Answer:
A word I know, six letters it contains. Subtract just one and twelve remains.
My first master has four legs, my second master has two. My first I serve in life, my second I serve in death. Tough I am, yet soft beside. Against ladies cheeks I often reside.
It's equally comfortable in an orchestra and a geometry textbook. What is it?
They're up near the sky, on something very tall. Sometimes they die, only then do they fall.
I look at you, you look at me, I raise my right, you raise your left.
They are many and one, they wave and they drum, Used to cover a state, they go with you everywhere.