Key: Gb major
Verse 1
Merritt
G
D
In corporated, checking store attendants for
F
Eb
larceny with a crew of shoppers.
E
D
There was two middle -aged gunts, one owning this chihuahua,
C
B
C#
which whimpered an d yacked in a cocoon of black sweaters,
Bob
Schaefer, crew leader, who
was an
American fascist with
Roosevelt jokes.
C#
Old
and
E
Hicksville?
Pleasantville,
D
E
D
Iowa, and our tires gave out.
roadhouse by the river,
D
E
an d I ran into the sailor under a potted palm in the
lobby.
D
E
We hit the local croakers with a fish poison con.
I got these poisoned
back from
South
and after
being stung by the dreaded candiru,
E
C#
E
like fire through the blood, doctor, and coming on now.
C#
And the sailor goes into his white -hot agony act,
chasing the doctor around his office
D
He never missed,
E
D
Bob and me, when we had a catch, as the old cunts call it,
E
C#
and arrested some sulky
clerk with his hand
B
D
deep in the company pocket.
We take turns playing the tough
F#m
cop and the
D
calm cop.
So I walk in on this
D
E
I have contacted this
D
Venusian virus and subject to dissolve myself in
C#
poison juices and assimilate the passer's
old party smelling like a
Eb
B
an d he snaps at me.
What's your trouble, young man?
Eb
The
my time is valuable.
Doctor?
This is a medical emergency.
D
out on the nod.
C
C#
You're loaded.
You assimilated the croaker.
left me sick.
D
C
Yes, he was old and tough,
D
but not too tough for the caustic enzymes of woo.
The sale was thin and the drug stores was closing, so
I didn't want him to get physical
and disturb my medications.
The next croaker rode with the
and
D
C#
We knotted out under the rubber
carpet under our feet
B
back to 1910.
D
Eb
or lay up
D
C#
drifting back through stale, roaming house, flesh,
C
B
pool halls, and chilly houses.
E
D
Fell back in sad flesh, small and
pretentious in a theatrical
C#
B
the aging ham cradles his tie -up and stabs a vein like
the asps.
D#
D
Click back through the cool gray short -change
artist's lush rolling
D
C#
C
D
empty pockets in the worn metal subway dome. I woke up in
D
C#
molded to the leather chair. I was
This was black smoke
The sailor, still sleeping,
D
he looked very young under a wispy moustache.
D
B
I woke him up and he looked around with slow hydraulic control,
C#
C
his eyes unbluffed, unreadable.
I was in fact very thin, as I saw,
when I stopped in front of a mirror panel and adjusted
C#
D
my tie knot in a starched collar.
It was a neighborhood of chilly houses and cheap saloons
C
B
heavy calm bartenders humming
Sweet
D
B
Sixteen. I walked without thinking
like a horse will
and came to the
D
Db
Chinese laundry by
We siphoned in and the chink
C
B
curtain and the black smoke set our lungs
dancing a junkie jig.
We lay up on
Chinese kid cooked
our pills and handed us the pipe.
After
six pipes we smoke slow and
C
B
The chink kid goes out to fix it
and the words hatch in my throat like
already written there. I was reading them
back.
B
D
Only way to orient yourself when in
Rome.
He comes in
Maxolies every night at 2 .20
this unnatural act on his person.
C#
So
D
regularly you can set your watch by it. I won't, I won't,
Not again.
Glub, glub, glub.
So that gives us 20 minutes at least
C#
D
through the side window.
St.
Louis before
they missed the time.
Memory pictures coming in.
C#
Little
C#
D
set s and banks an d clubs.
C
B
Eb
C
steel and oil and shares. I had a rich
St.
Louis family.
It was set for that night.
As we walked out, I caught the
Japanese girl picking up laundry, and my flesh
her over the afternoon.
Once in
a drug store.
And we can't find the
Jimmy for the narco cabinet,
and the harness bolts
sniffing around the door.
And there we are with a sex car
like beached idiots.
R .R. station.
We get on a train, shivering,
burning, junk sick.
And the warm vegetable smells
of thawing
filled the car.
Nobody could look at us,
D
steaming away there
like manure piles.
I woke out of a light yen sleep
when the
Japanese girl came in.
Three silver digits exploded
in my head. I walked out into streets
of
Madrid and won a football pool.
Felt the
Latin mind
clear in veinless sunlight.
Met
Paco by the soccer scores and he said,
¿Qué tal,
Enrique?
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TunerE A D G B E
ChordsD G F Eb E...
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