Like Goldilocks

The calendar year never errs. It

registers me at 85. And it's true I now

bear a cap of silvery hair, my face is

creased where it never was before

and though I'm still quick not quite

as I was. Sometimes when I look in

the mirror I'm surprised by my mother's

presence. Mostly, though I feel young

and why shouldn't I? Like Goldilocks

not too old, not too young. Except that

is when I'm out in public and society

informs me by the subtlest of whispers

that I've graduated to elderly status and

then Goldilocks exits leaving me with

the impression I've suddenly become old.

 

 

Creation, Time and Space

Creation, Time and Space

An imposing cathedral of
unparalleled beauty sheathed in
crystalline grandeur lifts its
imperious grace to the ceiling
of the sky velvet with approaching
night, a halo of moon and the
boldness of stars impassively
observing a landscape unlike
their own of frozen gases and
ancient minerals. The one below
with its living atmosphere
responds to the distance of its
sponsor-sun in a frigid pause
of the clamour of growing
things unlike the inert nothingness
of cold and distant space. This
most familiar place of time and
seasons, liveliness and curiosity
a highly specialized experiment
by nature in randomized creative
adventure. And so, her creations
look up and peer beyond the
darkness of the unknown, certain
of discovery and revelation.

 

Sisters

 

Life began for them as sisters growing up 

in the Pale of Settlement where Jews were 

sent to live lest they contaminate other 

Russians with their direct presence.

Sisters but unalike in every conceivable way. 

One married a Ukrainian peasant the other 

married my father. They were together as 

man and wife for over thirty years raising

four children together. Cancer took him at age 53. 

It wasn't cancer that took my mother though 

she had entertained colon cancer twice. 

Eventually thirty years past my father's death 

my mother was placed in a communal setting 

for elderly patients with dementia. My aunt

an inmate, greeted her sister on arrival but my 

mother failed to recognize her. She did though

mention that the man she always referred to 

by his family name planned to drop by

sometime later that evening, and smiled.

Boxing Day Gift

Her photo is on the back page of the local

paper. She is a young, attractive woman

a mother of four, the caption adds. Beside her 

another woman, her best friend. On the front page 

a headline: Killing domestic in nature: Police. 

And the quote that it is only a "homicide incident 

domestic in nature". Nothing to see here, a life 

snuffed out. But the public need not be overly 

concerned is the message; no general threat looms. 

No word of the arrested, the live-in boyfriend 

who might or might not have fathered any of those 

children. Testimonial from tearful friend how 

cheerful and good-natured, a perfect mother she 

was. A crowd-funding campaign will go forward.

Nothing to see here, a life snuffed out. An event

so common anywhere in the world, the reader

sighs, turns the page, pours another cup of coffee.

 

 

Destined

 

Perhaps it was that his subconscious

led him to create that geographic distance

to break the spell of the emotional closeness

that stifled his independent future where

his experiences would be his alone, this

the youngest of our children, the very one

with whom his parents found bonds of

attachment in a shared love of all that

seemed of vital importance in the quality

of their lives, separately and together. When

his father many decades earlier painted a

picture of this son that hangs on our bedroom

wall perhaps subconsciously he faces away

eyes on some distant landscape as he stands

poised on a promontory, fields and forests

stretched out before and below his beloved

figure. We see this distant son every day on

awakening and on preparing for slumber, eyes

fixed on a distant horizon, back to us, and no

bereavement on our part can convince him to

turn his head, look at us, for his future called.

Birthdays and Memories

We're talking about Mum, a recurring topic

in most of our infrequent conversations. I fiddle 

with the receiver to position it so her voice 

delivers a clearer message as she struggles with 

that message, short of breath. We've long since 

exhausted our takes on our mother's suitability 

as a parental role model and through our emotion

starved childhood knew we'd raise our own with 

empathy, open emotion and loving guidance.

Did it help? Do our own children now that we're

so old think more kindly of us than we do of our 

mother? Questions we bat back and forth. Now when 

we speak of our mother it's to recall little events

things we remember about her. She is the younger 

daughter, the one who changed our mother's soiled 

diapers. I'm the older one who rarely visited. Each of 

us thought the other had it easier from our constantly

haranguing mother until one day we finally opened 

it all up and spoke for hours. She can't do that any more. 

Talking exhausts her. Walking exhausts her. She is 

approaching her 81st year. Our mother died at 84 of

frontal-lobe dementia. I feel badly for my little sister 

who sent her older sister a birthday card for her 85th 

birthday, arriving just around the corner of time.

