How Strange It Is!

As a feature of indecent human nature to

jealously guard what is not theirs in the

arcane belief that claims are nine-tenths

of a just law of ownership it is beyond

strange that the most creatively talented

group on Earth from ancient times to

the present remains hounded, threatened

detested, their heritage and ancestry

mocked and belittled yet the articles

of their faith, their history, their land

and their contributions to the world

that shuns them are valued decoupled

from their source in counterclaims of

authenticity. From brilliance of thought

and reasoning, execution of monumental

discoveries to the ultimate horrors of

deliberate annihilation the world rushes

to claim originality and victimhood as

their very own experiences, denying both

achievement and martyrdom to the tribe

whose very existence profited them all.

 

The Vacant Eyes of Malnutrition

It is their soft large eyes that hold us

captivating with that expression of inquiry

and curiosity of the world they are born to.

Their beautifully expressive eyes inviting

the beholder to see the world through

theirs, a world where children are adored

and nurtured, humanity's future generated

timelessly, existing from age to age the

most priceless gift that existence offers.

Look into these eyes, the eyes of these

children born to war, expressionless and

blank for they have no curiosity and know

only privation, their limbs hang lifeless

from lank torsos, their heads a slant as

though scrawny necks cannot support

the burden of a subnourished brain. The

product of conflict, of conflict's call to

arms where arable land lies grimly fallow

whose only crops now are land mines

awaiting the unwary footstep leaving all

in ruin, and famine rules that children be

deprived of all that young minds clamour

to be exposed to, not the harsh reality of

death delivered by combatants, death

stalking the unwary the starving child.

Word of the Mashiah

 

When communicating with an

animal of limited understanding or

reason, expert opinion urges 

repetition. Repeat instructions

frequently enough and the message

will get through and one can hope for

compliance to follow. On the other hand

there are those of great knowledge

whose opinion is that repeating the

same message to no avail represents

the epitome of stubborn lost hope.

In the millennia that have passed

since the most elevated messages of

humanity were transmitted from their

maker through the kindly auspices

of his son-on-earth reverenced as the

voice of the Almighty whose supreme

sacrifice has enthralled the world in the

belief of the goodness resting in man

invoked but yet to emerge, surely it

takes the patience of a supreme being

to await the final disposition of the word. 

His 2022th Birthday

To his people of the tribe of Judah he was yet 

another rebellious young man viewed as an

emerging sage, a man unafraid to confront

those whose mercantile pursuits blotted the 

sacred purpose of the Temple. Little did they know 

this man would become a gift to the world at large

inspiring in his messages his dedication to

humanity, his compassion for the poor and the 

outcast. His birth 2022 years ago long a universal 

celebration of the divine in a profoundly profane 

world. Little did his people know that in this 

philosophical upstart lay the seeds of their future 

misery as the world embraced the divinity-blessed 

Yeshua while adopting the Imperial Roman

dismissal of his corporeal essence to release

his spirit to universal worship, in the process

relegating his kith and kin forevermore to the

bleak, dark dungeon of infamy and the endless 

malediction of religious fervor striking vengeance 

on the seed of Judea in pursuit of spiritual  malice.

Is This Islamophobia?

Should the virtuous impulse to save lives

be conditional on good character? Who is to 

judge? When a society agrees to the necessity 

of offering refuge wholesale to people under 

threat of death during savage wars to embrace 

these refugees do they absorb more than meets 

the eye? Bringing with them heritage and traditions

religions and social cultures, tribal antipathies

that nurse historical grievances do they leave 

these all behind to clasp the new values of those 

offering haven and a life of untold opportunities? 

When the absorbing society faces a situation 

of hostile baggage of racism and grudges along 

with ancestral hatreds that spread within their own

society down to immigrant offspring spurning 

the controls exerted toward student discipline  and

respect within the teaching arena opting instead to 

defy convention so unlike their parents' experience

instead threatening, intimidating, abusing others

violating trust, arriving armed with weapons yet

viewed by  woke authorities as underprivileged

behaviour excusable endangering everyone

what then is the advantage and the measure

of need and demand balancing that rescue?

