lover

by horace p sternwall

pictures by rhoda

you look so fine, baby, coming down the stairs with your eccentric millionaires a mellon and a dupont on each arm how could you ever come to harm? down in the shadows, behind the band that's me with a tray in my hand but you need not be impressed i'm serving the chauffeurs, not the guests i know your new friends would never believe that you could ever plot to deceive with your baby eyes and perfect smile but i have walked with you many a mile on feet of dreams down a highway of lies under burning, black and rainy skies but why speak in symbols, why talk in riddles your hell is real and i'm in the middle remember the gray nevada sand when we walked into vegas hand in hand the bus blasted by with its black exhaust but we never stopped to count the cost vegas - the american vampire night lit by money's undying light 24 hours of non-stop cancer the tunnel of love for two cons without an answer third time unlucky, you always said the third mark we rolled turned up righteously dead you took one look at the sucker's i d your eyes got wide and you said to me this guy's the boss of the whole east coast but, baby, i still love you the most no need to be scared of this dead mother as long as we are true to each other and remember the cafe in laramie when i became you, and you became me and the world was buried in cold and snow it was not so very long ago now that i think of it - yes, whenever i'd wake up from a dream of love forever your eyes were always clear and bright checking out everything, everything in sight when we held up the liquor store in ukiah i thought i heard the heavenly choir but it was the deputy's turn to die you saved me then - now i wonder why and what would mrs purvington-smith say if she knew who you hung out with and the things you did and the things you knew and the jokers and johns you conned - the whole crew and mr and mrs burford jones would shiver in their upholstered bones and cry for their mamas if you ever admitted to all the murders you've committed remember the time on 34th street when you got blisters on both feet we went into larry's sandwich shop the rain began falling, drop by drop and there was that pink cigar smoking god callahan from the vice squad but he just nodded and stirred his tea stirred his tea, so wearily larry's was kind of declasse the american sub was his forte you liked yours so much you ordered two more the rain began to really pour a guy at the counter with a purple face told a sad story about the seventh race the hustlers and losers and shoppers outside went by in a single watery tide at times like that it seemed to me they were all slaves, and only i was free the world wasn't old, the world wasn't new the world wasn't anything, but i had you