Happy Birthday Tom Waits...
Dec. 7th, 2006 12:46 pmOn a long cold night with nothing but a hard life stuffed in a moth eaten pea coat, you steal a quick sip from a hip flask full of shadows, shiver off a memory and polka stumble on down Heartattack & Vine. Moon light dancing on a puddle made of tears. Graveyard music growling from a smoke coated throat. Finds himself a bar where love won't go and all his ghosts can drink free. Step through the door jingling change in a pocket full of bad luck, tips back a hat stuffed with dreams. Pulls up a stool. Flashes a quick jail break of a smile at the bartender and downs himself a bottle full of sorrows.
There's trouble in a red dress sitting on the other end of the bar. You can tell by those curves that she's all heat and madness. She, in turn, absently sucks the gin from an olive plucked off an empty martini. You shoot her a wink from a black eye. You tell her that you got yourself a mockingbird in a cage and if she'd just be kind enough to buy the poor little thing a shot of whiskey, then if she was lucky, it might just sing her song for her.
She pulls taut the arch of a painted eyebrow, debates silently, until finally she throws a nod at the bartender with a shrug.
He slams a shotglass full of courage down. You lift it back up with a silent toast to the trouble in the red dress. You throw it back and she orders you another one -
'for luck' she says with a skeleton smile - and the bartender leans in close and says 'You better make this one count, kid!' pouring you what could be your last drink.
But with a little fire in the belly and the cough now loosened from the collar. You wipe the flames from your lips and step up to a jukebox sitting lonely in the corner. Pop in your last quarter and you light up that last cigarette you keep tucked like a pencil behind the ear and a slow. A slow waltz of violins sweet as roses and somewhere deep in the bottom of a caged soul, that mockingbird begins to sing...
There's trouble in a red dress sitting on the other end of the bar. You can tell by those curves that she's all heat and madness. She, in turn, absently sucks the gin from an olive plucked off an empty martini. You shoot her a wink from a black eye. You tell her that you got yourself a mockingbird in a cage and if she'd just be kind enough to buy the poor little thing a shot of whiskey, then if she was lucky, it might just sing her song for her.
She pulls taut the arch of a painted eyebrow, debates silently, until finally she throws a nod at the bartender with a shrug.
He slams a shotglass full of courage down. You lift it back up with a silent toast to the trouble in the red dress. You throw it back and she orders you another one -
'for luck' she says with a skeleton smile - and the bartender leans in close and says 'You better make this one count, kid!' pouring you what could be your last drink.
But with a little fire in the belly and the cough now loosened from the collar. You wipe the flames from your lips and step up to a jukebox sitting lonely in the corner. Pop in your last quarter and you light up that last cigarette you keep tucked like a pencil behind the ear and a slow. A slow waltz of violins sweet as roses and somewhere deep in the bottom of a caged soul, that mockingbird begins to sing...