My girl, she wears a Stetson hat. And I’m a sucker for
accordion music. That explains the gist of it, for mostly intents and some
surprising purpose. Tell me I’m barreling it for a tater? Not unless I’m
catching Lou Gehrig’s disease or clod hopping o’er fields of mauve. I’m not
predisposed to prefer PEZ over Tic Tacs, but don’t leave me alone over it
enough and I’ll preach high windy drafts of sustainability. And roosters be damned,
I’m almost plucky when it comes to categorizing empty-bus ineptitude.
Officially it’s not over. Lord’s wearing blue and gold this winter, and the
chic look backwards to move ahead. Well, shit. That’s garbled longing at its
finest finesse, if, for instance, you’re a asking for it. Gobstoppers and
broken teeth, we’ll shit before we flush from now on, right? Sure. That’s a
plain enough plan. Me? Now I got hearts on my wrists instead of razor blade
scars. That’ll do. Music that’s surprising. Pictures of photographs. Parking
spots that always go empty. So long. Nobody’s as popular as they think. That’ll
never be the ticket. So long. Write my epitaph in red felt and glitter. I’m
pushing on. I’m throwing my sunglasses into the ocean. Make me a loan to catch
a crashed plane. Opt out. I’m lucky in my lurching, enough so that I make wings
from smashed glass. Nobody aboard. Kiss off. Leap for it from the emergency
entrance. Coats optional. I’m making up for lost haste. The nunneries have all
closed for good, but the junk shops are selling pancakes for dinner. We all
talk and scram. My girl, she’s got blue-suede eyes and a Roosevelt tattoo.
Takes me to Timbuktu and back with a gleam of nickel in her smile. My girl, she
cracks beer cans and spills jokes. She finds herself getting lost going home. A
bad case of sunstroke wearing Michigan colors in the meadows of fall. Bashful
hardhatted grumbling. I’m more likely piping down in the thin of it, just
blendered to floor crumbs to feed the mice. Now it’s cover-the-carotid-artery-and-squat-away-from-view
time for me. Rascals, stevedores, grooms, fletchers, shoeshine boys, and the
mighty few who run the show. A few blondes dancing around in the kitchen to the
sound of running water. There just isn’t a map left that’ll lead me where I’ve
never been. Sure, maybe there’s a place for us, somewhere, me and my girl.
Maybe. But the air’s not giving out any tickets, and the moon’s a death
sentence, and we’ve got trades pending, and the soup’s never up. I’m
wine-splashed and spluttering. My girl? She’s taking pictures with other guys.
She’s wearing somebody else’s ring. And me? I’m late for dinner, again and
again, while the snitchers take phone numbers hostage and all the garbage men
are tugging on their gloves. But, you know, there’s still some lavender stuck
in the buttonhole of my favorite suit’s lapel. And I can still look in my
wallet and find her there. And, you see, I’ve got Tuesday’s off. The music’s
got its own belly fat. Forlorn alligators sneak peanuts from wish-takers.
Safety movies are dangerously lent to weeping gondoliers. Normal doesn’t
happen. In ellipses you’ll find me, commas behind me. The clatter of caskets.
The clubbing of bugs. Dingy cupolas deteriorating and birthrights swiped like
credit cards through the clarified emptiness I call my life. I tell myself
certain things. Stay up past moonlight. Get under the bed. Sweat and suffer.
Two-face the credits when only a suggestion of a wink will drink you back to
life or kiss you back to drinking. Sons of bitches always Goreying up the good
stuff. Well, eligible enough when seen through sunglasses, at least while
vindictiveness wears a veil. I’m falling for a neurosis or two, something
that’ll stay. Staying under the weather on purpose. Meteskying up things real
bad. Vermouthing through the olives of gin-wet days. Perspired and
out-of-this-world. So I say, stay happy for as long as it lasts. Because one
day, it won’t.
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