JOHN DAVIS

Lament for 1980s Childhood Villains

Blue-skinned men and metal-masked devils, where are you?
In this adult world, we face no tenor tyrants with skeleton
faces, no hissing sissies hiding their fear inside phony
uniforms and jackboots. Instead, dark business suits
with sword-sharp creases clothe plastic dictators
whose empty, artificial shells hold hollow
air of overseas factories stale with abandoned dreams.

Here, evil forces show no interest in mold-blown castles
but charge interest that decimates grown children raised
on supply-side economy and fast-food toy promises:
Prosperity arrives flavored like American beef
and salty, golden-fried ambition swallowed with soda.

Memories of cheap-gas road trips sustain us: unbuckled
backseat landscape replete with armored heroes and hooded
foes whose conquests never passed the braided, dotted line
of shiny upholstery stitching or the silver boundary
of push-button door locks, electric latches.

Return to us, petty warlords and furious foreign
beasts – this time needs your laughable ire,
your desire for fictional victory driven by small
but God-like fingers of Cold War children dressed in neon.

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