looking for an exit

look, i've found an old steel trumpet
fancy dinged and etched by smokey whiskey
it'll blast and we can scat my famous
bluesy concoctions

life is jumping curious, here at your
dilapidated table, creaky and shaky
just like your dancing, where the mirrors
interrupt our privacy

we have a mismatched capella
looping whispery at this honky place
that man is snapping and shouting
some thing in a bebop tongue

do you still wash your pontiac by the river
wiping and shining and blasting rock n roll
i heard the city fathers are making you a law
to order peace on sundays

what sort of bar room fancies cheese and grapes
silver frames on photographs
cluster cross old walls that want
their rugged aggravations on display

i'm toodling through this mix of cross-eyed
beauties, with swigs of margaritas,
unstirred cocktails that say nothing
what a town, bricky cincinnati

some squawking man's been telling me
rough stories, fishing dead folk
from the brown mouthed river
silt and dirt and strangled black

are we moving in and out of war
my feet won't run like the Riccoli boys
making time on the corner
with their daddy's business

what's the nearest exit
to bricky cincinnati
?