You Got It All Wrong

Don’t you ever just sing along with a song, spittin’ out whatever it is you hear, even when it doesn’t make any sense?

Sure there’s the usual “bathroom on the right” (CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”), “revved up like a douche” and “with a boner on his shoulder” (Manfred Mann’s “Blinded By The Light”) and “hold me closer Tony Danza” (Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”), but the more songs I think about, the more I wonder if I’m butchering any others…

My most recent fuck-up was when my fiancé was rapping “Lose Yourself” by Eminem. Who knew that the lyrics were “palms are sweaty” and not “Mom’s spaghetti”?

Or how about Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? Turns out, she’s saying, “we’re living in a powder keg” NOT “we’re leaving in a Powder kid” (like a reference to that movie “Powder”).

“Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child? I always sang the intro as “let a move, we arrive, lookin’ sexy, lookin’ fly, bad as chick, chick aside, DJ, channel 9, Spiderman, tender thing, there you, are come on baby…”

 

Clearly, I was wrong.

Fallout Boy’s “Sugar We’re Going Down” isn’t “we’re going down der literally around.”

“Needles” by SOAD doesn’t say, “my tapir tells me what to do” nor do they say, “pull the tapir out of your arrest”. 

I won’t list all the things I’ve misheard in “Give It Away Now” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, but they definitely don’t say “huckleberry buddy wanna keep it like a Kaiser” “Bob Marley throwin’ in a puppet” or “look at me swimmin’ in my Billy Jean”.

Probably the only song that most people babble through and which I haven’t fugged up is “Macarena”. When I was young and kids at school said “wekjfhaksjhdfkha Macarena EH MACARENA!” it made me want to grab a rock and bash it into their skulls while singing, “dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena”, then drop the rock, wiggle my butt in front of the corpse and shout, “EH MACARENA!”

Sure it’s a pretty violent fantasy for a schoolgirl, but it’s funny when you know what the lyrics mean. 

…Though the more I think about the lyrics, the more I wonder -was he singing about a stripper? 

 

And mi abuelita once gave me money for showing her the Macarena dance! And she LAUGHED!

It’s moments like these I realize how ridiculous my life-story would be.

Clubbing For The First Time

The sporadic neon lights thundered through slices of darkness making body dimensions appear singular and giving the cut and paste shadows an aura of mystery; like they were daring me to reach out to them -even in passing- just to convince the senses that yes: they were every bit as tangible as I was.

And the music penetrated and dominated the room, turning it into this living creature, made the shadows sway and forced my body to weave between them like water.

But the more I marched, trying to reach some sort of end desitnation, the more leaden my feet felt, unmasking my aimlessness.

So I stopped and closed my eyes.

I breathed deeply and listened as the bass line pounded and resounded in my ears, swarmed my thoughts and finally coursed through my veins -making my limbs throb and pulsate rhythmically.

I didn't need drugs to feel the overwhelming energy of the crowd. The endorphins, the hormones, the heavy breaths that had enclosed me were building up like a hungry wave: curling and clawing above me then swallowing me whole.

I was powerless...so I danced.

I danced witout thought or method. The spell of the atmosphere had captured me, enslaved my mind and allowed my body to speak its own language.

I felt a finger trace my spine, but I did not stop. I paid no attention, did not shudder, did not jump. I had become a shadow cloaked in the same aura of mystery, my movements communicating invitation.

The hands grasped onto my hips as they swayed, the body pressed itself close, wanting to melt into the rhythm that had possessed me. I could hear him panting in my ear as his lips found the cradle between my neck and shoulders.

My hand rose to stroke his cheek as we danced, this stranger and I, in the orgiastic adolescent pseudo-sex ritual. We danced closely and suggestively without either one of us turning around or speaking more than a few simple words, romancing ourselves in the dark and primitive dance cave, being faceless bodies all spectral, unattainable and lifeless...but somehow alive.

The Werewolf's Cry

The nameless echoes poured themselves into the years, never carelessly broken into disjointed pieces, fragments scattered like seeds in the wind or impaired by rushing waves of oblique memory.
No eloquent pause of those inveterately grievous whispers arrived: they stretched throughout the mind, each sin sewn into the fabric of every thought,daring flexibility and punishing that vagrant act of will.
It made the heart fiery and thick, coating it in blind chivalry, rattling off the dates of those murdered unknowns as they rose into the bellies of the worms with each passing step.
They expressed little and warned only of what was to come.
What they could not foresee was the endless tempest of a hunters' conscience; the last remaining mark of tenderness worn within.