Indigo Girls Album

Trying to remember the very last time
I felt a simple thing going fast
Was it the day in north Georgia
When you were trying to take a bath?
She sees the day lilies post inside
And the tears spring to her eyes
You turn the car around and your headed back down that track

She’s had a hard time
but the bottle of Jack sits on the counter like the devil she knows
And he beats her up and she fills her cup
with the ambers of a dime fire glow
see how she looked in her school year book
her friends signed ‘imagine’ on the bound (imagines all around?)
But would you stay in touch you know I miss you so much
I hope we get out of this town

Every day that you get up and force your cards
Playing your story in fits and stars
Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down to the stream
And you bloody your hands digging for your dream

I went looking for the answers from someone I heard believes that life gets easier
And you learn how to breathe and you learn how to grieve your past
You study the masters and their books
Giving in to the barbs and hooks
Till you accept it with grace that your true love doesn’t last

Every day that you get up and force your cards
Playing your story in fits and stars
Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down to the stream
And you bloody your hands digging for your dream

Every day that you get up and force your cards
You’re playing your story in fits and stars
Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down to the stream
And you bloody your hands digging for your dream

Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down
Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down
Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down

All the fur and fin will lose again
Cause our better is their worst reckonin'
And our fine-feathered friends will sing until they bleed
And how will we replace that symphony?

I've got the blackest boots, the whitest skin
Satisfy my sugar tongue again
Bring me love that buys us shoe-shine days
Guilded verses for your ethylene
And sing it to me free and clean

All the kids come home with foreign limbs
from hunting trips abroad they lose again
and we'll teach them how to talk
and whistle while they walk
and do the dirty work of battle hymns

I've got the blackest boots, the whitest skin
Satisfy my sugar tongue again
Sing me love that buys us shoe-shine days
Guilded verses for your ethylene
And sing it to me free and clean

Drinking tea with milk and Janjaweed
Pontificate on genocide or greed
With a spoonful of descent
For the orchestra of need
Is just enough to please this colony

I've got the blackest boots, the whitest skin
Satisfy my sugar tongue again
Bring me lullabies and morphine-dreams
Belladonna with her atropine
And sing it to me free and clean

I opened my hands up to see what I've got.
My days slip like coins into a slot.
They are gone, the shadows lie long.

I've been banking on a broken machine.
Left unattended, like most of my dreams.
Rusted components of an unmarked song

We've been staring down a brilliant dream
The sun burns our eyes.
We've been fighting for the love of our lives

All around us things come apart.
Broken pieces. broken hearts,
Fix me, oil me, match me with the next best thing.

Person to person, nation to nation
Heels dug in no communication.
While the time speaks of weathering

We've been wanting to be helped by binding ties
We've been fighting for the love of our lives

And when it breaks down, I beg you don't go.
A sinking ship, I'm ready to blow.
I try to out think you with an army of words,
I strategize.
I am fighting for the love of my life.

Iron and water, oxygen
Scotch and soda, or any combination
Starts the reaction.

Is there no mastermind of modern day
Who can blueprint a plan to make love stay
steady and weatherproof usher in a new revolution?

At the drawing board, the hopeful ones still try.
How can we help it
When we're fighting for the love of our live?

(Drawing board) The hopeful ones still try.
How can we help it
When we're fighting for the love of our lives?

I fell for guys who tried to commit suicide,
With soft rock hair and blood shot eyes.
He tastes like Marlboro cigarettes, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups,
A Pepsi in his hand, getting off the school bus.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

Now its tattooed girls with a past they can't remember,
Who pledged allegiance to a life of bending the curriculum.
She tastes like spring, there she goes again,
Drinking with the older guys, tripping by the lakeside.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

When you were sweet sixteen, I was already mean and
Feeling bad for giving it up to the man just to make the scene.
Where were you, back when I had something to prove,
With the switchblade set and the church kids learning my moves?

