The Situation Now with Pirates

is that these kids are sticking 

thumbtacks through the grommets
of pirate flags, all over America, 
on bedroom walls, hallway walls,
classroom walls, and one pirate flag
was even found flying on a flagpole
in the front yard of a seemingly nice family
who lives in your seemingly nice neighborhood.

The kids think it’s cool.
They think pirates are cool.
They think plundering and pillaging
and ransacking and looting and shooting are cool!

These kids with the pirate flags
are the very same kids on the Honor Roll,
and in student councils and in booster clubs
and in the Future Business Leaders of America-
these are the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts,
the soccer players, the altar boys,
the kids at the county fair showing off their rabbits-
these are the grandchildren we take into
nursing homes to visit their trembling grandparents,
these are the girls we drive to piano practice,
the boys we dress up in baseball uniforms,
these are the very same kids who are hoisting
pirate flags all over the United States of America.

When the adults are away, the kids
with the pirate flags make each other
walk the imaginary plank and they swig apple juice,
pretending it’s rum, and they stab each other
with plastic swords in imitation of their idols,
the pirates, the alcoholic womanizing thieves,
the men who used real swords, and drank real rum,
and forced themselves onto unwilling women.