Leave, Goodbye!

 

Hard to figure whether 2020 hosted us as

unwilling guests or if we hosted this gloomy

year and have found it wanting like a guest

you've seen enough of and hate the impulse that

moved you to tell it to drop around and you'll

hang out for awhile, just chilling. Finally the

world finds itself in agreement that this has been

the year no one wanted and couldn't even begin

to imagine. At its imminent departure fireworks

will illuminate the sky, balloons lift off in jubilant

colourful array, as noisemakers speed 2020 on its

way. Leave, goodbye, don't look back and never

think of returning. This has been an exceptional

year, one that will live on in memory though no

one wants to remember it, like a bad dream whose

nightmarish qualities followed us in every waking

hour, a villainous, sinister year whose entrance

gift was a wretched lethal plague that stopped the

world in its banal routines, imprisoning entire

unprepared populations, just a little spice added

to the excitement of a pestilence of locusts

deadly earthquakes and floods, wildfires and 

civil strife, landslides and volcanic eruptions.

Begone, you evil contender for recognition as 

history's most disastrous year of bleak mourning.

Indelible Black Stain

 

They were once valuable commodities

known also for their potential for those

who judged age, temperament, sturdy

construction as workplace essentials

capable of enriching the buyer. But

they were also quite expendable since

there were plentiful others where they

came from to be rounded up, herded

transported and displayed with pride

as new acquisitions capable as breeding

stock, as physical specimens of hard

labour ably withstanding harsh treatment

inclement weather and insubstantial 

investments in housing, integuments and 

food, an irresistible draw for they could 

also withstand inhumane types of extreme 

punishment. In the final analysis their 

presence represented the armature of a 

nation's economy. A nation which now 

finds itself without answer to the charges 

levelled against it as slavers and human 

rights slackers wealthy, influential but 

torn asunder, eternally damned.

The Battleground

 

The answer to the questions come from the very 

highest authority, those who can handily quote history 

as far back as the mind can imagine for there lies 

the enduring proof of those who now in their wisdom 

shake their heads and repeat ad nauseum it's them

again. And the them in question shudder for they 

know their history all too well since it begins and 

never ends with those darkly sinister tales of blood

vermin and pestilence. It began when plagues struck 

Egypt and Jewish slaves took their freedom in an 

escape that brought them to the promised land. And 

from there under the auspices of a sole, furious God 

they conspired to rule the world, capturing disease

and then dispersing it to the unaware, poisoning wells 

to destroy tribal villages and their inhabitants

kidnapping children to drain their blood for the

matzo that signifies Egypt's loss. The Black Plague?

Jewish conspiracy cabals causing the death of millions

more than when Nazi Germany tried to favour the

world by acting as global executioner. Coronavirus?

Forget Wuhan, don't blame the Chinese, look upon

those who seeded the virus in China unbeknownst

to the Chinese. The Jews, whose kabbalah flirtation

with the occult created the Golem standing mute and

huge prepared to battle civilization to the ground.

Happy Birthday!

 

Well ... just look at you! Aren't you the one

who blundered through life's curves and

dead ends taking the corners in roundabout

ways, pushing boundaries, tucking your

uncertainties into dim dark corners of your

subconscious, daring them to emerge at

risk of being disowned assigned to an alter

ego and carrying on as though the world was

there for your future. Good thing you discovered

him at an early age, good thing he overlooked

whatever couldn't be explained, good thing he

persevered and you gained perspective and a

life-companion. Think about how long it took

for you to reach yourself, eighty-three years and

now, in one fell swoop eighty-four is set to arrive

and all it took was a few hours of your time.

 

 

What If ... Really!

 

It has the status of being lodged in the minds

of those whose full faculty of cerebral function

has always been in doubt, so classify it as the

merest germ of a viral suspicion that a cabal

governing the greatest population on Earth, one

whose heritage and traditions reflect superior

facility in any and all indices of human innovation

where meritorious advance in the public sphere

recognized native intelligence, where the singular

art of superb craftsmanship has rarely been

equalled, all now harnessed to the ambition of

achieving power and influence at a global level

where the seated position of supreme unilateral

universal power lies in the comfortable possession

of a rival whom no ordinary efforts at unseating

can prevail. Why then, unleash the simple formula

of nature's insatiable silent and hidden threat of a

parasitic pestilence so intrusively dangerous and 

hungrily invasive it becomes a vector for  triumph 

through utter chaotic destabilization leading that 

sole power to vacate its throne and since nature 

abhors a vacuum it crooks its finger in beckoning

 the adversary to occupy the abandoned seat of 

power and influence it has so odiously earned.

