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104th Weekly Poetry Contest honorable mention: Interior Monologue with Mirror

by Bruce Boston

The cartographer who dwells behind my eyes,
who maps the continents of desire and imagination
for the navigator who charts the course of dreams
and nightmares for the pilot who traverses
the landscapes of time and illusion where
fabulous cities come and grow and go,
inhabited by creatures human and not so,
whose tales resemble those living and dead
as forecast by mages and twice-told by poets
on foolscap and parchment in volumes still read,
that relate and regale the sentence called life
and all it entails -- the passing of passion,
the hero's hard quest, the war on the mountain
waged for a woman, the bittersweet warmth
of the sun falling west -- while I watch from
a distance and wait in a queue, and turn
out my pockets and rummage my baggage
in search of a ticket for lands I once knew,
and wonder which flight holds my name
written full, what map's jagged passage
shows which way to go -- are the engines
still revving? does the jet stream still flow?
should I drink from the fire and dance
in the snow? could I lose/find my self
in the quickening reflection of some
high afterglow? -- I blink for a moment
and toss back my head -- the water
is running, the steam fogs the glass,
I see that the blood on my razor is red.
 
(Appeared in my collection Cold Tomorrows, Gothic Press)

104th Weekly Poetry Contest