Some Human Stuff

        40,000 Years Ago

Huddling for warmth by the fire

far from the retreating ice,

wondering about the stars

and the aromas on the wind,

even the taste of sweet berries

and the way they felt in your mouth

wasn’t satisfying enough,

so you scratched the shape of your soul

in abstract patterns on some rock,

not because you had to,

but because you had to.

Sorta like me in a way,

weren’t you,

beloved cousin?

   A Double-Barrelled First-Up Lesson

I was six or eight days old,

or something like that,

and, I’ve been told,

they gave me a sugar cube soaked with rum

to suck on before somebody snipped off my foreskin

to the sound of somebody

chanting some mumbo-jumbo in Hebrew.

I agree with my rationalist friends

that this was a barbaric thing

to inflict on an innocent baby,

for barbaric reasons,

but it did serve two real-life purposes:

it taught me from the onset

that life is filled with pain,

which has proved to be true,

and also that grog helps.

                               Biological Imperative

I knew it from the moment I first felt that tingling in my prostate,

through to the shudder of the send-off of my sperm in their sea of semen –

although of course I could have been mistaken, but I wasn’t –

this wasn’t just another fuck, no,

this fuck was the fulfilling of my biological imperative;

And when, after the usual gestation period, plus a couple of extra weeks,

my first daughter was born

and I made her promises she couldn’t understand,

I felt a happiness the like of which I’d never known.

I believed I had reason to live.

Now, tough shit, I realise that in the mocking face of the universe

my sense of biological fulfilment and paternal happiness and promise,

was, along with my species’ niche within the universe’s ongoing life,

little more than part of the straight line of a cosmic joke,

perpetuating punchlines of sadness and suffering,

and extending my biological imperative into a future

unlikely to have any imperatives for my progeny

at all.

                  Ordinary People

Ordinary people seem to take great pleasure

informing me about what a beautiful day it is

during the hot, sunny, blue-dome weather

that I dislike intensely,

yet react with shock and argumentation

when I comment on what a gorgeous day it is

during the cool, high-overcast, breezy weather

that I love.

                    The Appeal of Cruelty

I learnt early in life

that some people enjoy being cruel.

As a child I didn’t know why or understand how

my mother and my brother

enjoyed being so vicious and unfair

toward me,

or enjoyed tormenting me so often,

but I accepted it as just they way things were,

the way that children do.

At school and at play

I observed dumfounded as bullies

– both kids and teachers –

lavished cruelty on those

with whom they could get away with it.

It made no sense to me,

so when I was twelve I took to teasing a boy who talked strangely.

It made me feel terrible then

and for the rest of my life.

And now – it’s 2014 – I read on the internet

over the space of a few days

how young men from privileged countries

in the English-speaking world

are flocking to the Middle East

in order to get in on the cruelty action,

either with the Islamic State in upper Mesopotamia

or with the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza,

to engage in self-righteous, savage viciousness

they’d never get away with back home

in order to inflict torment and suffering

on innocents who’ve done them no harm.

Its appeal still perplexes me,

but I know that it’s what the word evil means.

                     Creeps and Jerks

Every sentient being is either a creep or a jerk.

At least that’s one way of looking at things.

Executives are creeps;

hourly workers are jerks.

Fashion designers are creeps;

consumer fashion slaves are jerks.

Corrupt cops are creeps;

honest cops are jerks.

Sexual predators are creeps;

hopelessly lovelorn romantics are jerks.

Cats are creeps;

dogs are jerks.

Wall Street bankers are creeps;

small-business owner-operators are jerks.

Ad-agency artistic directors are creeps;

taggers are mostly jerks.

Hipsters are creeps;

hippies were jerks.

Meat and dairy agribusiness operators are creeps;

nearly all livestock, poor things, are jerks;

but most of the workers in abattoirs are jerks, too.

Bought-and-paid-for politicians are creeps;

the people who vote for them are jerks.

Of course, nothing’s that simple.

The world has plenty of jerky creeps and creepy jerks,

and creeps with some jerk characteristics,

as well as jerks with some creep characteristics.

Which are you?

I myself am a jerk through and through,

damn it.

       A Failure Of Imagination

I saw a screenshot on facebook

of a Twitter message

that someone had sent to a lesbian singer

saying, ‘I stopped listening to your music

when I found out u were a lebanese.. God

wanted man with woman..’

Seeking empathy,

I tried to imagine

what it would be like

to be that dimwitted,

but it was beyond me.

                    Chichén Itzá Rocks

We wandered around the ruins,

my part-Mayan bride and I,

as thousands had before,

our eyes drinking in

the impressive monuments

made from rocks piled high.

We climbed to the top of a pyramid or two

and up the narrow spiral staircase

inside the 1200-year-old astronomical observatory,

as thousands had before,

the narrow steps and stairways

built for people much smaller and narrower than we were.

I don’t know how many of those thousands of visitors

had wondered why or how the ancient Mayans

had gone and built such grandiosities,

when they clearly didn’t have to in order to eat,

and I’m guilty of not being conversant

with all the theories that archaeologists have put forward

in regard to the Mayans’ motivations

for building such fantasies,

but whilst walking from one rock monument to another

my eyes focused on

the huge number of solitary, not-too-heavy rocks

that were just lying about,

willy-nilly, here and there,

on the ground near the footpath,

and I felt a kindergarten-like urge to start piling them up

and building some kind of mound or wall or something.

Maybe the ancient Mayans,

people like you and me,

and with whom I was related by marriage,

had felt a similar urge.

           Distant Cousins

The paintings in the caves

in palaeolithic Europe

and who knows where else,

I wonder how they differ

from the assemblages

of brightly coloured daubings

that I produce

and which now clutter my walls.