I Still Sing of Olaf

1.
This is the best of all possible worlds.
For how could True Love create less?

(Asserting what myths are supposed to do
is now deemed to be medieval thinking.)

When Voltaire lay dying, a parish priest
thought he had him. “Time to repent!”

“Who sent you?” Voltaire asked. “God!”
“Pray prove it. Where is His visiting card?”

2.
Relax; the Lord has since moved to America.
My country ‘tis of Thee? Let me count the ways.

We raze chickens, we crate pigs. His people
warehouse His people–especially Blacks.

Higher education in the land of the free
isn’t free; good jobs are scarce;

our health care sucks and what we have
costs too much, for Germans, French, etc.

live better longer. Earth’s richest country
has a poverty rate that is truly astounding.

Though our carbon footprint isn’t getting better,
on thin ice we trample on; who cares?

While metaphorical and concrete bridges totter,
we murder murderers, mistreat the addicted, and

what’s done to Blacks and the indigenous
disgraces our faux-numinous flag. He-men

don’t bake cakes for Sapphics; white wives,
obey white husbands; do socks doubt St. Paul?

Jesus and the Second Amendment, mucked-
up gods of Texas, roil God’s country up

which has more guns than people. We’re leaders in
shootouts; our suicide rate should make us ashamed,

but it doesn’t. Our courts are blind? Might as well
claim American bladders exude perfect piss! Etc.

3.
It’s hard to believe, yet I still do. Here
where inequality reigns like napalm

There is some shit I will not eat.” (Italics mine)
Still still

still still
why do non-Olafs consume it?

Thomas Dorsett, a retired physician, has had poems appear in over 500 literary journals, including Southern Poetry Review, Confrontation, North Carolina Review and The Texas Review. He is also the author of several collections. Read other articles by Thomas.