the air comes off the ocean the city smells fishy the air is full of fish and mystery whispering who, what, when I am warning you I am weightless and the wind i...

second intermission, anticipation you know the third act small talk drops out of the play you're standing in the lobby tightening your tourniquet waiting for i...

squint your eyes and look closer I'm not between you and your ambition I am a poster girl with no poster I am thirty-two flavors and then some and I'm beyond yo...

When the joy had left your body And you were locked into your own pulse You used to love to sit by the water And watch it lapping on the rocks And every time yo...

I will not lie down On the wrongful ground or play While it's still a radical sound Just to call a spade a spade Dear friends, women and men Please check my mat...

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 youre trying to fin...

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 and i've seen both my parents play out the ...

I love you and you love me and ain't that that way it's supposed to be? i Swing my stick legs 'round from the root and i pile drive each foot into a Platform bo...

What dreams cause me To abandon my pillow each night? Push away each of them, in fact Since there always seem to be more than one Then wake to aching stiff neck...

I will not stand immersed In this ultra violent curse I won't let you make a tool of me I will keep my mind and body free Bye, bye, minutiae Of the day to day ...

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...

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 her...

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 ...

More and more there is this animal Looking out through my eyes At all the traffic on the road to nowhere At all the shiny stuff around to buy At all the wires i...

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 t...

you can't hide behind social graces so don't try to be all touchy feely cuz you lie in my face of all places but I got no problem with that really what bugs me ...

Things can't get much weirder This can't get much worse Don't know why you wouldn't kiss me But it's a good thing i asked you first You were a big strapping bo...

I want somebody who sees the pointlessness and still keeps their purpose in mind I want somebody who has a tortured soul some of the time I want somebody who wi...

I wanna know what you think about your future Can you tell me what you think, what you think about your life? I wanna know what you think of me, your friends I...

my lipstick jumped ship to a styrofoam cup with the coffee gone the conversation strong all I got left to give baby, is up but sentiments like shadows grow oh s...

I said Venice You heard Vegas Now I say either way Baby let's go I get so shaky And I just can't shake it I bliss like this I'm one of those But I don't wanna ...

sitting in the boardroom the I'm-so-bored room listening to the suits talk about their world they can make straight lines out of almost anything except for the ...

You broke me bodily The heart ain't the half of it And I'll never learn to laugh at it In my good natured way In fact I'm laughing less in general But I learned...

I'm not hurting anyone I'm just telling my truth and if there if there is something wrong then maybe there's something wrong with you what's the big deal get ov...

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 t...

she sat there like a photograph of someone much further away we shared a brief bus stop on one of those inbetween days she gave me her smile and I looked undern...

I hated to pop the bubble Of me and you But it only held enough oxygen For a trip or two To the moon and back again Tell me, do you remember when Our love had s...

Buildings and bridges Are made to bend in the wind To withstand the world, That's what it takes All that steel and stone Is no match for the air, my friend What...

You cried and you cried and you cried wolf So it took me a minute to understand That you really were hurt bad That day you deeply cut your hand And then that lo...

How pleased can one Sun setting make you If you humble yourself to it? How grateful can you Really say that you are Just to be here and live through it? And whe...

By DAR WILLIAMS (NOT Ani DiFranco) Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday, Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay" A...

Standing just outside The circle of light Avoiding the pool cues Watching the game Waiting for you Hanging in the doorway Like smoke Like mistletoe This is wher...

ive been wondering what you meant when you asked do you have a light? ive been wondering where you went when you left that party that night cloud blood sweat sm...

You are listening to the phone ring Like a church bell sounding out the hour And the ringing cuts the silence Like a knife leaving little pieces left of your li...

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 y...

our father who art in a penthouse sits in his 37th floor suite and swivels to gaze down at the city he made me in he allows me to stand and sollicit graffiti un...

What's the point Of all this pointless proximity If you won't talk Take me for a walk Through a little story All these years Have made me sick to tears Of such...

Fourteenth street and the garbage swirls like a cyclone Three o'clock in the afternoon and I am going home F train is full of high school students So much shout...

the big day has come the bell is sounding i run my hands through my hair one last time outside the prison walls the town is gathering people are trading crime f...

Step up and forfeit your frontal lobe To the sexed up stroll of celebrity Never mind that the nanoseconds in between Are some of the darkest darkness that you'v...

Cold and drizzly night in Chicago's deep dish Fluorescent light of the bathroom Shows my hands as they are See an eyelash on my cheek Pick it off and make a wis...

life used to be life-like now it's more like show biz i wake up in the night and i don't know where the bathroom is and i don't know what town i'm in or what sk...

Folks back east they say, I'm leaving home everyday Beating the hot old dusty way out To the California Line Across the desert sands they role Trying to get out...

perpetrating counter-culture she is walking through the park first light ugly and more muscular than the dark pushing poems at the urban silence drawing portrai...

The wind is ruthless, the trees shake angry fingers at the sky, the people hunch their shoulders, hold their collars over their ears and run by Its a cold rain,...

Looks like my crazy family Is down one crazy daughter cuz I'm shipwrecked in a desert that Once was underwater just Looking for a swift turn of phrase Some colo...

I saw on the poster my name was printed just a little bit smaller I can tell you need to stand just a little bit taller no one ever talks about it but no one ca...

Emancipated minor Well directed, brilliantly casted Riding a Greyhound down to the city With her fake ID and a hell of a little hand basket Little game of sees...

