Poets United Midweek Motif ~ National Flag(s)

United Nations members' national flags
(Tom Page, photo)

“When you set a good example to the world, you become a flag 
waving on the skies of the entire world!” 

― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Raising the flag and singing the anthem are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason.” 

― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

 Midweek Motif ~ National Flag(s)

Flags are beautiful. 
We sing patriotic songs in front of flags. 
I thought I would find many national anthems like that of the USA which glorifies a flag flying in the heat of battle, but my browsing through a List of national anthems brought up very few that even mention the flag. This made me happy. 
Today let's observe flags and see what rises up.

 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem about a nation's flag and what it stands for.  Maybe the poem is an Anthem, maybe it is a Pledge of Allegiance.  Maybe it is a hope.  Include a description of the flag in your poem.

Flags of Native Peoples of the USA

excerpt from Colors of the Comanche Nation Flag

BY SY HOAHWAH

                              Red

Mupits’ breath, in moonlight, outside a child’s bedroom window

Hunter’s bones scattered on the prairie

Fragrance of Comanche gangstas who entered The Zoo Club

and assassinated the bosses of Underworld Seven,

a Navajo crime syndicate

Little Stoney Burgess’s footprints after catching ghost sickness

by running through Post Oak Cemetery chased

by snot-nosed bully, Blender Plenty Bear

                              Blue

Lips of the poisoned tribal chairman collapsed on the buffet table

at the 1974 Comanche Nation Inaugural Dinner

Silk handkerchief drawn over the stuffed owl used to converse

with the dead

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Flag of Bangladesh

excerpt from Reading Celan at the Liberation War Museum 

BY TARFIA FAIZULLAH

—Independence Day Celebration 2011, Dhaka

         . . . .

 ii.

Moon-pale stacks of clavicle a hand

            brushes dust from. I lost a word

that was left to me: sister. The wind

             severs through us—we sit, wait

for songs of nation and loss in neat

            long rows below this leaf-green

flag—its red-stitched circle stains

            us blood-bright blossom, stains

us river-silk—I saw you, sister, standing

            in this brilliance—I saw light sawing

through a broken car window, thistling

            us pink—I saw, sister, your bleeding

head, an unfurling shapla flower

            petaling slow across mute water—

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE)

Flag of the Austrian Empire

excerpt from Beginning with 1914

BY LISEL MUELLER

Since it always begins

in the unlikeliest place

we start in an obsolete country

on no current map. The camera

glides over flower beds,

for this is a southern climate.

We focus on medals, a horse,

on a white uniform,

for this is June. The young man

waves to the people lining the road,

he lifts a child, he catches

a rose from a wrinkled woman

in a blue kerchief. Then we hear shots

and close in on a casket

draped in the Austrian flag.

Thirty-one days torn off a calendar.

Bombs on Belgrade; then Europe explodes.

We watch the trenches fill with men,

the air with live ammunition.

A close-up of a five-year-old

living on turnips. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE)

O fire, O soul
Give us the spark of God-eternal,
That friend to friend and friend to foe,
One shall we stand before HIM.
And the flame of Jatin,
And the fire of Bhagath,
And the love of the Mahatma in all,
O, lift the flag high,
Lift the flag high,This is the flag of the Revolution

― Raja Rao, Kanthapura

(Found at DeskGram)

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ 

The World is a Beautiful Place.)