Irish Wake, continued further sketch:

MacGowan:  But what if, like, chhcchh hhcch, you guys weren't, I mean, not to take the piss out of you, important, like, completely unimportant.  Obscure, like.  Say, like me, no one gives a shit really, go have a drink in a pub, no one gives a shit and at least, if you're reasonably lucky, they don't punch you in the face when you're in your cups talking to yourself, the cunts. You guys have been in bars...  Both of you.  The door to the outside shut, everyone equal... What if, like, all your worldly powers were stripped away from you, and you were like just words, like a nobody, or maybe a poet...  You'd have a different view of things.  Or maybe you'd have the same, I don't know.  I mean, I don't know what that would look like...  I mean, being Irish, I've always revered the shit out of both of you, and you can't take who you are and suddenly make you a person like me...  But what if you, like one day decided, well, none of this is important, this worldly business and keeping everyone from killing each other and sticking it to the next guy...  Like, for that matter, what do you do when you're dead?  When you're, like, hhch  chhh, 'looking down from fucking Heaven' or somewhere, and you can't do a thing about anything anymore...  Where do you go?  What do you do, what's it like?  Do you like sit around and reminisce about the past, about life on Earth, about the time you kept the world from being blown up, or, like trying to appeal to people's better side when you've just ruined their economy, for a higher moral purpose certainly...  Maybe that's enough...  Maybe you just get reborn, like, as a trout or something, like, fucking swimming in a river...  I mean, like, think of how truly fucking scary being alive is.  I get nervous about everything, I know;  everyone knows that about me.  I once had a crack up, and I know what it's like and I'm not ashamed about it.  I know I'm not the only one...  You guys are smart, you know the score, and I know you've both had your fucking nervous breakdowns too.    Yeah, you're alive and no one can really protect you...  I mean, what kind of shit offer can you really make, if you're not a doctor or a nurse or a farmer who can feed you for a year, that really justifies your existence, what can you really do that's all that important...  You get up, make tea, breakfast, wipe your arse, and that's if you're lucky!  All you can really do is help people think, to, like, teach them how to not let their own minds fuck with them quite so bad...  Or, like, not be hurt, when someone says something shitty to you, or you can't figure out some fucking girl and, like, your own fucking emotions get in the way...  Poetry isn't all that beautiful, you know, in the practical world.  That's why my songs always have a bitter edge to them.  Rainy Night in Soho, yeah, yeah, but you also get kicked in the head by a bunch of Mods or Teds because they take you to be a punk and they want to beat the shit out of you just for no reason.  And our moods are constantly fucking changing anyway, so why bother keeping track of them!!

(sings)  In the filth and piss they lived in, they would sometimes hum an air,
or talk in tongues of madness, keeping time upon a chair,
and for their wrists a numbered tab
in Westminster Morgue on a cold hard slab
when I was still a young man in NW3

(Kennedy and Lincoln look at each other.)

Kennedy:  Yes, it's true.  I had that hole in my back.

Lincoln:  I think I was one long nervous thing after another...

Kennedy:   And there was that old drunk in a bar in Milwaukee or somewhere on St. Patrick's Day.  And it was cold, so Dave and I went in to warm up, and we all had a Jameson.  And somewhere there's an old drunk who's saying, "I had a Jameson with Kennedy..." and you wonder if anyone ever believes him.

MacGowan:  And Kennedy's grandfather ran a bar, or maybe both of them did.  Well, you finish where you start out, gentlemen, cheers...  (hiss laugh, lights a cigarette)

(quietly, as if to self)  Nothing's really all that interesting, except just, like, learning something...  Wish I hadn't been such a lousy student.

It was a ghost who came and sang me that song anyway, "I've been loving you a long time..."  That was what the ghost had to say, as for their lives, like, what remains of them, or what their thoughts were about...  "Down all the years and all the days... And I cried for all your sorrows, smiled at your funny little ways."  It was all quite simple for the ghost, I just had to listen.

But, keeping a pub, being a barman, that always scared the shit out of me, and it's hard work anyway, lugging all that stuff around, the kegs and bottles.  But the people, being around them, made me so nervous, like bleeding all over you with their problems and their strange fucking inner life craziness... I had to drink, no wonder I had to drink.  How could you not!

Lincoln:  I was a barman too.  You're right.  I was so damn sad all the time, and when I drank, few times I did, the next day I was even sadder, like I'd been bitten by a snake or something. I knew I had to get away from it.

(going into his own mind, kneels down on haunches, as if to draw in the ground, or look into a river)
'Mr. Chairman...  Mr. Cheerman...'  That's how my hick accent would have sounded to them, those New Yorkers and everyone else with their own funny accents.  My country twang...  An oddity to them, almost laughable, but, well, they got used to it, more or less.  Looking down at a dead bird, the same thing.

But some of them came to listen to me, to hear something beyond the every day logic, beyond the worldly condition of work and what you get from your hard work.  And some of them had the same deeper sense but just needed to be reinforced on it a bit.  I guess I looked the part somehow.

Kennedy (quietly):  Bobby has that sense.  That--ah--"tiny ripple of hope" he came up with.  Not as well read, not as political as I was, and in the end that makes you less handcuffed.  You trust your own sense;  you step out of the dialog.  That wasn't my sense of the job, but it speaks to the best of what we might have accomplished in avoiding war with the Soviets.

But with Vietnam, I should have listened more to Robert Frost, and less to Robert McNamara and all the Joint Chief and General types.

Lincoln:  They can be the vainest sons of bitches.

MacGowan:  Writing's hard work.  It's a completely different kind of work.  (lights a cigarette)   It's why Jesus took all those naps.

Kennedy:  I should go see him.  My back still hurts.  Maybe Marilyn is here somewhere.