A hatless pilgrim,

roving this way and that,

a man embodying the virtues of scat

(in every sense of the word),

wandering through starched cardstock fields

in search of an impossible flower

and its stingy nettles—

proud, pistil-engraved,

the flower’s gullet braised

by rivets of sungold—

(this, how the man warms himself within,

how he sounds out his vision, 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 forlornly around placeless terrain,

picking up a soiled metaphor here,

putting down a scratched symbol or curlicue there,

basically, a scavenger versed in vaudeville metaphysics,

a master of zero sum

instigating a fool’s mission through algebraic ruins.

We pause. End of Act I.

Act II: We open with the man

needing 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 his wind-wearied haunches 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,

he hears the faint strains of a Viennese waltz,

and he is with her again,

twenty-toed and entwined,

they whirl somatically

while making static 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

matching whittled silence

to countless confessional

days on end.