Jeffrey Lewis - Sad Screaming Old Man lyrics

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

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!

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 AM
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?

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!

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!

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!

(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)