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.

 

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 swarm, 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?

 

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?

 

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. 

 

 

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.

 

 

It Happens

  

There are times and there are times. One

need not necessarily believe in fables or the

sinister gossip hidden from public view of the

veneer of Imperial entitlement at the expense of

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

It happens. A dashing prince chooses his charming

princess who has yearned for his notice and a royal 

wedding results with great fanfare where the adoring 

public swoons over a match made in heaven and 

young girls dream of their own wayward prince

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

door to the palace and live happily ever after, until

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

separates the devoted royal pair. Theirs is not the model

for all such royal events for there are other stories 

when the downtrodden public is less inclined to worship 

royal affectations while the masses endure penury

lending impetus to a rough rabble of regicidal mobs 

invading the palace to slaughter all within, swords

adrip with blood. In others grim ceremony of guillotining 

those guilty of royal persuasion. Time moves on and 

though royal heritage persists it is the royal offspring 

themselves now choosing infamously to erode 

and degrade the gentle privileges of regal charm.

 

 

Call To Arms : Sisters, Arise!

 

Is that then the final word? Women meekly resigned 

to a cunning blow-back after all these years of

asserting women's rights the Great Liberation 

ending in a whimper? Who amongst the outraged males 

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

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

that women empowered themselves at the price of 

male pride resonated throughout the civilized world. 

It took a civilized society to lend its sympathy to 

pleas from dissatisfied males that their bodies rejected 

their minds and tearfully their minds were prepared 

to reject their bodies in a female transformation meant 

to level the playing field. Leaving female athletes who

aspired to greatness in their field to meet demands

by sporting committees that trans-females play 

their game in competition for awards where the

natal male configuration, physique and musculature

masquerading as female breezed past the desperate

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

theirs, reclaimed by the wolf posing as grandma. 

 

Nightscape

 

 

To sleep, perchance to dream. For all one

knows the thoughts that inhabit my mind

might also have visited that great literary

titan of historical documentation in drama

and comedy. A keen observer of humanity

confronted with the most mysterious of riddles:

what is it that makes its nightly visits to the

sleeping brain? An alien intruder, a mystic 

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

submerged memories of another place some

other time? The subconscious playing perplexing

games airing a series of events both unfamiliar

yet with the shadow of familiarity. Is that you

being featured as a principal in a strange and

eerie landscape, or are you merely the observer

detached and remote. If so, why when danger

edges ever closer do you gasp in fear and panic?

What differentiates a dream from a nightscape

intrusion leaving a dim memory and foreboding?

 

 

“Because the Jews ruined Christmas”

 

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

a history lesson by their teacher and just in time for 

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

an object lesson in a people's unforgivable sin against 

a Jewish prophet disbelieving his claim to a godhead 

and just as womanhood is haunted by Pandora's box

escapees, so too are Jews shunned in perpetuity as the 

original deicidal plot earning the undying enmity of 

the spirit of existence and all humanity of divine faith. 

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

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

punished for ruining Christmas. The children wailed 

and grieved as they died in gas chambers, their pleas 

for mercy unanswered as transport trains kept on

delivering them to their deserved punishment so that 

children playing Jews would fully know the extreme 

gravity of Jewish sin deserving obliteration. How

fitting their teacher was Black and thus entitled to her

mission to expand children's view of the world by

recalling history to show that some lives really and

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

 

 

Arise, Call To Action!

 

If events are not meticulously documented

did they really happen? And if proof of their 

occurrence has been preserved and assembled 

for public view how can society be assured that 

such documentation is truly reliable, much less 

the ethical spur of those who proffer them as 

proof positive? Commemorative statuary in the 

'free world' along with naming of institutions in 

recognition of past influences on the trajectory of 

history are now in poor repute through charges 

of historical injustice, white supremacy and the 

arrogance of colonialists consigning the world's 

aboriginals, 'racialized' communities to dreary 

lives of slavery, penury, disease. In this nothing 

to be proud of in further interests of conscience-

grieving guilt prepared to thrust their breasts on the 

swords of anguished apology. So haul down those 

statues, rename academia's halls of intellectual 

achievement, gut and renovate national museums

re-writing history as nations shrink in shame of 

once-proud history now joining the reprehensible

annals of invisible infamy, vile imperialists!

