Let Him Roll

(album: As Is - 1981)

Let him roll, Lord, let him roar
He always said that heaven was just a Dallas whore.

He was a wino tried and true
Done about everything there is to do
He worked on freighters he worked in bars
He worked on farms and he worked on cars.

It was white port that put that look in his eye
That grown men get when they need to cry
He sat down on the curb to rest
And his head just fell down on his chest.

He said every single day it gets
A little bit harder to handle and yet
And he lost the thread and his mind got cluttered
And the words just rolled off down in the gutter.

He was elevator man in a cheap hotel
In exchange for the rent on a one room cell
He's old in years beyond his time
Thanks to the world and the white Port wine.

So he says son he always called me son
He said life for you has just begun
And he told me a story that I'd heard before
How he fell in love with a Dallas whore.

He could cut through the years to the very night
When it ended in a whore house fight
And she turned his last proposal down
In favor of being a girl about town.

Now it's been seventeen years right in line
And he ain't been straight none of the time
Too many days of fighting the weather
And too many nights of not being together.
So he died.

When they went through his personal affects
In among the stubs from the welfare checks
Was a crumbling picture of a girl in a door
An address in Dallas and nothing more.

The welfare people provided the priest
A couple from the mission down the street
Sang Amazing Grace and no one cried
Cept some lady in black way off to the side.

We all left and she was standing there
Black veil covering her silver hair
And 'ol ene-eyed John said her name was Alice
And she used to be a whore in Dallas.

Let him roar, Lord, let him roll
Bet he's gone to Dallas rest his soul
Lord let him roll Lord let him roar
He always said that heaven was just a Dallas whore.

Let him roar, Lord, let him roll
I bet he's gone to Dallas rest his soul...