Covered Dishes Part 3

Your sullen muted whispers, wafting in this dank whiskey inn, are falling on wide-open ears, except, your mousey annoying voice lacerates my brain with claws that rip and tear and impale, yet, I desire more of this, here with these wet unhappy sots, lost forever like me, on a dark numbing cloud, as it floats aimless to the endless east, leeward like a restless barge, netting and trapping more broken souls, more reluctant denizens, more lodgers for the vacant harbor inns, and the laurel-shaded graveyards. But we are different than they, you and I. We know when to stop talking, and start nodding. “Miss, could you speak up, I can’t hear you.” The din of these dozens of voices here, amongst these dancing grabbing fools, are drowning out your sad pleadings. But I can taste your sadness, and your self-realization of a life worth nothing. “I’m lost and don’t know where to turn.” Then, in the neon darkness, the staid barkeep places a covered porcelain dish on our corner table, by the exit sign, brimming and teeming furiously with steamed remonstrances of insatiable fear. “You should see me in the morning,” she says, “Certainly not now, when it is the end of day,” when night has ascended its ego curtain, and a thousand imperfections are revealed. “No, not now!” "But my dear," I say, with eyes screwed forward, “You are perfect in the twilight time," this now time, as we sit here in the back booth, sipping these strong white whales. “No! you fool of a man!”she says, “I am not perfect enough!”