THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR

This is poem 42 in my book, and perhaps Douglas Adams

Should feature, the much famed and lost writer of the Galactic

Hitchhiker’s Guide. His comic solution of course, to that eternal

Quest lay in numbers, so as to enhance the position 

That there is no easy answer or particular truth to confide.

There is just the journey from place, navigated by pieces,

Each one splintered, shattered as every separate digit collects

What it can no longer save as we struggle to solve the equation,

That moves beyond six times seven as the spores we’re still

Faced with continue to multiply and infect. People have lost

Their sense of purpose and place in all of this grand, gulped

Confusion, and indeed, the disparity across status in this week’s

Episode fails to charm. If Adams had lived what would

He have made of this Covid? It sounds like one of his character

Names, if I’m honest, or with 19, that odd number, 

It could be the designated term for a planet near some

Suburbanised, random star. We could hitch a lift there, perhaps,

Caught on the old Vogon spacecraft, perhaps with poems

Like this as the torture that the characters Prefect and Dent

Have to face. But we would be running away from the world,

Instead of building up prepositions. We would escape our blown

Landscape and our climate change of mind for deep space.

Hoping to extricate that answer for real, despite what Adams

Confounded: How and why did this happen and what in

Zaphod’s name can be saved? For Zaphod Beeblebrox,

Just read God; effete, gauche, uncaring, while,

As with the paranoid android Marvin, our growing despair

Comes of age. For we are spiralling now in deep space

As the numbered days lose their meaning. We are all at sixes

And sevens and while on dry land, still all at sea

With this blight. Remember, you can’t thumb down boats,

Merely stow and perhaps someone soon will learn

How to commandeer spacecraft. But they will be

In a quite different story, and possibly not even one

We will write. For we will be the joke some force spoke

By way of anecdote, for amusement, in a restaurant

And a cosmos in which the end of the world entertainment

Accompanies the savoury glow of each bite.

We will become a rumour, or trail that a comet reports

As it travels. We will be that lost story that the deadline shy

Adams nailed. Or another proposition that failed,

Instead of preposition to structure. As the comic cut

That awaits us may not cap covid’s tail. So, we must learn

To laugh once again in our homes as we reach the end

Of one sentence. We must accept the fact that destruction,

As imagined before was brain food. Now we must

Starve  the forced gut, and properly cleanse out the system.

Now we must nurture the dying present in pieces,

Joining the dots and the numbers in order to preserve

Future moods. These may be light hearted, or not.

As a comic sense always save us. But within

That sense, more is moving and present in us than

We know. We cannot just sit and read. We must write.

In either thought, or on paper. Our deadline is delivered.

And so, thanks to Adams and despite him, too,

Each word glows. THEY just don’t see it. That’s all.

But perhaps THEY don’t need to see it. The wider

World is obstructed. But, if we glisten, each small one

Clears. This I know.  That’s when we will see 

Where to go, and naturally how to get there.

The answer is written, and it is in numbers,

Not language. It will be through the Black Hole

Board’s mathematics that the true equation

For God

                        Will be shown.   

David Erdos April 22nd 2020

For more poems from David Erdos visit The Corona Diaries collection 

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world. His books include EASY VERSES FOR DIFFICULT TIMES, THE SCAR ON THE CLOUD, OIL ON SILVER, NEWS FROM MARS, CHANGING PLACES WITH LIGHT (penniless press) and BYZANTIUM with the photographer Max Reeves. He is a contributing editor for The International Times and maker of documentaries all over the world. David’s work has been acclaimed by many leading figures including Harold Pinter, Heathcote Williams, Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair in whose recent book THE LAST LONDON, David features. He can be reached at David.erdos@sky.com.

David Erdos

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