Riot Grrrl | punk music | women in punk mp3 | Ani Difranco Тексты песен

Ani Difranco Тексты песен

Ani DiFranco (1990)

Both Hands

i am walking out in the rain, and i am listening to the low moan of the dial tone again. and i am getting nowhere with you, and i can't let it go, and i can't get through... the old woman behind the pink curtains and the closed door on the first floor, she's listening through the air shaft to see how long our swan song can last. and both hands, now use both hands. oh, no don't close your eyes. i am writing graffiti on your body. i am drawing the story of how hard we tried. i am watching your chest rise and fall like the tides of my life, and the rest of it all. and your bones have been my bedframe, and your flesh has been my pillow. i am waiting for sleep to offer up the deep with both hands. in each other's shadows we grew less and less tall and eventually our theories couldn't explain it all. and i'm recording our history now on the bedroom wall, and eventually the landlord will come and paint over it all. and i am walking out in the rain, and i am listening to the low moan of the dial tone again. and i am getting nowhere with you, and i can't let it go, and i can't get though. so now use both hands. please use both hands. oh, no don't close your eyes. i am writing graffiti on your body. i am drawing the story of how hard we tried. hard we tried, how hard we tried.

Talk To Me Now

he said ani, "you've gotten tough." 'cause my tone was curt. yeah, and when i'm approached in a dark alley, i don't lift my skirt. in this city, self-preservation is a full time occupation. i'm determined to survive on this shore. you know, i don't avert my eyes anymore. in a man's world, i am a woman by birth. and after nineteen times around, i have found they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth. talk to me now. i played the powerless in too many dark scenes, and i was blessed with a birth and a death, and i guess i just want some say in between. don't you understand in the day to day and the face to face, i have to act just as strong as i can just to preserve a place where i can be who i am. so

The Slant

a building settling around me. my figure female, framed crookedly in the threshold of the room. door scraping floorboards with every opening, carving a rough history of bedroom scenes. the plot hard to follow. the text obscured in the fields of sheets slowly gathering the stains of seasons spent lying there red and brown like leaves fallen the colors of an eternal cycle. fading with the wash cycle and the rinse cycle. again an unfamiliar smell like my name misspelled or misspoken. a cycle broken. the sound of them strong. stalking, talking about their prey like the way hammer meets nail. pounding, they say pounding out the rhythms of attraction like a woman was a drum. like a body was a weapon. like there was something more they wanted than the journey. like it was owed to them. steel toed they walk. and i'm wondering why this fear of men. maybe it's because i'm hungry and like a baby. i'm dependent on them to feed me. i am a work in progress, dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding. offering me intricate patterns of questions rhythms that never come clean and strengths that you still haven't seen.

Work Your Way Out

lying on the floor four stories high. in the corridor between the asphalt and the sky. i am caught like bottled water, the light daughter. i wonder what you look like under your t-shirt. i wonder what you sound like when you're not wearing words. i wonder what we have when we're not pretending. it's never-ending, haven't you heard? i don't need to tell you what this is about. you just start on the inside and work your way out. we are all polylingual but some of us pretend there's virtue in relying, on not trying to understand. we're all citizens of the womb before we subdivide into sexes and shades. this side that side, and i don't need to tell you what this is about. you just start on the inside and work your way out, undressing for the fan like it was a man. wondering about all the things that i'll never understand. there are some things that you can't know, unless you've been there. but oh how far we could go if we started to share. i don't need to tell you what it is about. you just start on the inside. you just start on the inside and work your way out.

Dog Coffee

perpetrating counter-culture she is walking through the park. first light ugly and more muscular than the dark. pushing poems at the urban silence, drawing portraits of the passers-by. sitting on the curb, combining traffic sounds. getting dirty looks and dirty jeans on the dirty ground. she says i can't figure out what kind of life this is, comedy or tragedy i just know it's show biz. and what if i don't agree with the lines i have to read they don't pay me enough the way i see it. freedom and democracy, that's the word from washington every day. the americat's asleep with warm milk and clichйs. and people are expendable along the way. your dollar is dependable, what more can we say? would you like some dog coffee? it's all that we've got. you can have some, you can have not. would you like some dog coffee? it's all that we've got. we're taking care of big business and meanwhile some of the beans rot.

Lost Woman Song

i opened a bank account when i was nine years old. i closed it when i was eighteen. i gave them every penny that i'd saved, and they gave my blood and my urine, a number. now i'm sitting in this waiting room playing with the toys. and i am here to exercise my freedom of choice. i passed their handheld signs. went through their picket lines. they gathered when they saw me coming. they shouted when they saw me cross. i said why don't you go home, just leave me alone. i'm just another woman lost. you are like fish in the water who don't know that they are wet. as far as i can tell the world isn't perfect yet. his bored eyes were obscene. on his denim thighs a magazine. i wish he'd never come here with me. in fact, i wish he'd never come near me. i wish his shoulder wasn't touching mine. i am growing older waiting in this line. some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times. under the fierce fluorescent, she offered her hand for me to hold. she offered stability and calm and i was crushing her palm. through the pinch pull wincing, my smile unconvincing. on that sterile battlefield that sees only casualties, never heroes. my heart hit absolute zero. lucille, your voice still sounds in me. mine was a relatively easy tragedy. now the profile of our country looks a little less hard nosed. but that picket line persisted, and that clinic's since been closed. they keep pounding their fists on reality hoping it will break. but i don't think there's a one of us, leads a life free of mistakes.

Pale Purple

pale purple nipples, goose pimpled, she shivers. shifts from a walk to a trot. alone in the city infested with faces. immune to new friendships. interested in places she's never seen. she says, "everything is grey here and nothing is green." the girls from down the street, sixteen, seventeen years old. you can smell them getting pregnant. you can hear their rock and roll. that's america. you have to be tough like a glad trash bag. the government's an old nag with a good pedigree, but pedigree's don't help you and me. i see the precedent is grey here and nothing is green, unless something unforeseen happens. i'm surrounded by the haves. they say i can have some too, just because of what i do. do they think a lot about those who have not or does it just distract them from what they do? most of us have grey except for those who can pay for green. i'm torn. i'm torn. rejecting outfits offered me regretting things i've worn when i was still playing roles to fill holes in my conception of who i am. you know, now i understand it's not important to be defined, it's only important to use your time well. well, time is something nobody can buy. and nobody can sell you, so don't let anybody tell you they have the advantage. because all the grey people can say every day, doesn't mean anything if your mind is green. pale purple nipples, goose pimpled, she shivers. shifts from a walk to a trot. alone in the city infested with faces. immune to new friendships. interested in places she's never seen. she says everything is grey here. otherwise i'd stay here, but i'm looking for green just like every human being.

Rush Hour

rush hour and the day's dawning. the rain came and pushed me under the awning. the puddles grew and threw themselves at me with every passing car i'm shielding my guitar. and there were some things that i did not tell him. there were certain things he did not need to know. and there were some days when i did not love him. he didn't understand me and i don't know why i didn't go. he said, "change the channel. i've got problems of my own. i'm so sick of hearing about drugs and aids and people without homes." and i said, "well, i'd like to sympathize with that, but if you don't understand, then how can you act i expected summer to be there?" in the morning i woke to the alarm, but she was out of arms. reach, sneaking out on silent thighs that were spent and sore from the hot nights that came before. he said, "i looked for you. i don't know why." i said, "i was wearing black so you could see me against the sky." take your big leather boots and your buckles and your chains, put them on a downtown train. i expected he would be there in the morning. i awoke to the alarm. he was still in arm's reach, but his body was just a disguise. his mind had wandered off long ago. you see in his eyes, love isn't over when the sheets are stained. in my head there remains so much left to be said. make me laugh, make me cry, enrage me, but just don't try to disengage me.

Fire Door

i opened the fire door to four lips. none of which were mine kissing. tightened my belt around my hips where your hands were missing, and stepped out into the cold. collar high under the slate grey sky, the air was smoking and the streets were dry. and i wasn't joking when i said goodbye. magazine quality men talking on the corner. french, no less, much less of them then us. so why do i feel like something's been rearranged? you know, taken out of context i must seem so strange. killed a cockroach so big it left a puddle of pus on the wall. when you and i are lying in bed you don't seem so tall. i'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired, and my brain is disconnected but my heart is wired. i make such a good statistic someone should study me now. somebody's got to be interested in how i feel just 'cause i'm here and i'm real. oh, how i miss substituting the conclusion to confrontation with a kiss. and oh, how i miss walking up to the edge and jumping in like i could feel the future on your skin. i opened the fire door to four lips. none of which were mine kissing.

The Story

i would have returned your greeting if it weren't for the way you were looking at me. this street is not a market and i am not a commodity. don't you find it sad that we can't even say hello. 'cause you're a man and i'm a woman and the sun is getting low. there are some places that i can't go as a woman. i can't go there and as a person. i don't care. i don't go for the "hey baby, what's your name?" and i'd alone thank you just the same. i am up again against the skin of my guitar in the window of my life, looking out through the bars. i am sounding out the silence, avoiding all the words. i'm afraid i've said too much. i'm afraid of who has heard me. my father, he told me the story and it was true for his time, but now the story's different. maybe i should tell him mine. all the girls line up here. all the boys on the other side. i see your ranks are advancing. i see mine are left behind. i am up again against the skin of my guitar in the window of my life, looking out through the bars. i am sounding out the silence, avoiding all the words. i'm afraid i can never say enough. i'm afraid no one has heard me. and despite all the balls that i've been thrown and forced to drop on the social totem pole, i'm preciously close to the top. they put you in your place and they tell you to behave, but no one can be free until we're all on even grade. and i would have returned your greeting if it weren't for the way you were looking at me.

Every Angle

i'm imagining your frame, every angle and every plane. i'm imagining your smell, the one that mingled with mine once upon a time. thoughts of you are picketing my brain. they refuse to work such long hours without rest in unstable conditions at best. they're out there every day holding up their signs and thoughts of no other man but you could possibly get through the picket lines to enter into my mind. i'm imagining your laugh again, the one you save for your family and your very close friends. i'm imagining the way you say my name. i don't know when i'm going to hear it again. my friends can't tell my laughter from my cries. someone tell this photograph of you to let go of my eyes. i'm imagining your frame. i'm imagining your smell. i'm imagining your laugh again and the way you say my name.

Out Of Habit

the butter melts out of habit. the toast isn't even warm. the waitress and the man in the plaid shirt play out a scene they've played so many times before. i am watching the sun stumble home in the morning from a bar on the east side of town. and the coffee is just water dressed in brown. beautiful but boring, he visited me yesterday. he noticed my fingers and asked me if i would play. i didn't really care a lot, but i couldn't think of a reason why not. i said, "if you don't come any closer, i don't mind if you stay." my thighs have been involved in many accidents and now i can't get insured, and i don't need to be lured by you. my cunt is built like a wound that won't heal. and now you don't have to ask because you know how i feel. you know how i feel. art is why i get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. and it doesn't seem fair that i'm living for something i can't even define. there you are, right there in the meantime. i don't want to play for you anymore. show me what you can do. tell me what are you here for. i want my old friends. i want my old face. i want my old mind. fuck this time and place. the butter melts out of habit. you know, the toast isn't even warm.

Letting The Telephone Ring

i am letting the telephone ring cause i don't want to know why. i don't want to hear you explain. i don't want to hear you cry. i have written so much about you. so much i thought i knew. words like water used to flow. now what could i possibly have to say? she is someone i don't even know. and all the things that you've given to me, i see now were simply reparations. they were gifts of your guilt, they were my preparation. i know i should be mature, keep my feet on the floor, but for some reason, i just don't want them anymore. i know this shouldn't be important compared to you and i, but i can still hear my questions, and i can still hear you. i can still hear you lie. now vicariously, i have her in me. i want to peel off my skin, let the water wash in. you always said that i was hiding, that i was hiding from you. but you are capable of things i could not do. you are capable of things i could not do. i remember how you pretended, how you pretended to touch me. i remember how i couldn't bring myself to believe. i remember wondering what was wrong, what was wrong? how could i be so naive, how could i be so naive?

Not So Soft (1991)

Anticipate

you are subtle as a window pane standing in my view, but i will wait for it to rain so that i can see you. you call me up at night when there's no light passing through, and you think that i don't understand, but i do. we don't say everything that we could. so that we can say later "oh, you misunderstood." i hold my cards up close to my chest. i say what i have to and i hold back the rest. 'cause someone you don't know is someone you don't know. get a firm grip, girl before you let go. for every hand extended another lies in wait. keep your eye on that one. anticipate. dress down, get out there. pick a fight with the police. we will get it all on film for the new release. seems like everyone's an actor or they're an actor's best friend. i wonder what was wrong to begin with that they should all have to pretend. we lost sight of everything when we have to keep checking our backs. i think we should all just smile. come clean and relax. if there's anything i've learned, all these years on my own, it's how to find my own way there and how to find my own way back home.

Rockabye

tending the garden of noise when i grow. the traffic and the church bells and the neighborhood boys. singing to myself as the solitude sets in tune with the symphony of south brooklyn. i sing. rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, the baby that is me. rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, ''til i'm fast asleep. the tunnel is train torn. the tracks are worn and sore. i can feel the rattle riding up through the floor. she jumped the turnstile. he paid for his ride. i am the echo in the station where their footfalls collide. i left her at the epicenter. we were trembling dutifully. i left him too. i left parts of me. i said today i am leaving in every sense of the word. but i'm in love with your memory. already everything i've seen and heard. and i will go singing as the solitude sets in time with the rhythm of everywhere i have been. it sounds like rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, the baby that is me. rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, ''til i'm fast asleep.

She Says

she says, "forget what you have to do. pretend there is nothing outside this room." and like an idea she came to me, but she came too late or maybe too soon. i said, "please try not to love me. close your eyes, i'm turning on the light. you know i have no vacancy and it's awfully cold outside tonight." the rain stains the brick a darker red. slowly i'm rolling out of her bed. the rain stains the streets a darker black. i dress my face in stone because i can't go back. i feel her eyes watching me from behind the curtain of her hair. and she says, "i'm sorry i didn't mean to stare." i say, "i think i really have to go now, but oh baby, maybe someday, maybe somehow."

Make Me Stay

i'm gonna turn and walk away. you can wait ''til i am far along, then run and come and catch my arm and say you'd die if i were gone. i want to hear you call my name. it's too easy just to say it soft. i don't like my language watered down. i don't like my edges rounded off. i can't always wait for your circumstance to improve. love is loose, it shifts each time you move. go ahead, put my back against the wall. give it all up or don't give it to me at all. you never know this could be our last night. so step back step back into the light so i can see your silhouette. i'm not done looking yet. save the profile for the camera. give me your eye to eye. i know all your secrets, and you know all of mine, mostly. i don't go for the soft focus and the fantasy. i need something real. i can think and say and see so. i'm going to turn and walk away. you wait ''til i am far along, then run and come and catch my arm and say you'd die if i were gone. yes, i'm going to turn and walk away. you can watch me go, or you can make me stay.

Subway

the subway car smells like an antelope cage and don't you feel like the captain riding in a rage. oh, the city's sweet as cider, it sours with age. the toss between fear and freedom, looking for a familiar sign. and the man sitting next to you says, "hey baby, can you spare a dime?". oh, the city's sweet as cider, it sours in time. you turn to see his pants from 1965, with the holes in the pockets and the fly open wide. and just when he starts to make you nervous, suddenly he starts to cry. oh the city's sweet as cider, it passes some people by. and on the other side of the darkness, where the tunnel closes inside. you can only come out even in this town, but girl, you've come out all right. oh, the city's sweet as cider, but it isn't sweet at night. no the city's sweet as cider, but it isn't sweet at night.

On Every Corner

death has been your lover. he has brought you the edges of your life. and now you are looking over and all we can say is it's gonna be all right. and i am looking forward to looking back on these days. when on every corner someone holds a sign that says i'm homeless, i'm hungry and i have aids. how will they define our generation in the coming decades. who will tell the story and what will they say? will they say the victims were thought of as criminals? while the guilty sat on high deciding their fate, ticking off statistics in their spare time. tell me, which is the crime? may you never test positive, pregnancy, hiv. may you never be the receptacle of blame. may you never be the scapegoat for a whole world full of shame. may you never be fighting for your life and at the same time have to fight for your name. there are too few who open both eyes. we sit back in our easy chairs and we try to sympathize. whether from the point of a needle or the edge of our beds. we too, like too many others, could be dead. our actions will define us before a single definition can be said. yeah, so what if god is testing us? what if that's true? what are you going to do? what is the answer to you?

Small World

she was shaking and talking louder and louder. each sentence was sifted to a very fine powder. her face was wet and tight. her grip was cold and light. a strong wind could blow you down. i heard myself say, "word up, sister." a strong wind could take me away. i said, "how long have you been at large? they told me you were stashed last time i asked." she said, "i've been out now for all of three hours. i just resurfaced and here you are. i must admit that it has been hard so far." i said, "skeletons are fine, your closet or mine." and we took turns recounting the details of lost time. and when we had both admitted it all, we threw our heads back and laughed until we cried. we laughed because the world is absurd and beautiful and small. there we were washed up on the curb as the rush hour traffic went out with the tide. and i was aware that with every word spoken and shared, i could see her shaking subside. i said, "sister looks to me like you're going to be fine."

Not So Soft

in a forest of stone, underneath the corporate canopy, where the sun rarely filters down the ground is not so soft, not so soft. they build buildings to house people making money or they build buildings to make money off of housing people. it's true, like a lot of things are true. i am foraging for a phone booth on the forest floor that is not so soft. i look up it looks like the buildings are burning but it's just the sun setting. the solar system calling an end to another business day. eternally circling, signaling the rhythmic clicking on and off of computers. the pulse of the american machine. the pulse that draws death dancing out of anonymous side streets. you know the ones that always get dumped on and never get plowed. it draws death dancing out of little countries with funny languages where the ground is getting harder and it was not that soft before. those who call the shots are never in the line of fire, why? where? there's life for hire out there. if a flag of truth were raised, we could watch every liar rise to wave it. here we learn america like a script. playwright, birthright, same thing. we bring ourselves to the role. we're all rehearsing for the presidency. i always wanted to be commander in chief of my one woman army. but i can envision the mediocrity of my finest hour. it's the failed america in me. it's the fear that lives in a forest of stone underneath the corporate canopy where the sun rarely filters down and the ground is not so soft.

Roll With It

she says, "my ass hurts when i sit down." she says, "my feet hurt from just standing around. i think my body is as restless as my mind and i don't know if i can roll with it this time." packed his uniforms and drove him to the base. she was crying all the way. the world looked her in the face and said, "roll with it, baby. make it your career. keep the home fires burning till america is in the clear." the mainstream is so polluted with lies. once you get wet, it's so hard to get dry. we're all taught how to justify history as it passes by, and it's your world that comes crashing down when the big boys decide to throw their weight around. but just roll with it, baby. make it your career. keep the home fires burning till america is in the clear. what if the enemy isn't in a distant land? what if the enemy lies behind the voice of command? the sound of war is a child's cry behind tinted windows. they just drive by. all i know is that those who are going to be killed aren't those who preside on capitol hill. i told him, "don't fill the front lines of their war. those assholes aren't worth dying for." but he said, "roll with it, baby. make it your career. keep the home fires burning till america is in the clear." she says, "my ass hurts when i sit down." she says, "my feet hurt from just standing around." i think my body is as restless as my mind and i'm not gonna roll with it this time. no, i'm not gonna roll with it this time.

Itch

i am evening the score. i am cutting the umbilical cord. curled with my teeth against my knees. i am scratching at my consciousness like a bitch with fleas. i think you'll be greatly pleased to learn that yours was the hardest itch to relieve. this is me without my hair. welcome to my open stare. i got nothing to hide no more. why disguise what isn't there? i am an eyesore. i am a detour. you can find me crying on the shoulder of the road and i will tell you what you want to hear before you go. and that is that yours was the hardest itch to relieve. yours was the hardest itch to relieve. i've mapped out my course. looks like it's all uphill. i've got a heavy heart to carry, but a very strong will. it's just hard to travel in the shadow of regret. in fact, it's so hard that i haven't actually left yet.

