Tom Waits - Potter's Field lyrics

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 bu*tonhole 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 He dressed the hole in his gut with a hundred dollar bandage A king's ransom for a bedspread that don't amount to nothing Just cobweb strings on a busted ukulele And the nightstick leaned on a black shillelagh With the poison of a junkie's broken promise on his lip He staggered in the shadows screaming I ain't never been afraid And he shot out every street light on the promenade Past the frozen ham and eggers at the penny arcade Throwing out handfuls of a blood stained salary They were dead in their tracks at the shooting gallery And they fired off a twenty-one gun salute And from the corner of his eye he caught the alabaster orbs Of a dime a dance hall girl and stuffed a thousand dollar bill in her blouse And caught the cruel and unusual punishment of her smile And the nightstick winked beneath a rain soaked brim Ain't no one seen hide nor hair of him since No one except a spade on Riker's Island and me So if you're mad enough to listen to a full of whiskey blind man And you're mad enough to look beyond where the bloodhounds dare to go And if you want to know where the nightstick's hiding out You be down at the ferry landing oh let's say about half past a nightmare When it's twisted on the clock and you tell them nickel sent you Whiskey always makes him talk And you ask for Captain Charon with the mud on his kicks He's the skipper of the deadline steamer And she sails from the Bronx across the river Styx And a riddle is just a ticket for a dreamer Cause when the weathervane is sleeping and the moon turns his back You crawl on your belly along the railroad tracks And cross your heart and hope to die and stick a needle in your eye Cause he'd cut my bleeding heart out if he found out that I squealed Cause you see a scarecrow is just a hoodlum Who marked the cards that he dealed And pulled a gypsy switch Out on the edge of Potter's Field