Up Up Up Up Up Up lyrics

'Tis of thee

They caught the last poor man
On a poor man's vacation
They cuffed him and confiscated his stuff
They dragged his black ass down to the station
And said, ok, the streets are safe now
All your pretty white children can come out and see spot run
And they came out of their houses
And they looked around
But they didn't see no one

My country 'tis of thee

Virtue is relative at best
There's nothing worse than a sunset
When you're driving due west
And I'm afraid that my love
Is gonna come up short
There is no there there
I guess I'm scared
Cuz I want to have good news to report
Every time I come up for air

Now I'm cruising through a chromakey blue sky
And I know that in an hour or three
The sun is gonna be in my eyes

Come
Come away
Come away from
Come away from it

Next to the glass ashtray
In a little plastic baggy
Is a bitter rock remedy
Really good stuff
But I take offense to the fact
That you're so hell bent
Are you trying to tell me this world
Just isn't beautiful enough?

Do you want to get off?
Is this your stop?
Do you gotta have a tripledecker super fudge sundae

In the jukebox of her memory
The list of names flips by and stops
She closes her eyes
And smiles as the record drops

Then she drinks herself up and out
Of her kitchen chair
And she dances out of time
As slow as she can sway
For as long as she can say
This dance is mine
This dance is mine

Her hair bears silent witness
To the passing of time
Tattoos like mile markers

If the mattress was a table top
And the bed sheet was a page
We'd be written out
Like a couple of question marks
My convex to your concave
And we'd be lying here
At the end of a sentence
And asks, are you ready now?
Are you gonna glow in the dark?
Are you gonna show me how?

Do you like to watch when water misbehaves?
Do you like waves?
As the wind shifts

Growing up it was just me and my mom
Against the world
And all my sympathies were with her
When I was a little girl
But now I've seen both my parents
Play out the hands they were dealt
And as each year goes by
I know more about how my father must have felt

I just want you to understand
That I know what all the fighting was for
And I just want you to understand

From the depth of the pacific
To the height of Everest
And still the world is smoother
Than a shiny ball-bearing
So I take a few steps back
And put on a wider lens
And it changes your skin,
Your sex, and what your wearing
Distance shows your silloutte
To be a lot like mine
Like a sphere is a sphere
And all of us here have been here all the time

You brought me to church,

Up up up up up up points the
Spire of the steeple
But god's work isn't done by god
It's done by people

Up up up up up up points the
Fingers of the trees
The lumberjacks with their bloody axes
Are on their knees

And just when you think that you've got enough
Enough grows
And everywhere that you go in life
Enough knows

Up up up up up up dances

It's not so much that we got closer
It's that her face just go bigger
And by the time it was filling up my whole view
I figured my face had got bigger too
So I used it to try and way her
Say something to her
Make my case
But my face
Never had a chance
All along it was the wrong song and dance

I just stood there
Without even a stance
Helpless to her advance
And her retreat

You cease to smell the steel plant
After you've lived there for a while
Smoke is snow is ash are leaves that blow
Through the air aloft
All our houses dim their sliding
To the same soot gray style
And we hang our laundry out on Sundays
When they turn the furnaces off

Everybody's daddy works up on the line
The Stienbrenners and the Wilczewskis
Have been there the longest time

In walked a man in the shape of a man
Holding a hat-shaped hat
He held up two fingers and said 'how many fingers?"
And I said 'Peace man, that's where it's at"
I said you are what you do in order to
Prevent becoming what you're busy not doing
And if you do do it truly
Then you arrive at it newly
Then in the end you are absolved
And the problem of heaven is solved

come, come away
come away from
come away from it

come, come away
come away from
come away from it

won't you come
come away from
come away from it

why won't you
why won't you come
come away from
come away from it

come
come away from
come away
come away from
won't you come
come away
come away from

next to the glass ashtray
in a little plastic baggy
is a bitter rock remedy
really good stuff

I am walking
Out in the rain
And I am listening to the low moan
Of the dial tone again
And I am getting
Nowhere with you
And I can't let it go
And I can't get through...
The old woman behind the pink curtains
And the closed door
On the first floor
She's listening through the air shaft
To see how long our swan song can last
And both hands
Now use both hands
Oh, no don't close your eyes

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

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

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

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

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

Guess there's something wrong with me
Guess I don't fit in
No one wants to touch it
No one knows where to begin
I've got more than one membership
To more than one club
And I owe my life
To the people that I love

He looks me up and down
Like he knows what time it is
Like he's got my number
Like he thinks it's his
He says,
Call me, Miss DiFranco,

I got pulled over in west Texas
So they could look inside my car
He said are you an American citizen
I said
Yes sir
So far
They made sure I wasn't smuggling
Someone in from Mexico
Someone willing to settle for America
'Cause there's nowhere else to go

And every state line
There's a new set of laws
And every police man
Comes equipped with extended claws

You think I wouldn't have him
Unless I could have him by the balls
You think I just dish it out
You don't think I take it at all
You think I am stronger
You think I walk taller than the rest
You think I'm usually wearing the pants
Just 'cause I rarely wear a dress

Well...

