tom waits
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