Flag on The Moon
The Americans planted their flag on the moon.
As if they could own the moon.
And no other nation seemed to care
about the ownership of this magical sphere,
giving journeys the right of passage.
It hardly seems to be fair.
I know of men, now in their graves,
unwilling to live under a flag as slaves.
One tore one down on the day
of the making of a queen,
vowing to never drink out of her cup.
By all the civilization an empire promised, he couldn’t be swayed.
So he faced the hangman a few years on,
no truer patriot, ready to become one with his country than this son.
The youngest and the last to face this type of glory,
he asked only for flowers of May
to touch the ground where he would lay.
For fear of further uprise, they buried him in their territory.
The other got halfway up the flagpole,
before they shot him down the rabbit hole,
before they sent him to kingdom come
in slow motion, like a fireman knowing
the disaster had already been done.
He too was set to return to the soil where he came from.
Of a generation who lived house theft at first sight
and brought up on the urge to fight,
he leaped to remove the red spot scratching the sky,
from a height, the mourners seemed so small.
He gazed ahead as three bullets dived from a balcony behind.
For fear they would take it all, we buried him at nightfall.
