i was wandering once in a turbulent shopping mall

as the saturday rush started slowing down to a crawl

and i asked this girl as my tootsies were getting sore
for the shortest way to the nordstrom department store

not that finding that nordstrom was such an imperative task
just a random thought and she was on the spot to ask

or it may have been macy's somewhere on the limb of the grid
it just seemed like the right time to ask her so ask i did

she was hawking some dead sea ointments with time to bide
but she ceased her commerce and offered to be my guide

we kept traipsing like clockwork bunnies all day and all night
through the ever thickening throng through the fading light

where the very breath got sticky like cheesecloth that clings
to the skin as my guide escaped on her clockwork wings

leaving me with a voiceless multitude barely awake
on a desert shore of some unexpected lake

neither nordstrom nor frigging macy's in sight but instead
an old gent on a hill to judge the quick and the dead

on the dead sea shore handing verdicts in in the nick
of time and i looked and i wasn't among the quick

thus was totally wasted a gainful trip to a mall
picking someone to ask for a way is a judgment call

Alexey Tsvetkov
"wasted opportunity"
2013