 

 

It Was a Very ? Year

 

The year I was born my parents greeted

their first-born child, with three more

to follow at substantial intervals, all

to an immigrant family living in pride and

poverty, escapees from racial bigotry

social and institutional violence seeing

no possible future for themselves where

they were born. It was, coincidentally the

year that Nazi Germany denied the

League of Nation having any business

interfering in the way it treated Jews. In

that year of 1936 Britain's King George

died, making way for the ascension of

Edward VIII; Hitler opened the 4th

Winter Olympics; 4 million French workers

went on strike; racists almost beat Leon Blum

to death; the Hindenburg had its first test

flight; Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles.

Jews were warned of arrest should they

attempt to vote; Italy, Austria and Hungary

signed the pact of Rome; Britain, the U.S.

and France signed a naval accord; Italy

firebombed Harar, Ethiopia; Arab

highwaymen near Nablus killed three Jews;

Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa;

General Francisco Franco began the

Spanish civil war; The "Nazi Games" of

the 11th Olympic games opened in Berlin;

Benito Mussolini celebrated his "axis"

with Nazi Germany; A British Royal 

Commission investigated the underlying

cause of anti-Jewish riots which the Arab 

Higher Committee boycotted; Japan and

Nazi Germany signed the Anti-Komintern

pact; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia

Kazakhstan and Kirghistan joined the USSR;

Edward VIII abdicated for Wallis Warfield 

Simpson; and humble me was born.

 

 

  

 

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.

 

 

Birthdays and Memories

We're talking about Mum, a recurring topic

in most of our infrequent conversations. I fiddle 

with the receiver to position it so her voice 

delivers a clearer message as she struggles with 

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

exhausted our takes on our mother's suitability 

as a parental role model and through our emotion

starved childhood knew we'd raise our own with 

empathy, open emotion and loving guidance.

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

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

mother? Questions we bat back and forth. Now when 

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

things we remember about her. She is the younger 

daughter, the one who changed our mother's soiled 

diapers in her dementia. I'm the older one who rarely visited.   

Each of us us thought the other had it easier from our  

constantly haranguing mother until one day we finally  

opened it all up and spoke for hours. She can't do that anymore. 

Talking exhausts her. Walking exhausts her. She is 

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

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

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

birthday, arriving just around the corner of time before

she too, four years later is in the final throes of dementia.

 

 

Destined

 

 

Perhaps it was that his subconscious

led him to create that geographic distance

to break the spell of the emotional closeness

that stifled his independent future where

his experiences would be his alone, this

the youngest of our children, the very one

with whom his parents found bonds of

attachment in a shared love of all that

seemed of vital importance in the quality

of their lives, separately and together. When

his father many decades earlier painted a

picture of this son that hangs on our bedroom

wall perhaps subconsciously he faces away

eyes on some distant landscape as he stands

poised on a promontory, fields and forests

stretched out before and below his beloved

figure. We see this distant son every day on

awakening and on preparing for slumber, eyes

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

bereavement on our part can convince him to

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

 

 

Boxing Day Gift

Her photo is on the back page of the local

paper. She is a young, attractive woman

a mother of four, the caption adds. Beside her 

another woman, her best friend. On the front page 

a headline: Killing domestic in nature: Police. 

And the quote that it is only a "homicide incident 

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

snuffed out. But the public need not be overly 

concerned is the message; no general threat looms. 

No word of the arrested, the live-in boyfriend 

who might or might not have fathered any of those 

children. Testimonial from tearful friend how 

cheerful and good-natured, a perfect mother she 

was. A crowd-funding campaign will go forward.

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

so common anywhere in the world, the reader

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

 

Sisters

 

 

Life began for them as sisters growing up

in the Pale of Settlement where Jews were 

sent to live lest they contaminate other 

Russians with their direct presence.

Sisters but unalike in every conceivable way. 

One married a Ukrainian peasant the other 

married my father. They were together as 

man and wife for over thirty years raising

four children together. Cancer took him at age 53. 

