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Desolation Row
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Bob Dylan
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1
They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
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The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
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Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
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One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
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And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
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As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row
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Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one," she smiles
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And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
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And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
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And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
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And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
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Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row
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Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide
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The fortune telling lady has even taken all her things inside
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All except for Cain and Abel and the hunchback of Notre Dame
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Everybody is making love or else expecting rain
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And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show
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He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row
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Ophelia, she's 'neath the window for her I feel so afraid
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On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid
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To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest
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Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness
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And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow
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She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row
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Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
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Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
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Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette
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And he when off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet
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You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago
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For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row
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Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup
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But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up
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Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole
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And she also keeps the cards that read, "Have Mercy on His Soul"
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They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow
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If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row
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Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast
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The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest
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They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured
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Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words
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And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know"
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Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"
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At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
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Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do
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Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
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Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene
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Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
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Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row
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Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
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Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?!"
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And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower
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While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers
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Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow
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And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row
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Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke
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When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke
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All these people that you mention, yes, I know them, they're quite lame
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I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name
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Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no
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Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row
My Chemical Romance - Desolation Row [Of...
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