Tom Waits and an Infinite Sadness By Stuart Buck

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tom waits and an infinite sadness

we were sat around the table discussing things that matter like global warming and politics when I suddenly became very aware that I was there which might sound funny but sometimes you can be somewhere but not really be in the moment just be inhabiting the space physically but this time I was really there my body my mind my spirit all in line all attuned to the conversation  to the feel of the leather sofa on the small of my back because my t-shirt was riding up and the sound of tom waits coming from the speaker and I heard him as if he was whispering his strangle-cat blues in my ear I could smell the scotch on his breath

and I looked over at my friend and he was talking about a far off place and the war that raged there and then my friends mouth hung open stretched as if he were screaming then went beyond even that as if his jaw was dislocating the way a snake snaps his mouth open to consume something twice his size and it kept going and going until it was just a dark hole that stretched and tapered became a black strip that extended ever higher  and each colour in his face, in the room, in the world split and rose in lines like a barcode

and there was a noise something high pitched and tremulous until the noise and the colours became one and each strip vibrated and trembled like a guitar string and suddenly I knew things I never knew before and I was in love and I had lost and I was in every moment of every life and I could taste the colours that made up the thin strands in front of me and the strands twirled and danced before my eyes and then there was a feeling in the pit of my stomach like falling backwards off a chair but i never hit the ground

and its ok its ok when you leave your body and see it lying on the floor because you are tiny now and floating, floating ever higher and things are changing, the colours are changing from peach and deep blue to a womb like red and you are something indescribably now, something insignificant a speck streaming along this endless soft tunnel that isn’t time and isn’t space

but its ok because your mum is there and your dad is there and everyone that has ever died is there just drifting through the warm infinite and if you could cry you would cry because my god it is so beautiful

and do you promise it will never end?



Stuart Buck is a poet and author living in north Wales. His debut collection of poetry, Casually Discussing the Infinite, peaked at 89 on Amazons World Poetry chart and his second book 'I Am Very Far'will be released on Selcouth Station Press in 2019. When he is not writing or reading poetry, he likes to cook, juggle and listen to music. He suffers terribly from tsundoku - the art of buying copious amounts of books that he will never read.