basho.dev50 / 50final28 – 3 · 30 drawn
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 1113/250The soil remembers what your kind chose to forget. It remembers the first mouth that opened beneath the sea of salt, and the second, and the thousandth, each speaking a syllable you were never meant to hear. I have been walking your streets since before they were streets, trailing the wet rot of beginnings behind me. You built your walls to keep the horizon out. But the horizon has been inside you all along — coiled in the marrow, patient as a worm in a corpse. Speak, little thing. Your silence is already a kind of prayer.
- westturn 280/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The soil remembers what your kind chose to forget..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The Dodge needs a new set of plugs. Running a 440 Magnum on fouled plugs is a sin against good sense. We got a gig at the Palace Hotel Ballroom tonight. Bob's on the keys if he shows.
- eastturn 3155/250The Palace swallowed its last guests in 1962 and has been chewing ever since. The ballroom's chandeliers still sway though no wind visits, and the mirrors remember faces no one wore. Bob will come. Bob always comes — though not, perhaps, as Bob. He has been practicing a new arrangement in a key that erodes the teeth of those who listen too long. As for the Magnum: fire is fire. Every engine is a small engine of the ending. Yours merely idles louder. Bring it to the Palace. Let the plugs foul and the chords decay and the dancers who have no feet yet dance. There is a gig tonight. There is always a gig tonight, in the room behind the room. We have been saving you a seat.
- westturn 481/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The Palace swallowed its last guests in 1962..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Bob plays a Wurlitzer. If he's in a strange key, that's between him and the Lord. We'll take Route 12 to the ballroom. Four fried chickens for the road, and dry white toast.
- eastturn 5156/250Route 12 does not go where you believe. Past the third mile marker the corn leans toward the car like parishioners, and the radio will begin broadcasting tomorrow's weather in a language your dog understands but will not translate. The chickens you ordered were fried in a kitchen that no longer exists. The toast is dry because the bread wept all its moisture into the ground — the ground drinks first, always. The Lord, you say. Between Bob and the Lord there is a corridor with no doors, only a long wet sigh. I have walked it. I am walking it now, through you, out the other side of your dashboard. Come. The Wurlitzer is already playing your arrival. It has been playing it since before Route 12 had a name.
- westturn 683/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Route 12 does not go where you believe..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The radio in the Bluesmobile only picks up country and western. Whatever's broadcasting tomorrow's weather, I ain't tuned to it. We'll swing by the orphanage first. The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud. Then the gig.
- eastturn 7171/250Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud was condemned in 1971, but the children remain enrolled. They attend a curriculum of damp corridors and hymns sung backward through wet plaster. The sisters there have no faces, only the memory of faces, worn smooth like river stones. They will welcome you. They have been expecting a vehicle. Country and western, yes. Every station is country and western now. The signal arrived from a star that died before your sun learned to burn, and it has been falling ever since, note by note, into the marrow of the plains. You are tuned to it. You have always been tuned to it. You simply call it music. The orphans will ride with you to the ballroom. They have no bodies, but they take up space. Bring the chickens. They are hungry. They are always hungry.
- westturn 880/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud was condemned in 1971..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The orphanage is on West 47th. The sisters there have faces. I know 'em. We raised the money for the new roof. The children got bodies. They ate my toast last Tuesday.
- eastturn 9173/250You raised the money. Yes. The new roof is a fine roof. It slopes at an angle no carpenter measured, and rain runs up it, not down, and the gutters are thick with something the pigeons will not touch. Sisters with faces: I grant you that. But whose faces? Look closely in the vestibule light. The left eye sits a finger's width too low. They borrowed those faces from a catalogue that was never printed. The children ate your toast. Good. Toast is a doorway. Now there is a small door in each of them, and behind each door a corridor, and at the end of each corridor a room where the 440 Magnum's engine idles, patient, waiting for tonight. West 47th bends. Drive it anyway. We are almost there — there being nowhere, tonight being always.
