I Burned The Flag On Independence Day

If you think it’s easy to burn The Flag
There’s a lot more to it,
You just can’t bend over and set a match to it,
It has to be soaked in something
Like Oil
Or Naptha
So I got some Crude Oil and soaked The Flag
Real good
Until it was black and unrecognizable
Except for its rectangular shape
Which I didn’t like so I twisted it around
With a stick and then soaked it again with
Naptha
And then I took a wooden match
Flicked it with my thumbnail
And watched the flame of the match
Flare up
And caught the burning whiff of sulfur in my nostrils
And then, bending over I lit the nearest corner of The Flag.

The Flash burned my eyes, The Blast knocked me back
And I was blinded for a few minutes
When I opened my eyes, The Flag was there
Inside the flames, burning but not being consumed
The black cloud of smoke rolled off of it like a burning oil well
But The Flag was straight and the colors were bright
And out of the center came
A regiment of British soldiers followed by
The Three Patriots: Drummer, Fifer, Standard Bearer
Only they were skeletons and their bones clacked as they marched and played
Their Death March
Then I saw the prison at Andersonville with its Line of Death
And Sherman’s Army like a fiery cannonball burning through the South

The Naptha
Exploded and there was a Marine on Guadalcanal with a flamethrower
Charring the bodies of Japanese soldiers who were holed up in caves
The USS Arizona raised to the surface in Pearl Harbor
And the voices of the dead cried out
Then it sunk again as the Burning Flag flared up
This time into two mushroom clouds
Where I could see the ashes of the children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
The Naptha
Flared again and a little Vietnamese girl ran down the road
Her body on fire
And then there were the faces of the dead at My Lai

There were flags in two windows of the twin towers at the World Trade Center
Targets for the guided missiles that hit them
There are flags on the coffins of sons and daughters, fathers and mothers
Coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq
There are flags flying in America
Flags of Aggression and Warfare
Flags of Oppression and Torture
Flags of Perdition
And nightmarish, gory
Flags of Gluttony and Greed

I looked at the charred remains of
The Flag
And the visions ceased
But when I looked again it was whole
And bright and clear
As if it had been exorcised
And made pure and had become
A Flag of Peace
Then it vanished and was gone forever.