Monday, September 17, 2012

misanthropic dipsomaniacs



            “Something like this: Don’t argue with me. I’ve just had a heart attack.”
            “Sure. And the guy says to me, ‘This job’s killed greater men than I.’ And I tell him, ‘Well, that’s not so great,’ you know?”
            “Yep. You know, like, worry about it, why don’t you? Go ahead. Worry!”
            “Plan ahead to fall behind. It gets the ruckus started, pretty close to right.”
            “Volatile suppositions go down drowned and exposed. I might make more rights on reds than most. Over that, well, I’m felled to be finished.”
            “And then she says, ‘I’m all out of lipstick.’ Right?”
            “Lord save the devils. Put my name in a hat and toss your glass in the air. I’m altered, and I’m alright.”           
            “Can’t a man just be happy without all these accusations being hurled at him?”
            “The kind of nonsense we talk should be patented.”
            “All the breaks, all the walked hurrying, all the push-and-peep deliverance, all the harkening, all the vouching. We’re such weasels in with rats. I bet this whorl of crumby luck is done, just like us. Or would that be to us?”
            “Nothing is worse. Better’s junked. A lot of crud, if you make me an answer of it.”
            “Decline between the lines.”
            “Fellow tipplers, unite!”
            “Topers. It’s topers, fuck nut.”
            “I don’t care. I don’t care. I just…me? I just don’t care no more.”
            “Play to place.”
            “I’m up on blocks lately. I’m in dispose. I’m jealous of windows. That’s another round, boys. Once more around.”
            “Rye whisky, rye whisky. If I don’t get rye whisky I think I might die.”
            “Or if you do you’ll drink yourself to it. The dying, that is.”
            “Per…burp…haps.”
            “Plain as night. 
             “Other people. Shit. They go around ordering their own disasters. Dessert is not served, damn it! I am groveling for pennies and unsalted peanuts. Shit.”
            “Work around it. Pat your own front. I’m dishing out plates to the spoon-and-fork crowd.”
            “The mice have come for your morsels.”
            “Yikes. I mean, jiminy x-mas.”
            “Victory is our all’s nothing.”
            “With me, well, it’s all tiptoe or tornado. I opt for unlikely resources. A better pull at this here bottle in front of me. Everything gets on to being relevant at some point.”
            “Just ask God when she’s drunk.”
            “Better down than out. I rent my time by the bottle. Gasoline makes us all sadder campers. Just the fumes. Just the spume.”
            “Remarkable. Your playing your own funeral, and it’s a sellout. Can’t get a ticket anywhere, new or old.”
            “It’s a tough song to end. You’ve just got to know when to pull the plug.”
            “That’s just the ice in your drink talking.”
            “Sure. I’m all bells and cop sirens. Take me less than a serious man would. Splash out my dreams on the cold concrete. Nobody’s around to hear.”
            “Some girl says hi, asks how you’re doing as you try to squeeze by a crowded deli counter. And you scratch at your neck and try to remember who she is and how the hell she knows you. And you say that you’re doing just fine.”
            “Another one or three down the hatch.”
            “That’s a dollar to somebody else’s name.”
            “Strange pensioners giving the weak arm to stranger strangers than us.”
            “Tell ‘em all I said farewell.”
            “Wilt and whine. Shrink and moan. I’m dreary. I’m picked apart by trying. If the streetlights were wearing shirts they’d have a few buttons undone about now. And I’m sitting here memorizing the names of lakes. By golly, though. Nobody knows her alibis by heart the way I do.”
            “Who?”
            “The rain.”
            “Oh.”
            “The 24-hour diners are all filled up with lunatic insomniacs, dress-rehearsal dropouts, ex-candy-bar salesmen, scarf-and-bolo wearing hooligans, and the crankiest janitors east of Minneapolis. I give in, but not out.”
            “I am overwhelmed by holy dismissiveness. Color me in with Colorado. Cut the skin from all the apples. I’m giving out church keys to all the beggars. Let’s trump up the charges and stroll without the moolah. Nothing will cut our ties for us. Nothing.”
            “Only they don’t go around giving out medals to chumps like us.”
            “Better dangerous than sorry that you’re getting too soft.”
            “My Russian don’t stumble when it’s walking itself home. My China’s on the fritz. All my Ethiopias are dressed up in courage. Don’t relate my Mexico to yours. I’m feeling festive in the window’s neon. And my Frances are driving on the wrong side of the road.”
            “Guess. I’m all for it. Guess, guess, guess.”
            “Do you see these hands clapping?”
            “Bluffs that call themselves. I get it.”
            “Bats! Look out! Duck! Bats!”
            “That’ll cave in what I don’t get into what I forget to feel like having too long ago to repeat. You, uh, dropped something there.”
            “I’ve been picking myself up off the floor for too long now. Forget it. I’m all out and in at the same time.”
            “Better off out than in. We keep ourselves up at night with jumpy plunderings of the past.”
            “Sha Na Na Na. Lah. Lah. Lah!”
            “This here bar’s holding me up like it’s my only friend. All I got in this miserable old world.”
            “Nobody brings anything small into a bar….”
            “Around here. Yep. Bad old Jamie Stewart on the lam. Gesticulating for the mob.”
            “I can’t sleep at night.”
            “The day?”
            “Nah. That’s for drinking away the maudlin dreams I’m too scared to let myself have.”
