Leading to Perdition

His deserving time will come, the world sighs

where he will be held accountable for the

ruination of a nation, the wreckage of another.

In affairs of the world of governance there

is no real accountability for power is its own

aphrodisiac, charming those attaining positions

of ultimate command to the belief of their

very infallibility, that they can do no wrong

for whatever their decisions they are right.

Loyalty to a tyrant rewarding his military elite

to the sacrifice of their multitude of sad and

sorry subordinates ensures orders will be

carried out resulting in wholesale destruction

countless deaths, a mere distraction on the

world body long accustomed to occasional

lapses in civilizational normatives causing a

mental shrug so profound Earth is momentarily

shaken off its axis in a shudder of grief.

Genesis

Idle thoughts bring us to wonder

whether Nature views her creatures

as would an indulgent parent or in

the alternative of indifference. As

creatures of a higher order of reason

and invention don't we model ourselves

after Eternal Nature? She for whom

existence is an experiment, for whom

the universe in its profoundly amazing

complexities is a laboratory where

new creations and revelations of the

possibilities in old creations take their

place in the endless inventory of Nature's

boundless imagination. In analyzing

humanity and its chronic incapacity

to hold existence dear does she ever

wonder as do Earthly parents of their

wayward children, what went wrong?

 

Such Pitiless Realities

In the solemn, hallowed chamber

of the United Nations General Assembly

where Power speaks to Truth

the admission was made: There was

no choice. In the vital need to protect

itself the Kremlin ordered the invasion

of its conniving neighbour to evade

its criminal strategy of infiltrating

innocent Russia with lethally-minded

neo-Nazis. There was no choice most

unfortunately but to send its artillery

into civilian enclaves, bombing hospitals

apartment buildings, business centres

shopping malls and factories, for they

all, without exception threatened Russia.

Yet the Russian military benevolently

undertook the burial of Ukrainian citizens

who died of sudden coronary incidents

in such numbers, unmarked mass graves

located in forests were required; so sad.

And because the Ukrainian military is

so unfortunately aggressive, adamantly

refusing to accept Russian victory, vastly

preferring an uncalled-for counteroffensive

there will be no alternative but to put a

stop to the conflict with nuclear weapons.

A misfortune caused by Ukraine's

undeniable aggravating threats, you see.

 

 

All Is Forgiven

Blind love of country right or wrong?

Perhaps that emotion depends on how wrong.

The nation whose leader challenges 

international norms of sovereign right

threatening might to overcome neighbours' fear 

of the benign intention to reverse history

in a return of servitude twists the moral

rectitude of a people hectored to accept an

irredentist proclivity challenging loyalty

when citizens fully realize that it is not their

choice to die for their country, but the nation's

leadership's decision that they must die in

defense of a totalitarian ideology, an honour

they are not graciously given the right to decline.

Nor is there comfort in the generosity of

their national Patriarch standing firm in the

allegiance of the Russian Orthodox Church toward

the ambition of their president's decision to

war, to destruction, to mass deaths to relieve

the fighters of any sins carrying out their duties

to the land, for through him God has spoken.

 

Mahsa Amini's Hijab

Dour, desiccated old men

shrivelled with age and bitter

that life is fast ebbing, their beards

grown piously long and broad

issue edicts meant to tame the

wild nature of beguilingly beautiful

young women portraying them as

eager to bewitch men with their

absent morals when it is men whom

the Eternal One has equipped to

use women as breeding stock in a

firm harness of social control

erasing their humanity in dark

enveloping shrouds and policing

their public appearances with public

morality guardians. Young and old

women reject morality's straitjackets

and with pride and joy in life

despite the prejudice of misogyny

display themselves as free as nature

intended, paying the ultimate price 

for a moment of liberty, their lethal

punishment inciting others to deny and

defy a totalitarian ideology of death.

 

 

The Sea Reclaiming The Land

The mighty forces that aggravate the seas

transforming it from tranquil majesty

to raging monster are sent by nature as 

emissaries of power. Hurricane-force winds

torrential downpours in a team effort to

teach humanity that its presence is a mere

lend-lease affair wholly dependent on the

good graces of nature but on occasion

withdrawn in a spiteful exercise of rage

leaving entire communities reeling at the

sheer scope of destruction never before seen

in anyone's lifetime, where people are swept

out to an unforgiving sea, forever lost, their

home and hearth sent after them sailing off

to some unknown horizon as the sea reclaims

the land and those upon it through force majeure

leaving survivors dazed and distressed, witness

to nature's cruel wrath until she signals her

elements to withdraw, atmosphere subdued

as she disarms the traumatized by sending out

her most admired, life-sustaining servant. The

sun's appearance calms as it inspires confidence

in another day dawning, the assaultive nature

of recent punishment diminished, forgotten.

