Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)

Bob Dylan © 1978 Special Rider Music

(Official lyrics @ www.bobdylan.com)

 Street~Legal session 3, Rundown Studios, Santa Monica Ca - 27.apr.1978, album version  

There's a long-distance train
Rollin' thru the rain
Tears on the letter i write
There's a woman i long to touch
An' i'm missin' her so much
But she's driftin' like a satellite

There's a neon light ablaze
In the green smokey haze
An' laughter down in Elisabeth street
An' a lonesome bell tone
In that valley of stone
When she bathed in a steam of pure heat

Her father would emphasize
You got to be more than street-wise
But he practiced what he preached from the heart
A full-blooded Cherokee
He predicted to me
The time an' the place that we part

There's a babe in the arms of a woman in rage
An' a long time golden haired stripper on the stage
As she winds back the clock an' she turns back the page
Of a book that nobody can write
Oh, where are you tonight?

The truth was obscure
Too profound an' too pure
To live it you had to explode
In that last hour of need
We entirely agreed
Sacrifice was the code of the road

I left town at dawn
With Marcel an' Saint John
Strong men belittled by doubt
I couldn't tell her
What my private thoughts were
But she had some way of finding them out

He took dead-center aim
But he missed just the same
She was waitin' puttin' flowers on the shelf
She could feel my despair
As i climbed up her hair
And discovered her invisible self

There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped
There's a million dreams gone, there's a landscape bein' raped
As her beauty fades an' i watch her undrape
But i won't but then again maybe i might
Oh if i could just find you tonight

I fought with my twin
That enemy within
'Til both of us fell by the way
Horseplay an' disease
'S killin you by degrees
While the law looks the other way

Your partners in crime
Hit me up for nickels and dimes
The man you were lovin' couldn't get clean
It felt out of place
My foot in his face
But he should have stayed where his money was green

I bit into the root
Of forbidden fruit
With the juice runnin' down my leg
Then i dealt with your boss
Who'd never known about loss
Who always was too proud to beg

There's a white diamond gloom
On the dark side of this room
And a pathway that leads up to the stars
If you don't believe there's a price
For this sweet paradise
Just remind me to show you the scars

There's a new day at dawn an' i've finally arrived
If i'm there in the morning, baby, you'll know i've survived
I can't believe, i can't believe i'm alive
But without you it doesn't seem right
Oh, where are you tonight?