Sleep like a baby,
my little lady,
Dream till the sunrise
creeps into your eyes
Dream till the sunrise
Turns on the day.
In the Avenues and Alleyways
while you sleep there's a whole world coming alive
Able and his brother, fighting one another
in and out of every dive
The Avenues and Alleyways
where the strong and the quick alone can survive
Look around the jungle
see the rough and tumble
Listen to a squealer cry
Then a little later
in the morning paper
Read about the way he died.
Wake up my pretty
Go to the city
Stay through the daytime
safe in the sunshine
stay till the daytime
turns into night.
In the Avenues and Alleyways
Where a mans gotta work out which side he's on
any way he chooses
chances are he loses
no one gets to live too long
the avenues and alleyways
Where the soul of a man is easy to buy
everybody's wheeling
everybody's steeling
all the low are living high
Every city's got em
can we ever stop em
some of us are gonna try.