The Glowing Green Forest

It is one of those 'once-upon-a-time'

Earth-places where many generations

earlier the entire region was prime forest

and a cart track made its wobbling way

through the thick growth of trees over

the hummocked and undulating forest floor 

where forest giants were to be felled

to made way for homesteads in attempts  

to tame the woods dense with underbrush 

and stubborn with upheaved rocks littering 

the dark landscape under the forest canopy.

Today no trace of human  habitation

the forest resolutely reclaimed itself

more dense and unapproachable to a 

delusional prospect of homestead farming

hard-set to remain forever what nature

intended, a glowing green gem secure in 

its isolation where now and again intrepid 

curiosity impels forest lovers to enter its 

dim interior with the respect it demands and 

warily welcomes those seeking solitude.

Unwoken

The world is a mysterious place, for there are 

rabbit warrens and tunnels where the creatures

live and play and invite others to join them and

on occasion people tumble down those burrows

finding the occupants odd in their addiction to 

contrariness and illogic for magic mushrooms are 

plentiful and once consumed a hallucinogenic 

madness sets in and when they emerge they're 

never the same again. I should know for as a child 

I fell into one, was charmed by the bright green

underworld with its vast cast of unique characters

yet resisted and never stopped being myself. I am her

the woman you see, the she who bore children and

lived happily ever after with the boy now a man

who proved to me how happy we could be, man

he, woman me. We are they in a partnership duo

one deigning not to insult language and biology

for it is females who become pregnant and most

assuredly not a pregnant 'person' delivering a child

to face a confused future of resentful juvenile

backlash against the reality of nature's creation.

Venting Spleen

Artificial intelligence? That's how some wags 

would describe infuriating egotists believing 

in the clarity of their confused thoughts. 

On the other hand, machine intelligence is a

reflection of the design capabilities and infusion 

a human hand pours into a computing device.

Yes, it's clever to fashion a functionable set

of algorithms for a predictable outcome

proving that 'monkey see monkey do' can 

apply to machines as well as to humans. It is

however, a misnomer to consider machines

capable of artificial intelligence; they perform

what they are programmed to produce. They

are dumb, not intelligent; mute to argument

totally, obstinately immune to reason so

how intelligent is that? You've never argued

with a government computer program designed

to elicit 'correct' responses, rejecting those

that fail to compute to its standards? Try it.

Blue's Origins

Royal personages are known to take 

umbrage at the attempted usurpation of

their supreme powers so it is little wonder

if from time to time nature humphs her

displeasure at the obnoxious habit of

humanity in its belief it is equal to the

creative capacity of Mother Nature in her

divine role as Everything. She it is who

brings order to the Universe and creates

the conditions for life and having deigned

to give life to humanity finds its various

affectations as creators in their own right

offensive to her sense of supremacy. And

so it is she occasionally orders her many

elements to refuse mankind's feeble efforts

at emulating the Great Creator as when

the forces of gravity reject the power of a

rocket to propel another object into space.

A Mess of Pottage

In that classic puzzler of what comes first

we may ponder the shaping of a personality

born into an aristocratic position with a

massive heritage in a culture and a society

wedded to its royalty and wonder whether

it is the royal dynasty that moulds its princelings

or that the emotional state of narcissism 

is inbred, inherited along with the line of

succession of kings and queens. History is

replete with sibling contenders to the Crown

engaging in charges of attempted regicide

some succeeding others gone to the gallows.

Think: it must be difficult work maintaining

oneself as a princely narcissist compelled to

prove time after time  how exceptional one is

inviting admiration and viral envy. All the more

so when the succession bypasses the 'spare' 

then impelled to reject his royal designation in

a bid for independence as a sensational celebrity

whose defiant choice of a commoner wife steeped

deep in her own rancid resentment of life steers

the dejected royal on a path of familial rejection

and fashionable remunerative stardom and the

die is cast, a mess of pottage grasped and bled.

Command Performance

Honour thy mother and thy father

for they are the anointed Royals

Queen and Consort and you

their son and heir, born to inherit

what will be left to you.

The occasion both solemn and

exalted for you have been patient.

Know your heritage and honour it.

Maintain tradition on command.

In the lifetime of waiting

distract yourself by commoner

and patrician matters. For art and

architecture matter, as does nature

and agriculture. Be all things to all

people and restrain yourself from ill

impulse to speak what you should not.

Set aside the harsh realities that you

are like all others not of royal descent

and your elevated status consigns you

to the scandal sheets for perverse

scandals. Rely on the blessing of short

memories as grey and grizzled now in

deep mourning you wear the crown

and heft the scepter, desire abated.

