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.