Tom Waits - Nighthawks Postcards (From Easystreet) lyrics

Yeah, you check out the street and it looks like there's kind of a Kind of a blur drizzle down the plate gla** And as a neon swizzle stick is stirring up the sultry night air Looks like a yellow biscuit of a bu*tery cue ball moon Rolling maverick across an obsidian sky And as the buses go groaning and wheezing Down on the corner I'm freezing 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 The buildings towering high above lit like dominoes or black dice Used car salesmen dressed up in Purina checkerboard slacks And Foster Grant wraparounds Pacing in front of Rainbow, Earl Scheib, thirty-nine ninety-five merchandise Like barkers at a shooting gallery They throw out a Texas Guinan routine: 'Hello s**er, we like your money, just as well as anybody else's here Come on over here now... Let me put the cut back in your strut and the glide back in your stride Now climb aboard a customs Oldsmobile, let me take you for a ride' Or they give you that P. T. Barnum bit: 'There's a s**er born every minute!' 'You just happened to be coming along at the right time, you know Come over here now' And you know, all the harlequin sailors are on the stroll In search of like new new paint And decent factory air and AM-FM dreams Yeah, and all the piss yellow gypsy cabs They're stacked up in the taxi zones And they're waiting like pinball machines To be ticking off a joyride to a magical place Like Truckers Welcome diners With dirt lots full of Peterbilts and Kenworths and Jimmies and the like They're hi-balling with bankrupt brakes Man, they're overdriven and they're underpaid They're overfed, and they're a day late and a dollar short But Christ, I got my lips around a bottle And I got my foot on the throttle and I'm standing on the corner Standing on the corner like a just got in town Jasper I'm on a street corner with a gasper Looking for some kind of a Cheshire billboard grin Stroking a goateed chin Using parking meters as walking sticks Yeah, on the inebriated stroll With my eyelids propped open at half mast But you know, over at "Chubb's Pool and Snooker" Well, it was a nickel after two, yeah, it was a nickel after two And in the cobalt steel blue dream smoke Why, it was the radio that groaned out the hit parade And the chalk squeaked and the floorboards creaked And an Olympia sign winked through a torn yellow shade Old Jack Chance himself leaning up against a Wurlitzer Man, he was eyeballing out a five ball combination shot Impossible you say? Hard to believe? Perhaps out of the realm of possibility? Naaaah Cause he be stretching out long tawny fingers Out across a cool green felt in a provocative golden gate He got a full table railshot that's no sweat And I leaned up against my banister I wandered over to the Wurlitzer and I punched A2 I was looking for maybe 'Wine Wine Wine' by the Nightcaps Starring Chuck E. Weiss Or maybe... maybe a little something called "High Blood Pressure" By George (Crying in the Streets) Perkins, no dice 'Cause that's life, that's what all the people say You're riding high in April, you're seriously shot down in May I know I'm gonna change that tune When I'm standing underneath a bu*tery moon That's all melted off to one side Parkay It was just about that time that the sun came crawling yellow Out of a manhole at the foot of twenty-third Street And a Dracula moon in a black disguise Was making its way back to its pre-paid room at the St. Moritz Hotel And the El train tumbled across the trestles And it sounded like the ghost of Gene Krupa With an overhead cam and gla**paks And the whispering brushes of wet radials on wet pavement Shhhhhhhhhhhhsh With a traffic jam session on Belmont tonight And the rhapsody of the pending evening I leaned up against my banister And I've been looking for some kind of an emotional investment With romantic dividends Yeah, kind of a physical negotiation is underway As I attempt to consolidate all my missed weekly rendezvous Into one low monthly payment, through the nose With romantic residuals and legs akimbo But the chances are that more than likely Standing underneath a moon holding water I'll probably be held over for another Smashed weekend Thank you