Sad Screaming Old Man - Jeffrey Lewis

I’m used to apartments with walls that are weak

Sometimes I hear it all, if my neighbours must speak

But the recent apartment and bedroom I got

Started out seeming decent more boring than not

For two or three years nothing happened at all

There was an old man next door,

that I would see in the hall

He shuffled politely, wears an old suit

You know a standard old geezer, A quiet old Coot

He used to seem normal but then all at once

He started these nocturnal groanings and runts

It’s hard to get used to, it gives me the creeps

Pretty much every night now he screams when he sleeps

Dark night of our souls,

Dark night of our heart

Dropping down the bottomless hole

I just need to get some sleep,

I don’t know when I might begin,

But I don’t want another minute

In this same old story, purgatory

Stop the torture, old man and please

don’t be myself from the future.

If it was a dog bark or a screaming infant

I’d probably be fine, back to sleep in an instant

Picture me lying there, alone in my bed

When this old man just lets out

these shrieks near my head

And now every night at like three in A.M.

I get woken up by this miserable mayem

Who’s being dismembered, what the Hell’s wrong

I’m feared he will send me insane before long

And it makes me afraid, just to be me like I’am

It could be my fatal moments screaming old man

Tell me what did he do?

In his youth, for this torture

And what about him

Is it true is that he’s me in the future

Dark night of our soles

Dark night of hearts

Dropping down the bottomless hole.

I just need to get some sleep

I don’t where I might begin

But I don’t want another minute

In this same old story, Purgatory

Stop the torture Old man

And please don’t be my myself from the future

I’m used to apartments with walls that are weak

Sometimes I hear it all, if my neighbours would speak

But the recent apartment and bedroom I got

Started out seeming decent more boring than not

But now it’s like trying to sleep In some Guantanamo cell block

Or some hospital hell hole for some horrible shell-shock

Or some Medieval dungeon with sadistic conditions

Or some pitiful someone is getting whipped while you listen

And you know in the dark, when your mind is just spinning

You get visions of weird things, there’s no end or beginnings

I just thought for a bit and end up screaming some more

I’m scared that’s it’s me and I’m the him from before

I guess that It’s paranoid, fantasies of drive-by scenario’s

That seem dumb in the daylight, but Ponaro gets very told

Dark night of our soles

Dark night of hearts

Dropping down the bottomless hole.

I just need to get some sleep

I don’t where I might begin

But I don’t want another minute

In this same old story purgatory

Stop the torture Old man

And please don’t be my myself from the future

Well you know Jeffrey, it’s true what you say

I once was like you then I turned out this way

I lived my whole life, complaining love wasn’t there

It was never enough to sacrifice for a care

And I once had a cat and one or two Pals

And I would go and hang out sort of that way you do now

But now all I can do now, is just scream in the dark

There’s the pain inside ninety year empty and heartless

If you grow seeking freedom you’re a rose breathing bloom

So you know it’s already leading you down the road to this room

Though I’d get glory from war and dark and entrenched

Then i spent forty years in a park, on a bench

And I throw away substantially, hopeless eventually

You just permanently shrieking like me,

Like you were meant to be

I was sent out as a warning, but as an acceptance

So accept it

It is already written

It is already happening

It’s already here

AAARRrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh…