Tom Waits on Route 22

Got a head full of lightning, and a head full of rain

Trembling with you, I fall asleep down
by the stream. The corn is taller than me.
There's a tree in the forest but I don't know
where, I've built a nest out of your hair.

Hush a wild violet. A band of gold.
You stick around till the bandages
come off. Dancing with the Rose
of Tralee, you whisper:

let's tumble out of the window with confetti
in our hair. I cross my wooden leg
and swear on my glass eye. On every sidewalk,
a thousand pigeons fall.

My parole officer will be proud: I steal
boysenberries, smear 'em on your face.
It's late: your stairs and doorway
send me off to bed where I'll fall

asleep in your arms. Wake me in my dreams.
Let's steal a hacksaw from my dad,
cut the braces off your legs-
We'll bury them out in the cornfield.

*Tom O'Connor has had poems appear in Pebble Lake Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Plainsongs, Notre Dame Review, Touchstone, and Flint Hills Review, among other periodicals. His scholarly articles have appeared in The Journal of Film & Video, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Social Semiotics. His first scholarly book, Poetic Acts & New Media, has just come out from The University Press of America.