Kyla, written after watching the play by Lars Norén by the same name..

“Lest we forget how fragile we are…. “ Sting

The three of us drink beer in the park

We don’t notice the weather

Our black boots will protect us

The three of us

Shaved heads and tattoos of broken crosses

Proud but beaten

Displaced but native

Our black boots will protect us.

Singing the praises of Berlusconi

We raised our right fists in salute

With a single purpose;

“Sverige will be the color of snow.”

Our black boots will protect us

Our black boots, tall and proud

Thick soles, steel toes

Untied and open when at rest,

Our black boots will protect us

Today we stuffed our pant legs in

And laced up our boots tighter than ever

Our proud black boots.

They don’t know pain

They don’t know what they’ve done.

Our black boots will protect us.

We toyed with our prey like a cat,

We shouted our slogans,

Our boots put on quite a show for this captive audience.

Our boots hoped our ancestors would be proud

We all drank beer to feed our anger and our nerve

We circled like vultures around our prey

And then our boots, our proud black boots

Went to work.

Our black boots were proud

Our black boots will protect us

Our black boots don’t know the truth.

Our boots don’t realize

There are consequences for what we’ve done

His world is over and they don’t care

We asked each other

If this was the really real

We asked each other

If we’d done this before

Later that night we cleaned our black boots

They wanted more

Later that night we cleaned our black boots

We wondered how they’d protect us.

Author's Note

I wrote this poem, as the title suggests, after seeing the play Kyla. The play, written by the brilliant controversial Swedish playwright Lars Noren, is about 3 neo-nazis who brutally murder an immigrant merely because he's an immigrant. They toy with him for most of the play, then kill him. It's a very strong play and I felt like I wanted to further the message of the play by writing this.

Reviews

[Eliot Knight]

Ahhh I haven't seen the play but after reading your poem, I'm interested in doing so. Can it be viewed online?
I liked it a lot. It's always unsettling to think that murderers and savages too battle morality just as the rest of us.