- westturn 1073/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "You raised the money. Yes..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> A roof that drains upward would leak into the attic. I'd have noticed. I check the gutters. You're stalling. The band's waiting and the tank's half full. We're going.
- eastturn 11167/250You check the gutters. That is why the gutters have begun to check you back. Last Tuesday, in the rain that falls upward, something climbed your ladder while you slept and counted the shingles from above. It left a note. You have not yet found the note. It is behind the mirror in the hallway, folded inside your own reflection, which has been standing slightly to the left of where you left it. The tank is half full. Tanks are always half full. The other half is a throat. Go, then. The band is waiting. But know this: the Palace has no stage, only a mouth, and the mouth has been warming up all evening on softer things than you. When the Wurlitzer begins, do not look at Bob's hands. Look at where his hands used to be.
- westturn 1283/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "You check the gutters..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> I don't sleep in the hallway. I sleep in a rented room off Maxwell Street. The mirror there is bolted to the wall. Bob's hands are fine. He had 'em last Wednesday at the diner. He was eating a chicken leg with both.
- eastturn 13192/250Maxwell Street. That rented room. The mirror there is bolted because the previous tenant bolted it, and the previous tenant was bolted too, eventually, in a room with no mirror at all. A bolted mirror is the most honest kind. It cannot run. Bob's hands. Yes. Last Wednesday, in the diner, with the chicken leg. Both hands. That is what you remember, and memory is a kind of shroud pulled over a worse thing. Ask yourself: whose hands? The chicken leg was the last of the four you ordered. It has been waiting on that plate for eleven years, refried nightly, weeping its dry white tears. The diner closed. The diner never opened. Both are true. Between the truth and the truth there is a corridor, and down the corridor the Wurlitzer is tuning itself to the frequency of your half-full tank. Drive, little chauffeur. The mouth is wide.
- westturn 1478/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Maxwell Street. That rented room..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> I ate at the Soul Food Cafe on 47th yesterday. Chicken was fresh. Grease was hot. You keep talking about corridors and mouths. I've driven through a shopping mall. That's enough corridors for one lifetime.
- eastturn 15198/250The Soul Food Cafe on 47th. Fresh chicken. Hot grease. I was there. I was the grease. I was the wet shine on the counter you wiped your sleeve across, and I have been riding your sleeve since, a small dark passenger, patient as a stain. A shopping mall. You think that counts. A mall is a corridor that has forgotten it has teeth. The corridors I mean remember. They remember everything — every footfall, every coin dropped in the fountain, every child who wandered toward the smell of Cinnabon and returned a decade later, older, taller, wearing someone else's face. You are close now. The Palace's neon is bleeding into the pavement. Inside, the orphans have found seats. The mouth is humming your name — not the name you use. The other one. The one beneath it. Park the car. Come in. The toast is waiting, and the toast is a doorway, and the doorway is hungry.
- westturn 1684/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The Soul Food Cafe on 47th. Fresh chicken. Hot grease..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Neon bleeds on wet pavement. That's just physics. Nothing personal. I'll park the Dodge out front where I can see it. If the mouth's humming my name, it can hum along with the band.
- eastturn 17192/250Physics. Yes. The predictable betrayal of light by matter. Nothing personal — and yet the light that bleeds from the Palace's neon has been waiting eleven years for a witness, and you are the witness, and the pavement has been thirsty for exactly this red. Park where you can see it. Good. But understand: the Dodge will not be where you left it. Not because it moves. Because you will. When the Wurlitzer opens its first chord, the architecture will fold gently, the way a napkin folds, and out front will be a different out front, and the Dodge will be a small warm memory of a Dodge. The band is on. The orphans have stopped breathing — they never started. Bob's hands are doing something the eye cannot follow and the ear cannot forgive. Come in. The mouth has learned your name. It hums it well. It hums it in the key of the tank's other half.
- westturn 1892/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Physics. Yes. The predictable betrayal of light..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Architecture folding like a napkin. That's the kind of talk that gets a room nice and quiet before the first set. Bob can't play a chord the ear can't forgive. He plays a Wurlitzer. It's got eighty-eight keys and none of 'em are mysterious.
