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... The gangster in concrete rolls down the river chan- nel.... They cowboyed him in the steam room.... Is this Cherry Ass Gio the Towel Boy or Mother Gillig, Old Auntie of Westminster Place?P Only dead fingers talk in Braille.... The Mississippi rolls great limestone boulders down the silent alley.... "Clutter the glind!" screamed the Captain of Moving Land.... Distant rumble of stomachs.... Poisoned pigeons rain from the Northern Lights.... The reservoirs are empty.... Brass statues crash through the hungry squares and alleys of the gaping city.... Probing for a vein in the junk-sick morning.... Strictly from cough syrup... A thousand junkies storm the crystal spine clinics, cook down the Grey Ladies.... In the limestone cave met a man with Medusa's head in a hat box and said, "Be Careful," to the Customs Inspector.... Freezed forever hand an inch from the false bottom.... Window dressers scream through the station, beat the cashiers with the fairy hype.... (The Hype is a short change con.... Also known as The Bill....) "Multiple fracture," said the big physician.... "I'm very technical...." Conspicuous consumption is rampant in the porticos slippery with Koch spit.... The centipede nuzzles the iron door rusted to thin black paper by the urine of a million fairies.... This is no rich mother load, but vitiate dust, second run cottons trace the bones of a fix.... COKE BUGS The Sailor's grey felt hat and black overcoat hung twisted in atrophied yen-wait. Morning sun outlined The Sailor in the orange-yellow flame of junk. He had a paper napkin under his coffee cup -- mark of those who do a lot of sitting over coffee in the plazas, restaurants, terminals and waiting rooms of the world. A junky, even at the Sailor's level, runs on junk Time and when he makes his importunate irruption into the Time of others, like all petitioners, he must wait. (How many coffees in an hour? ) A boy came in and sat at the counter in broken lines of long, sick junk-wait. The Sailor shivered. His face fuzzed out of focus in a shuddering brown mist. His hands moved on the table, reading the boy's Braille. His eyes traced little dips and circles, following whorls of brown hair on the boy's neck in a slow, searching move- ment. The boy stirred and scratched the back of his neck: "Something bit me, Joe. What kinda creep joint you run here?" "Coke bugs, kid," Joe said, holding eggs up to the light. |
