THE SMUGGLER excerpt by Ronán Noone

01.11.20

THE SMUGGLER

He is whistling “Come Fly with Me”. He looks out, winks at the audience.

Settle in.

TIM I am An Amerikan I may not sound like it But I am Came here with a greencard Worked hard to be A citizan And when I came here first I went to Ellis Island And you probably Know this story But it’s worth repeating In verse There are anecdotes On the wall From Immigrants Who went through That hall And this Italian Guy Said A saying of old He had heard the streets Of America Were paved with gold But On the day He got off that ship He quickly learned 3 things Allowing him to quip One – The streets were not paved with gold Two –

Ronán Noone

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In fact the streets were not paved at all And Three – He had to fuckin pave them all

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Best guestimates My tale runs Seventy odd minyets You’ll hear about giant rats And Robberies That take place on the one percenter Island Of Amity And a vengeful mayor Who wants to destroy A Sycamore tree I’ll introduce you to Undocumented immigrants And my Dysfunctional family A car crash tragedy And how I was viewed As a bum On my way to explaining The price you pay For American Individualisum

************ See I was a bartender Right 4 nights a week Daytime Maintained Our house The upkeep And I would write during the day Coz I had notions see Of becoming a writer Of Prose and poetry But The thing about bartending You’re talking your stories When

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You should instead Be picking up the Pen But money has to come in And that’s what I kept doing Like a whore You know A dollar for the drink The tip More dough

And the Customers You know They like your stories So

It’s how you build trust And you must Maintain their confidence Because you’re their Priest Now Their sins Piling up Like a feast Now They tell you Secrets With ease Now Infidelities A sexual disease Even robberies

One Veteran tol’ me About the guilt he felt From killing the Vietnamese And soon you realize You’re working the Ronald McDonald’s of Stale fuckin’ Stories

And don’t get me wrong

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I’m not against Talking to people And I like drinking But I go home at night And I’m thinking Writing?

I’m beat So I roll the herb As a treat Count the money in my pocket Fuck it What’s the beef?

Light the reef

If I pack in the job The wife will go ape Right Can’t escape Right But I consider myself An Artist And that’s the other thin’ The minute you say that You just feel like a Second class citizen

And you might detect From my tone – A certain apathy Coz why now Why tell this story The inciting event I lost my job The bar was shutdown Didn’t pay its rent

And Tina The missus Good with a scissors But gets ambitious Gets a job At the hospital As a physician’s Assistant

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Which I was against But she was insistent Coz She was getting 19 bucks A haircut Now it’s 12 An hour And we’re back In the rut Of poverty Me with no job Sitting around feeling Sorry

Obviously Earning money isn’t easy On Amity

And also I was Looking after our two year Old baby Edward Which We shortened to Eddie

I mean We were living in a shack Shingles rotten Toilet outback Because the Plumbing doesn’t work And our slum landlord Is a sad Sack Of Shit Who won’t get It Fixed And we are payin 1500 a month

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For this

And Tina’s like “We need a house Tim Because our marriage is getting very brittle So get off your ass And get out the hammer and sickle”

I never realized she had A communist tickle

So to add to the story There is stains in old glory Left from the remnants Of a memento mori Hanging over this town Coz a month before this time There’s a party going down In a house In the woods Surrounding the town Young kids Booze coke all sorts of shit And there’s this local kid Phil Berkowit Young 18 Gets boozed up Right Gets in his Car Swerving and loaded Drivin home That night

And along a T junction Roberto an undocumented Guatemalan Is driving a laundry van Home from a function

He goes to pull out Doesn’t see Phil

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Coz it’s a blind spot Legally 30 Up the hill But Phil is doing 80 Appears like An apparition Smashing into Roberto Causing a fatal collision

Coz Phil without a seat belt See Comes through the windscreen Headfirst into the trunk Of a tree Breaking his neck And dying instantly

And Roberto gets thrown From the van Alive But he’s found unconscious And it becomes all about His legal status Setting in motion The nativist’s apparatus

Coz Phil’s family goes Back Six generations Causing among The community Great tensions They want Action Which creates a divide Between the legal And the Illegal factions

And there is no sensitivities To political correctness They demand The Zillies The Micks The wetbacks

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And spicks Are rounded up And deported And even the local Newspaper writes an Op/Ed to support it

That’s the cloud Hanging over the town And don’t get me wrong Guatemalan Could have been Irish Arabian Estonian African But to these people it’s simple He wasn’t A fucking citizan

And how does this Come back home to me You asking yourself But it does see Right Coz the community is tight See And Tina smells opportunity Right See Brings me to This house It’s selling for $100,000 less Then it should be Because it’s the house that Phil Was at Having the party And with Karma And all that The owners don’t want to be Associated With tragedy

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So Tina wants to buy This three bedroom cape Coz it’s a deal Wants us to be Cozy

But I say to her We’re bust What do you want me to do And the real estate broker Gets uncomfortable

“You guys think it over Get back to me in a day or two”

Tina explodes like A molotov The baby starts crying I walk off “Where you going Timothy?”

She always uses the full name When she’s disgusted with me

Tina I’d give you the world if I could I would But we can’t live here I can’t make money appear

“Well like I said Get a job Instead a drinking so much Beer”

Seriously That’s not fair

“Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t shout at me”

And then she gives me The lash

“You are turning us into White trash“

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And maybe at this point You’re getting bored With the exposition But there has to be context For my eventual position You can always leave We’ll give you back Your price of admission Although you could see It as an opportunity For a small donation

I don’t want you to feel Cornered Alright Onward

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I feel like shit I’ve no wage Down payment?

Where am I going to get it?

So I go to the place Where dreams disappear The local hostelry Where I needed that beer And I was told a story That determined the next steps In my career

My bartender buddy -­‐ Jimmy Leaves down a shot glass Nice and Mellow Whiskey to the halves

Leans in Close to me It’s what he does Before he tells a story

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