Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street) - Tom Waits

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 lookin'

For some kind of Cheshire billboard grin

Stroking a goateed chin, and using parking meters

As walking sticks on the inebriated stroll

With my eyelids propped open at half mast

But you know... over at Chubb's Pool Hall and Snooker

It was a nickle after two, yea it was a nickle after two

And in the cobalt steel blue dream smoke, it

Was the radio that groaned out the hit parade

And the chalk squeaked, the floorboards creaked

And an Olympia sign winked through a torn yellow

Shade, old Jack Chance himself leanin' up against

A Wurlitzer and eyeballin' out a 5 ball combination shot

Impossible you say? ...hard to believe?, perhaps

Out of the realm of possibility? naaaa

He be stretchin' out long tawny fingers out across a

Cool green felt with a provocative golden gate

And a full table railshot that's no sweat and I leaned

Up against my bannister and wandered over to the

Wurlitzer and I punched A-2 I was lookin' for

Something like Wine, Wine, Wine by the Night Caps

Starring Chuck E. Weiss or High Blood Pressure

By George (cryin' in the streets) Perkins - no dice

"that's life," that's what all the people say ridin' high

In April, seriously shot down in May, but I know I'm

Gonna change that tune when I'm standing underneath

A buttery moon that's all melted off to one side

It was just about that time that the sun

Came crawlin' yellow out of a manhole

At the foot of 23rd Street

And a dracula moon in a black disguise

Was making it's way back to its

Pre-paid room at the St. Moritz Hotel (scat)

And the El train came tumbling

Across the trestles and it sounded

Like the ghost of Gene Krupa

With an overhead cam and glasspacks

And the whispering brushes of wet radials

On a wet pavement and there's a

Traffic jam session on Belmont tonight

And the rhapsody of the pending

Evening, I leaned up against

My bannister and I've been looking

For some kind of an emotional

Investment with romantic dividends

Kind of a physical negociation

Is underway

As I attempt to consolidate all my

Missed weekly payments, into

One-low-monthly payment

Through the nose

With romantic residuals and leg akimbo

But the chances are more than likely I'll probably

Be held over for another smashed weekend