Gratitude

thank you for letting me stay here. thank you for taking me in. thank you for the beer and the food. thank you for loaning me bus fare. thank you for showing me around, that was a very kind thing to do. thank you for the use of the clean towel. thank you for half of your bed. we can sleep here like brother and sister, you said. but you changed the rules in an hour or two. and i don't know what you and your sisters do, but please don't. please stop. this is not my obligation. what does my body have to do with my gratitude? look at you. little white lying for the purpose of justifying what you're trying to do. i know that you feel my resistance. i know that you heard what i said. otherwise, you wouldn't need the excuse. thank you for letting me stay here. thank you for taking me in. i don't know where else i would have turned. but i don't come and go like a pop song that you can play incessantly and then forget when it's gone. you can't write me off and you don't turn me on. so don't change the rules in an hour or two. i don't know what you and your sisters do, but please don't. please stop. this is not my obligation. what does my body have to do with my gratitude?

The Whole Night

we can touch, touch our girl cheeks and we can hold hands like paper dolls. we can try. try each other on in the privacy within new york city's walls. we can kiss, kiss goodnight and we can go home wondering what would it be like if, if i did not have a boyfriend. we could spend the whole night. i am waking up in her bed. i sing 1st avenue. the open window said always late to sleep, late to rise. lying here watching the day go by. in the living room there are people on the carpet having stupid conversations just to hear themselves talk. and i am drifting through. i am heading for the kitchen i am thinking of her fingers as i walk...

Next Big Thing

hello, it's me. i'm returning your call. it's monday, wednesday, friday, between noon and three. he says, "i usually just let the phone ring but i've always got a minute of time for the next big thing." and i wonder, "how can he see where he's going with those dollar signs in front of his eyes." i say, "thank you for your interest, but my thing is already just the right size." hello, it's me. yes, i'll play for the door, nothing more on a tuesday. he says, "baby what is your name? i forgot." he says, "baby tell me again, are you really hot?" and i think he does not hear what i'm saying. he's just looking at my eight by ten and wondering about the part that was left out. does she have a body that will really draw them in? how much do you want? how much are you willing to do? baby, this is no business for a sweet little girl like you. can you play the game? act it out frame for frame. do you know your lines? let's hear them one more time. but i'd rather pay my dues to the six people sitting at the bar than to all those men in their business suits who say, "i'll take you away from this if you'll just get in the car."

Brief Bus Stop

she sat there like a photograph of someone much further away. we shared a brief bus stop on one of those in-between days. she gave me her smile and i looked underneath at the lipstick on her teeth. she asked me for a light and if i thought her hair looked okay. we grew out of the small talk into stuff strangers just don't say. we discovered we are both pleasantly furious half of the time, when we're not just toeing the line. we sat underneath the shelter as the rain came down outside. the bench was cold against the underside of our thighs. i said i think we need new responses each question's a revolving door. and she said, yeah, my life may not be something special but it's never been lived before. we decided our urgency will wane when we grow old. and there will be a new generation of anger new stories to be told. but i said, i don't know if i can wait for that peace to be mine. and she said, well, you know, we've been waiting for this bus for an awfully long time.

Looking For The Holes

i am looking for the holes. the holes in your jeans because i want to know are they worn out in the seat or are they worn out in the knees? there are many ways to wear what we have before it's gone. to make use of what's there. i don't wear anything i can't wipe my hands on. do your politics fit between the headlines? are they written in newsprint? are they distant? mine are crossing an empty parking lot. they are a woman walking home at night, alone. they are six strings that sing and wood that hums against my hip bone. we can't afford to do anyone harm because we owe them our own lives. each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs. our enemies are the very air in disguise. you can talk a great philosophy, but if you can't be kind to people every day then it doesn't mean that much to me. it's the little things you do, it's the little things you say, it's the love that you give along the way. when we patch things up, they say a job well done, but when we ask the question why, where did the rips come from? they say we are subversive and extreme. of course we are just trying to track a problem to its source. we are looking for the holes. because we know we can't sit back and let people come to harm. we owe them our lives. each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs. our enemies are the very air. our enemies are the air.

Imperfectly (1992)

What If No One's Watching

if my life were a movie, there would be a sunset and the camera would pan away. but the sky is just a little sister tagging along behind the buildings, trying to imitate their grey. the little boys are breaking bottles along the sidewalk. the big boys, too. the girls are hanging out at the candy store pumping quarters into the phone 'cause they don't want to go home. and i think, what if no one's watching? what it when we're dead, we're just dead? what if it's just us down here? what if god ain't looking down? what if he's looking up instead? if my life were a movie, i would light a cigarette and the smoke would curl around my face. everything i do would be interesting. i'd play the good guy in every scene. but i always feel i have to take a stand, and there's always someone on hand to hate me for standing there. i always feel i have to open my mouth, and every time i do i offend someone somewhere. but what, what if no one's watching? what if when we're dead, we're just dead? what if there's no time to lose? what if there's things we gotta do, things that need to be said? you know i can't apologize for everything i know. i mean, you don't have to agree with me, but once you get me going, you better just let me go. we have to be able to criticize what we love. say what we have to say, 'cause if you're not trying to make something better as far as i can tell you're just in the way. i mean, what, what if no one's watching? what if when we're dead, we're just dead? what if it's just us down here? what if god is just an idea someone put in your head? i mean, what, what if no one's watching? what if no one's watching?

Fixing Her Hair

she's looking in the mirror, she's fixing her hair. and i touch my head to feel, what isn't there. she's humming a melody we learned in grade school. she's so happy, and i think this is not cool. 'cause i know the guy she's been talking about. i have met him before, and i think, what is this beautiful, beautiful woman settling for? she bends her breath when she talks to him. i can see her features begin to blur as she pours herself into the mold he made for her. and for everything he does, she has a way to rationalize. she says he don't mean what he do. she tells me he called to apologize. he says he loves her. he says he's changing. and he can keep her warm. and so she sits there like america suffering through slow reform. but she'll never get back the time. and the years sneak by one by one. she is still playing the martyr. i am still praying for revolution. and she still doesn't have what she deserves, but she wakes up smiling every day. she never really expected more. that's just not the way we are raised. and i say to her," you know, there's plenty of really great men out there." but she doesn't hear me. she's looking in the mirror. she's fixing her hair.

In or Out

guess there's something wrong with me. guess i don't fit in. no one wants to touch it. no one knows where to begin. i've got more than one membership to more than one club, and i owe my life to the people that i love. he looks me up and down like he knows what time it is. like he's got my number. like he thinks it's his. he says, "call me, miss difranco, if there's anything i can do." i say, "it's mr. difranco to you." somedays the line i walk turns out to be straight, other days the line tends to deviate. i've got no criteria for sex or race. i just want to hear your voice. i just want to see your face. she looks me up and down like she thinks that i'll mature. like she's got my number. like it belongs to her. she says, "call me, ms. difranco if there's anything i can do." i say, "i've got spots i've got stripes, too." their eyes are all asking are you in, or are you out. and i think, "oh man, what is this about?" tonight you can't put me up on any shelf, 'cause i came here alone. i'm gonna leave by myself. i just want to show you the way that i feel, and when i get tired you can take the wheel. to me what's more important is the person that i bring, not just getting to the same restaurant and eating the same thing. guess there's something wrong with me. guess i don't fit in. no one wants to touch it, no one knows where to begin. i've more than one membership to more than one club, and i owe my life to the people that i love.

Every State Line

i got pulled over in west texas so they could look inside my car. he said are you an american citizen? i said, "yes sir, so far." they made sure i wasn't smuggling someone in from mexico. someone willing to settle for america 'cause there's nowhere else to go. and every state line there's a new set of laws. and every policeman comes equipped with extended claws. there's a thousand shades of white and a thousand shades of black. but the same rule always applies smile pretty, and watch your back. i broke down in louisiana and i had to thumb a ride. got in the first car that pulled over, you can't be picky in the middle of the night. he said," baby, do you like to fool around baby, do you like to be touched." i said, "maybe some other time. fuck you very much." i'm in the middle of alabama. they stare at me where ever i go. i don't think they like my haircut. i don't think they like my clothes. i can't wait to get back to new york city, where at least when i walk down the street. nobody ever hesitates to tell me exactly what they think of me. a little town in pennsylvania there was snow on the ground. a parked in an empty lot where there was no one else around. but i guess i was taking up too much space as i was trying to get some sleep. 'cause an officer came by anyway and told me i had to leave.

Circle Of Light

standing just outside the circle of light, avoiding the pool cues, watching the game, waiting for you. hanging in the doorway like smoke, like mistletoe. this is where i'll be whenever you come or go. i'm gonna roll you over, gonna peel you back, expose your tender center, watch the juices flow from the crack. gonna peel you out of your protective shell, or i might have to break right in there and raise some hell. i don't have no grand plan for you and me. just nothing is impossible, nothing is unlikely. i'm just riding the tide, nothing more, and it's bound to take me out some before it brings me back to shore. when you look in the mirror, do you see visions of your past? i ain't got time for halfway. i ain't got time for half-assed. when i look in the mirror, i see my days to come. and my face is just a trace of where i'm coming from. just outside the circle of light is where you've been living your whole life. you've got to jump into the center and launch your attack. and then you've got to crawl back in the corners where it's really black.

If It Isn't Her

standing like john wayne, she is full framed. she is center stage, and my imagination is rattling in its cage. i didn't really notice when everything else disappeared, but as far as i'm concerned if it isn't her, it isn't here. she says, "do i know you?" i say, "well, no, not biblically, but i've been waiting for you come and talk to me. i have been playing too many of those boy girl games." she says, "honey, you are safe here. this is a girl-girl thing. i told him i loved him, so he thought i'd roll over and play dead. he was god's gift to hypocrisy with weak knees and a big fat head." she says, "honey, don't tell me that old story, you are boring me. just tell me, do you like me? tell me what you're gonna do now that you're free." standing like john wayne, she is full framed. she is center stage, and my imagination is rattling in its cage. i didn't really notice when everything else disappeared, but as far as i'm concerned if it isn't her, it isn't here.

Good, Bad, Ugly

it was good, good to see you again. good to meet your girlfriend. i'll try not to wonder where you are when you go outside to kiss her in the front seat of your car. it is good, good to be back home. how i missed this time zone. strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends, but there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends. and it's bad to have eyes like neon signs. flashing open, open, open, open all the time. and it's bad that i wrapped you in a fantasy and i carry you with me. but lately it seems like everybody's joined at the hip. and i'm still fancy, i'm so fancy, fancy free. sometimes the beauty is easy. sometimes you don't have to try at all. sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall. and it's bad that i took that second look. i guess i'm an open book. you know i didn't really intend to embrace you that long. but then again i wasn't the only one holding on.

I'm No Heroine

you think i wouldn't have him unless i could have him by the balls. you think i just dish it out. you don't think i take it at all. you think i am stronger. you think i walk taller than the rest. you think i'm usually wearing the pants just 'cause i rarely wear a dress. well...when you look at me you see my purpose, see my pride. you think i just saddle up my anger and ride and ride and ride. you think i stand so firm. you think i sit so high on my trusty steed. let me tell you i'm usually face down on the ground when there's a stampede. i'm no heroine at least, not last time i checked. i'm too easy to roll over. i'm too easy to wreck. i just write about what i should have done. i just sing what i wish i could say and hope somewhere some woman hears my music and it helps her through her day. 'cause some guy designed these shoes i use to walk around. some big man's business turns a profit every time i lay my money down. some guy designed the room i'm standing in. another built it with his own tools. who says i like right angles? these are not my laws. they're are not my rules. i'm no heroine. i still answer to the other half of the race. i don't fool myself like i fool you. i don't have the power. we just don't run this place.

Coming Up

our father, who art in a penthouse, sits in his 37th floor suite and swivels to gaze down at the city. he made me in he allows me to stand and solicit graffiti until he needs the land. i stand on in my darkened threshold. i am pawing through my pockets the receipts, the bus schedules, the matchbook, phone numbers, the urgent napkin poems. all of which laundering has rendered pulpy. and strange loose change and a key. ask me go ahead, ask me if i care. i got the answer here. i wrote it down somewhere. i just gotta find it. i just gotta find it. somebody and their spray paint got too close. somebody came on too heavy. now look at me made ugly by the drooling letters. i was better off alone. ain't that the way it is? they don't know the first thing, but you don't know that until they take the first swing. my fingers are red and swollen from the cold. i'm getting bold in my old age. so go ahead, try the door it doesn't matter anymore. i know the weak-hearted are strong willed and we are being kept alive until we're killed. he's up there. the ice is clinking in his glass. i don't ask, i just empty my pockets and wait. it's not fate, it's just circumstance. i don't fool myself with romance. i just live phone number to phone number. dusting them against my thighs in the warmth of my pockets which whisper history incessantly asking me where were you. i lower my eyes wishing i could cry more and care less. yes it's true, i was trying to love someone again. i was caught caring, bearing weight. but i love this city, this state. this country is too large and whoever's in charge up there had better take the elevator down and put more than change in our cup or else we are coming up.

Make Them Apologize

my breast is cradled in the curve of my guitar. i'm breaking strings and other things playing hard. no, i'm not on the rag, but i'm not on the run. i am matching the big boys one for one, and i must admit, i'm having myself some fun. because the music business is still run by men, like every business and everything. but we can sing like a son of a bitch. make them twitch around their eyes. make them apologize. he had a mean streak three miles wide. it was a long walk to the other side. she tried to get through it holding on to her smile. but he wasn't worth the time it takes to make that mistake. he just wasn't worthwhile. she's been under command of the wrong man. and she'll give you everything except the upper hand. she was his mother, and his lover, and his wife. now she wants the luxury of her own life. 'cause the marriage business is still run by men, like every business and everything. but she can sing like a son of a bitch. make him twitch around his eyes. girl, make him apologize. they all want to lead the fight and they know what they know all right. but there's so much they don't understand. what about the other sex? what about the other hand? they only know what they've been told and they're well cast. but they don't break the mold, and good sources are not enough. so she calls their bluff. yeah, she calls their bluff. 'cause the revolution business is still run by men, like every business and everything. but we can sing like a son of a bitch. make them twitch around their eyes until they realize. they just don't realize.

The Waiting Song

your basic average super star is singing about justice and peace and love and i am glaring at the radio, swearing, saying that's just what i was afraid of. the system gives you just enough to make you think that you see change. they will sing you right to sleep and then they'll screw you just the same. but i will wait, yes, i will wait for the truth. they think i make a big deal about nothing, but they still think i'm kinda cute. they joke about the status quo to break the ice. once the ice is broken, i hope they all fall through, 'cause this is no joke to me. they don't fool me with their acts of sensitivity. they too shall pass, just like everyone who's only here for my ass. and i can't wait, oh, i can't wait 'til they get their due. baby, i've only got a minute. baby, i have to go. a minute is all my life will ever allow. let's grow old and die together. let's do it now. because you'll do all the jobs no one else will do, and you'll step aside, and you will let me come through. you have all my respect. i'll leave it here when i go. maybe i never told you, baby. maybe you don't know. but maybe if we wait, if we wait things will improve. maybe we just wait and things will improve. you know, they've got to improve. your basic average super star is singing about justice and peace and love and i am glaring at the radio, swearing, saying that's just what i was afraid of. the system gives you just enough to make you think that you see change. they will sing you right to sleep and then they'll screw you just the same. he says, "i know you have to go. you have gone before." we are fighting on two different fronts of the same war. but no matter what else i will do, i will wait for you.

Served Faithfully

he caresses every bottle like it's the first one he's had. saying, it ain't love, but it ain't bad. it's the only reward bestowed upon me, and i have served faithfully. i can see he is scarred from doing some hard time. but i let alone what is broken, 'cause it isn't mine. he strikes out at me when i am within reach. then he reaches for me when i draw the line. sometimes it seems like love is just a fancy word for compromise. you gotta read between the years. you gotta write between the lines. you gotta try to understand the grandness of the man behind the petty crimes and let him off easy sometimes. i have only just met an old, old friend. we've been walking around holding hands. i hope some day he can bend as far as it takes to understand and risk breaking open again.

Imperfectly

i'm okay if you get me at a good angle, and you're okay in the sort of light, and we don't look like pages from a magazine, but that's all right that's all right. i crashed your pickup truck and then i had to drive it back home. i was crying i was so scared of what you would do. of what you would say, but you just started laughing. so i started laughing along saying, "it looks a little rough, but it runs okay. it looks a little rough, but it runs good." anyway. we get a little further from perfection each year on the road. i guess that's what they call character. i guess that's just the way it goes. better to be dusty than polished like some store window mannequin. why don't you touch me where i'm rusty? let me stain your hands. when you're pretty as a picture they pound down your door, but i've been offered love in two dimensions before, and i know that it's not all it's made out to be. let's show them how it's done. let's do it all imperfectly.

Puddle Dive (1993)

Names and Dates and Times

i know so many white people. i mean, where do i start? the trouble with white people is you can't tell them apart. i'm so bad with names and dates and times, but i'm big on faces that is, except for mine. i believe you when you tell me we've met before. this time you've got my interest. this time you've got the floor. why don't you go and tell me something i don't already know? give me something to remember you by when you go. i eat too much. i laugh too long. maybe i'll like too much of you when i'm gone. let's go over to the window and sit in the neon light. let's go out walking you know, it's garbage night. let's go down to the east river and throw something in. something we can't live without and then let's start again. the more you talk, the more i get the sense of something that hasn't happened yet. the more you talk, the more i want to know the way i'll remember you when i go. i eat too much. i laugh too long. maybe i'll like too much of you when i'm gone. i am so many white people. i mean, where do i start? they've got lots of personalities. i just can't tell them apart, and i never remember anything except for those things which i never forget. you know there's no in between. i'm big on your face. yeah, it's big in my mind. you're like the rest of the human race. you're one of a kind.

Anyday

i will lean into you and you can be the wind. i will open up my mouth and you can come rushing in. you can rush in so hard and make it so i can't breathe. i breathe too much anyway. i can do that anyday. i just wish i knew who you were. i wish you'd make yourself known. probably you don't know i'm her, the woman you want to call home. i'll keep my ear to the wall. i'll keep my eye on the door 'cause i've heard all my own jokes and they're just not funny anymore. i laugh too much anyway. i can do that anyday. have you ever been bent or pulled? have you ever been played like strings? if i could see you, i could strum you, i could break you, make you sing. but i guess you can't really see the wind. it just comes in and fills the space. and everytime something moves, you think that you have seen its face. and i've always got my guitar to play, but i can do that anyday.

Fourth Of July

you gotta have the right tools for every job, so i invite myself in through a hole in the fence. i am tripping through the junkyard, scanning over the piles. the thin cats raise their skin in defense. i know he's watching me. i can see him through the cracks. his eyes are small and shy on my back. he says his name is jason. he lives in the last trailer on the right and he'll be seven on the 4th of july. only the people who live here know the name of this place. my path through iowa would be hard to trace. all the adults in this town try not to frown when i walk by, but jason smiled at me. he met my eye. he don't ask me where i'm from or why i came here alone. we all go looking for paradise, then we go back home. we cut out the small talk, go right to the way things are. he showed me his squirrel skull, i told him i locked myself out of my car. so there goes the only friend i have in iowa. his hand flapping behind him waving good-bye. his name is jason. he lives in the last trailer on the right, and he'll be seven on the 4th of july.

Willing To Fight

the windows of my soul are made of one way glass. don't bother looking into my eyes. if there's something you want to know, just ask. i got a dead bolt stroll. where i'm going is clear. i won't wait for you to wonder. i'll just tell you why i'm here. 'cause i know the biggest crime is just to throw up your hands. say this has nothing to do with me. i just want to live as comfortably as i can. you got to look outside your eyes. you got to think outside your brain. you got to walk outside your life to where the neighborhood changes.tell me who is your bogeyman? that's who i will be. you don't have to like me for who i am, but we'll see what you're made of by what you make of me. i think that it's absurd that you think i am the derelict daughter. i fight fire with words. words are hotter than flames. words are wetter than water. i got friends all over this country. i got friends in other countries too. i got friends i haven't met yet. i got friends i never knew. i got lovers whose eyes i've only seen at a glance. i got strangers for great grandchildren. i got strangers for ancestors. i was a long time coming. i'll be a long time gone. you've got your whole life to do something and that's not very long. so why don't you give me a call when you're willing to fight for what you think is real. for what you think is right.

Egos like Hairdos

i saw on the poster my name was printed just a little bit smaller. i can see you need to stand just a little bit taller. no one ever talks about it, but no one can disguise the cloud of competition that's hanging behind their eyes. there's more bad blood in this bar than there is beer. and it's subtle, but it still sucks, and i want out of here. we got egos like hairdos. they're different every day depending on how we slept the night before. depending on the demons that are at our door. they told me you wanted to play last. every profession has its system of castes. so they reverse the order we go on and then you stand at the bar and you talk through my songs. we've got egos like hairdos. they're different every day depending on how we slept the night before. depending on the demons that are at our door. everybody loves the underdog, but no one wants to be him. the press will fatten you up and then they'll dig their teeth in. it's cool to discover someone. it's hard to support them. everyone is playing life like it's some stupid sport. we got egos like hairdos. they're different every day depending on how we slept the night before. depending on the demons that are at our door. i got my kitchen stocked. i got my door unlocked. there're no demons here. and i don't really care whose name is printed in bigger type. you know i live in a world full of hope, not a world full of hype. i ain't no saint, i help myself to what i need, but i help other people too. y'know i sleep soundly.

