Drown In Implacable Choices

The making of binding decisions
disposed in an array of cruelly
opposed choices, each drowned
in a matrix of its own antipathy,
is not something I would have
ordinarily prepared ground for.

I am not afraid to decide; I do
not belay taking the 'hard yards',
a phrase borrowed, I admit, from
a game I despise – more for the way
the ‘good ol’ boys’ poured scorn on
men like me because I differed.

Where they saw one way I saw three,
where they claimed death or glory
I deplored the waste. When they
said 'follow me' they meant 'us' in
a leadership anarchy – yet they still
expected me to show the way.

I am mindful of where I will stand and
fall, my cause of death is not freedom
of choice or its baleful inevitability,
the voice of reason rides whispering
on my shoulder always, reminding me
in words describing searing loneliness.

Choose I must – aware my choice means
nothing more than minor exchanges
in an infinity of chain-reactions immersed
in a stream of dreams coalescing in the great
placid lake of human sentience where I
drown in implacable choices.
© March 1, 2007 I.D. Carswell