 

 

God's Gaze Distracted

 

How to imbue a sensitive child with a sense

of security and well-being, the comfort of knowing

their place in the world and the horizons open to

them in their future? The reassuring love of a

parent, the sense conveyed to a child of endurance

in the face of adversity, the confidence that they

have the attributes required to build upon through

exposure to education and societal norms. How

then do Jewish parents convey all of this to their

offspring in explaining that educated people had no

problem accepting a societal norm so adverse to the

enduring existence of Jews that their leaders were

enabled to destroy the lives of Jewish children just

like them, trusting and eager to learn, fully one and

a half million such children whose lives were

obliterated with full intention by those oblivious

to their humanity. The dilemma is to expose one's

questioning child to the reality of the Holocaust or

seek avoidance of any mention of the monstrous deed

that extinguished the lives of men, women and children

by the Nazi Third Reich under the eyes of the world.

 

 

Life Is So Unfair!

My grandmother, she’s this little woman with kind of curly, silver hair and she used to look after me every day from the time I was an infant until I was nine, when my mother was out to work. Well, she sometimes laughs at me. It can be infuriating, really. It’s not laughing, actually, guess it’s more like teasing. Deliberately, of course. I’m not dumb, I know she’s trying to get me to realize what I’m saying before I do it, and then stop saying it. But it’s hard.

And, as I say, infuriating, depending on when she does it. If I’m with friends, and she does it, it makes me feel pretty annoyed. I don’t bother saying anything to her, what’s the point?
I just kind of laugh along with her. Every time I say something like “it’s not fair”, or - and I know this sounds kind of silly, since I’m in my teens now - “it’s not my fault”, she does it.

Not my fault if those phrases just kind of come tripping out of me. See what I mean? I’m so accustomed to saying them, I don’t even think about it. And knowing that, I see what my grandmother means. The minute one of those phrases has come out of my mouth, she turns to me, and in a loud voice, with a kind of whining inflection that is truly awful, copies me.

“Not my fault”, she deliberately, emphatically repeats with a kind of nasal whine. I swear I don’t sound like that, not really. It’s just her way of drawing my attention to what I’ve said. Thanks a whole bunch, grandma. On the other hand, I know very well she doesn’t mean to make me feel bad, just her way of trying to make me more aware of what I’m saying.

I shouldn’t feel so abruptly defensive about anything. And, as she has always (at least lately, now that I’m older, noticing things more, and remarking about them to her) said to me, life isn’t necessarily fair. It’s just life, you take it as it comes and make the best of it. Still, it’s not, in a sense, respectful of me, I think, when she does that. Maybe I will get around to asking her to stop. If I can’t manage, somehow to stop myself belting out that automatic defense-mechanism. Well, I get her point.

Still, it’s true, and I defy anyone, anyone at all, to prove to me that life is fair. Because it most definitely is not. My grandmother says I’m much too sensitive. She tells me that when I was really young, much younger than I am now, say around second grade, my teacher then told my grandmother that she was impressed at my natural sense of justice. Don’t even ask me how a grade two teacher would arrive at that kind of conclusion of a little kid. My grandmother took it to heart, proudly. Insists that, on the evidence before her, I have been imbued (likely through my genetic inheritance, as she always says), with an enhanced, natural sense of justice.

Maybe that’s why I’m so outraged at my grade eight teacher, for not respecting us kids as thinking human beings. She assumes we’re idiots. Claims we are, anyway. And I’ve never before had a teacher who resorted to hysterics, thinking that will make us behave better. It may be true, and I believe it is, that this class is one of the rudest, rowdiest ones in the school. We’re just incidentally the only grade eight in the school, since the entire school enrolment is only 220. Shrinking year by year.

The first year I came here it was 260. Seems the rural areas of this province are seeing a decline in the elementary school population. That’s why schools are closing all over the place. Even my old school, in the city, where I used to go when we lived close to my grandparents has closed. Well, it wasn’t exactly in the city proper, although it’s considered to be now, through amalgamation. Back then it was considered the suburbs. The suburbs are moving steadily outward.

Anyway (where was I?. I get that kind of thing from my grandmother, going off in a tangent. Too much either on or in my mind, she says). Right, my teacher. She will not listen. She thinks she knows what goes on, and draws erroneous conclusions. Just because I’m the tallest kid in the class, taller even than the guys, she thinks I’m the number-one class troublemaker. Maybe too because I talk a lot, but what can you do when someone is talking to you? I turn around to answer a question or to respond to something someone says beside me or behind me, and whomp! She leaps all over me. When I try to explain she screams.

