Flags Made of Skin
Beneath the shadow of artillery’s blunt and brutal hymn
They cut the flag from living bodies,
stitched by gaslight and a national whim.Boys in dress uniforms
and girls in Sunday lace
Mothers who clung to medals, fathers
who vanished without a trace—All butchered by men in polished shoes
who never stepped in blood
Who spoke of freedom with a preacher’s tone
but knelt only to the flood.They built the altar out of coffins,
raised the banner with a fever’s fist
Wrote “honor” on a census sheet,
and lied about the lists.The towns are haunted by parades
where only names return
Where old men drink in silence and the fields still burn.Each scar a testament,
not to the glory sung, but to the bone and gristle ground
The little girls who found dog tags in mud,
the mothers who waited and drowned.They called it “sacrifice” and kissed the cloth,
but never wrote the price
Just hoisted flesh on poles of ash, baptized by the knife.
Night bleeds through the border, history written in bone and brine
Each hymn a pulse of propaganda,
every anthem a funeral line.They burned the language of the conquered,
rewrote the dead in marble and steel
They marched for “liberty” with wallets fat,
and let the orphans kneel.Behind each victory, a million ghosts feed the soil
Withered fingers reaching up through roots,
arms entwined in toil.The drums are loud,
but only to drown the wail of those consigned to sleep in dust
As men in pressed uniforms bark orders to boys
who will never be enough.The priests sprinkled holy water on rifles and hands
Gave blessings to bayonets and sermons to the damned
And no one asks whose daughters scream beneath the tank’s parade
Or whose sons came home zipped in flags—just empty shells, medals displayed.
The banners wave, still soaked in red, over parliaments that feign regret
Where politicians trade flesh for applause,
and soldiers curse in silhouette.A thousand years of history,
a thousand lies retold
Every page a map of bodies, every myth bought and sold.They worship color
and symbol, never the flesh that paid
They call it “nation,” “pride,” “tradition,”—forgetting the child in the
raid.Freedom, they say, as they march past graves, forgetting every name
Justifying murder with a border,
absolving genocide with fame.Yet the dead are not silent, the dead don’t forget
Their stories carved in sidewalks,
in every scarred silhouette.To love a flag is to swallow ghosts,
to sing a song for bones
To clutch a rag of human skin and pretend it’s not your own.
And when the final war is over, when every anthem dies
When all the banners rot away
and no one recalls the lies—There will still be children searching for fathers
who never came
Still be fields haunted by bones, by memory, and by shame.The flag will fray,
its colors fade, but underneath, the truth remains—No freedom won by killing kids,
no honor in their chains.Pride is a weapon, patriotism a brand
But the cost is counted in bodies,
in blood soaked in the land.The flag’s still flying, high and clean,
but look beneath the thread
It’s not a symbol—it’s a warning, a skin for the nameless dead.