When you look at me
You see my purpose,
See my pride
You think I just saddle up my anger

The windows of my soul
Are made of one way glass
Don't bother looking into my eyes
If there's something you want to know,
Just ask
I got a dead bolt stroll
Where I'm going is clear
I won't wait for you to wonder
I'll just tell you why I'm here

'Cause I know the biggest crime
Is just to throw up your hands
Say
This has nothing to do with me

Just the thought of our bed
Makes me crumble like the plaster
Where you punched the wall beside my bed
And I try to draw the line
But it ends up running down the middle of me
Most of the time

Boys get locked up in some prison
Girls get locked up in some house
And it don't matter if it's a warden or a lover or a spouse
You just can't talk to 'em
You just can't reason

I search your profile
For a translation
I study the conversation
Like a map
'Cause I know there is strength
In the differences between us
And I know there is comfort
Where we overlap

Come here
Stand in front of the light
Stand still
So I can see your silouette
I hope
You have got all night
'Cause I'm not done looking,
No, I'm not done looking yet

Each one of us

I'm calling from the diner
The diner on the corner
I ordered two coffees
One is for you
I was hoping you'd join me
'Cause I ain't go no money
And I really miss you
I should mention that too

Yes I know what time it is
In fact, I just checked
I even know the date
And the month
And the year
I know I haven't been sleeping
And when I do
I just dream of you
Dear

Tiptoeing through the used condoms
Strewn on the piers
Off the west side highway
Sunset behind the skyline of jersey
Walking towards the water
With a fetus holding court in my gut
My body highjacked
My tits swollen and sore
The river has more colors at sunset
Than my sock drawer ever dreamed of
I could wake up screaming sometimes
But I don't

I'm sorry I didn't sound more excited on the phone
I'm sorry that after all these years
I've left you feeling unrequited and alone
Brought you to tears

I guess I never loved you quite as well
As the way you loved me
I guess I'll never really be able to tell you
How sorry I am

I don't know what it is about you
I just know it's not what it was

Think I'm going for a walk now
I feel a little unsteady
I don't want nobody to follow me
'Cept maybe you
I could make you happy you know
If you weren't already
I could do a lot of things
And I do

Tell you the truth I prefer
The worst of you
Too bad you had to have a better half
She's not really my type
But I think you two are forever
And I hate to say it but

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
But now I'm found
Was blind but now I see

'Twas grace that taught
My heart to fear
And grace that fear relieved
How precious did
That grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers
Toils and snares
I have already come
'Twas grace that brought me
Safely thus far

I cannot name this
I cannot explain this
And I really don't want to
Just call me shameless
I can't even slow this down
Let alone stop this
And I keep looking around
But I cannot top this

If I had any sense
I guess I'd fear this
I guess I'd keep it down
So no one would hear this
I guess I'd shut my mouth and rethink a minute
But I can't shut it now
'Cuz there's something in it

Tonight you stooped to my level
I am your mangy little whore
You are trying to find your underwear
And then your socks and then the door
And you're trying to find a reason
Why you have to leave
I know it's 'cuz you think you're Adam
And you think I'm Eve

You rhapsodize about beauty
And my eyes glaze
Everything that I love is ugly
I mean really, you would be amazed
Just do me a favor

I do it for the joy it brings
Because I'm a joyful girl
Because the world owes me nothing
And we owe each other the world
I do it because it's the least I can do
I do it because I learned it from you
I do it just because I want to
Because I want to

Everything I do is judged
And they mostly get it wrong
But oh well
'Cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged

Me and the other kids from the neighborhood
We played out on the street all summer long
Rule was, we had to go home at night when the street lights came on.
We were oblivious to the rest of the world
And we'd hold up the cars in the street
And we'd always play boys against girls, and both sides would cheat.
Strange men would stop their cars at the curb

I heard the sound of your bike,
As your wheels hit the gravel,
Then your engine in the driveway
Cutting off
And I pushed through the screen door
And I stood out on the porch
Thinking fight, fight, fight
At all costs,
But instead I let you in,
Just like I've always done
And I sat you down and offered you a beer
And across the kitchen table
I fired several rounds,