Desolation Row - Take 1, Alternate Take

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