 

 

Crime and Punishment

 

The good and the bad, love and hate

celebrity and notoriety, passion and

compassion they are opposites so closely 

aligned in human nature with the capacity 

to slide from one to the other unless carefully 

monitored one emotion leading to another 

in a confused mind where discipline never

lodged leaving society bemused and transfixed 

at its outcomes. How is it even possible 

that young girls remotely joined through the 

ether of communication conspire to meet on a

public street of a thriving metropolis their

intent to commit public mischief meant to

satisfy their own curiosity about themselves.

In the process three 13 year-olds happy in

the presence of three 14-year-olds thrilled

that two 16-year-olds would notice their

presence swam, pounce, punch, kick and

stab a homeless man, moving in for the kill 

in lock-step with death each time he manages 

to fend off their wild advances. The girls are 

indulging in an experiment to discover more 

about themselves in a sordid sisterhood of 

bored enquiry that will inform them how 

powerful their combined control can be over 

life and death. What demons drove them on this 

blighted journey of discovery?  What vision

carried  them to this brave new world?

The Timeless Curse

Like nature itself indifferent to the impact 

of its tempests wrought upon a world cringing 

when its spinning sphere belches its molten interior 

and heaves its mantle the malediction of humanity 

launched against its most enduring, potently creative

tribe ebbs and flows. One might assume that

those chosen to absorb those dagger-thrusts 

of limitless suspicion and violent hatred

from birth to death might become immune to

their outcast status yet with each tide of the moon 

that resurrects the fabrication of a people destined 

to endure a fate bruised by lethal assaults to 

diminish the number of those whose creative 

genius advances world knowledge and prosperity 

while advocating equal justice for all, the trauma 

resurfaces to nestle deep within the ancient

inherited subconscious wracked with the certainty 

it will never end. Capriciously, it does not.

 

Pillars of Fire Consuming Human Flesh

Sho-ah, Holocaust, systematic slaughter of

Jews by Nazi Germany. Genocidal intent.

Genocide, intent to destroy an ethnic community.

Antisemitism, rank hostility against Jews. So

clearly defined anyone can understand the import

even an academic; say a professor at a military

college for example. Who also happens to have

Ukrainian ancestry and carries an identifying

name of Lubomyr. Lubomyr is enraged, utterly

splenetic with rage that a Holocaust memorial

fails to highlight the plight of Ukrainians who

were targets of fascist Germany along with Roma

homosexuals, political opponents and physically

and mentally disabled. They too died not only six

million Jews and it is high time that Ukrainians

losses were institutionally recognized. No word

from Lubomyr of the proud Ukrainian Azov 

Battalion auxiliary SS police unit happy to aid

in the extermination of Jews among whom even 

now there is talk of the Holocaust representing a

historical 'bright period' in human history with no

wish to appropriate the Holocaust for the greater

glory of memorializing Ukrainian victims of fascism.

 

 

Revolution

A revolt has been brewing. Have you heard?

There's a new inquisition in the cathedral

of righteousness and a bloodthirsty mob

like hounds at a bloodsport rally are baying

for vengeance against the wealthy and the

powerful, the colonialists and the slavers

while society shaken to its core cringes in

guilt for acts their predecessors long years

back perpetrated on huddled masses of 

 Africans and Indigenous peoples, the poor

and the disadvantaged -- the guilty known by

the pale white shade of their skin. Guilty of

being White a damning classification meant

to identify all those whose ancestors viewed

themselves owners of land and humans both

meant to be worked to produce personal riches.

Among them Black slavers and Indigenous

warmongers forgiven and upheld as victims

though they pioneered these anti-humanity sins

of exploitation. Shake and shudder all you whom

BIPOC names and blames. Prepare your last

will and testament, quiver and beg forgiveness.

 

 

 

Visitor From Another World

 

Thoughts as ephemeral as gossamer

as transitory as a butterfly suddenly seen

and instantly gone, so long submerged

resurface from the inner sanctorum of

memory where the mind has neatly

stored them without consultation with

the owner abruptly taken back in time and

place with a startling clarity of vision and

recall. The subconscious photographic

details as concise and clear as the present

no need to grope through the years that

followed, perspective narrowed to a 

personal history ringing an evanescent

bell of joyful recognition. The younger

self could not possibly have imagined one

day far in the future a thought and a stage

would be recovered, returning from the

past on its long journey to the present. A

random visitor, just dropping casually by

making contact to say hi, remember me?

