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.

 

Immortal Youth

 

Sarah Birke

 

Rising like a blazing meteorite
of galactic ice and space dust,
lighting up the sky with its
fiery tail, youth flings itself
with the passion of defiant grace
into the void of exuberant hubris
to flicker and spark and collapse.

The young are, because of their
brave youth, immortal. To believe
otherwise is to deny the phantom
reality of their world that informs
their lives, inspires and rescues
them from the tedium of
existence without excitement.

They cannot imagine a sudden
cessation of vitality, the quick
abandonment of an aspiring
elite, extreme athlete, to a morbid
failure to surmount gravity-defying
soaring arabesques nature permits
only winged denizens of the air.

Who among the insouciant
bold, the immortal young, can
conceive of disaster such as is named
a ruptured vertebral artery, whose
irrevocable effect of intercranial
hemorrhage disastrously closes
down that effervescent brain?

Not they, nor any others celebrating
the physically impossible made
possible by youth pushing the
boundaries of human strength, vision
and agility, loosing itself from the surly
bonds of the commanding atmosphere,
challenging the very nature of
indomitable Nature herself.

 

 

And May The Most Deserving Candidate Win

 

A figure of power and authority, a
personage of dignity, integrity and
uncommon intelligence and grace
to infuse the people with hope in the
future and trust that the promise the
candidate for high public office as a
civil guide and lawmaker is well placed
and worthy of the tasks at hand.

Why then, is it that those who present
as officious charlatans, prideful
mountebanks whose pasts reflect
failures of moral certitude, commissions
of grave ethical lapses, yet all is forgiven
as the rhetoric soars into implausible
denials and bombastic accusations
against others clearly their superiors.

Seldom does the rectitude of the
trustworthy and those proven to have
zealously served with distinction in
the public sphere appear to rise to
the heights of public acclaim as yet
do those skilled in oratorical
sleight-of-truth, those who spin tales
of improbable dreams become reality,
they leading the impossible way.

The temperate, insightful, focused
mind reliant on reason and resolve
to the public weal, proven by experience
dedicated to service and leadership
fails to ignite the passion of support
for lack of the charismatic flavour
of vaunted celebrity however tainted
by ignominious social violations.

In the final analysis triumph falls
to the facade of righteousness, as the
empowerment of self-interest elevates
the unworthy, disdaining the solid
candidate. What does this reflect upon
those who prove the truism that we
earn the government we injudiciously
choose to select in our fair judgement?

  

It's the Jews!

 

It is not yet known and possibly never will be since

the accursed creatures determined to dominate

the world and perhaps the universe are notoriously

averse to identifying themselves yet represent a 

secretive cabal. Unknown from which primitive

planet drifting in the bleak darkness of outer space

they arrived, possibly exiled by common decree

to befoul the serene accommodating and peaceful

aura that would pervade this globe were it not

for their hostile presence. They are heroes, those

who recognize and deplore the mission of these

extra-terrestrials to destabilize the irenic glory of

the ship of Earth gliding through the ocean of sky

unrelenting in their revelations of the sinister plots

against humanity from ancient times to the present

of these interlopers seeking to command and to own

all the riches of the planet by stealth -- skilled at

covert schemes to install themselves at the  height

of society and government -- taking the reins of

finance and communication to steer the naive

in awe of their false benevolence in developing

hospitals and universities, humanitarian groups to

aid those in need, innovators to bring the world of

science into a modern era, music and art to delight

the soul in a massive conspiracy to deceive while

sweeping awards and recognition of superior

achievements, all designed to disarm suspicion in

their ultimate goal. Yet all is not lost for the world

can rely on the august body of the United Nations

and its stalwart minions to reveal the devilish ruse.

 

Sharing and Caring

 

The challenge and the goal - now
encased like a fossil in amber
remains well known for its high
rate of success, yet little practised
today and more's the pity, observing
the sorry slate of fleeting marriage
contracts - is to infuse the relationship
with the truly unerring flavour of
mutual love and commitment.

The generations succeeding those
that took serious notice of the woman's
way to a good man's heart places little
credence in "old wives' tales", requiring
basic homebody skills for both, each
complementing the other, for nowhere
in a frantically triple-tasking society is
there the quaint notion of available time.

Caring solicitation nurtures love and
affection through assurances of devotion,
an ancient formula, tried and true.
Cherish and ye shall be cherished. Dare
to care enough and the rewards are
amply presented. The dedication is to
the other, and the self awarded fidelity.

