Old gangsters never die, except for the few that fall asleep in cinemas at midnight. Lay there sprawling in the footlights for the usherette or the ice cream girl to find. And if I die, God knows I might, don’t let me die in black and white, don’t make me share a haunted screen with every other ghost boy who stood trembling in the foyer drinking wine, then coughed and shot his cuffs and checked the time and stepped outside and got cut down by dead policemen, faces strobing in the panic-light, their long dark cars parked out the back, their halos black against the night, and John Dillinger’s name in finest bullet silver etched upon their hearts, a cold tattoo upon their skin, right next to where the badge is pinned. I could die carefully, at dusk.
‘Cause buddy I once owned a pair of diamond collar studs and as I live and breathe I swear that that’s no lie, and men with such good taste as me deserve to cash their chips more elegant than those without a shirt upon their back or shine upon their dancing shoes. Like playing poker, being dealt the ace of flames you stand, and whispering once your mother’s name pitch headlong dead across the roulette table, bullet holes pinned like armistice poppies in neat rows across your back. Or drowning. Do you know so many hoods and hitmen got sent down to tread the riverbed for all eternity and now they look like statues in some cold submerged art gallery and I would gladly kiss the hand of any man who would bind my wrists and send me down to be in such good company. Dutch Shultz, Capone, why, men like that had hellstars in their eyes and when they walked in groups of more than three, they must have looked like grounded constellations torn down from a B-film sky.
Old gangsters never die.
Say, wouldn’t it be nice to fall asleep forever in some old speakeasy in the 1920’s where they never pulled aside the blind and looked outside to find that 50 years had washed away. All the legends and the blood stains and the zoot suits like a fistful of dead roses someone left there with the hat check girl, then drove off into Old Chicago, windows wound and their radio turned down to keep their holstered shoulders cold, and dry. (…) And as I live and breathe I swear I never seen a pair who fell so sweet to hear the poetry of cordite in the air or turned their faces up, like so. Receiving death as if it were a mother’s kiss or something black, and rare. Hey fellas, is it cold there in that movie house tonight? C’mon and pass out that Jack Daniels and we’ll talk about old murders, double crosses and dead blonds and we’ll say here’s looking at ‘cha. Here’s blood in your eye. Old ghosts sit in the back room. Old dreams wear dusty clothing. Old bodies don’t tell stories.
Old gangsters never die.
·
191 görüntüleme
Yorum yapabilmeniz için giriş yapmanız gerekmektedir.