My flag has singed bullet holes polka-dotting it. The colors in the cloth ran a little bit after the sweat bath it was baptised in, but you can still see the blood that stained it under a cloudless sky. You can wear this flag like a cape, with your head through the ragged hole, or you can hang yourself with it. Today, I'm wearing it as a hospital gown on the street corner, yelling at passerby, ranting about my rights and their rights and ignorance and death and war and no one is listening. The shiny new nylon flag waves over my head, hanging like an anvil. No one looks my way. It's fine. I don't need them to anyhow. Flags are a symbol, symbols have power, and my flag has been bleached of all its symbolism, broken down and remade as a symbol of a different kind. My flag is charged with all the bitterness and hate I can cough up out of my guts. It's the cumrag of the world now, a hankerchief for the bloodiest phlem, a mop for all the urine and feces of a planet, kindling for fires, a fuse for molotov cocktails. I am unmaking this country with my flag, unraveling the stitches of its dream and using the scraps as tourniquets. The bigger pieces are good for filtering out tear gas. Not that I need it for that. The police officers that come to talk to me are wearing flags on their chests, just above their badges. I'm not surprised to see them, just tired. These cops are different though. Their guns are already drawn, and if could see into their car, I'd find the police report for my murder already filled out, signed and dated. My flag is about to get a few more holes. I ask one to read me my rights, which confounds the both of them, if only for a second, giving me all the time I need. I sit down into the lotus position, close my eyes, and flood my pores with memory of America I have stored up, all the greed, all the hypocrisy, all the arrogance, all the apathy, every abuse I can remember hearing about or seeing. It soaks into the canvas, hissing like acid, smoking slightly. We are at the edge now...and with a thought, I tilt us over the precipice, and my flag and I burst into flames. Once the video and pictures are online, everyone decides that I look like that vietnamese monk, except for my expression--I am not serene. I am wide eyed and laughing, an image so horrifying that afterwards, all this or any other flag can ever symbolize from then on is death and madness.