Let's Burn the Flags of All Nations

Poet and novelist Michael Brownstein’s Let’s Burn the Flags of All Nations includes provocative poems such as “After Patriarchy Collapses and Capitalism Crumbles,” “The Jewish Poem,” “Planetary Patriots,” and the title poem -- works transcending the political into a vision of what is possible on a global scale.

The poems in Let’s Burn the Flags of All Nations urge us to abandon today’s ruthlessly competitive mindset that is running our future into the ground. They expose nationalism for what it is -- a myth separating us from our common humanity. We have forgotten who profits from this separation: the corporate, political, and military leaders of phantom entities created in our name.

Let’s Burn the Flags of All Nations is a handbook for change, calling on us to free ourselves from the fictions fed to us since childhood about who we are. It asks if we have what it takes to work out a new life:

It’s time to risk everything Open the gates, tear down the fences Roam wherever we like along Rivers and mountains without end Because we ourselves Are those rivers and mountains...

“Bold and inspiring, unyielding in their rigorous truth, these poems work to transform habitual patterns of fear and greed into the sane and generous life we all deserve. Let’s Burn the Flags of All Nations should be required reading for everyone.” (Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money)

“These tough, uncompromising poems of witness, rage, and anarchic wit unmasks the dysfunction of the human realm as it presses its Anthropocene agenda on the rest of the universe. They call for the end of patriarchy.” (Anne Waldman, author of Jaguar Harmonics)

“Wonderful, powerful poems that excite the heart and reveal truths behind the so-called patriotism that feeds into the hands of the 1%.” (John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)

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Michael Brownstein is the author of three novels – Self-Reliance, The Touch, and Country Cousins – as well as ten poetry titles including World on Fire, a book-length poem about corporate globalization and consciousness change. He lives in the Catskill mountains.