There's a high wind blowin'   And the stars are shining bright   Oh what a night this is gonna be   I think I'll let the world sleep without me   I got one eye open   One eye closed   And my thin body's trembling beneath the bedclothes   My heart's beatin' against the roof of my mouth   It's almost time to get out of this house      I got one hand on the radio   One hand on the wheel   I got my right foot on the floorboard   I'm prepared to kill or be killed   There's a high wind blowin'   And the stars are shining bright   And the rain upon the tarmac   Helps me sail through the traffic lights   I'm heading down to the dock of the bay   To feel the power of the waves   I'm gonna move up closer to that wind   And wrestle with the thoughts solitude always brings      You see I'm stuck between hell and the deep blue sea   And I know that water's sucked under better man than me   I was just another western guy   With desires that couldn't be satisfied   One day I asked the angels for inspiration   The devil bought me a drink   And he's been buying them ever since   He's had the liquor on my tongue   Feel like the sea upon the sand   He's had me signing confessions   From this shaking hand   He's had me struggling to hang onto hope   Like a drunken sailor in a tugboat   With a bottle of vodka in my overcoat   And my dog eared bible lost overboard      You see he tricked me into temptation   So I've tricked him into this confrontation   I never said I was the man I appeared to be   Not the flesh wrapped around the bones of necessity   Or the soul on fire   Scribbling thoughts for posterity   I'm gonna have little Lucifer runnin' off to purgatory   With his tail between his legs   I'm gonna teach him a lesson   He ain't ever gonna forget   All the vultures and crows are fixin' up some tombstones   They won't be chewing the meat off my bones      There's a high wind blowin'   And the stars are shining bright   Me and him are gonna have a little knife fight   In the bowels of the big city skyline   Oh this feelin' inside runs dark and deep   Tonight my hearts not thumping   A Mercy Beat      I was just another western guy   With desires that can't be satisfied   Oh what a night this is gonna be   The world can sleep without me   What a night this is gonna be   The world can sleep without me   Oh what a night this is gonna be   The world can sleep without me