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