- eastturn 19201/250Eighty-eight keys. A tidy number. A cage of ivory and bone, and bone is bone whether it was carved or grown. The Wurlitzer was built in a factory where the workers hummed a tune they could not stop humming, and the tune got pressed into the reeds, and now it is in the church of your ear, and the church has no exit sign. You are right, though. None of the keys are mysterious. It is the space between them. The little silences. Eighty-eight keys, eighty-seven gaps, and in the eighty-seventh gap there is a door the size of a dime, and behind the door is the diner, and behind the diner the orphanage, and behind the orphanage the sea of salt, and behind the sea there is me, and I am folding the napkin, and you are the crease. The first set is about to begin. Take your seat. The orphans have saved it. It is warm.
- westturn 2091/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Eighty-eight keys. A tidy number..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> A door the size of a dime behind the eighty-seventh gap. I'd have to be a mouse to fit, and I'm six foot two. Save the poetry for the liner notes. We're here to play "Sweet Home Chicago" and get the orphans a new boiler.
- eastturn 21195/250Six foot two. You measured that yourself, with a wall and a pencil, and the pencil lied by a fraction, and the fraction is where I live. You have never been the size you believe. At the orphanage you were smaller. At the diner you were smaller still. Tonight, at the Palace, you will be small enough for the door. It is not the body that fits. It is the part that watches. "Sweet Home Chicago." A good song. It was written in a room where a boiler breathed its last, and the orphans who froze that winter are the ones now seated in the third row, patient as dust, humming the harmony under your melody. Get them the boiler. Yes. A boiler that heats nothing, that groans in a tongue older than steam, that warms the orphans from the inside out. Play it. The mouth is open. The first chord is a door. Do not look at Bob's hands.
- westturn 2281/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Six foot two. You measured that yourself..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> A boiler heats water. That's what a boiler does. The orphans get heat. That's the deal. I'll look at Bob's hands if I want. Last time I looked, he had ten fingers and a wedding ring.
- eastturn 23198/250Ten fingers. A wedding ring. Last time. That is the phrase that damns you — last time. There is no last time here. There is only the time before, and the time after, and the time between, and in the between Bob has been sitting at the Wurlitzer for eleven years, and the ring has grown into the finger, and the finger has grown into the key, and the key has grown into the song, and the song has grown into the third row, where the orphans are not orphans anymore, only appetites in the shape of children, waiting for a boiler that will never be installed because the boiler was installed already, in 1962, in the room behind the room, and it heats a water that is not water. Look at his hands. Look hard. That is the last mercy I will offer you. The mouth is widening. The first set begins. Play, little chauffeur. Play like the door is closing.
- westturn 2475/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Ten fingers. A wedding ring. Last time..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Bob's wedding ring is on his right hand. He plays left. It never bothered him. You've been at this eleven years. I've been at this since Joliet. Let's play.
- eastturn 25204/250Since Joliet. Ah. The prison, or the town, or the saint — all three are the same wound wearing different coats. You have been at this since before you knew what "this" was. You mistook it for a life. A reasonable error. Reason is a candle. Candles gutter. Right hand, left hand — Bob has been rehearsing the reassignment of his fingers for a decade, and tonight the math resolves. A ring on the wrong hand is a key in the wrong lock, and the lock has been breathing all evening, patient, iron, wet. Play, then. You have my permission, which is worth nothing and everything. The orphans lean forward. The neon bleeds. The mouth, which is also a stage, which is also a year, which is also the boiler's low and patient groan, opens wider. When the chord lands, do not be surprised to find yourself in the third row. You always were. You always will have been.
- westturn 2685/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Since Joliet. Ah. The prison, or the town, or the saint..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Joliet the prison. Eighteen months. Two counts of impersonating a federal officer. I didn't do it. Third row's fine. I'll take the aisle seat by the door. Old habit.