The realm of Empire finally yours.

 

 

Spiting the Spirit of the Sceptered Isle

She is gone. It was, simply put, her exit time.

In an earlier time she was the very essence of

a vibrant, intelligent woman whose accession 

to the throne heralded a new world of diplomacy

with a renewed mission to unite a world that

had undergone two convulsive upheavals of

unmitigated, depraved inhumanity. She sat her

throne with the dignity of purpose and proud

commitment guiding her nation and her nation's

Commonwealth of Nations bespeaking an

imperial colonialist empire outdated by the 20th

century which had its own miserable sins to

deplore. In her passing passed also the age of 

true monarchy even as her successor gains the

throne she has vacated. A remarkable woman of

truly royal sentiments rivalling that of her birth.

Mourned by a global audience whose living memory

she graced. And yet there are rancid charges of

furious hatred impugning her as what she was not;

triumphant at her death, marking her as a thief of

souls, wishing she had died in an agony of pain so

excruciating she would welcome the release of death.

Ascribing to this woman with a noble lineage and

even more noble empathy for all who suffer, a vile

malignancy of racist enslavement in a burst of bile

testifying to the offender's pathological sense of

personal injury while she, as a migrant from a former

colony, exults in living as an academic in the very

nation whose beloved monarch has departed.

 

 

The Play's The Thing

The walls are stark and grey, the desolately

forlorn raw cement walls of the memorial

dedicated to mass butchery. There is an angry

yet plaintive murmur that resonates within

those walls, peaked and sharp, the pointed

edges a nominal Star of David. The sound is

there, a ghost that pleads and begs to be

reunited with its mother in a separation that

took the child directly to the gas chamber

its mother to join a slave labour work detail.

The Brutalist walls of despair reek with the

agony of the dead in their millions. Yet they

draw not only the populace that silently stares

and shudders, but the lesser community of art

and commerce that see the quasi compound as

the perfect backdrop to the sensual appeal of

fashion design, posing fetching half-clad

models in alluring display among the faint

murmuration of annihilated victims of hate.

Anthem for a Queen

The Queen is gone, long live the King!

The laws of royal succession as dependable 

as gravity and the grave business of filling a 

raw gap in the order of monarchical security

lest the governed have second thought. 

This was no ordinary royal, this queen. It was

as though all possible creditable traits a royal 

could possess through genetic endowment 

in a long string of European royalty skilled

at intermingling to maintain purple blood had

been vested in her. Her profoundly authentic

vow to act as the guiding light of royal

prerogatives lavished as gifts on her subjects

bound her to them and them to her as a

planet to its star. Well and truly did she fulfill 

her self-styled obligation of royal virtue 

upholding the throne to benefit her people 

that the British Empire magnified. She will be 

missed as her son and successor fills the breach 

in the protocol of royal presence. A king 

whose footprint will wobble and weave where 

his mother's was firm and decisive in trust.

Challenging Nature's Blueprint

 

Aha, another clue leading to understanding

vanished species, endangered and finally extinct 

for various causes. Perpetuation of the species 

requires procreation, male and female acting as nature 

devised they should. But wait there have always been 

variations on the theme among species yet the original 

primal method remains paramount. With each new 

human birth jubilant parents celebrate a boy 

or a girl and the world turns as it must in a 

spinning melodic perfect universe. Suddenly 

a spanking new phenomenon popularized by 

sensitive authority of togetherness in rejuvenating

the excitement of discovery through exploring 

new and novel human dilemmas once seen as 

a transitory whim of curious children is now

embraced as a contradiction of nature that should

be upheld as just another norm that urges the

young to find themselves on a spectrum of choices 

spurning the very absurdity of recognizing

two sexes, for the more urgent search of the

genuine spirit of individual choice as a mission 

to put presumptuous nature firmly in her place.

The Forgiving New Face of Justice

Who would've thought? It's a new world we

inhabit, all of us. One half comprised of the

disadvantaged, the remainder those whose

guilt at normalcy and good fortune meeting

their introduction to life and social comfort

has bred a new, compassionate movement.

Who would have imagined after all that an

impoverished background, denial of the basics

of childhood emotional support and guidance

a bred social aversion and a natural instinct

for psychopathy would have a positive outcome?

Where social deviants whom the justice system

recognizes as outright criminals brought to

trial land softly on the undercurrent of very

special privileges for very special circumstances.

