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