Standard (EADGBE)

Verse 1

It's nighttime now and my eyes are all water

My friends have all moved to where the sun's always shining

I'm watching the weather with the Doppler Radar

There's a storm busting out of every silver lining

By day I work the correction center

Where the men are corrected with poison gas

And by night I clock in on a bender

To forgive myself and forget the past

Chorus

 The strings of my heart are so tight

 They'll spare me no suffering tonight

 There's a storm blowing slowly come hell or come holy

 Just blow me to the morning light

Verse 2

A killer winks behind the eyes of a warden

The chaplain's ace is in the dead man's sleeve

There's a serpent hiding in every saint's garden

Quoting the scriptures behind laurel leaves

Verse 3

Every bad man has friends in low places

Who shroud themselves in a darkness to hide

But some of these dearly departed hard cases

Venge me with friends of the holiest kind

And I'm constantly looking over my shoulder

At well dressed fellows with hidden agendas

I'm the mouse in the meadow rolling the boulders

And crushing the homes of the newly forgiven

Verse 4

Now the sun's rising up and the storm is a passing

A little rain and a little lightning

Outside the window where the thunder was a crashing

In their Sunday best little boys are fighting

Innocence today guilty verdict tomorrow

A civilized world has civilized ways

And every civilized world has a civilized fellow

To keep it all civilized with a lever to raise