(Photo by Fibonacci Blue)
I pledge allegiance to the tears and to the sweat and to the blood
Of those that united their human limit
And human ache
And human passion
To the mercenaries of the spirit
I pledge my soul
My flesh
My histories and my futures
To the soldiers draped in their mothers wet kisses from the heartland of America
Valiant enough to connect their mother’s love to the love of tears of the mothers
Of Mesopotamia
Who saw their children’s futures
Destroyed in the palaces and huts and strategic war rooms
Of the powerful
I pledge allegiance to the Republic of those that still believe in a Republic
Brazen enough to walk humbly and reject a check
I will not be sold
they whisper to themselves in the little light
that still remains
I pledge allegiance to the one nation
of the earliest alarms
precursors of a future
working the land
opening the shop
assembling in the factory
this is my nation
the nation under
God
And beside God
Inside God
God inside
I pledge
God dead with us on a war zone or subway ride
who cannot help but remain
and whose biggest most tenacious obsession
is
to continue to pledge allegiance to us all.
***
Carlos Rodríguez is an educator at Verbum Dei High School in Watts, CA. You can follow him @CarlosMRodrig89.
