Red Flags

by Joshua C. Frank (December 2023)

 

Red Flags

The national flags of the Westerners’ lands
Turn red in the dim, fading light of the sunset,
Like Communist red—bloody floors in a prison;
All the flags look the same when the light fades away.

Distinctions of flags have all faded away;
You can’t tell your own from the Soviet land’s,
And Christians and patriots cast into prison
Are told by the warden they’ve seen their last sunset.

A country’s long day has to end with a sunset;
What soldiers have fought for is fading away,
And chaos fights order and locks it in prison.
The victim?  Depends on just where the die lands.

With what we hold dear walled away in a prison,
There’s nothing to do now but watch the land’s sunset.

 

 

The Banned Barbie

For a little girl’s birthday, I shopped at the mall
With my mother to pick the most suitable doll.
We went to the Barbies and searching we started;
Pink boxes stood high like the Red Sea when parted.

A doctor, a teacher, an athlete, a nurse,
A corporate executive, options diverse,
The bewildering array still was missing one other:
I noticed that Barbie was never a mother.

No baby, no stroller, no pregnancy belly,
No children around but a sister named Kelly.
The boxes said, “You can be anything,” but
The noblest career as an option was cut!

Yet I’d love for a little girl somewhere to learn
That her motherly wishes aren’t cause for concern
Or a childhood phase she’ll be leaving behind,
But a dream to encourage, and how she’s designed.

 

 

Left in the Cold

His parents left him frozen cold,
Three-hundred-plus degrees below.
An embryo at five days old,
For seven years, he’s ceased to grow,
With bio-functions all detained;
His house, a cryo-sleeper hole.
Although too young to have a brain,
He’s human life and has a soul.

The lab conceived him on a plate
With seven sisters, seven brothers,
And gambled with implanting eight
Into the body of his mother.
She bore two kids, two years apart;
Six others perished on the way,
While six more, with him from the start,
Have stayed in stasis to this day.

Instead of their beloved son,
He’ll be a snowflake in that room.
There’s nothing more that can be done;
He has no home but Mother’s womb.
His parents call two kids enough;
Three is too much, they want no more.
He’d need the cash that buys their stuff,
And in their minds, he’s just a spore.

Rejected runt, no conscious mind,
His whole life in a freezer pod.
When he leaves his cells behind,
Will his soul ascend to God?

 

 

A Leftist Rebukes Hamas

A satirical poem against the left’s appalling response to the terrorist group Hamas beheading babies in Israel

Hey, Hamas, you silly dolts,
You need to mow down more adults.
Keep fighting for your patch of sand,
Since Jews do not deserve the land,
But chopping off their babies’ heads
And slashing children in their beds?
You really need to be more subtle;
To succeed, you must befuddle.
Convince the unborn babies’ mothers
That nothing counts more than their ’druthers
And children are a dungeon chain
Forcing women’s toil and pain.
Convince them that it’s not alive
Until you see its face arrive
And anyone who disagrees
Hates women and ignores their pleas
(The usual apologetics).
Delegate the death to medics
Who live by an assassin’s dictum:
Kill when none can see the victim!

By pro-choice tactics, you may choose
A better way to kill the Jews,
But should you choose the final solution
Applied to France’s Revolution,
We still will stand up for your side
While your land is occupied.
Behead in public or abort—
The right to either, we’ll support.

 

 

Lost Sheep, Lost Sleep

The devil takes the people as his sheep.
Surrounded every day by hellish flocks,
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

They sell off precious human life for cheap
And weigh your death against the price of stocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

Another mother kills her child; I weep.
Murders tick by like second hands on clocks—
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

A couple learns the penalties are steep
For right belief as “child welfare” knocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

A woman casts her husband from his keep;
His speaking with his kids, she quickly blocks—
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

Through Christian doors, satanic toxins seep;
Despite God’s love, each family member mocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

Behind their Jesus masks the demons creep.
Which facts are lies?  Which facts are orthodox?
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

To God’s small flock, our Shepherd seems asleep
As one more pro-life priest, the Pope defrocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

God says that “as you sow, so shall you reap”
While keeping evil free from bars and locks—
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

Perhaps I think too much and think too deep
Because I think outside my culture’s box.
The devil takes the people as his sheep;
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

 

 

A Parent’s Prayer

How heavy the crosses that You have been giving—
Dear God, ever gladly I’ll bear them
And heavier still for as long as I’m living,
But as for my children, Lord, spare them.

I know that their lives on the earth are a trial,
But heartbreaks and griefs that impair them,
I’ll carry that burden myself with a smile,
And as for my children, Lord, spare them.

Don’t let them remake the mistakes of my youth,
And don’t let the devil ensnare them,
But help me to teach them to revel in Truth—
I beg You: my children, Lord, spare them.

 

(These poems were first published in The Society of Classical Poets)

 

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Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has been published in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Verse Virtual, and The Asahi Haikuist Network, and his short fiction has been published in Nanoism and The Creativity Webzine. His website is here.

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