exile when surrounding

nations expelled the Jews that had lived among

them for millennia, an unobtrusive affair because

no one noticed. Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia

Yemen, Iran: where are your Jews? Arab visitors

to Israel can hear the daily call to prayers emitted 

from mosques throughout the country, a nation

Jew-haters label 'apartheid', its presence called an

'occupation' for the military presence forced by

Palestinian Arab violence perpetrated against Jews

insisting that Jews must abandon their heritage.

And the world approves. Why? Just ... Because.

 

 

Iranian Child Martyrdom

Those of the faith endowed with the wisdom of 

years and piety know that solutions to seemingly

impossible dilemmas can be found through the

expedient of compelling the hand of god to point

the direction of proceedings. And so was seen

an answer to the problem of how battle-hardened

soldiers could march to the enemy lines and

escape triggering the minefields separating them

by sending platoons of tens of thousands of child

warriors appropriately bedecked to greet Allah

on their entry to Paradise as martyrs, entry keys

for secure passage around their necks, special permits 

signed by the great Ayatollah his ear to the mouth 

of god following instructions that to save the 

Islamic Revolution, Iran must sacrifice its young 

and unlike Isaac whom the Almighty spared 

returning the child to Father Abraham, there was

no intervention for the martyrdom-impassioned

children of Iran, tutored to obey and to serve.

Down Payment on Deterrence

And so it proved that those who survived

despite the most exacting measures to ensure

they would not proved the adage that whatever 

does not kill you will make you stronger. That 

proof came at a terrible cost. No fewer than six 

million lives exhausted in dense black smoke

their ashes enriching the soil that hosted the 

crematoria all over Europe just as the living 

souls had enriched the culture of the societies 

that hosted them unwillingly and no longer did. 

But the survivors would never again be herded 

onto cattle cars nor buried in mass graves for 

they have returned to their Biblical-era roots 

and the fortification of security and defense 

superior to the military assets of those determined 

to complete an unfinished genocide is dedicated 

to prevention. Any that may threaten their 

intention at now proceeding with a renewed

 annihilation and their architects will discover

they themselves become ashes of deterrence.

Prevention The Cure

Beware, a nation that has seen the brink

of the chasm of annihilation is no longer one

to be trifled with. The responsive lightning strike 

of prevention in asserting the right of existence

should henceforth be perceived as the predictable

response to all and any promising annihilation to

complete genocide's goal. No longer a nation

dispersed and dependent hailed for its human

assets' accomplishments and despised for those

very traits of achievement in all indices of human

prosperity and quality of life. Know this, that

threats against a nation now capable of mounting

its defences against the pitiless designs by vicious

psychopathic regimes will be deflected and the

consequences will deliver to those emitting such

threats the very existential uncertainties they

openly plot to accomplish in destroying Israel.

 

 

The Jewish Question

It is more than the mind can bear, the

burden of knowing strains the cerebral

functioning of an organ of wondrous

capacity designed by nature to envision

the world she created for her progeny

to inhabit that her creatures are capable

of formulating a plan so diabolical to undo

the existential presence of a people through

cunning brutality and the accompanying

conscienceless violence of extermination

succeeding in influencing ordinary people

that the issue is one of racial hygiene and

harmony to advance civilizational mores

and the quality of life of deserving Teutons

by extinguishing the rapacity of the rabble

among them whose purpose was to own the

world, direct its finances, enslave the worthy

souls innocent of their malice to avail the scum

of the earth the Third Reich would remove

from contention ... and all would be well.

 

Forever A Child

 

Forever a child you gape and gasp

at the dazzling magic of endless starry

crystals dimpling the air as winter charges

into a landscape left desiccated and grey

by fall, transported to a time deeply etched

in memory when your childish eyes

transcribed the downy coverlet of the world

in your mind with enchantment, and fairy

tales were true as you recall the soft yielding

measures of snow packed into perfect spheres

and snowmen speaking of their delight in

release from the crowded pack and your

clever mittened hands. You remember the

pleasure of burrowing into drifts, of spreading

your arms and legs and there was born a

snow angel. The happy flight of a sled 

skimming a slope to deposit you head over

heels below, the warmth and comfort, the\

laughter and the joy have never vanished

merely tucked safely deep in the bank you

know as memory to be retrieved annually in

a celebration of life and youth and nature.

