Judaic Legitimacy
It is a scrupulously violent reductive
act that takes one and a half millennia
to fully strike, launched by a venomously
deliberate destroyer and enabled over
generations by equally hateful enablers
who succeed in the ultimate act of
plagiarism gilded as a theocratic directive.
Whereby ancient Judaic scriptures of
solemn sacred memory detailing the
rise of monotheism, the verbal thunder
of the Prophets, the honouring of the
Patriarchs and Matriarchs in their
silent tombs have, every one, been
claimed as authentically Islamic for
did not their Prophet proclaim it so as
he purloined all that history and memory
held dear in the hearts of Jews? A
sanctimonious world established a
seat of universal acclaimed recognition
of heritage rights sitting in judgement
aided by those entirely bereft of morals
grimly agreeing to support contentions
of an Arab collective eager to deny
recognition of the heritage of a dynasty
not their own, co-opting its sacred memory
and symbols, its scriptures and its laws
withdrawing legitimacy of history and
precedence, UNESCO assenting and
Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon
all the sacred in Judaism transformed
within an alter-universe favouring Islam.
Human Rights?
Restraints on jihadist terrorism? Funny
you should ask, but there's an answer,
you just have to dig for it and not very deeply.
No one is in doubt about what constitutes
human rights. The doubt exists in its universal
applicability. For you it is assured. For others
it is not. Be grateful that you live where you do
since human rights is a geographic entitlement
taken for granted though jealously guarded.
We have a global institute that guarantees it
for one and all along with peace, an end to
conflict, do we not? So what is its scorecard,
that illustrious hall of international bureaucracy
second only to the Nobel Prize Committee.
Peace Prize Laureates include, let's see
Yasser Arafat, he of the gun and the dove
for dramatic impact on the General Assembly.
Nobel Laureates less than noble in their
achievements come readily to mind, so
think Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi and the
free world's saviour who forgot to save,
Barack Obama. Canada's Pearson harboured
a racist pathology. Remember Kurt Waldheim
Austria's Nazi gift to the United Nations?
And the UN's ultimate sanctimony in hoisting
abusers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, China,
Russia to prominence in vetting nations they
label as human rights abusers, surely none
more guilty than one tiny nation whom
history has nailed to the cross of applied
extinction. But rest assured, the world body
is in reliable hands, in the admirable and sturdy
collaboration between the Non-Aligned Group
and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The Forbidden Market
Scruples? They all have a horse in
the race, the steeple they're chasing
is business with a country whose
natural endowment of resources
eclipses those of other geographies
where there is huge profit to be made
and all are fused with corporate interests
reflecting untold wealth and influence
whose countries of origin bask in the
pride of entrepreneurship and
ingenuity unparalleled bringing
trade lustre and filthy lucre to the
business of pursuing success in
dredging the Earth, refining its
elements and influencing the national
affairs of nations which on the global
scene recognize the pariah nature
of tyrannies spreading havoc within
and without their spheres of direct
influence, tidily spurning direct contact
with these outliers threatening the
stability of the world order through
their experiments with intercontinental
missiles, nuclear explosives, while
dispatching terrorist militias to silence
their enemies since despots secular
and theocratic are pathologically
indebted to hatred, oppression and
violence to fulfill their destinies with
faint likelihood their threats and their
appetite for atrocities will ever curtail
the greed of those they hate, preferring
to 'do business' overlooking awkward
circumstances and inconvenient outcomes.
Theocratic Evil
Evil hides its presence in many Janus
faced guises though it need not
knowing that its dread presence is
celebrated by many who admire
and cling to the malevolence it
inspires. Among the disguises it
seeks out, co-conspirators, vile
demagogues who present themselves
as demi-gods demanding their due in
awe and obedience and who convince
their audience of believers that the
god they worship demands human
sacrifice, the death of those who will
not surrender their autonomy to the
worship of the omniscient, omnipotent
omnipresent power of the dark overlord.
The Islamic Republic of Iran courts
the potency of fear in the presence
of terrorism, an enabling conquest
that shatters and destabilizes those
nations whose culture is not one of
death, but whom Iran's culture has
re-introduced to the crepuscular
shadows of Medieval inquisition
mutilation, crucifixion and extermination.
Restless, awaiting the reappearance of
the Hidden Mahdi who will finalize
the mere rehearsal of the Holocaust
setting loose the Angel of Death, Iran
squats, malicious, evil's premonition.
Woodland Fauna
Perhaps she presumes a trifle too
much, this woman with her peculiar
manner, her fey hints at communion
with foxes, her garb betraying I know
not what, a leather fedora set atop her
leathery, striated face. Her voice
conspiratorial as though we, like her
represent a strata of the woodland
cognoscenti, gifted in the languages
exchanged between animal species
imbued with the deep knowledge of
their habitual natural cultures as
creatures of the wild. Nodding sagely
beside her the now-grown child I
had taken years earlier for a son,
whose presence now clearly, despite
a decidedly ungendered visage, is
that of a young woman whose crowning
glory sweeps at great length behind her
the most luxurious strands of hair
imaginable, in fact a magical feat of
astonishing proportions. My own
recent assignation with shears and
double-sided mirror cropping my head
to close-shorn non-glory a dull contrast.
Yet she complains of its weight even
while whipping the gathered strands
in a swirl that only a fabled creature
of the woods could display, and I bite
my tongue in favour of silence; not for
me to suggest that obvious solution.
To Differ
I view the devastation of the forest
with the bleak vision of one who
has been betrayed both by the imperious
majesty of nature and the compensatory
hand of humankind. The once-forested
entrance to the wooded ravine has been
ravished, laid bare, deforested, a silent
picture of desolation. This place to which
I daily repair is one shared by many
among whom a woman who declares
her unbridled love of nature, herself
daily venturing to its cool green shelter
a forest teeming with vistas of the seasons
with birds and insects and animals whose
presence enriches the environment and
my experience. The balance of the forest
lies untouched, spared the intrusion of
remediation responding to the ravine's
saturated hills collapsing. In time the
engineers and the huge tracked vehicles
the cranes and the bulldozers will be
removed, trees replanted and the forest
returned. In its present state it represents
a scarred and empty place, yawning like
a chasm, a void, deplorably vulnerable and
bare. And she, my nature-loving friend gazes
happily at this ruined landscape, smiling
rhapsodizing over its splendid 'open feel'
and that the enclosing forest has been happily
supplanted by a clear sightline where, she
sighs, she can see 'far and wide', how nice!
Impressions
You think it's him standing beside
his booth of assorted objects
speaking with another man as you
walk by, then return. You've only
met him once before and then briefly
but there was warmth, the kind that
kindles between kindred spirits. You
ask how he has been and he peers
at you before recognition sets in
and he moves to hug you, and you
shift slightly. He appears as though
the past winter was difficult, as
though he shrank in height, and he
is most certainly dishevelled, long
grey/white hair stringy, but the
creases around his eyes and his
mouth deserve that hug. And you
speak together, as the crowds mill
about and past, peering at the wares,
asking about his health, his brother's
and of course the things that really
matter to him, for this man of 85
is a master gardener, an artist in
his own right whose skills are widely
recognized in avant garde circles
which you don't yourself inhabit.
He invites you to return to his farm
for a visit; isolated, adjacent a forest
where you saw the most enchanting
garden ever, never to be forgotten
but you demur, and you move -- on.