I should explain, it isn’t only me that gets ripped into, it’s most of the class, with the exception of a few of her favourites. Heaven save us from class favourites, those snivelling little angels who can never do anything wrong. They’re actually the sneakiest, most untrustworthy kids; the snottiest ones too, for that matter. There’s a bunch of us kids, guys I hang around with, that she picks on, mostly. Although she’ll scream at anyone, when she’s irritated. And lately she’s always irritated.

No wonder no one listens to her, why the class just keeps on behaving badly. She’s lost our respect. I’m ready to tell her that to her face. That’s no way to behave, to control a class, to discipline us collectively for something one or two people have done that has outraged her. That we don’t even know anything about. But she won’t listen. She wants respect, but isn’t prepared to extend it to any of us. That’s fair?

Things got so bad that a few weeks back the principal sat in on the class, while our teacher was away on sick leave. No, she wasn’t sick, it was her kid. That’s another thing, she’s there to teach us, right? So why do we have to sit there, bored out of our skulls, listening to her talk about her family situation? Who cares?

Her three-year-old kid seems prone to getting sick. You’d think she’d have someone else she could rely on when the day-care insists they can’t take him back until his fever is gone. She’s got parents, her husband’s parents. She’s tried using them in emergencies, she told us, but she doesn’t trust them. Doesn’t trust her own parents, her husband’s parents to look after their grandchild! What is the matter with the woman? She says they don’t understand her child, don’t know how to look after him properly. Sure.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about that. After all, when she books off sick, we get fill-ins, replacement teachers. Some of them are okay, mostly they’re pretty clueless. Can’t work with the curriculum. So it’s a wasted day. Wasted with her there, when instead of teaching us, she assigns us really stupid homework, or just stands around talking about her family, about her week-end, about her state of health. She’s only in her late thirties, what happens with people when they get that old-not-old, do their brain cells go suddenly plunk?

Right. Like I was saying, the principal came in one day, and sat with us, to discuss the reputation this class is acquiring, which is how she put it. There’s only 23 kids in the class, not a big one, you’d think our teacher would be capable of putting in the effort she’s getting paid for. My mom says teachers make very good salaries; their union contracts see to it. And she’s been teaching for ten years, has some seniority, so she’s making good bucks. There I go again.

Anyway, the principal kind of prodded us, asking why did we think it was that our teacher was having such problems with the class? Why she kept sending so many of us over to talk with the vice-principal, when she was ‘at the end of her tether’. Why ask us? Well, presumably, she’d already discussed it with our teacher. No one wanted to say much of anything.

She took a different tack; said something general about the situation and asked us to raise our hands if we agreed, sit on them if we didn’t. That told her something, since when she asked if we were comfortable in the class, felt like we were learning, everyone sat on their dumb hands.

Well, said the principal, she was stymied. Didn’t know what to think. Never came across anything like it before. I guess not. She’s new at the school, but our old school records are available to her any time she wants to have a look at them. Mine, for example, will inform her that I’ve been commended many times in the past for my academic achievement, but more, because I’ve been useful to my previous teachers in helping shy students, or misbehaving students feel more included, getting them to thaw out, loosen their attitude, become less hostile.

I even had a thank-you note from some kid’s mother about it, and a certificate that went out in the mail so my mom could see it. Big deal. I actually did nothing extraordinary, nothing at all special, just treated them decently, that’s all.

Which is more, far more, than this teacher has ever done. At the beginning of the year I thought she was pretty cool. Truth is, she did help me in practical ways, like with my math, helped me to see it in a different way, so I was able to understand things better. I don’t know what happened after the first two months, things just disintegrated. And she’s been really horrible ever since.

I don’t enjoy people screaming at me, yelling in my face, accusing me of things I haven’t done. My mom, actually, says it’s partly my fault for judging my teacher. I’ve judged her to be incapable of performing her teacherly duties and as a result I’ve withheld my respect. I’m cool and polite. Evidently she takes umbrage at that. Tough.

The principal’s prodding was going nowhere. I raised my hand and offered my opinion, asked if I could proffer it. She said, go ahead. So I did. I told it like it was. Said we were as entitled to respect as our teacher, and if she couldn’t bother to offer it to us, why expect us to respect her in return? So we’re noisy and don’t pay attention. But, I emphasized, this happens precisely because we’re driven to it by our own exasperation over having to submit to this woman’s tirades, each and every day.

And, I said, this is interfering with our education, diminishing the level of our education, and we’re certainly entitled to more than what we’re experiencing. I wasn’t the least bit scared. I felt I was right, and when you feel that way, you’ve got a responsibility to yourself to proceed.

