Potter’s Field Tom Waits

Well you can buy me a drink and I'll tell you what I've seen
And I'll give you a bargain from the edge of a maniac's dream
That buys a black widow spider with a riddle in his yarn
That's clinging to the furrow of a blind man's brow
And I'll start talking from the brim of a thimble full of whiskey
On a train through the Bronx that will take you just as far
As the empty of a bottle to the highway of a scar
That stretched across the blacktop of my cheek like that
And then ducks beneath the brim of a fugitive's hat
You'll learn why liquor makes a stool pigeon rat on every face
That ever left a shadow down on Saint Mark's place

Hell I'd double-cross my mother if it was whiskey that they paid
And so an early bird says Nightstick's on the hit parade
And he ain't got a prayer and his days are numbered
And you'll track him down like a dog
But it's a tough customer you're getting in this trade
Cause the Nightstick's heart pumps lemonade
And whiskey keeps a blind man talking all right
And I'm the only one who knows just where he stayed last night

He was in a wrecking yard in a switchblade storm
In a wheelbarrow with nothing but revenge to keep him warm
And a half a million dollars in unmarked bills
Was the nightstick's blanket in a February chill
And the buzzards drove a crooked sky beneath a black wing halo
He was dealing high Chicago in the mud
And stacking the deck against a dragnet's eye
And the shivering nightstick in a miserable heap
With the siren for a lullaby singing him to sleep
And bleeding from a buttonhole and torn by a slug
Fired from the barrel of a two dollar gun
That scorched a blister on the grip of a punk by now
Is learning what you have to pay to be a hero anyhow