 

 

Tapestry

The ceiling of the sky has been clamped low 

and tight with silvery clouds so dense that 

dusk stalks the day. A day of diamond crystals 

falling in an endless veil of crystalline light 

winking and blinking as each twists and turns

gently in the winter wind gusting and

thrusting itself over soft contours of snow

laid on trees and shrubs lifting evanescent

sheets of crystals defying the grey dusk

of the forest interior. The day so modest

in its winter chill that falling snow hesitates

as it nears the forest floor suddenly lifted

by a breeze to settle over the humped 

snowpack weighing heavily on cedar 

boughs skirting the ground like a debutant's

festive dress. Errant flakes drift momentarily

on the surface of the forest stream only

to disappear as one with the icy water.

But the snow impervious to time and place

drifts and whirls into lacy layers to enact

the luminous embroidery nature ordered.

Partners in Malice

What're the chances? From wildly dissimilar

backgrounds yet both accomplished thespians.

The prince has found his princess, the princess

her prince. Their congress has lit the spark of venal

vengeance against all those presumed to have 

transgressed against their sensibilities. Two 

wounded victims with the instincts of reptilian 

savagery together mounting a set piece of odious

revelations, tawdry and unsavoury enabling them to 

besmirch kith and kin to impose shame and suffering 

to equal their own as pathetic emotional juveniles 

flailing against the injustices simmering with violent 

resentment in their minds' inner sanctum sanctorum. 

As actors in a spurious drama of betrayal cupidity 

has its place along with celebrity, both handsomely 

spurring the misfits to the 'tell-all' jungle of lost faith 

in the inner ego's promise. Nursing a hatred so

divisive they scornfully tell all to reap the dividends. 

Disentitling Others

 

We are a mystery to ourselves and to others. 

In this world there is ugly and there is beauty. 

We celebrate one and express revulsion

for the other. Physical characteristics that

illuminate our presence are not chosen but

inherited. Are attitudes of chronic delusional

hatred deeply ingrained in a psyche anchored

where the wearer of those expressions distancing

themselves from broader humanity use their

free agency to disperse their black, violent humors

victims of their own existential psychosis eager

to proliferate their miserable rage against those

they choose as victims -- or is society at large

complicit through the very nature of humanity

shunning harmony among harmless diversities

preferring to withdraw within narrow circles of

shared culture looking outward through the

lens of dysfunction seeing threats to their own

comfort in ventilating spleen against competitors

claiming entitlement through human rights?

 

Do You Remember? I Do!

 

Remember once waking up in a strange

place in complete darkness and silence

wondering where your mother was and

suddenly struck with the thought that 

everyone had died and so had you? Remember

when as a toddler you were taken to a place

where nuns in habit looked after small children

whose mothers worked in garment factories?

Remember hearing a loud street band with

brass musicians in uniforms of an army

calling itself Salvation? Remember when

horse-drawn delivery wagons brought ice

blocks to your street, house-to-house for the

kitchen ice box? Remember your 'uncle'

smothering you as you lay in bed? Remember

strangers stopping you in the street to ask where

you were from? Remember your mother taking

you to a sweat shop to work the summer months

at age 13? Remember a year later working for a 

toy factory stamping out tin toys? Remember

how hushed and joyful it was when you were

married at 18? I remember all that. I remember

my father was orphaned at 13 and became a refugee

farm worker. I remember my mother's squint as an

eye injury from a bomb tossed into her parents'

Pale of Settlement home. I remember and think

how very fortunate I am and how kind life has

been to me for I had little and now have much.

Going Back Where They Came From

When the parents react with amused contempt

at the panic in the target community when

their children face being confronted by other

students with the demeaning derogative of

humanly inferior ethnicity fit for a gas chamber 

to eliminate the world's undesirable human 

trash with the declaration that kids will be kids 

and they're just having a good time you can bet 

that they were patterned on the 'good time' their

parents were observed to have in discussions 

about the presence of Jews in the community and 

the unfairness of the misery of the Arab community 

in the Middle East suffering the indignity of 

having their land wrenched from their grasp 

treated as second-hand citizens, forced to live

under Jewish laws so patently unfair to non-Jews. 

Now, they sneer, their own Jewish community 

within the larger community in which they are a

 minority must suffer the tedium of Jewish complaints. 

It's just that siccing the police and the guardians of 

'anti-racism' on their kids for posting swastikas

is a step too far to tolerate and they won't have it.

