there's a blur drizzle down the plateglass

as a neon swizzle stick stirrin up the sultry night air

and a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon

rollin' maverick across an obsidian sky

as the busses go groanin' and wheezin',

down on the corner I'm freezin';

on a restless boulevard at a midnight road

I'm across town from EASY STREET

with the tight knots of moviegoers and out of towners

on the stroll

and the buildings towering high above

lit like dominoes or black dice

all the used car salesmen dressed up in

Purina Checkerboard slacks

and Foster Grant wrap-around,

pacing in front of EARL SCHLEIB

$39.95 merchandise

like barkers at a shootin' gallery

they throw out kind of a Texas Guinan routine

"Hello sucker, we like your money

just as well as anybody else's here"

or they give you the P.T. Barnum bit

"There's a sucker born every minute

you just happened to be comin' along at the right time"

come over here now

you know... all the harlequin sailors are on the stroll

in a search of "LIKE NEW," "NEW PAINT,"

decent factory air and AM-FM dreams

and the piss yellow gypsy cabs

stacked up in the taxi zones waitin' like

pinball machines

to be ticking off a joy ride to a magical place

waitin' in line like "truckers welcome" diners

with dirt lots full of

Peterbilts, Kenworths, Jimmy's and the like, and

they're hiballin' with bankrupt brakes, over driven

under paid, over fed, a day late and a dollar short

but Christ I got my lips around a bottle and

my foot on the throttle and I'm standin' on the corner

standin' on the corner like a "just in town"

jasper, on a street corner with a gasper loo