Impression of Tom Waits

He’s himself incarnate, or so
it seems, so seamy. Most of us don’t
even try that trick. Full disclosure - do I know?
I never once met or talked to the guy.
But in the meantime, though - I have
a pretty good idea, of the man and it’s pretty
personal to me, so. Just gotta ask.
Have you heard him sing? His voice rolls out

from the gap left in the emotional spectrum
after all the blues have already been sung, his larynx
a damp rag
-wrung-dry, and there just ain’t none,
no more left, no more blues - except oh!

The echoes.

From which he croons a deep-throated
porn soliloquy, growling raw
and as wretched as anyone could ask. He didn’t ask
for whatever gift he has, he’s just worked it
for all it’s worth. And he seems pretty pleased,
pretty cheerful, given the blasted landscapes
he paints. He seems well-adjusted
to such dismal scenes. I think he knows the worst

that’s in him. I think that’s a key to his insight. Have you heard
the lyrics he draws out from there? The seediness
of dim-lit smoke-curtained rooms, waking
with a stain on your soul the size and shape
of somebody’s face
stolen from a blackout memory -
but it looks good there. There are pills
for it, anyway, and whatever’s left in bottles. It’s

like some demented Catholic saint
decided to get all his Purgatory right now, which
is insane
because pretty sure his upbringing skipped all that.
But somebody’s running a penance, or at any rate,
some inhuman experiment in shameless absolution.

He’s like a scientist, worse,
a Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster
in one, reconceived as a vaudevillian
vivisection routine: an outrage,
up self-dissected onstage, revealing
the most sensitive and delicate structures
like an obsessive inward exhibitionist - people wince,
cringe and stifle cries as he runs electric charge
through twitching, exposed parts with wires, the audience
crying out in sympathetic pain - to his deadpan enjoyment.

You don’t see such workings normally, but
you can feel them in you now. Thanks! Then he jumps back,
slapped all haphazardly back together again in a cheap suit
and plunging into a rollicking barrelhouse waltz-time rag!
With inappropriate jazz-chord flourishes and voicings
thrown in just to show you. Just to smack

every forehead in the room back
in its seat of consciousness with something wet.
And he finishes the number, and, sincerely curious, asks
from the side of his mouth, “Djya like that one? I got another,”
with a drawl from no other region on Earth.

He’s one of us.

A lounging, rangy and rawboned shambolic raconteur
of triumphant woe; prettiest, pettiest betrayal, crime
and skulking, skipping guilt, and
lip-smacked sourness. He might as well
be naked in a drawing class, holding a pose
till we’ve gawked our share
and given up on any resemblance. He’s just there.
Human nature incarnate - just his own, thanks much.
The piano and voice noise he’s capable of making
rings out like the gong of a hollowed-out soul. Man,

I don’t know if he’s a Bodhisattva or what,
but if he ain’t coming back, I don’t care to be reborn
to a world without his semi-cocked view on things.
Most of us have missed something,

and Tom Waits caught it.

He seems willing to pay the price,
too, but I don’t know who’s equipped to tally it
up for him. He holds a position of unique
and uncomfortable authenticity. People
are mostly inclined to leave him to it.

In Rock and Roll, Tom Waits is the power
behind the throne, except he doesn’t care
what the royalty does. He’s back there
for his own business,
and it smells.

A more human man you will not find alive.

I don’t know if he’s a great artist. He’s
an artist. Rankings are for critics to chew,
swap the taste of, puzzle out and crow over. This

man’s apart from the game, in that sense. He’s got
all the integrity of a lump of coal. It doesn’t take
Santa Claus to drop that in a dirty sock, give it
a hard and vigorous squeeze and call it a diamond. Superman,
maybe, but Superman wouldn’t come within Mach 3
of a Tom Waits song.

Everyone in those is vulnerable.

But Tom Waits? A nice guy? Sense I get is,
he knows his own heart. Something few descend to,
and I suspect no one can know their own heart
without taking full possession of the consequences.
Owning to what they’ve done. Knowing your own heart
takes a scraped and scathing life. If you had a complaint
for Tom Waits, over some way he treated you? I suspect

you’d find him answerable. I suspect his answer
might astonish you. A scathed-simple humility. Not
meek, just well-abashed, and long since over his own
bullshit. Not keen to shovel any more on himself,
for your benefit or mollification.

I’d guess he’d treat you fine. I doubt he’d consider himself
"nice" over it, but maybe, a better man than the worst
he knows is in him. The man who doesn’t know his worst
is just the one who later says he couldn’t be responsible for it.

He’s not wrong.

All men are animals. Most men are babies. Some men are monsters,
too. Waits is a self-tamed wild menagerie and hard-knocks nursery act,
but the wildest beast of all is the one keeping the others in line,
the whole scary and harmless routine, doing amusing tricks
for the wowed-insensible crowd. The love he inspires is terrifying.

Is it any wonder?

He’s a pretty consummate professional,
whatever else he is. Wary as I am, and I am,
I would trust Tom Waits with any con he wanted to pull.
I’d consider it a debt of honor paid, whatever he bilked me for. Yet
I suspect he’d leave me with his own lucky silver dollar in my pocket,
for my trouble and profit.

He strikes me as a pretty great cat. Pacing himself,
leery and amiable.