Words and music by Ani DiFranco
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The light blue flickering rhythm
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Of the neighbor's big console T.V.
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Is basking on the ceiling
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Of another insomniac spree
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And outside sleep's open window
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Between the drops of rain
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History is writing a recipe book
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For every earthly pain
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Oh to clean up the clutter of echoes
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Coming in and out of focus
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Words spoken
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Like locusts
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Sing and sing
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In my head
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And thing is
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They often seem
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In my memory's long dream
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To be superfluous to
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The true story of what was
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Cuz
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Real is real regardless
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Of what you try to say
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Or say away
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Real is real relentless
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While words distract and dismay
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Words that change their tune
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Though the story remains the same
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Words that fill me quickly
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And then are slow to drain
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Dialogues that dither down reminiscent
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Of the way it likes to rain
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Every screen
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A smoke screen
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Oh to dream
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Just for a moment
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The picture
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Outside the frame
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Then in a flash
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The light blue horizon
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Spanning a sudden black
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Is sucked into the vanishing point
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And quiet rushes back
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To search for the downbeat
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In a tabla symphony
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To search in the darkness
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For someone who looks like me
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(Though I'm not really who I said I was
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Or who I thought I'd be)
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Just a collection of recollections
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Conversations consisting
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Of the kind of marks we make
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When we're trying to get a pen to work again
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A lifetime of them!
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Coughˇ¦coughˇ¦ahemˇ¦
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I say to me
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Now here listening
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I say to the locusts
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That sing and sing to me sitting
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Now here on the front porch swing of my eyes:
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I hereby amend
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Whatever I've ever said
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With this sigh
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The True Story Of What Was
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Ani DiFranco |