Nighthawk Postcards

There's a blur drizzle down the plate glass
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 Schlieb
$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 highballing' 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