Red Cross on White

[A Poem for St. George’s Day]

The flag is nothing but a bloody gash on a white background,

stabbed guts oozing through a white nightgown.

Life is nothing more than a ride on a fairground misery-go-round.

The wheel of fortune round and round it goes.

The flag is Christ crucified anachronistically in snowy climes;

the blinding bright white light of might and right hiding behind the blood

of crusades and dragons slain and forests felled in olden times.

The stained relic of a shroud. Santa Claus coming

down the chimney to groom your children with gifts.

The red hot iron of a sword rising up from the white heat of a forge;

the rust of defunct factory machinery overrun by frost;

blood spattered by a slaver’s whip on sugar or salt;

lipstick on the pale lips of a corpse

splayed out in the powder of a burst bag of coke after a police raid

or a hit. Painted sunset seen through knife wound and smog.

The red mark of the forbidden and wrong.

The cross roads littered with the ghost limbs of accident victims.

Martyrs fall and rise and fall.

X always marks the spot.

It is an unknown, red, hot, angry, flagging

unknown, waiting to explode:

blood-borne virus on the pristine white coat of an ambulance driver.