Poem #34: Tom Waits,

Pour me another absinthe and holy water—I can catch up. Thank you
for the poem-songs, the nightmares, the fiction, the grit and gut.
Take me with you; I’m on board. Thanks for the roundtrip ticket
to the strip club—or was it a church?—housed in a jangling lyric,
for remembering sons newly home from war. I’m almost there.
For sounding like my grandfather, a preacher, my dying lover,
a Victrola, the choke and smoke, the gravel in your throat,
the blues and gospel hour, the sugar-tongued-coffin-salesman
of love. Speaking of love, I love your percussive thump, your bull
horn, your bag o’ tricks, the slap-of-a-toilet-seat instrument,
the high school marching band glockenspiel, your broken guitar,
your pump organ, your anything-makes-a-noise. Don your tall hat
and plume. Let me waltz with you, get lost in your ghost land.
Hold my hand. Lean me against the jukebox, feed it sleeping pills,
let’s sway to the sax. I will close my eyes while you sing, lose
myself in the inner workings of your dreams, like a timeless clock,
with the tick and tock and unexpected knock of cuckoos. Let’s run
through the carnival of your soul, casting away spider webs
and sunsets of worrywart, with the soundtrack on the wrong speed,
while digging deep in our pockets, which are more like wells,
for one last locket holding a photograph of someone we might
have loved, a century ago. Keep on rummaging, churning music
out of everything—like the bar drunk bellied up with the tattoo
of an eyeball on his forehead buying shots for the amputee
in love with the vampire-turned-Christian for the sake
of his mother-in-law. Someone said, “Tom waits for no one.”
Or was it time? Slow down. Wait for me, limping along,
kicked but inspired. Until the red velvet curtain swings shut,
until the song ends and another begins, I’m grateful.
Yours.