Love can indeed be evoked through
countless other premium manners,
of natural means or society's popular artifices.
But slight veneer begets casual response,
a caricature of sincerity, soon worn
past endurance. And the moving hand
writes the story of pretense then
moves inevitably, disconsolately on.

  

The Battleground

 

The answer to the questions come from the very 

highest authority, those who can handily quote history 

as far back as the mind can imagine for there lies 

the enduring proof of those who now in their wisdom 

shake their heads and repeat ad nauseum it's them

again. And the them in question shudder for they 

know their history all too well since it begins and 

never ends with those darkly sinister tales of blood

vermin and pestilence. It began when plagues struck 

Egypt and Jewish slaves took their freedom in an 

escape that brought them to the promised land. And 

from there under the auspices of a sole, furious God 

they conspired to rule the world, capturing disease

and then dispersing it to the unaware, poisoning wells 

to destroy tribal villages and their inhabitants

kidnapping children to drain their blood for the

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

Jewish conspiracy cabals causing the death of millions

more than when Nazi Germany tried to favour the

world by acting as global executioner. Coronavirus?

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

those who seeded the virus in China unbeknownst

to the Chinese. The Jews, whose kabbalah flirtation

with the occult created the Golem standing mute and

huge prepared to battle civilization to the ground.

 

 

The Starry Firmament

 

The cosmic stars have become
blinking diamonds, suspended
in frozen animation, slowly
revolving across the dark
blue-velvet of the winter sky.
We observe the firmament,
in awe of its stunning immensity.

Mankind's communications
satellites, like clockwork,
wind their mechanical presence
above the half-sleeping Globe,
transiting messages, communing
with far-flung Constellations.

We theorize, yet cannot quite
imagine great distant planets,
pin-pricks of planetary
existence in a dark void
rippling with mysterious
luminous matter, life-giving
suns and gaseous planets.

From this vantage, the familiar
is sighted and celebrated and
the secrets of the Universe, both
dark and light tantalize even as
they elude. Who are we, after all,
to posit and define the science
of Nature's precise design?

  

Remembering ... Forgotten

 

The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in Silesia, mine were princes of the earth. Judah Benjamin, in reply to a taunt by a Senator of German descent.

None could have been more greatly taken by surprise and mortally offended than secular Jews in civilized, cultivated Germany - who considered themselves more affected and deeply steeped in modernity and creative energy and intelligence by their venerated generations of German citizenship than their Jewish heritage - to discover that they were regarded as mere Jews, fit for nothing but eradication by the Third Reich.

Their steep complacency at having attained acceptance at the highest levels of German society, academia, political life and wealth would be shattered by the reality of the military-political juggernaut that would overtake Europe and reach out to Asia, enveloping as it progressed, the near east and North America.

The intellectual vastness and social connections to the master race admitted of a moral certainty of racist exceptionalism that excluded Semites from the stellar genetic superiority of the Aryan race of supermortals.

You call me a damned Jew. My race was old when you were all savages. I am proud to be a Jew. John Galsworthy, Loyalties, Act. II.

Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Jews considering themselves culturally superior to Polish and Italian Jews never imagined their countries would accept that they were dross too, to be disposed of summarily along with their Latvian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and other European countries' Jewish counterparts.

The massive round-up, degradation, humiliation, scorning, enslavement in ghettoes and death-camps located around Europe with infamous names like Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, with their slave labour, their medical experiments, their punishments and starvation rations, their gas chambers and chimneys puking the dark detritus of burnt bodies in a ghastly parody of orderly convention, bespoke the Nazi ideal of eradicating the impediments to the attainment of human perfection.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

The quietly determined theatre of extermination became a subterranean affair of cleansing the world of a plague, a dread scourge of those posing as human whose subhuman facade had been revealed by Nazi ideology that wallowed in the worship of pride, pursued perfection, and visualized a very exclusive and choice Utopia. The very physical characteristics of the perfect Nordic male would effectively have excluded the German chancellor.

And the Jews, en masse, no offence, merely acknowledgement of the most appalling inferiority soiled by genetic traits betraying their unworthiness of sharing the air, the water and other precious natural resources, were specifically chosen, in their totality, for annihilation, to make the world of the truly entitled by nature and inheritance, a better place.

