Laurel: I am the Gary Busey of poetry.
Hardy: No. More like the Mo Howard.
Laurel: Rang like silver?
Hardy: No. It shone, though.
Laurel: Now there’s a way I know where I could put in a swimming pool.
Hardy: The call of the domesticated?
Laurel: Shake it.
Hardy: Done. Oh. Yeah. Done.
Laurel: Fed Cassius Clay his first beer, for 25 cents.
Hardy: And in less time than it took Andy Granatelli to fix a flat.
Laurel: He knocked me out.
Hardy: Yep. Cold.
Laurel: Nice to toast in the winter’s first chill. Nice to be craving fantastic limits. Nice to choo before a haw.
Hardy: Yep. For nubbers like us. We smoke ourselves down to nothing.
Laurel: Leave it to the grail diggers and the gravest of holies.
Hardy: Smell ‘em going and leaving.
Laurel: I’ll never forget the stink of certain lurid things. I won’t go into it. I won’t. It doesn’t do.
Hardy: Forgetting? Hell, creeks do minor damage to major players in this, you know, in this, you know, in this, you know, game we play.
Laurel: I know?
Hardy: A game.
Laurel: We play?
Hardy: We play! We play. We play, we play, we play, we play, we play.
Laurel: Seriously?
Hardy: Never!
Laurel: Give me the words. Put down a fight. Get it. Get it. Get it. Down.
Hardy: How am I going to go? Down, down, down, down, down.
Laurel: Match my sticks, you gunner of love. Belated, as you would. You would! Belated, you come. Finally! You would.
Hardy: Worried?
Laurel: Me? Nah. Too much bossa nova going on beforehand.
Hardy: That?
Laurel: Yes. That. And also being blinded by a tuxedo moon.
Hardy: People used to do cool things around here. People don’t do cool things anymore. Why don’t people do cool things anymore?
Laurel: Technological savvy.
Hardy: Ah. Shit.
Laurel: Playing around is frowned upon if it’s too original, or too old fashion, or might make somebody somewhere feel that special joy that comes from being alive.
Hardy: Loudness. That’s all that counts. Separation. Cutting one’s self off from all those other selves out there making their little noise. Zoning out in this personal space we carve out, this tiny nook of uncreative drool space. I am punctuating. You. I. Fuck. I cannot be. Know. Together.
Laurel: Hyphenated tempers. Spare colons lacking in, commas, that do without inside brackets. Between exclamation points. Never to be trapped in the belly of a paragraph.
Hardy: Trying. It’s not. It is an end result without going through all the trouble of getting there. Nothing to do with natural rhythms.
Laurel: Finding new ones?
Hardy: It’s poorly structured. But who are we?
Laurel: Just a couple of poor nubbers. That’s all. Smoking our brains down past the filter.
Hardy: Young is up for what’s never coming. What it doesn’t want to or can’t imagine. Youth values its own futureless participle of being young. On and on. The eternal, “What now?”
Laurel: Breath used for using breath.
Hardy: Vampires are chasing our shadows and they’re missing teeth and we strut by and they say, “Hey! Who is that who goes there?” And we play smart and act dumb. It’s another show we’re missing out on. The vampires are no longer thirsty. Our blood is worthless.
Laurel: It’s not the time now. It’s never the time now. It’s not what you ought to think about.
Hardy: Stretched over bamboo. Bahing badly, but at least not booing.
Laurel: Humming over the sound bugs make.
Hardy: Like that?
Laurel: Sorting it out. Sort of.
Hardy: Houses built. A swell joint swelling with overconsumption. Grade me.
Laurel: Straight seas.
Hardy: Half pointy. Right arm’s for rubbering. There’s a hunting I’m sure we’ll never get around to. But haunting? That’s reading a pulse by Braille.
Laurel: You shout, shout, shout, and shout while I’ve been keeping quiet.
Hardy: You’re the James Cagney of keeping your trap shut.
Laurel: No. The Forrest Gump of being cool.