 

 

Neighbours

 

 

Neighbours

These are your neighbours, now
grandparents to children as young
as their own were when you first
knew them. Some have become
firm friends, others have
disqualified themselves from
that inner circle to remain firmly
acquaintances, but all are like
close-bound residents of a
small village whose moments in
life become public knowledge
by consent of the inevitable
or by design. Now the common
interest is the afflictions of
implacable aging as all are
bemused by the little-noticed 
alterations in appearance, where
grey is the mutually shared common
denominator. That, and the growing
litany of hip-and-knee replacements
heart surgeries, catastrophic fall
recoveries and post-surgical
treatments for an encyclopedia
of diseases. There, on the street,
where neighbour meets neighbour
each sighs to the universal refrain
of time and tide's impatience.

 

 

It Was a Very ? Year

 

It Was a Very ? Year

The year I was born my parents greeted
their first-born child, with three more
to follow at substantial intervals, all
to an immigrant family living in pride and
poverty, escapees from racial bigotry,
social and institutional violence seeing
no possible future for themselves where
they were born. It was, coincidentally the
year that Nazi Germany denied the 
League of Nation having any business
interfering in the way it treated Jews. In
that year of 1936 Britain's King George
died, making way for the ascension of
Edward VIII; Hitler opened the 4th
Winter Olympics; 4 million French workers
went on strike; racists almost beat Leon Blum
to death; the Hindenburg had its first test
flight; Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles;
Jews were warned of arrest should they
attempt to vote; Italy, Austria and Hungary
signed the pact of Rome; Britain, the U.S.
and France signed a naval accord; Italy
firebombed Harar, Ethiopia; Arab
highwaymen near Nablus killed three Jews;
Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa;
General Francisco Franco began the
Spanish civil war; The "Nazi Games" of
the 11th Olympic games opened in Berlin;
Benito Mussolini celebrated his "axis"
with Nazi Germany; A British Royal 
Commission investigated the underlying 
cause of anti-Jewish riots which the Arab 
Higher Committee boycotted; Japan and
Nazi Germany signed the Anti-Komintern 
pact; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, 
Kazakhstan and Kirghistan joined the USSR;
Edward VIII abdicated for Wallis Warfield 
Simpson; and humble me was born.

Arise, Call To Action!

If events are not meticulously documented

did they really happen? And if proof of their 

occurrence has been preserved and assembled 

for public view how can society be assured that 

such documentation is truly reliable, much less 

the ethical spur of those who proffer them as 

proof positive? Commemorative statuary in the 

'free world' along with naming of institutions in 

recognition of past influences on the trajectory of 

history are now in poor repute through charges 

of historical injustice, white supremacy and the 

arrogance of colonialists consigning the world's 

aboriginals, 'racialized' communities to dreary 

lives of slavery, penury, disease. In this nothing 

to be proud of in further interests of conscience-

grieving guilt prepared to thrust their breasts on the 

swords of anguished apology. So haul down those 

statues, rename academia's halls of intellectual 

achievement, gut and renovate national museums

re-writing history as nations shrink in shame of 

once-proud history now joining the reprehensible

annals of invisible infamy, vile imperialists!

 

 

“Because the Jews ruined Christmas”

Oh, look! A class of third-grade children taught 

a history lesson by their teacher and just in time for 

Christmas. A re-enactment of the Holocaust, no less

an object lesson in a people's unforgivable sin against 

a Jewish prophet disbelieving his claim to a godhead 

and just as womanhood is haunted by Pandora's box

escapees, so too are Jews shunned in perpetuity as the 

original deicidal plot earning the undying enmity of 

the spirit of existence and all humanity of divine faith. 

Here, Yiddele, you play Hitler and here, little boys 

and girls -- dig graves, shoot Jews for they must be 

punished for ruining Christmas. The children wailed 

and grieved as they died in gas chambers, their pleas 

for mercy unanswered as transport trains kept on

delivering them to their deserved punishment so that 

children playing Jews would fully know the extreme 

gravity of Jewish sin deserving obliteration. How

fitting their teacher was Black and thus entitled to her

mission to expand children's view of the world by

recalling history to show that some lives really and

truly do not matter. Hers the legacy of malicious hate.