Who hateth me but for my happiness?
Or who is honoured now but for his wealth?
Rather had I, a Jew, be hated thus,
Than pitied in a Christian poverty.
Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

One might think that a collective representing the world's religious leaders would seek to intervene. They did not, presumably on the presumption that God would look after His own. The saving grace being that a small but noted number of religious and their laity took it upon their consciences and moral certainty to act on their own to save whom they could among Jews.

Suavity toward the Jews! Although you have lived among them, it is evident that you little understand those enemies of the human race. Haughty and at the same time base, combining an invincible obstinacy with a spirit despicably mean, they weary alike your love and your hatred. Anatole France, The Procurator of Judea

As in medical science, when an anomalous, sinister, threatening bacteria or virus emerges to threaten humanity as a horrible existential pandemic, all scientific and technological means must be harnessed toward the imperative of destroying the threat to the well-being of humanity's continued existence...

And, since time immemorial Jews, with their strange religion insisting on an especial status with their Maker, and exhibiting typically hideous traits offensive to others already held a tradition of suspicion and rejection, there was little problem in reaching international consensus that Something Must Be Done.

When people talk about a wealthy man of my creed, they call him an Israelite; but if he is poor they call him a Jew. Heinrich Heine

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. Albert Einstein

That 'something' emerged as an exquisitely planned and executed genocide. So expertly dedicated to its task, it succeeded in destroying resources to the military deeply engaged in challenging and overcoming resistance to German fascism's indomitable need to conquer the world and to dominate it for at least a thousand years.

And while it hampered the military, it succeeded in its exemplary mission to rid the world of a menace. The Jews sacrificed for the salvation of world civilization.

A hopeless faith, a homeless race,
Yet seeking the most holy place,
And owning the true bliss . . . .
Or like pale ghosts that darkling roam,
Hovering around their ancient home,
But find no refuge there.
John Keble, The Christian Year: Fifth Sunday in Lent

The tradition of a two-millennium-old story of sacrifice and redemption repeated. World Jewry has never recovered its numbers. The Jewish population of Israel, established post-war as the traditional homeland of the Jews, and considered by Jews to be its only safe haven on Earth, is now roughly reflective of the numbers that perished in the Holocaust.

And Israel shall be a proverb and a by-word among all people. Old Testament: 1 Kings

The invidious scourge of ethnic hatred known as anti-Semitism lives on, succeeding once again in the temporary wake of post-Holocaust remorse. The world and its affairs returned to normalcy.

Still on Israel's head forlorn,
Every nation heaps its scorn.
Emma Lazarus, The World's Justice

  

Shush, Nothing

Bend your mind around

nothing. Make that a
timeless nothing. As in
no existence. None whatever
therefore nothing. Stir in
Creation; that would
be, you see, the Universe
suddenly creating itself.
Out of an immense,
meaningless, non-existence.

For where there was nothing
a space, a huge yawning
unimaginable, silent, dark
and motionless space containing
nothing, aroused itself
mysteriously to welcome
the existence of something.

An explosion of matter,
a gaseous, fiery-fierce
maelstrom of radioactive
inchoate matter, the
unerring intelligent design
of natural science. Ah,
that would of course be
the wakening into being
of the science of nature.

Astonishing, yes. Beyond
belief, for it is fantastical.
The Universe declares itself
into existence in all its dark,
mesmerizing elasticity and pull,
in a luminous display of colour
and light. The spheres evolve.

And they majestically revolve,
cool and coalesce, draw
energy and light and coax
amoebas of life forms to
populate those revolving,
gigantic geodes, as shooting
stars and meteorites cross
the heavenly firmament of the
ever-emerging, definable
essence that is something.

  

Waiting...

 

With the limitless patience of the faithful

they wait, imperturbably confident and

assured, the seers and the shamans, the

yogis, the sufis and the swamis, near

Chichen Itza.  Their followers worldwide

besotted with the spiritual chill of the

unknowable void of being will settle for

alternates.  Awaiting the spirals of

heavenly light promised to invade the heads

of believers, from their vast galactic journey

they weep in fear and joy.  A cosmic dawn

arrives to gift the worthy with telepathy and

they will loose themselves from the

niggardly magnetic bonds of Earth, to

levitate and flee its constricting confines

set to implode.  Electrical vortexes

arrived from the galaxy's centre bid them

hither and they will respond, leaving fear

embracing love, bathed in the light of

transformative cleansing of the soul.  For

they have discovered true salvation, fleeing

the stagnating brutal influence of life as

we think we know it. That is the revelation

the cataclysmic upheaval that engages 

humanity, one with the golden light

of divine forgiveness, an arcane alchemy 

of  life bypassing death, the final frontier

to incandescent longevity.  If not immortality

then why not?  Thirteen and counting.