The principal didn’t scowl, didn’t look condemnatory, just looked at me kind of thoughtfully. That impressed me. She turned to the class and asked who else felt the way I did? Almost everyone lifted their hands. And then there was utter quiet. The principal heaved a huge sigh, got up, said she’d give it some thought, relay what she’d gleaned from us to our teacher. She turned to me before she left and asked if I’d be willing to repeat what I’d said to her, directly to my teacher. Most certainly would, I said.

Since then, nothing. Nothing, nothing at all. No acknowledgement from the office, nor our teacher that anything had taken place out of the ordinary. I felt pretty deflated, I’ll tell you. My mom said to give it a rest, just go with it, and forge ahead. Not to take things so seriously. It’s all right for her, she isn’t assaulted on a daily basis by the accusations of someone who won’t listen to reason.

And then, of course, there’s the little matter of my report card, my latest report card. She gave me marks in the mid- to high-70s. Patently absurd. I’ve earned much better marks than that. This report card punishes me for being outspoken, for being the victim of a personality clash.

Exactly, said my mom, your personality is clashing with that of your teacher. What’s happening in the classroom, she said, is exactly what occurs out in the real world, where people often don’t get along and have to make a concerted effort to do so. She herself, she told me, had to learn the hard way. She thought I would be smart enough to learn quicker than she had.

Obviously, I’m not. And I’m not.

My literature and English marks are absurd; no one reads more than I do, and I’ve got a perfect (well, pretty good) command of the language, and my tests are excellent. How can she interpret that to a slightly-above-average class mark? Ditto for geography, social studies, art and music. My French and math look about where they should be, but the rest is a travesty. She’d give me worse marks, I know, if she could get away with it. But she can’t, because I am a good student. I’m really, really pissed off, big time.

She’s really not very professional at all. My mom’s a professional. She takes pride in the work she does, and she does really complicated, important work. I don’t know all the details, but she can do these really amazing drawings, like architects do. She works on contract for the government. Makes more money that way, she says, than having a permanent job with them, though sometimes she gets really anxious when one contract has expired and she has to go looking for another one.

My teacher should be invited to go look for another job. I know that’s not very nice, but she isn’t very nice, and that’s the absolute truth. My mom says I’m too negative. My grandma says the same thing. What really, truly bugs the hell out of me is that this teacher, who makes everyone miserable around her, has said the same thing to me. She should know, she’s the very epitome of negativity.

And there’s a parent-teacher interview coming up. My mom was supposed to go in to the school on Monday for this interview. Me too, I was supposed to be there. I was looking forward to it, kind of in a twisted way. I know that whatever my teacher says, my mom will support her. Mom thinks I should be more disciplined, less inclined toward criticizing my elders, that I should learn to take advice, and be less judgemental. My grandmother has told me that my mom’s experiences at school paralleled mine; in other words my mom was just as critical of her teachers, as they complain I am with mine.

Listen, I was never exactly in love with any of my teachers. I liked some of them, didn’t care for others, but they weren’t like this person, not at all. I had more respect from my teachers when I attended pre-school, than I get now. And there’s something pretty wrong with that. If someone like my teacher hasn’t the necessary patience and the fortitude to teach a class of 12 and 13-year-olds, she shouldn’t be doing it.

My grandma told me there’s a glut of teachers, most of them can’t find jobs because of declining enrolment, and new graduates are just biding their time, waiting for older teachers to retire, or just making do, taking on temporary fill-in jobs. They’re on a list that the schools use, for emergency calls. And for the most part, when they come in to fill in for a day or two they don’t really do much of anything, other than baby-sit. That’s right, they don’t know where we’re at in the curriculum, and they’re not in a very good mood because they haven’t got permanent employment, and it just seems that they sit there resentful of us, as though we’re the ones who’ve gotten them into that mess.

Anyway, I repeat: life just isn’t fair. Here’s something that really bugs me. Every day after school I’d come home and first thing getting in the door I’d go over to speak with my little pig Henry, stroke his tiny head, and ask how his day was. Fill up his water, just to give him clean water to drink. And a bit of a treat, a piece of celery or apple. I got him at the Humane Society - mom’s big on rescues - when he was only two, they said. I loved him, I really did. He was so cute, made these really sweet little sounds.

