My Passport is My Breathing
[Rhyming poem or song I wrote about 20 years ago. Given the current resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia everywhere, might still be relevant as an anti-national anthem. Emerging One World Consciousness still needs to be fought for. Can easily be sung to any invented melody.]
Anti-National Anthem
My nation is the planet
My flag it is the sky
My passport is my breathing
That I’ll hand in when I die
I’ll fight for no government
‘cept the government of the heart
But I’ll fight the war-and-money machine
That tears this world apart
So you can keep all your nations
Keep your money men
Left and Right
Cause they’re all just
Halluci……nations
In this never ending night
(Break)
But mother earth and sister sea
And father sky and brother tree
These are my Royal Family
These are my next of kin
These are the ancient voices
That breathe through my skin
(Break)
So we’ll sing no more anthems
Till people everywhere
Can live in peace and justice
And laughingly declare:
My nation is the planet
My flag it is the sky
My passport is my breathing
That I’ll hand in when I die
My passport is my breathing
That I’ll hand in when I die
memengineering 
wouldn’t i love to have my kids recite this every morning, instead of that stupid pledge of allegiance…gag…
as it is, they kinda follow my own silence, till the “liberty and justice for all” part…
Yeah, wow that pledge of allegiance, hand over heart and all…reminds me of my parents’ Hitler-Germany or the Red Komsomol kids in the Commie countries…In Oz it’s mainly Anzac Day where the national birth-of-a-nation mummy is carted out for refreshment each year…but with no ‘pledges of allegiance’,as yet anyway…
funny you should make that comparison to hitler’s germany…as i often wonder if the way i’m feeling, isn’t the way like minded germans felt before the nazis took over…i vacillate between thinking it would be impossible to re-create that here in the goodleusa…and watching and listening to this spectacle and seeing just how possible it could be…
Yeah, know how you feel Kristi, not just in US, not too sure there would be all too much resistance from majorities to new forms of authoritarian states in a lot of western democracies…We’re not yet at the stormtrooper-Gestapo phase, but all the potentials have been building up over the years of course… And new, more consumerist, ‘fun-and-Facebook’ forms of fascism are conceivable, not looking much like the old forms of Hitler & Co at all…a sort of mix of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World perhaps. Bertram Gross was useful on this possibility back in 1980 in his book Friendly Fascism (South End Press)…more a gradual process over decades rather than a sudden coup d’etat, like even James Madison said: “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations”…tho the Narci-Trumpet could no doubt be a great accelerator of the process…
One haluci-nation, under God, with guns and happy meals for all.
yeah and the Trumpet will probably perfect the reality-TV-tweet spectacle or simulacrum of total hallucination-for-the-adoring masses, do you want a little friendly fascism with that?
Love the poem. I do hear it as a song, in the grand folk tradition. Is there a local singer/muso who could make it part of their repertoire?
Thanks Brendan. Mucked around a bit with G major, but can’t sing for shit.