The Poet's Address To The Nation State

THE POET’S ADDRESS ON THE

NATION STATE /

AND THE IRRELEVANCE OF PATRIOTISM

“Patriotism... is the egg from

which wars are hatched”

- Guy de Maupassant

meaning to write you,

get as far as the address

cross out ‘United Kingdom’,

refuse to inhabit a ‘kingdom’,

a kingdom is a fairyland Disney-cartoon

escapist drug of magical lies, unrealities,

and mystic dreamtime elitist

shit-royalist symbolism for

subservience and defeat

cross out ‘Great’ Britain too,

a geographical abstraction as

meaningless as ‘Greater Manchester’,

but it still stinks with hung-over imperialist

bloodghosts of xenophobic Tory gunboat

quasi-race myth superiority of slavery,

and deference to a class and an empire

that is a dominion of cemeteries

so here, now, my Old Albion genetic DNA-trace lineage

takes in Ranters, Utopian Socialists, Levellers, Luddites,

Anarcho-Syndicalists, Trade Unionists, CND No-Nukers,

Opium Eaters, Atheists, Regicides, Suffragettes, Pagans,

Anti-Vivisectionists, Peace Pledge Union-ists, vegetarians,

Chartists, insurrectionary poets, mad artist visionaries, &

the peasants and craftsmen whose blood waters the earth

of this dark and brooding land,

more enduring than empire,

nobler than monarchs

so England, yes,

and Yorkshire - that too, but

by the time I’ve worked my way through

it all I’ve forgotten what I meant

to write you

anyway

Published in:-

‘BUSSWARBLE no.50’ (Australia - March 2001)

‘THE BLACK ROSE no.7’ (UK - April 2001)