My apologies to Francis Scott Key.
~~~
Oh, say, can you see, by the bombs' lasting light
What so proudly we hailed at the moonlight's last beaming;
Whose flawed spite and trite spars, through this perilous night.
Over the sidelines we watch, so tauntingly screaming?
And the missile's loud blare, the people's cursed prayers,
Gave proof through the light, that our hate is still here.
Oh, say, does that scar-mangled banner yet maim
In the land of greed, and the home of the paid?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the keep,
Where the comrade's host in smirking silence dozes,
What is that which the breeze, when the children weep,
As it fitfully blows, half steals, half opposes?
Now it catches the stream of the morning's first scream,
In full plight reflected now dulls in the dream:
It's the scar-mangled banner, long may it shame
In the land of greed and the home of the paid.
And here is the band who so boastfully swore
That the slight hand of war and the tactful illusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no core?
Our blood in their voracious jowls of confusion.
No refuge can help the immigrant and the depraved.
From the terror of flight, or the tomb of the grave:
And the scar-mangled banner in disgrace does claim,
In the land of greed and the home of the paid.
Thus be it ever, when freemen shall fan
Between their loved homes and other's damnation.
Distraught with failure, may Hell's desecrated land
Praise the power that has made and served us predation!
Then yield we must, if our cause isn't enough,
And this be their motto: In wealth we lust.
And the scar-mangled banner in anguish shall wave
Over the land of greed and the home of the paid!
YOU ARE READING
Sitting Here Thinking (2019)
PoetryShort poems of varying subjects and construction, but deep enough to be swallowed in. Written while sitting anywhere, lost in thought about everything and anything. These were written mostly in the year 2019. Please feel free to leave any feedback...
