Ulysses

Tyler Kaszuba

“Who are you, who do not know your history?”

I asked, face to face with certain death, soulless machines,

self-devouring husks of Old World ideals and failures.

Ignorant words of love for a country long since dead,

asleep in the fumes of its own perdition.

Utter devotion to a forgotten flag, a misguided symbol

that forges conflict in the unchanging fires of war.

 

I died that day you brought apocalypse to the Divide,

the place that I thought of as home, community,

torn asunder by the message you had delivered.

You showed me what it takes to destroy history,

not unlike the savages who thought to honor me with their braids.

What was once the pride of my tribe, now a meaningless symbol

woven by hands that raped. Pillaged. Burned. Mocking history.

 

We stand before each other now

where America has awoken beneath our feet.

Two couriers, their paths like Bear and Bull,

with the hope to begin again, to let go of the past,

and the conviction to see it done.

To kill a nation, you need only cut its throat,

and the symbol dies with it.