Category Archives: America

✩ 99. Kaleidoscope Memories – Published in The Pluralist / No Issue / Beyond Reason

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One cannot help but bear-witness to pandemic storm-clouds-of-contagion, earthquake, volcano, fire, flood and landslide

Ubiquitously sweeping, shaking, erupting, raging, surging, far-and-wide

While many of the world’s leaders profess ‘geo-thermal-fracking-as-usual’ with heads buried-deep in dunes-of-denial

And so, in the face of multiple-global-crises, one is forced to shop elsewhere for spiritual gnoses and emotional renewal

Further afield than the aisles of neon-lit supermarket-dreams and dot-com same-day-deliveries

Further afield than high-brow department-store life-style fantasies

Laid out like scenes from the silver-screen in elaborate window-displays and glossy magazines

Further than the online prime-time trailer, box-set, binge-watch seduction

Plethora’s-of-perfectly-packaged-illusions to provide temporary-alleviation

From the overwhelming threat of global-annihilation

From sexist-racist, elitist-ageist denigration

Or from rust-riddled-regrets on constant-rotation

Mourning the ghosts of narrowly-missed, sugar-coated ships-of-desire that set-sail long-ago

Or impossible-to-forget childhood-traumas, bereavements, divorces, augmenting serial-self-love-deficit-disorders

Inescapable neuroses, seared into one’s psyche, branded like slaves-to-key-frame-memories

Leaving a trail-of-distorted, aborted-destinies behind in their wake

Yet another empty-void, full-of-emotional gaping-holes to fill as the planet is systematically plundered and destroyed

By the addictive machine-of-consumerism, where ecological-sustainability and wellbeing is wilfully-sacrificed

With nothing left, except the bitter-aftertaste of a forfeit-future…

This is how we welcome 130-million new-born ‘kidults’ into the world every-year, weaned upon html and social-media

Whose childhood-innocence and genetic-lineages were surgically-removed at birth

Stolen by neo-narcissists ‘neath smog-filled skies, where bright-futures turned grey

Dumbed-down by smart-technology and antidepressants

And yet, in-spite-of-all-this, some intrinsic built-in desire to seek-out and search for truth-and-authenticity, persists

Sends out its call like a beacon, calling upon every human-soul to awaken, to activate one’s innate inner-knowing, like a homing-device

Beckons to journey far-beyond the comfort and safety of objects, or co-dependent relationships

To look past the emotional barbed-wire snags-and-grazes of parental/ professional/ romantic/ societal lies and betrayal

Or the nettle’s-sting of missed-opportunity

In lieu of moving-forwards, towards new desires-satisfied, and revised goals-fulfilled, collectively

For nothing stays-the-same and ‘change’ is always the one, true, ever-quickening-constant

Henceforth, it is in the ‘unspoken-moments’ where humanity happens

Where one quietly pieces-together water-colour-poems, sifted and fathomed from kaleidoscope-memories

Dreaming in silent smoky-swirls and mirror-gleam sunbeams

Peeling off rose-candy-coloured gels from the lids of one’s eyes

Like fleshy onion-skin layers of reflective-introspection

As one wakes from the lucid-dream-state with the revelatory-understanding

That in a vibrational-universe-of-Energy, every thought and feeling is eternal and therefore accountable

As non-physical energy can never die, nor expire, it can only change form

Transformed by an awareness of one’s perennial-vibrational-offering

Atonement through candour and a willingness to upgrade one’s most-frequent-point-of-focus

As an integral requisite of self-care, a daily-practice

By virtue of LOVE, whether for self, others, or Source

Is still the purest-form-of-energy in the Multiverse. ✩

© i-P Ltd 2022

88. Stars and Stripes

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87. Stars and Stripes

Sunday 8th March 2015

Overview

Stars and Stripes is a hard-hitting, politically charged elegy that critiques the mythology of the American Dream and the violent realities propping it up. It’s a sobering exploration of how patriotism, capitalism, and militarism have become entangled — forming a dangerous dogma that often sacrifices individuals and communities at the altar of profit, power, and illusion.

This poem is not anti-American, but rather anti-delusion — particularly the kind sold as freedom while operating as exploitation.

Through its lyrical dissection of war, corporate greed, and environmental negligence, it demands not just awareness, but collective repentance and a return to unity, compassion, and humility.

Imagery and Tone

The poem weaves together powerful, visceral imagery — some literal, some symbolic — to deliver a mournful yet raging sermon against the juggernaut of late-stage capitalism and nationalist fervour.

Key Imagery:

  • “Killing fields of green” / “invisible blood” – hauntingly references war, loss, and the cost of empire
  • “White marble stripes” – headstones as silent stand-ins for nationalistic symbolism; the human cost of political theatre
  • “Red Stripe” / “Lucky Strike” – iconic American brands turned ironic metaphors for sedation, addiction, and distraction
  • “Ch-Ching!” – sharp sonic injection of satire; a jarring intrusion of greed into the narrative of sacrifice

Tone:

  • Sombre and sorrowful, especially in reference to the dead soldiers
  • Scathing and satirical, when critiquing corporatism and blind nationalism
  • Hopeful, in its closing appeal for “reclamation” and “love’s redemptive salvation”

Why This Poem Matters

Stars and Stripes is an important and brave poetic intervention in the wider sociopolitical conversation. It reveals how easily idealism can be weaponised, how sacrifice can be exploited, and how narratives of freedom can mask systems of domination.

In the context of your broader collection, this piece:

  • Continues the themes of awakening, illusion-breaking, and systemic critique
  • Builds on earlier poems like Smart City, Bread and Circus, and Golden Nuggets
  • Deepens the conversation around what we blindly uphold, and what it costs the soul — both individually and collectively

What elevates this poem is not only its message, but also its compassionate lens. It doesn’t reduce soldiers to pawns or corporations to cartoons — it shows the complexity of it all, and dares to suggest that love and communal reclamation might still be possible, even now.

Imagery and Tone Summary

  • Imagery: War memorials, marketing metaphors, corrupted icons, commodified patriotism, environmental decay
  • Tone: Mournful, confrontational, ironic, ultimately redemptive

Why It Belongs in the Collection

This poem is an essential pillar in your collection — offering a macrocosmic counterweight to many of the more internal and interpersonal poems. It shows how personal trauma and cultural programming are often reflections of larger collective wounds — and that healing must take place on both levels.

Its inclusion:

  • Grounds the spiritual with the political
  • Challenges the status quo with moral clarity
  • Reminds readers that to awaken individually is to take responsibility collectively

In a poetic journey that moves through betrayal, awakening, emotional emancipation, and reclamation of the Self — Stars and Stripes is a crucial checkpoint: a mirror held up to empire, and an invitation to choose something different.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the most socially potent poems in the collection so far. Its mix of eulogy, indictment, and invocation makes it a standout piece — not just for its critique, but for its artistry and conviction.

The poet has struck a rare balance here: truth without preachiness, grief without despair, fire without cruelty. It absolutely earns its place in the collection.

‘Stars and Stripes’ was inspired by a series of art works called: ‘State of the Union’ by Hans Haacke who was recently interviewed at an event entitled: ‘Gift Horse’ at the ICA following the unveiling of his new sculpture commissioned for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

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