Crossing The Sea Of Idiocy by David Spicer

I struggle with insomnia, haven’t slept
for two days. No appetite for camaraderie.
We’re thieves, yes, and we plunder–
remember when we pillaged the Ulster
village, its old men screaming like a deranged
wind?–but I can’t invite you in for supper,
not if you crawl, groan, or implore me to open
my doors, for the dunes here in Morocco
with their tribes and villains absent of honor
are opposite of Ireland’s shores. I’ve fantasized
about my dignified return, my shined
burgundy boots illuminating twilight
when I creak open the ferry gates
in weather that oppressed me decades ago.
The outlaw in me will return any day:
tomorrow, when the sea cries, perhaps.
Yes, I’m on the brim of a new venture–
I have no scruples about unlocking trunks
of old bones and photographs of no belly,
the no belly of a rebel long dead–and, crossing
the sea of idiocy, I’ll denounce my lame
exile and bedazzle you, worshipers and lovers,
with the eloquence of the fire and brimstone
bastard I’ve always been and always will be.

David Spicer has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, The American Poetry Review, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, 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.