To Tom Waits

Have a glass or ten of whisky in honour of Tom Waits' 60th birthday. The man with the voice of days gone bye, which was once described by Daniel Durchholz "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." His songs take me back to some of my best memories of dark and smoky pubs, sittin alone at the bar drinking dark beer and smoking hand-rolled ciggarettes and just being on your own. He also reminds me of long evening when my writing was suffering from not being written and I had to force words unto the page with the help from a bottle of Scotch and ol' Tom, thanks for that. I raise my whisky filled glass and say "Happy Birthday Tom".


"We are all mad here"

You can hang me in a bottle like a cat
Let the crows pick me clean but for my hat
Where the wailing of a baby
Meets the footsteps of the dead
We're all mad here

As the devil sticks his flag into the mud
Mrs Carol has run off with Reverend Judd
Hell is such a lonely place
And your big expensive face will never last

And you'll die with the rose still on your lips
And in time the heart-shaped bone that was your hips
And the worms, they will climb the rugged ladder of your spine
We're all mad here

And my eyeballs roll this terrible terrain
And we're all inside a decomposing train
And your eyes will die like fish
And the shore of your face will turn to bone.

"Lullaby"

Sun is red; moon is cracked
Daddy's never coming back
Nothing's ever yours to keep
Close your eyes, go to sleep
If I die before you wake
Don't you cry, don't you weep

Nothing's ever as it seems
Climb the ladder to you dreams
If I die before you wake
Don't you cry, don't you weep
Nothing's ever yours to keep
Close your eyes; go to sleep.