Here is another poem, belonging in my Dr Cogito series, if without any direct naming of this persona.
No Markers
There are no markers for when I pass
To this world that holds me fast
But permits at least with frequent trips
Brief reports on conditions there
Most of the lands are unmapped
The cities blur in broken memories
The smoldering glory of a world undone
But for ruins curated by my kind
It is the simple things I can repeat
Like slicing slowly through a peach
Or standing atrophied
In complete exhaustion
Before the verdicts of my peers collapse
And hard men learned in the ken
Cry out for me to run, and take
these poor letters to unknown friends.
Breathing, hard and fast, I wait upon
their answer heard alone in the other world.
At other times, they call me outcast.
In ashen dress I conceal my crime;
Perhaps even I have forgotten
What marked me, what called me
To sit in feigned solitude
And demand a prophet’s vision
Beyond my strength. Yet these self-sworn chains
And the blistered skin beneath
Are now my nightly gown, my stately dress.
No laughter, no canon of the humane
And death can free me from this daily task
To transmogrify the unattainable madness.
Then in hakluyt editions of some second life
These strange journeys will encounter
The welcoming arms of the prodigal father
And at last taste unquenchable life, with dear Penelope.
if i’d read this a couple of years ago when i had time to read more books, & read a lot of archaic, esoteric stuff, i’d have a much better idea of what is going on in these poems. i do get sucked in by the pace & imagery though. it makes me long for more energy & more time to just read.