Tom Waits - The Ghosts of Saturday Night
(after hours at napoleone’s pizza house)
A cab combs the snake,
Tryin’ to rake in that last night’s fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life
Like small change on strangers...
Paws his inside p-coat pocket
For a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with maxwell house eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.
Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, irene
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes
And the texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a ’ring and valve special’...
Cryin’ fill’er up and check that oil
You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil.
The early mornin’ final edition’s on the stands,
And that town cryer’s cryin’ there with nickels in his hands.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs - roll ’em over and a package of kents,
Adam and eve on a log, you can sink ’em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can’t be late.
And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
Filled with twilight coupe devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of saturday night...