Jungleland

The rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine over the Jersey stateline
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down FlamingoLane

Well the Maximum Lawman run down Flamingo chasing the Rat and thebarefoot
girl
And the kids round here look just like shadows always quiet,holding hands
From the churches to the jails tonight all is silence in theworld
As we take our stand down in Jungleland

The midnight gang's assembled and picked a rendezvous for thenight
They'll meet `neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this faircity light
Man there's an opera out on the Turnpike
There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops, Cherry Tops, rips this holy night
The street's alive as secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanished unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for therecord machine
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street down inJungleland

In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that theD.J. plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on, just a look and a whisper, andthey're gone

Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroomlocked
In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender in the tunnelsuptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down as shots echo down themhallways in the
night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light

Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between flesh and what's fantasy and the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it allbe
And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, noteven dead
Tonight in Jungleland