Life knocked me off my platforms
So I pulled out my first pair of boots
Bought on the street at astor place
Before New York was run by suits
And I suited up for the long walk
Back to myself
Closer to the ground now
With sorrow
And stealth

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 miss no one
just listening to the swishing of distant cars

so I hope I'd never see the ocean again
pushin' and pulling at me as I go deeper and deeper in

Looks like my crazy family
Is down one crazy daughter cuz
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Til I get to know you
I ain't gonna show you nothing
Wordlessly
Whatchoo think this is?
You think that that grin
Gonna get you in
Where you wanna be?

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

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

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