The Flag

You want me to worship and to venerate this flag

This flag which was raised over the dead bodies of my ancestors in triumph after they were slaughtered for their disobedience

This flag which was raised over their broken backs, casting shadows over the flesh where whips were sunk cruelly like teeth into their skin

This flag which was flown, triumphantly over the verdant forests of Brazil

And the favelas where my ancestors slept

So that democratically elected leaders who attempted to redistribute wealth, free mixed men women and children from corporate parasitism

And secure the most basic cultural dignity for the laborers who put fruit in western supermarkets, and manufactured the various metals of capitalist hegemony

Could de deposed at Uncle Sam’s behest

Black bodies could be put back in their place

And native land could be raised once more for methane farms

This is the flag my ancestors saw before them when they were brought here in chains

It is the altar at which my ancestors sacrificed their language, religion, and culture to escape European industrialization and destitution

When this flag falls, I will not cry

How dare you ask me to

To worship this flag would be to spit on their memory

To worship this flag would be to deny my own reality

My loyalty is not to a grand courthouse filled with laws designed to control me

A brutalist prison complex designed to frighten me

A border fence beyond a stolen river

Or a freestone palace built by slaves

My loyalty is to the country; to its people, to its land

My loyalty is to the bakers who baked the bread which livened my palate as a little boy

The pizza makers who tossed dough above tired fingers

The fisherman who filled buckets with bluefish by the pier

And the laborers who slaved to build the bridges I crossed with romance in my eyes

So I could look out from beneath their spires, and watch life unfold in a million different faces

My loyalty is to the friends who held my hand on the path to manhood

The teachers who filled my mind with knowledge

The bus drivers who took me home everyday

And the old women who watched astutely from the corner

To make sure that I was safe, even if I never returned their gaze

My loyalty is to the road pavers who fashioned the streets I played on everyday

The grave diggers who placed my grandmother carefully into the ground

The arborists who planted the vast trees which sheltered me with their dappled shadows

And every single one of the women who carried life forward before my birth

Because they believed, despite indescribable pain and a society which scowled at them

That change would finally come

Someday

This flag has let them down

Do not ask me to