Interpret:

Ben Folds

Album:

Lonely Avenue

Man in a wheelchair in the lobby of the Forrest
With frighters, hustlers, hard-up millionaires


Mobsters, cops, whores, pimps and Marxists
All human life is there


Man in a wheelchair listens to the chatter
Writes down all the insane crap he hears


He can’t move around but it doesn’t really matter
In the Forrest all you need is eyes and ears


And out they pour, the hits and misses
Turn Me Loose, Lonely Avenue
And down in Nashville Elvis sings Suspicion
Pomus/Shuman, 1962


And he never could be one of those happy cripples
The kind that smile and tell you life’s OK


He was mad as hell, frightened and bitter
He found a way to make his feelings pay


Back at the Forrest, in the steakhouse off the lobby
Another diner gets three bullets in the head


Doc looks down and carries on eating his linguine
Tries to think up a lyric for the dead


Fred Neil, Jack Benny, and crazy Phil Spector
Pumpkin Juice and Eydie Gormé
Damon Runyon Jr. and the Duke’s orchestra
All superhuman life was there


And he never could be one of those happy cripples
The kind that smile and tell you life’s OK
He was mad as hell, frightened and bitter
He found a way to make his isolation pay