Look...at us, at them, the pathetic ones -

quivering with the misery of unrequited life.

  

Humankind Orphaned

Undeniably we remain one of nature's works 

in progress, the draft plan having undergone

many spontaneous alterations from primordial

times to the present and look, we are still

evolving. Nature has patience and she does

not think in terms of her creatures' lifespans

for in the vast time and space that she has 

dominion over we are but the briefest of

afterthoughts.Who knows, really? She might

even in that brief focus on humankind's

complex blueprint, have envisaged a tame

cooperative spirit somewhat like a colony

of bees or of ants working studiously together

for the common weal, and indeed her humans

have themselves on occasion expressed such

admirable intentions of emulating those far

lesser creatures. Hers is a busy agenda however

and such details must inevitably escape her 

notice as she turns attention to the much larger

order of orchestrating fascinating events 

in her universe as a whole, only occasionally

returning to the minutiae of which humans

are but one example. And having turned that

attention upon that agonizing evolution might

have muttered a plague on that disorderly house.

 

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.

 

Their Divined Due

 

A life of deprived misery lends itself
readily to the impoverished downtrodden
of an ignorant, militant and indigent class
to be complicit in readiness to demonstrate
to the world at large their impassioned
support of their very own oppressors;
foreign benefactors they may be, as
opposed to home tormentors, but unity
is paramount, so 'Kill The Enemy!' prevails.

A tyranny that restricts basic human
rights for those it oversees, is still
capable of manipulating the marginalized
by appealing to their tribal instincts in
defiant threats to presumed outside
usurpers of sovereignty. The sovereign
dignity of the homeland paramount.

The masses, whose needs are ignored
and whose debilitated existence is of
no concern to their dictators, yet prove
to be immensely useful when their
righteous ire and religious sensibilities
are turned in wrath against an outer,
non-tribal source which, in sympathy with
their beggarly plight offers aid seen to be
delivered by their own ruling elite.

The realpolitik of the grimy street
soiled with the accumulated waste of
dire neglect and misfortune is easily capable
of instilling pride of nation and fond
tradition in a misbegotten caste intimately
familiar with plague, pestilence and
starvation redolent of their heritage.

And from the lisping lips of children
is orchestrated venomous belligerence,
and diabolical curses as they course
along a capital's thoroughfare, hoisting
aloft the flag of defiance, chanting
"Death to the Enemy", naming foreign
countries whose humanitarian aid has
prolonged their lives but whose very own
governments have blatantly taken credit.

 

Cold Comfort?

 

Who among us mutters cold
comfort? This is, after all,
a brave new world we inhabit.
No longer should any of us
pine for notice and the
warmth of companionship.

For company there is in
abundance; no one need
feel any longer the depths
of lonely despair. Concern
for our well-being and peace
of mind is - everywhere.

One's microwave oven bids
its chirpy message of "enjoy
your meal!" The laundry pair
politely wishes us a good day
when their cycles are complete.
Our motor vehicles clearly
have consulted with our mothers.

To them falls the task of
reminding us to secure our
seat belts. They greet us: "Hello!"
when the ignition key springs
them to attentive life. They
remind us of a door not quite
shut, oil running low, and to
decrease our speed: thank you.

And when the journey is done,
ignition key turned to off,
bids us in a slow, lingering
wistfulness ' "Goodbye" for now.
One's cellphone addresses us
with fond familiarity embellished
with our favourite wallpaper.

The iPod remembers our chosen
music to entertain us intimately.
And, oh yes, the computer stands
prepared to link us with caring
others who share our concerns
and values. What more might any
self-respecting soul search out?

  

You Are Here

 

What is life, but our
very existence; because
we are here, there is
awareness of being,
of time and the elements
of the greatest mystery
of all, in that we
know: Out of nothing
came the grandeur of
existence when a sublime
spark of energy created
the chaos of sizzling
gases, molten rock and
metal to agonizingly
slowly coalesce, creating
within the vast space
of nothing something,
existing within time and
yawning infinity -- an
equally immense being
of substance hosted within
that great gaping expanse
without end, and from
some primordial gathering
of infinitely minute matter
the chemicals of life
quietly, insistently, stirred
and became the beginning
of being and life exists
it is as we know it.

