The Chains of the Sea - Tapa blanda

Of course we never got on the Riverboat that night. We had to stay for the wedding but it looked like it was all for the best. It was a close thing though. Loneliest told me that Mark Twain said he was thinkin’ about just staying here at Paree on the Mississip but Voltaire talked some sense into him and reminded him that if he stayed here it would get even worse than it was. He knew Mr.Balzac and a Mr. Proust had learned that he was writing the world’s greatest novel and that if he stayed here he’d have more to worry about than some characters from dumb ass novels written in English and Russian and Irish and that pretty soon he’d just, maybe, be sitting around dreamin’ of the Madeline he ate if Proust got to him. And Mr. Twain shuddered and said he couldn’t imagine ever eating up a girl and Voltaire explained a Madeline was like a donut and Proust had written millions of pages about eatin’ one. So Mark decided he’d stay for the wedding and all but would go back to Connecticut tout sweet and write his Letters to the Devil. But what a wild night! It must have been around three when I left the office stepping over the Americans that weren’t used to absinthe and walking around the merry French fellows who were goin’ through their pockets and I was just at the doors of the saloon when Mr. Hemingway comes out backwards and plops his ass right in front of me and I’m about to help him up when he just slumps down for the count and Loneliest and Zelda and a bunch of Frenchies come out and Loneliest goes up to him and shouts “Get up, Hemingway. Get up you son of a bitch!” and Zelda all drunk is trying to pull him away and this lady who I found out later was named Miss Gertrude Stein comes out with a big bucket of water and throws it on Hemingway and the Frenchies are shouting Sacred Blues! and she grabs Hemingway's hand and pulls him up and he staggers a little but then sees Loneliest and says “Taught you a lesson, didn’t I” and then puts his arm around him and they all go back in the bar and sing the Marseilles. “This is crazy,” some guy next to me says and, of course, it was Woody Allen looking all askeered but, man, I was worn out and maybe drunk so all I did was give him a noogie and went in the saloon and waved at Kees with two chorus girls and Charlie and Toulouse Lautrec dancin’ together and stepped over Captain Spaulding near the piano and then up the stairs thinkin’ I would flop out on the balcony and I’m going down the hall when Saul Bellow passes me with his arm around Holden Caulfield talkin’ to him as they head downstairs and I know that’s strange for some reason but I never make it to the balcony but just collapse in front of where Long Johns Silver is laying drunk with his parrot layin’ drunk on him and I still got some moxie in me and start singing as I am laying there on the pieces of eight litterin’ the floor. “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest Ho! Ho! Ho! And a bottle of rum!” And Tom and Huck are there loomin’ above me. Tom, of course in a musketeer hat but good old Huck still wearin’’ his straw one I think it being hard to tell cuz of the absinthe and the parrot that had just got up and was flapping in front of me all drunk And they sing (the parrot too) “Drink to the debbil and all for the quest Ho! Ho! Ho! And a bottle of rum!” AND MORE!

Joe Green is the author of two books of poetry: “The Dark Bark Poems and Songs of Rin Tin Tin” and “The Diamond at the End of Time.” He is the co-author with Tim Smith of “The Limerick Homer.” He lives in a far countree.