Okay, I was kind of scared of him, too. Mom would laugh at me, she is used to handling animals. I should be, I’ve lived among them long enough, but Henry was different. He was so small. Mom would put him in my lap, and I’d brush his hair. And pet him. Sometimes he didn’t want to be handled, and he’d nip my fingers. Hard. I was just kind of leery of picking him up, in case I did something wrong, and hurt him or dropped him or something, even after Mom showed me how. I lacked confidence she said, and I certainly did.

Henry had a little cage when we first got him. But Mom decided he needed stimulation and more room, so she expanded it to two stories, and another area just for him to bounce around. At first he was just still all the time, didn’t move about much. But when he became accustomed to his new expanded cage, he began to explore it all. One level was for sleeping, the other for eating, and the large area on the first level for him to do whatever he wanted. His cage was right next to Mom’s rabbits, so he had plenty of company. They snuffled one another.

Actually he became so bold that Mom would sometimes leave the door to his cage swung wide open and he’d just go out and amble about everywhere. He was good about confining his droppings to a special area in his cage. For the most part, that is. He was a curious little devil, always wanted to know what was going on. The cat just paid him no mind, and Mom’s two dogs got used to him really fast. The smaller one even tried to play with Henry sometimes. I was always worried he’d get hurt, he was so small. He was afraid of nothing.

Along with his regular food, he’d also get a daily salad, fresh fruit and vegetables cut into little pieces. He would actually squeak repeatedly at about the time of day he knew he’d be getting his salad, impatient for his bowl. Made us all laugh. It really was funny seeing him padding around on the kitchen floor, in between the cat and the dogs, everyone politely managing to sidestep the other. Although when the cat started meowing, and the dogs barking, impatient for their meals, with Henry squeaking along, it reminded me of one of those old nursery stories grandma used to read me when I was small, The Musicians of Bremen.

One day I walked into the house, went over to Henry’s cage, and stroked his little head. He slept a lot, always, but that’s normal. I thought he was sleeping. Although I did think, at the time, how strangely his body seemed to be laying there, not the way it usually looked. His body looked stiff, awkward.

I soon realized he wasn’t going to respond to me. I freaked out, I really did. I just ran out of there, and shut myself into my bedroom. Until Mom got home. She sat down with me and we both cried. Then she wrapped him up in a tiny blanket and put him in a freezer bag and into the freezer. It was winter. She planned to bury him in the spring, soon as the ground thawed. He’d only been a year with me, my very own companion pet.

See what I mean?

My grandma says most teens are grumpy and inclined to fuming about things. Hormones, she says. Bullshit, I say. Not to her, of course.

 

Inheritance

 

Verily, it is an odiously ungraceful world

that idolizes a Jewish sage while violating

the humanity of his successors. Ingratitude

of the greatest magnitude unendingly

visited upon a tribe whose numbers are in

constant flux, never permitted to substantial

increase before another deadly assault begins

throughout history from ancient origins to

the present. His name is spoken in hushed

reverence, his people referred to as pestilence

personified not fit to occupy a place in a 

world body never prepared to accept their

presence other than as scheming perpetrators

lusting to gain dominance over all, even

while the veneration of a Jewish scion of

the House of David, inheritor of Abraham's

covenant with God is held to personify all

that is nobly enriching of the human spirit.

The Source

 

The source? It could of course be your

subconscious, a more palatable suggestion

readily accepted than that niggling little

recurring thought that whispers now and

again how strange it is... It is you and only

yourself that inhabits your mind needless to

say and who would argue with that simple

fact? You, on occasion. Subtle deviations

from the known into the deep, dark unknown.

For example that poem that flowed so very

effortlessly, surprising and pleasing you no

end. Where did it come from? You sat down

with a defined intent to write what your mind

had been playing with, expanding, refining

and finally prepared to commit completion

you began ... and your fingers flew over the

keyboard in tandem with some urgent voice

deep within -- a tangential direction not  your

own, but there it is, those mysterious words with

no one to claim them but you, their author...?

Deciphering the Unknowable

 

Nature does not measure itself by time

it is beyond time, a human construct

a continuum by which humanity

measures existence and all that is

above all lifespans, events and evolution.

Nature has no need of examining itself

it is timeless and forever evolving yet

to humans time's essence is their life's

yardstick from birth to death. It is as 

though time itself controls the universe

an offspring of nature failing to recognize 

her own. That too is a particular conceit 

of humanity, that nature and all it signifies 

can be interpreted and understood by

humanity's elite minds through the medium

of science, nature's very own toolkit. It

is mankind dabbling in nature's laboratory.

