in praise of pip...
The air raid siren’s playing a Tony Bennett tune. We’re all
heaped in yellow, washed brutally in gold, and stabbed brushing into a stale
copper that’s jerry-rigging havoc from the street’s steely skin. The ambulances
are in a trance, and I’m making hay with a gentleman’s magazine. Lowly and
rising. There’s a sticker price of 99 cents on most of my ideas, and the
garbage sure ain’t taking itself out, but the sky’s lapping up the lazuli out
of an opening-day sale, and the cards have lost their faces and their shine,
and for the moment there’s no real way to tell if the weather’s going to take
off its hat and stick around a while. The Senators are all dead. The sky’s
pitching for its life. And I’m just one of those heels with a Robin-Hood
complex, gone from auburn to a streaky gray. It’s to laugh. No more bets. No
more bottle. No more plying blue for the dirt. The carousel’s piping Gloria and
spitting rain-slick neon, and the shooting gallery’s all ducks and squashed
hope. A shill ducking for cover in a rooming house dreams big and loses the
same way. The sodden carcass of an aging, weak idiot in exchange for a little
kid’s shoebox soul. The nature of reality’s becoming unraveled. Stuffy and
refined, going out for a beer run and forgetting to buy beer. Geezer plates and
teeth like a rabid hound, and all inroads are leading out to the pastures of
hell. Locks change. Doors get blown. Strays’ chains rattle the kennels. A place
where there’s not even supposed to be a war on, and the kid lies dying, for an
hour or so. Low-balling chances of making it out to brighter lights, to the
peppered squeaks and thwacks of a pickup game. An hour. An hour. Nobody’s
stuffing three hundred in an envelope. Nobody’s drinking light beer. Making
movies from scraps and leftovers, worn-down resentment, out-classed pizzazz.
Tax me, then. The rum’s been stirred to life. The spaghetti’s gone to mush. A
bible’s ripped to shreds on the bed. Hang on. Get yourself a stool’s worth.
We’ll meet back at a quarter ‘til doomsday. The strings are gone from the
piñata. The milk’s drained from the livestock. Catch the last bus to Norfolk.
We’ll find others to hang for our crimes. We’ll don paraffin wings and
gorilla-glue felt hearts to our wrists. Don’t you know, the moon’s made of
squash and eucalyptus bark? Cash on the barrelhead, it’s only cashed-in losses
now. Bet the book and throw silver dollars at the band when they’re finally
done for good. Our song’s been out of tune for so long now that we don’t even
notice. A couple broken mirrors and your picture fallen frameless to the
concrete, a widow’s weeping caught in the slivers and shards. Hokey-Pokey’d to
a dream while home’s just one last losing streak away. It’s to laugh. That’s
what it’s always been. To laugh. So, steal the smoke from all the fires, and
curl, soft and happy and lost, into the curve of the world. We’ll send out for
the clowns to take care of the rest.
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