Lonely Street

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 stumblin' 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 comin' 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 stinkin' drunk, and always in jail, One night they threw me in with a man they called the mangler He was caught on the street makin' 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.