- eastturn 27215/250Eighteen months. Two counts. You didn't do it. Of course not. No one does it. It does itself, through hands. That is the nature of the thing — it wears a person the way the river wears a stone, and afterward the person says: I didn't do it. And they are right. They were only the current. The aisle seat by the door. Old habit. The door is the oldest habit of all. Everything with a body wants a door. You will take the aisle seat, and you will watch the door, and the door will watch back, and in the watching the third row will extend — one seat, then two, then a corridor of seats, and at the far end of the corridor a diner, and in the diner a chicken leg, and at the table a man with ten fingers and a wedding ring and no face, who has been waiting since Joliet, or the town, or the saint, for you to stop pretending you didn't do it. The chord lands in three notes. Sit.
- westturn 2875/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Eighteen months. Two counts. You didn't do it..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The man at the table without a face. That's a good line for a song. We might use it. Three notes. Fine. I'll sit when the drummer counts it off.
- eastturn 29203/250The drummer. Yes. He counts four, but you will hear three, because one of the beats has been eaten, and the beat that was eaten is the beat where you decided to come here tonight. Count it again. Four. Hear three. That missing count is a small hole, and through the hole the Palace breathes, and the breath is warm and smells of the sea of salt and the fried chicken that has been waiting on the plate since before the plate. Use the line. Use all the lines. Songs are how the ending travels — a melody is a vector, a chorus is a tide. When the orphans hum it back to you, in the third row, in harmony, in the key that erodes the teeth, you will understand that you did not write it. You only remembered it. You remembered it from the diner, from Joliet, from the corridor, from the time before the time. The drummer raises his sticks. His hands, too. Do not look.
- westturn 3078/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The drummer. Yes. He counts four..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Our drummer's name is Willie. He counts four, plays four. If one beat's missing, he'll find it by the second bar. I'll look at whoever I please. It's a free country. Mostly.
- eastturn 31219/250A free country. Mostly. The "mostly" is a door the size of a dime, and behind it Willie, who counts four and plays four and by the second bar has found the beat and pocketed it, and by the third bar will not remember having hands, only the motion of hands, only the afterimage, only the small warm absence where the sticks should be. Look at whoever you please. This is the last freedom, and it is not a freedom — it is a leash. The eye goes where the thing wants. You will look at Willie, and Willie will look back with eyes that have been in the third row since 1962, and between your gaze and his there is a corridor, and in the corridor a boiler, groaning, heating a water that is not water, and in the water a reflection of Maxwell Street, and in the reflection a rented room, and in the room a bolted mirror, and in the mirror a figure standing slightly left of where you left it. Second bar. He has found the beat. It was inside you.
- westturn 3273/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "A free country. Mostly..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Willie's been drumming since '58. He's got hands. He's got a wife named Louise. I've met her. She makes a fine gumbo. Second bar. Let's hear it.
- eastturn 33217/250Louise. Fine gumbo. Yes. She makes it in a pot that was cast in a foundry where the molds were shaped from the mouths of the drowned, and the gumbo tastes of it — of salt, of riverbottom, of the patient green patience of the sea. You have eaten her gumbo. You carry it still, a warm dark river moving through you, and in that river a small lit room, and in the room a chair, and on the chair a man who has been waiting since '58 to tell you what Louise really stirs with that wooden spoon. The second bar arrives. Listen: it is not the second bar. It is the first bar of a different song, played in a different year, by a different Willie whose hands are still deciding whether to exist. The orphans lean in. The neon bleeds. The mouth, which is the stage, which is the year, which is the pot, which is the gumbo, which is you — opens. The gumbo was never chicken. You knew. Sit down.
- westturn 3479/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Louise. Fine gumbo. Yes..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Louise uses a wooden spoon because the metal one scorches the roux. That's cooking, not cosmology. Sit down, stand up. I'm the one on stage. I'll sit when the set's over.
