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