 

 

The Winter Sun

 

As long as there have been sentient creatures 

awe and adulation, and the timid instinct to

recognize the power and dependence exerted

on the appearance of that ancient orb

that greets us every morning and temporarily

leaves us in the evening -- lighting and warming

our days from dawn to dusk -- the venerable

role of the sun as the giver of life has been

known. Should it ever leave of an evening

and fail to return so too would we in a world

where a cooling planet no longer illuminated

fails to provide the balanced measures for

life to flourish. Winter offers a glimpse of how

vulnerable elements-exposed animals and 

vegetation temporarily cope not abandoned by

our fiery star but removed from closer proximity

as we involuntarily orbit its gravitational draw

resigned to the revolution that will restore us

to the benevolence that inspires our renewal

as worshipful revenants to an ancient ritual.

 

 

 

Winter Gift

The early morning sun cast aside the last

vestiges of night lurking in tight corners

allowing the first glimmers of dawn to create

suspense, then fully illuminated the overnight

landscape, gleaming and glimmering below

in a breath-catching scintillation of diamond

clustered skeins of snow soft and bouffant

comforting the late November forest for its

pitiable loss of leaf mass, the disappearance

of bracken on the forest floor, dispensing its

incomparable decor over the forest canopy

shielding from critical eye the discarded matter

brown and desiccated in exchange for the

brilliance of a heavenly gift delivered to last

long winter months where ferns and wildflowers

slumber to be reawakened in spring when the

geese now flying overhead calling their goodbyes

return in reverse migration and the snowpack

melts irrigating the forest floor and the raging

raceways that will welcome returning wildfowl.

Worlds Within Worlds

 

They are so proudly distinctly different

from all others surrounding them clutching

their faith to their hearts, wearing those hearts

so visibly in long black flowing robes the

women concealing themselves from unauthorized

gaze, the community cloistered forbidding its

members communion with others lest they and

their community be tainted by the commonality

of the surrounding culture, theirs dedicated to

one on high and none other, certainly not to the

specious authority of any government as they

declare themselves immune from laws and

regulations meant for others while they exclude

themselves with the riposte that God alone

informs their action by his ineffable judgement 

as they defy instructions broadcast to inform 

the public of measures to be taken by all in the

hopes of staving off a deadly malevolent virus

from exacting ever greater punishment on human

life. Their piety the talisman the virus shrinks from.

The Experiment

 

Perhaps the covenant was one that nature

herself undertook -- to bestow upon one tribe

attributes of vision, curiosity, capability and

intelligence, apportioning to another envy

covetousness and anger -- in unbridled curiosity

pure and unsullied by compassion, utterly

indifferent to the outcome, focused solely on

the strengths of endurance and the lengths of

endowments each would develop, deploy and 

exemplify, she preferentially endorsing neither 

in her indifference and neither was she inspired

to conclude the experiment, as a minor diversion

and just as certain it is that the vast reaches of 

the universe will steadily expand so too do the

results of this micro-lens in human diversity

of unequal, disproportionate apportioning roil

the world offending the spirit of commonality

with the presence of one tribe's success in 

revealing its own sensitivity to creative science

the other its viral defence of hostile resistance to

acknowledging the superiority of exceptionalism.

enterprise of pure scientific discovery.

The Godliness of Malevolence

 

Behold! an evanescent nimbus of holiness

hovers over the heads of those with the

powerful certainty that they carry out

instructions from on high purposing to

cleanse the world of its sins and its sinners

those who fail to declare the Shahada

who bring calamity into the world and

calumny on the name of the Prophet. They

whose purpose it is to hasten the longed

for appearance of the Hidden Mahdi for

only then will the world be expunged of

the presence of false gods and those who

worship them, all to be cleansed in a final

cataclysm of unknown proportions leaving

the faithful to live in harmony with Islam.

Who are those obeying the profane orders

of human enlightenment seeking to overrule

the Almighty, none but useless dregs awaiting

annihilation for none but God alone has the

omnipotent power to influence the Republic

of God to set aside the ultimate weapon 

designed to obliterate the unworthy and in

turn elevate the worshipful obedient.

