Genies Wearing Jackboots

Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet

German troops march in triumph through Warsaw, September 1939 - from WW2history.com

Genies Wearing Jackboots

We rubbed the lamp, it didn’t take us very long,
We thought we had consigned them to history,
And now they are back, genies wearing jackboots. 

The post war promised much, resolve was strong,
We made our monuments, laureling our glory,
Then, we rubbed the lamp, it didn’t take us very long.

They found the lamp, Ronnie and Maggie in cahoots,
It stayed in the cupboard, waiting for a judge and jury,
And now they are back, genies wearing jackboots.

Europe healed, opened her doors, lines grew long,
Faces darker, money freed, bankers wrote the story,
So, we rubbed the lamp, it didn’t take us very long.

A crash caused by greed, austerity gave Brexit roots,
The poor against the poor, the USA equally grisly,
And now they are back, genies wearing jackboots.

We thought it couldn’t happen again, we were wrong
The Genies look familiar, the strut, the Franco, Duce, Fuhrey,
But we rubbed the lamp, it didn’t take us very long,
And now they are back, genies wearing jackboots.

I wrote this poem back in 2018 but it feels ominously prescient now. I don’t post this to be a Cassandra, or a prophet of doom. I post it in a spirit of hopeful hyperbole or exaggeration to make a point. The point is that history may not repeat itself exactly but it does seem to rhyme.

In all my years I do not remember a time, apart from perhaps when I was just born and the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, when things have looked quit so incendiary.

The elections this year across the world, especially in India, the UK and the USA are possible turning points. As well as the growing crisis in Isreal/Palestine, Yemen, Taiwan and Ukraine. Not to mention further possible military activity by Russia in the Baltic States.

I am just trying to poetically remind myself to stay awake and do what I can with my votes and my voice to speak up. Here is a quote fromDietrich Bonhoeffer who was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident. He was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”