The Barbarian Horde

They were a horde prepared for action that

would be the stuff of nightmares arriving

before dawn broke on the Sabbath, stealthily

destroying a protective border barrier, flooding 

into towns and villages shown on maps they

carried though some among them knew the

environs well, where they sought and were

given employment as farm labourers and it

was they who knew where the security detail

slept which became the first deadly casualties

of a lethal raid to destroy young lives and old.

Girls and women tormented, mutilated, raped

and murdered. Entire families torched to death

in their homes, infants and their parents alike.

The final touch, capture and kidnap hostages

to be brought back with the murderers to be

publicly reviled, taunted and thrashed by the

very townsfolk and villagers on the opposite

side of the border, taught from childhood to

despise their neighbours, to aspire to the heroism

of martyrdom, sacrificing their own lives for the

glory of slaughtering as many Jews as they

could before their orgy of hate and gore was

apprehended with their victims' response.

The Architects of Rejection

Convinced they hold the treasures certain

to ensure their adversaries have little option

but to submit to their demands or forego

the release of those they captured, dead or

alive, in the subsequent bargaining for a

ceasefire that would allow them the time to

restock both their corps of operatives and the

weapons to rejoin the conflict, they enjoyed

their strategy of postponing acceptance of

concessions in their favour for the pleasure

inherent in the torment of hope denied the

hostages. Their arrogance of assurity time

and again denied for cessation of hostilities

the terrorists ignited by their cynicism abrogating

a treaty in satisfying its blood-lust through

a sadistically savage rampage of rape and

mutilation and slaughter torching villages

and their inhabitants; to them a casual show

of heroic proportions now focused on survival

of its remaining battalions under siege by a

nation intent on annihilating future prospects

of October 7's promised revival suddenly sees

the fugitive terrorists amenable to signing onto

that elusive ceasefire at a time when their intent

adversary sees no profit in ceasing firing.

Final Solution Redux

The technique is well known for it

succeeded in its mission to destroy its

target as has been well documented not 

only by the countries allied to foil the

more expansive plans of the Third Reich

for world domination but by the perpetrators

themselves, proud of their characteristic

exacting bookkeeping, keeping abreast of

their accomplishments, so secure in their

axis drive to conquest they never imagined

it would all be used at the Nuremberg Trials.

The magnitude of the Final Solution and the

horrors of their ghoulish genocide resonates

today in the tactics and savage protocols of

their successors claiming their intention to

complete what the original Nazis left undone.

The blood libels, accusations, threats, isolation

and exhortations to those once neighbours

of the need to annihilate the outsiders even

those indistinguishable from themselves but

for their culture, ethnicity and religious

devotion translates well in the Middle East

where the successor-inheritors of fascism are

even now replaying the original script.

Leave Me Be!

Really now, life can be SO unfair. We are all of

us after all, nature's creations, animals of various

shapes and sizes, temperaments and natural

inclinations, all of which speaks to the vast

imagination and creative talents inherent in

Nature, the mother of us all. Yet here we are

my tribe, modest creatures that we are, living

everywhere in various incarnations, adding

to the diversity of creatures inhabiting this

singular planet we call home. Our very name

is feared and denigrated, sending shudders of

apprehension down the spines of others, large

and small not of our species. Here am I, a

modest creature with no ill-intentions toward

any though I have distant relations who respond

fiercely, lethally when irked, but not I. After

a miserably cold, long winter hibernation who

wouldn't want to emerge from a dank underground

den to bask in the spring sun? I lie passively

on stones or pathways to feel warmth coursing

through my reptilian body, harming none yet

I am harassed by curious animals wanting to 

know what manner of beast I am. Leave me be!

Misery Becomes Them

They share characteristics geared unerringly

toward grievance and victimhood; acting on

the first with violent aggression, lovingly

wearing the second as a badge of endurance

and resistance to their perceived loss at others'

gain, unwilling and incapable of conceding

that their mass psychosis is a reflection of tribal

psychopathy, regularly given to psychotic

savagery delivered in a maelstrom of sadistic

pleasure in doing irreversible harm to others

while rejoicing at their suffering, deliberately

oblivious to the harm they do themselves in

the stark desolation of their souls. They seek

validation in appeasement which re-ignites the

embers of their state of vengeful satiation as

the new flares roar into life and fresh atrocities

are imposed upon those they cast as their enemies

each fresh new assault outdistancing the last

as manifestations of their group neurosis that

inflicts upon the true victims of their delusionary

hatred the torment of mutilating pain before death. 

From the Holocaust to the Holocaust

Well certainly the course of human relations

takes twists and turns so arrestingly bizarre

in the dark recesses of the subconscious that

fiction emanating from the feverish minds of

psychopaths repel and disgust those who

familiarize themselves with the plot, taking

refuge in the belief that such scenarios occur

in print to titillate and frighten, but never could

they darken the world in real time and place. Who

could or would or might imagine that in this

civilized world a tiny proportion of humanity

would be viewed as dispensable to the degree that

a state enterprise would arise to methodically

and with industrial efficiency destroy the lives of

millions because they are Jews? Once done and

the world looked on with incredulity at their own

deliberate unwillingness to halt the frenzy of mass

slaughter declaring never again could or would or

should it re-occur that a people whose contribution

to the world they inhabited was immeasurable in

its value face annihilation in thought or deed, who

might have imagined in a fervid imagination gone

rancid that it was time to prepare the groundwork

to denigrate, slander, accuse and threaten another

dedicated, well-practised protocol of genocide?

Photos

They are a multitude numbering

the days of your life as indispensable

to memory and affairs of your heart

as each of the living souls that look

back at you captured by the camera

lens when you directed the theatrics

of a pose and when spontaneous snaps

were taken at the most inauspicious of

times to record and record and record

and then as incidents faded in time

tucked deep in the furthest recesses of

memory set aside and the images so

neatly captured in photographs grew

in number while dimmed in the past

until on impulse retrieved surprising

you with the sudden jolt of acquaintance

as recognition and yearning tugged

loose the memories and that which was

lived returns to dredge tears from a

place of mourning you hardly knew

might even exist to live another day.