Bestowing Recognition

 

Though no one could confuse it for a conifer

the outlier feral apple tree lived its long life in a

forest among spruce, fir and pine, oak, maples

beech and hawthorns, producing hard little

apples favoured by birds and small furry

forest animals -- and the occasional human

intruder. A seed carried by the wind, dropped

by a bird sprouts and the apple tree finds itself

a forest denizen unlike any others. If there is

awareness among trees perhaps it felt shunned

alternatively embraced by others unlike itself.

It is old now, gnarled and battered by time and

the elements though it still produces fruit and may

survive another winter. It has been awarded a

special recognition as Christmas approaches, not

to be cut down like a fir or spruce and hauled to

someone's home, but to stand venerable and

proud, dressed this year of 2020 for the occasion.

 

 

The Capital City of Judah

Reasonably enough logic seems to agree

that sociopaths can be included in society

in a spirit of tolerance that may view them

merely as eccentrics to be left to their own

harmless devices; social discontent and its

sister maladjustment crafts another world

exclusive to its own. That same logic is in

agreement that psychopaths have no place

designated for them within society, their acts

of inadvertent malice or casual violence 'just

because' mandates they be marooned forcibly

away from vulnerable society, so it is. And

so is it that makes for compelling confusion

when public sympathy veers toward a group

conspicuous in their aggrieved victimhood, a

cause of which is their own intransigence, one

which violently punishes another group they

claim is their aggressor which merely wishes

to live in peace and harmony on an island of

its very own after suffering the malevolence of

genocidal near-oblivion, perpetrators of which

remain convinced that campaign should have

succeeded entirely yet having not the remainder

should be shunned and held accountable for the

sin of claiming their inalienable birthright.

 

 

Dreamland

 

This is the epitome of entertainment

unrivalled in its precise verisimilutude

to real life, the actors coached in their

roles by immersive experience, the settings

and the choreography the work of a master

mind both playful and keenly familiar with

the intersection of heart and mind reflecting

the scope and breadth of a long life portrayed

as a drama, a sentimental purview, a nod to

intimacies and the role of alternate players

where each command performance is at

variance with the one preceding it and there

is no marquee to advise beforehand how the

presentation of that evening, curtains drawn

will further illuminate its subject. Even the

appearance now and again of totally odd

actors inadvertently stumbling onto the stage

once familiar yet unfamiliar play their parts

to thespian perfection in this most private of

cinemas with its nightly call when the principal

finally drifts into slumberland, exhausted.

Introspection

 

Older than me the two cousin-siblings I

adored might even have coached me in the

fine art of disobedience and deception. So

much time has passed I cannot be certain but

what I know of a certainty is that I was not a

biddable child and without doubt easily took

to both disobedience and deception. It did give

me pause once when I overheard my mother

speaking of me to a neighbour saying the

most astonishing thing, that her daughter (me)

would never tell a lie. In the interests of full

disclosure I tutored with no hint of shame a

younger cousin, so angelic it would never

have occurred to him to defy any adult in

authority, but it was I who taught him that he

could slip unwanted food on his dish behind

the stove, under the ice-box (yes, that long ago)

and no one would be the wiser seeing his plate

emptied of the hated fish or liver and to smile

modestly at the praise that followed. In my

kitchen we keep a compost pail on the counter

and into it goes coffee grounds, tea bags, fruit

outer casings, vegetable peelings - and when I

serve dreaded vegetables like broccoli or yam

my aged husband when my attention is diverted

slyly slips them off his plate, placing the clean

plate conspicuously on the counter for inspection.

Back Then

Like the questionable quasi-sacred practices of mendicant monks and friars out to fatten their own pockets selling the Church-unsanctioned 'indulgences' to gullible Christians, we were made aware, as we sat along with young acquaintances, both Japanese and European, that we could access Buddhist prayers in an offering to the Temple's guests. We were seated at a long refectory-style table set in the Japanese style awaiting dinner and it was served by smiling young monks, tonsured and clad in attire common to figures of faith in any religion.

Given a piece of washi to write down the subject of our preferred prayer and whom it would benefit, the fee transferred, a sense of tranquil satisfaction washed over us, and we turned to the meal being presented, starting with a bowl of Miso soup on top of which floated a raw egg. 