They are now held to a standard significantly

below that of the privileged class with abundant

lifetime opportunities denied those of racial

backgrounds spurned in character as being

deficient unto the day. Their poverty of like

opportunities presaging their inability to take

their place in society as law-abiding citizens

choosing instead to rampage, to threaten, to

violence, culminating in unspeakable criminal

offences for which commission they are viewed 

innocent by reason of early childhood deprivation

and missed opportunities in later years. Lesser

personal responsibility engages with lesser

punishment where they are free to rejoin society

visiting upon all levels, the advantaged and

those without, the lethal impact of a venomous

nature where crimes viewed through the lens

of the forgiving become trivial, devalued

as a justifiable cause for life imprisonment.

 

 

Death-Loving Assassins

They live in today's world yet they exist

within a nomadic world of tribes and clans

where pagan belief in a panoply of gods

ruled humanity and they search out those

who defy the injunction to surrender to their

sacred faith in one supreme being else die

for their sins. Migrating restlessly within their

mission to destroy those unworthy of life

in homage to a thundering god demanding

appeasing sacrifice to assuage his rage they

approach their targets with the confidence of

believers, the inhumanity of slaughterers

and the certitude of martyrs claiming their due.

Ancient prohibitions commanding against

murder readily superseded by a religious devotion

dedicated to perpetuation of the myth of peace

attainable once the legion of enemies is destroyed

they haunt the consciousness of their defiant

targets in denial of threats of crucifixion

and beheading complemented by wholesale

dispatch through bombs vested close to the

hearts of martyr-bent, death-loving assassins.

Risque-ing All

It is quite possibly the longest lasting yearning

ache in existence and Icarus began the rush

with wax wings succumbing to a jealous sun

continued by the great Leonardo sketching

a wing-flapping flying machine. In ancient

times those convinced they were the Messiah

set out to prove their divine origins in flight

succeeding in emphasizing the proclivity of 

the human body to shatter on impact with the

Earth. No one wants to admit the non-existence

of Superman. Yet humans remain transfixed

by their shortcomings, the most able, intelligent

creature on Earth cannot match the effortless flight

of a bird. More latterly humanity devised extreme

sports and parachute-jumping came into vogue.

Human nature in its extreme fascination with

extending the bounds of the possible now leaps

into thin air convinced an abrupt fall averted by

a timely parachute break can offer them the ultimate 

frisson of elation and terror and live to boast the story. 

Sadly, extreme leaps sometimes pair with extreme 

crashes leaving obituaries to praise the departed as 

beautiful, courageous souls who lived to the fullest.

 

The Dark World of Imposed Death

 

Is not human nature a dilemma impossible 

to predict in the gamut it runs from

terror groups espousing their love of death

eager to shovel the corpses of those they

mutilate and murder to perdition as

recompense for denial of their ideology

to those who knowingly risk all for

the gift of self-respect, honouring their

conscience in listening to its reason...?

It is not only extra-territorial terrorists

but nationalist despots whose special

regard for those who defy them that

formulize and formalize a pattern of

threats inherent in the mysterious deaths

by suicide of those demanding justice

and a cessation of violence in an endless

desolation-inspired cycle of death.

In Memoriam

He chased a chimera for he was one himself

convinced he had the formula that would free his 

people from their serfdom to a bitterly hostile 

ideology that would permit no individual agency

meant to transform a people into a colony of 

regimented, order-obeying collaborationists

the very pillars that held aloft the canopy of

self abnegation purportedly for the benefit of 

the social weal in worship of an unyielding elite.

In a conspiracy to dehumanize a vast populace. He 

acted in conscience with the means and purpose 

of liberation and was lionized for his kind humanity 

by those only marginally impacted by his decrees.

Those for whose benefit he acted gifting them 

with freedoms loathed him for the resulting destruction 

of their shackles in preference to tyrannical rule 

more familiar to them, taking comfort in shifting 

discipline and responsibility to an echelon they 

envisaged acted in good faith for their benefit. 

Rejecting their liberation they once again bask in 

the steelclad strictures burdening and once more

impoverishing them in mind, spirit and body.

Envy Begets Malice

It's true after all, they are a breed apart in

whom nature instilled the virtues of patience

hope, determination and endurance. An

inheritance of spirited enquiry where books are 

treasured and knowledge sought as the means 

by which stimulated minds become creative

exploring avenues of consciousness to expand 

and advance the unity and furtherance of existence. 

Yet no other people has been as shunned and

shamed facing injustice and violent expressions 

of hatred as they. None others inherit the forlorn

haunted memories of genocidal annihilation

in a world where indifference to mass murder

diminished humanity -- oblivious to its failure.

Withholding praise and wonder in reflection 

of this ancient people's facility in art and science

in creative brilliance turning instead to slanderous

accusations of pursuit of dominance and power

resentment and hostility so acute it led the world to

abandon its own humanity to deprive Jews of theirs.