Poem: No Markers

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.