Like I Said: Songs 1990-91 lyrics

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

Tending the garden of noise
When I grow the traffic
And the churchbells
And the neighborhood boys
Singing to myself
As the solitude sets in
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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

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