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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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?

 

 

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. 

 

 

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?

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.