A hatless pilgrim, roving this way and that,

a man embodying scat

(in every sense of the word),

wandering through starched cardstock fields

in search of a stingy flower,

proud, pistil-engraved,

the flower’s gullet scorched

by streaks of sungold

(this, how he warms himself within,

how he sounds it out, word by word,

merciless in his measure),

this man has given himself many names—

Murphy, Molloy, Malone, Mercier, Camier, Watt, Krapp—

nomenclatures in a fishless glass bowl of myth and metaphor

(some may say madness), the hatless pilgrim

wandering around placeless terrain,

picking up a soiled metaphor here,

putting down a bruised symbol or curlicue there,

basically, a scavenger versed in vaudeville metaphysics,

a master of zero sum

instigating a fool’s romp through algebraic ruins.

We pause. End of Act I.

Act II: It’s time for the man to redress

his scarred self in the clothes of a new name.

I ask him what it will be.

It’s already been Watt, he snides acidly.

Mum’s the word. Mum’s the metaphor too.

It seems Mum covers a lot.

We rejoin the mummified pilgrim

already in progress as he enters a tavern

sits down on a rickety stool

orders a pint of Guiness

and allows his hawk-eyes to do their ravening:

men everywhere, soiled, tired, flatulent, fatherless

(or father-struck, or father-hunted).

Mum’s the word as these men gather

to groan and toll haunted bells

and tell sorted tales akin to coals raked over dying fires.

He absorbs them as mollusks would seawater.

Glug glug glug.

Guiness done.

He asks for music.

Not aloud, in his head, music please,

and he hears a Viennese waltz,

and he is with her again,

as they whirl somatically

while making mad porridgey love

to each other with slug-set eyes.

Disgust ejects him from the music-memory,

back at the tavern

he orders another pint

glup glup glup

done–

the men remain

a time-doped and disordered quadrant

of jittery constellations,

where the hell are the meteors,

he slams his hand down upon the counter of his mind,

ouch, he winces, orders another pint,

glug glug glug

the night goes on like this

for countless confessional

days on end.