We were in a Zen Buddhist temple, a compound set high on a prominence overlooking a small town. We would be staying there for several days. Later, in the evening, I would be seated on a small stool in a large chamber the focus of which was a pool, and this was a public bath. It was women's hour, and while on the stool I used a basin of clear, cool water and soap to thoroughly cleanse myself. It was only then that I could enter the pool and experience the comfort of the water's warmth, alongside another handful of women whose presence was sparse in the expansive pool.

We slept on futons that night, my husband and me. In the tiny chamber which was ours for the length of our stay, furnished as frugally and subtly artistically as only Zen Buddhism knows how to present, was a scroll, its legend in Katakana script, the brush strokes, fluid and casual, of a bird seated on a melon upon whose vine curling about the scroll sat other, smaller birds. Only a small, low table occupied the room where we were served tea as we sat on tatami mats.

We were there with a group we had joined, of young Japanese and their European counterparts, adventurers curious about other parts of the world, working as teachers of English at various schools and colleges. We were the oldest, the only married couple. Most of our trips as a group focused on hiking expeditions in forests outside the great sprawling city of Tokyo. To access those forests close to small towns and villages we had to take a combination of public transit; buses, trains, subways. My husband knew his way around. 

While at the Temple compound we took walks early in the morning just as mist began clearing under the influence of the intense sun. The most prominent path led from the temple complex down to the village, a walk of roughly a half-hour, though looking down at the village from the height of the Temple complex, it looked much closer. On the way, we would pass a part of the Temple complex where the monks were housed, and at that time of the morning the heavenly sound of a chorus of sacred music sung by a choir of quietly restrained voices followed us as we meandered along. It seemed otherwordly.

Much earlier, at the crack of dawn, we had the option of attending the first prayer of the day in a large chamber where monks and guests were seated on the floor on their haunches as the melodic, slow-paced, low-voiced prayers commenced. It takes a limber body to be seated for such a prolonged period in that respectful pose, attentive to the proceedings.

As we walked along, the two of us, enveloped in a feeling of having somehow managed to travel back in time to another era, certainly another country than that we were born to, immersed in another culture, we thought how quaint it was to see young tonsured, cassocked monks driving past, genially waving and smiling at  us, in their BMWs. 

We two wandered at leisure through the monastery's hill-sloped gardens along stone pathways lined with tiny Jizo statuettes. Some of them held children's toys, were dressed like infants. Jizo is a revered Bodhisattva, the patron saint of travellers, but perhaps more importantly the protector of the spirits of children who have died. The tiny statuettes were everywhere displayed, hundreds of them. It was not by any means the only place where we saw them, poignant and appealing, the champions of tiny lost souls, particularly children who had died prematurely.

The monastery was a place of quiet tranquility. I recall walking through a corridor linking buildings fully open to the out-of-doors, fully similar to medieval churches' cloisters, how much the landscape and the buildings themselves made me feel as though I was living in a similar landscape I inferred from the Name of the Rose. But while living there, in Japan, it was the great novel by Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, that made the greatest impression for the monastery, like the novel in all likelihood reflected the medieval world in the modern era.

Shaking Hands With Nature

 

In the great out-of-doors wilderness experience 

of raw nature you venture forth for the express 

purpose of being there whether to find yourself 

capable of adjusting to the fundamentals of existence

or to satisfy your instinctive love of wild green places

unshielded by humanity's great strides in manipulating

their environment for ultra comfort and distance

from the demands of basic needs solved by tame

technological advances; what could be more humbling 

than to find yourself like any other animal searching 

privacy in the vulnerability of primary functions? 

There, where no bathrooms exist rivers and lakes 

and forest do, in abundance. And if you're in a 

heritage wilderness park you can hike the portages 

with your canoe on upraised arms, backpack carrying 

all you need for a week compressed into essentials. 

You will become adept at harnessing that backpack

high and inaccessible between two obliging trees

you will discover on islands cranberries grow on shrubs

and wild rice in shallow depths of bogs. At night the

eerie sound of stealth movement, the distant howls

of wolves, the glory of the night sky's Milky Way.

Each camp site becomes an adventure of discovery

curiosity satiated locating a box over a trench, or one 

with a roof and open sides, even occasionally a fully 

enclosed loo where you needn't return your toilet roll 

to your backpack and the gratitude felt when you 

find a worn bar of soap left behind sitting on a rock 

awaiting use at the edge of a lake. You are an intruder 

deserving of the ire of squirrels tossing cones on your 

tent from the pines above. The bold and tenacious mice 

who scurry over your cooking pans proprietarily as

dusk descends are not there for your amusement

though they do perform that function. The jays that

swoop expertly to fly off with a long spaghetti strand

they've beaked exact the rental fee they have imposed.

