Lonely Street

(album: Song For America - 1975)

Sometimes when I'm walking down this lonely street,
Well, it sure don't seem like twenty years,
Since I went walking down this lonely street
And the smell of perfumed ladies filled the air

This street ain't got no name, dead end is in the river,
And I lived where I hated life day by day,
There wasn't nothing I could do to shake a cold night shiver,
'Cause to move up Lonely Street you had to have some say

Gambling is bad luck down on Lonely Street
And it sure ain't no place to be when a man gets sore
You know I killed a man and I paid all I can,
With twenty years on a chain gang,
For the flesh and the blood on that jailhouse floor

Sometimes when I'm walking down this lonely street
I get caught up in a dream that won't let me go
And as the bright lights flash up and down this lonely street
My mind rolls back the years long time ago

I see my baby stumbling around with tears in her eyes
And as I reach out for her she falls on the floor
She mumbles through bloody lips about a bad man, robber, raper,
And in my gut I know I got one to score

The word was coming down, down on Lonely Street
That the bad man was a dead man if he crossed my trail
Every night I'd walk up and down this Lonely Street
I get stinking drunk, and always in jail,
One night they threw me in with a man they called the mangler
He was caught on the street making some old whore,
I remember he was quite proud of that,
So half-crazed I shot him,
And I cried in the blood on that jailhouse floor.