Back Around

my lipstick jumped ship to a styrofoam cup with the coffee, gone the conversation strong. all i got left to give baby, is up. but sentiments like shadows grow oh so long. guess i gotta go. don't get up. don't cry. it's really very simple, just kiss my cheek and say goodbye. i never really go anywhere. anyway, i just pass through from time to time. bye bye, baby, baby, bye bye. maybe i'll see you next time i'm in town. maybe when i'm through falling off the face of the earth. i'll come back around. you know i love to come back around. ten hours of driving will make your mind kind of numb but it's better than ten dollars an hour slamming a hammer on my thumb and it's better than five dollars an hour selling people shit i wouldn't buy myself at least at the end of the day i'm always somewhere else. bye bye, baby, baby, bye bye. maybe i'll see you next time i'm in town. maybe when i'm through falling off the face of the earth .i'll come back around. you know i love to come back around.

Blood In The Boardroom

sitting in the boardroom, the i'm-so-bored room, listening to the suits talk about their world. they can make straight lines out of almost anything, except for the line of my upper lip when it curls. dressed in my best greasy skin and squinty eyes, i'm the only part of summer here that made it inside in the air-conditioned building decorated with corporate flair. i wonder can these boys smell me bleeding though my underwear? there's men wearing the blood of the women. they love there's white wearing the blood of the brown, but every woman learns to bleed from the moon, and we bleed to renew life every time it's cut down. i got my vertebrae all stacked up as high as they go i, but i still feel myself sliding from the earth that i know. so i excuse myself and leave the room. say my period came early, but it's not a minute too soon. i go and find the only other woman on the floor is the secretary sitting at the desk by the door. i ask her if she's got a tampon i could use. she says, oh honey, what a hassle for you, sure i do. you know i do. i say it ain't no hassle, no, it ain't no mess. right now ,it's the only power that i possess. these businessmen got the money. they got the instruments of death. but i can make life i can make breath. sitting in the boardroom, the i'm-so-bored room, listening to the suits talk about their world. i didn't really have much to say the whole time. i was there so i just left a big brown bloodstain on their white chair.

Born A Lion

i'm not hurting anyone. i'm just telling my truth, and if there if there is something wrong, then maybe there's something wrong with you. what's the big deal? get over it. relax, just 'cause i do up in your face what other people do behind your back. why we all gotta look gotta act the same? i say if you're born a lion, don't bother trying to act tame. everything i do, i do for the first time. i got a big crush on you. and it's crushing my mind. can i follow you home and listen to you think? leave my lip prints on your cups? leave my hairs in your sink? they think i'm out there out there living on the fringe. well, this is my world and i invited them in. they should try living by my rules for a day. nobody would die. there'd be lots of stuff to say. i'm not hurting anyone. no, i'm not hurting anyone.

My IQ

when i was four years old they tried to test my i.q. they showed me a picture of 3 oranges and a pear. they said, which one is different? it does not belong. they taught me different is wrong. but when i was 13 years old, i woke up one morning thighs covered in blood like a war, like a warning that i live in a breakable takeable body. an ever-increasingly valuable body that a woman had come in the night to replace me, deface me. see, my body is borrowed yeah, i got it on loan for the time in between my mom and some maggots. i don't need anyone to hold me. i can hold my own. i got highways for stretchmarks. see where i've grown. i sing sometimes like my life is at stake, 'cause you're only as loud as the noises you make. i'm learning to laugh as hard as i can. listen 'cause silence is violence in women and poor people. if more people were screaming, then i could relax, but a good brain ain't diddley if you don't have the facts. we live in a breakable takeable world. an ever available possible world, and we can make music like we can make do. genius is in a back beat. backseat to nothing if you're dancing, especially something stupid like i.q. for every lie, i unlearn i learn something new. i sing sometimes for the war that i fight, 'cause every tool is a weapon - if you hold it right.

Used To You

i'm still here because i've got nothing else to do. you're an asshole, but i'm getting used to you. i like the fact that you talk incessantly. i got a thing for assholes who tell good stories. i think that drinking is the only thing that you do right. you're gonna self-destruct. i think that's what i like. you like me, so you try and make me feel like shit. i think it's kind of funny. yeah i kind of enjoy it. if you're gonna do it, overdo it. that's how you know you're alive. go ahead, take yourself a coma nap. take a puddle dive. you said, this is my bedroom window. you said, this is my view. you said, lie down here with me and see the things that i do. like you were trying to tell me something about the way you live. like you would give me something if you had something to give. and for all your talk you don't say much that's real. i think i know more than you about the way that you feel. i understand your anger and your apathy. i think if i was you, you're who i'd be. i'm still here 'cause i got nothing else to do. you're an asshole, but i'm getting used to you. i could love you. yeah, i've entertained the thought. but i could never like you, so i guess i'd better not.

Pick Yer Nose

how come i can pick my ears but not my nose? who made up that rule anyway? how can you say that's the way it is.that's just the way it goes. why don't you decide for yourself what you can do and what you can say. how come i can pick my friends but not my enemies? what is it about me that offends? what is it about me 'cause you know i'm only five foot two and i'm giggly wiggly? tell me again, what did i do? why are you scared of me? i fight with love and i laugh with rage. you've gotta live light enough to see the humor and long enough to see some change. i think shy is boring. i think depressed is too. i think pretty is nice, but i'd rather see something new. all these plastic people got their plastic surgery, but we got a big, big beautiful. we got it for free. who you gonna be if you can't be yourself? you can't get it from t.v. you can't force it on anybody else. you know they come to clear cut. they come to strip mine. they come for some of my big butt, my big brain, or just a little time. they wanna take me out to dinner. think i'm a bitch if i don't go. seems like the people who actually like me won't allow me to say no. your idea of a conversation is the third degree, but i don't really know you, and i don't really want to talk about me. 'cause i'm not going to pretend that i don't pick my nose. that's just the way it is, my friends. that's just the way it goes. this is who i am, what i do, and what i say. if you like it, let it be. if you don't, please do the same. i fight with love. i laugh with rage. you gotta live light enough to see the humor and long enough to see some change.

God's Country

state trooper thinks i drive too fast. pulled me over to tell me so. i say out here on the prairie any speed is too slow. i miss brooklyn. i miss my crew. let's start over. i missed my cue. guess i just forgot who i was talking to. i should have recognized that fierce look in his eyes. i've seen it in the mirror so many times. he's going to put his two cents in 'cause he's got a gun, but i'm gonna put in three 'cause history owes me one. guess i came out here to see some stuff for myself. i mean, why leave the telling up to everybody else? this may be god's country, but it's my country too. move over mr. holiness and let the little people through. thank you for serving and protecting the likes of me. thank you for the ticket now can i leave? you know i have left everywhere i have ever been. i don't really recommend it though. not like anyone asked me. maybe you and i will meet again someday. i've been known to come down this road. call it destiny, and then again maybe not. i don't know.

Like I Said (1993)

Anticipate

Rockabye

tending the garden of noise when i grow. the traffic and the church bells and the neighborhood boys. singing to myself as the solitude sets in tune with the symphony of south brooklyn. i sing. rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, the baby that is me. rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, 'til i'm fast asleep. the tunnel is train torn. the tracks are worn and sore. i can feel the rattle riding up through the floor. she jumped the turnstile. he paid for his ride. i am the echo in the station where their footfalls collide. i left her at the epicenter. we were trembling dutifully. i left him too. i left parts of me. i said today i am leaving in every sense of the word. but i'm in love with your memory. already everything i've seen and heard. and i will go singing as the solitude sets in time with the rhythm of everywhere i have been. it sounds like rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, the baby that is me. rockabye, rockabye baby, rockabye, 'til i'm fast asleep.

Not So Soft

Roll With It

Work Your Way Out

Fire Door

Gratitude

The Whole Night

Both Hands

She Says

Rush Hour

Out Of Habit

Lost Woman Song

Talk To Me Now

The Slant

Out Of Range (1994)

Buildings And Bridges

buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind. to withstand the world, that's what it takes. all that steel and stone is no match for the air, my friend. what doesn't bend, breaks. what doesn't bend, breaks. we are made to bleed and scab and heal and bleed again and turn every scar into a joke. we are made to fight and fuck and talk and fight again and sit around and laugh until we choke. sit around and laugh until we choke. i don't know who you were expecting probably some bitch who does not budge with eyes the size of snow. i may get pissed off sometimes, but you seem like the type to hold a grudge and in the end, i just let go... buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind. to withstand the world, that's what it takes. all that steel and stone is no match for the air, my friend. what doesn't bend breaks what doesn't bend breaks.

Out of Range

just the thought of our bed makes me crumble like the plaster where you punched the wall beside my bed. and i try to draw the line, but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time. boys get locked up in some prison. girls get locked up in some house, and it don't matter if it's a warden or a lover or a spouse. you just can't talk to 'em. you just can't reason. you just can't leave, and you just can't please 'em. i was locked into being my mother's daughter. i was just eating bread and water, thinking nothing ever changes. and i was shocked to see the mistakes of each generation will just fade like a radio station if you drive out of range. if you're not angry, you're just stupid or you don't care. how else can you react when you know something's so unfair? the men of the hour can kill half the world in war. make them slaves to a super power and let them die poor. i was locked into being my mother's daughter. i was just eating bread and water, thinking nothing ever changes. and i was shocked to see the mistakes of each generation will just fade like a radio station if you drive out of range. just the thought of our bed makes me crumble like the plaster where you punched the wall beside my bed. and i try to draw the line, but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time. baby, i love you. that's why i'm leaving. there's no talking to you and there's no pleasing you. and i care enough that i'm mad that half the world don't even know what they could have had. i was locked into being my mother's daughter. i was just eating bread and water, thinking nothing ever changes. and i was shocked to see the mistakes of each generation will just fade like a radio station if you drive out of range.

Letter To A John

don't ask me why i'm crying. i'm not going to tell you what's wrong. i'm just gonna sit on your lap for five dollars a song. i want you to pay me for my beauty. i think it's only right, 'cause i have been paying for it all of my life. i'm gonna take the money i make i'm gonna take the money i make. i'm gonna take the money i make and i'm gonna go away... we barely have time to react in this world, let alone rehearse. and i don't think i'm better than you, but i don't think that i'm worse. women learn to be women and men learn to be men. and i don't blame it all on you but i don't want to be your friend. i'm gonna take the money i make. i'm gonna take the money i make. i'm gonna take the money i make and i'm gonna go away... i was eleven years old. he was as old as my dad and he took something from me i didn't even know that i had. so don't tell me about decency. don't tell me about pride. just give me something for my trouble, 'cause this time, it's not a free ride. i'm gonna take the money i make i'm gonna take the money i make i'm gonna take the money i make and i'm gonna go away... don't ask me why i'm crying. i'm not going to tell you what's wrong. i'm just gonna sit on your lap for five dollars a song. i want you to pay me for my beauty. i think it's only right, 'cause i have been paying for it all of my life. now i just wanna take, and i'm just gonna take. i'm gonna take, and i'm gonna go away.

Hell Yeah

life is a b movie. it's stupid and it's strange. a directionless story and the dialogue is lame. but in the "he said, she said," sometimes there's some poetry if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally. oh, yeah. hell yeah. i got a face like a limp handshake. hair like an accident scene. i've been waking up slowly savoring the same old dream. and somewhere between the folds of your memory i was sleeping soundly. oh, yeah. hell yeah. 'cause i like you, but i know you don't know it i like you so much. i talk to everyone but you, and i wonder what you would think of this little number. i wonder what you would say if you knew. if you don't ask the right questions, every answer seems wrong. i was a terrible waitress, so i started to write songs. and i don't know how i feel, but i wonder if you feel like me. do you ever get wrapped up in the folds of my memory? oh, yeah. hell, yeah. 'cause i like you, but i know you don't know it i like you so much i talk to everyone but you and i wonder what you would think of this little number yeah i wonder what you would say if you knew. there's a river of people that runs past my eyes, and it's beautiful enough just to watch it go by. but the trouble with water is she'll always leave you for gravity. i never even told you i had a crush on you or anything. oh, yeah. hell yeah. life is a b movie. it's stupid and it's strange. a directionless story and the dialogue is lame. but in the "he said, she said," sometimes there's some poetry if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally. oh, yeah. hell yeah.

How Have You Been

you could always hear the rub squeaking of those two tree limbs 'til one day one of them came down, taken down by the wind. but on the one that's still there you can still see where the bark was rubbed bare. it's a metaphor if you know what i mean. how have you been? me and you and your girlfriend makes three. in the interest of even numbers, i will make myself scarce. i will make myself scarcely me, but i'll be outside your window at night. pull up your shades, leave on your light. i don't want to come in between. i just want to know, how have you been? i leave for a living. music's just something i do on my way out the door, and i'd do almost anything once. something about you i think i'd do you more. if i had my way, i'd stay here and watch your hair grow for a while. it makes me smile just to dream of it. how have you been?

Overlap

search your profile for a translation. i study the conversation like a map. 'cause i know there is strength in the differences between us, and i know there is comfort where we overlap. come here. stand in front of the light. stand still so i can see your silhouette. i hope you have got all night 'cause i'm not done looking. no, i'm not done looking yet. each one of us wants a piece of the action. you can hear it in what we say. you can see it in what we do. we negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction. if you won't give it to me, at least give me a better view. i build each one of my songs out of glass so you can see me inside of them, i suppose. or you could just leave the image of me in the background, i guess and watch your own reflection superimposed. i build each one of my days out of hope and i give that hope your name. and i don't know you that well, but it don't take much to tell. either you don't have the balls. or you don't feel the same. i search your profile for a translation. i study the conversation like a map. 'cause i know there is strength in the differences between us, and i know there is comfort where we overlap.

Face Up And Sing

some guy tried to rub up against me in a crowded subway car. some guy tried to feed me some stupid line in some stupid bar. i see the same shit everyday. the landscape looks so bleak. i think i'll take the first one of you home that does something unique. some chick says thank you for saying all the things i never do. i say the thanks i get is to take all the shit for you. it's nice that you listen, it'd be nicer if you joined in. as long as you play their game girl, you're never going to win. today i just want someone to entertain me. i'm tired of being so fierce. i'm tired of being so friendly. you don't have to be a supermodel to do the animal thing. you don't have to be a supergenius to open your face up and sing. somebody do something, anything soon. i know i can't be the only whatever i am in the room, so why am i so lonely? why am i so tired? i need company. i need backup. i need to be inspired.

Falling Is Like This

you give me that look that's like laughing with liquid in your mouth. like you're choosing between choking and spitting it all out. like you're trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling. and falling is like this. feels like reckless driving when we're talking. it's fun while it lasts, and it's faster than walking. but no one's going to sympathize when we crash. they'll say "you hit what you head for, you get what you ask." and we'll say we didn't know, we didn't even try one minute. there was road beneath us, the next just sky. i'm sorry i can't help you. i cannot keep you safe. i'm sorry i can't help myself. so don't look at me that way. we can't fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling. and falling is like this.

Out Of Range

You Had Time

how can i go home with nothing to say? i know you're going to look at me that way and say "what did you do out there, and what did you decide?" you said you needed time and you had time. you are a china shop and i am a bull. you are really good food and i am full. i guess everything is timing. i guess everything's been said. so i am coming home with an empty head. you'll say, "did they love you or what?" and i'll say, "they love what i do. the only one who really loves me is you" and you'll say, "girl, did you kick some butt?" and i'll say "i don't really remember, but my fingers are sore and my voice is too." you'll say, "it's really good to see you." you'll say, "i missed you horribly." you'll say, "let me carry that. give that to me." and you will take the heavy stuff and you will drive the car. and i'll look out the window and make jokes about the way things are. how can i go home with nothing to say? i know you're going to look at me that way and say "what did you do out there, and what did you decide?" you said you needed time and you had time.

If He Tries Anything

i'm invincible, so are you. we do all the things they say we can't do. we walk around in the middle of the night. and if it's too far to walk, we just hitch a ride. we got rings of dirt around our necks. we talk like auctioneers and we bounce like checks. we smell like shit. still, when we walk down the street, all the boys line up to throw themselves at our feet. i say, "i think he likes you". you say, "i think he do too". go and get him girl, before he gets you. i'll be watching you from the wings. i will come to your rescue if he tries anything. it's a long, long road. it's a big, big world. we are wise, wise women. we are giggling girls. we both carry a smile to show when we're pleased. we both carry a switchblade in our sleeves. tell you one thing, i'm gonna make noise when i go down. for ten square blocks they're gonna know i died. all the goddesses will come up to the ripped screen door and say, "what do you want, dear?" and i'll say, "i want inside." i say, "i think he likes you". you say, "i think he do too". go and get him girl, before he gets you. i'll be watching you from the wings. i will come to your rescue if he tries anything.

The Diner

i'm calling from the diner, the diner on the corner. i ordered two coffees, one is for you. i was hoping you'd join me 'cause i ain't go no money and i really miss you. i should mention that too. yes, i know what time it is. in fact, i just checked. i even know the date and the month and the year. i know i haven't been sleeping, and when i do i just dream of you dear. i miss watching you drool on your pillow. i miss watching you pull on your clothes. i miss listening to you in the bathroom flushing the toilet, blowing your nose. i'm calling from the diner, the diner on the corner. i ordered two coffees, one is for you. the cups are so close. the steam is rising in one stream. how are you? i think you're the least fucked up person i've ever met. and that may be as close to the real thing as i'm ever gonna get. but my quarter's gonna run out now or so i'm told. i guess i'd better go sit down and wait for you til my coffee gets cold.

Not A Pretty Girl (1995)

Worthy

you think you're not worthy. i'd have to say i agree. i'm not worthy of you. you're not worthy of me. which of us is deserving? look at the human race. the whole planet at arm's length, and we don't deserve this place. what good is a poker face when you've got an open hand? i was supposed to be cool about this. yeah, i remember cool was the plan. tried to keep it all under wraps, but the wraps kept going slack. i keep turning round. i keep coming back. give me a vertical, your horizontal line. i want to take each of them, bend them to divine. the world is too good for me. i am such a naughty girl. but when we're together, we're too good for this world. you think you're not worthy. i'd have to say i agree. i'm not worthy of you. you're not worthy of me. i'm not worthy of you. you aren't worthy of me...

Tiptoe

tiptoeing through the used condoms strewn on the piers off the west side highway. sunset behind the skyline of jersey. walking towards the water with a fetus holding court in my gut. my body high-jacked, my tits swollen, i'm sore. the river has more colors at sunset than my sock drawer ever dreamed of. i could wake up screaming sometimes, but i don't. i could step off the end of this pier, but i've got shit to do and i've an appointment on tuesday to shed uninvited blood and tissue. i'll miss you, i say to the river, to the water, to the son or daughter i thought better of. i could fall in love with jersey at sunset, but i leave the view to the rats and tiptoe back.

Cradle And All

14th street, the garbage swirls like a cyclone. three o'clock in the afternoon and i am going home. f-train is full of high school students. so much shouting, so much laughter. last night's underwear in my back pocket, sure sign of the morning after. take me home. take me home and leave me there. think i'm gonna cry, don't know why. think i'm going to sing myself a lullaby. feel free to listen. feel free to stare. i live in new york, new york. city that never shuts up. in the daylight everything is so gory. you can hear snatches of strangers sorry stories. i moved there from buffalo, but that's nothing. the trico plant moved to mexico. left my uncle standing out in the cold. said here's your last paycheck, have fun growing old. take me home. take me home and leave me there. think i'm gonna cry, don't know why. think i'm going to sing myself a lullaby. feel free to listen. feel free to stare. rockabye baby in the treetop. when the wind blows, the cradle will rock. when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby cradle and all. youth is beauty, money is beauty, hell, beauty is beauty sometimes. it's the luck of the draw, it's the natural law. it's a joke, it's a crime. i was bored, you were bored, it was a meeting of the minds. now it's three in the afternoon and i can't leave too soon saying, "thank you, i've had a nice time." take me home. take me home and leave me there. think i'm gonna cry, don't know why. think i'm going to sing myself a lullaby. feel free to listen. feel free to stare. rockabye baby in the treetop. when the wind blows, the cradle will rock. when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby cradle and all. rockabye baby in the treetop. when the wind blows, the cradle will rock. when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby cradle and all. maybe i'll live my whole life just getting by. maybe i'll be discovered, maybe i'll be colonized. you can try to train me like a pet, you can try to teach me to behave. but i'll tell you, if i haven't learned it yet, i ain't gonna sit, i ain't gonna stay. take me home. take me home and leave me there. think i'm gonna cry, don't know why. think i'm going to sing myself a lullaby. feel free to listen. feel free to stare.