  

That Effeminate Sky

 

Vanity and vexation
evidently can beset the
tolerant patience of the
sky, no less than that of
a woman whose fickleness
and vixenish ways poets
have so long celebrated.

That great festive bowl
of heaven picks daintily
among her wardrobe of
choice. Shall it be, this
wintry day, wispy feathers
of vapour teasing the
power of the sun...?

Its relentlessly probing
fingers restrained, or a
flippant veil of silvery sheen?
On the other hand, the wind's
impudence, dishevelling those
gauzy-slight integuments may
narrow the decision process.

Selecting opaque stolidity
of white, grey clouds; even to
shades of bruised purple,
though courtesy and discretion
mitigate against enquiry even
while the sky avoids scrutiny.

Its provenance, after all,
despite the shocking nature
of prevailing gossip is not to
be disclosed. To screen herself
from searching eyes she calls
upon the elements to turn
her tears to snowflakes.

  

Inheritance

The malleable, enthusiastically excitable
questing mind of youth inspires in us
memories of our own search to
understand the world and our obligatory
and emotional relations to be tentatively
established, then confidently pursued in
search of our as-yet-imagined destiny.

Let us speak here of the hallowed tradition
of grandmothers throughout the ages
on every Continent, lighting the ember
to spark the fire of her grandchild's life
aspirations toward realization; gently,
persuasively, herself fading with the years.

Introducing the child to her own circle of
infallible advisers; the gentle muse of
learning, and the sweet one of compassion;
the stern muse of self-discipline; the giddy
one of happiness and joy; equipping the
child with the wisdom of discernment.

When the child, matured, recalls her
grandmother's faded eyes, deep with
memory of her own discoveries through
a living, inherited thread of silken,
cherished care, the long continuum of
enlightenment and ambitions realized,
sorrow and loss unfolds as it must. 

 

The Ethos of Jihad

Truly, the profound mysteries
of the human mind can be
dreadfully confounding
with little basis in rational
consideration. For, consider
the awful declaration of
some among the hordes of
humanity of death-adoration.

These strange minds insist
on the ineffable value in death
for by this device may they
achieve their soul's desire;
martyrdom. In martyrdom
there is immortality for, they
imagine to live forever adored
by nubile angels in paradise.

Martyrdom, they reason
unreasonably, achievable only
by sacrificing other lives to
their deathly ambitions, who
happen, not by chance, not to
share the illusions of the death
appeal. Death, to the assassins
in-the-name-of-the-divine, is
sweeter than life to them.

Just as life is dearer than
death to those hapless victims
the jihadists select for mutually
jubilant annihilation. And another
conundrum raises its profoundly
odd and querulous head in the
enigma of those exalted clerics
who urge death upon martyrs.

Who stand above the bloody fray
themselves while interpreting the
holy word writ by God's hand alone
yet remain themselves strangely
invested with the will to defy death's
personal invitation; struggling to
fend off its generously fulsome,
morbidly unwelcome overtures. 

  

There Be Dragons

Once, upon a time when the
Earth was flat, and the horizon
led to a dangerous tipping point
where sailing vessels ran the risk
of slipping over the edge of the
known world into a vast dark
fearful vacuum of nothingness
to be forever lost, dropping past
an eternity into the unrelenting
void, it was common knowledge
that dragons, you know, lingered
here, and there, where human
settlement was not known to
exist. Those dragons, so to speak
- and we shall - are there, still -
and are here, as well, lurking,
biding their ancient time. The
Earth, we may feel, we now have
settled, and know full well, in its
rotund geology, but its companions,
nature and time, remain mysterious
forces humankind's curiosity and
ingenuity have yet still not managed
to accurately decipher. Those
dragons, in the guise of conflict,
pestilence, natural upheavals, and
climate catastrophes remain,
untamed, threatening, forbidding;
lethally shunning futile pacification. 

 

Unhappy Narcissist

 

The comfortable arena of denial
does its critical function proud;
saving the ego from extreme
distress and pride in self from
a needful introspection.

To void oneself of the indignity
of failure to become responsible,
one indulges in these plaintive
shirkings of cause and effect of
unacknowledged acts initiated;
sins of unrewarded commission.

But all such habits have
consequences, when paranoia breeds
defensive contempt and the slow
degradation of relations slide inevitably
from emotional intimacy to brittle
distrust and breakdown.