The Spirit Within

 

There have been no recent developments in

human behaviour unknown to the ancients

who analyzed how humankind dissolved its

humanity in venomous paroxysms of envy

fear and hatred of the other. As a prescription

for peace they warned against excesses of

reaction to the deep pools of dysfunction

between tribes and faith in the eternal essence

of omniscient, omnipresent, jealous and

controlling spirits. Among them surely

there were some wise beyond their time

who understood that it is within each soul

that the controlling spirit exists to be ignored

at one's peril to be sent spiralling into that

special hell of misery draining the goblet

of bitter gall transforming life into an

unending blizzard of blame and victimhood.

Winter Solstice

 

There are no wind gusts to blow

the cascades of snow into hidden

crevices in the muted landscape as

the opaque curtain of white billows

and swells and then ebbs but the snow

still falls in light flurries spiralling gently

to the forest floor, waylaid by the

outstretched boughs of fir, hemlock

spruce and pine weaving fine embroideries

of nature's lace to grace the forest trees.

Pewter-shaded clouds stuck fast to the sky

relieving their burden with no inclination

to move on. The weight  of the snow on

cedars droop boughs until they're released

and a fine skein like ectoplasm drifts to

the forest floor, a silent testimony to

winter's arrival as the solstice approaches.

The preternatural dusk of the inner forest

surrenders to deepening twilight, itself

melting gracefully into the darkness of night

and still snow sifts through the landscape.

Herstory

 

She is now in her mid-80s tending from 

time to time to recall sometimes vividly 

sometimes faintly her evolving moments of

realization, how tormented she suddenly felt

in a strange bed with overwhelming thoughts 

of the enveloping darkness of death.The panic

felt when her mother took her to a daycare

operated by strange women in religious habit.

Her loneliness as a child and swift grasp

of reading and the magic inherent in language

as solace from a threatening world where once 

a young black girl with intent approached in an

inner-city alleyway and her spurt of assurances 

she was no enemy, her parents taught her so and 

she was spared. Her yearning for green spaces 

where to the child she was, parks were heaven. 

The sad sense of abandonment sent to a summer 

camp for underprivileged children. The ominous

doubt overhearing her parents speak of Jews and 

death camps. The horror she felt hearing her father

say he didn't want to die, but  he did anyway. Her 

resignation when her mother convinced a garment 

factory head her young daughter would be useful 

on the factory floor. The dreams she had approaching 

her juvenile years of meeting a youth like herself 

who would become her everlasting companion in life

and she did and nothing was evermore impossible.

 

 

A Word To The Wise

 

Reserve high expectations for yourself since it's 

perfectly all right to expect yourself to rise to 

occasions as needed but avoid at all costs hanging 

those expectations on the shoulders of others 

in particular those who hang stethoscopes over 

their shoulders as a proud statement of a long 

tradition of pride in giving comfort and aid when

required to those in need. Ah, but we live in an 

entirely different era now, gone the time when 

medics shared the trenches with those soldiering on

through illness and disease. Where once MDs

were skilled in general medicine and light surgery

they focus now on noting symptoms for accurate

diagnoses to enable them to shuffle patients off

to the eventual attention of specialists. And good

luck on both fronts; accuracy of diagnoses and

specialist appointments. Where once your general 

practitioner set fractures, gave stitches and shots

of critical vaccines, in the age of COVID it is the

neighbourhood pharmacy to turn to. Where once

an appointment to 'see' one's family doctor was a

routine practise, a reservation is now required for a

telephone consultation, full stop. Where once a

doctor insisted on seeing a patient before committing

to diagnosis and prescription, it can now all be done

remotely. Your cardiologist won't hesitate to send 

you for a routine EKG and if you balk at exposure

the telephone 'consultation' reservation is cancelled.

Nothing to see here folks, time to move on....for

whatever it is ailing you it will either resolve itself

by natural means or simply put, nothing will avail.

 

 

O, Ye Believers

 

What greater assurance of well-placed trust 

could there possibly be than in the  authority 

of a government for which lack of trust merits 

execution? Yet to withhold that trust one sins 

for it is a betrayal of the divine powers and 

presence in all of existence of God Almighty 

and the faithful know this by word of the Almighty's 

presence on Earth to whom the authority was 

granted to represent that most sacred of spirits 

that rules all that is and all that will ever be. 

It is in the name of the Almighty that this nation's 

theistic rulers proclaim fatwas, form and arm 

violent belligerents and instruct them to strike 

the enemies of Islam wherever they live, threatens 

the existence of another religion's haven on Earth 

and punishes to the death would-be usurpers to 

their power structure while authorizing their 

divinely-inspired military to maim and murder 

other nations' dispirited faithful in a spirit of 

helpfulness whose ultimate goal is to guide 

others to the path of divine righteousness. 

