[2002-10-30] deHTMLized by script by Zrajm C Akfohg

Ani DiFranco: Reckoning [?]
(c)2001 Righteous Babe Records

 1. Your Next Bold Move
 2. This Box Contains...
 3. Reckoning
 4. So What?
 5. Prison Prism
 6. Imagine That
 7. Flood Waters
 8. Grey
 9. Subdivision
10. Old Old Song
11. Sick of Me
12. Don't Nobody Know
13. School Night
14. That Was My Love
15. Revelling
16. In Here


1. Your Next Bold Move

Coming of age during the plague
Of reagan and bush
Watching capitalism gun down democracy
It had this funny effect on me
I guess

I am cancer
I am HIV
And I'm down at the blue jesus
Blue cross hospital
Just lookin' up from my pillow
Feeling blessed

And the mighty multinationals
Have monopolized the oxygen
So it's as easy as breathing
For us all to participate

Yes they're buying and selling
Off shares of air
And you know it's all around you
But it's hard to point and say "there"
So you just sit on your hands
And quietly contemplate

Your next bold move
The next thing you're gonna need to prove
To yourself

What a waste of thumbs that are opposable
To make machines that are disposable
And sell them to seagulls flying in circles
Around one big right wing

Yes, the left wing was broken long ago
By the slingshot of cointelpro
And now it's so hard to have faith in
Anything

Especially your next bold move
Or the next thing you're gonna need to prove
To yourself

You want to track each trickle
Back to its source
And then scream up the faucet
'Til your face is hoarse
Cuz you're surrounded by a world's worth
Of things you just can't excuse

But you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker
And you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker
And it's getting colder and colder
Everytime you lose

So go ahead
Make your next bold move
Tell us
What's the next thing you're gonna need to prove
To yourself


2. This Box Contains...


3. Reckoning

You can doubt anything
If you think about it long enough
Cuz what happened always adjusts to fit
What happened after that
And it's hard to feel like you are free
When all you seem to do is referee
Remember when it was just you and me
Steppin' up to bat?

And win or lose
Just that you choose this little war
Is what kills you
And either/or it's that this war
Is maybe also what thrills you


We thought we left possession behind
But truth is I was yours and you were mine
And now I've replayed a thousand times
Exactly what was said
Cuz nothing is as it appears
In the funhouse mirrors of your fears
On the roller coaster of all these years
With your hands above your head

And win or lose
Just that you choose this little war
Is what kills you
And either/or it's that this war
Is maybe also what thrills you

I don't care how fast you run
Just tell me, baby, that when you're done
With your little marathon
You still got cab fare home
Cuz the finish line is a shifty thing
And what is life but reckoning
And, you know
You are still the song I sing
To myself
When I'm alone

And win or lose just that we choose
This little war is what kills us
And either/or it's that this war
Is maybe also what thrills us


4. So What?

Who's gonna give a shit
Who's gonna take the call
When you find out that the road ahead
Is painted on a wall
And you're turned up to top volume
And you're just sitting there in pause
With your feral little secret
Scratching at you with its claws
And you're trying hard to figure out
Just exactly how you feel
Before you end up parked and sobbing
Forehead on the steering wheel

Who are you now
And who were you then
That you thought somehow
You could just pretend
That you could figure it all out
The mathematics of regret
So it takes two beers to remember now
And five to forget
That I loved you so
Yeah, I loved you, so what

How many times undone
Can one person be
As they're careening through the facade
Of their favorite fantasy
You just close your eyes slowly
Like you're waiting for a kiss
And hope some lowly little power
Will pull you out of this
But none comes at first
And little comes at all
And when inspiration finally hits you
It barely even breaks your fall

Who were you then
And who are you
Now that you can't pretend
That you can figure it all out
Subtract out the impact
And the fall is all you get
So it takes two beers to remember now
And three more to forget
That I loved you so
Yeah, I loved you, so what
I loved you
So what


5. Prison Prism


6. Imagine That

Imagine that I am onstage
Under a watchtower of punishing light
And in the haze is your face bathed in shadow
And what's beyond you is hidden from sight
And somebody right now is yawning
And watching me like a tv
And I've been frantically piling up sandbags
Against the flood waters of fatigue and insecurity

Then suddenly I hear my guitar singing
And so I just start singing along
And somewhere in my chest
All the noise just gets crushed by the song

Imagine that I'm at your mercy
Imagine that you are at mine
Pretend I've been standing here
Watching you watching me
All this time
Now imagine that you are the weather
In the tiny snow globe of this song
And I am the statue of liberty
One inch long

So here I am at my most hungry
And here I am at my most full
Here I am waving a red cape
Locking eyes with a bull

Just imagine that I am onstage
Under a watchtower of punishing light
And in the haze is your face bathed in shadow
And what's beyond you is hidden from sight


7. Flood Waters


8. Grey

The sky is grey
The sand is grey
And the ocean is grey

And I feel right at home
In this stunning monochrome
Alone in my way

I smoke and I drink
And every time I blink
I have a tiny dream

But as bad as I am
I'm proud of the fact
That I'm worse than I seem

What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more
Maybe some tiny shiny key
Will wash up on the shore

You walk through my walls
Like a ghost on tv
You penetrate me

And my little pink heart
Is on its little brown raft
Floating out to sea

And what can I say
But I'm wired this way
And you're wired to me

And what can I do
But wallow in you
Unintentionally
What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more
Maybe some tiny shiny key
Will wash up on the shore

Regretfully
I guess I've only got three
Simple things to say:
Why me?
Why this now?
Why this way?
With overtones ringing
And undertows pulling away
Under a sky that is grey
On sand that is grey
By an ocean that's grey

What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want
And still I want more
Maybe some tiny shiny key
Will wash up on the shore