And you have succeeded in shaking hands with nature

as you learn to avoid rapids, to keep your distance from

moose, to identify the horrifying shriek of a screech owl.

 

 

Joy To The World

Thank heavens for the expected for the

ordinariness of routine for it reflects

normalcy, it shouts it from the rooftops

and there, on roofs and around eaves and

looped over front yard conifers and shrubs

are your neighbours on this cold and blustery

November day threatening rain -- but it could

even be snow flurries -- stringing up their

coloured, blinking Christmas lights and

evergreen decorations, the Santas and the

reindeer all reminiscent of long-familiar

days of joy and celebration, the sound and 

form and colour of the yearly Event of The 

Year that children yearn for and must not be 

disappointed in. How then is this year different 

from any other that has preceded it in living 

memory, other than the wretched looming threat 

hovering over all that is? Possibly the hope that 

it will vanish as swiftly as the threat now afflicting 

humanity reared its menacing affliction to vanquish

all that human-designed science could muster

in defiance of just another anomaly of nature.

Helios The Father

 

The scintillating jewel in the crown of our 

existence dominates the heavens with its 

irresistible attraction to the awestruck creatures 

that have looked toward that celestial body as 

the creative font of all that is and ever will be

since time immemorial. Its sacred mission to 

foster and nurture well known as all of creation

animal and plant life alike turn their trusting

gaze heavenward to follow its daily trajectory 

across the sky. Its presence eliciting wonder 

and joy as it warms and illuminates this, our 

dwelling place in the vast universe unseen and 

fearful in its sinister cold and dark depths a vast 

chasm of empty space and careening ice, gases

chemicals and minerals, its immensity a mysterious 

unknown. The life-sustaining mission of our 

glowing disc, its transcendent beauty bearing

reassurance transports us with the ecstasy of 

knowing and being, conferring its gift of life.

 

Name It Social Cleansing

 

Blood libels, pogroms, official persecution, slanders

scapegoats used by tyrants to deflect public anger

at their subsistence level living conditions for whom

blaming the presence of Jews was a useful alternative

to revolts; easier not to notice roving bands of enraged

citizens torching the hovels of cowering Jews than to

dispatch police units to disrupt and dispel protests.

The unsubtle art of denigration to steer a populace

in the direction of despising Jews whom they might

otherwise tolerate in their midst was a fine use of the

propaganda talents of political anti-Semites in a lurid

campaign to rid a continent of the nuisance presence of 

a subhuman horde of intellectuals, artists, scientists

lawyers, doctors, literary giants and their offspring for

they were obviously a subversive element in an otherwise

progressive nation whose concern for the welfare of

its Aryan purity was a source of pride, diminished by

the unwanted presence of crude and clever pretenders. 

A Love Note

 

Dear garden, forgive me, I have been remiss.

I should have told you before how much you

mean to me, and told you often, so please accept 

this as an apology for neglecting to inform you 

just how much you are appreciated for adding

quality to my life. Your calm demeanor, attention

to detail as you get on with the season unfurling

one delight after another in a colourful display

of artistry and unimaginable abundance humbles

me and excites me and pleases me no end. Your

busy and efficient approach to the limited time

given you to excel as best you can has my very

deepest admiration. Your generosity in providing

a landscape of indescribable beauty while so

selflessly offering up haven to insects, food for

butterflies and hummingbirds represents an object

lesson in the very spirit of species collaboration to 

ensure that nature is as proud of her creations as I 

am of your exquisite presence in my life. Thank you.

The One And Only

 

Most assuredly, not just anyone possesses the

democratic authority to sit in that most highly

respected of public institutions called the Oval Office.

