Poets United Midweek Motif ~ National Flag(s)

United Nations members' national flags
(Tom Page, photo)

“When you set a good example to the world, you become a flag 
waving on the skies of the entire world!” 

― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Raising the flag and singing the anthem are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason.” 

― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

 Midweek Motif ~ National Flag(s)

Flags are beautiful. 
We sing patriotic songs in front of flags. 
I thought I would find many national anthems like that of the USA which glorifies a flag flying in the heat of battle, but my browsing through a List of national anthems brought up very few that even mention the flag. This made me happy. 
Today let's observe flags and see what rises up.

 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem about a nation's flag and what it stands for.  Maybe the poem is an Anthem, maybe it is a Pledge of Allegiance.  Maybe it is a hope.  Include a description of the flag in your poem.

Flags of Native Peoples of the USA

excerpt from Colors of the Comanche Nation Flag

BY SY HOAHWAH

                              Red

Mupits’ breath, in moonlight, outside a child’s bedroom window

Hunter’s bones scattered on the prairie

Fragrance of Comanche gangstas who entered The Zoo Club

and assassinated the bosses of Underworld Seven,

a Navajo crime syndicate

Little Stoney Burgess’s footprints after catching ghost sickness

by running through Post Oak Cemetery chased

by snot-nosed bully, Blender Plenty Bear

                              Blue

Lips of the poisoned tribal chairman collapsed on the buffet table

at the 1974 Comanche Nation Inaugural Dinner

Silk handkerchief drawn over the stuffed owl used to converse

with the dead

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Flag of Bangladesh

excerpt from Reading Celan at the Liberation War Museum 

BY TARFIA FAIZULLAH

—Independence Day Celebration 2011, Dhaka

         . . . .

 ii.

Moon-pale stacks of clavicle a hand

            brushes dust from. I lost a word

that was left to me: sister. The wind

             severs through us—we sit, wait

for songs of nation and loss in neat

            long rows below this leaf-green

flag—its red-stitched circle stains

            us blood-bright blossom, stains

us river-silk—I saw you, sister, standing

            in this brilliance—I saw light sawing

through a broken car window, thistling

            us pink—I saw, sister, your bleeding

head, an unfurling shapla flower

            petaling slow across mute water—

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE)

Flag of the Austrian Empire

excerpt from Beginning with 1914

BY LISEL MUELLER

Since it always begins

in the unlikeliest place

we start in an obsolete country

on no current map. The camera

glides over flower beds,

for this is a southern climate.

We focus on medals, a horse,

on a white uniform,

for this is June. The young man

waves to the people lining the road,

he lifts a child, he catches

a rose from a wrinkled woman

in a blue kerchief. Then we hear shots

and close in on a casket

draped in the Austrian flag.

Thirty-one days torn off a calendar.

Bombs on Belgrade; then Europe explodes.

We watch the trenches fill with men,

the air with live ammunition.

A close-up of a five-year-old

living on turnips. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE)

O fire, O soul
Give us the spark of God-eternal,
That friend to friend and friend to foe,
One shall we stand before HIM.
And the flame of Jatin,
And the fire of Bhagath,
And the love of the Mahatma in all,
O, lift the flag high,
Lift the flag high,This is the flag of the Revolution

― Raja Rao, Kanthapura

(Found at DeskGram)

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ 

The World is a Beautiful Place.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ News Media

TODAY!

The 2017 Celebration of World Press

Freedom Day will be in Jakarta:  

"Critical Minds for Critical Times: 

Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just 

and inclusive societies."

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.” 

― Will Rogers

“In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the . . . . freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin. . . .” 

― Hélder Câmara

“The English-language press in India supports the project of corporate globalization fully. . . .  Let's support everything that leads to the conditions in which the massacre takes place, but when the killing starts, you recoil in middle-class horror, and say, ". . . . Can't we be more civilized?” 

― Arundhati Roy, The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile

Midweek Motif ~ 
News Media

So, our medium is poetry . . . 
which doesn't exclude news or the variety 
and uses of media in our world.  
Who controls whom?

We'd love to read your stories.

Your Challenge:  Either write a new documentary poem OR a new poem that comments on News Media.

Notes and Quotes from the Media War from HonestReporting

Excerpt from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower 

by William Carlos Williams

. . . . 

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides. 

(Read the rest HERE.)

excerpt from The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

by Bob Dylan

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gathering
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
 . . . .

Read the rest HERE. (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.)

From Blue Front

BY MARTHA COLLINS

There were trees on those streets that were named

for trees: Sycamore, Cedar, Poplar, Pine,

Elm, where the woman's body was found,

where the man's body was taken and burned—

There must have been trees, there were trees

on Seventh Street, in front of the house that stands

in the picture behind the carriage that holds

the boy's mother, the boy's cousin, the boy—

And of course there were trees on Washington

Avenue, wide boulevard lined with exotic

ginkgoes, stately magnolias, there were trees

on that street that are still on that street,

trees that shaded the fenced-in yards of the large

Victorian houses, the mansion built by the man

who sold flour to Grant for the Union troops,

trees that were known to the crowd that saw

the victim hanged, though not on a tree, this

was not the country, they used a steel arch

with electric lights, and later a lamppost, this

was a modern event, the trees were not involved.

. . . . 

(Read more HERE.)

🙈 🙉 🙊

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Childbirth)

♡♡♡

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Conversation

Leslie Hunter's Figures in conversation, Étaples, 1914

“Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.” 
― Evelyn Waugh

“And once again, only the Small Things were said. 
The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.” 
― Arundhati Roy

 He Comes for Conversation

"Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded 

very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil 

with which words are eaten.”      

-- Chinua Achebe

"The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty

observations, has a romance of its own." 

--Virginia Woolf 

Midweek Motif ~ Conversation

The thing about conversation 
is that no one can do it alone.

I prefer one-on-one, but have had some stunning group conversations.

How about you?

Your Challenge: Write a new poem with conversation in it OR about conversation(s).

   

The Dangling Conversation

The Little Boy and the Old Man

by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’

Said the little old man, ‘I do that too.’

The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’

‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.

Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’

The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’

‘But worse of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems

Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.

‘I know what you mean,’ said the old man.
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Excerpt from The Mango

by Mary Oliver

. . . 

After salmon and salads,

mangoes for everyone appeared on blue plates,

each one cut in half and scored

and shoved forward from its rind, like an orange flower,

cubist and juicy.

When I began to eat

things happened.

All through the sweetness I heard voices,

men and women talking about something—

another country, and trouble.

It wasn’t my language, but I understood enough.

Jungles, and death. The ships

leaving the harbors, their holds

filled with mangoes.

Children, brushing the flies away

from their hot faces

as they worked in the fields.

Men, and guns.

The voices all ran together

so that I tasted them in the taste of the mango,

a sharp gravel in the flesh.

Later, in the kitchen, I saw the stones

like torn-out tongues

embedded in the honeyed centers.

They were talking among themselves—

family news,

a few lines of a song

(Read the rest HERE)

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Excerpt from Telephone Conversation

by Wole Soyinka

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. "Madam," I warned,

"I hate a wasted journey—I am African."

Silence. Silenced transmission of

Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.

"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?" Button B, Button A.* Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--

"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" Revelation came.

"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?"

Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality.

 . . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below 

and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ Neutrality / Objectivity )