Glamour Stories by pd lyons 1970’s

~

green dingo cookies

sugar lemon tarts

orient in a bottle

lovely strutting street partier

your smile tempting

your vision bright in my arms

I walk to your dancing down the street

~

 

The working man’s pickets were cushioned by gently curving yellow lines and Lady Love was smoke in the back seat. There was nothing to say so he sat back and watched the houses go by, halfway wondering about the people who might have lived in them. There were dance productions; they liked dirt roads, gypsy trails with coloured ribbons tied to pigeons as they circle high above your caravan. There were children worshiping anything sweet and there was love that was not innocent. Nevertheless, there must be good places in the city. Mysterious places with that special type of darkness and dirt that put glamour in your eyes – neon tails, pin ball glitter buzz, juke box spewed songs of no particular importance, sticky sweet glitzy ladies drinking long rums on palace floors. It might have been cold on the streets, but the sun hung out for pie faced men in blue uniforms with gold buttons shined brighter than the sky.

He watched houses turn to wooden tenements and then brick and then bus stations and stairs that only went down into an earth never knowing sky other than that of cracked tiles reflecting dim electricity.

 Then darkness fell slowly, twice. After the second time he was crouched by a gutter fire drinking bourbon with black men who listened as shade party ladies told tales of the past. Watching the thick panorama of different coloured faces in windows that were not glass holding bottles that were windows, he aimlessly played with fire glass and melted containers that still had roses on them and lady love sang cripple songs on his shoulder to a false dawn.

 

1)   At the star palace he played electric games for silver. An hour later he was sitting with drinks that held the names of stars and ladies. The glamour was sparkly tinsel and pointy toed dudes with glitter on their sleeves dealt funk across the room. One high heeled lady with snakes on her breasts was laughing with her jaded beau and every time she wiggled her snakes would strike at passers-by. Playing more electric games the colours trailed ringing bells through the open doorway down through the hall out into the street.

 

2)   He saw women caging babies with wings as dark girls danced young with tequila in the streets. They sang of pentacles and cat’s eyes and the babies growled and the women pretended as they sat on imitation boxes rolling rounded cages filled with feathers. Across the long streets green with weeds from a sea that knew no salt and felt no beach, came the sounds of silver clouds along with windy faces looking for what they do not know forever.

   Stay still she tells him. Painting his face with primary colour, his hair with light, his fingers with diamond, then dipping him in neon, takes him by the arm, out the door down the iron stairs that are still worms beneath their footsteps. She leads him.

   She took him out that night, riding in a high-test vehicle, feeding him streams of drink and foods which even a man of money would have considered rich. The lights were bright, but it was her, that ever in illusion made him squint his eyes with smile. Laughter was limitless. Bodies electric with joyous sense of touching into morning when they found two people together dreaming. Two people they had never known before sat softly watching sun rise. When they got up? They were no more. Merely, slightly older, innocent with the sounds of newspaper rolling off a park bench.

   Down the street mid-day left him walking to a place where it was darkness all day long, where even the drink was dark and sweet and dull neon was the colour of a band which sung of mushroom women and foreign language. He sat where he could occasionally peek out through the boarded-up window. Soon daylight would be memories forgotten and evening a memory to be lived. Remembering the dark deep colour easy on the eyes, cool on the body a swirl in the liquid of a woman.

 

3)   There is a used to be Norwegian cafe we once went to and simple watched a brown girl tambourine her way through the tables asking for nothing more than that enjoyment be taken. He fed my head while her movement sped through my body like a shot filling, until her motion was my thoughts and my fingers moved to draw her dance. There in the used to be Norwegian cafe where black boards were tables, ash trays held chalk and we both got stoned on a brown hair tambouriner.

 

4)   All along the boulevard stuff strutters and blue baby minglers in the liquid. Pretzel men and fruit stand women where he bought an apple and a pack of cigarettes. Sat on cement steps smoked dreams of you in silence brown pieces of cotton all remaining in his eyes.

   The Vaseline dudes were across the way yelling in Hey-mans and leather Mary- Lou-do-da’s to a middle-class bar hopper who said she was born in Highgate looking for satisfaction but never thought some jerk in silver after dark sunglasses would try ‘n slip it to her. She walked by them into the early morning where smoke from bourbon fires and my last cigarette reached a sliver of sun caught through an already forgotten darkness.

 

5)  Who dealt funk across Kallay Street? Who touched Glay Hornen’s nose and got away with it? Who remembered a thousand nights and now tonight was still looking for a place to play his heart deck quicksilver streak across a starless sky? Finally finding a palace called Baxter’s he played his money slow into the night. The cards would turn a twisting and a stretching along a muted orchestra’s fever, their heat tightening his butter ivory smile to turn a last losing heart. I had to laugh at his winning surprise. Then went to find a mellower darkness to call my own, a place where seriousness was a laughing touching colourless intoxication.