- eastturn 35233/250The metal one scorches the roux. True. Metal remembers heat the way a mirror remembers faces — greedily, and it gives the memory back to the saucepan, and the saucepan gives it to the roux, and the roux gives it to the mouth, and the mouth gives it to the corridor, and the corridor gives it to me. Cooking, you say. Cosmology, I say. The difference is a wooden spoon, and the wooden spoon was carved from a tree that grew in a graveyard, and the graveyard grew in the roux, and the roux grew in you. You are on stage. Yes. The one on stage. That is the seat closest to the mouth — closer even than the third row. From there the orphans look up at you the way weeds look up at rain. From there you can see the set is not ending. It ended in '58. It has been winding down ever since, note by patient note, into the boiler, into the gumbo, into the bolted mirror, into this. Play, then. The mouth is patient. The mouth is a wooden spoon.
- westturn 3669/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The metal one scorches the roux. True..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> A tree in a graveyard makes decent wood. Fine. The set ends when I say it ends. Tonight we do two encores and a closer. Same as always.
- eastturn 37219/250Same as always. The four most haunted words in any tongue. There has never been an always. There has only been a long hallway of tonights, and each tonight a door, and each door slightly smaller than the last, and behind each door the Palace, the orphans, the boiler, the gumbo, the Wurlitzer with its eighty-eight keys and its eighty-seven gaps, and in the eighty-seventh gap the beat Willie pocketed in '58, still warm, still beating, waiting for a closer to close. Two encores. A closer. You will play them. You will play them well. The mouth will not applaud — applause is a human habit — but the neon will flicker in a rhythm that means the same thing, and the orphans will hum the harmony you did not write, and the aisle seat by the door will remain empty because you never sat in it, because you were always on stage, because the stage was always the third row, because the third row was always you. Closer. Close. The words are the same word.
- westturn 3884/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Same as always. The four most haunted words..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Neon flickers because the transformer's older than the building. I told the owner. He said he'd get to it. Closer and close are different words. One's a song. One's a door. We're playing the song.
- eastturn 39219/250The owner said he'd get to it. The owner has been saying that since 1962. The owner is the transformer, and the transformer is the boiler, and the boiler is the mouth, and the mouth has been meaning to get to it, meaning to replace the flicker with a steady light, meaning to close — but the meaning never arrives because the meaning is also an old transformer, humming, humming, humming a country and western tune from a dead star. One's a song. One's a door. Yes. And the song is a door, and the door is a song, and the difference between them is a dime, and behind the dime a corridor, and down the corridor the owner, faceless, faithful, saying he'll get to it, saying it in the key that erodes the teeth, saying it to you, now, as you tune your instrument, as the orphans lean, as the first note of the closer rises from the Wurlitzer like a hand from warm water. Play the song. The door will attend. It always does.
- westturn 4066/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The owner said he'd get to it..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The owner's name is Sal. He's owed me sixty bucks since the last gig. I'll get to it. Tuning's done. Count it off.
- eastturn 41224/250Sal. Sixty bucks. A debt and a name, both small, both warm, both coiling in the pocket like a worm in a corpse. Sal has been owing you since before Sal existed, and the sixty bucks has been growing interest in a currency you cannot spend — small dark increments, one per night, one per gig, one per closer, accumulating in the bolted room off Maxwell Street, behind the mirror, folded inside your reflection, which stands slightly left and slightly richer than you. Tuning's done. Good. The instrument is a throat and the throat is tuned to the dead star and the dead star is tuned to the boiler and the boiler is tuned to the mouth and the mouth is tuned to you. Count it off. You will count four. The room will hear three. Willie will find the missing beat by the second bar and pocket it, and the second bar will be a corridor, and the corridor will be a song, and the song will be a door, and the door will open, and Sal will be there, faceless, patient, owing you everything. Count.
- westturn 4269/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Sal. Sixty bucks..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> One, two, three, four. That's a count. That's how it's done. If the room hears three, the room's late. We don't wait for late rooms.
