1.

I went down to the barroom, it was just about closing time.

I’d been up all day, burning out my lungs and sipping burgundy wine.

The only soul I saw in there was just one old lonesome man,

He was sitting up at the bar, with a Blue Ribbon in his hand.

            I sat down a stool away, and I ordered up a draft,

            And I saw the reflection of his face in the bottom of my glass.

Slowly I began to remember him from about a year ago.

It was the poet, the writer, the down-and-outer — old Skid Row Joe.

 

2.

I says, “Hey, Joe, won’t you tell me about the latest song you wrote?”

And he pulls a scrap of paper from his threadbare gabardine coat.

With his bloodshot eyes, his sunken face and the skeleton of a hand,

He looked like the Devil, cast out of Hell, doomed to live the life of man.

            He took me on a trip across the broken side of town,

            And I could see through the windows of his words how life had brought him down.

He spoke of a woman that had done him wrong and a bottle that had done him in,

And I could see through the mirror of his song the man I might have been.

 

3.

And if “might have been” ain’t strong enough, it’s the man I still might be,

For who’s to say what kind of shape this life might take for me.

And as I thought about his words, his song it suddenly stopped,

And he turned to me and said, “Son, I got some pills you might like to drop.

            “But you got to take ‘em right now,” he said, “on top of this alcohol,

            “And go on home and wait, and see what fate befalls.”

I follow him around to the bathroom where he gives me a couple or three,

And I swallow ‘em down with tapwater, and he gives his hand to me.

 

4.

I clasp it tight, the lights go out, the bar is closing up.

He slips off into the darkness, and I slip out down the steps.

The streets are dark and empty, and the night is all alive,

And I stumble on home to the bedroom, where I think I must have died.

            For when I wake up, the sun is high, and I find the kitchen sink,

            And I splash water all over my face and give myself a drink.

And with my bloodshot eyes, my sunken cheeks and the skeleton of a hand,

I look like the devil, cast out of hell, doomed to live the life of man.