Fools in Fools Hats!
The 17th of May is the Norwegian national day (my adopted country).
It celebrates the day in 1814 when ordinary norwegians liberated themselves from being exploited by a Swedish bourgeoisie and passed to being exploited by a homegrown Norwegian bourgeoisie.
It beats me why that should be someting to celebrate!
Oh well, this poem takes a jab at the many forms of nationalism we have been through this last century, and explains in its own way why nationalism is such a diseased and corrupt tool for manipulating people and leading them away from their real liberation.
17. mai
An orgy of nationalism,
Decorated in childlike innocence,
A sugar coated cyanide pill,
Slowly poisoning a nation.
A blue six pointed star,
Hanging limp in the burning midday sun,
Over the graves of Hebron.
A vicious smile,
A chequered red and white shield,
Flapping noiselessly,
Spotlessly clean witness, casting its shadow,
Over the killing fields,
Of ethnic cleansing.
The three coloured flag of a dying empire,
Reflected in the turbulent waters of the South Atlantic,
Watching silently,
The bloated bodies bobbing up and down.
Nationalism,
Our twentieth century disease,
In Nagorno Karabakh,
In the Sudentenland,
Running wild through the streets of Magdeburg.
In the Hindu Kush and Cordillera del Condor,
Frozen fingers rest nervously on the trigger,
Ready in a moment,
To paint their bloody nationalism in the virgin snow.
And then there was the obedient Lynndie,
West Virginia mountain patriotism,
Pointing maliciously
At the hooded Mustafa
And here, on this seventeenth of May,
Along the glistening cobbled streets of Bergen,
A sea of flags,
Clenched in the tiny hands of innocent children,
Sugar coated nationalism,
Slowly poisoning a nation.
It celebrates the day in 1814 when ordinary norwegians liberated themselves from being exploited by a Swedish bourgeoisie and passed to being exploited by a homegrown Norwegian bourgeoisie.
It beats me why that should be someting to celebrate!
Oh well, this poem takes a jab at the many forms of nationalism we have been through this last century, and explains in its own way why nationalism is such a diseased and corrupt tool for manipulating people and leading them away from their real liberation.
17. mai
An orgy of nationalism,
Decorated in childlike innocence,
A sugar coated cyanide pill,
Slowly poisoning a nation.
A blue six pointed star,
Hanging limp in the burning midday sun,
Over the graves of Hebron.
A vicious smile,
A chequered red and white shield,
Flapping noiselessly,
Spotlessly clean witness, casting its shadow,
Over the killing fields,
Of ethnic cleansing.
The three coloured flag of a dying empire,
Reflected in the turbulent waters of the South Atlantic,
Watching silently,
The bloated bodies bobbing up and down.
Nationalism,
Our twentieth century disease,
In Nagorno Karabakh,
In the Sudentenland,
Running wild through the streets of Magdeburg.
In the Hindu Kush and Cordillera del Condor,
Frozen fingers rest nervously on the trigger,
Ready in a moment,
To paint their bloody nationalism in the virgin snow.
And then there was the obedient Lynndie,
West Virginia mountain patriotism,
Pointing maliciously
At the hooded Mustafa
And here, on this seventeenth of May,
Along the glistening cobbled streets of Bergen,
A sea of flags,
Clenched in the tiny hands of innocent children,
Sugar coated nationalism,
Slowly poisoning a nation.
When flags become more than just pretty colours they should be unceremoniously burned!
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