9. Subdivision

White people are so scared of black people
They bulldoze out to the country
And put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets
And while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest
The berlin wall still runs down main street
Separating east side from west
And nothing is stirring, not even a mouse
In the boarded-up stores and the broken-down houses
So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps
Just to prove they got no manners
No mercy and no sense

And I'm wondering what it will take
For my city to rise
First we admit our mistakes
Then we open our eyes
The ghosts of old buildings are haunting parking lots
In the city of good neighbors that history forgot

I remember the first time I saw someone
Lying on the cold street
I thought: I can't just walk past here
This can't just be true
But I learned by example
To just keep moving my feet
It's amazing the things that we all learn to do

So we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter
Serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water
And the old farm road's a four-lane that leads to the mall
And our dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall

I'm wondering what it will take
For my country to rise
First we admit our mistakes
And then we open our eyes
Or nature succumbs to one last dumb decision
And america the beautiful
Is just one big subdivision


10. Old Old Song

I'll sing you a song that starts out descriptive
And locates a time and a place
Like a dinner table where a whole family
Is just sitting down to say grace
An old old song that moves into action
Taking its sweet sweet time
And waits until we all say amen
Again and again in rhyme

It's the story of a father and a mother
Who battle each other over nothin'
With a couple of kids trying to figure
Which way the plot's spinning
Who's winning and who is bluffing

It's a story as common as a penny, son
It ain't really worth anything to anyone

Poor little sore little song
That aches like a muscle each time that it moves
Sad little song that you play
And you play and you play
And you play 'til you lose
While history is outside writing a recipe book
For every earthly pain
This song is inside finger painting dark swirls
Again and again and they all look the same

Cuz what if you come home from school one day
And you find your whole family's at war
And there's this ominous silence just waiting to be broken
And there's secret places for hiding underneath the floorboards
And everyone seems to be bracing
For the subharmonic thunder of the next bomb
And everyone seems to be waiting for the cops to bust in
With their guns drawn
At the bleak light of dawn

It's a story as common as a penny, son
I don't think it's worth anything to anyone


11. Sick of Me

How sick of me
Must you be
By now
While you're standing just outside
Of what your pride will allow
Always reaching into yourself
To find a new way to understand me
When I'm sure that there's no one else
In the world
Who could withstand me

The first person in your life
To ever really matter
Is saying the last thing
That you want to hear
And you are listening hard
Through the splintering shards
Of your life as it shatters
And you're standing firm
And you're staying close
And you're seeing clear

I took to the stage
With my outrage
In the bad old days
When you were the make-me-mad guy
But the songs
They come out more slowly
Now that I am the bad guy
And I say, I'm sorry I'm so crazy
I am astounded by your patience
And you say, believe it or not, baby
The joy you bring me
Still outweighs it

The first person in your life
To ever really matter
Is saying the last thing
That you want to hear
And you are listening hard
Through the splintering shards
Of your life as it shatters

And you're standing firm
And you're staying close
And you're seeing clear

How sick of me
Must you be
By now?


12. Don't Nobody Know


13. School Night

She went over to his apartment
Clutching her decision
And he said, did you come here to tell me goodbye?
So she built a skyscraper of procrastination
And then she leaned out the twenty-fifth floor window
Of her reply
And she felt like an actress
Just reading her lines
When she finally said
Yes. it's really goodbye this time
And far below was the blacktop
And the tiny toy cars
And it all fell so fast
And it all fell so far

And she said:
You are a miracle but that is not all
You are also a stiff drink and I am on call
You are a party and I am a school night
And I'm lookin' for my door key
But you are my porch light

And you'll never know, dear
Just how much I loved you
You'll probably think this was
Just my big excuse
But I stand committed
To a love that came before you
And the fact that I adore you
Is but one of my truths

What of the mother
Whose house is in flames
And both of her children
Are in their beds crying
And she loves them both
With the whole of her heart
But she knows she can only
Carry one at a time?
She's choking on the smoke
Of unthinkable choices
She is haunted by the voices
Of so many desires
She's bent over from the business
Of begging forgiveness
While frantically running around
Putting out fires

But then what kind of scale
Compares the weight of two beauties
The gravity of duties
Or the ground speed of joy?
Tell me what kind of gauge
Can quantify elation?
What kind of equation
Could I possibly employ?
And you'll never know, dear
Just how much I loved you
You probably think this was
Just my big excuse
But I stand committed
To a love that came before you
And the fact that I adore you
Is just one of my truths

So I
I'm goin' home
To please the one I so love pleasing
And I don't expect
He'll have much sympathy for my grieving
But I guess that this is the price
That we pay for the privilege
Of living for even a day
In a world with so many things
Worth believing
In


14. That Was My Love


15. Revelling

You were so in love
That it was all you could talk about
And I think I felt a little left out
You were on cloud 9 all the time
While I was levelling
I was wringing my hands and you were revelling

But then why shouldn't you?
It was such a beautiful thing to do

Would that I could get me some
Of your yum yum delirium
I could level off the ground that we stand on
But with you down on bended knee
Always looking up at me
That feeling of standing up together is gone

And though I love you through all time and space
My love always seems to take second place

You were so in love
That it was all you could talk about
And I think I felt a little left out
You were on cloud 9 all the time
While I was levelling
I was wringing my hands and you were revelling

But then why shouldn't you?
It was such a beautiful thing to do


16. In Here

Even when I look right at you
I always just see through
And I always just see new things
To admire about you.

Am I what you thought you were getting?
Does this love we make-make you proud?
Does it look like it did on the menu?
Minus, of course, the little dark clouds.

Of course, when we signed up for forever...
We had no idea it was in here.
I guess always is all this and then some.
I guess at least that much is clear.

And whenever I look at you
You know I always just see new things
To admire about you...
You

[[eof]]