Bruce Springsteen Jungleland Lyrics

Jungleland Lyrics

The Rangers had a homecoming
In Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat
drove his sleek machine
Over the Jersey state line
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 Flamingo Lane

Well, the Maximum Lawmen run
down Flamingo
Chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl
And the kids 'round
there live just like shadows
Always quiet, holding hands
From the
churches to the jails
Tonight all is silence in the world
As we take our
stand
Down in Jungleland

The midnight gang's assembled
And picked
a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign
That
brings this fair city 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 flash unseen
Kids flash guitars just like
switchblades
Hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the
hunted
Explode into rock 'n' roll bands
That face off against each other
out in the street
Down in Jungleland

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

Beneath the city, two hearts beat
Soul engines running
through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked in whispers
Of soft refusal
and then surrender
In the tunnels uptown, the Rat's own dream guns him
down
As shots echo down them hallways 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
what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here don't write nothing
at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of a
knife, they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But
they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland