Waiting For The Gang Or Cod Street Corner

Saturday night out the domi and on the street. Cod Street corner. The scene torn off the street like some scandal from a daily-rag. Me and Johnny -- fish-city-cats – slick-soaped piles of hair, tight ice-blue drainpipes, black leather, high heeled pointy boots. We two wacky off-kilter sentries – famous (for been there). Two shabby parrots playing the hard-case doorkeepers, foot to foot waiting for the gang to come...cool observing eyes check the road for slops – safe corner!
Fish Town: cruel, horror joke-town in a make-do world. Open sore streets cracked with alleys – florid-curtained windows on kill-floor-streets. Winds that suck the bones with icy breathe — freeze-frozen, big. grey city streets of collapsible dreams -- ersatz circus to the eye – just another surface – economy of space – measured blocks in blocks – a life that clings too near...breathing crushed air – home, the last place to be....But here's the turf we keep to meet the game – place to look and duck – clock the empty time. Cod Street corner outside of everything – place to show. Saturday night! Me! Me! Me! – A stick in the pants, a prick pittance in the pocket....Me! Me! Me! Get his end away? A boy, too young, and yet, far older than he was...
Cod Street corner -- light and dark -- headlights smashing up the shadows, searchlight-paparazzi-flashbulb-attack-headlight-show dazzling our eyes, electrifying faces, carving-out space. Headlights shift – blue-white, liquid light flows -- shadows turn – blacks and greys screwing holes in faces, sick yellow light smears the contours of our alert Gothic gargoyle heads, being the eyes for slops... Silhouetted dark faced passer-bys; animated creatures trying to get somewhere...
Cod street corner commencing...playing the game -- bake black charge to spin a number, walk the block to blow the joint – on the move is safer -- 'Cool blow!' Back on the turf and sparky with smiles all round. Rapping talk-stories, flicking brains morphing tropic ideas into shape, turning over what has, and had, and will be, what we'd seen, who did what, and who will show and where. And where it's at – place to hit – where the music is, clothes, dope, and birds – all the world in one place...
Cod Street corner--we're Slick and Ready! Tamla Motown-tamourine-players rattling coinage in the pocket – Led-captains free-wheeling to multiply the silver; circulate the loot....Knowing what we need...entrance fee to feel....The rest is cool birds and flush guys....Tap-talk, and windy words to jive them pure, to pay the way -- a quid or two; 'That takes work!' No coin, no BLUE SPOT on this Saturday night....No cool crazy scenes, no faces, no thrill-menaced-mad stuff, no run away sounds to ride the mind, no ultra-violet magic light; a chance to glow in my electric-white shirt with a film star tan...no birds, no charge, no happy pills to stretch the night to morning light! while the Jones' sleep their stood-still life...Graft dodging doesn't pay! But graft's a drag that kills you in a thousand ways – doing time; jarred time – too absolute -- stuck in tides of days with pains, and angry gaffers with ambitions for nil.
'What did you say?'
'Nothing, just thinking!'
Cod Street corner, hunger primitively watching doll-faced-birds pass togged up in mini-skirts, and cowboy boots, or the flutter of dresses like blown paper in the wind. Maybe main birds; Jenny Beale and Audrey Rue will show...then anything can happen – they do everything! Audrey's crazy – good on the glims – a girl with an outlaw-look, and what a mouth...and sings so cool....Lucky if she holds the key to her sister's pad -- Party time!'
Cod Street corner Johnny's gob-iron flashes quick from his jacket like a knife – eats his metal bone. Johnny blowing cool, taking off, stamping out his beat of blood and voodo-rhythm and blues that keeps us warm. The cool coming up from the pavement echoes in the doorway and in our minds -- vamping lungs of breathe – suck and blow.... Johnny's pleading harp screeches up the road: 'Yeah, lonely blues-train from up the tracks a coming'...speaking, and signifying -- so help me! -- implications in skin ripping tones, cool and hurting strains with a sense of haunted loss that only the body knows – toasting in Northern -- putting bone in the voice. That Howlin Wolf atmosphere lays hands upon us -- 'Amen!...I am his witness!' King bees tonight! Around the world of noise – Traffic-blare tones...cars slide by like trombones, grinding wheels of rhythm, and blasts of horns, yellow-yap, rebel-yell, and cloud of vulgar tongue...
Cod Street corner now manned by only spectral jive -- Cod Street corner long time gone.