Nightscape

 

To sleep, perchance to dream. For all one

knows the thoughts that inhabit my mind

might also have visited that great literary

titan of historical documentation in drama

and comedy. A keen observer of humanity

confronted with the most mysterious of riddles:

what is it that makes its nightly visits to the

sleeping brain? An alien intruder, a mystic 

force of nature or the body-keeper's very own

submerged memories of another place some

other time? The subconscious playing perplexing

games airing a series of events both unfamiliar

yet with the shadow of familiarity. Is that you

being featured as a principal in a strange and

eerie landscape, or are you merely the observer

detached and remote. If so, why when danger

edges ever closer do you gasp in fear and panic?

What differentiates a dream from a nightscape

intrusion leaving a dim memory and foreboding?

Call To Arms : Sisters, Arise!

 

Is that then the final word? Women meekly resigned 

to a cunning blow-back after all these years of

asserting women's rights the Great Liberation 

ending in a whimper? Who amongst the outraged males 

shouted 'if you can't beat them, join them' and started

a race to the finish. Are we finished yet? The charge 

that women empowered themselves at the price of 

male pride resonated throughout the civilized world. 

It took a civilized society to lend its sympathy to 

pleas from dissatisfied males that their bodies rejected 

their minds and tearfully their minds were prepared 

to reject their bodies in a female transformation meant 

to level the playing field. Leaving female athletes who

aspired to greatness in their field to meet demands

by sporting committees that trans-females play 

their game in competition for awards where the

natal male configuration, physique and musculature

masquerading as female breezed past the desperate

efforts of those born female to excel in a sport no longer 

theirs, reclaimed by the wolf posing as grandma. 

It Happens

 

There are times and there are times. One

need not necessarily believe in fables or the

sinister gossip hidden from public view of the

veneer of Imperial entitlement at the expense of

the great unwashed. Don't have to believe me. 

It happens. A dashing prince chooses his charming

princess who has yearned for his notice and a royal 

wedding results with great fanfare where the adoring 

public swoons over a match made in heaven and 

young girls dream of their own wayward prince

tardy in arrival. Rinse and repeat. The pair close the 

door to the palace and live happily ever after, until

they no longer do ... or old age and the Angel of Death 

separates the devoted royal pair. Theirs is not the model

for all such royal events for there are other stories 

when the downtrodden public is less inclined to worship 

royal affectations while the masses endure penury

lending impetus to a rough rabble of regicidal mobs 

invading the palace to slaughter all within, swords

adrip with blood. In others grim ceremony of guillotining 

those guilty of royal persuasion. Time moves on and 

though royal heritage persists it is the royal offspring 

themselves now choosing infamously to erode 

and degrade the gentle privileges of regal charm.

 

 

Creative Imagination

They are two mistresses of creation; one

the divinely supreme creator of all that exists

Nature herself. The other a woman whose

creative imagination brought fantasy to the

excited lives of millions of readers and while

Nature is revered as sublime and immutable

the author whose soaring fantasy swept the

globe with an adoring public whose purchase

gained her wealth is now vilified and damned

by that very public for defending the laws of

Nature's biological verities. Like a belief in

a higher power where all that is required is

faith, those who are born male or female may 

in popular opinion switch their genders to one

preferred by whim and choice and sometimes

baleful intent. Nonsense she says: born male

forever male; born female, female you are. The

male of the species does not give birth, the 

female may yearn to possess her opposite's

attributes of brawn but never will. Nature grins

and the author grimly pauses and rests her case.

Dear Tyrant

That of course is the entire point of

being a dictator, the deep suffusion of

satisfaction in tyrannizing one's subjects

to behave precisely as whims take the

one who decides who may live and who

will die. And who is there to oppose him?

Certainly not his staunch military owing

their status to their beloved dictator's

benevolence toward them. All the toys

of science and technology so beloved of

boys who will be men at his disposal as

he dabbles in the heady power that accrues

with ownership of weapons of destruction

that have few peers. A power enabling the

holder to taunt alarmed international onlookers

fearful of the child-in-a-man's-body's propensity

to raging tantrums whose threats bode dire.

As for the people over whom he governs to

whom he represents a dear leader only the

gods can remove they live enslaved to a grim

reality where the nation's sparse wealth is

apportioned toward their dictator's leisure

and pleasure where leftover dross may lead 

to mass starvation. The entrapped ecstatic

over their lot in life extolled by their tyrant

must suppress their joy and delight, freeze

any compulsion to smile, signs of disrespect

punishable by life in prison little different in

fact from their ordinary everyday lives.

