A cluttered room, a lonely light. Fingerprints form a lattice on the tablet screen. The words don’t want any part of it, they’d rather follow the dogs around the yard or the cats through the trees. They’d rather do anything but this dusty old number. The pity party of a sick sad old man playing to the cheap seats, the vaudeville act of a busted up slugger swinging futilely for the fence. Who could blame them? You can have too much of anything, especially not enough.
There is an arc to the ember dangling between fingers, an inkling slowly leaving the ash. Drawled sparks in the smoke drenched blue bias, shadows sweeping and the winds busy wolving the door. The flat affect, the patient flicker, the landing of the apt track across the moment of my disarray. A confession dragged out of the brass, the bass line and the banging on the bars. So it goes, the show is over, the spotlight swept up with a push broom. And yet the number plays.
I’m not the sort that gets many return engagements. Most of my encores are more a pelting with rocks and garbage than a listing of my greatest hits. The going has gone from bad to worse, the circuit never much for forgiving. The clown flounders about the boards, clutching at the curtains, pulling up his trousers. There will be no quarter given, no indignity spared. The laugh track between the themes, this melody falling down.