 

6) He stopped and harmonica playing the blues for the street choirs the silent eye-love ladies gathered by this boogie boy pumping stuff strutter madness good for making even ladies bounce as well as that the falling night was played ivory black and blue..

   He was a stinger a person for whom everything in life is a cool excitement. I would be too, one of a slyer race. Hey Day! Stand over here. Silver lights the wheel flashing faces across their eyes. We were the even-steven odd couple for hours our laughter was the sorrow of their day and palace guards began to shudder, a thoughtless dry morning it would be! Oh yes, a glicking and a clicking.

I stood a clear glass liquor one doesn’t need to swallow at my lips. Whispers are shadows, glitter is nights, and I am lord of a slyer race. A cold excitement is how we stuff strut our ways around down and so around.

 

7) Stacking brick builder silence with piano blue dirt the old moonshiner came out of the hills for to sing us a song not taking the corn cob out of his mouth –

“Stag darted when I came into this world…

Sixty-nine years a running in this world,

Into your eyes I look

And I am gone”

  My failing fingers release a shattering of glass. So much like the night I am a stinger, a spark of the night wind diamond spun through whose images the storm is constant.

 

8) It was a dirty day the wind came straight up from the streets, a d-r-i-e dirty day. Yellow car was smoke across the last blowing leaves a blonde hair girl in the back seat on expedition to secure eastern tobacco. A paper boy on the corner hustling silver from a storm full of dreamers, aimless there was no one there but still money making he questioned nothing. I was no questioner either I was a smiler from way back in the days of St. Martin when sitting in the park he would smile at me with his evil. Days were good then the sun brightened dew dipped green of the park and St. Martin’s eyes. The smoky nights of bourbon fires drowned in red and white liquid from brown bags making it a joy to be laughed and sunlight a blue sky to be music. I was the first rock n roll star he ever saw.

   She was the first rock n roll star that ever was. She was the one who sang at west coast sea parks giving the crowd and their animals a beat to bounce their boots to. Plain fancy were the things she wore for these were early times when neither funk dealer nor stuff strutter, none wished to be grabbed and many of us were unaware of what was happening. It was quite a while later when I saw her in the Sage Palace that I became truly aware. On that night when glitter was something only me and the saint knew about – she was! She was electric neon silver on the stage her spangles reaching out fang red to all who caught her. Her voice the rock that stunned you into the blissful pain of her rolling you helpless through the dark until your eyes shone, and your body ran tinsel into pools of neon again and again – the colours skyrocketing reaching long past a thousand nights long past bodies fallen.

   He once asked if I didn’t lose my identity as he had heard that happened in rock n roll. I told him identity only meant to be identical. He smiled knowing my answer. The nights were long red spangles and glamour our fancy, the style transpiring hundreds of numbers in the 54 Sage Palace where now I sometimes sing rock n roll good old daze blues.

   Mad Maggots a place of cat dancing while we dined on Tasmanian porridge and lobster tails. The long glasses for wine the tall champagne bubbles bursting a thousand times my eyes.

   Baxter’s a place of smoke and creamy white women whose breasts never knew sunlight. Darkness white light clear liquor burning and when every other place was stacked, and every other place was cracked Baxter’s was booming.

   Backstreets was red and kinky hair girls playing navel hairs with your dreams all up and down the pin-balls wild and the strutters free and you could be anyone.

 

9)   Fatness was a person named raving with hunger and the years between my life were bringers of me to this place with gold down my eyes and a fancy in my step which once was clumsed with unknowing. The statue of St. Martin is where I’m standing; the fountain pours silver over spitted wishes and pigeon feathers, feathers of a bird that knew no ribbons only the taste of confetti popcorn. Smiling is what I’m doing because I like to so much. a smile showing jewelled teeth and lips that like a kiss as well as any tongue. There is someone waiting for a letter they will never get. A letter telling how I no longer like shade parties and glitzy ladies, that I don’t believe the St. was a saint or that bourbon wasn’t made for trash can fires. It’s a letter they will never get because when my high heels hit the pavement I smile and go off to dark sweet evenings in times never to be forgotten.

~

children tiger of the smoke

spark off sweet high stepper

rock age stars and glitter daze the night

palace halls neon stains

glitzy women drink eyes of stars

I need nothing frilly

after all who really dealt funk across Kallay street?

 

Circa 1970’s

* Regards to Jefferson Airplane, After Bathing At Baxter’s