It wasn't cancer that took my mother though 

she had entertained colon cancer twice. 

Eventually thirty years past my father's death 

my mother was placed in a communal setting 

for elderly patients with dementia. My aunt

an inmate, greeted her sister on arrival but my 

mother failed to recognize her. She did though

mention the long-dead man she always referred 

to by his family name planned to drop by

sometime later that evening, and smiled.

 

Creation, Time and Space

 

An imposing cathedral of

 

unparalleled beauty sheathed in

 

crystalline grandeur lifts its

 

imperious grace to the ceiling

 

of the sky, velvet with approaching

 

night, a halo of moon and the

 
boldness of stars impassively

 
observing a landscape unlike

 
their own of frozen gases and

 
ancient minerals. The one below

 
with its living atmosphere

 
responds to the distance of its

 
sponsor-sun in a frigid pause

 
of the clamour of growing

 
things unlike the inert nothingness

 
of cold and distant space. This

 
most familiar place of time and

 
seasons, liveliness and curiosity

 
a highly specialized experiment

 
by nature in randomized creative

 
adventure. And so, her creations

 
look up and peer beyond the

 
darkness of the unknown, certain

 
of discovery and revelation.

 

 

 

Like Goldilocks

 

The calendar year never errs. It

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

bear a cap of silvery hair, my face is

creased where it never was before

and though I'm still quick not quite

as I was. Sometimes when I look in

the mirror I'm surprised by my mother's

presence. Mostly, though I feel young

and why shouldn't I? Like Goldilocks

not too old, not too young. Except that

is when I'm out in public and society

informs me by the subtlest of whispers

that I've graduated to elderly status and

then Goldilocks exits leaving me with

the impression I've suddenly become old.

 

Repulsing Extermination

 

Disdain, oppress and persecute anyone

long enough, threaten, demean, humiliate

and they've been psychically wounded. Carry 

on and add to that litany of contempt casual 

violence enabled by diminishing the human 

stature of those forever at target and then no

type of assault, no corrective violence to alter

their place in the world seems to suffice. Leaving 

the ultimate expedient of ridding oneself of an

intolerable nuisance whose presence galls and

we enter the theatre of atrocities once expressed 

in the frequency of deadly pogroms which

themselves were obviously inadequate to rid 

the world of the pestilence of Jews. Enter the

Final Solution to ultimately forge a perpetual

motion machine; delegitimize, sanction, isolate 

dispossess and violate paving the way inevitably for  

vast populations of those whose heritage found root

in what the pious call the Holy Land to be 

obliterated. That was then. Now the remainders

of the despised have resurrected their ancient 

homeland and now they respond blow for blow. 

Yet there is the reality of timid hesitation, full

self confidence absent for the outlier nation

remains held in low regard yet yearns for 

approval, so in response to deadly provocations

looks to the international community, unwilling 

to earn further censure and so refrains from

striking the final blow to an enemy once

again wholly dedicated to its extermination.

 

Bleak Black Celebrity

 

A crime so repulsively heinous it

boggles the mind that when he recorded

himself eviscerating the man he had

just killed and noting for posterity before

he posted it that the parts were a carnivore's

delight the atrocity provided entertainment

and evoked envy among those for whom

such atrocities were treats to be savoured.

An international search through Interpol

brought him back to the scene of the

crime where he was charged, tried and

convicted, a man whose posturing and

egocentric hubris transfixed a reluctant

audience with disbelief that anyone could

become such a monster. The mute grief

of the victim's parents as they sat day

after day through the trial before returning

to their own country to mourn their son

there, seared the memories of the public

compassionate in their own sorrow that

society could raise such a deviant wretch.

Mother of the sadistic murderer though

begs to differ; they don't know her son but

she does, a lovely human being with not

an ounce of venom in his heart for anyone

for he played with kittens not as charged

tormented then killed them. But it is the

kindheartedness of the national prison

system that places everything in its proper

perspective when it arranged for his

marriage with conjugal rights to another

prisoner as they couple for a lifetime of

what others call happily wedded bliss.