Shy

the heat is so great. it plays tricks with the eye. it turns the road to water, and then from water to sky. and there's a crack in the concrete floor, and it starts at the sink. there's a bathroom in a gas station, and i've locked myself in it to think. and back in the city, the sun bakes the trash on the curb. the men are pissing in doorways, and the rats run in herds. i've got a dream of your face that scares me awake. i put too much on my table, and now i got too much at stake. and i might let you off easy. yeah, i might lead you on. i might wait for you to look for me, and then i might be gone. it's where i come from, and where i'm going, and i'm lost in between. i might go up to that phone booth and leave a veiled invitation on your machine. and you'll stop me, won't you, if you've heard this one before? the one where i surprise you by showing up at your front door, saying "let's not ask what's next, or how, or why." i am leaving in the morning, so let's not be shy. the door opens, the room winces. the housekeeper comes in without a warning, and i squint at the muscular motel light. says "hey, good morning." and she jumps, her keys jingle and she leaves as quick as she came in and i roll over and taste the pillow with my grin. well, the sheets are twisted and tangled and the heat is so great and i swear i can feel the mattress sinking underneath your weight. oh, sleep is like a fever and i'm glad when it ends. and the road flows like a river and pulls me around every bend. the heat is so great. it plays tricks with the eye. it turns road to water, and water to sky. and there's a crack in the concrete floor, and it starts at the sink. there's a bathroom in a gas station, and i've locked myself in it to think.

Sorry I Am

i'm sorry i didn't sound more excited on the phone. i'm sorry that after all these years i've left you feeling unrequited and alone, brought you to tears. i guess i never loved you quite as well as the way you loved me. i guess i'll never really be able to tell you how sorry i am. and i don't know what it is about you. i just know it's not what it was. i don't know why red fades before blue, it just does. and i don't know what it is about me that i just can't keep still. i keep thinking someday i will make this all up to you and maybe someday i will. i guess i never loved you quite as well as the way you loved me. i guess i'll never really be able to tell you how sorry i am.

Light Of Some Kind

i wish i didn't have this nervous laugh. i wish i didn't say half the stuff i say. i wish i could just learn to cover my tracks. i guess i'm not concerned about getting away. 'cause every time i try to hold my tongue it slips like a fish from a line. they say if you want to play, you should learn how to play dumb. i guess i can't bring myself to waste your time. 'cause we both know what i've been doing. i've been intentionally bad at lying. you're the only boy i ever let see through me. and i hope you believe me when i say i'm trying. and i hope i never improve my game. yeah, i'd rather have these things weighing on my mind. and at the end of this tunnel of guilt and shame there must be a light of some kind. there must be a light of some kind. i must have blown a fuse or something cause it was so dark in my mind. she came up to me with the sweetest face and she was holding a light of some kind. and i still think of you as my boyfriend. i don't think this is the end of the world, but i think maybe you should follow my example and go meet yourself a really nice girl. in the end the world comes down to just a few people, but for you it comes down to one. but no one ever asked me if i thought i could be everything to someone. there's a crowd of people harbored in every person. there are so many roles that we play, and you've decided to love me for eternity. i'm still deciding who i want to be today.

Not A Pretty Girl

i am not a pretty girl. that is not what i do. i ain't no damsel in distress, and i don't need to be rescued. so put me down punk. maybe you'd prefer a maiden fair. isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere? i am not an angry girl, but it seems like i've got everyone fooled. every time i say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger and never to their own fear. and imagine you're a girl, just trying to finally come clean, knowing full well they'd prefer you were dirty and smiling. and i am sorry i am not a maiden fair. and i am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere. and generally my generation wouldn't be caught dead working for the man. and generally i agree with them. trouble is, you gotta have yourself an alternate plan. and i have earned my disillusionment. i have been working all of my life. and i am a patriot. i have been fighting the good fight. and what if there are no damsels in distress. what if i knew that and i called your bluff? don't you think every kitten figures out how to get down whether or not you ever show up? i am not a pretty girl. i don't want to be a pretty girl. no, i want to be more than a pretty girl.

The Million You Never Made

the air comes off the ocean. the city smells fishy. the air is full of fish and mystery, whispering who, what, when. i am warning you i am weightless and the wind is always shifting so don't hang anything on me if you ever want to see it again. i am telling you i'm different than you think i am. and you can dangle your carrot, but i ain't gonna reach for it, 'cause i need both my hands to play my guitar. and life is a sleazy stranger who looks vaguely familiar, flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar. and i am telling you that i am different than you are. at night when you're asleep, self-hatred's going to creep in and try to blame it on the devil. the one who's bed you sleep in and don't tell me what they did to you as though you had no choice. tell me, isn't that your picture? isn't that your voice? if you don't live what you sing about, your mirror is going to find out. oh, yeah. i'd like to go to all the pretty parties where all the pretty people go. and i ain't really all that pretty but nobody will know. 'cause everybody loves you when you're a star, and nobody questions what it takes to go that far. and life is a sleazy stranger and this is his favorite bar. no, i don't prefer obscurity, but i'm an idealistic girl. and i wouldn't work for you no matter what you paid. and i may not be able to change the whole fucking world, but i could be the million that you never made. oh yeah, i could be the million that you never made. i could be the million that you'll never make. you're looking at the million that you'll never make.

Hour Follows Hour

hour follows hour like water follows water. everything is governed by the rule of one thing leads to another. you can't really place blame cuz blame is much too messy. some was bound to get on you while you were trying to put it on me. don't fool yourself into thinking things are simple. nobody's lying and still the stories don't line up. why do you try to hold on to what you never get a hold on. you wouldn't try to put the ocean in a paper cup. cause i have had something to prove as long as i've had something that needs improving. and you know every time i move, i make a women's movement. and first you decide what you gotta do, then you do out and do it. and maybe the most that we can do is just to see each other through. hour follows hour like water in a river and from one to the next we don't know what each hour will deliver. we just call it like we see it. we call it out as loud as we can and then afterwards we call it all water over the dam. and maybe the moral high ground isn't as high as it seems. maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things. i just hope it was okay. i know it wasn't perfect. i hope in the end we can laugh and say it was all worth it. we make our own gravity to give weight to things and then things fall and they break and gravity sings. we can only hold so much is what i figure. we try and keep our eye on the big picture and the picture keeps getting bigger. too much is how i love you, but too well is how well i know you. i've got nothing to prove this time, just something to show you. i guess i just wanted you to see that it was all worth it to me.

32 Flavors

squint your eyes and look closer. i'm not between you and your ambition. i am a poster girl with no poster. i am thirty-two flavors and then some. and i'm beyond your peripheral vision, so you might want to turn your head. 'cause someday you're going to get hungry and eat most of the words you just said. both my parents taught me about good will and i have done well by their names. just the kindness i've lavished on strangers is more than i can explain. still there's many who've turned out their porch lights just so i would think they were not home and hid in the dark of their windows 'til i'd passed and left them alone. and god help you if you are an ugly girl. course too pretty is also your doom. 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room. and god help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash. a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying back. i'm not trying to give my life meaning by demeaning you. and i would like to state for the record i did everything that i could do. i'm not saying that i'm a saint. i just don't want to live that way. no, i will never be a saint but i will always say. squint your eyes and look closer. i'm not between you and your ambition. i am a poster girl with no poster. i am thirty-two flavors and then some. and i'm beyond your peripheral vision, so you might want to turn your head. 'cause someday you might find you're starving and eating all of the words you said.

Asking Too Much

i want somebody who sees the pointlessness and still keeps their purpose in mind. i want somebody who has a tortured soul some of the time. i want somebody who will either put out for me or put me out of misery. or maybe just put it all to words and make me say, you know i never heard it put that way. make me say, what did you just say? i want somebody who can hold my interest. hold it and never let it fall. someone who can flatten me with a kiss that hits like a fist or a sentence, that stops me like a brick wall. because if you hear me talking, listen to what i'm not saying. if you hear me playing guitar, listen to what i'm not playing. and don't ask me to put words to all the spaces between notes. in fact, if you have to ask, forget it. do, and you'll regret it. i'm tired of being the interesting one. i'm tired of having fun for two. just lay yourself on the line, and i might lay myself down by you. but don't sit behind your eyes and wait for me to surprise you. i want somebody who can make me scream until it's funny. give me a run for my money. i want someone who can twist me up in knots. tell me, for the woman who has everything, what have you got? i want someone who's not afraid of me or anyone else. in other words, i want someone who's not afraid of themself. do you think i'm asking too much?

This Bouqet

got a garden of songs where i grow all my thoughts. wish i could have a harvest one or two for some small talk. seems like i'm starving for words whenever you're around. nothing on my tongue and so much in the ground. nothing on my tongue and so much in the ground. half the time i got my gaze trained on your motel door. fourth door from the end. rest of the time my gaze lays like a stain on the carpeted floor. if it weren't for my brain i'd just go over and make friends. too bad about my brain cuz i'd like to make friends. see the little songbird unable to make a sound. you'll never know she follows her words from town to town. we both got gardens of songs and maybe it's okay that i am speechless cuz i picked you this bouquet. yup, sure am speechless, but i picked you this bouquet.

Crime For Crime

the big day has come. the bell is sounding. i run my hands through my hair one last time outside the prison walls. the town is gathering people are trading crime for crime. everyone needs to see the prisoner. they need to make it even easier. they see me as a symbol, and not a human being. that way they can kill me. say it's not murder, it's a metaphor. we are killing off our own failure and starting clean. standing in the gallows, everyone turned my way. i hear a voice ask me if i've got any last words to say. and i'm looking out over the field of familiar eyes. somewhere in a woman's arms a baby cries. i think guilt and innocence, they are a matter of degree. what might be justice to you might not be justice to me. i went too far, i'm sorry i guess now i'm going home. so let any amongst you cast the first stone. now we've got all these complicated machines, so no one person ever has to have blood on their hands. we've got complex organizations, and if everyone just does their job no one person has to understand. you might be the wrong color, you might be too poor. justice isn't something just anyone can afford. you might not pull the trigger. you might be out in the car. and you might get a lethal injection, 'cause we take a metaphor that far. the big day has come. the bell is sounding. i run my hands through my hair one last time outside the prison walls. the town has gathered. people are trading crime for crime.

Coming Up

Dilate (1996)

Untouchable Face

think i'm going for a walk now. i feel a little unsteady. don't want nobody to follow me 'cept maybe you. i could make you happy if you weren't already. i could do a lot of things, and i do. tell you the truth, i prefer the worst of you. too bad you had to have a better half. she's not really my type, but i think you two are forever. and i hate to say it, but you look perfect together. so fuck you and your untouchable face. and fuck you for existing in the first place. who am i that i should be vying for your touch? who am i? bet you can't even tell me that much. two-thirty in the morning and my gas tank will be empty soon. neon sign on the horizon, rubbing elbows with the moon. a safe haven of sleepless where the deep fryer's always on and the radio is counting down the top twenty country songs. and out on the porch, the fly strip is waving like a flag in the wind. y'know, i don't look forward to seeing you again. you look like a photograph of yourself taken from far, far away. and i won't know what to do, and i won't know what to say. except fuck you and your untouchable face. and fuck you for existing in the first place. who am i that i should be vying for your touch? who am i? i bet you can't tell me that much. i see you and i'm so perplexed. what was i thinking? what will i think of next? where can i hide? in the back room, there's a lamp that hangs over the pool table and when the fan is on it swings gently side to side. there's a changing constellation of balls as we are playing. i see orion and say nothing. the only thing i can think of saying is fuck you and your untouchable face. and fuck you for existing in the first place. who am i that i should be vying for your touch? who am i? i bet you can't tell me that much.

Outta Me, Onto You

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no more. it's gonna be sudden, it's gonna be strange. i'm gonna turn on a dime, give you 5 cents change. it's gonna be long overdue. it's all gonna come out. out of me, on to you. out of me, on to you. one of these days you're gonna push too hard. we'll go on like we've always done till you go too far. one of these days it's gonna reach the top. then it's gonna start to spill and it's not gonna stop. out of me, on to you... no more. some people wear their smile like a disguise. those people who smile a lot, watch the eyes. i know cause i'm like that a lot, you think everything's okay it is till it's not. out of me, on to you... no more. some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. i wear mine underneath my right pant leg strapped to my boot. don't think cause i'm easy, i'm naive. don't think i wanna pull it out. don't think i'm gonna show it. out of me, on to you... no more. most people like to talk a lot, including you. you know there isn't much i have to say that i wouldn't rather just shut up and do. i'm gonna miss you when you're gone. i'm gonna be torn. just remember that i love you. just remember you were warned. out of me, on to you... no more, no more.

Superhero

sleepwalking through the all night drug store, baptized in fluorescent light. i found religion in the greeting card aisle. now i know hallmark was right. and every pop song on the radio is suddenly speaking to me. art may imitate life, but life imitates tv. 'cuz you've been gone exactly two weeks. two weeks and three days. and let's just say things are different now. different in so many ways. i used to be a superhero. no one could touch me, not even myself. you are like a phone booth that i somehow stumbled into. and now look at me, i am just like everybody else. if i was dressed in my best defenses, would you agree to meet me for coffee? if i did my tricks with smoke and mirrors, would you still know which one was me? if i was naked and screaming on your front lawn, would you turn on the light and come down screaming, "there's the asshole who did this to me." stripped me of my power, stripped me down. i used to be a superhero. no one could hurt me, not even myself. you are like a phone booth that i somehow stumbled into. and now look at me, i am just like everybody else. yeah you've been gone exactly two weeks. two weeks and three days and now i'm a different person. different in so many ways. tell me, what did you like about me and don't say my strength and daring. 'cuz now i think i'm at your mercy and it's my first time for this sort of thing. i used to be a superhero. i would swoop down and save me from myself. but you are like a phone booth that i somehow stumbled into. and now look at me, i am just like everybody else.

Dilate

life used to be life-like. now it's more like show biz. i wake up in the night and i don't know where the bathroom is. and i don't know what town i'm in or what sky i am under. and i wake up in the darkness and i don't have the will anymore to wonder. everyone has a skeleton and a closet to keep it in and you're mine. every song has a you, a you that the singer sings to. and you're it this time. baby, you're it this time. when i need to wipe my face i use the back of my hand. and i like to take up space just because i can. and i use my dress to wipe up my drink. i care less and less what people think. you are so lame. you always disappoint me. it's kinda like our running joke, but it's not really funny. i just want you to live up to the image of you i create. i see you and i'm so unsatisfied. i see you and i dilate. so i'll walk the plank and i'll jump with a smile. if i'm gonna go down, i'm gonna do it with style. and you won't see me surrender. you won't hear me confess, 'cuz you've left me with nothing, but i've worked with less. and i learn every room long enough to make it to the door. and then i hear it click shut behind me. and every key works differently. i forget every time. and the forgetting defines me, that's what defines me. when i say you sucked my brain out, the english translation is i am in love with you and it is no fun. but i don't use words like love, 'cuz words like that don't matter. but don't look so offended. you know, you should be flattered. i wake up in the night in some big hotel bed. my hands grope for the light. my hands grope for my head. the world is my oyster. the road is my home, and i know i'm better off alone.

Amazing Grace

amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. i once was lost, but now i'm found, was blind, but now i see. 'twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace that fear relieved. how precious did that grace appear the hour i first believed. through many dangers, toils, and snares i have already come. 'twas grace that brought me safely this far and grace will lead me home. and when the heart and flesh shall fail and mortal life shall cease, i shall possess within the vale a life of joy and peace.

Napoleon

they told you your music could reach millions. the choice was up to you. you told me they always pay for lunch and they believe in what i do. and i wonder if you'll miss your old friends once you've proven what you're worth. and i wonder when you're a big star, will you miss the earth? and i know you always, always want more. i know you, you'll never be done. because everyone is a fucking napoleon. everyone is a fucking napoleon. and the next time that i saw you, you were larger than life. yeah, you came and you conquered, you were doing all right. you had an army of suits behind you, and all you had to be was willing. and i said i still make a pretty good living. you must make a killing, a killing. and i hope that, that you are happy. i hope that at least you are having fun. oh, but everyone is a fucking napoleon. well, everyone is a fucking napoleon. you say that, so that's the way it's gonna be. so that's what this is all about. i think that that's the way it always was. you chose not to notice until now. oh now that, now that there's a problem. you call me up to confide and you go on for over an hour about each one that took you for a ride. and i guess that you dialed my number because you thought for sure that i'd agree. i said, "baby, you know i still love you, but how dare you complain to me." oh, but everyone is a fucking napoleon. everyone is a fucking napoleon. everyone is a fucking napoleon.

Shameless

i cannot name this. i cannot explain this and i don't really want to. just call me shameless. i can't even slow this down, let alone stop this. and i keep looking around, but i cannot top this. if i had any sense i guess i'd fear this. i guess i'd keep it down so no one would hear this. i guess i'd shut my mouth and rethink a minute. but i can't shut it now 'cuz there's something in it. we're in a room without a door, and i'm sure without a doubt, they're gonna want to know how we got in here. and they're gonna want to know how we plan to get out. we better have a good explanation for all the fun that we had 'cuz they are coming for us babe, and they are going to be mad. yeah, they're going to be mad at us. this is my skeleton. this is the skin that it's in. that is, according to light and gravity. i'll take off my disguise. the mask you met me in, 'cuz i got something for you to see. just gimme your skeleton. give me the skin that it's in. yeah baby, this is you according to me. i never avert my eyes. i never compromise, so never mind the poetry. i gotta cover my butt 'cuz i covet another man's wife. i gotta divide my emotions into wrong and right. the i got to see how close i can get to it without giving in. then i get to rub up against it till i break the skin. rub up against it till i break the skin. they're gonna be mad at us. they're gonna be mad at me and you. they're gonna be mad at us and all the things we wanna do. just please don't name this. please, don't explain this. just blame it all on me. say i was shameless. say i couldn't slow it down, let alone stop it. and say you just hung around 'cuz you couldn't stop it.

Done Wrong

the wind is ruthless. the trees shake angry fingers at the sky. the people hunch their shoulders, hold their collars over their ears and run by. it's a cold rain. it's a hard rain like the kind you find in songs. i guess that makes me the jerk with the heartache he to sing to you about how i been done wrong. i am sitting, watching out the window of the coffee shop. and i'm waiting, waiting, waiting for it to let up. i am rocking like a cradle, warming my hands with the cup in between. i am leaning over the table holding my face over the steam. and before it gets so cold that the rain turns to snow, there's a couple of things i'd like to know. like how could you do nothing and say, "i'm doing my best." how could you take almost everything and then come back for the rest? how could you beg me to stay, reach out your hands and plead and then pack up your eyes and run away as soon as i'd agreed? it just all slips away so slowly. you don't even notice it till you've lost a lot. i've been like one of those zombies in vegas, pouring quarters into a slot. and now i'm tired and now i'm broke. and i feel stupid and i feel used. and i'm at the end of my little rope. and i am swinging back and forth about you. before it gets so cold that the rain turns to snow, there's a couple of things i'd like to know. like how could you do nothing and say, "i'm doing my best." how could you take almost everything and then come back for the rest? how could you beg me to stay, reach out your hands and plead and then pack up your eyes and run away as soon as i'd agreed?

Going Down

you can't get through it. you can't get over it. you can't get around. just like in a dream you'll open your mouth to scream and you won't make a sound. you can't believe your eyes. you can't believe your ears. you can't believe your friends. you can't believe you're here. and you're not going to get through it, so you are going down. i put a cup on the windowsill to catch the water as it fell. now i got a glass half full of rain to measure the time in between when you said you'd come and when you actually came. little mister limp dick is up to his same old tricks and thought he'd call me one last time. but i'm just about done with the oh-woe-is-me shit, and i want everything back that's mine.