            “The older we get…”
            “The more we need this.”
            “Crash on the levee, baby. This old ship’s a gonna wreck just right before it gets to shore.”
            “The more we need of this. The more it needs of us.”
            “Sha Lah Lah…Lah lah lah…”
            “All we are is what time’s made us.”
            “Washed out to the sea too drunk to swim.”
            “Sha Na Na. Lah. Lah! Lah!”
            “And we’re reckless now, getting smashed before breakfast with ruffians.”
            “Never mind my shyness. Just, never mind.”
            “A winze for the more temperamental of us to connect with our inner selves. I am in charge of nothing.”
            “Blasted.”
            “Rats.”
            “There’ll be or they’ll be?”
            “Both. In any or all cases, loafing gets me by. By the way, this here edge is not very easy to take off.”
            “I’ve noticed. Quick, recite The Declaration of Independence while imbibing this here glass of beer.”            
            “That’ll help. The shakes are coming for me. Best to get a head start.”
            “Even Thomas Jefferson…”
            “Yep. Even him. The king of the nickel.”
            “Not so much like other people. A crusader of the bummest deals. Not one adolescent in detention would ever guess what that’s worth. Not even an act of vandalism to my name. Hold the fort. I gotta wrangle with the pisser.”
            “General Mao’s gone north for the winter. Okay. Go get your tinkle on.”
            “You can’t talk to me like that. We’re attempting to be adults here, remember?”
            “Oh, well, shit. All the bartenders from here to tiramisu keep their noses clean with busyness. I’d advise opportunity to ring instead of knocking. I’d advise you to do the same, if I could.”
            “Anything’d be reassuring at this point. Hallelujah. Day by day. I shall be back.”
            “In or through the course of events we come to a steeple of fingers and a home made of paper, rock, and scissors. We might attempt a hijacking of our stilted ways. We might make dominos out of nude pictures of 3rd-rate movie stars. Over my own admonishment. Over my quibbles with insecurity’s blessed walls. I’d be stabbing back if I could. Don’t you know all my best friends are from Queens? Ah. The flush. There it is. The hallowed sound of water’s downward dance. A crepitant jangle in the lights. The gusty hooverings of the hand dryer. I want to watch trees go about their day. This song reminds me of 1948. Claire De Lune? Or would that be near-to-highly inappropriate for me to say out loud? Piano music is an old pal of mine, so there’s that.”
            “Mumbling will get you everywhere except where you want most to go.”
            “Some highbrow philosophizing went on in the john there, I see.”
            “And to whom would that remark be intended for? I’m all ears, here. Really.”
            “Say that again. Did you fly when you were a kid?”
            “All the time.”
            “Figurines. It does and it does and it does. Doesn’t it?”
            “Got to. Cranks of fortune lend awful dimes to anachronistic machines. We hotel our destinations. We chase quarters into the gutter. The bells are all out of tolls. Abate! That’s what I say. Abate!”
            “Greasy hunky-dory satisfaction takes root. That’s all I’m seeing here. Smug stops of stationary devices. Me? I bridle optimism in hopes of remaining humble.”
            “Conning yourself? It’s a cheapskate’s ruse. I own the mercenary plash in the surroundings. Get taken with it or be took. It’s me winking at the trunk instead of the hood.”
            “I own the rights to my anger. I drink to or with it, but never to my health.”
            “Gather your belongings. The party’s not attended. We need to damage our remorse some before outwitting errand-takers.”
            “I believe in peonies with rubber stems.” 
            “Nobody’s in the business of placing blame, as they said back in other Novembers, other recharged accounts, and in the hassle of crummy weather. The breath it takes is never quite away enough.”
            “There are raisins in my rum. And every day I’m a little more dumb.”
            “Playing the scales up and down while the other kids got to run around and roughhouse. Look at me now. I’m a stiff collar for the world to pull at. Reconsider the dust.”
            “You don’t say!”
            “I do.”
            “Well, pop my corn and punch all my jokes. I eat earwigs for breakfast and small-time despots for dessert.”
            “And for all of our hereafters?”
            “Cry toasts in the loveless midnight. Arrest graffiti chiselers for scabbing the bar doors with phrases like, ‘She’s a walrus and she don’t like black.’ Misrepresent my necktie in a wrapping contest. Choose no side. Ophelia works only as a bouncer and a radio thief in these skewered times we find ourselves counting along with. These months have the loneliest sounding names.”
            “Beat back the breakers, mama. This whole here show’s never gonna hit the road.”
            “I’ve said my peace through shards of war. Oh holiest of shit, I’m murkier now in throes of photographed wonder than the past’d ever know.”
            “Some gladder afternoon than this. I’ll flay away. I’ll flay away. And then. And then. Flay, flay, flay away.”
            “Sadder still. Sad and sadder, and sadder still.”
            “As long as the whisky pours true, and it is so warm and strong going down. Tingle my palms and elate my brain. I’m off to nab cat burglars in the act of asleep-and-drunk-in-their-boots penance.”
            “So says who?”
            “So says the father’s mother and the son’s holiest of poltergeists.”
            “How many points do I get for missing?”
            “Only as much as it takes for it to be all that you do.”
            “How much?”
            “Deal. Just, fucking, deal.”
            “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. All the goddamn Mississippis in the world. Okay, I’m rivered out.”
            “Good enough, and, also, just not quite that good.”