Today, at the walnut table
I stared at my notebook’s white possibilities.

Two sirens taunted me:
Am I a madman or a soldier?

One, full of wine—
Chardonnay or Cabernet—

waited, on the verge of popping
its cork that sealed a promise.

The second, a guard at attention,
sweat on its dark neck,

tested with stern silence
my tenacity for the task.

Which one did I pick?
The liquid tango of obsession

or toil that marched
toward a difficult mission?

Today, I drank from both:
a soldier’s discipline

to grapple with choices
and a lunatic’s surrender to abandon.

# # #

David Spicer has had poems recently in Rat’s Ass Review, Reed Magazine, Chiron Review, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., among others, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, two Best of the Nets, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.