Pay Me lyrics by Tom Waits, 1 meaning, official 2024 song lyrics | LyricsMode.com
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Tom Waits – Pay Me lyrics
They pay me not to come home
Keeping me stoned
I won’t run away
They say it’s easy to get stuck in this town, just like Joan
You know I gave it all up for the stage
They fill my cup up in the cage
It’s nobody’s business but mine when I’m low
To hold yourself up is not a crime here you know
At the end of the world

And I kick my foot at the lights
I breathe it in all night
There’s a light on a canvas tree
And money from home supporting me
They pay me not to come home
I will eat crow
I’ll stay away
And though all roads will not lead you home, my girl
All roads lead to the end of the world
And I sewed a little luck up in the hem of my gown
The only way down from the gallows is to swing
And I’ll wear boots instead of high heels
And the next stage that I am on, it will have wheels
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Songwriters: KATHLEEN BRENNAN, THOMAS ALAN WAITS
Corrected by BoneMachine

Pay Me meanings

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    Ever since a boy, this man and his sister have had ever increasingly weird relations with each other. Incestual describes it in the least, and the encounters become more violent as they discover their preferrences agree to a most heated lust.
    During a session, their mother walks in unexpectedly, and the man slips with the knife that they had used to heighten the trill, and accidentally kills his sister.
    The mother convinces the father, out of mercy or love, to send the boy abroad, and sweep the matter under the family carpet.
    At first, in paris, the boy, with a generous allowance, stalks the streets alone, and in grief. He drinks. Moves from cafes to clubs. He meets many prostitutes, and moves his debauchery on to new levels, and goes further into a field he'd felt was not within his power to explore, until now.
    So, with his money, he pays the girls to let him wear their clothes. They teach him club songs, and by the end of a rather a) a hilarious story or b) a sad demise, he winds up a cross-dressing performer, late into the nights.
    Ever mindful of his dead lover-sister, he slowly becomes his dead-sister out of guilt, unrelelenting grief, and lust.
    He knows the whole thing is crazy, and at the centre of his heart, he believes he knows his love for his sister was natural and not a sin, but he accepts that not everyone would agree with him. And since she's dead and gone, he wonders that the only reason he's alive is because he is a coward, and can't take his own life. But he has solution. If he were to go the authorities back home, and tell all, he'd get the hangman's noose. It would be his last performance, since he is too old and hideous these days for the stage.
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      Ever since a boy, this man and his sister have had ever increasingly weird relations with each... Read more →

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