I ran for miles through the suburbs of the seventies,
Pollen dust and Pixie sticks, kissing in the deep end
Of swimming pools before I knew what's in there.
We come into this life waterlogged and tender.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

Looking out across suburban yards
To the construct of our days through the thinning of the trees.
How come I only build a house of cards
That gets blown to pieces by the fall's first fickle breeze?
When I feel that stirring, the illicit kiss,
It's just the cool tongue of the devil with a sucker in his midst.

One day, I'll change.
You'll be the first one that I call.
I owe you an apology, too many thanks, and that's not all.
'Cause I've been running long before I learned to crawl.

My calendar lies crumpled, laid to waste.
It's been scrawled on, thumbed through and changed.
Will this be the measure of my days -
Dinners and appointments, deadlines I can't make?
When I start to feel it making sense for me,
That's just hope springing eternally.

One day, I'll change.
You'll be the first one that I call.
I owe you an apology, too many thanks, and that's not all.
'Cause I've been running long before I learned to crawl.

Outside the summer's gone for good,
Dying impatiens, stacked up wood
My friends will get together to cook,
Talk about what's happened, take a second look.

The master loves the servant who blind heeds him.
The husband, the obedient wife.
The snake will always bite the hand that feeds it,
Even if you love him, even if you save his life.

One day, I'll change.
You'll be the first one that I call.
I owe you an apology, so many thanks, and that's not all.
I've been running long before I learned to crawl.

Second time around you know its
Really got me down
Sister don't you judge it
Keep it to yourself now
If ya ain't got nothing good to say
Don't say nothin' at all

Got bitten by the bitter bug and I
Just can't get enough
Ill will and my own conceding
Weary of the world it seems
I'm weary of the world
Weary of the world it seems

Sort of always come my way
I'm just a little bit off these days
Like the hard knocks all my life
Like I'm a bible belt wife
Like I didn't see it coming
Like I didn't walk in willingly

See I never want to sing again
La la la like a butterfly
Without my wits about me
Without my heart in line
Third times a charm
This is mine

[Harmonica feature]

You said you just heard Loretta sing
And you felt the loneliness seeping in
Cowboys made you uneasy
You're a God-fearing lesbian
So you learn not to yearn
And you take it on the chin again

Here's what I find about compromise
Don't do it if it hurts inside
Cause either way you're screwed
And eventually you'll find
That you may as well feel good
You may as well have some pride

[Interlude]

Come August we'll go to Cherokee and
Hear Loretta do her thing
Pack it into the Indian casino and
Make the hillbilly scene
Kick up our heels
And join in

Are you my ally or my enemy?
Do you have self-loathing or empathy?
Can you keep me in your prayers, sister?
Can you keep me in there somewhere?
And sister, if you ain't go nothin' good to say
Don't say nothin' at all

Today my mind is drawing a blank
I canvas you to color this in
There's no gas left in the tank
You've always got your engines running

You've got no whip when the beast lays down
And feeds upon the rest has finally found

What are you like?
My open door revolver
What are you like?
My go to problem solver
You shine a light in the darkest corners of my mind
What are you like?
You're that kind

I cover mirrors with the clocks (cover mirrors with the clocks)
I'm getting superstitious lately (you don't ever brush it off)
But you don't ever brush it off (you won't cover me to safety)
You won't cover me to safety

While I'm sitting on this couch
You're up and figuring it out

What are you like?
My open door revolver
What are you like?
My go to problem solver
You shine a light in the darkest corners of my mind
What are you like?

The Greek chorus of our little play
You'll explain me when I act this way
And as we go along
The unwritten song breaks through
And it's all about you

What are you like? (You're an open door)
What are you like? (You're the best and more)
What are you like? (You're a sacred text)
What are you like? (You're what's coming next)
What are you like? (You're my open door (X3))

Jimmy died on his couch yesterday
A friend of his ex wife called me to say
He just gave it to God, slipped from the livin’
With the bills pilin’ up and a back that was givin’ in

it’s been years since I’ve seen anyone
Now I’m sittin’ here, in the dark
Stallin’ out in my car
Wishing I could bum a light
From the ghost of the gang tonight

