Jeffrey Lewis - Sad Screaming Old Man lyrics

[VERSE 1] I'm used to apartments with walls that are weak Sometimes I'd hear it all if my neighbours would speak But this recent apartment and bedroom that 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 and 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 grunts It's hard to get used to, it gives me the creeps Pretty much every night now, he screams when he sleeps [Chorus] Dark night of our souls Dark night of our hearts 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! [VERSE 2] If it was a dog bark or a screaming infant I'd probably be fine, back asleep in an instant But 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 3 in the A.M I get woken up by this miserable mayhem Who's being dismembered? What the hell is wrong? I'm scared that he'll send me insane before long And it makes me afraid just to be me like I am Cause it could be my fatal moment, screaming old man Tell me what did he do, in his youth for this torture And what if I'm him and it's true that he's me in the future? [Chorus] Dark night of our souls Dark night of our hearts 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! [VERSE 3] I'm used to apartments with walls that are weak Sometimes I'd hear it all if my neighbours would speak But this recent apartment and bedroom that I got Started out seeming decent, more boring than not But now it's like trying to sleep in a Guantanamo cellblock Or a hospital hellhole for some horrible shell shock Or a medieval dungeon with sadistic conditions Where some pitiful someone is getting whipped while you listen And you know in the dark when your mind is just spinning And you get visions of weird things with no ends or beginnings I drift off for a bit and then he's screaming some more And I'm scared that he's me and I'm the him from before I get some paranoid fantasy sci-fi scenarios They seem dumb in the daylight but for now again there he goes! [Chorus] Dark night of our souls (dark night soul!) Dark night of our hearts (dark night 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! [CODA] (old man voice) Well you know Jeffrey, it's true what you say I once was like you but then I turned out this way I lived my own life complaining love wasn't there It was never enough to sacrifice for, or care And I once had a cat and I had one or two pals And I would go and hang out, sorta like that way you do now But now all I can do is just scream in the darkness For pain inside ninety years, empty and heartless If you grow seeking freedom, you're a rose, breathe and bloom So you know it's already leading you down the road to this room Thought I'd get glory from war, in the dark in a trench Then I spent forty years more just in a park, on a bench And it's all existentially hopeless eventually You're just dementedly shrieking like me, like you were meant to be I am sent not as a warning But as an acceptance So accept it! It is already written! It is already happening! You are already here! (screaming)