Words and music by Ani DiFranco
|
|
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
|
|
Cuz
|
|
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!
|
|
Cough…cough…ahem…
|
|
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
|
|
-----------------
|
The True Story Of What Was
|
| Ani DiFranco |