 

 

Sacrilegious Myth-Buster

Can it possibly be other than monstrously

sacrilegious to deliberately and with

malice aforethought spurn and abuse a

child's trust in the sublime, ineffable

presence on this blighted Earth of an

avuncular, red-cheeked, white-bearded

elf who arrives bearing as many gifts as

children's greed can visualize as Christmas

paradise? Furious with the pretense of an

annual celebration of human capriciousness

the bishop extols the virtues of poverty-

sensitive St.Nicholas whose persona Santa

has taken under false pretenses. And when

a child scolds the bishop defending Santa

since his parents assured him the jolly red

elf is absolutely real, he is sent home by said

bishop with a message: your parents lied to you.

Can the world stand by without reaction as

this atrocity occurs leaving children grief-

stricken and disbelieving? Heaven only knows.

Triumph of Communist Capitalism

The exuberant shopping experience

is a no-contest reality offering goods

that are readily available, easily

replaceable, soon obsolescent and

let's-face-it inexpensive. Abundant

shelves groaning under the weight

of products whose manufacture and

purpose -- to satisfy the purchasing

public's every whim and ostensible

need -- will be comprised of poor

materials badly designed with the

saving grace of cheap. In maintaining

that value syndrome manufacturing has

settled into a system of cheap wages

and what's more forced labour, but that

has nothing to do with Everyone who

focuses on the price tag not the imprint

of source. And so the giant purveyor of

consumer goods of every conceivable

description and purpose strides the world

puissant with the confidence that human

greed is the universal tool enabling its

machinery of cheerful global conquest.

 

 

Bird of Paradise Repressed

 

 In nature's avian kingdom it is males

whose colourful plumage is on display

to attract the opposite of its species.

Nature devised a different strategy for

humans gifting the female of the species

with physical characteristics deemed of

great allure and beauty whose purpose is

to gain admiration from the male human.

In the process of designing human emotions

some were slipped in adverse to comfort

to women's overweening pride in their

gifts when males claiming property

rights instruct women to conceal their 

pride of ownership revealing them to none

but themselves. This ancient humiliation

of womankind is so deeply engrained in

tribal societies intertwined with religious

convictions women are instructed it is none

but god's will they be demure and modest

obeying injunctions demeaning to their

sovereign human rights, but little does that

matter since within those cultures it is clear

and constant they have no rights, after all.

Origins and Refuge

Nothing quite engenders desperation

to escape one's country of origin

as do threats, oppression, violence

human indignities, repression, and

poverty of life to impress upon the

subjected the dire need to escape the

trap of their indigent, fragile future

to seek refuge in a world rife with refugees 

seeking hope elsewhere than their place 

of birth and community. Tribalism

sectarian enmities and war have always 

spurred people to flee their lot for hope

elsewhere to seek a redemptive future. Is 

it only now in this conflicted era of ancient 

renewed antipathies that those named refugees 

fault their haven-found refuge installing there 

the very platforms of original dispute while

from safe distance glorifying the place

left behind and finding fault with the

quality of life and purpose within the very

nurturing atmosphere of freedom found.

Last Resorts

Well, what ya think? From the very evidence 

before us it seems Nature is reclaiming her 

dominion. We've had a good run haven't we?

Just about everything going our way

able and willing to elevate humankind

to the loftiest perch on the creation scale 

and in so many instances taking nature's 

blueprint and 'improving' on it. Those 

improvisations may not have earned

the plaudits from the great creator we

thought they merited. In quick order

not necessarily looking for approval from

us we have been gifted with a deadly virus

volcanic eruptions that will not stop

tornadoes whose violence and breadth

have outstripped all previous iterations

wildfires destroying great swaths of forest 

and human habitation, atmospheric rivers and

certainly not least an influx of wild boars

and coyotes all hungry to prolong their lives

at the expense of others'. Dispiriting to the

extreme. Reason to strike out and migrate

elsewhere in the universe to find an

agreeable celestial body to host us so we

can begin all over again? Wait: should we?

Celebrity!

His enigmatic stage is his saturnine

appearance belied by the clearly

twinkling mischief in those eyes

his mobile, expressive face

manifesting his inner spirit

compensating for the trauma

suffered as a child which despite

that anguish bred in him an intuitive

feel for emotional manipulation

and through talent and bravado

transformed  him into the celebrity 

he planned to be. But such a modest 

one, impressively toe twitching 

in bashful resignation when lionized

while frugally banking the results. 

