The rangers had a [bad word] 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 [bad word] down Flamingo chasing the Rat and the barefoot 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 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 vanished unseen
 Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades 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 D.J. plays
 Lonely-hearted lovers [bad word] in dark corners
 Desperate as the night moves on, just a look and a whisper, and they're gone

 Beneath the city two hearts beat
 Soul [bad word] 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 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 the night they reach for their moment
 And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, not even dead
 Tonight in Jungleland