Vendetta

“I watched with glee while your kings and queens, fought for ten decades; for the gods they made. I shouted out, who killed the Kennedy’s, when after all; it was you and me.” – Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil

Nubile girls at my gym, ready for marriage and lusting after marry me bodies, bounce rhythmically on treadmills while ponytails bob symmetrical figure eights; their gaze transfixed on home makeover reality shows, remodeling porn depicting fascinating renovations of imagined hope chest packaged dreams that they feel down deep in the canal of their craving; right down to the china, silverware and crystal.

The flat screen that resides over my StairMaster projects CNN. At the ready stands a flawless little creäture of desirous adoration; her scimitar curves accentuated by arms akimbo; eye candy with meticulously quaffed hair and Oil of Olay pure skin looking like she’s been polished each morning by a rotary buffer is narrating the day’s top meat grinder events with a smile as blasé as a weather gal describing a perfectly turned spring day in San Francisco.

She flash cuts to Beebe Netanyahu, a real yahoo and Führer of the new Nazi’s regurgitating the same moral equivalency cold cuts he normally slings with the drone of a lobotomized robot; laced over the podium like a tailor with a case of workbench back; his eyebrows drag his forehead down to meet his weak fey chin; he wears the expression of a mid-career lighthouse keeper; one who has seen a lot of shipwrecks and expects more. His performance is for the cameras; not the back rooms of atherosclerotic, hypocritical, cigar chewing, hopeless, larded adults; infracted vultures turning babies into scattered fragments from the explosive shells, bombs, missiles and bullets they reap profits from. Decayed, balding, cheese breath Netanyahu lays it on us like a great soggy lukewarm mother’s poultice.

The Germans had Hitler, the Russians, Stalin; we were graced with baby Bush the Shrub for a weary time. Some say he was a good president and I suppose if you rate him on his responsibility for body count, confirmed kills; they’d be right. The Palestinians, a people left more alone than any in memory have Hamas; living dead men, zombies after the apocalypse; modern-day Charles Mason’s stuck in the lust for blood oblivious of any grey tones. Each side’s argument seems to be saying “my enemy is so vicious he has forced me to loose my soul” and no matter how many babies we turn to goop; our cause is just.

How easy would be to let the beast out; the one unleashed by the Capo di tutti capi of demons; hate; that most dangerous of motivations that emanates from within out; always just there, beneath the surface of everyday normalcy; our own personal Mephistopheles; master of our negative light, Satan’s worker, agent of Lucifer; where promises of heaven turn into private hell when Beelzebub nudges those already in danger to be damned into that Faustian bargain where we wager our souls on the notion that we are right and have been wronged. He circles the earth in a dark cloud settling down occasionally in men’s hearts in places like Gaza, Cambodia, Rwanda, Manhattan and just now; France.

How easy would it be to release humanity, to squeeze the trigger, pull the pin, loose the spear, open the bombay doors, let the fucking rice boil over in Chinatown; to spill blood that never washes off like there are gooks in the wire and let the ID feast on adrenaline and danger and let the taste of sweat and blood and heroism and righteous victory trump all other pleasures; where all compassion is lost in a Howitzer’s cloud. That’s what spare-ribbed Palestinian boys slinging rocks at jolly green giants with guns wishing they were hand grenades; cannon fodder ripe for turning into shrapnel; feel.

It’s perhaps why I let my demon out for regular walks in the garden. He is pulsing forth just now out my finger tips and on to this imaginary paper. So, every year on my birthday I forgive every transgression my friends have laid on me over the past year; blow out the pipes, crack the neck and wipe the slate clean; start fresh. It lightens the burden I and all men carry and keeps the demon at bay. Where it not for my tradition, the worlds ongoing shit storm of hatred, the current featured attraction being the Israeli/Palestinian and Islam-o Vs civilization death cult clique cream de la cream of vendettas, could easily metastasize and visit itself in my heart. Hate and revenge is an insidious intoxicating virus.

No one cares any longer what your ends may be fellas; your means to your ends have left us all bleeding from the eyes; making the gladiator games of the Coliseum seem like a little girls backyard tea party. To turn away or be anesthetized, that’s our choice. Well, as Willy Shakes Mercutio screamed, while dying in Romeo and Juliet from the Capulet and Montague madness feud, “a plague on both your houses”.

The mid-eastern maniacal madmen doom-hungry junkies started their caged death match the year I was born; sixty-six years ago. Christ fellas, learn how to have an argument and move the fuck on. Package all that unlimited passion and send the word out for the Levant’s Gandhi, Christ, King or Mandela; and when he shows up; try not to shoot him down like we did Jack and Bobby and Martin. Here’s hoping you find your holy man peace maker. In the meantime pick a date and on that date once a year step back and forgive.