Writing his youthful autobiography 

and stressing his troubled childhood

his modest nature chose to title the 

book with one word: a four-letter 

contraction of his given name.

 

 

Diplomacy, You Say?

Oh, look! How very gracious!

Beijing is being vindicated in its

propaganda farce-saving by the very

country whose citizens were abducted

and held incommunicado on spurious

espionage charges for three years

allowing the Chinese Communist Party

to demonstrate in real life that it means

business when warning its detractors

that criticizing anything Beijing does

from cyber espionage to threatening

a country's sovereignty, or squashing

democracy and then perpetrating cultural

genocide is out of bounds, any manner

of infractions for which will cost the

offenders dearly. And here is Canada's

very own foreign minister throatily and

with full conviction parroting Beijing's

assertions that everything it does is in full

accordance with the law; not internationally

recognized law mind, but Beijing's will do.

 

 

Enlightenment

Lacking vision, curiosity, the inner fire to learn. 

Totally uninspired, no self-motivation, unmoved 

by the wish to acquire knowledge. Some 

damning report card commentary that was. No 

one crept into the head of the young Indigenous 

student to gently ask what he thought of it all. 

Only many years later, an acclaimed poet honoured

for his vision and for his ancestral pride; at that 

juncture finally undertaking the completion of 

his neglected formal education to achieve that

graduation certificate his earlier self set aside

did he tell the tale of a teacher's disparagement 

of a child's native religion and language as pagan

that he and his ancestors would all meet in hell. 

Humiliation when the teacher subjected his name

and background to class perusal culminating in 

sneers and guffaws at his shy, determined efforts at 

rebutting false assertions, he knew that school 

attendance was not the ultimate teaching ground for 

those like himself already exposed to far more 

learning experiences than could be countenanced 

for a child steeped deep in the practised study of 

nature and clan exposure to the humility of existence 

based on tribal oral traditions of humanity.

Her Cheerful Greeting

 

She is a tiny Oriental woman long past her 

middle age yet with facial features that are timeless

white hair hanging loose a bright headband to 

match the COVID mask holding her bob in place 

unless it's caught in a girlish ponytail, swinging 

in rhythm to her practised, practical movement 

as she marches groceries along the conveyor belt 

scanning each all the while chatting, smiling

taking no heed of the truculence surrounding her. 

As gracious as she is efficient she assures me it is 

no bother unpacking the items I've placed in a 

bag meant to be kept apart from what I'm taking 

home. Each item is priced and carefully replaced

the bag to be left for the Food Bank. Nothing 

fazes this woman other than the discovery her wallet 

was missing and despite frantic efforts could not 

be found. Never before had I seen a furrowed 

brow above her trusting eyes. Until it was returned

her faith in life's acquaintances restored

somewhat as her manner has done mine.

Breathe Easy, Folks

What's new on the local scene you ask? This city is 

growing, it's getting a little crowded. The budget for 

social services is seriously groaning. The police budget 

is growing spurring agitation from communities 

claiming racial harassment raising banners to defund 

the police. Shootings and deaths on a steady rise. The 

latest two 16-year-olds; score one dead one struggling 

to live. Local residents need not fear the police chief says.

This was a targeted hit. You know, criminal disputes.

Street gangs, moving drugs and illicit weapons. So

nothing to worry about. The residents living in their

crowded assisted housing can breathe a sigh of relief.

They're not targets, just those who live among them

like the two 16-year-olds. The dead boy an aspiring

rap artist, beloved by all. Such a nice kid, friendly

to everyone, kind and gentle. Someone wasn't thinking

kind and gentle when he was targeted. Not a word

from the Black Lives Matter folks. Makes sense;

black lives matter when the instrument of death is

white; when it's black, it's just people in disagreement

working out their frustrations. Don't get in the way.

 

 

Contest ... Contrast

In nation-to-nation relations there are the

diabolically venomous minds that view

others in the stark outline of the enemy

no room for filling in the broader picture

of shared humanity. Those are the minds

using their inheritance of cerebral function

to devise ever more complex and deadly

architecture of violent upheaval aimed

directly toward achieving a goal of mass

extermination to remove the subjects

identified as inimical to the larger goal

of world conquest. The lethal game plays

out with the targets employing intelligence

of a more subtle nature, diabolical in its

clever feints and surgical strikes quietly

orchestrated to destroy not venomous minds 

but the weapons conceived and meant

to be deployed to annihilate those with the

will and intention of survival in the pursuit

of inherent wit over witless self-defeat.