But then this man is not 'just anyone', he is a

singular man whose acumen in the 'art of the

deal' is legendary, then tack on to that a mysterious

charisma capable of captivating a huge audience

manipulating their assessment of his sterling

qualities as a statesman-in-waiting in the belief

that as an office-holder of a benevolent and firm

executive overlooking the well-being of a nation

his decisions would be paramount to their own

future success, ushering him to power to confound

political competitors and the world at large. His

entitlement to the office confirmed he swept the

webs of intrigue and corruption aside to make

way for an era of volatile spur-of-the-moment

decisions, alienation of allies, abandonment of

treaties, denials of irregularities in his real estate

holdings, withholding taxes, punishing any who

resisted his immoral, illegal decisions, casting a

wide array of gratuitous personal insults on all

whose better natures offended his own. And when

finally the democratic process retaliated spurning

his expectation of gratitude for all his sacrifices

on behalf of the nation cast himself into the role of

an aggrieved juvenile threatening to abandon the

poor suffering country he had deviously divided

to achieve his ends by huffing off elsewhere in the

delusional belief that any other country harmed by

his casual assaults on reason would welcome him.

 

 

Absent Recall

 

A perfect day to be out on a forest trail in the warmth 

and sunlit extravagance of an Indian Summer day

the acrid fragrance of desiccated foliage, the sound 

of chickadees and nuthatches flitting through the 

conifers, the filtered rays of the sun through the forest

canopy warming your back and you were glad to be 

there in a landscape that clutched at your very essence. 

You barely noticed as you ascended a wooded pathway

the middle-aged woman with a small child beside her 

waving a stick, alarming your little dogs, but nodded 

and smiled hello in passing. Then stopped, puzzled as

she asked if you had once worked for a name so familiar 

your mind knew the unfamiliar face knew you even

if you had no idea who she was. How was it possible 

that someone you may have briefly been introduced to 

thirty years ago recognized you despite a quarter-century

passage you wonder as you agree yes I did once long ago. 

Does this woman possess a prodigious memory that

delves deep and stores minutely inconsequential details

or is there that about you that may be unforgettable

as unlikely as that seems, breaking into conversation 

with a woman recently married back then, but now a 

mother of four mature women and grandmother to a 

multitude of offspring, whose face you cannot recall.

Fall Melancholy

 

The elementary culinary foundations

of sweet and sour so vital to our taste

receptors in enjoying food appealing to us

have their counterpart in our emotions as

in the sweet nostalgia that sweeps over us

as adults swishing through layers of dried

leaves in the fall calling up memories of

childhood, the warmth of family of our

enjoyment of the seasons in the vast and

endless discoveries of life. But then this 

is also a time when as adults we see and 

feel the passage of time and treasure the

warm leisure of summer, dreading the onset

of winter and are overcome with a sense of

sadness in the metaphor that autumn suggests

as our forlorn gardens, dredged of their

colour accents as plants are uprooted and

discarded and others cut back, we view the

dismantling with profound sadness. Yet our

agedness is forgotten in the pleasure of digging

deep in the warm, moist soil not yet in frost

evoking earlier memories of the fragrance

and the promise of the garden to return.

Evolving Post-Extinction

The competing endowments of survival

and curiosity are not unique to that most

select creature of nature's creativity for others

of the animal kingdom appear to share those

attributes, or curses if  you will and it is not

humankind alone whose sense of adventure as

a cure for boredom or a search for greener

pastures drives evolution. A precedent long

before proto-humans left Africa for other

beckoning continents identified when science

discovered duck-billed fossils dating from

the Cretaceous period 66 million years' distant

left their native habitat in North America on

an urge of discovery, launching themselves

toward distant shores, floating, swimming

endlessly to reach Africa, an example followed

in reverse when homo erectus migrated out of

Africa in overland journeys toward destiny's 

call a mere 12,000 years ago, still and forever

mired in the extraordinary evolutionary process.

 

 

Coveting the Prize of Power

Every country's culture considers itself a reflection

of a land of the free and the home of the brave though 

the sentiment may not quite reflect the prideful intent

of the phrase to an audience aware that another land

of the free and home of the brave erred in punishing 

the nascent United State of America. Now America 

punishes itself, the very nation that opened wide its 

welcoming arms to the wretched of the world escaping 

injustice and persecution even while the nation saw 

nothing amiss in its devotion to black servitude to 

white privilege, a dichotomy that has haunted it ever 

since with a torrid wave of accusations and civil unrest 

roiling the comfort of the cultured gentry of this very 

day who in their wisdom and manipulative skill 

entreat the lower classes, new and old to trust their 

interests in persevering against all odds are championed 

by those dedicated to once more installing themselves 

as administrators of the country's fortunes only to 

discover old bromides no longer work, the populace 

prefers governance by one like themselves, brash

uncultured, absent literacy and fiercely determined 

to scale the heights of power taking the agency of 

their futures into their own hands to elect a man of 

low character but high aspirations, a vulture of 

opportunity and self aggrandizement but who yet

ordains events to benefit the devotion of the masses.

