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 sittin' 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 here look just like shadows   Always quiet, holdin' 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 renedzvous for the night   They'll meet me 'neath that giant Exxon sigh    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 vanish unseen    Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades   Hustlin' 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 dancin'   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 runnin' 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 as the ambulance pulls away   Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light      Outside the street's on fire    In a real death watlz   Between what's flesh and what's fantasy   And the poets down here    Don't write nothin' 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    And not even dead    Tonight in Jungleland