Convinced of faultless demeanor
an open trustingness leading to a
soft vulnerability; poor abandoned
soul, the world has turned a deaf,
uncomprehending ear to your
incomprehensible suffering miseries.

Face yourself. Speak clarity to
your reluctant inner self, unwilling
to delve deep to solve the mystery of
your goodness, charity and compassion
overwhelmed by others' cruel deceits,
not your own delusional conceits.

Be kind to yourself as a start and those
who find it in themselves to care deeply
for you as a cherished kin whose genetic
inheritance you carry in excess; find the
way to be less rapaciously irascible with
them as with yourself in despair.

Shed your bitter rancour, there can
be no grace there, nor salvation from
a lifetime of self imposed, aggravated
unhappiness with the induced conviction
that life is your uniquely personal hell.

  

This Unfortunate World

 

This world of ours is an awfully
frantically busy place, its
inhabitants obsessed with
their various preoccupations
all geared to fulfilling aspirational
choices made of free will and
the urge to succeed, taking
little notice of the inconveniences
posed by the casual unexpected.

In Germany, fate has caught
up to destiny with a 90-year-old
former SS assassin sentenced now
to life in prison. In Bangladesh,
a man, enraged his wife did not beg
his assent as Islam decrees before
embarking on a college degree,
taped her mouth, then proceeded
to amputate her right hand
in a righteous rage of entitlement.

Twenty-six unfortunate passengers
on an overloaded boat that
capsized in Nigeria have been
recovered by authorities. Among
the dead, a 6-year-old child. Of
those rescued who lived, was a woman
who proceeded into childbirth in a
successful full term pregnancy.

In Japan, a precocious one-year-old
toddler demonstrated his cool
mettle by directing his plummeting
body into shrubbery after his father
deliberately discarded the child at
their apartment's 10th story height.
The child, face scratched, wept in
disfavour of the peculiar new game
his father introduced to their union.

Finally, at a New York-based,
high-profile advertising agency,
two elevator occupants stood by as
another woman accessed the elevator
incompletely, her body only half
within as the door slid closed and the
elevator ascended, crushing its
unfortunate almost-passenger. 

 

 

Lonely Planet

 

Life is a heavy burden, a tired
succession of heart stops on
the journey to despair for too
many who began their passage
believing it would be otherwise.
They recognized at various
bends in the road a challenge,
an opportunity and rose, they
felt, to the occasion. Sometimes
the occasion slipped right by,
leaving the disbelievingly
incredulous survivor adrift.

They struggled forward, ever
determined to grasp new promises,
but those too, fate grasped from
their eager fingers. Yet the bereaved
hand remained an open appeal,
pleading with the spirit not to
surrender. We see these weary souls
around us, mechanical smile, blank,
uncomprehending eyes, faces
creased in the desperation of
empty existence, hungry for notice.

Their need so raw it cannot
be a mystery. There is little to be
done for no one can unravel a life
lived without joy. But little will
also herald the brief relief that
acknowledgement brings, with
inclusiveness. A welcome, however
brief and mere facade will still
reassure, found in a greeting of
genuine gladness, a sincere smile,
a lingering conversation, and an
acquaintance's fond hug, whether
physical or inherently implied. 

 

 

Growing Up

 

There's that emotional conflict
when a grandmother is confronted
with her grandchild's inexorable
loss of childhood. The infant she
helped raise is now indisputably
growing into adulthood. One
knows that to be so, for she has
announced that when she visits
she would like her hair professionally
cut and styled, and a visit to La Senza
is also in the works for bras to
be properly fitted to her size.
But the child is not yet gone.

For, she asks, please, to have her baby
blankie, please, please, mended. And
when it is recommended she mend it
herself she says she cannot, and this
time she would be pleased to thread
the needle, grandma, so ... please?
After it's washed, then, growls the
grandmother to the child's undisguised
horror, for washing the threadbare
memento of childhood would most
certainly cause total, irrevocable
disintegration. Grandma, please!

  

Covenant

Surely, from some other place

a world never imagined, they

came across the endless ocean

to see and covet this land of our

ancestors. They are powerful

their armies surpass our warriors

in weapons and strategies unknown

to us. They bring gifts to show their

peaceful intentions, yet when we

spurn them, their faces are grim

and the sticks they carry threaten.

Their King sends his greetings.

