The Slammer Conundrum, 2026 (whose hatred trumps whose)

I wear my flag with brown skin pride –
Red, black, and yellow on my side.
It’s more than cotton, thread, or ink,
It’s where I’m from, it’s how I think.
But here comes Bloke, Jerusalem Cross ablaze,
A supremacist glare beneath his smug gaze.

He growls, “Your shirt, your eyes, offend
My right to feel white to the bitter end!
You’ve fractured my sense of national pride,
I’m wounded, mate – now watch me confide
To the filth, to the coppers, I’m placing a call:
‘Hate, intimidation! Come cuff him, haul!’”

I laugh and say, “It cuts both ways –
Your cross and slogan set me ablaze!
Your tee and anger, coloured by hate,
Squash my spirit, suffocate.
I’m scared, I’m shaken, here’s what I do:
Dial up the filth, I’m dobbing on you!”

So here come the sirens, blue and red,
With notebooks poised, hats on their head.
They stare at my flag, they stare at his cross –
They mutter, consulting the 2026 gloss:
“What is hate, or just proud display?
Who feels ‘unsafe’ in this bizarro ballet?”

Do we both get marched to the slammer next door?
Do the handcuffs click on the rich and the poor?
Or just the darker, for threatening peace
With flags reminding white eyes of their lease?

Or maybe, just maybe, half the crowd –
The nation in prison green, defeated, cowed.
For who decides who gets to cry
“I feel offended, so you comply!”
And if we all dob and take offence,
The gaols will burst, at public expense.

So under these laws, how long, my friend,
Before satire and logic both end?
And half the country’s locked away –
For wearing their truth in bold display.

It’s a hell of a riddle, a bungle, a blight:
Who owns the story, who wins the fight?
As for the filth – whose side do they take?
Who’s left standing, or who’s the fake?
In the land of the free, if you dare to recall,
Intimidation’s a tee shirt, for one and for all.