Nighthawk Postcards (From
Easy Street) - Tom Waits
There's
a blur drizzle down the plateglass
as a
neon swizzle stick stirrin up the sultry night air
and
a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon
rollin'
maverick across an obsidian sky
as the
busses go groanin' and wheezin',
down
on the corner I'm freezin';
on a
restless boulevard at a midnight road
I'm
across town from EASY STREET
with
the tight knots of moviegoers and out of towners
on the
stroll
and
the buildings towering high above
lit
like dominoes or black dice
all
the used car salesmen dressed up in
Purina
Checkerboard slacks
and
Foster Grant wrap-around,
pacing
in front of EARL SCHLEIB
$39.95
merchandise
like
barkers at a shootin' gallery
they
throw out kind of a Texas Guinan routine
"Hello
sucker, we like your money
just
as well as anybody else's here"
or they
give you the P.T. Barnum bit
"There's
a sucker born every minute
you
just happened to be comin' along at the right time"
come
over here now
you
know... all the harlequin sailors are on the stroll
in a
search of "LIKE NEW," "NEW PAINT,"
decent
factory air and AM-FM dreams
and
the piss yellow gypsy cabs
stacked
up in the taxi zones waitin' like
pinball
machines
to be
ticking off a joy ride to a magical place
waitin'
in line like "truckers welcome" diners
with
dirt lots full of
Peterbilts,
Kenworths, Jimmy's and the like, and
they're
hiballin' with bankrupt brakes, over driven
under
paid, over fed, a day late and a dollar short
but
Christ I got my lips around a bottle and
my foot
on the throttle and I'm standin' on the corner
standin'
on the corner like a "just in town"
jasper,
on a street corner with a gasper lookin'
for
some kind of Cheshire billboard grin
stroking
a goateed chin, and using parking meters
as walking
sticks on the inebriated stroll
with
my eyelids propped open at half mast
but
you know... over at Chubb's Pool Hall and Snooker
it was
a nickle after two, yea it was a nickle after two
and
in the cobalt steel blue dream smoke, it
was
the radio that groaned out the hit parade
and
the chalk squeaked, the floorboards creaked
and
an Olympia sign winked through a torn yellow
shade,
old Jack Chance himself leanin' up against
a Wurlitzer
and eyeballin' out a 5 ball combination shot
impossible
you say? ...hard to believe?, perhaps
out
of the realm of possibility? naaaa
he be
stretchin' out long tawny fingers out across a
cool
green felt with a provocative golden gate
and
a full table railshot that's no sweat and I leaned
up against
my bannister and wandered over to the
Wurlitzer
and I punched A-2 I was lookin' for
something
like Wine, Wine, Wine by the Night Caps
starring
Chuck E. Weiss or High Blood Pressure
by George
(cryin' in the streets) Perkins - no dice
"that's
life," that's what all the people say ridin' high
in April,
seriously shot down in May, but I know I'm
gonna
change that tune when I'm standing underneath
a buttery
moon that's all melted off to one side
It was
just about that time that the sun
came
crawlin' yellow out of a manhole
at the
foot of 23rd Street
and
a dracula moon in a black disguise
was
making its way back to its
pre-paid
room at the St. Moritz Hotel (scat)
and
the El train came tumbling
across
the trestles and it sounded
like
the ghost of Gene Krupa
with
an overhead cam and glasspacks
and
the whispering brushes of wet radials
on a
wet pavement and there's a
traffic
jam session on Belmont tonight
and
the rhapsody of the pending
evening,
I leaned up against
my bannister
and I've been looking
for
some kind of an emotional
investment
with romantic dividends
kind
of a physical negociation
is underway
as I
attempt to consolidate all my
missed
weekly payments, into
one-low-monthly
payment
through
the nose
with
romantic residuals and leg akimbo
but
the chances are more than likely I'll probably
be held
over for another smashed weekend