Revealing Hypocrisy's Faultlines

 

Granted, parody is a rebuke

not a cure holding up to

public ridicule

those who pose as righteously

progressive selectively

harnessing their efforts

toward sanctimonious morality

expressed in humanitarian

terms of reference 

while targeting the offences

committed by those struggling to

exist against the efforts of

others to extinguish their rights of

existence committing themselves

to existential defense and in so doing

offending those unconvinced they

should while claiming the offensive

acts of self-protection victimize those

whose goal is to slaughter in gain of

territorial advantage. The ripostes of

parody shredding the pretense of

neutral judgement for when all else

fails comic revelations of issues

injurious to reality have their value in

the light of clarity and laughter.

Illuminating Life

 

As the Winter Equinox steadily approaches

soot-grey clouds streaked with charcoal

monopolize the skies in the Northern

Hemisphere sifting globules of rain

alternately with flurries of snow

showering through the atmosphere

saturated with winter's promise of a great

accumulated snowpack to relieve the tedium

of the sullen skies casting a dark visage

over the Earth's landscape in a never-ending

cascade of brooding days, abrupt in their

departure into the bleak dark of night

unrelieved by the luminous sight of the moon

and the stars imprisoned behind those clouds.

Until suddenly the sun prevails brusquely

burning through the dismal ceiling of cloud

to illuminate its audience below bringing

with it penetrating cold and flesh-piercing

winds. Ah, but the sun, it illuminates life!

His Story

 

Long before he became a streetwise child orphan

wandering back alleyways among others like himself

he knew deprivation without knowing what it 

was other than existing in a state of perpetual hunger.

Hard to imagine what he thought of agricultural

work shipped from Europe to North America at the

turn of the century to become a farm labourer along 

with others, a philanthropic plan to offer homeless youth

new opportunities, indentured for years until they paid

their passage. He laboured and endured then was free

to wander the streets of another city as an adult no

longer hungry. Meeting another refugee married and

had children living penuriously but free from racist

harassment. Never exposed to formal education he

inhaled knowledge with experience, devoured books

proclaimed himself a 'self-made man', eager to engage 

in debate at any opportunity, any subject, shuddered 

at the rounding up of Europe's Jews knowing that 

might have been his fate. A man stunted in physique 

but capable of  hard work, he discovered others from 

his home town, played a tuba in an amateur orchestra

sent his children to parochial schools so they would 

know from whence they came. Fate sought him all to

soon, he protesting the while to the final stage of life 

for which he was destined despite the delay on the way 

to carry him to a lingering and all-too-brief farewell.

The Human Dilemma

 

What if the source of humanity's inability 

to improve itself and leave its baser instincts 

behind is lodged in its collective desire to be

better than it knows it is, feeling that it can be 

better and failing abjectly leading to conflict

 and misery for all involved, encouraging among 

the disaffected an errant embrace of sociopathy

as a more direct route making gains for the 

human element in minority to realize their own 

aspirations for chaos to reign. A bizarre defect 

within the majority which yearns for order and 

equality equating honeyed words of promise 

from those seeking power then producing nothing

of value but for their own ends to be achieved

antithetical to good government and public

usefulness. While the rare blunt-spoken candidate 

persuading the electorate he can deliver good 

for society that others have failed to do does 

just that in  masterful strokes of judicious reasoning 

from a persona whose personal failings in decency 

mask the successes he is responsible for, leading

to his downfall and the return of the poseurs

producing ill government and the reality of 

failure. Choices so flawed and ill-starred

peace prizes are awarded to warmongers.

 

 

The Politics of Cynicism

 

What a conundrum it is that most people

think of themselves as discerning of human

character and of course observation and

experience is a great aid in leading people

to the conclusion that the must untrustworthy

of professions is that of politicians, yet even

knowing this they obligingly vote for the most

charismatic of candidates who are blatantly 

egotistical, accomplished liars, hypocritical

authoritarian, rapacious and manipulative to

the end degree. With rare exceptions politicians 

seem to be born to the role, gifted with requisite

characteristics yet claim their sole motivation

is inspired by service to the public weal. They

have no real need to practice to deceive since 

it evolves so naturally within their psyche.

Despising the typecast candidate, the public

peers through their rose-coloured lenses to

distinguish their choice as dedicated and oh so

different, then when in office repent at leisure.

Leaving You Mute And Bemused

 

The outcome is predictable when experience 

and reasonable intelligence inform us of what 

to expect when we perform an oft-repeated

action. This kind of inductive reasoning is 

simply a matter  of routine observation with

nothing whatever in common to a predictive 

sense out of the ordinary. This is where the we 

named the subconscious moves into the arcane. 