Kathy lost a nephew under the wheels of a train
A midday suicide after a losing streak
He just stood on the tracks and gave it to glory
I never called her, to say “I’m sorry my friend.”
It’s been years, but I’m thinking about you
And all of your tears
And I’m sitting here in the dark
Afraid to make a stupid call
Wishing I could bum a light
From the ghost of the gang tonight

Tonight I’m gonna take that ride for the years we missed and the friends that died
Sideswiped baby on the road somehow with a pack of dreams that just weren’t allowed
Maybe you’re walking those halls all quiet and sad
Or sitting in the dark all scared and mad
Feel my hand reach across and don’t forget
Where you come from baby, ‘cause there’s truth in it

Yeah we huddled against the cold in those days
By the light of a fire in a pep-rally haze
With the smoke and lives past, and a reason for livin’
No matter how bad it got, we wouldn’t give in to it
It’s been years, since I’ve seen anyone cry these tears now
Sitting here in the dark, stalling out in my car
Wishing I could bum a light
From the ghost of the gang tonight

The fisherman comes up
puts his two poles in the sand
he stares out at the sea
just exactly like me
but I’ve got a book in my hand
we will have caught on to something by the end of the day
but mostly we think about the one that got away.

I’ve seen like a bird
what pleasures the surface can bring
I’ve lost my best craft
going foolishly back
to where to Sirens sing
I’ve stared up at the place where the water meets the sky
and though I stopped breathing I still believe I should try
maybe a boat in search of lost treasures will pass by.

‘Cause the fleet of hope is so pretty
when she’s shining in the port
and the harbor clings to the jetty
for protection and support
out in the choppy waters the sharks swim and play
you’re all washed up when Poseidon has his day.

I’ve walked through the desert
climbed over mountains so high
through jungles and plains
I took buses and trains
and airplanes across the sky
but none as seductive as ocean before me alone
and now I know why
you layered your pockets with stones.

‘Cause the fleet of hope is so pretty
when she’s shining in the port
and the harbor clings to the jetty
for protection and support
out in the choppy waters the sharks swim and play
you’re all washed up when Poseidon has his day.

When I was a girl
all of my fancy took flight
and I had this dream
Could outshine anything
even the darkest night
now I wait like a widow for someone to come back from sea
I’ve always known
I was waiting for me

‘Cause the fleet of hope is so pretty
when she’s shining in the port
and the harbor clings to the jetty
for protection and support
out in the choppy waters the sharks swim and play
you’re all washed up when Poseidon has his day.

Baby I got the best intentions
But I just can’t do it
Baby I got the truest aim
But I just can’t win
Baby I got a good vibration
But I just can’t play it
Baby I spent my only fortune
On the wages of sin.

So you, you got to be, extra forgivin
And you, you got to be extra strong
You got to be true romantic
I want you to look the other way
When every thing goes wrong

Baby if you took all the good stuff
And put it all together
And you took all the bad stuff
And you threw it all away
Would I still be the girl that suits your fancy
Would I still be the boy
Who rocks your world

If you get lonely
In trouble and the chaos
If you get bored, since you walked away
Remember what I told you
When the night was darkened
You can leave me all you need to
Baby I’m here to stay

Baby I’m going to be extra forgiving
And I’m going to be super strong
Because baby I’m a true romantic
I’m going to look the other way
When everything goes wrong

Mister pull up a chair
I got time for tears
Tell me all the stories that you never did
Of the salty south
The Seminoles held out
While Geronimo died in a lonely jail

A thousand tides, and
A thousand waves
Takin' it all away

It'll come back in
We'll be gone by then
And it's a miracle we ever learned to live

Drain that land
For a better plan
Sugarcane and the civil man
But now the ringin' dead them pines
Planted in that time
We gonna keep on killin' till they get it right

A thousand tides, and
A thousand waves
Takin' it all away

It'll come back in
We'll be gone by then, oh
And it's a miracle we ever learned to live

I remember the wind
As it was settlin'
And every sun goin' down was a picture then
But we look back at 'em framed
They all look the same
There's no sense of time, no sense of pain

A thousand tides, and
A thousand waves
Takin' it all away

And it'll come back in
We'll be gone by then, oh
And it's a miracle we ever learned to give