Hardy: Born out of this, the way we are, or were, if we could be, then, what we’d like to be, some one day.
Laurel: Bruised and brought back, less weary and more aware.
Hardy: If.
Laurel: If.
Hardy: Shortly sold.
Laurel: No. Borrowed to steal.
Hardy: The slender ladies of the dance.
Laurel: More mothballs for sale. More lonely nights to not have to spend. Traditions tossed to the desensitized scrum.
Hardy: Voracious. These are the kids who steal from themselves to turn somebody else a profit.
Laurel: I’m the Archie Bunker of love.
Hardy: No. More like the Flipper of off.
Laurel: Not what I am, but what I mean, or meant, to be.
Hardy: Lap it up. I’m getting back what I never had.
Laurel: Bundle me up and take the wings from my ways. What we found in the barn. What they trounced. Give this away from what’s become of us.
Hardy: Lots of going. On. What’s to bust or take? What’s meant.
Laurel: Noises in a noisy hotel. We lobby for more. But who? But, I say, asking, who?
Hardy: You put the ass in ask.
Laurel: Placebo, please.
Hardy: Have you ever caught yourself wide-awake?
Laurel: With it. Man. I am. That’s real. With it.
Hardy: I listen at night only.
Laurel: Last night I had the strangest dream about Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Hardy: Did you believe it?
Laurel: Believed it. Legs and thighs and breasts and all.
Hardy: And the train runs through it.
Laurel: Around it too.
Hardy: Ends are given to the lined up. Begin. Again. Begin.
Laurel: Party hats on.
Hardy: An aura of expectations is created. I’m tired of funny people. Could I get a little seriousness up in here?
Laurel: Course it follows. No ransacking allowed. And Caruso was bigger than Jesus.
Hardy: I’m the Caruso of lap dances.
Laurel: Not something to brag about, I’d think.
Hardy: Depends what you mean.
Laurel: Lapping it up? You mean?
Hardy: Surnaming pets. Getting to be cranky. Up by default. Try me. Go ahead. Try. Try. Try.
Laurel: You mean?
Hardy: Pianos that rollick more than they bounce.
Laurel: You mean?
Hardy: Mean. Mean. I’m tired of looking like me.
Laurel: That’s something like this, “There’s a wife to look after, or to look after you, and we don’t turn our backs on family. We’re good.” Something like that. Or, “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone away.” Something, anyway.
Hardy: Gaps in all I’ve got. Photographs of trembling out of work. Eyes white to the bluest black. Focus. Remain neutral.
Laurel: Patrolling. Hell. Rock me like a chair. That’s out of my jurisdiction. After you, the genuine article goes putt, putt, putt, putt.
Hardy: A Bud Light truck backing up down a hill. A very distinct way of telling unimportant things. It’s useful to be useless.
Laurel: I read the future in last night’s graffiti. It usually conveys a sense of malaise and dread mixed with a whiff of saffron.
Hardy: Our world? Laxatives chased with Imodium.
Laurel: Or, “Sitting in this old jailhouse, I know it ain’t nothing but a waste of my bodily dimensions.”
Hardy: Space without. Space within.
Laurel: Or, “Brother, how much I’ll do to you anyhow.”
Hardy: Grow your own vegetables. Raise other folks’ kids. Snoop. Get a line to dry your personal effects with. It’s not, nothing is, demanding enough. Of us? For us? Well, we ameliorate our video game collection and get over it.
Laurel: Chain us to the miles we’ve never had to walk.
Hardy: Nope. It inhibits growth. Sullies the prefect ironic wink. Fast only loses to faster, and nothing gains. It’s only what is lost. Everything. And how sad how little it is, what is lost. So little. Nothing really. Can’t take it with you. Just move on. See a movie.
Laurel: Comfort wears time up its sleeve. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.
Hardy: Boring.
Laurel: What am I concerned with?
Hardy: Boredom?
Laurel: Yes. Exactly.
Hardy: And so they win, right?
Laurel: Every time.
Hardy: Who?
Laurel: Exactly.
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