Absorbing Life

Surely the gift of language is the greatest treasure 

bestowed upon humankind for with that gift our 

minds expand to breathe the words and exhale the 

thoughts that enlarge our experience and expand

our souls. A book is no mere repository of words

arranged row upon row but a catalogue of expression 

capturing our imagination to send us toward worlds 

we might never know. In that knowledge lies a 

bounty without which our very existence becomes

a dreary exercise in repetitive thought and

purposeless motion. That gift sends our

consciousness soaring into the stratosphere

of excited thought forming our very being

in a comprehensive unity of body and soul.

There is exquisite music in the sounds of

language with words enunciating melodies

of purpose and design our minds muse

upon and interpret shunning and banning

the ignorance of the unlettered who choose

instead the gutterals of incomprehension.

 

 

Solutions There Are None

Deep thinkers in introspection may muse

what formula of human reason and intelligence 

it might take to rouse humanity from its steady 

state of hapless disequilibrium to measures meant

to validate and elevate the common weal, surely

a goal that vast elements of humanity could find

shared purpose in to solve the human spirit's 

duality of reverence for the sublime yet penchant

for inciting violence destroying the product of the 

heavenly spirit they so adore. The presence of a 

charismatic persona of wisdom who has imbibed a

deep draught from the legendary Tree of Knowledge?

Whose skills in persuasion and commitment to

humanity's deepest desires of universal freedoms

could usher in a common goal of peace above all?

A mass retinue of the faithful to lift the banners of

justice and mercy to convince world leaders who 

have nibbled and sputtered the values and verities of 

that same fabled source in a continuous repetition 

of the eternal search for rescue from ourselves?

The Denial of Sacred Judaism

As eras in human history are recounted

none is so redolent of divinity and its

worship, none so linked to Israel and 

Judean heritage as Jerusalem, David's

gleaming city of light glancing from its

glorious height upon the world, where his

son Solomon built his temple twice destroyed

three thousand years ago, a virtual eternity.

Its history interrupted by the sacrilege of an

Islamic invasion re-consecrating Jerusalem

and forbidding a Jewish presence of prayer

at Solomon's Temple precincts. For Islam

claims as its own that which in its current

state is the Temple Mount, the jewel of the

Jewish state where, lest surrounding Muslim

states be offended, Jews, on threat of war

may never pray lest they defile the presumed

presence of the spirit of Islam in conquest.

 

Mister President!

Well then, how far will he go? No one knows

in fact not even himself. But watch him.

He does enjoy being watched for the fillip

that elevates him in his own opinion as a

reaction to the extraordinarily bold and bizarre

decision-making his muscular imagination

leads him to. But do not provoke this man for

it is just that, capable of freeing his inner caution

to acts of brutal desperation. Aerial bomb a

market? A nursery-school? A theatre? A multi

story apartment, A hospital? All in a day's work.

Civilians become mere cannon-fodder in the fog

of war, he winks. Ah then, but there are limits

Mr. President, are there not? Say, for example a

nuclear installation?  Electrical power plants and 

Water supplies all designated military targets so

whyever not radiation risks from nuclear plants?

Role Modelling

Look on ye great unwashed and

tremble with unrequited notice as 

these refined, unapproachable women

of distinction pose and purr in their

self-appointed roles of liberated

progressives, privately venal and

self-adoring. Portraying themselves

as champions of the unadorned every

woman wedded to her societal role

too engaged in the pedestrian existence

that life has assigned, not the elite

privileged of the celebrity class. There

they are gloating and flaunting their

unique status in the pretense of briefly

abandoning child and chore to the shared

pleasures of tippling and recreational

chats in a shared congratulatory escape

from the burdens of supervising the hired

help around their opulent homes; viewers

of their recorded pantomime transfixed in

adoration in the belief that these tigers

represent their own future of lighthearted

camaraderie, no worldly cares, a time and

place that will elude them, a mere mirage.

 

 

Genocide, Interrupted

Language expressive of concepts which can

express the forbidden with its shudder effect

representing the most grievous wrongs that

humanity can conceive of. Words like deicide

fratricide, patricide, matricide set the wheels

of thought and the fear of infectious insanity

on alert; how could any level of society however

disturbed commit to such violent acts of murder?

And then there is that word signifying the intent

to annihilate an entire people, a formula so vast

and malevolently insane only a pathology of mass

dementia could aspire to its completion to satisfy 

the demonic in humanity. Yet it happened and in 

its aftermath the dread word has undergone a

transformation, casually deployed to describe

poorly imagined constructs of social meddling 

disturbing to the public weal. What is preserved

is the origins and raging hate behind genocide 

that impels the same breed of antisemites to 

deplore an uncompleted plan and to agitate anew 

for a reconstructed formula not merely to complete 

the interrupted genocide but this time to exceed 

its partially completed goals: no intact survivors.

 

 

Big Boys Don't Cry

Big boys don't cry, do they? Especially if 

they're brawny and brainy and chief of a

large metropolitan area police force. Do they 

cry then? They may, if the circumstances are 

crushing enough and personally frustrating 

given the duties of security and public order

incumbent on the holder of that office. He

is reputed to have once warned a subordinate

he was on the cusp of cutting off his 'balls'

for bookends. Faced with a crisis of public control 

when other big brawny non-security protesters 

converging on the city saw his own rebelling 

against the candidate recruited from 'outside' 

despite his 35-year experience in the profession 

and his deputy-chief role in the biggest city in the 

country, that won him the trust as winning candidate 

in a search to replace the retiring chief, the Police

Services Board saw in him a progressive-minded 

administrator capable of dealing with rising crime

but the rank and file viewed him an uppity Black.