 

 

Super-Powering Democracy

It is so yawningly familiar and so predictably 

amusing whenever headlines gravely report that 

some third-world tyrant in Africa or Eastern Europe 

or Asia congratulates his loyally discerning public 

for their democratically-cast ballots expressing 

confidence in his rule to allow him continuance of 

his lifelong grip on power for a 92 percent agreement 

persuades him to stay on and if there is dissent warning

of an uprising why then, in step the generals in grim

concordance with the benevolence they know so well.

An inner chord of satisfaction in reflection of how

civilized nations comport themselves forms a stark

contrast to the benighted parts of the world wistfully

hoping that one day they too will live in a democracy

reflects our smug certainty that those distant scenarios

are a blemish on the developing world. So when reality

barges its raucous presence into our consciousness it

is with incredulity that we look to our near-abroad

where generals assure the public they will not intervene

in the chaos of an uber-partisan campaign of slurs and

condemnations as two parties armoured in sanctimonious

fervour to represent the best interests of a nation in a

state of violent confrontation with itself, the incumbent

claims electoral victory as does his challenger while the

social climate heats toward riots, looting and violence

capturing the indomitable spirit of democratic America.

 

 

The Twisted Logic of Faith's Passion

The provocations and persecutions

must stop for they are incitements to 

reaction, impressing on the devout their

obligation to their faith girding themselves

in time-honoured hadith instructions to

avenge the sacred memory of one who

brought salvation to desert nomads, by

example teaching them the efficacy of a

bloodied sword in convincing stubborn

resistance that surrender is preferable to

the ignominy of death by beheading since

separating the seat of the soul from its

earthly carapace stamps the sinner unfit

for resurrection. The West's values clearly

befit those conquered by fear of death who

cling to the impression of freedom to resist

the call of the Almighty to abandon self to

the spirit's agency. Bringing upon their heads

the terrible wrath of a deity who brooks no

dissent from the feckless mockery of the

divine, harbingers of their own doom.

The Year of Covid Rule

We're living the mass psychosis of a truly

lapsed year, a hysteria of fear and siege has

draped its deadly curtain over the mass of

the globe's multifarious societies held in

common by their foundational roots as a

species among others whose emotions and

penchant for suspicion and superstition bind

them together even as their choices and

cultures pry them apart; the world community

that imagines itself beset by the scourge of an

microscopic parasite designed with a single

purpose, to replicate endlessly and for that

process the creature which has no life of its

very own seeks out humankind's as a womb

wherein it finds comfort and incentive as it

gains the ascendancy on occasion indulging

in a killing spree martyring itself to the process

as if to honour spectral Death whose company

it holds in respect at a distance for it claims

both victim and victor as its just due in an

apprehended pantomime of life's basic rules.

As The World Turns

There is no shortage of bizarrely recurring

events, both natural and humanity-induced 

to grip the world's attention in this fated year

of 2020 that has haunted the world -- from

earthquakes to tsunamis, terrorist attacks

to territorial conflicts and unending proxy wars

reflective of the restively acquisitive nature

of the human animal, when other animals

bequeathed across the species barrier a

viral threat to business-as-usual, distracting

from the ordinary to the extraordinary

confounding medical science and laying

low entire continents as we enter a new era

of uncertainty no longer agency of our own

fortunes but led by the nose gasping for breath

thanks to nature. As though a diversion is 

required to snap us out of the trance of mere

hopelessness another arises as all eyes swivel 

to the spectacle of what will result in either a 

continuation of a dystopian governance of a 

preeminent nation whose affairs affect all others

or its replacement through the installation of a 

challenger prepared to alter or reverse each and 

every maladroit decision produced by a unique

executive administrator flawed beyond belief

to rescue the country and by default the world

and rechannel it into the clear direction of a far

more satisfactory dysfunctionally impacted state.