Through savage progress cuts the jungle line
The jungle line, the jungle line
Through the class on park and the trash on vine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
With his hard edged eye and his steady hand
Through huts, through Harlem, through jails and gospel pews
Through Europe and the deep, deep heart of Dixie blue
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines
Charging, chanting down the jungle line
It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
They'll eat a working girl like her alive
Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind
The mathematic circuits of the modern nights
Those cannibals of shuck and jive
He hangs it up above the jungle line
Poppy poison, poppy tourniquet
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
In a low cut blouse she brings the beer
Coy and bitchy, wild and fine
Through I bars and girders, through wires and pipes
Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear
And metal skin and ivory birds
And he hangs a moon above a five piece band
Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
