Redacció
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.
Foto: Joel Beirnstein
