Nouveau Niche

You may have been taught at an impressionable

age by your socially aware parents themselves 

experienced in racism and exploitation the 

victims of slander and accusation that 

eventually culminated in mass slaughter that 

authentically justified the label of genocide 

that in this world there are other groups that

suffer the indignity and harms of bigotry

lending their compassionate support to 

those living in the misery of inequality.

You may have inculcated in your own

offspring an awareness of the equality of

all, however 'different' they may appear

to the eye in a world cradling a single

human race inexorably at war with itself.

Their children too may have benefited as

responsible caring humans with the lessons

passed through the generations of care 

for others. Yet nothing will save you and

yours from the very special scorn and

rejection meted out to all thinkers of sound

reason who skirt the pseudo concerns of

the present generation fetishizing a social

current of progressive witch-hunting linked

to the  elevation of the formerly scorned

and the diminishing of the humanity of all

who championed their inalienable rights. 

Questions

Before existence was there just a great

yawning chasm of unoccupied nothing? 

Before existence where was Nature? Without

Nature's intervention there is no existence.

What, otherwise, is Nature? The great

unknown creator whose aura can be found

in all that lives. All that has been created

exists with tension, that of the struggle to

sustain itself surrounded with hostility by

other creations all seeking the advantage 

of sustained life and finding it in the

presence of others similarly engaged in

survival prepared to challenge each other

as predators fulfilling Nature's injunction

in the imperative to live or to die. In the

vast outer reaches of space that tension is

palpable. On the most insignificant planet

orbiting a commonplace star the struggle

is manifest as exploitation of resources 

resonate in a primal dance of existence.

 

 

There Be Dragons

The world of astronomy is agog

at the latest revelation of a gigantic

Black Hole ferociously tearing a star

a multiplicity of times larger than our own

to shreds of non-existence. True the

sum of the parts of that star were

summarily consumed while bursts of

radiation so bright they obscured the

light of surrounding stars in the vast

reaches of the universe Earth's most

powerful telescopes discerned, documenting

the end of a star that had wandered too

close to the irresistible gravitational pull of

the ravenous beast waiting, like a trap-door

spider to subsume all in its path. The

imagery as fresh as yesterday. No word

nor will there ever be whether livable

planets orbited that star, whether its

inhabitants were going about their lives 

when instantly the source of their existence

expired and so too, dismally, would they.

If You Go Into The Woods Tonight

In the gloom of the fading forest light 

dusk has already settled. The masts 

of the tree canopy, dark and skeletal

reach beyond to the purple night sky.

Wind of the day has subsided

not a whisper threading through the

leaf-bare oaks and maples. Giant pines 

faintly rustle with the night sound of birds 

at rest. An owl peers its telescopic sight 

to the forest floor detecting mice and moles. 

A man treads quietly through the snow

keeping pace with his dog, the two

leaving an indelible track of blue-white

indentations in the otherwise pristine

landscape. Unseen by either, the ghost

of a coyote silently watches waiting

for the intruders to finally leave.

 

Excluded and Forlorn

Who's in the popular ascendancy?

Not you, chum, if you're white. Being male

doesn't help. Have you considered a broadly

magnifying scrutiny into your genetic

background? Could be back there

somewhere there's Indigenous ancestry.

That would help your odour switch from

repugnant to fragrant. Not two-spirited?

Maybe give it a try? Ever considered

transitioning to the alternative gender?

How about none at all? So here you are

puzzled and disconcerted because employers

are actively searching out the disabled and

those of visible ethnic origin that excludes 

you. You've got all the professional creds

and worked hard to achieve them. Well

that's sad, my friend. The world just happens

to be counter-spinning and you're just not

prepared. Now, if you were gay or lesbian --

ever consider that? -- you'd qualify. You'd

have suffered gross indignities to your psyche

as a social pariah but now the world's turned.

Welcome to the new reality that worships all

that was once exotic and forbidden, spurned

a disgrace to human nature. Here's lookin' atcha.

A Global Pestilence ... Pathogen/Protest

 

Oh ye of little faith in world leadership ...

Pause and consider how heartwarming it is

when presidents and prime ministers consult

discovering how much in common they share.

Take the instance of the unabashed admiration

Canada's prime minister has for China's premier 

a democracy looking on in awe at the ease 

in which a dictatorship is able to exert dominion 

over a vast multitude whose numbers dwarf 

those of Canada. Yet generous to a fault Canada's 

own premier advises China's that in the face

of public disaffection and mounting protests it is 

best to allow the public to ventilate its frustrations 

honouring the human right to exercise free speech. 

Canada's own response to group protests of hundreds 

as opposed to China's vast protests of hundreds of 

thousands swiftly settled inconvenient issues by the

timely invocation of what was once identified as the 

War Measures Act. China's admirable restraint in only 

ordering its national police to secure public safety 

honouring the rule of the Chinese Communist Party 

in its diligent concern for public health and social 

cohesion strikingly similar in text and tenor to Canada's 

own. Brought to agreement by a global pestilence.

Reductio ad Absurdum

What is the meaning of life? Must it

have a meaning? Cannot we exist simply

because we do? Did Nature have a purpose

when she devised a creature that celebrates

itself as an expression of the highest order

of animal life? What other animals of her

creative imagination are themselves creative

capable of deep, dense thought in the sublime

exercise of reason? We are, therefore we think.

Think of this: the three common elements of

the animal kingdom from infancy to agedness 

in the foundational fundamentals of nature's 

injunction to her offspring in pursuit of the 

elements of survival: Our needfully functional 

existential fixation motivating all of nature's 

creatures: food, play, sleep. Unique are we?