Godot Asks For Directions

by Steven Mayoff

 

 

a confusion of arrows pointing to bliss, damnation,

childhood, fortune, remorse…

 

he unfolds his map reads between

the creases fraying into nonexistence and stares

 

out at the world through a tear in the fabric of cartographic

nightmares where beyond the edges be

 

dragons guarding our most treasured

islands: an archipel-ego of biblical distortions and revisitations…

 

in a rare flash of insight he realizes he is naked and pushes

his head through a torn crease wearing

 

the map like a poncho smoothing down

the edges to keep them from flapping against the hot winded

 

changes of sameness… we are here as

they are there as he is everywhere in the lostness of not now

 

and it keeps getting later according to the pocket watch chained

around his neck being in servitude to

 

his own reclusive nature scribbled

in the margins of an appointment book taped to his inner thigh…

 

excuse me would you be so kind he practices in his not right

mind as those equally faceless as he

 

walk briskly by at the busy intersection of smart street and drive-by

boulevard… wetting a finger to the wind

 

he circles once like a dog and settles on

an oblique north easterly direction straight into a cul-de-sacreligious

 

signpost warning of his imminent arrival… pardon me would you be

so good he inquires of the neighbouring

 

hoodlums who strip him of watch, map,

appointment book and all notions of a redeemer who liveth in the

 

bloody heart bombs lobbed in migratory fashion toward a bloodred

sunset… sorry to bother but could

 

you direct he asks the operator before

the disconnected line hums through his circulatory estimations

 

of how long…

how long…

how long…