Hoy me identifico con la cancion" Burma Shave" de tom waits, se que no es algo literal, pero yo me identifico, no se como, con esta canción
Burma Shave(1)
Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue
Scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town
Took the one eyed Jacks(2) across the railroad tracks(3)
And the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through
He’s a juvenile delinquent, never learned how to behave
But the cops’d never think to look in Burma-Shave
And the road was like a ribbon, and the moon was like a bone
He didn’t seem to be like any guy she’d ever known
He kind of looked like Farley Granger(4), with his hair slicked back
She says ’I’m a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat.
How far are you going?’
Said ‘Depends on what you mean’
He says ‘I’m only stopping here to get some gasoline’
’I guess I’m going thataway, just as long as it’s paved
And I guess you’d say I’m on my way to Burma-Shave’
And with her knees up on the glove compartment
She took out her barrettes, and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
And she popped her gum and arched her back
‘Hell, Marysville(1) ain’t nothing but a wide spot in the road
Some nights my heart pounds like thunder
Don’t know why it don’t explode
Cause everyone in this stinking town’s got one foot in the grave
And I’d rather take my chances out in Burma-Shave’
‘Presley’s(5) what I go by, why don’t you change the stations
Count the grain elevators in the rearview mirror’
She said, ‘Mister, anywhere you point this thing
It got to beat the hell out of the sting(6)
Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin’
And so drill me a hole with a barber pole(7)
And I’m jumping my parole just like a fugitive tonight
Why don’t you have another swig(8), and pass that car if you’re so brave
I wanna get there ‘fore the sun comes up in Burma-Shave ‘
And the spider web crack and the mustang screamed
The smoke from the tires and the twisted machine
Just a nickel’s worth of dreams, and every wishbone that they saved
Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma-Shave
And the sun hit the derrick and cast a bat wing shadow
Up against the car door on the shotgun side(9)
And when they pulled her from the wreck
You know, she still had on her shades(10)
They say that dreams are growing wild
just this side
of Burma-Shave
Written by: Tom Waits
Published by: Fifth Floor Music, Inc. (ASCAP),© 1977 & Warner Bros. Music Ltd, 1986
Official release: “Foreign Affairs”, Elektra Entertainment/ WEA International Inc., 1977 &
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(1) “Burma Shave is an American shaving-cream company, like Colgate. They advertise on the side of the road and they have these limericks which are broken up into different signs like pieces of a fortune cookie. You drive for miles before you get the full message. “PLEASE DON’T”… five miles… “STICK YOUR ARM OUT SO FAR”… another five miles… “IT MIGHT GO HOME”… five more miles… “IN ANOTHER MAN’S CAR - BURMA SHAVE.” They reel you in. So when I was a kid I’d see these signs on the side of the road - BURMA SHAVE, BURMA SHAVE - and I’m young and I think it’s the name of a town and I ask my dad, “When we getting to Burma Shave?” So in the song I used Burma Shave as a dream, a mythical community, a place two people are trying to get to. They don’t make it.”
