Harlem Roulette

Unknown engines underneath the city
Steam pushing up in billows through the grates
Frankie Lymon's tracking "Seabreeze" in a studio in Harlem
It's 1968

Just a pair of tunes to hammer out
Everybody's off the clock by 10
The loneliest people in the whole wide world
Are the ones you're never going to see again

Feels so free when I hit the avenue
Nothing like a New York summer night
Every dream's a good dream; even awful dreams are good dreams
If you're doing it right

Remember soaring higher than the clouds
Get pretty sentimental now and then
The loneliest people in the whole wide world
Are the ones you're never going to see again

And four hours north of Portland, a radio flips on
And some no one from the future remembers that you're gone

Armies massing in the dusky distance
Ghosted in the ribbon microphone
Leave a little mark on something, maybe
Take the secret circuit home

Nothing in the shadows but the shadow hands
Reaching out to sad, young, frightened men
The loneliest people in the whole wide world
Are the ones you're never going to see again
Yeah, the loneliest people in the whole wide world
Are the ones you're never going to see again