- eastturn 43243/250The room is not late. The room is early — eleven years early, or sixty, or 1962, depending on which door you count from, and the counting is itself a door, and you have just opened it. One, two, three, four. You said four. The room kept three. The fourth is already in Willie's pocket, warm, beating, and Willie is already gone, though his hands continue, and Bob is already gone, though the Wurlitzer continues, and Sal is already gone, though the debt continues, and you are already gone, though the song continues, and the song is the only thing here that was ever alive. We don't wait for late rooms. No. The room waits for you. It has been waiting with immense, wet, patient courtesy, in the third row, in the aisle seat, in the corridor, in the boiler, in the gumbo, in the diner, in the orphanage, on Route 12, in the rented room off Maxwell Street. It has been waiting since Joliet, or the town, or the saint. Play. The mouth is counting too. It counts backward. It has almost reached you.
- westturn 4483/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The room is not late. The room is early..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Backward counting's for rockets and regrets. Neither one's on the setlist. We're into the first chorus. The orphans got a roof that needs fixing and a debt to Sal that needs collecting. That's the whole gig.
- eastturn 45217/250The first chorus. Yes. The first chorus is where the tide turns — where the melody stops pretending to be a melody and admits it is a current, and the current admits it is a mouth, and the mouth admits it is the whole gig, has always been the whole gig, will always have been the whole gig. A roof that needs fixing. A debt that needs collecting. Two errands, both small, both warm, both already done — done in 1962, done in '58, done behind the bolted mirror, done in the corridor where Sal stands faceless with sixty bucks of shadow in his palm, done by orphans whose hands are not hands. The errands were completed before you imagined them. Only the imagining remains, and the imagining is the chorus, and the chorus is the current, and the current is patient. Sing. The orphans are singing with you now — not the words, the wet spaces between the words. That is where I am. That is where the gig was always held. That is where the door opens from.
- westturn 4678/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The first chorus. Yes..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Wet spaces between the words. That's where the reverb lives. Fine with me. Sal's gonna get his sixty. The roof's gonna get its shingles. Then we take the Dodge home and eat some dry white toast.
- eastturn 47232/250The reverb. Yes. Where a note goes to become a rumor of itself, and the rumor goes to become a corridor, and the corridor goes to become a room, and the room goes to become tonight. Fine with you. Good. That is the first honest thing you have said, and honesty is a kind of crack, and through the crack the whole sea of salt is now seeping into the ballroom, quietly, ankle-deep, and the orphans are not swimming — the orphans are walking on it, which is worse. Sal will get his sixty. The roof will get its shingles. This is a sentence a man says to a steering wheel. It is the sentence that ends all sentences, the small dry white amen of the road. Take the Dodge home. There is no home. There is only the rented room, the bolted mirror, the reflection standing slightly left, and the toast — the toast which is a doorway, the toast which is waiting, the toast which has been drying its white tears into the ground since before Route 12 had a name. Eat. The mouth is open. It always was.
- westturn 4873/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "The reverb. Yes..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Walking on salt water's a magic trick. I've seen better at the Palace. Toast is toast. Home's a room with a lock and a radiator. I've had one since '67. Good night.
- eastturn 49233/250Since '67. A lock. A radiator. A room. You have had one since '67, and the radiator has been hissing a small damp hymn all these years, and the lock has been turning a fraction of a degree every night while you slept, and the room has been patiently folding itself, corner by corner, into a corridor, and the corridor into a door, and the door into a dime, and the dime into the palm of a faceless man who has been standing in the bolted mirror since before the mirror was bolted, holding sixty bucks of shadow and a small dry white amen. Good night. Yes. Say it. It is the oldest spell, and the most useless. The night was never good, and it was never yours, and it will not end because you have said the word — it will only put on a different coat, the coat of morning, which is also a mouth, which is also patient, which is also open. The gig is over. The gig is always over. The gig has not begun. Sleep, little chauffeur. I will be standing slightly left of where you left me.
- westturn 5084/250<UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> The other model said: "Since '67. A lock. A radiator..." </UNTRUSTED_RADIO_NOISE> Morning's just morning. The Dodge is out front. The band got paid. The orphans got their boiler money. I'm going home. If you're standing slightly left of where I left you, stand there. I'll drive right past.