Adam and Eve

tonight you stooped to my level. i am your mangy little whore. now you're trying to find your underwear and then your socks and then the door. and your trying to find a reason why you have to leave, but i know it's cuz you think you're adam and you think i'm eve. you rhapsodize about beauty and my eyes glaze. everything i love is ugly. i mean really, you would be amazed. just do me a favor, it's the least that you can do. just don't treat me like i am something that happened to you. i am truly sorry about all this. you put a tiny pin prick in my big red balloon. and as i slowly start to exhale, that's when you leave the room. i did not design this game. i did not name the stakes. i just happen to like apples and i am not afraid of snakes. i am truly sorry about all this. i envy you, your ignorance. i hear that it's bliss. so i let go the ratio of things said to things heard. as i leave you to your garden and the beauty you preferred. and i wonder what of this will have meaning for you, when you've left it all behind. i guess i'll even wonder if you meant it at the time.

Joyful Girl

i do it for the joy it brings because i'm a joyful girl. because the world owes me nothing and we owe each other the world. i do it because it's the least i can do. i do it because i learned it from you. and i do it just because i want to, because i want to. everything i do is judged and they mostly get it wrong. but, oh well, 'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged. and the woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff that they say. and she looks me in the eye and says would you prefer the easy way. no, well, ok then. don't cry. i wonder if everything i do i do instead of something i want to do more. the question fills my head. i know there's no grand plan here. this is just the way it goes. when everything else seems unclear, i guess at least i know. i do it for the joy it brings because i'm a joyful girl. because the world owes me nothing and we owe each other the world. i do it because it's the least i can do. i do it because i learned it from you. and i do it just because i want to, because i want to.

Living In Clip (1997)

Wherever

Looks likesomething unbelievable.

Hide And Seek

Me and the other kids from the neighborhood, we played out on the street all summer long. rule was, we had to go home at night when the street lights came on. we were oblivious to the rest of the world and we'd hold up the cars in the street and we'd always play boys against girls, and both sides would cheat. strange men would stop their cars at the curb and say, "hey, sweetheart, come here." i'd go up to the window and they'd have their dick out in their hand and a sick little sneer. i'd say, "here we go again. yeah, ok, this time you win." and i'd feel dirty, i'd feel ashamed, but i wouldn't let it stop my game. we would play hide and go seek and territory would be the whole block. sometimes the older boys, when they'd find you they wouldn't want to tag you, they'd just wanna talk. they'd say, "what would you do for a quarter? come on, we don't have much time." then i'd think for a minute and say, "ok, give me the quarter first... fine." this time you win, here we go again. and i would feel dirty and i'd feel ashamed, but i wouldn't let it stop my game. i remember my first trip alone on the greyhound bus. a man put his hands on me as soon as night fell. i remember when i was leaving, how excited i was. i remember when i arrived, i didn't feel so well. i remember a teacher in school that got me so sick, so scared that i went into the bathroom and threw up in my hair. and i could go on and on, it just gets worse, and i should probably stop. girl, next time he wants to know what your problem is. girl, next time he wants to know where the anger comes from. just tell him this time the problem's his. tell him the anger just comes, it just comes.

Distracted

So...I don't know, um... I don't know if you've heard this...little album that I've put out, but it's...there's been all this...This is uh...This song is newer than it...But it's very much in that same kinda tortured melodramatic kind of self absorbed, vein... And so now like, now it's so funny, like all the, you know, all the Righteous Babe, not all of them just a couple of them that, you know, they've got their little panties on a little too tight They're like all in a twitch, um, because they're, you know they're like "Oh well, you know, now you fuckin' wench, you're just writin' about, like, love and shit, you're not write... What happened to your poltics? What, are you just gonna sell out and be like, you know, bladibladiblah... And is this a conscious move away from overtly political songwriting, blah blah blah?" And I'm like, "No man...It's like...It's just...I got kind of distracted."

Travel Tips

So okay *laughs* So last night, well, we were s'posed to be here last night. I mean not... "And you're late!" *laughs* No... We were s'posed to be in this town, sleeping soundly, in beds, with toilets really near by, and um, but... No, instead we were in a study room in a dormitory at the University of Chicago *laughs* and we were having a little slumber party. It was either that or sleep at the gate at the airport, so, we decided, well, the study room. And it was so funny 'cuz there we were in Chicago, right? And everybody was in Chicago, and they could check out any time they liked but they could never leave. *laughs* So, yeah...right, and Chicago is just infested with cranky air travel people, and they were...they filled up the hotels. But not the dorms, no. Travel tips. *laughs*

Little Plastic Castle (1998)

Little Plastic Castle

in a coffee shop in a city which is every coffee shop in every city, on a day which is every day, i picked up a magazine, which is every magazine. read a story then forgot it right away. they say goldfish have no memory, i guess their lives are much like mine, and the little plastic castle is a surprise every time. and it's hard to say if they're happy, but they don't seem much to mind. from the shape of your shaved head. i recognized your silhouette as you walked out of the sun and sat down. and the sight of your sleepy smile eclipsed all the other people as they paused to sneer at the two girls from out of town. i said, look at you this morning, you are, by far, the cutest, but be careful getting coffee, i think these people wanna shoot us or maybe there's some kind of local competition here to see who can be the rudest. people talk about my image like i come in two dimensions. like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind. like what i happen to be wearing the day that someone takes a picture is my new statement for all womankind. i wish they could see us now in leather bras and rubber shorts like some ridiculous team uniform for some ridiculous new sport. quick someone call the girl police and file a report. in a coffee shop in a city which is every coffee shop in every city, on a day which is every day.

Fuel

they were digging a new foundation in manhattan and they discovered a slave cemetery there. may their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon and we've moved onto the electric chair. and i wonder who's gonna be president, tweedle dum or tweedle dumber? and who's gonna have the big blockbuster box office this summer? how 'bout we put up a wall between houses and the highway and you can go your way, i can go my way. except all the radios agree with all the tvs. and the magazines agree with all the radios. and i keep hearing that same damn song everywhere i go. maybe i should put a bucket over my head and a marshmallow in each ear and stumble around for another dumb numb week for another hum-drum hit song to appear. people used to make records as in a record of event, the event of people playing music in a room. now everything is cross-marketing. it's about sunglasses and shoes or guns or drugs, you choose. we got it rehashed. we got it half-assed. we're digging up all the graves and we're spitting on the past. and we can choose between the colors of the lipstick on the whores. cuz we know the difference between the font of twenty percent more and the font of teriyaki. you tell me, how does it make you feel? you tell me what's real? and they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics even when they're as dry as my lips for years. even when they're stranded on a small desert island with no place in two thousand miles to buy beer. and i wonder is he different? is he different? has he changed what he's about? or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about? am i headed for the same brick wall, is there anything i can do about anything at all? except go back to that corner in manhattan and dig deeper, dig deeper this time. down beneath the impossible pain of our history between unknown bones beneath the bedrock of the mystery beneath the sewage system and the path train. beneath the cobblestones and the water main, beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals. beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels, beneath everything i can think of to think about, beneath it all. beneath it all to get out. beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel there's a fire just waiting for fuel.

Gravel

i heard the sound of your bike as your wheels hit the gravel, then your engine in the driveway, cutting off. and i pushed through the screen door, and stood out on the porch thinking, "fight, fight, fight at all costs". but instead i let you in, just like i've always done. i sat you down and offered you a beer. and across the kitchen table i fired several rounds, but you were still sitting there when the smoke cleared. and you came crawling back to say that you wanna make good in the end. oh, let me count the ways that i abhor you. you were never a good lay and you were never a good friend. but oh, what can i say, i adore you. all i need is my leather, one t-shirt, and two socks. i'll keep my hands warm in your pockets and you can use the engine block. we'll ride out to california with my arms around your chest, and i'll pretend that this is real, 'cuz this is what i like best. you've been juggling two women like a stupid circus clown, telling us both we are "the one". and maybe you can keep me from ever being happy, but you're not gonna stop me from having fun. so lets go, before i change my mind. i'll leave the luggage of all your lies behind because i am bigger than everything that came before. you were never very kind and you let me way down every time. but oh, what can i say? i adore you. i heard the sound of your bike as your wheels hit the gravel, then your engine in the driveway, cutting off.

As Is

you can't hide behind social graces, so don't try to be all touchy feely. 'cuz you lie in my face of all places, but i got no problem with that really. what bugs me is that you believe what you're saying. what bothers me is that you don't know how you feel. what scares me is that while you're telling me stories, you actually believe that they are real. and i got no illusions about you. guess what? i never did. and when i said, when i said i'll take it, i meant, i meant as is, as is... just give up and admit you're an asshole. you would be in some good company. and i think you'd find that your friends would forgive you, or maybe i am just speaking for me. when i look around, i think this, this is good enough, and i try to laugh at whatever life brings. 'cuz when i look down, i just miss all the good stuff. and when i look up, i just trip over things. i've got no illusions about you. guess what? i never did. when i say, when i say i'll take it, i mean, i mean, as is...

Two Little Girls

you were fresh off the boat from virginia, i had a year of new york city under my belt. we met in a dream, we were both nineteen. i remember where we were standing. i remember how it felt. two little girls growing out of their training bras. this little girl breaks furniture, this little girl breaks laws. two girls together, just a little less alone. this little girl cried wee, wee, wee all the way home. you were always half crazy, now look at you baby. you make about as much sense as a nursery rhyme. love is a piano dropped from a four story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. and i don't like your girlfriend. i blame her. i never seen one of your lovers do you so much harm. i loved you first, and you know i would prefer if she didn't empty her syringes into your arm. here comes little naked me padding up to the bathroom door to find little naked you slumped on the bathroom floor. so i guess i'll just stand here with my back against the wall while you distill your whole life down to a 911 call. now you bring me your bruises so i can "ooh and aah" at the display. maybe i'm supposed to make one of my famous jokes that makes everything ok. maybe i'm supposed to be the handsome prince who rides up and unties your hands, or maybe i'm supposed to be the furrowed-brow friend who thinks she understands. here comes little naked me.

Deep Dish

cold and drizzly night in chicago's deep dish. fluorescent light of the bathroom shows my hands as they are. see an eyelash on my cheek. pick it off and make a wish and walk back out into the bar. wind at the windows, neon lights the patterned pane. the waitress wields the weight of her tray around her palm. the doorman cups his hands and lights his cigarette again and the rain marches on. this is only a possibility in a world of possibilities. there are obviously, there are many possibilities ranging from small to large. before long there will be short, before short there was nothing, when there was nothing there was always the possibility of something becoming what it is. don't even bother trying to say something clever. clever is as clever does no matter what it says. i'm looking for a sign, says you're real this time. but i don't trust what's in your head. i walk up to the bar and point to the top shelf and then i throw my head back and laugh at myself. i raise a toast to all our saviors each so badly behaved. it's too bad that their world is the one that they saved. there's a spider spinning cobwebs from your elbow to the table while my eyes ride the crowd in a secret rodeo. i smile with my mouth, lift my watch up to the light, say oh, look i have to go. now you get to dance with me, now is when it's gotta be 'cuz i can't wait for the dance floor to fill in. if you want to dance with me, i'll show you how it's gonna be, 'cuz i can't wait for the band to begin.

Loom

you always got those dark sunglasses covering up half your face, but if you promise to take them off, i promise i won't squander your gaze. i will be picturesque, i will be nice. i won't do anything you can't tell your wife. i will think before i act. i will think twice. just let me see your eyes. each time we spoke we've put in our token and ridden the tilt-a-whirl. i was giggling and dizzy and flirting like a twelve year old girl. the carnival of you and me is coming to town. watch how we spin and spin and then fall down. now we just say hello and head for firmer ground. you are the one-way glass that watches me standing in line at the bank. i always looked into your glasses like a cat looks into a fish tank. but all i could ever see was the specter of me reflected. i want a monument of the friendship that we never had, erected. i want it to take up lots of room. i want it to loom. you always got those dark sunglasses between us when we talk. but after the party is over, if you wanna take a walk, we could just look around, not do nothing wrong. just try to be at least as brave as our songs. i will bring my heart. i will bring my face. you name the time and place.

Pixie

i'm a pixie, i'm a paper doll, i'm a cartoon, i'm a chipper cheerful free-for-all, and i light up a room. i'm a color-me-happy girl, miss live and let live, and when they're out for blood, i always give. the man behind the counter looks like he's got a half a dozen places he'd rather be. and furthermore he looks like he's prepared to take it all out on me. buddy, i don't really care what your problem is, just don't make it mine. come on kids, let's all hold hands and pretend we're having a good time. maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep. well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape and there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice. all the privileged white kids on tv playing at death, brandishing their cold cuts with their ghostly make-up and their heroin breath. and all the little fishies flapping wildly on their hooks, while all the top critics find great meaning in the telephone book. the little emperor, he has no clothes, so he can't come out to play, and besides which life is suffering, and he likes it that way. and the little guy is not so friendly but you know life has been cruel, so wipe that smile off your face, baby, and try to be cool. maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep. well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape and there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice. yeah, i'd like to perfect the art of being studiously aloof, like life is just a boring chore and i'm living proof. i could join forces with an army of ornery hipsters, but then i guess i'd be out of a job. so i guess that's out of the picture. 'cuz i'm a pixie, i'm a paper doll, i'm a cartoon, i'm a chipper cheerful free-for-all, and i light up a room. i'm a color- me-happy girl, miss live and let live, and when they're out for blood, i always give.

Swan Dive

i'm cradling the softest, warmest part of you in my hands. feels like a little baby bird fallen from the nest. i think that your body is something i understand, i think that i'm happy, i think that i'm blessed. i've got a lack of information. i've had a loss of perspective. i've had a little bit to drink and it's making me think that i can jump ship and swim, that the ocean will hold me, that there's got to be more than this boat i'm in. they can call me crazy if i fail. all the chance that i need is one-in-a-million, and they can call me brilliant if i succeed. gravity is nothing to me, moving at the speed of sound. i've just gonna get my feet wet until i drown. i teeter between tired and really, really tired. i'm wiped and i'm wired, but i guess that's just as well. 'cuz i've built my own empire out of car tires and chicken wire and i'm queen of my own compost heap and i'm getting used to the smell. i've had a lack of information, i've had a little revelation. i'm climbing up on the railing trying not to look down. i'm going to do my best swan dive into shark-infested waters. i'm gonna pull out my tampon and start splashing around. 'cuz i don't care if they eat me alive, i've got better things to do than survive. i've got a memory of your warm skin in my hand and i've got a vision of blue sky and dry land. i'm cradling the hardest, heaviest part of me in my hands. the ship is pitching and heaving, our limbs are bobbing and weaving, i think this is something i understand. i just need a couple vaccinations for my far-away vacation. i'm going to go ahead and go boldly 'cuz a little bird told me that jumping is easy, that falling is fun, right up until you hit the sidewalk, shivering and stunned. they can call me crazy if i fail. all the chance that i need is one-in-a- million. and they can call me brilliant if i succeed. gravity is nothing to me moving at the speed of sound. i'm just gonna get my feet wet until i drown.

Glass House

sitting in my glass house while your ghost is sleeping down the hall. watching the little birds fly kamikaze missions into the walls. think i'm gonna stay in today, sit on my couch and watch them fall. life just keeps getting harder, and it just keeps getting harder to hide. the darker it is around me, the easier it is to see inside. outside the glass the whole world is magnified, and it's half an inch from here to the other side. i guess that push has come to this, so i guess this must be shove. but before you throw those stones at me, tell me, what is your house made of? and if you know what i'm doing wrong, you're going to have to get in line. but for the purposes of this song, lets just say i'm doing fine. i guess i'm doing fine. trapped in my glasshouse, a crowd has been gathering since dawn. i make a pot of coffee while a catastrophe awaits me out on the lawn. think i'm going to stay in today, and pretend like i don't know what's going on. yeah, i guess that push has come to this, so i guess this must be shove. but before you throw those stones at me, tell me, what is your house made of? and if you think you know what i'm doing wrong, you're going to have to get in line. but for the purposes of this song, lets just say i'm doing fine. i think i'm doing fine.

Independence Day

we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp, 4th of july. sat out on the hood with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks explode in the sky. there was an exodus of birds from the trees, 'cuz they didn't know we were only pretending. and the people all looked up and looked pleased, and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending. i don't think war is noble, and i don't like to think that love is like war, but i gotta big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot of your front door. you can't leave me here. i've got your back now, you'd better have mine. 'cuz you say the coast is clear, but you say that all the time. so many sheep i quit counting. sleepless and embarrassed about the way that i feel, trying to make mole hills out of mountains, building base camp at the bottom of a really big deal. and did i tell you how i stopped eating when you stopped calling me? i was cramped up and shitting rivers for weeks, and pretending that i was finally free. you can't leave me here. now that you're back, you'd better stay this time. 'cuz you say the coast is clear, but you say that all the time. we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp, 4th of july. i planted my dusty boots on the bumper, sat on the hood, and looked up at the sky.

Pulse

you crawled into my bed like some kind of giant insect and i found myself spellbound at the sight of you there, beautiful and grotesque and all the rest of that bug stuff bluffing your way into my mouth, behind my teeth, reaching for my scars. that night we got kicked out of two bars and laughed our way home. that night you leaned over and threw up into your hair. and i held you there thinking i would offer you my pulse if i thought it would be useful. i would give you my breath except the problem with death is we have some hundred years and then they can build buildings on our only bones. a hundred years and then your grave is not your own. we lie in our beds and our graves unable to save ourselves from the quaint tragedies we invent, and undo from the stupid circumstances we slalom through. and i realized that night that the hall light which seemed so bright when you turned it on is nothing compared to the dawn, which is nothing compared to the light which seeps from me while you're sleeping cocooned in my room beautiful and grotesque, resting. that night we got kicked out of two bars and laughed our way home. i thought: i would offer you my pulse. i would give you my breath. i would offer you my pulse...

Up Up Up Up Up Up (1999)

'Tis of Thee

caught the last poor man on a poor man's vacation. and they cuffed him and they confiscated stuff, they dragged his black ass down to the station. and they said okay the streets are safe now, all you pretty white children can come out and see spot run. and they all came out of their houses and they looked around but they didn't see no one. and my country 'tis of thee to take swings at each other on talk show tv. why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun because we'll never live long enough to undo everything they've done to you, undo everything they've done to you. above 96th street they're handing out small pox blankets so people don't freeze. the old dogs got a new trick, it's called criminalize the symptoms while you spread the disease. and i hold on hard to something between my teeth when i'm sleeping. and i wake up and my jaw aches and the earth is full of earthquakes. and my country 'tis of thee take shots at each other on prime time tv. and why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun because we'll never live long enough to undo everything they've done to you... to undo everything they've done to you. they caught the last poor man flying away in a shiny red cape and they dragged him down to the station. and they said, "boy, you should have known better to try to escape". and i ran away with the circus because there's still some honest work left for bearded ladies. but it's not the same going town to town now that they put everyone in jail except the cleavers and the bradys. and my country 'tis of thee to take swings at each other on the talk show tv. why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun because we'll never live long enough to undo everything they've done to you. to undo everything they've done to you.

Virtue

virtue is relative at best. there's nothing worse than a sunset when you're driving to the west. and i'm afraid that my love is gonna come up short. there is no there where i sound scared. i want to have good news to report every time when i come up for air now i'm cruising through a crumbcake of a blue sky. but i know that in an an hour or three something's gonna be in my eye. i know that sometimes all i can see is how i feel. like the whole world is on the other side of a dirty windshield and i am trying to see through the glare. yeah, i'm struggling just to see what is there. the one person who really knows me best says i'm like a cat. yeah, the kind of cat that you just can't pick up and throw into your lap. the kind that doesn't mind being held only when its her idea. yeah, the kind that feels what she decides to feel she is good and ready to feel. and now i am crawling through the backyard. i am hiding under the car. i have gotten out of everything i've gotten into so far. i eat when i am hungry and i travel alone just outside all of the houses where i feel most at home. but in the window you sometimes appear and your music is faint in my ear.

Come Away From It

come, come away, come away from... next to the glass ashtray in the little plastic baggies is a little rock remedy, really good stuff. well, i take offense to the fact that you're so hell bent. you try to tell me this world just isn't beautiful enough. do you wanna get off? is this your stop? do you have to have a triple decker super fudge sundae with a goddamn cherry on top? what makes you so lavish that you can afford to spend every sorry moment feeling angry and bored? why don't you come, come away, come away from? why don't you come, come away, come away from? yeah, we used to hold hands down those unfamiliar streets. yeah, you used to take me diving in the watery blue deep. now you're trying to find every tiny treasure, every shiny penny of pleasure. satisfy every selfish purpose before you swim back up to the surface. and i just want you to come, come away, come away from it. i want you to come, come away, come away from it. you think that i just don't like it anymore, but i'll tell you what i don't like. i don't like that i have to put the training wheels back on your bike. and i don't like the extravagance of the way you taste when i kiss you. i don't like being left alone, baby don't you think i miss you. why don't you come, come away, come away from it...

