Here is another in the series of poems featuring Dr Cogito that I have been writing.
Dr Cogito’s fall
To this no-man fathomed deep,
In Dante’s written hell,
Down long, down cold, to flames I fell.
To the great men in union dues
I begged revenge to ill effect,
In the plumbers room,
Where power left me sole and wrecked,
A forgotten drunk with no spine,
Nor mind, fettered to this too real city,
But reaching for the things no numbers surpass.
My words watched from outside tearful glass
The bejeweled feast I am banished from,
Where, in branded rags to hide,
I steal sobs in sunken strife.
When only the mind is wrong,
The body soon sings pain in sympathy.
Then all day is dim.
Then all day is dull –
Slowly awaiting the numb relief
Of small capsules of hemlock
That for my errors in life
I am condemned to drink
And whose illusion breaks in groggy morn.
We call the land of the drones sane.
Escorted from the hive,
Freed from the dream of a cell to call mine own,
I am left to die, labeled and useless,
Clutching only my doctor’s script.
There, cowering alone I sing
Incantations of prose
To revive five forlorn bells,
An elegy to march towards weak light,
In this dread pageant stripped of mystery.
There, like an exiled, imprisoned king
I relive commiserated glories.
I pen laments and memories
Of an ill-tempered sovereign
At war with circumstance
Who lets the mad and insignificant
Moulder into a green and grey corruption
Where his true reign begins.
In the waiting room my eyes close.
I drape alone this penance,
And hide in frailty,
A long traveled pilgrim,
To wait upon the doctor’s administration.
Sitting with hands cupped upwards
Eyes closed, and bleeding,
I catch by sound alone
A rain of fallen martyrs
Whose lives are not told
In magazines, big or small,
Who scream tortured in household duty.
This long life lacks rites of recurring spring.
And so we must find them in learning, in memory.
So, each successive soul can dance itself to death
To appease our productive monster.
So, in the sacrifice the tribe is revived.
So, through sacrifice, the murmured lines endure.
What prince can promise such dire eternity?
No dreamt dwelling, this long wished home.
Jeff Rich
