88. Stars and Stripes

Posted on March 8, 2015 by iPoem

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

67. Bread and Circus

Posted on August 12, 2012 by iPoem

Review of Bread and Circus

Sunday 12th August 2012

Summary

Bread and Circus is a searing critique of contemporary society, culture, and media manipulation. Rooted in historical allusion and poetic sharpness, it draws a direct line from the fall of ancient Rome to the decline of modern Western civic values — particularly in post-industrial London. Through the metaphor of “bread and circuses”, the poem exposes the ways in which spectacle, distraction, and consumerism have replaced meaningful engagement, community responsibility, and genuine freedom.

Why This Poem Matters

This is a poem with teeth.

Taking its title from the phrase coined by Roman satirist Juvenal — “panem et circenses” — the piece uses this historical reference not simply as metaphor but as prophecy. In ancient Rome, the strategy of distracting the masses with food and entertainment served to pacify the public and deflect attention from political degradation. The poem implies that we are now living in a modern replay of that tactic, where the cultural narrative is no longer shaped by ethics or enlightenment, but by:

“The gaudy bauble of the bread and circuses / Pantheon of the minor media celebrity trivia, frivolous spectacle”

There’s a deep disgust here — not moralistic, but mournful — that something once noble has been hollowed out. The civic body has become a confectionary shell. What was once rich in philosophical depth, communal care, and democratic spirit is now:

“Homogenised, pulverised, diluted and perverted / Into the confectionary cabin’d cribb’d cavity / Of society’s vacuous missing soul”

The imagery evokes both industrial machinery and dental decay — society not just controlled but rotting from within. The “cabin’d cribb’d cavity” (a Shakespearean echo, perhaps from Macbeth) paints a claustrophobic image of entrapment, indulgence, and internal erosion.

The Metaphysical & Material Collapse

While on the surface this is a poem about sociopolitical disillusionment, there’s also a spiritual lament embedded beneath. The soul — both individual and collective — is the ultimate casualty. There is no redemption offered, only diagnosis:

“Replaced with a prescribed sugar-coated illusory reality / That enslaves 80% of the populace through a manipulative ideology”

This is not just critique — it’s revelation. The poem suggests that the illusion of freedom is the most dangerous kind of control — a brilliantly disguised mechanism that keeps people from awakening to the deeper truths of their existence.

The percentage (80%) is especially effective — a blunt and clinical figure amid poetic lyricism, grounding the abstract in statistical reality. It’s a psychological, spiritual, and economic enslavement wrapped in the comforting packaging of pop culture, media saturation, and economic conformity.

Tone, Form, and Imagery

Tonally, this piece channels the observational detachment of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land with the contemporary bite of postmodern social commentary. The opening image —

“Post-industrial London groans restlessly / Under a Lowry-esque watercolour laden sky”

— conjures an overworked, greyscale world where human life has become routine, mechanical, and aestheticised into passive observation. The reference to L.S. Lowry evokes the flattened, faceless workers of England’s industrial history, still trudging through a system that no longer feeds the soul — only the spectacle.

In Conclusion

Bread and Circus is a bold, necessary poem. Not because it offers solutions, but because it tells the uncomfortable truth: our culture may have traded its soul for sugar-coated distraction. It’s a poem that dares to ask whether the freedom we think we have is just a cleverly disguised leash.

And like any great piece of dissenting literature, it doesn’t plead for attention — it demands it.

“…a false freedom, that never really
existed in the first place…”

This final line lands like a quiet bomb. The illusion is total. But the poem itself — like a shard of mirror — reflects enough truth to help us wake up, if we dare.