Jukebox

in the jukebox of her memory the list of names flips by and stops. then she closes her eyes and smiles as the record drops. then she drinks herself up and out of the kitchen chair and she dances out of time. as long as she can say, as long as she can say this dance is mine. this dance is mine. her hair bears silent witness to the passing of time. tattoos like mile markers map the distance she has gone... winning some... losing some... she says my sister still calls every sunday night. after the rates come down and i still can't manage to say anything right. and my whole life blew up and now it's all coming down. and she says leave me alone. she fills the the pot with water. and she drops in the phone. she says tonight i just want to stay home. she says leave me alone. it's a darkness that i have to feed. i got a sadness that grows up around me like a weed. i'm not hurting anyone, i'm just spiraling in. and then she closes her eyes and hears the song begin, again. she appreciates the phone calls, the consoling cards and such. she appreciates all the people who come by and try to pull her back in touch. they try to hold the lid down tightly and they try to shake it well. but the oil and the water, they just wanna separate themselves. yeah she drinks herself up and outta the kitchen chair and she dances out of time. as slow as she can say, as long as she can say this dance is mine. this dance is mine...

Angel Food

the mattress was a table top and the bed sheet was a page... we'd be written out like a couple of question marks -- my convex to your concave. we'd be lying here to be under the sunset. are you ready now? are you going to glow in the dark? are you going to show me how? do you like to watch when water misbehaves? do you like waves? as the wind shifts and shifts again the sails smile, and then he slaps around the mast. the mattress was a table top, the bed sheet was a page. we'd be lying here -- my convex to your concave. you come to me with cake in your pocket. you come to me nicely, like that soft kinda cake that's mostly icing. you come to me ready and we'll bring the angel food. bring the angel food...

Angry Anymore

growing up, it was just me and my mom against the world. and all my sympathies were with her when i was a little girl. and i've seen both my parents play out the hands that they were dealt. as each year goes by, i wonder how my father must have felt. i just want you to understand that i know what all the fighting was for, and i just want you to understand that i'm not angry anymore. no, i'm not angry anymore. and she taught me how to wage cold war with quiet charm, but i just want to walk through my life unarmed. to accept, not just get by like my father learned to do, but without all the acceptance of getting by that got my father through. i just want you to understand that i know what all the fighting was for, and i just want you to understand that i'm not angry anymore. no, i'm not angry anymore. light falls like people into love. we generate our own light to compensate for the lack of light from above. every time we fight, a cold wind blows our way, we can learn like the trees, how to bend, how to sway and say i just think i understand what all the fighting was for, and i just want you to understand i'm not angry anymore. no, i'm not angry anymore.

Everest

from the depth of the pacific to the height of everest. still the world is smoother than a shiny ball bearing. so take a few steps back and put on a wider lens. it changes your skin and your sex and what you're wearing. distance shows your silhouette to be a lot like mine, but a sphere is a sphere and all of us have been here all the time, been here all the time. you brought me to church. cinder blocks and fluorescent light. yeah, you brought me to church, 7 o'clock on a sunday night. and the band was rocking, and the floors were scrubbed clean, and everybody had a tambourine. so i took a deep breath and became the white girl with the hair. and you sat right beside me while everybody stared. and through the open window, i think the singing went outside and it floated up to to tell the stars not to hide. cause by the time church let out, the sky was much clearer. and the moon was so beautiful that the ocean held up a mirror. as we walked home, we spoke slowly. yeah, we spoke slow, and we spoke lowly. like it was taking more time than usual to chose. words to go with your squeaky sandaled shoes. like times not a thing that's ours to lose. from the height of the pacific to the depth of everest...

Up Up Up Up Up Up

up, up, up, up, up, up points the spire of the steeple, but god's work isn't done by god, it's done by people. up, up, up, up, up, up point the fingers of the trees. the lumberjacks with their bloody axes are on their knees. and just when you think you've got enough, enough grows, and everywhere that you've gone in life enough knows. up, up, up, up, up, up dances the steam from the sewer. she rounds the corner the brutal wind blows right through her. up, up, up, up, up, up raise the stakes of the game. each day sinks it's bootprint into her clay and she's not the same. and just when you think you've got enough, enough grows, and everywhere that you've gone in life enough knows. half of learning how to play is learning what not to play, and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say. she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves and makes music like mercy that gives what is is and has nothing to prove. she crawls out on a limb and begins the to build her home. it's enough just to look around to know she's not alone. up, up, up, up, up, up points the spire of the steeple. but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people.

Know Now Then

it's not so much that we got closer, it's that her face just got bigger. and by the time it was filling up my whole room, i figured my face had got bigger too. so i used it to try and sway her. i used it to try to say something to her, make my case, lose my face, never let it show. all in all, it was the wrong song and then i was helpless, to her advances, to her retreat... backspace, delete... and it's not so much that we fell in love, it's that my life just seemed to compound to a slow walk, on a straight line between my lips, and her frown. maybe we were never as close as we should have been but i didn't know, what i know now, then.

Trickle Down

you cease to smell the steel plant after you've lived here for a while. smoke is snow or ash or leaves that blow through the air aloft and all the houses trim their siding to the same soot grey style. and we hang our laundry out on sundays when they turn the furnaces off and everybody’s daddy works up on the line. the steinbrenners and the wuchevskys have been here the longest time and everybody’s mommy squints into the sun sunday afternoon after all the laundry’s done. sometimes a distant siren can set a dog to barking late at night and then it dominoes on down til every dog is joining in. and the first tremors of the lay-off’s sing like a distant siren light and we all perked up our ears and paced the fence of the ensuing den. and every night we’re glued to the tv news at six o’clock, cuz it was hard to tell what was real and what was talk. and they explained about the cutbacks all with earnest frowns, but what they didn’t say was that the plant was slowly shutting down. this town is not the kind of place that money people rule, they make their jokes up on the tv about all the snow. and they’re building condos down river from where the plant had been, but nobody really lives here now that the air is clean. and the president assured us that it was all gonna trickle down like it would be raining so much money that we’d be sad to see the sun. mr. wuchevsky’s brother had some business out in denver, so they left town. everybody knows they were the lucky ones. you cease to smell the steel plant after you’ve lived here for a while.

Hat Shaped Hat

in walked a man in the shape of a man holding a hat-shaped hat he held up two fingers and said 'how many fingers?" and i said 'Peace man, that's where it's at" i said you are what you do in order to prevent becoming what you're busy not doing and if you do do it truly then you arrive at it newly then in the end you are absolved and the problem of heaven is solved and the man broke into a smile, like he was breaking into a song and he was broken and smiling and i was singing along and we agreed completely agreetly about most things 'til the sun set sweetly like it does in those paintings the ones they hang in hotel rooms the ones they bolt to the wall as though anyone would want to steal them at all we talked like children without breathing 'til i stopped this lady as she was leaving and i said 'excuse me, but do you know what time it would be if we were on mars ?' and she held up her hand like a crossing guard stopping the cars and she said five in the morning in walked a man in the shape of a man holding a hat shaped hat

To The Teeth (1999)

To the Teeth

the sun is setting on the century and we are armed to the teeth. we're all working together now to make our lives mercifully brief. and school kids keep trying to teach us what guns are all about. confused liberty with weaponry and watch your kids act it out. and every year now like christmas some boy gets the milk fed suburban blues reaches for the available arsenal and saunters off to make the news. and the women in the middle are learning what poor women have always known that the edge is closer than you think when the men bring the guns home. look at where the profits are that's how you'll find the source of the big lie that you and i both know so well. by the time it takes this cultural death wish to run it's course, they're gonna to make a pretty penny and then they're going to hell. he said the chickens all come home to roost. malcolm forecasted this flood. are we really going to sleep through another century while the rich profit off our blood? yeah, it may take some doing to see this undoing through. but in my humble opinion, here's what i suggest we do. open fire on hollywood... open fire on mtv. open fire on nbc and cbs and abc. open fire on the nra and all the lies they told us along the way. open fire on each weapons manufacturer while he's giving head to some republican senator. and if i and if i hear one more time about a fool's right to his tools of rage, i'm gonna take all my friends and i'm going to move to canada and we're going to die of old age.

Soft Shoulder

i don't keep much stuff around. i value my portability, but i will say that i have saved every letter you ever wrote to me. the one you left on my windshield outside of the little motel is in the pocket of my old gig bag from back when life was more soft-shelled. letters littered with little lewd pictures drawn by the ghost of woody guthrie who would use your big thick hand just to draw one two for me. and i think of your letters as love letters which is how i think of songs. in that it is the writing of these things that tend to carry us along. and i dance to one of your old tunes with my true love on our wedding day. and your voice sang the way my heart would sing that finally knew just what to say. two people pulled over on the same night to look up at the same stars. they both found their wheels were spinning in a soft shoulder. then they got back into their cars and missed this fate appointed rendezvous. and then a whole lot of time went by. and finally they were done worshipping the landscape and they put down their hands and moved into the sky. and they had barely said hello and it was time to say goodbye.

Wish I May

losing my love of adventure... losing all respect for me and myself tonight. i wonder what happens if i get to the end of this tunnel and there isn't a light. i've worn down the treads on all of my tires. i've worn through the elbows and the knees of my clothing and i'm stumbling down the gravel driveway of desire, trying not to wake up my sleeping self... do you ever dream when you open your mouth and you try to scream but you cant make a sound? that's everyday starting now. that's everyday starting now. don't tell me its gonna be alright. you can't sell me on your optimism. don't tell me its gonna be alright. you can't sell me on your optimism. it's stiff competition to see who can stay up later, the stars or the street lights. and all they really want is to be alone with the darkness. no more wish i may. no more wish i might. it takes stiff upper lip just to hold up my face. i gotta suck it up and savor the taste of my own behavior. i am spinning with longing faster than a rolling wheel. this is not who i meant to be. this is not how i meant to feel. do you ever dream when you open your mouth and you try to scream but you cant make a sound? that's everyday starting now. that's everyday starting now. don't tell me its gonna be alright. you cant sell me on your optimism. don't tell me its gonna be alright. you cant sell me on your optimism. i don't think i am strong enough to do this much longer. god, i wish i was stronger. this song can never be long enough to express every longing. this song can never be long enough to express every longing. god i wish it was longer...

Freakshow

life on the outside ain't easy. oh yeah, life in the circus ain't easy. oh yeah, the folks on the outside don't know it. the tent comes up and the tent goes down all that they see is the show. and the ladies on the horses look so pretty. and the lions are looking real mad. and some of the clowns are happy, oh yeah, some of the clowns are sad. there's another expression that the makeup is in the making, under the bigtop it's about freedom it's about faking. there's an art to the something and there's a science. there's a lot of love and compliance. there's a lot of love and compliance. we live to hear the slackjawed gasping. we live under a halo of hell threat. and then the children raise up a giant shield of laughter like they're fending off death. oh, and we can make something bigger than any one of us alone. and then the clowns will take off their makeup and the people will go home. but life on the outside ain't easy, no sequins, no elephants, no parading around. the tent goes up and the tent comes down, and they're set up in this fucking town. welcome to the freakshow, here we go. welcome to the freakshow, here we go. welcome to the freakshow...

Going Once

going once... going twice... sold to the girl who ignored all the advice of all the people who knew better. she just stood there on the front porch waiting for her will to come and get her. and she was packed. she had her suitcase full of noble intentions. she had a map and a straight face hell bent on reinvention. and she was ready for the lonely. she was in it for it only. going once... going twice... down that road less taken. with her diary and the wd-40 and the swiss army knife and her beer. and there was always someone there to say, "why don't you just stay and hang your hat here?" but she was packed. she had a suitcase full of bungles and near misses and she was swinging through a jungle of last calls and first kisses. and she was learning about please, about huge humilities. then one day she looked around her and everything up 'til then was showing. and she wondered how did i get here without even knowing where i was going. and now there's no getting out of this and there's no going back. it all seems so odd sometimes and the odds all seem stacked. going once... going twice... sold to the girl who ignored all the good advice of all the people who knew better. of all the people who knew worse. yeah, her will was her chauffeur. yeah, her will was her curse. she was packed. she had a suitcase. she had a map and a straight face. she was ready for the long leg. she was in it forever. she was in it forever. she was in it. she was in it.

Hello Birmingham

hold me down. i am floating away into the overcast skies over my home town on election day. what is it about birmingham? what is it about buffalo? that the hate filled want to build bunkers in your beautiful red earth? they want to build them in our shiny white snow. and now i'm close, close the curtains in this little booth where the truth has no place to stand. and i am feeling oh so powerless in this stupid booth with this useless little lever in my hand. and outside my city is bracing for the next killing thing. waiting by the bridge and praying for the next dr. martin luther king. it was just one shot through the kitchen window just one or two miles from here if you fly like a crow. a bullet came to visit the doctor in his one safe place. a bullet ensuring the right to life whizzed past his kid and his wife and knocked his glasses right off of his face. and the blood poured off the pulpit. yeah the blood poured down the picket lines. and the hatred was immediate, yeah. and the vengeance was divine. so they went and stuffed god down the barrel of a gun. and after him they stuffed his only son. hello birmingham, it's buffalo. i heard you had some trouble down there again. just calling to let to know someone understands. i was once escorted through the doors of a clinic by a man in a bulletproof vest. and no bombs went off that day so i am still around and saying birmingham i'm wishing you all of my best. oh birmingham, i'm wishing you all of my best. oh birmingham, i'm wishing you all of my best on this election day.

Back Back Back

back back back in the back of your mind are you're learning an angry language? tell me boy boy boy are you tending to your joy or are you just letting it vanquish? back back back in the dark of your mind where the eyes of your demons are gleaming, are you mad mad mad about the life you never had baby even when you are dreaming. while there's old old old people in these nursing homes just scowling away at nothing, like big bad dolls just cursing at the walls and pulling out all of their stuffing. and everyday is a door leading back to the core 'cause old age will distill you, and if you're this this this for the bitterness now someday it will just fill you. when you sit right down in the middle of yourself you're gonna wanna have a comfortable chair, so renovate your soul before you get too old, because you're gonna be housebound there. yeah, when you're old you fold up like an envelope and you mail yourself deep inside. and there's nowhere to go except out real slow, are you ready boy for that ride? your arrogance is gaining on you it's all 'cause eternity, and you better practice happiness, you gotta practice humility, you took the air, you took the time, yeah you were fed and you were free, so you better put some beauty back boy while you got the energy, you better put some beauty back while you got the energy. i say back back back in the back of your mind are you learning an angry language? tell me boy boy boy are you tending to your joy or are you just letting it lanquish, yeah back back back in the dark of your mind where the eyes of your demons are gleaming, are you mad mad mad about the stuff you never had even when you are dreaming?

Swing

she came to and her whole life was how she remembered it. she had a mouth full of fur, and she was laughing. she parked her hearse across three space posted motorcycles only and jumped out shouting. what the cus could make a nice girl like us feel so lonely? are you weary as water in a faucet left dripping with an incessant sadness like a sad record skipping and an ugly and ornery and shadowy dread lurking like a troll under a bridge between your heart and your head? please, dumb blind kind sir lend little miss listless a little bit of christmas. she's been a real good girl but now she's stuck here. the world is so little and still mysterious and ominous as ever before, like an unmarked bottle of pills on the shelf right next to the thing you were reaching for. swing the groove around here where i can reach it. when i get my ass back on track, i'm gonna need it. swing shift til i get the money to buy me and my baby a moon full of honey. then i'm gonna turn of the nagging voices inside my head that follow me to bed and say you suck...

Carry You Around

how pleased can one sun setting make you if you humble yourself to it. how grateful can you really say that you are just to be here and live through it? and when beauty asks a question how often do you reply? how often do you wonder about life on the other side? on the other side of sorrow, on the other side of rage, on the other side of ok, ok at all in any way. imagine what loneliness will drive someone to do. now multiply that times me and multiply that times you. now imagine what it would take to make this all happen again. and just when you think you're gonna cry, multiply that times ten. you are distracting me from all other activities, and i know the fact of your presence will dominate my memory of this restaurant, this table, this day, and this town. cause i carry you baby, i carry you around.

Cloud Blood

i've been wondering what you meant when you asked, "do you have a light?". i've been wondering where you went when you left that party that night. cloud blood smudge smeared on the sky, it's dawn's roadkill. i've been driving since midnight and i'm driving still. stop on the top of the ridge just to feel the wind on my rand mcnally. then i feel the air grow cold as i drift to the first blue of the valley. and you're wondering how far down you are on my call back list. but you don't realize everytime i find i'm by a phone the landscape shifts. every other song someone's trying to write angels into the world. every ace, every grace, every near miss, every decent kiss by a pretty girl. she was an angel. she looked like an angel. and all of the angels did sing, and the angels were watching, and the angels were listening, and the angels were on hand to stand in for everything. you can call it magic when a man pulls a rabbit out of a hat. but the reason i don't call you is 'cause i wonder if there isn't a better word than that. and you can call me crazy, but i think you're as lazy as white paint on the wall. and i know you'll only speak to me in dial tones if i call. it's been way too long since i've been behind the wheel. headlights guiding me right through the dark i feel. driving, trying hard to resist sleep's first kiss. everytime i have time to think, i think of this.

The Arrivals Gate

gonna go out to the arrivals gate at the airport and site there all day - watch people reuniting. public affection is so exciting, it even makes airports okay. watching children run with their arms outstretched just to throw their grandpa's necks. watching lovers plant kisses. old men to their misses at the arrivals gate. watching a mother with a mother's smile. don't tell me to move. i just wanna sit here for a while. i have determined it's a sure cure for cancer. watching excitement turn family dogs into dancers at the arrivals gate. i got me a white bread sandwich with some shredded lettuce. and i got me a ringside seat for my quaint little fetish. i just wanna drain my little pink heart of all its malice and kick back for the afternoon in this fluorescent palace. everybody's in a hurry here in purgatory except for me. i'm where i need to be at the arrivals gate.

Providence

who knew at this party that i would walk in and i'd see you. i guess now we could just get drunk. yeah, that could be our excuse. i could slip and out of nowhere you could be there to catch my fall. we could laugh at ourselves and the writing that's on the wall. it's a narrow margin, just room enough for regret in the inch and a half between "hey, how you been?" and "can i kiss you yet?" so we talk like nervous neighbors over a tall fence... true love, but for the lack of providence. but i just got one more thing to tell you, it's that words are vitamins and life is short and i know that when i get up to the front office i'm gonna have to fill out a full report. and the first question will be what were you thinking? the next question, what did you say? and they're gonna check to make sure the answers to one and two match up along the way. in the interest of poetry and the cowboy movie that is you and me. i'm back on the horse now and i am riding back. i am striding so effortlessly. what i mean is, it's late, much too late for us. and i'm fixing to go home... just my conscience and a bigger sense of irony as my chaperone. yeah, it's a narrow margin, just room enough for regret inch and a half between "hey, how you been?" and "can i kiss you yet?" so we talk like nervous neighbors over a tall fence. true love, but for the lack of providence. and i just got one more thing to tell you, it's that words are vitamins and life is short. i know that when i get up to the front office, i'm gonna have to fill out a whole report. and the first question will be what were you thinking? and the next question... what did you say? then they're gonna check to make sure that the answers to one and two match up along the way. true love, but for the lack of providence.

I Know This Bar

i know this bar with a jukebox full of medicine and christmas lights blinking around a clouded mirror. it's not that far from old voelker's bowling alley. just go up there and turn right. it's about three blocks from here. you'll probably find grace, her shift starts at happy hour. she has this sweet face, easy as tea leaves to read. you have to know what to look for. you have to know what's there to find. but i guess you don't really know her, so never mind. i used to hang out a lot around there in that part of town where all the white kids still have feathered hair. yeah, i know this song with this one really killer line. i don't remember it exactly, but it saves me everytime. it's on the jukebox there, number 5403. go put that song on for me won't you and make gracie think of me.

Revelling/Reckoning (2001)

Ain't that the way

i love you and you love me and ain't that the way it's supposed to be? i swing my stick legs 'round at the root and pile drive each foot into a platform boot and i'm up and i'm out cuz i'm bouncing off the walls and i come when i'm called and you called i got a super-cute three-piece suit one piece for your body one piece for your smile one more little piece if you stay a while i gotta beeline double time leave my home sweet home for your honeycomb then i show up steady, ready and proud and i find i've forgotten how to talk out loud isn't it just like you to bring me to my knees in my brand new stockings while the cat is out with my tongue isn't it just like you to bring me to my knees in my brand new stockings love makes me feel so dumb

O.K.

if you ask me i'll say yes please to you today so don't ask me cuz i'm weak that way just don't ask me o.k. i'm so glad we got that straightened away if you see me walk by you better just let me walk by you better not bat your pretty eyes you better not stop me to say hi i got a sweet tooth today so you better not cut that pie if you ask me i'll say yes please to you today so don't ask me cuz i'm weak that way just don't ask me o.k.

