DON’T STOP THE MUSIC
This is for the punks and the pop divas.
This is for the pirates and the producers.
This is for everyone who ever sang along:
fuck the noise, but don’t stop the music.
Dance till your Converse kicks fall to pieces.
This is for the mosh-pit and the VIP.
This is for the ravers and the metal-heads:
keep thrashing because once the music stops,
you may as well be dead.
This is for the bobos and the foodies in the Marais:
enjoy your gay bars and your 2 Many DJs.
This is for the loners and the cynics
in that improbable place of worship,
six beers deep in the dark with no ear-plugs.
Enjoy the creepy doorman and the clipboard-bitch.
Enjoy the sticky shoes and dirty toilets.
Enjoy the list you never get on.
This is for the snares and the wah-wah pedals:
fuck the squares and their wartime medals.
This is for the PTSD survivors in platform shoes,
flashing bar-staff at the BO18 in Beirut.
This is for Ibiza, Goa, and Black Rock City.
This is for the nectar of the damned,
but you’ve got it all wrong: ours is not
the nature of the damned, just the dancers.
This is for the last-minute ticket to the Bataclan.
Make peace with your dead phone.
Grab a busted vélib and enjoy the ride home.
Enjoy the back seat of the vomit comet.
Enjoy your walk of shame.
Hell to pay come Monday 8AM
but until then don’t stop the music,
or you may as well be dead.
This is for the secret dance parties
in the deserts of Iran and Afghanistan,
where the thought police can’t see you.
This is for the weekend warriors,
night-crawlers and vampires.
This is for the right to sin.
The right to almost, but not quite, fall in.
This is for the mother of all fat ladies
when she breaks into song:
enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.
Yann Rousselot 
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