 

 

Inscribed in the Book of Life

All religious devotees are piously instructed

to prize life as all religions extol themselves as 

purveyors of peace and good fellowship

emphasizing the ways of the sacred in the

divine path of the Almighty who in infinite

wisdom conferred existence upon the

universe and smiled kindly at the lifeforce

ingrained in humanity frowning only when

that creation spurned the commandments

impressed upon their consciousness to treat

others with the dignity reserved for the Spirit

who invested a spark of its own immortality

in each living thing. Somehow the messages 

to the faithful have been corrupted by those

of faint faith who portray themselves as the

arbiters of the faith's tenets as they persuade

their fellows to surrender their lives for the

greater glory of God and in the process offer

the lives of those who fail to follow their way

to God's favour. While powerful theists governing

the land declare those protesting their tyranny

to be in breach of God's divine instructions thus

forfeiting their lives as apostates, in service to God.

 

 

Annus Exitus

The year has grown old, tired and cranky.

Its once-boisterous entrance in youthful

enthusiasm has waned, festiveness no

longer on its agenda, long-term plans beyond

its light-stepping spring season forgotten as

it groans with the effort to produce another

and yet another day, unable to muster the

energy to produce ambient light of such short

duration it's hardly a day. Warmth has eluded

the year in its progress toward termination with

memory of a long and lazy summer bright with

flowers and butterflies long faded, a brief mirage

destined to end but in its passing handing over

to Autumn the vibrant shades of the rainbow to

drape over trees the year would soon assign a

long slumber to while its winter apprentice cast

dark and early dusk over the landscape in a 

dismal stage handicapping joy in the eyes of the

beholder then, contrite, showering it all with the

brilliance of shimmering sequins of ice and snow

the year's final gift before its ultimate silent exit.

 

 

Anniversary

I'm glad, really glad that you

were there where I had been but

remember, I was there before you.

I'm glad too that you were going

my way and so we went there together.

Wasn't that neat? Out of nowhere

there you were, even though I

recognized you and you had no idea.

You thought it was funny something

to laugh about but it was true. You

came in my dreams and then one day

there you were and I used my wiles

and you were trapped. So then we went

forward together sharing that far

and long destination. Didn't we enjoy it?

Lots to talk about now isn't there? 

You, the realist and me, the fabulist,

Seventy years and more to come!

Pharmaphobia

It boggles the mind the extent to which

irrationality in human minds shackled

to unshakable beliefs in calamitous 

outcomes waiting to pounce on those

incautious enough to have faith in science

preferring to bring on their own chances

of death clasping tight to rejection of

tried-and-true interventions to ensure

bypassing an untimely end, convinced

the medical community's agenda is not to

heal but to assist stalking death whose mission

is to reap from the bosom of life infants and

pharmaceutical-suspicious adults insisting

that a formula's success in widespread use

whose attributes shielded millions from

disaster is a malicious plot to reduce Earth's

population on direct orders from the devil.

 

 

Where? Russia, Iran, Turkiye, China

In liberal democracies there are costs to

defying the authority of government but in 

reflection of their political values citizens 

are free to speak as they will of their opinion 

as the governed. Granted there is a price to pay 

in the sense of being regarded as anti-social 

misfits, ingrates and the worst slurs of all racists

and homophobes, placing government critics

in the realm of unsavoury company and that

irrespective of their actual personal values. In

dictatorships on the other hand there are those few 

whose principles cannot be the least compromised 

by concerns of personal dignity besmirched for 

those are not the instruments of punishment meted 

out to the unworthy citizen who campaigns against 

corruption, exploitation, racist belittlement and 

violence. For these stalwarts their sense of caution 

for fear of retribution stands resolute against the 

fervour of their condemnation of the autocrats 

and tyrants who wage external war and violate 

human rights at will, praising and inciting terror 

groups who do their will as ancillary defense of 

the indefensible. Moral outrage leads these people 

of conscience to shunt aside fears in favour of 

broadcasting to the world the outrages of their 

leaders, whom the world soon enough discovers 

have been executed by firing squad or hung, or 

beheaded or crucified as penance for decrying evil. 

And the world shrugs looking elsewhere in a fit of

boredom for its latest titillating, unusual events.