 

 

Existence recognizes no obligation to explain itself. 

The formula is nature's alone. Frail humanity searching 

for elusive meaning in life found its answers in Theism 

and there the culture of exclusion, fiery emotion and 

hatred resides. Beloved of believers holding sacred all 

screeds writ by humanity at the behest of the unseen

creator, the faithful find comfort in the belief that their 

devout subscription guarantees their future in death 

when the worthy's soul is released to wander at leisure. 

It is no easy matter to qualify in single-minded veneration 

in the ecstasy of the sacrament of the Divine whose 

scriptures admonish the need to worship none but He 

for all others are mere pretenders whose sacrilegious 

attendance on false deities destines them to a violent death

absent the salvation of rebirth. In the presence of rank 

blasphemers the faithful are enjoined to express their fury 

by mob violence shedding blood as a testament to their 

absolute faith. The triumph of a godly virtue seen in 

accusations and threats, savage violations of humanity 

in the wild culmination of a swarm of zealots joyfully

spilling blood as proof positive of their limitless faith.

Abandoning The Blueprint

Curiosity, wonder and imagination has been 

the companion to evolutionary design from the 

perspective of the human mind to the development 

of the complex brain that drives humanity to look 

beyond and above -- within and without to find 

its place in the universe. The implacable drive to 

know and to discover leads the human animal in its

endless exploration of self and beyond. That drive 

arises from early development of the species 

alongside the passage of a lifetime from wondering 

child to established maturity. The most commonplace 

curiosity is that teasing a girlchild to the mysteries 

of being a boychild, imagining the future from male 

to female, from female to male. Imaginary as these 

 whimsical transitions were in most part in the past

they have devolved to stir society to collective guilt

of a child's passing fancy. Where in the present the 

die is cast with the child's murmur of dissent and 

parental assent setting off a cultural social firestorm

 of transitional gender reversals and strangely enough

accelerated episodes of suicide. Sacrificing children on 

the altar of submission to normalize the abnormal.

Have You Heard?

Of the two acronyms take your choice: DIE: 

(diversity, inclusion, equitable) or mayhap

JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) 

for you see human evolution is still evolving

and the practise of science and medicine is now

interwoven inextricably with those indices of

human philosophy whereby the world becomes

a far better place. Life can be so complicated in

retrospect when once feeling ill a doctor's visit

was indicated so your symptoms could be analyzed

interpreted and your ailment theoretically diagnosed.

But that was before the halls of academia woke to 

its responsibilities beyond natural science layering 

wisdom with social justice. Think of DIE not quite

as expiring, but a roll of the DIE where you begin

to question whether a visit to the doctor is worth

hearing him expound on the source of your illness

being the poverty of deprivation owing to the colour

of your skin, so absorbed in his exposition he may

forget the diagnosis and you return home while

the symptoms jog on until you end in hospital where

pastors indulging their pastoral duty infuse you with

their gentle words of salvation on the way to death.

What Could Go Wrong?

Be fruitful, multiply, nature exhorts her creatures

careful to incentivize her more creatively complex 

progeny, the simpler forms left to their own begetting 

processes. And since nature enjoys challenges she 

devised multiple methods of replication to amplify 

the process and delight her sense of mischief. Her 

living organisms owe much to her explosive sparks 

of creativity for which she blueprinted single cells 

and complex gatherings of cells in the production 

of life. From progenitors to their generational 

offspring she studied what her living laboratory 

produced discovering that the most complex and 

intelligent of her creatures could face eradication by

a single-celled animal with a passion for replication

finding its nursery within the inner core of a warm 

and moist abode. Nothing daunts her passion for 

invention as in procreation by fission, budding

fragmentation, spores, propagation, parthenogenesis

sex or hermaphrodition. Until scientists hungry for

discovery stumbled upon stem cell xenobots whose

microscropic mastery at self replication in movement

for which much is foreseen to benefit science and 

humanity. Unless of course, nature has different ideas 

as she mutters the nerve! Trust science, not scientists. 

The Delirium of Power

The intoxicating delirium of power

and unitary control rumbles through the 

dreams of tyrants and the nightmares of all 

for whom dictatorial power crumples before

the lens of cerebral reasoning and moral direction. 

