Liebchen

By David Saap

Liebchen
You needn’t worry
As we’re civilized
This isn’t 1935
Never mind
The thump of
Jackboots outside
Your window
They’ll pass in time
Return to your
Romance novel
Return to your home
And garden show
Perfect granite
And stainless steel
(Flip that house
Few can afford)
Never mind
That brutal icy round up
(You’re much too pale)
The stifling of speech
The deed to your womb
Remember you voted
Obviously disgruntled
Over the price of eggs
This is Ohio after all
This isn’t 1935

I Want

I want
Dammit I want
Gotta have my cruise
Gotta stuff myself
And gamble and get
Drunk as I want
Floating drifting
On so much steel and oil
And obscene power
All To entertain me

Gotta have
My sailboat my RV
My ski trip my jet skies
Gotta have my mini
Mansion with the perfect
Backsplash tile
Granite countertop
Newest matching appliances
Precisely like all the
Pretty people on TV

(I demand I insist
Callously persistent
A nation of tantrums)

Gotta have my cardboard
Box after box after box
My daily delivered fix
(I’m so friggin’ high!)
For me all for me
Gotta have my gas sucking
Big ass pick-up truck
Hauling all
My insignificance

Gotta have my semi-auto
Gotta have my bullets
Gotta make my itchy
Trigger finger exceedingly
Happy happy happy
My tank my bombs my nukes
I just gotta gotta have it
I want

Sincerely Yours

Dearest dumbass
That would be
You me – all of us
What now?
Exquisitely distracted
While spinning
Your Wheel of Fortune
Your book club
Your brunch
Your cruise
Your abundant consumption
Canada is burning
Did you get a whiff
Of catastrophe
This far south
Acrid in your mouth?
And it’s raining
Every day on the news
Another deluge
Let’s all hitch a ride
Two by two with Noah
(I am thinking there’s
No seat for us in the Ark)
But then whatever
Could you do when
Occasionally terrified for
Your children’s children?
Sincerely yours

BIO

David Sapp, writer and artist, is the recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and art and is a Pushcart nominee. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Asia. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior; several chapbooks; a novel, Flying Over Erie; a book of poems and drawings, Drawing Nirvana; and four books of poetry and prose, Love and History, Acquaintances, A Precious Transience, and a memoir titled The Origin of Affection, winner of the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award.