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Landlocked again in frozen Iowa,
I’m still the captain of my ship,
I’ll still charm all of you sardines
and mackerel until you swoon,
all of you sharks and seagulls
who’ll swallow anything,
I won’t show mercy when you
float in the fever you catch.
I can cajole you to destroy each other,
or dazzle you to hug in a unified trance
before you lose grip and slide
into the twilight of your dance.
I can convince you to swim in oil-soaked ice,
and you’ll delight in this devilish smile
while we brandish my motto for the mission:
Our Love of Me Beams Like a Hundred
Lighthouses. Your wet minds are useless,
I’m a trickster who’ll defeat any fool
or liar, so when belief sinks in your
hypnotized faces, I’ll swagger
toward you — I’m a riot of one,
and you’ll stutter at my beck and call,
for I possess the ships, the oars, the nets,
I’m my own harpoon: none of you can
elude the epidemic of me as I gore
you, skewer you, and sell your
sorry souls to the highest bidder.
David Spicer has poems accepted by or published in such magazines as Reed Magazine, The Curly Mind, Slim Volume, Yellow Chair Review, Jersey Devil Press, TheNewVerse.News , On the Rush, Circle Seven, Phantom Kangaroo, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., and elsewhere. He is also the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, plus eight unpublished manuscripts.