Ani Difranco lyrics

Life use to be lifelike. Now it's more like showbiz. I wake up in the night 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 I don't have the will anymore to wonder. And everyone has a skeleton a closet to keep it in. And you're mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Good Bye
Magazine quality men talking on the corner
French, no less much less of them then us

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'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 there signs
And thoughts of no other man but you
Could possibly get through
The picket lines

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 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