Return To Jungle Land

 

The windows are thrown open

Somewhere Springsteen’s ‘Jungle Land’

Spreads saxophone and horns

Into the humid north west air

There is sweat and naked flesh

In the room on Mountbatten Avenue

Where young love consummates

On white linen sheets

 

The rats have deserted the city

Where there are no restaurant takeaways

Cascading from backstreet dumpsters

And a weak June moon illuminates

The darkened corners of piss alley

Cleansed by an earlier thunderstorm

That cast a greasy sheen of dampness

and evaporates into low drifting mist

 

The ghosts of new town revellers

Exorcised into their bedsits

Haunt the amber lit alleys

On this warm Saturday night

And a lone voice screams the last line

In perfect sync with the Boss

And howls at the waning moon

‘tonight in Jungle Land…’