The Enemy Within

From primal generation when apes

descended from their lofty perches

on high to perambulate permanently

upright upon two legs below the tree

line the single human race that birthed

itself to become homo sapiens turned

out to be less wise than nomenclature

would have us believe. From the primordial

to the present, existence for humanity

equated with a beating heart, a reasoning

brain, eyes and ears, emotions and language 

creating a biological identity with no 

variations other than those inevitably

socially transmitted and inherited to

divide the unity of biology into a vast

multitude of factions each claiming 

unique characteristics each viewing

the others as beyond the stream of

belonging, creating of humanity a sad

network of threatening adversaries in an

endless drama of violently lethal upheavals.

 

 

In Malice The Forethought

 

To be held in esteem

to be loved and cherished

to have someone with whom

you can feel emotionally free

to divulge all the discomfort

and discomfiting incidents

in one's life is everyone's goal

for we are human and our

generic nature is to seek out

those like ourselves whose

temperaments and values can

reflect our own in the creation

of a fluid and warm cocoon

of togetherness. People differ

and so do their circumstances

and their compass in life and

how they adjust to others in

their lives. How very fortunate

it is when two people harbouring

the fantasy of victimhood and

resentment in their juvenile

emotional state of estrangement

and petulant wish to cause harm

and pain to others discovered one

another to found their celebrity

team of malevolent misery.

Nouveau Niche

You may have been taught at an impressionable

age by your socially aware parents themselves 

experienced in racism and exploitation the 

victims of slander and accusation that 

eventually culminated in mass slaughter that 

authentically justified the label of genocide 

that in this world there are other groups that

suffer the indignity and harms of bigotry

lending their compassionate support to 

those living in the misery of inequality.

You may have inculcated in your own

offspring an awareness of the equality of

all, however 'different' they may appear

to the eye in a world cradling a single

human race inexorably at war with itself.

Their children too may have benefited as

responsible caring humans with the lessons

passed through the generations of care 

for others. Yet nothing will save you and

yours from the very special scorn and

rejection meted out to all thinkers of sound

reason who skirt the pseudo concerns of

the present generation fetishizing a social

current of progressive witch-hunting linked

to the  elevation of the formerly scorned

and the diminishing of the humanity of all

who championed their inalienable rights. 

Questions

Before existence was there just a great

yawning chasm of unoccupied nothing? 

Before existence where was Nature? Without

Nature's intervention there is no existence.

What, otherwise, is Nature? The great

unknown creator whose aura can be found

in all that lives. All that has been created

exists with tension, that of the struggle to

sustain itself surrounded with hostility by

other creations all seeking the advantage 

of sustained life and finding it in the

presence of others similarly engaged in

survival prepared to challenge each other

as predators fulfilling Nature's injunction

in the imperative to live or to die. In the

vast outer reaches of space that tension is

palpable. On the most insignificant planet

orbiting a commonplace star the struggle

is manifest as exploitation of resources 

resonate in a primal dance of existence.

 

 

There Be Dragons

The world of astronomy is agog

at the latest revelation of a gigantic

Black Hole ferociously tearing a star

a multiplicity of times larger than our own

to shreds of non-existence. True the

sum of the parts of that star were

summarily consumed while bursts of

radiation so bright they obscured the

light of surrounding stars in the vast

reaches of the universe Earth's most

powerful telescopes discerned, documenting

the end of a star that had wandered too

close to the irresistible gravitational pull of

the ravenous beast waiting, like a trap-door

spider to subsume all in its path. The

imagery as fresh as yesterday. No word

nor will there ever be whether livable

planets orbited that star, whether its

inhabitants were going about their lives 

when instantly the source of their existence

expired and so too, dismally, would they.

If You Go Into The Woods Tonight

In the gloom of the fading forest light 

dusk has already settled. The masts 

of the tree canopy, dark and skeletal

reach beyond to the purple night sky.

Wind of the day has subsided

not a whisper threading through the

leaf-bare oaks and maples. Giant pines 

faintly rustle with the night sound of birds 

at rest. An owl peers its telescopic sight 

to the forest floor detecting mice and moles. 

A man treads quietly through the snow

keeping pace with his dog, the two

leaving an indelible track of blue-white

indentations in the otherwise pristine

landscape. Unseen by either, the ghost

of a coyote silently watches waiting

for the intruders to finally leave.

 

Excluded and Forlorn

Who's in the popular ascendancy?