There is never at any given time in history a 

shortage of aspirers to power just as the

cautionary fear of the emergence of despotic 

oppressors is not lacking among those whose 

history has been rife with absolutist inquisitors 

who set rules none may disobey on pain of 

punishing deterrence. The misruled resort to 

the subterfuge of obedience while covertly 

gathering restive cliques of rebellion seldom 

achieving their goal for the very arms of the 

oppressor geared to suppress disharmony among 

diverse disentitled derive their strength from 

force of violence meted out generously to fully

extinguish disaffection by the well-known

pacifiers of torture and premature death.

 

 

The Lethal Sword of the Hidden Mahdi

Even as the universe is expanding 

growing evermore vast and distant

our globe is contracting becoming

smaller and more transparent. No longer

are borders capable of constricting the

curiosity of neighbours in this era of

mass communication and cyber intrusion

and those considered enemies have at 

their disposal many assets the finest in

secret revelations, humint, conscripting

citizens of tyrannical threats to human

existence to tell all. And so it is that a

nation dominated by a theistic overseer

plots a cataclysmic event to destroy those

who doubt its formidable links to the divine

defying a world body of nations condemning

its secretive drive to attain a lethal force

to unleash a redeeming Apocalypse where

only the just and the faithful may survive.

In Worship of Clean

 

Is it not strangely paradoxical that

humanity considers survival without

freedom a quaint notion to be dispelled

through revolutionary zeal unseating

tyrannical dictators so all may be free

and live in the luxury of liberty as befits

intelligent beings. Yet that discerning

humanity shackles itself to rituals in

pursuit of the unattainable; to cleanse

their habitation of the stuff of the universe.

A cleanliness mania dictates what tyrants 

do not, that vast energy be spent in the

endless cycle of sweeping, dusting and

mopping up our very own shed cells and

those of our pets and with that the dust

of distant stars in galaxies far off not

averse to drifting endlessly to find rest

in our homes. And we obliged to tidy up

what nature discards. In so doing shackling

ourselves to the dismal mania of routine

fixing our destiny in worship of clean.

 

 

 

Imperious China's Gifts

A great nation truly distinguished by great gifts 

heaped upon the world by Imperial China whose 

philosophic understanding of humanity and the 

courageous act of living were matched by the 

production of its sublime artistic talents leaving 

priceless calligraphic, exquisite porcelain, matchless

architecture and representational art as an aesthetic

testament to human achievement supported by its 

recognition of a system of bureaucratic meritocracy.

Gone, long gone that era, in its place an imperious 

China its goal to set its mark of ownership of world 

resources and in return gifting the globe with labour 

courtesy its immense population-skilled production 

urged on by the Chinese Communist Party jealous of 

its reputation as a viper is of its territory incorporating

into its reserves Tibet and East Turkestan the better 

to enslave its unwilling human elements while genetic 

riches of the region produce the fine minds of scholars

scientists, writers and surgeons. All called upon by 

their benevolent tyrant to serve their country at home 

or abroad sharing secret intelligence to sharpen the 

sword of offence. Gifts of the modern era generous in 

chemical opioids and pathogenic viruses to bring 

the world to its virtual knees while the keepers of 

that ancient civilization's assignation with destiny 

with the blank vision of statuary, revel in spite.

 

Contorted New World

A strange kind of human social progress

this is, abandoning an earlier era when

respect for process and method saw those

eager to leave their homelands to migrate

elsewhere in response to opportunity or the

urge to escape repression, oppression and

abuse, make application for immigration

prepared to await the outcome, hoping for

acceptance and if they arrived at their new

adopted country prepared to learn its history

customs and values, obeying its laws

anxious to become an integrated part of the 

whole. Refugees too, escaping state-level 

human rights abuses or conflict arrived to 

take their place with gratitude for their rescue

in the orderly process whereby nations select 

those they deem capable of integration and 

conformation. A new era has dawned where

failed societies ruled by tyrants, nations where 

criminal gangs challenge government for authority

countries at war with themselves and their near

neighbours bleed migrants escaping the confines 

of uncertainty and fear marching en masse

declaring themselves entitled to bypass legal

systems and other nations' will as they seek out

those countries identified with wealth, defying

security and laws in violent rebellion against

exclusion. Migrant groups seeking a better life

scorning their haven's heritage, culture and

values, bringing their own establishing enclaves 

of resentment and rage that the culture and 

values of the their own heritage are not the

universal norm as they set about with firm intent

to establish there the very conditions they fled.