Ani Difranco True Story Of What Was Lyrics

True Story Of What Was Lyrics

The light blue flickering rhythm

Of the neighbor's big console TV

Is basking on the ceiling

Of another insomniatic 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

In my memory's long dream

To be superfluous

To the true story of what was



'Cuz



Real is real

Regardless of what you try

To say

Or say away



Real is real relentless

While words distract and dismay

Words that change their tune

Though the story remains the same



Words that fill me quickly

And then are slow to drain

Dialogues that dither down reminiscent

Of the way it likes to rain



Every screen, a smoke screen

Oh, to dream

Just for a moment, the picture

Outside the frame



Then in a flash, the light blue horizon

Spanning a sudden black

Is sucked into the vanishing point

And quiet rushes back



To search for the downbeat

In a tabla symphony

To search in the darkness

For someone who looks like me



Though I'm not really who I said I was

Or who I thought I'd be



Just a collection of recollections

Conversations consisting

Of the kind of marks we make

When we're trying to make a pen work again



A lifetime of them



I say to me, now here listening

I say to the locusts

That sing and sing to me sitting

Now here on the front porch swing of my eyes



I hereby amend

Whatever I've ever said

With this sigh