What does Lost in the Flood mean?

Bruce Springsteen: Lost in the Flood Meaning

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Album cover for Lost in the Flood album cover

Lost in the Flood Lyrics

The ragamuffin gunner is returnin' home like a hungry runaway
He walks through town all alone--"He must be from the fort," he hears the high school girls say
His countryside's burnin' with wolfman fairies dressed in drag for homicide
The...

  1. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    May 25th 2014 !⃝

    From Wikipedia:

    The first verse is about "ragamuffin gunner" and has a recurring theme of religion, including references to the "hit-and-run" pleading for "sanctuary" and hiding beneath a "holy stone," while "breakin' beams and crosses with a spastic's reeling perfection" and "nuns run bald through Vatican halls, pregnant, pleading Immaculate Conception." Finally, "everybody's wrecked on Main Street from drinking unholy blood."

    The second verse is about a "pure American brother", "Jimmy the Saint", perhaps the same person as the "ragamuffin gunner" from the first verse. This is the beginning of Springsteen's use of automobile themes (along with "The Angel"), as the pure American brother "races Sundays in Jersey in a Chevy stock Super Eight" and "leans on the hood telling racing stories." Eventually, Jimmy the Saint gets into some sort of accident (described as running "headfirst into a hurricane") and presumably dies since "there was nothing left but some blood where the body fell."

    The third verse concerns a series of people on the streets of a city, presumably New York. They include "Eighth Avenue sailors in satin shirts," "some storefront incarnation of Maria," "Bronx's best apostle", "the cops," "the whiz-bang gang" and "some kid" who gets shot in the ensuing gun fight and holds "his leg, screaming something in Spanish."


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