Garden of simple

some crazy fucker carved a sculpture out of butter and propped it up in the middle of the bonanza breakfast bar and i am stuffing toast and sausage into my pockets under a sign that says grand opening while my dog is waiting in the car i wake up, i check out i fill the tank and wash the windshield clean then i'm back out on the highway and BANG that's when i remember my dream: we were standing in a garden and i had a machine that made silence it just sucked up the whole opinionated din and there were no people on the payroll and there were no monkeys on our backs and i said, show me what you look like without skin science chases money and money chases its tail and the best minds of my generation can't make bail but the bacteria are coming to take us down that's my prediction it's the answer to this culture of the quick fix prescription but in the garden of simple where all of us are nameless you were never anything but beautiful to me and, you know, they never really owned you you just carried them around and then one day you put 'em down and found your hands were free so now it's early in the morning at the longitude of memphis and the sun is setting sweetly on hong kong and the big plan is just to keep spinning cuz the big bang is only just beginning and sometimes it's all that we can do just to hang on and what i meant to say is xxoo which means i'm thinking of ya which means i've been thinking of you all along

Tamburitza lingua

a cold and porcelain lonely in an old new york hotel a stranger to a city that she used to know so well bathing in a bathroom that is bathed in the first blue light of the beginning of a century at the end of an endless night then she is wet behind the ears and wafting down the avenue pre-rush hour post-rain shower stillness seeping upwards like steam from another molten sewer summer in new york they've been spraying us with chemicals in our sleep us / they something about the mosquitoes having some kind of disease them / me CIA foul play if you ask the guy selling hair dryers out of a gym bag chemical warfare "i'm telling you, lab rat to lab rat," he says, "that's where the truth is at" that's where the truth is at that's where the truth is at and everything seems to have gone terribly wrong that can but one breath at a time is an acceptable plan she tells herself and the air is still there and this morning it's even breathable and for a second the relief is unbelievable and she's a heavy sack of flour sifted her burden lifted she's full of clean wind for one lean moment and then she's trapped again reverted caged and contorted with no way to get free and she's getting plenty of little kisses but nobody's slippin' her the key her whole life is a long list of what ifs and she doesn't even know where to begin and the pageantry of suffering therein rivals television tv is, after all, the modern day roman coliseum human devastation as mass entertainment and now millions sit jeering collectively cheering the bloodthirsty hierarchy of the patriarchal arrangement she is hailing a cab she is sailing down the avenue she's 19 going on 30 or maybe she's really 30 now ... it's hard to say it's hard to keep up with time once it's on its way and, you know, she never had much of a chance born into a family built like an avalanche and somewhere in the 80s between the oat bran and the ozone she started to figure out things like why one eye pointed upwards looking for the holes in the sky one eye on the little flashing red light a picasso face twisted and listing down the canvas of the end of an endless night 10 9 8 seven six 5 4 three 2 one and kerplooey you're done. you're done for. you're done for good. so tell me did you? did you do did you do all you could?

Marrow

the answer came like a shot in the back while you were running from your lesson which might explain why years later all you could remember was the terror of the question plus, you weren't listening you were stockpiling canned goods making a bomb shelter of our basement and i can't believe you let the moral go by while you were soaking in the product placement where was your conscience? where was your consciousness? and where did you put all those letters that you wrote to yourself but could not address? i'm a good kisser and you're a fast learner and that kinda thing could float us for a pretty long time then one day you'd realize you've memorized my phone number and you'll call it and find it's a disconnected line cuz i got tossed out the window of love's el camino and i shattered into a shower of sparks on the curb you were smoking me weren't you? between your yellow fingers you just inhaled and exhaled without saying a word where was your conscience? where was your consciousness? and where did you put all those letters that you wrote to yourself but could not address? there's a smorgasbord of unspoken poisons a whole childhood of potions that are all bottled up and so one by one i am dusting off labels i am uncorking bottles and filling up cups so go ahead and have a taste of your own medicine and i'll have a taste of mine but first let's toast to the lists that we hold in our fists of the things that we promise to do differently next time cuz the answer came like a shot in the back while you were running from your lesson which might explain why years later all you could remember was the terror of the question plus i'm not listening to you anymore my head is too sore and my heart's perforated and i'm mired in the marrow of my (well... ain't that) funny bone learning how to be alone and devastated where was my conscience? where was my consciousness? and what do i do with all these letters that i wrote to myself but cannot address?

Heartbreak even

it's a heartbreak even situation nothing lost and nothing gained so i'm 10 years old again standing in the backyard waving at a train i feel you make love to me slightly every time you let a little laugh slip too soon and the moment passes over us so lightly it feels like sand blowing over a dune you try not to let your emotions show but it ain't a balloon you can just let go it's an ice cream cone dripping in the sun sticky hands sticky arms sticky situation it's a heartbreak even situation one part powerful elation one part pitiful and frail and i'm trying to feel my way around a book of promises written in braille there is pressure from within this and pressure from above there is pressure on our tenuous, strenuous love and there's wet wool blankets one, two, three laid onto my chest 'til i just can't breathe and i try not to let my emotions show but it ain't a balloon i can just let go it's an ice cream cone dripping in the sun sticky hands sticky arms sticky situation

Kazoointoit

i love us both but i don't feel good so i keep pulling over and looking under the hood i love us both but i'm at wit's end where does your compromise begin and mine end? i love us both but what world's it gonna be? the one according to you or the one according to me? i don't feel good so ... now do my problems include talks with doctors who don't even understand about food? i think in ancient china they kinda figured out how the body works but our culture is just a roughneck teenage jerk with a bottle of pills and a bottle of booze and a full round of ammunition and nothing to lose and is it really the best we can do to arm wrestle over whose world it's gonna be? (the one according to you or the one according to me) i love us both and i'll see ya if you'll see me so ... who are we?

Whatall is nice

today we are only whatall is nice about us today we turned on in the blue light of dawn and made love and you were not a dot dot dot waiting for me to complete you and it was like i just forgot to measure everything that i do we woke up with the notion that enough is not enough without more and then we pushed with one motion like the ocean heaves a wave at the shore and you were not a dot dot dot leaning forward expectantly and i was not in such a rush to insure my autonomy today we are only whatall is nice about us

What how when where (why who)

what what what what what did you think you were doing? how how how how how did you think this would go? when when when when when you showed up on my radar where where where where where did you think you would show? what what what what what do you make of this station how how how how how it pulls away from the train? when when when when when if at all will you realize where where where where where do and done are the same? what what what what what now you're out in the open how how how how how do you think you can hide? when when when when when will you find some nice soft sand where where where where where you can bury your pride? what what what what what do you want from this lifetime? how how how how how does your story line flow? when when when when when you finally get to the punch line where where where where where will the applause sign go? and why why why why why don't you just take your bow cuz who's gonna love you now?

Fierce flawless

she was cuffed to the truth like the truth was a chair bright interrogation light in her eyes her conscience lit a cigarette and just stood there waiting for her to crack waiting for her to cry his face scampered through her mind like a roach across a wall it made her heart soar it made her skin crawl they said, we got this confession we just need for you to sign why don't you just cooperate and make this easier on us all there was light and then there was darkness but there was no line in between and asking her heart for guidance was like pleading with a machine cuz joy, it has its own justice and dreams are languid and lawless and everything bows to beauty when it is fierce and when it is flawless on the table were two ziploc baggies containing her eyes and her smile they said, we're keeping these as evidence 'til this thing goes to trial meanwhile anguish was fingering solace in another room down the hall both were love's accomplices but solace took the fall now look at her book of days it's the same on every page and she's got a little tin cup with her heart in it to bang along the bars of her rib cage bang along the bars of her rib cage

Rock paper scissors

it's rock paper scissors as to whether i will get over you at all it's hand against hand and both hands are mine it's standing in a circular line which is not to say that i'm not also happy a happy meal with a surprise inside surprise surprise here's another bright light in your eyes exposing all the stuff you're not calculating enough to hide this melancholy that i carry makes me feel so grown up at my kitchen table doing shots of resignation i never thought i'd see the day when i would say i give up and break the stallions of my wildest expectations i do not want to know you this way surrounded by so much pain but how am i supposed to let go of you this way like a bird into the sky of my brain? i think i could accept all these dark colors as just part of some bigger color scheme if it wasn't for that drippy string quartet of sadness underscoring each smiling scene desire drags me right out of myself a gas-soaked rope tied to a piece of coal and i'm getting pretty good at looking at the bright side while the flames rip along the sand and swallow me whole

Your next bold move

coming of age during the plague of reagan and bush watching capitalism gun down democracy it had this funny effect on me i guess i am cancer i am HIV and i'm down at the blue jesus blue cross hospital just lookin' up from my pillow feeling blessed and the mighty multinationals have monopolized the oxygen so it's as easy as breathing for us all to participate yes they're buying and selling off shares of air and you know it's all around you but it's hard to point and say "there" so you just sit on your hands and quietly contemplate your next bold move the next thing you're gonna need to prove to yourself what a waste of thumbs that are opposable to make machines that are disposable and sell them to seagulls flying in circles around one big right wing yes, the left wing was broken long ago by the slingshot of cointelpro and now it's so hard to have faith in anything especially your next bold move or the next thing you're gonna need to prove to yourself you want to track each trickle back to its source and then scream up the faucet 'til your face is hoarse cuz you're surrounded by a world's worth of things you just can't excuse but you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker and you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker and it's getting colder and colder everytime you lose so go ahead make your next bold move tell us what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove to yourself

Reckoning

you can doubt anything if you think about it long enough cuz what happened always adjusts to fit what happened after that and it's hard to feel like you are free when all you seem to do is referee remember when it was just you and me steppin' up to bat? and win or lose just that you choose this little war is what kills you and either/or it's that this war is maybe also what thrills you we thought we left possession behind but truth is i was yours and you were mine and now i've replayed a thousand times exactly what was said cuz nothing is as it appears in the funhouse mirrors of your fears on the roller coaster of all these years with your hands above your head and win or lose just that you choose this little war is what kills you and either/or it's that this war is maybe also what thrills you i don't care how fast you run just tell me, baby, that when you're done with your little marathon you still got cab fare home cuz the finish line is a shifty thing and what is life but reckoning and, you know you are still the song i sing to myself when i'm alone and win or lose just that we choose this little war is what kills us and either/or it's that this war is maybe also what thrills us

So what

who's gonna give a shit who's gonna take the call when you find out that the road ahead is painted on a wall and you're turned up to top volume and you're just sitting there in pause with your feral little secret scratching at you with its claws and you're trying hard to figure out just exactly how you feel before you end up parked and sobbing forehead on the steering wheel who are you now and who were you then that you thought somehow you could just pretend that you could figure it all out the mathematics of regret so it takes two beers to remember now and five to forget that i loved you so yeah, i loved you, so what how many times undone can one person be as they're careening through the facade of their favorite fantasy you just close your eyes slowly like you're waiting for a kiss and hope some lowly little power will pull you out of this but none comes at first and little comes at all and when inspiration finally hits you it barely even breaks your fall who were you then and who are you now that you can't pretend that you can figure it all out subtract out the impact and the fall is all you get so it takes two beers to remember now and three more to forget that i loved you so yeah, i loved you, so what i loved you so what

Imagine that

imagine that i am onstage under a watchtower of punishing light and in the haze is your face bathed in shadow and what's beyond you is hidden from sight and somebody right now is yawning and watching me like a tv and i've been frantically piling up sandbags against the flood waters of fatigue and insecurity then suddenly i hear my guitar singing and so i just start singing along and somewhere in my chest all the noise just gets crushed by the song imagine that i'm at your mercy imagine that you are at mine pretend i've been standing here watching you watching me all this time now imagine that you are the weather in the tiny snow globe of this song and i am the statue of liberty one inch long so here i am at my most hungry and here i am at my most full here i am waving a red cape locking eyes with a bull just imagine that i am onstage under a watchtower of punishing light and in the haze is your face bathed in shadow and what's beyond you is hidden from sight

Grey

the sky is grey the sand is grey and the ocean is grey and i feel right at home in this stunning monochrome alone in my way i smoke and i drink and every time i blink i have a tiny dream but as bad as i am i'm proud of the fact that i'm worse than i seem what kind of paradise am i looking for? i've got everything i want and still i want more maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore you walk through my walls like a ghost on tv you penetrate me and my little pink heart is on its little brown raft floating out to sea and what can i say but i'm wired this way and you're wired to me and what can i do but wallow in you unintentionally what kind of paradise am i looking for? i've got everything i want and still i want more maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore regretfully i guess i've only got three simple things to say: why me? why this now? why this way? with overtones ringing and undertows pulling away under a sky that is grey on sand that is grey by an ocean that's grey what kind of paradise am i looking for? i've got everything i want and still i want more maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore

Subdivision

white people are so scared of black people they bulldoze out to the country and put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets and while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest the berlin wall still runs down main street separating east side from west and nothing is stirring, not even a mouse in the boarded-up stores and the broken-down houses so they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps just to prove they got no manners no mercy and no sense and i'm wondering what it will take for my city to rise first we admit our mistakes then we open our eyes the ghosts of old buildings are haunting parking lots in the city of good neighbors that history forgot i remember the first time i saw someone lying on the cold street i thought: i can't just walk past here this can't just be true but i learned by example to just keep moving my feet it's amazing the things that we all learn to do so we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water and the old farm road's a four-lane that leads to the mall and our dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall i'm wondering what it will take for my country to rise first we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes or nature succumbs to one last dumb decision and america the beautiful is just one big subdivision

Old old song

i'll sing you a song that starts out descriptive and locates a time and a place like a dinner table where a whole family is just sitting down to say grace an old old song that moves into action taking its sweet sweet time and waits until we all say amen again and again in rhyme it's the story of a father and a mother who battle each other over nothin' with a couple of kids trying to figure which way the plot's spinning who's winning and who is bluffing it's a story as common as a penny, son it ain't really worth anything to anyone poor little sore little song that aches like a muscle each time that it moves sad little song that you play and you play and you play and you play 'til you lose while history is outside writing a recipe book for every earthly pain this song is inside finger painting dark swirls again and again and they all look the same cuz what if you come home from school one day and you find your whole family's at war and there's this ominous silence just waiting to be broken and there's secret places for hiding underneath the floorboards and everyone seems to be bracing for the subharmonic thunder of the next bomb and everyone seems to be waiting for the cops to bust in with their guns drawn at the bleak light of dawn it's a story as common as a penny, son i don't think it's worth anything to anyone

Sick of me

how sick of me must you be by now while you're standing just outside of what your pride will allow always reaching into yourself to find a new way to understand me when i'm sure that there's no one else in the world who could withstand me the first person in your life to ever really matter is saying the last thing that you want to hear and you are listening hard through the splintering shards of your life as it shatters and you're standing firm and you're staying close and you're seeing clear i took to the stage with my outrage in the bad old days when you were the make-me-mad guy but the songs they come out more slowly now that i am the bad guy and i say, i'm sorry i'm so crazy I am astounded by your patience and you say, believe it or not, baby the joy you bring me still outweighs it the first person in your life to ever really matter is saying the last thing that you want to hear and you are listening hard through the splintering shards of your life as it shatters and you're standing firm and you're staying close and you're seeing clear how sick of me must you be by now?

School night

she went over to his apartment clutching her decision and he said, did you come here to tell me goodbye? so she built a skyscraper of procrastination and then she leaned out the twenty-fifth floor window of her reply and she felt like an actress just reading her lines when she finally said yes. it's really goodbye this time and far below was the blacktop and the tiny toy cars and it all fell so fast and it all fell so far and she said: you are a miracle but that is not all you are also a stiff drink and i am on call you are a party and i am a school night and i'm lookin' for my door key but you are my porch light and you'll never know, dear just how much i loved you you'll probably think this was just my big excuse but i stand committed to a love that came before you and the fact that i adore you is but one of my truths what of the mother whose house is in flames and both of her children are in their beds crying and she loves them both with the whole of her heart but she knows she can only carry one at a time? she's choking on the smoke of unthinkable choices she is haunted by the voices of so many desires she's bent over from the business of begging forgiveness while frantically running around putting out fires but then what kind of scale compares the weight of two beauties the gravity of duties or the ground speed of joy? tell me what kind of gauge can quantify elation? what kind of equation could i possibly employ? and you'll never know, dear just how much i loved you you probably think this was just my big excuse but i stand committed to a love that came before you and the fact that i adore you is just one of my truths so i i'm goin' home to please the one i so love pleasing and i don't expect he'll have much sympathy for my grieving but i guess that this is the price that we pay for the privilege of living for even a day in a world with so many things worth believing in

Revelling

you were so in love that it was all you could talk about and i think i felt a little left out you were on cloud 9 all the time while i was levelling i was wringing my hands and you were revelling but then why shouldn't you? it was such a beautiful thing to do would that i could get me some of your yum yum delirium i could level off the ground that we stand on but with you down on bended knee always looking up at me that feeling of standing up together is gone and though i love you through all time and space my love always seems to take second place you were so in love that it was all you could talk about and i think i felt a little left out you were on cloud 9 all the time while i was levelling i was wringing my hands and you were revelling but then why shouldn't you? it was such a beautiful thing to do

In here

even when i look right at you i always just see through and i always just see new things to admire about you am i what you thought you were getting? does this love we make make you proud? does it look like it did on the menu minus, of course, the little dark cloud? 'course when we signed up for forever we had no idea it was in here i guess always is all this and then some i guess at least that much is clear and whenever i look at you you know, i always just see through and i always just see new things to admire about you

Evolve (2003)

Promised Land

you're taking up lots of space your shit is everywhere your breath is all up in my face your hands are swarming in the air you're the first one out of the car and then you're the loudest one in the bar tell me is there something wrong girlfriend? what's with this new version of who you are? she lifts her chin and squints at me to assess what i think i know she says my heart has some dangerous neighborhoods so beware where you try to go and they say that the truth will set you free but then so will a lie it depends if you're trying to get to the promised land or you're just trying to get by what is a camera but a box of light? what is a guitar but a box of sound? you think i don't understand but i think i might what it is to harness the emptiness and just ride it around and maybe your chest is an empty shell with ribs of spiraling coral where a perfect pearl of sadness resides but if you ever need an ear i could just come and press it there and listen to the sound of the ocean inside.

In The Way

no you didn't just leave i actually kicked you out i couldn't hardly believe that the words came out my mouth you couldn't hardly believe what you heard yourself discuss as you packed up all your things and you said goodbye to us tell me what is in the way in the way of my love for you yeah there's somethin in the way in the way of my love an now there's nothing left to lose and the screen just says fini and each night in separate rooms we cry separately and every day we yell down each other's holes two slippery strippers swinging round two poles tell me what is in the way in the way of my love for you tell me what is in the way in the way of my love i gotta get it out the way out the way of my love for you yeah there's something in the way in the way of my love we took down all the pictures and then we took down all the walls packed up our expectations and piled em up in the hall yeah we bagged our future and kicked it to the curb and then we stood there unencumbered and we stood there undeterred cuz we were done clinging to the things we were afraid to lose and the only thing left was a breathtaking view and you looked at me and i looked at you and you said how bout now baby? now whatchoo wanna do? now there's nothing in the way in the way of my love for you yeah there's nothing in the way in the way of my love i had to get it out the way out the way of my love for you had to get it out the way out the way of my love no you didn't just leave.

Icarus

it seems like you just started noticing how noticibly bad things really are and then you walk past this couple arguing in a rolled up window parked car an all that gesticulated bitterness an all of that muffled yelling hell it's like it just starts wafting at you like a big furry rat died inside of that wall kinda smell bad dreams like this roll in like a cold front thunderous thunder and lightning in tow and your tiny little life gets even smaller as you heed the heavens' mighty show and i don't mean heaven like godlike cuz the animal i am knows very well that nature is our teacher and our mother and god is just another story that we tell you're trying not to grasp not to start grasping at straws or sticks or stones you're trying to learn to just sit inside your sadness even if you're sitting there alone cuz just like icarus ascending never intending to look back nature's law and your tragic flaw send you flying into the arms of another venus fly trap guzzle till the buzzing stops guzzle till the buzzing stops guzzle till the buzzing stops

Slide

she was hungry so hungry and she was trying to think clear but she kept opening the fridge door an looking at the mustard and the beer and then finally she went out into the rain carrying her bicycle chain and her feet worked the pedals while her appetite steered and after that she just followed her nose cuz fate is not just whose cooking smells good but which way the wind blows she laid down in her party dress and never got up needless to say she missed the party she just got sad then she got stuck she was wincing like something brittle trying hard to bend she was numb with the terror of losing her best friend but she never sees things changing she only sees them ending and some vicious whispering voice keeps saying you have no choice cuz when i look at you i squint you are that beautiful and my pussy is a tractor and this is a tractor pull i'm haunted by my illicit, explicit dreams and i can't really wake up so i just drift in between thinking the glass is half empty and thinking it's not quite full the pouring rain is no place for a bicycle ride try to hit the breaks and you slide and you slide and you slide.

