"Indigent Night" - (Thom P. Miller, 1984)

Indigent Night (1984)

It’s an indigent night with a delinquent moon.
Stick with me, baby, and you’ll see the stars
(they only come out at night.)
And an indigent scream that’s just passing through
(nice to see you.)

A long dark night in the city of the soul,
the run-down section of the heart.
Feelings with addresses unknown
belly up to the bar where they water down
the vermouth and the truth.

Sweet delinquency! Sweet delinquency’s the thing!
It darts about like sparks through the stubble of the night,
lights up the truth with neon joy.
(God is in neon and neon is a gas.)
Transient gals, won’t you come out tonight,
Juke box eyes a’flashing?

Vagrancy! It darts about like sparks through the
Stubble of my beard
(God is in neon and neon is a gas.)
lights up the night with radical snow.
Sweet Delinquency!
(Streetlight Madonnas, come out tonight,
shed those juke-box tears!)

It’s an invalid night with a malpractice moon,
(a long, dark night in the city of the soul)
Obstacle illusions that fill up the night,
(the run-down section of the heart)
Foul up the air like the dog days of emotion
(The sidewalk of the stars! The sidewalk of the stars!)
and all their monkey-fart dreams.

Desperation shoots through the veins on its way to the heart.

The death-squads of desire, the kamikazi’s of lust,
play under the lights a friendly game of search-and-destroy.
Sirens wail, cut through the night
with a searchlight fist in anger or salute
to the malignancy of dreams, the delinquency of starlight,
the indignity of shadows.

The air is conditioned to the moaning of angels,
kneeling in the half-light, begging for indulgence.
The night is accustomed to the customs of strangers,
the habits of drifters, filets of the soul!
Vacant lot vigils of flop-house truths!
Vigilante vespers by choirs of the lost!
Stations of the double-cross!

The air is scented with a summer of lilacs,
Nostalgic transfusions of a whole different sort;
On the outskirts of memory: a girl dressed in white.

The hour before dawn, with its muscatel sweetness…
The stillness of shadows…
The silence of the mind as the heart strikes out.

Thom P. Miller, 1984
Soprano: Gwen Faasen
Alto: Kathy Proulx
Tenor: R. D. Swets (RIP, Bob.)
Percussion: Ric Troll