Not you, chum, if you're white. Being male

doesn't help. Have you considered a broadly

magnifying scrutiny into your genetic

background? Could be back there

somewhere there's Indigenous ancestry.

That would help your odour switch from

repugnant to fragrant. Not two-spirited?

Maybe give it a try? Ever considered

transitioning to the alternative gender?

How about none at all? So here you are

puzzled and disconcerted because employers

are actively searching out the disabled and

those of visible ethnic origin that excludes 

you. You've got all the professional creds

and worked hard to achieve them. Well

that's sad, my friend. The world just happens

to be counter-spinning and you're just not

prepared. Now, if you were gay or lesbian --

ever consider that? -- you'd qualify. You'd

have suffered gross indignities to your psyche

as a social pariah but now the world's turned.

Welcome to the new reality that worships all

that was once exotic and forbidden, spurned

a disgrace to human nature. Here's lookin' atcha.

A Global Pestilence ... Pathogen/Protest

 

Oh ye of little faith in world leadership ...

Pause and consider how heartwarming it is

when presidents and prime ministers consult

discovering how much in common they share.

Take the instance of the unabashed admiration

Canada's prime minister has for China's premier 

a democracy looking on in awe at the ease 

in which a dictatorship is able to exert dominion 

over a vast multitude whose numbers dwarf 

those of Canada. Yet generous to a fault Canada's 

own premier advises China's that in the face

of public disaffection and mounting protests it is 

best to allow the public to ventilate its frustrations 

honouring the human right to exercise free speech. 

Canada's own response to group protests of hundreds 

as opposed to China's vast protests of hundreds of 

thousands swiftly settled inconvenient issues by the

timely invocation of what was once identified as the 

War Measures Act. China's admirable restraint in only 

ordering its national police to secure public safety 

honouring the rule of the Chinese Communist Party 

in its diligent concern for public health and social 

cohesion strikingly similar in text and tenor to Canada's 

own. Brought to agreement by a global pestilence.

Reductio ad Absurdum

What is the meaning of life? Must it

have a meaning? Cannot we exist simply

because we do? Did Nature have a purpose

when she devised a creature that celebrates

itself as an expression of the highest order

of animal life? What other animals of her

creative imagination are themselves creative

capable of deep, dense thought in the sublime

exercise of reason? We are, therefore we think.

Think of this: the three common elements of

the animal kingdom from infancy to agedness 

in the foundational fundamentals of nature's 

injunction to her offspring in pursuit of the 

elements of survival: Our needfully functional 

existential fixation motivating all of nature's 

creatures: food, play, sleep. Unique are we?

The Function of Language

As infants humanity searches for language

in the babbling babies invoke as they

emulate what they hear to make sense

of communication until finally they

achieve language skills mimicking what

they hear in the knowledge of being well

understood, an induction into personhood

impressing with their uncanny facility to

form and understand messages. As for the

convention of language exchange as the

fulcrum for fully understanding how others

think, feel and behave in a world that

inherited the chaos of the genesis of language

great minds of communication come to

appreciate that a common universal speech

does not lead to a cessation of human

hostilities for even in speaking the same

language, comprehension evades for the

fact is humanity even in uttering similar

words speaks a language evasive, intentions

hidden from scrutiny and Babel persists.

An Alternate Universe

It is more than a hypothesis. There are alternate

worlds in existence and it is unknown whether 

one is born into one world or instead drifts into 

one world or the other. One, a world where 

reason prevails and truth and reality honoured

the other where its inhabitants trust that the world 

reflects their preferences. Where reality becomes 

a movable feast where the succulent tidbits are 

chosen and the unpalatable set aside and spurned. 

As an accompaniment to selecting personal realities

the aggressor invariably becomes the victim

rallying support to the cause he insists is just

while brandishing a sabre against a presumed

adversary possessing resources he craves. When

the attacked defend themselves they are accused

of fomenting violence by the fantasyworld

dwellers who view themselves as allies of any

whom their worldview entitles to shape the

kind of reality they see utility in for themselves.