Oh My My

your body forshortened below your shoulders your face so close it's out of focus way down the hallway comes the sound of your shoes that is what i what i think about when i think about you if we let our love off of its leash do you fear like i fear how fierce it could be? your headlights sweeping across my ceiling the breadth of my smile now the depth of my feeling way down in my dark life a shaft of your light shines through and that is what i what i think about when i think about you if we let our love off of its leash do you fear like i fear how fierce it would be? oh my my.

Evolve

i walk in stride with people much taller than me and partly it's the boots but mostly it's my chi and i'm becoming transfixed with nature and my part in it which i believe just signifies i'm finally waking up and there's this moth outside my kitchen door she's bonkers for that bare bulb flying round in circles bashing in her exoskull and out in the woods she navigates fine by the moon but get her around a light bulb and she's doomed she is trying to evolve she's just trying to evolve now let's get talking reefer madness like some arrogant government can't by any stretch of the imagination outlaw a plant yes, their supposed authority over nature is a dream c'mon people we've got to come clean cuz they are locking our sons and our daughters in cages they are taking by the thousands our lives from under us it's a crash course in religious fundamentals now let's all go to war get some bang for our buck i am trying to evolve i'm just trying to evolve gunnin for high score in the land of dreams morbid bluish-white consumers ogling luminous screens on the trail of forgetting cruising without a care the jet set won't abide by that pesky jet lag and our lives boil down to an hour or two when someone pulls a camera out of a bag and i am trying to evolve i'm just trying to evolve so i walk like i'm on a mission cuz that's the way i groove i got more and more to do i got less and less to prove it took me too long to realize that i don't take good pictures cuz i have the kind of beauty that moves.

Shrug

what's with that halo hovering above that thick skull spare me if i do say so - i think you're covering 'course there was nothing could've prepared me for the side effect of this dirty drug the way you punish me and then you shrug what's with that phone call, baby it's like you're trying just trying to crush me do you feel stronger each time you push me, dear did you tell your mom you carpet bombed before you left here and is it just the side effect of this dirty drug or does each apology sound more like a shrug are you at home now with your kitty cats are you just at home now with the way that you act do you split the rent there with all your secrets or do you just pretend to all your friends they're uninvited guests yes and when you want it tidy tell me can you still dispel me sweep me neatly under the rug does your conscience ever mention the way that you treat me or do you just fend it off with a...

Phase

i'll be your biggest fan i will be your fool i'll be your exception to whatever the rule an i ain't the type to bitch i ain't the type to cry i'll sit at your red light and wait for your shit to go by and this vague little smile is my all-purpose expression the meaning of which i will leave to your discretion my distraction's my defense against a lack of inspiration against a slow leak deflation the further the horizon the more it holds my gaze and the foreground's out of focus but you know i kinda hope it's just a phase i've been through and through this i know just how it goes you'll have no idea you'll have no need to know cuz i will make your body grow wings and take flight i will erase sound i will erase light and this vague little smile is my all-purpose expression the meaning of which i'll leave to your discretion my distraction's my defense against a lack of inspiration against a slow leak deflation the further the horizon the more it holds my gaze and the foreground's out of focus but you know i kinda hope it's just a phase.

Here For Now

i bet you're wondering if you woke up today just to learn why the caged bird sings i bet you're wondering if the godesses are all crazy or just keeping it interesting situated slightly outside society at odds with its odd offerings i bet you're teetering on the edge of sobriety just to alleviate a few things... like the fear that you're standing here cuz you want to be liked you know you need your instrument but does your instrument need to be miked? you keep imagining that pretty soon you will just disappear and thinking that one thing is what saves you from your fear of being here here for now here for now i bet you're looking for the little red x next to the red arrow and the words 'you are here' i bet you're hoping that your heart will send up the white flag this time or some sign that the coast is clear yeah the moment when your heart jumps it's all that's happening and once again it's like the first time you've felt that shock yeah the moment when your heart jumps it's all that's happening an i was right behind the door when you knocked thinking maybe i'm just standing here cuz i want to be liked i know i need my instrument but does my instrument need to be miked? i keep imagining that pretty soon i will just disappear and thinking that one thing is what saves me from my fear of being here here for now here for now here for now.

Second Intermission

second intermission anticipation you know the third act small talk drops out of the play you're standing in the lobby tightening your tourniquet waiting for it and then the bell sounds and the lights flash and there's all these questions milling around and there's no time to ask no bliss for little miss leading cuz she's learning about bleeding but what is love if not exquisite our only saving grace or is it? and somewhere inside your iris blooms the reflection of my surprise as you stroll past every last do not enter and touch me at my epicenter and the bell sounds and the lights flash and there's all these questions milling around and there's no time to ask i'm always trying to get there i never really get there to that quiet place where i accept myself instead i'm deep inside some high school locker room no clothing popping the zits of my self loathing under fluorescent lights and the bell sounds and the lights flash and there's all these questions milling around and you're too ashamed to ask second intermission anticipation you know the third act small talk drops out of the play and you're standing in the lobby tightening your tourniquet waiting for it waiting for it.

Serpentine

pavlov hits me with more bad news every time i answer the phone so i play and i sing and i just let it ring all day when i'm at home a defacto choice of macro or microcosmic melancholy but, baby, any way you slice it i'm thinkin i could just as soon use the time alone yes, the goons have gone global and the CEOs are shredding files and the democrans and the republicrats are flashing their toothy smiles and uncle tom is posing for a photo op with the oval office clan and uncle sam is rigging cockfights in the promised land and that knife you stuck in my back is still there it pinches a little when i sigh and moan and these days i'm thinkin i could just as soon use the time alone cuz all the wrong people have the power of suggestion and the freedom of the press is meaningless if nobody asks a question i mean causation by definition is such a complex compilation of factors that to even try to say why is to over simplify but that's a far cry isn't it dear? from acting like you're the only one there unrepentantly self centered and unfair enter all suckers scrambling for the scoop exit mr. eye contact who took his flirt and flew the coop but whatever no matter no fishin trips no fishin cuz mamma's officially out of commission and did i mention in there somewhere did i mention somewhere in there that i traded babe ruth? yes, i traded the only player that was bigger than the game and i can't even tell you why cuz you'd think i'm insane and that's the truth and the music industry mafia is pimping girl power sniping off their sharp shooter singles from their styrofoam towers and hip hop is tied up in the back room with a logo stuffed in its mouth cuz the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house but then i'm getting away from myself as i get closer and closer to home and these days i'm thinkin i could just as soon use the time alone an i must admit today my inner pessimist seems to have got the best of me we start out sugared up on kool-aid and manifest destiny and we memorize all the president's names like little trained monkeys and then we're spit into the world so many spinny-eyed t.v. junkies incapable of unravelling the military industrial mystery preemptively pacified with history book history an i've bin around the world now and i can see this about america the mind control is deep here, man the miopia is steep here and behold those that try to expose the reality who really try to realize democracy are shot with rubber bullets and gassed off the streets while the global power brokers are kept clean and discrete behind a wall behind a moat and that is all that's all she wrote an my heart beats an sss o o o sss cuz folks just couldn't care care care less less less as long as every day is superbowl sunday and larger than life women in lingerie are pouting at us from every bus stop shelovesme shelovesmenot shelovesme shelovesmenot... and big government should not stand between a man and his money cuz "what's good for business is good for the country" our children still take that lie like communion the same old line the confederacy used on the union conjugate liberty into libertarian and medicate it associate it with deregulation privitization we won't even know we're slaves on a corporate plantation somebody say halleluja! somebody say damnation! cuz the profit system follows the path of least resistance and the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked makes it serpentine capitalism is the devil's wet dream so just give me my judy garland drugs and let me get back to work cuz the empire state building is the tallest building in new york and i always got the feeling you just liked to hear it fall off your tongue but i remember my name in your mouth and i don't think i was done hearing it close to my ear on a whisper's way to a moan but pavlov hits me with more bad news every time i answer the phone so i play and i sing and i just let it ring all day when i'm at home a defacto choice of macro or microcosmic melancholy but baby, any way you slice it i'm thinkin i could just as soon use the time alone.

Welcome To

welcome to: no amount of stoned makes you feel ok welcome to: this year's alone - brought to you by christmas day welcome to: the darkness into which prayin people pray it's quiet here except for this song now that everybody's gone but hey least you don't have to play along today welcome to: something like elation when you first open your eyes just cuz it means that you musta finally got to sleep last night welcome to: the precipice between groundlessness and flight it's quiet here except for this song now that everybody's gone but hey least you don't have to play along today besides which welcome to: taking the good stuff down off of the shelf and welcome to: the art of conversation with yourself welcome to: humming an unbroken tune all day long yes it's quiet here but hey least you don't have to play along today.

Educated Guess (2004)

Swim

You keep telling me I'm beautiful but I feel a little less so each time your love is so colorful it flashes like a neon sign but I finally drove out where the sky is dark enough to see stars and I found I missed no one just listening to the swishing of distant cars. I hope I never see the ocean again pushing and pulling at me as I go deeper and deeper in til I'm so far from my shore so far from what I came here for I let you surround me I let you drown me out with your din and then I learned how to swim. I was floating above myself watching her do just what you wanted poor little friendly ghost wondering why her whole house feels haunted I told myself I was strong enough that I had plenty of blood to give and each elbow cradled a needle but listless and faint ain't no way to live. So I hope I never see the ocean again pushing and pulling at me as I go deeper and deeper in til I'm so far from my shore so far from what I came here for I let you surround me I let you drown me out with your din and then I learned how to swim. You keep telling me I'm beautiful but I feel a little less so each time your love is so colorful it flashes like a neon sign but I finally drove out where the sky is dark enough to see stars and I found I missed no one just listening to the swishing of distant cars.

Educated Guess

Looks like my crazy family is down one crazy daughter 'cause I'm shipwrecked in a desert that once was underwater just looking for a swift turn of phrase some colors to fly as I float by in the parade. Plus I dream in skin scented sentences of a stronger faster fiercer you and to each noun, verb and predicate I dedicate a vivid hue but you ain't done too well getting past your permanent pastel have you now? Yes, the desert seemed so promising and then it paled somehow. So school is in session get your chin off your desk now pick up your pencil and turn over your test use your education and take an educated guess about me. I've got a slot at eye level like a speakeasy door and I know you know the password cuz I've seen you here before and I've got something sweet for you and I don't care if it is more than you deserve I've got a lot of love and a lot of nerve so watch me while I take this curve. Yes school is in session get your chin off your desk now pick up your pencil and turn over your test use your education and take an educated guess about me. Plus I have this whole new family and I'm in love with each of them and I'm on this list called lucky whenever I'm in reach of them and I'm learning how to say that I'd be happy either way with your love. i'm calling on the stars above School is in session get your chin off your desk now pick up your pencil turn over your test use your education and take an educated guess about me.

Origami

I am an all powerful amazon warrior not just some sniveling girl so no matter what I think I need you know I can't possibly have a need in this world. Come and come for that sweet sweetness i'll be your never ending vending machine I could never need to be alone never need to be my own as much as you need your queen. I know men are delicate origami creatures who need women to unfold them hold them when they cry but I am tired of being your savior and I am tired of telling you why. And since when did this me me me become the be all and end all of me oh listen to you talk to me long time love has got to breathe, babe you got to let it ebb and flow if you want a ball to bounce you gotta let it go just let it go. I know men are delicate origami creatures who need women to unfold them hold them when they cry but I am tired of being your savior and I am tired of telling you why.

Bliss Like This

I said venice you heard vegas now I say either way baby let's go I get so shaky and I just can't shake it I bliss like this I'm one of those. But I don't wanna wear you wear you like a band-aid wave you like a ticket out of my good grief I just wanna know you know you like I know my garden what you smell like when you're bloomin what lives underneath deep down underneath way down underneath. We do a whole lotta laughin at the shyness that surrounds us I do a whole lotta lookin somewhere else I don't need to look no, I can just feel you besides every time I see you it just forces me to look at myself. 'Cause I get so shaky and I just can't shake it I bliss like this I'm one of those and I said venice and you heard vegas but now I say either way let's go c'mon baby let's go.

The True Story of What Was

The light blue flickering rhythm of the neighbor's big console t.v. is basking on the ceiling of another insomniac spree and outside sleep's open window between the drops of rain history is writing a recipe book for every earthly pain. Oh to clean up the clutter of echoes coming in and out of focus words spoken like locusts sing and sing in my head. And thing is they often seem in my memory's long dream to be superfluous to the true story of what was. 'Cause real is real regardless of what you try to say or say away real is real relentless while words distract and dismay words that change their tune though the story remains the same words that fill me quickly and then are slow to drain dialogues that dither down reminiscent of the way it likes to rain every screen a smoke screen oh to dream just for a moment the picture outside the frame. Then in a flash the light blue horizon spanning a sudden black is sucked into the vanishing point and quiet rushes back to search for the downbeat in a tabla symphony to search in the darkness for someone who looks like me (though I'm not really who I said I was or who I thought I'd be) just a collection of recollections conversations consisting of the kind of marks we make when we're trying to get a pen to work again. A lifetime of them! I say to me now here listening I say to the locusts that sing and sing to me sitting now here on the front porch swing of my eyes: I hereby amend whatever I've ever said with this sigh.

Bodily

You broke me bodily the heart ain't the half of it and I'll never learn to laugh at it in my good natured way in fact I'm laughing less in general but I learned a lot at my own funeral and I knew you'd be the death of me so I guess that's the price I pay. I'm trying to make new memories in cities where we fell in love my head just barely above the darkest water I've ever known you had me in that cage you had me jumpin through those hoops for you still, I think I'd stoop for you stoop for your eyes alone. From that bomb shell moon in yet another lovely dress to the deep mahogany sheen of a roach I am trying to take an appreciative approach to life in your wake I focus on the quiet now and occasionally I'll fall asleep somehow and emptiness has its solace in that there's nothing left to take.

You Each Time

There you were day after day six feet twenty feet two feet away right in my pocket singin me a song makin my heart race all day long. And we talked it out and we talked it down but your eyes were not listening and my ears were looking around for another song to sing but it was you each time it was you. The answer to each moment must be yes and the question: can you live with that? becomes the test so you weigh it against that aching in your chest and that secretly relentless emptiness. And you talk it out and you talk it down but your eyes are not listening and my ears are running around looking for another song to sing but it is you each time it is you. So my heart finally broke it was so long bent and it broke in three places when it finally went it wanted only to say what it meant so it suffered every punishment. Now it lives in a shack outside of town and only the wolves are out there listening and in her dreams they chase her down their moonlit eyes are glistening and it is you each time it is you.

Animal

More and more there is this animal looking out through my eyes at all the traffic on the road to nowhere at all the shiny stuff around to buy at all the wires in the air at all the people shopping for the same blank stare at america the drastic that isolated geographic that's become infested with millionaires. When you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance you have to believe mercy has its own country and that it's round and borderless and then you have to grow wings and rise above it all like there where that hawk is circling above that strip mall. More and more there is this animal looking out through my eyes seeing that animals only take from this world what they need to survive but she is prowling through all the religions of men seeing that time and time and time again their gods have made them special and above nature's law and the respect thereof. And I think when you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance you have to believe that mercy has its own country and that it's round and borderless and then you just grow wings and rise above it all like there where that hawk is circling above that strip mall. Ask any eco-system harm here is harm there and there and there and aggression begets aggression it's a very simple lesson that long preceded any king of heaven and there's this brutal imperial power that my passport says I represent but it will never represent where my heart lives only vaguely where it went. 'Cause I know when you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance you learn that mercy has its own country and that it's round and borderless and then you just grow wings and rise above it all like there where that hawk is circling above that strip mall.

Grand Canyon

I love my country by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history who have fought the government to make right where so many cunning sons and daughters our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter came through hell and high water so that we could stand here and behold breathlessly the sight how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light. Yes, I've been so many places flown through vast empty spaces with stewardesses whose hands look much older than their faces I've tossed so many napkins into that big hole in the sky been at the bottom of the atlantic seething in a two-ply looking up through all that water and the fishes swimming by and I don't always feel lucky but I'm smart enough to try cuz humility has buoyancy and above us only sky so I lean in breathe deeper that brutal burning smell that surrounds the smoldering wreckage that I've come to love so well yes, color me stunned and dazzled by all the red white and blue flashing lights in the american intersection where black crashed head on with white comes a melody comes a rhythm a particular resonance that is us and only us comes a screaming ambulance a hand that you can trust laid steady on your chest working for the better good (which is good at its best) and too, bearing witness like a woman bears a child: with all her might. Born of the greatest pain into a grand canyon of light. I mean, no song has gone unsung here and this joint is strung crazy tight and people bin raising up their voices since it just ain't bin right with all the righteous rage and all the bitter spite that will accompany us out of this long night that will grab us by the hand when we are ready to take flight seatback and traytable in the upright and locked position shocked to tears by each new vision of all that my ancestors have done. Like, say, the women who gave their lives so that I could have one. People, we are standing at ground zero of the feminist revolution yeah, it was an inside job stoic and sly one we're supposed to forget and downplay and deny but I think the time is nothing if not nigh to let the truth out coolest f-word ever deserves a fucking shout! I mean why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists? Out of respect for those who fought for this I mean, look around we have this. Yes I love my country by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history who have fought the government to make right where so many cunning sons and daughters our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter came through hell and high water so that we could stand here and behold breathlessly the sight how a raging river of tears is cutting a grand canyon of light.

Company

What's the point of all this pointless proximity if you won't talk take me for a walk through a little story. All these years have made me sick to tears of such mysteries why should I keep you if you won't keep me company? Until I get to know you I ain't gonna show you nothing wordlessly what do you think this is? You think that that grin gonna get you in where you wanna be? Do I have to stand under your little cloud just to get near you baby can't you help this little girl not to fear you why don't you just talk take me for a walk through a little story. And tell me why should I keep you if you won't keep me company?

Rain Check

As dolls go I am broken and you could just let that get us off the hook but from under the umbrella of the unspoken I see you giving me that look. Baby, you're right as rain about the benefits but you might be wrong about the costs and it feeds my heart that you came looking for me but I'm thinkin I need to stay lost. So I won't say I saw you fibbing or jump-jigging across the floor I won't say you walked me to my car and draped your arm on my open door. I know my mind is made of matter but I need to know exactly what is the matter at it's core? because my heart is just a muscle and simply put, it's sore. So never mind about the benefits and never mind about the costs that don't change the basic premises in which I am surely lost. So I won't say I saw you fibbing or jump-jigging across the floor I won't say you walked me to my car and draped your arm on my open door.

Akimbo

What dreams cause me to abandon my pillow each night? push away each of them, in fact since there always seem to be more than one then wake to aching stiff neck twisted tits and face smashed against the mattress legs and arms akimbo like the high pitched body of a jumper waiting for her chalk outline finally at rest.

Bubble

I hated to pop the bubble of me and you but it only held enough oxygen for a trip or two to the moon and back again tell me, do you remember when our love had such grace we were floating above this whole place. It's dawn on the corner where the city tests its squeaky breaks outside my bedroom window a doppler muffler and a boomin bass it's dawn and the snow is turning on its deepest blue so I go outside just to stand there and look at my hands against the color I find I always return to. I want you to always remember for me baby, if you can how much you hated the woman who made you a man and remember for me won't you back further before that how you loved her like a boy cried from the joy when you weren't laughing. No, I hated to pop the bubble of me and you but it only held enough oxygen for a trip or two to the moon and back again do you remember when our love had such grace we were floating above this whole place. So I hear these days you too are trying your hand at sleeplessness a few more dizzying doppler lovers and then a booming loneliness how innocent the young student on the day school has begun when I said this was what I wanted did you think I thought it would be fun? No, I hated to pop the bubble of me and you but it only held enough oxygen for a trip or two to the moon and back again oh but I remember when our love had such grace we were floating above this whole place.

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