The finger I use for scooping out coffee grounds from the
grinder is black under the nail. If it’s Tuesday then it’s August. The
usefulness of a rationale that doesn’t figure. Bee ties. Pigeon cameras. A
lamprey in the bathtub. It’s a musical washbox that never gets scrubbed.
Cast-iron jealousy hooked to a crane. Piddled away attention. The come-and-go charm
of TV. The noisiest gum on the block. I’m mustering some third-generation
Cadillac-Coupe-De-Ville courage. Desperately seeking a bologna sandwich, and
the moon’s out hunting Michigan again. Talking loud so strangers will hear and
be impressed. A shagreen purse and a crepe paper smile, carrying on and
repointing the bricks of the past with hard-fought wonder. Casked to sell? It’s
a deceitful plan, perhaps, but the mind’s conniving gets laden with
grandfathered clauses. Asking starts to question itself. A dab of duck fat
behind each ear makes my personality a confit of redundant charm. I brush my
hair with castor oil and use rusty nails as toothpicks. Let’s make a deal to
make no more wishes, to put the stars back to sleep when this is all through,
and to wreck havoc on Tuesday’s blues with a few of Friday night’s neon
letters. For now the Chinese Godfather’s sitting next to me on this
termite-infested bench while I feed ice cream sandwiches to pigeons and tell
the time by church bells. All my nightmares are made of corroded chromosomes,
plugged pennies, and 15-minute lunch breaks, and they’re stitched up cheap with
broken cello strings. In the last place, well, there’s a terror there that
weeps sleep from boredom. Hunting Michigan with the moon when it makes the
least sense. And when the girls around here get to stomping around it’s like
there’s a 5.8 rambling through town. My record player skips all the best songs,
and the microwave doesn’t even got enough left in it to make popcorn. Let me
tell you, it gets rudimentary and mortgaged and hard up to be alive when your
racing form’s all filled up with circled losers. The coffee boos me in the
morning, and I sneak love from the truth peddlers. Nobody’s going to want my
organs when I’m gone. You see, on this side of Palookaville there are still
upsets in the making and more considerations to consider, as I shuffle the
depths and swing slim from the banisters. The lady who waits on me at the
drugstore is wearing a Have A Nice Day pin in her lapel. I walk outside in the
blinding sun and stare up at a glass behemoth skyscraper that’s reflecting
other buildings in its cascading cerulean dance of windows, and I flounder
around and dance by the empty place where a bus station used to go. Tomorrow’s
a dropped hat and a duel of fingers. Tosspot’s grow ragged and rig their hearts
with safety-pin sadness. Sing me champagne and sweep the gutters with
swizzle-stick brooms. It’s a crumb to toss to party crashers and melee
evacuees. Trust the judgment of wizened crows and the cracked crossbeams in the
rafters of your soul. My heart’s shattered china. I waste all my wishes on the
bottles behind the bar, and I miss what the sun’s got left to make of me. I
dance in movie theatres and cut my own hair. But my windows, they still stay lit
all through the night.
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