Ceci n'est pas un drapeau

You have pledged your allegiance to me since before you can remember. You were under the God in whom we trusted, since before you can remember. That some people can remember more is incidental. From my pole I saw generations of students come and go, lurked in the corners of your classrooms and corridors, drooped in equal parts approval and disapproval.	I am on fire. I'm wrapped around a protestor's mouth to protect her from tear gas and to symbolize the repression of dissent. I am hung upside-down. Your decal of me won't get you into heaven anymore.
	They fly me on the news, anymore, a waving icon in the corner of the screen. I like corners. News stories have two sides but I have only one. In a corner you can't approach me from behind. I am the abstract face of democracy, my stars and stripes a USA Today info-graphic on colonialism. Texas sees things differently.
	When your grade school teacher was told to enforce the requirement that you all say the pledge every morning, she half-heartedly complied until one day she gave up in disgust. It was your first lesson in the power of civil disobedience. You stopped saying the pledge, but I continued hovering over you for years.
	I can see, but I won't say. I am the mute canvas onto which the intent of the founders is streaked in red like blood that never dries. These colors don't run, but since when do colors run? You have helped me more than I will ever help you.
	Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech. What part of that don't you understand? Your schoolchildren whose allegiance to me and your God you required have peaceably assembled to petition you for redress of their grievances. Don't look at me.
	I cannot be trademarked, any more than the word "patent" can be patented. But I am a trademark, since America stands for free trade. You are free to trade your flags in for me. The sooner the better -- beat the rush.
1995: The Flag Desecration Constitutional Amendment passes in the senate. 1969: The American flag is removed from the moon by Neil Armstrong. 1960: 50th star removed (Hawaii) 1959: 49th star removed (Alaska) 1949: Truman revokes flag day. 1931: Congress declares that "The Star Spangled Banner" is no longer the national anthem.
Jasper Johns was right: A painting of a flag is still a flag.
Fucking flag you're a brand on America's inner ass, that reptilian part of our brain which joined and so did not die, who offered the Indian Eve the forbidden fruit of private ownership and original sin, who would rather carry a gun than learn to compromise, who ran into the west coast and so pushed inward, who invented the atomic bomb called the inner city, whose uncritical mass of grey matter is neither, its true flag black and white, confederate, not red meat but black meat, pounded into submission starving hysterical naked, lunch, cigarettes in a coffee filter, filterless, pushing the surgeon general into a walk-in freezer, the flag is a football being drop kicked through the goal posts of bullshit, another bullshit point of fucking light as millions die of aids and limp through crumbled cities in the countries of our enemies or workers. Pledge allegiance to this.
I owe allegiance to no one. You know why: there was no room at the Inn, so Betsy Ross sewed me in a manger, and the drum & fife corps brought me gifts of Zildjian and Selmer. Colonists spangled me. Now I flap for your sins along with the rest of the American trinity: the eagle and that pyramid-eye thingie.
Blooded, scare, baiting, neck. House, wash, supremacy, water. s, the; blood, beard, balls.
I do not discriminate. 5 cents will buy you a flag sticker. 37 cents, a flag stamp. $1.50, a plastic flag on a stick. $5, a small vynil flag. $10, a large polyester flag. $25, a large rayon flag. $50, a large cotton flag with embossed stars. $125, an heirloom-quality flag with tassles and an eagle on the pole. $520, an actual flag used in WWI. $1250, a historic pre-civil-war flag. $2650, a flag with gold stitching and pearl inlay on each star. $3458, a really, really big flag on a three-story pole. $7690, a large titanium flag with 14 karat gold stars. $10,937: 20,000 red, white, and blue cards with instructions and a staff of people to hand them out so that 20,000 football spectators can form a giant human flag at halftime. $25 billion, a cloth flag on a wire frame and the necessary equipment and staff to plant it on the moon.
I'm not your flag. Yours has more colors on it. It includes more than the colonies and states in the republic for which I stand. But I bear you no ill. I do not deny what has been done in my name, nor do you deny what has been done in yours. The difference is that while you march on the street I flap in the breeze, no less flamboyant or ambiguous than a puppet on a stilt. Do not despair. Pass whatever amendments you want. Burn me or fly me in battle, grow old and die, but I will not change and I will not mean what you want me to.