The Candidates

 

Smug, intemperate, crass and arrogant

to mention but a few of the indispensable

attributes qualifying personages of great

self-importance for high public office these

days. It helps to be born with that fabled

silver spoon with a background of entitlement

and the self-assurance of one whose every

whim and whimper has never been denied

grown to adulthood yet lacking emotional 

maturity and a reasonable degree of intelligence

aside from the craft of modelling self as the

answer to the universal search for a candidate

of sound mind, experience and honour-bound

to think first and foremost of the welfare of

the nation whose fortunes have been dropped

in the lap of the aristocratic scion of the past.

Dictator or democrat they share much in common

and the public weal does not dominate either

their thoughts or their actions, united in praise

of their own illiberally corrupt investment in self.

The Distempered Mind

The human mind is truly a remarkable

instrument toying with fantasy in a game 

to shape-shift reality to whatever the creative 

possibilities can offer in service to a brain 

convinced that its enemies lurk everywhere

threatening and awaiting the opportunity

to leap upon the unwary with deadly precision. 

The mind is only too adeptly prepared to 

usher that brain to endless scenarios to identify 

the enemy, heap malicious intent over vicious 

assaults the wary must elude by preempting 

that lethal force by one of their own. Hostility 

is put to work devising deadly bombs meant to 

mutilate and kill. The enemy is transcribed as 

any man, woman or child the targeted bomb

is able to reach and destroy, bringing joy and 

celebration to terrorist groups triumphant

in purpose and practise -- heroes to some.

Approaching the Ineffable

The origins of the universal creative force

that is nature will remain forever unknown

for the originator of all that is in its wholesale

complexity shuns intimacy with the curious

the very mind and intelligence that nature

itself is responsible for as but one speck in the

vast universe still unfolding beyond the reach

of mere human understanding. Nature holds its

blueprints of being and origination in the vault 

of the universe unreachable by the questing 

mind endowed with the hypotheses of vision

and imagination destined to forever flaunt its

brilliance through the sublime intricacy of its 

outreach leaving us gasping with incredulity

spurred to ever greater invention destined to fail.

Desolation

What are the chances that fate with its 

twisted equilibrium of finality would write 

such an implausible plot guiding a life-saving

professional toward a scene of disaster and 

in the process screen the victim beyond

recognition impelling medical aid to

desperately bring all its considerable skills

and experience to mitigate the condition of

a dying girl to enable surgeons to restore

her to life, only to reveal no life left to save

for the soul had left the body the paramedic

so assiduously strove to preserve. Only to 

discover her frantic efforts that ultimately

failed to save a life was that of a young woman

so gravely and horrendously injured nothing

could persuade fate to preserve her future. The

agony of the medic reverberated through the empty 

chasm of space as she raised her head and loosed 

her incredulous grief in the revelation she had

lost her only child whose familiar features were so

mutilated she was unrecognizable to her mother.

 

 

Challenging Gravity

Gravity is the glue that nature provides

to keep us in our place. It tethers us, we do

not flitter and flutter remaining solidly on

terra firma as animals like us are meant to do.

Gravity throughout the universe creates the

attraction of bodies one to another although

humanity's attraction to one another is one of

emotion not gravity proving how complex is

the nature of nature. We have been nurtured 

by that ineffable source of all that is and all

that will ever be through gifts of curiosity

and creative thought to believe we are meant

to break the bonds of gravity in exploration

of the universe, leaving our calling cards 

floating serenely in space to prove we were

there. Like a mother anchoring her child to

the assurance of a safe place only to see her

offspring solve the puzzle of escape, nature

must of a certainty wonder why bother to tame

the spirit of adventure in the untamable.

 

Doha Doubter

Honour among thieves? In the world

of men even the implausible may be

possible. Where there is power and profit

to be made there are accommodations to

bypass in strictest confidence the byways of

ethical morality in the greater interests of

satisfying lust and cupidity in exchanges

between principals not known for scrupulous

adherence to social conventions arranged and

generally agreed upon as best-practice scenarios

satisfying the imperatives of decency and human

rights. And thus is it that a wealthy kingdom

is granted the privilege of hosting the world's

most favoured sport, its sole qualification vast

wealth, persuasively negating the most basic of

required accommodations. The theocratic influence

that creates its hostile environment to any not of

their religious persuasion, the geography that

mitigates against athletic energy expended in 

inappropriate weather conditions, the impulsive

declarations testing credulity all aside, the venue

built on the backs of indentured labour in a death

count rivalling the construction of the Pyramids

all niggling complaints raised by unworthy doubts.