Where our minds roam about in spheres we 

really have no idea exist much less that some 

peculiar sense obliquely advises us of something 

yet to occur. As when for example you think 

of someone or an event just as a sudden random

thought, unrelated to anything, someone you 

haven't seen or heard from in a long time

or some event that occurred at a remove in time

and to your astonishment (or blase acceptance)

that person moves once again into your life or

that event recurs leaving you mute and bemused.

The Comfort of Love

 

The soul is the essence of our existence

for we are what it is, even as it reflects what

we are; our consciousness of all that we see

hear and cling to, it is our working mind

our reminder of our being, incorporeal

an unknown life-essence, an impulse and

primal compulsion. If it can be seen anywhere

that place can be deep within the looking

glass of the eyes, ethereal and haunting.

The eyes of a child reflect surprise and

curiosity, trust and need, the soul emerging

to become what it will. As those eyes

record what they see they augment that

soul in a compendium of experience and

emotion the innocence replaced by other

ineffable reflections of humanity redolent

of hope and disappointment, regret and

self-remonstration, the fortunate among

them enveloped in the comfort of love. 

White-on-White

 

A vast lid of antimony was clamped

tightly under the sky this day

emitting no light, the sheen of its

metallic white dominating the

atmosphere as it emitted dense

clouds of snow spiralling onto the

landscape below overwhelmed by

the sheer persistence of white

stretching from sky through the 

atmosphere to tame a landscape sere

and dark with withered vegetation

on a day of perpetual twilight. 

 

Unrepentant Guardians

 

One could claim them to be models of good 

behaviour even though such a statement is a 

bit of a stretch but they are endearing little 

creatures and as child proxies fulfill almost all 

expectations in companionship, entertainment 

and a focus for our parental void in our dotage. 

Two very small, black and furry, wide-eyed

Poodles intelligent and stubborn, devoted and 

demanding. Our thoughts are to provide them 

with security and opportunities to view the world 

as their own and they do vocally advertise their 

presence while leaving hints wherever they've been. 

We are however left troubled by their aversion to

the presence of others of their kind to whom

their hostility is beyond palpable and gives us

reason to question whether we have gone a tad

too far in patterning our little charges after

ourselves, leading to soul-searching introspection:

is it conceivable that we subconsciously emit

a similar, quieter air of resistance in the presence

of others like ourselves, or are our little charges

repaying in like kind their version of security?

Intrusion

 

Man proposes nature disposes and so

should your plans for a briskly cold

winter day include a saunter

through frozen winter trails

to touch nature's raw mysterious base

be aware the forest has its own rules

of engagement. In the brief hush of

twilight when stealthy dusk begins

to infiltrate the fastness of that

elemental ecology the soft twitter

of birds as they settle for the night

the last scurry of squirrels as they

make for their nests prepares the

forest for daylight's expulsion where

above its canopy a crescent moon appears

wind no longer rustles dry leaves

the surrounding trees stand straight

as sentries questioning your presence

and all too soon your penetration within

that intimately closed system's unwelcome.

 

Resigned But Hopeful

 

A palpable air of unreality stalks the globe

reflecting a recurring nightmare of sinister

proportions not yet understood but feared

with good reason for each morning we

wake to the latest news of the new totals

of unfortunates infected, hospitalized, dead

outdistancing the numbers of the day before

and we know that the nightmare that hosted

such a restless night's sleep had its genesis

in anticipation of such updates we feel we

can happily live without. Living is the crux

the reason that everyone you see as you 

maintain cautious distance has a haunted 

appearance, weary eyes and downturned mouth

though it can swiftly turn upward in a valiant

effort to cheer the opposite face so plainly at

pains to appear resigned, yet not without hope.

 

 

Seeking Solace in Fungal Rosettes

 

Gone are the roses, those exquisite

cultured jewels of a gardener's delight

for the garden itself is now seasonally absent

retired from active service, burrowed

deep underground safe and secure from

howling winter winds and ice and with

it the roses for delicate surgery snipped

their lovely wands though it's true that

blossoms still stubbornly budded and

thrived even with the onset of frosted

nights but duty called and now the patient

is resting and biding time while feeling

as well as can be expected. Oh we miss

those fragrant sources of utter delight the

layered petals of richly shaded colour that 

intrigued and fascinated with their perfection

and can hardly credit the sight of facsimile 

roses tenderly cultivated by nature lovely

to behold and tasked with seasonal renewal

as we wander a forest seeking solace.