Such proclamations are explained

to our chiefs and our elders, in

assurance of how they honour us

and wish to live alongside us on

the land, without strife. They wish

to farm our traditional hunting

grounds, and to log our forests and

to mine the land. They assure us

that care will be taken to allocate

reserves of land - our land - only to

us alone, where no white man may

intrude. We have only to sign here

with a mark, and it is done. Yes

they avow recognition of our first

place here, for this is our land, and

we will freely agree to share this land.

Some among us whisper the white

man speaks with a crooked tongue

even the King who says he will give

us money and good health and

educate our young in his ways.

Some say the white man conspires

to trick us and take our land.

 

Male/Female She Created

The 'mother' of all that exists, Nature is less

a perfectionist than she is an inspired and

sometimes reckless experimenter dedicated

to trial and error with a truly impish sense of

humour. Having designed the ultimate creation

with a brain struggling to compete with her own

ineffable genius, she also gifted that creature

with the pleasures of procreation and conferred

upon it a binary reality infusing one half with

the attributes of motherhood the other left with

the endowment of an instinct for the hunt and

so they evolved man-the-source-of-sperm and

woman welcoming the outcome in her gifted

womb. In all her creatures was this gift of

creation proffered; those in the air, in the seas

in the trees and on land with the occasional

misfiring of neurons and confusion of genetics

to a place where males imagine themselves

females and females certain they are males

disrupting the order of Nature's deliberations

though in point of fact it is she herself whose

attention occasionally and infamously lapses

into distractions that confuse the formula.

 

Grey On White

 

 
Nothing whatever reserved about that
tiny creature.  She was happily outgoing
so at ease, that diminutive canine companion
of the elderly woman that she was not at all lost
in her absence, among a crowd of people.
Her bright eyes alive with curiosity darted
everywhere that activity piqued her attention.

Not, in fact, much happening, other than a
slow succession of mostly grey heads and
greybeards arriving for their pre-surgery
appointments at their community hospital
not inclined, under the circumstances, to
good cheer singly nor among themselves.

Yet the sight of the sweetly animated,
grey-haired dog, placidly seated among
strangers, so alive to its gregariously-
accepting instincts, gave the gift of laughter
to those assembled, awaiting the tedium of
the pre-operative protocol, where blood
pressure would be monitored, X-rays
ordered, blood tested, innumerable questions
fielded in preparation of a life event as
difficult to absorb as it was to deny.

Worried self-concern was transformed
to quiet observation as smiles swept creased
grey faces formerly distracted by miserable
thoughts weighted with fear of the unknown.
The nurses moved among the decrepit throng
with clean and tidy efficiency, tossing coy
comments to the tiny toy poodle, scrambling
someone's coat into a semblance of comfort,
lightening everyone's palpably dark mood.

The little dog submitted to pats, smoothing
its beribboned topknot, gave calm attention
to peoples' nods, smiles and conversations
constraints of strangers suddenly eased by
its calming presence.  It dozed in people's
willing warm laps alternately to gracefully
straining its minuscule presence to arch forward
in rapt interest, missing nothing whatever.

Certainly not the arrival of a frail, barely
ambulatory figure, inspection and instruction
both completed; that of its beloved mistres,
as the poodle's adoring fixation on the figure
demonstrated, while it leaped toward the
outstretched arms.  In pure reciprocal
loving embrace, the little grey head resting in
close communion against the wizened white head.

 

Hello Out There!

Spiral Galaxy M66
Credit: Russell Croman

Hello out there! How are you?
Better yet, where, precisely, are you?
SETI is looking for you, NASA is
looking for you. For, you see, we
know you're out there. Why would
you, after all, not be out there?

We are here, in our immense little
Galaxy, a mere speck of gathered
matter in the vast, unknowable,
mysterious intriguing, finite/infinite
Universe. There, just a little to the
left, there we are...set your sights to
the Milky Way, we're there, circling
our sun. See us there, we're waving!

Wavering in insecurity simultaneously.
Our most famed astrophysicist warning
us there may be good reason not to
approach you too trustingly brings
conflict to our consuming curiosity.
Yet if we approach in peace, will you
not meet us reflecting identical resolve?

Ah, you are aware of the human
tribal-clan propensity to exclusionary
chauvinism, of the ready resort to
xenophobic suspicion lighting the
volatile torch of conflict. Your historians
have noted our proclivity to drench
our Earth with blood and eagerly harvest
the bitter fruit of unresolved despair.