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On lyrics of genius...

Posted August 19, 2002 5:57 PM.

Some songs make you burst from sheer weight of emotion. Some make you want to dance like a coked-up electro-shocked duck in the mating season. Some, on the other hand, are dripping with ludicrously stunning lyrics... It's even more fun reading them when you haven't got a clue what the song is...

1 Picked up a boy just south of Mobile
Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal
I was sixteen, he was twenty-one
Rode with us to Memphis
And papa woulda shot him if he knew what he'd done
2 I drank the portion she offered me
I found myself on the floor
Then I looked into those big green eyes
And I wondered what I came there for....
3 There was this boy who had two children with his sisters
Who were his daughters, who were his favorite lovers
I got no lips, I got no tongue
Where there were eyes, there's only space
I got no lips, I got no tongue
4 Well you can't live with em
Or without em
You never really know a thing about em
It's hard to believe that all that's there...
is a rag and a bone and a hank of hair...
5 The ladies buy their ice from me
They dig my fast delivery
They love the way I move about
I don't make a mess
I get in and out...
6 Hey goombah, I love a how you dance a rhumbah
But take a some advice paisano
Learn how to mambo
If you gonna be a square
You ain't a gonna go nowhere

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