The Empire Has No Clothes

Save a tricolored rag
Posted on a gym room wall
Not even a flag, a painting
So much for the US Flag Code

That you can see right through
Making it more difficult to burn
Negating any if its symbolism
Neither lit at night or on a pole

Watching Pavlovian patriots
That rise on the first few notes
Of the Star spangled banner

It is vomitous that trigger
Can quiet a crowd to stand and
Put the right hand over their heart

Half playing along, hands at my side
I wonder why everyone else submits to
The social indoctrination of rote behavior
Satiating our own needs, or other’s???

It occurs to me each time it plays to
Kindly walk up to the singer gently
Request the microphone and announce

The wake up call is that those notes
Were a test, that they have failed their
Patriotic dooty to think individually

Not to mention it has absolutely
Nothing to do with a “sporting” event
Which happened to be adolescent wrestling

Teaching dominance to the Alpha wannabes
Submission to the reluctant participants
Temporary tolerance of pain either way
Physically and oddly enough emotionally

Of the wistful wishes turned dashed dreams
Carried by the parents coaches and kids
Being MMA contenders of money and fame

In a platonic homoerotic public display
Of artificial empty arrogant aggression
Cheering on and instructing the aggressors

Maybe instead of playing the song once
It could be played between every match
Maybe then the woke would be woken up

Otherwise it is only an alarm put on snooze
Until the next event that it does not need
To be played for any reason whatsoever

“We’ve got the only national anthem that mentions #ucking rockets and bombs in the #ucking thing. You know what I mean?”

George Carlin

“Oh, say can you see
By the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there

O say, does that star-spangled
Banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?”

Which is only the first verse
Of a four stanza poem written in 1814
Two hundred and eight years ago
Losing its effective fervor 207.9 years ago

The other ones were cut for
Their racism overtones and
The US’s enemy at the time
Later became its ally

Makes one wonder what all
The fighting is for in the first place
Besides economic distraction & prick waving

Therefore its only relevance is its
Automaton calculated reaction
In public social situations

(No one stands at home
When they hear it played there)

Wouldn’t you think in an
Allegedly “Christian” nation
Where people allegedly
Praise and follow the “Prince of Peace”
It sings something that reflects that?

Say John Lennon’s “Imagine”

“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…. Aha-ah…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world… You…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”


Nevermind

That would be a global anthem and
Nearly forgot there’d be no money involved
Gross gross wealth, pathetic poverty
Violence, hatred, religion, racism etc.

“Just an observation,
Maybe I need
Different glasses.”

– Angelo Devlin