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 l...

I'm imagining your frame every angle and every plane I'm imagining your smell the one that mingled with mine once upon a time thoughts of you are picketing my b...

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 som...

i walk in stride with people much taller than me and partly it's the boots but mostly it's my chi and i'm becoming transfixed with nature and my part in it whic...

Some guy tried to rub up against me In a crowded subway car Some guy tried to feed me some stupid line In some stupid bar I see the same shit everyday The lands...

You give me that look that's like laughing with liquid in your mouth like you're choosing between choking and spitting it all out like you're trying to fight gr...

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...

she's looking in the mirror she's fixing her hair and I touch my head to feel what isn't there she's humming a melody we learned in grade school she's so happy ...

you wander into the forest following that shiny red ball and by the time you looked up you were lost, that's not all instead of being the hero boy he finds his...

Think I'm going for a walk now, I feel a little unsteady I wonder what will follow me, except maybe you I can make you happy, if you weren't already I could do ...

They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan And they discovered a slave cemetery there May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon And we've...

sitting in my glass house while your ghost is sleeping down the hall watching the little birds fly kamikaze missions into the walls think i'm going to stay in t...

State trooper thinks I drive too fast Pulled me over to tell me so I say out here on the prarie Any speed is too slow I miss brooklyn I miss my crew Let's start...

Going once, going twice Sold to the girl Who ignored all the advice Of all the people who knew better She just stood there On the front porch Waiting for her wi...

A throat with a heart in it stuck in traffic A ticket and a mind to fly, an alarm clock still drunk and high Sanity painted her mask on all the way across town ...

I love my country By which I mean I am indebted joyfully To all the people throughout its history Who have fought the government to make right Where so many cun...

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 aro...

I heard the sound of your bike as your wheels hit the gravel and your engine in the driveway, cutting off I pushed through the screen door and I stood out on th...

You start trippin And i start slippin away I was taught to zip it If i got nothin nice to say And down in the texas of my heart Driving a really big truck Heade...

He was a handsome musician But he had an ugly scar You could not see it on him But you could hear it when he played guitar Naked and nervous silence Therefore ...

life is a b movie it's stupid and it's strange a directionless story and the dialouge is lame but in the he said she said sometimes there's some poetry if you t...

Hold me down I am floating away Into the overcast skies Over my home town On election day What is it about birmingham? What is it about buffalo? Did the hate f...

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 w...

hour follows hour like water follows water everything is governed by the rule of one thing leads to another you can't really place blame, cuz blame is much too ...

two years ago before we felt so familiar and before I could remember your last name I remember now how our bright spring green deepened with the heat as the sea...

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall She sees the bartender in a pool of blood, Cries out, "My God, they killed ...

So that's how you found me Rain falling around me Lookin down at a worm With a long way to go And the traffic was hissing by And i was homesick And i was high ...

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 thi...

seems like you just started noticing how noticeably bad things really are and then you walk past this couple arguing in a rolled up window parked car an all tha...

I'm invincible so are you we do all the things they say we can't do we walk around in the middle of the night and if it's too far to walk we just hitch a ride w...

Standing like john wayne She is full framed She is center stage And my imagination is Rattling in it's cage I didn't really notice When everything else disappea...

If yr not If yr not If yr not If yr not If yr not getting happier, as you get older... then yr fuckin' up. If yr not (x4) If yr not aware that what you put out...

two years ago before we felt so familiar and before I could remember your last name I remember now how our bright spring green deepened with the heat as the sea...

I'm okay if you get me at a good angle and you're okay in the sort of light and we don't look like pages from a magazine but that's all right that's all right I...

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 ...

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 o...

Such an intent stare One eye at a time Your talons like fish hooks You are a rare bird The kind I wouldn't even mind Writing in the margins of my books Someti...

no you didn't just leave i actually kicked you out i couldn't hardly believe that the words came out my mouth you couldn't hardly believe what you heard yoursel...

We drove the car To the top of the parking ramp 4th of July Sat out on the hood With a couple of warm beers And watched the fireworks Explode in the sky There w...

I am evening the score I am cutting the umbilical cord curled with my teeth against my knees I am scratching at my consciousness like a bitch with fleas I think...

Can't sit on my porch and smoke a j, and remember how peaceful life can be. But all night long are a bunch of pushers sellin' drugs right there on my tv. Drugs ...

i do it for the joy it brings because i am a joyful girl because the world owes me nothing we owe each other the world i do it cuase its the least i can do beca...

in the jukebox of her memory the list of names flips by and stops and she closes her eyes and smiles as the record drops then she drinks herself up and out of h...

it's not so much that we got closer it's that her face just got bigger and by the time it was filling up my whole view i figured my face had gotten bigger too s...

That's just my cowgirl alter-ego Riding on her bar room bull Dripping with the sweat of irony As the cowboys whoop and drool Shooting glances at the mirror To s...

There's really no hope for me And that three second rule Somethin gets dropped And still I'm the slowest damn fool Slow to realize what's really going on Slow t...

Hey little bag of sugar floating in your biosphere Summon the courage to put down your landing gear And come out here 'Cause I am as exhausted as a drowning po...

Don't ask me why I'm crying I'm not going to tell you what's wrong I'm just gonna sit on your lap For five dollars a song I want you to pay me for my beauty I t...

I am letting the telephone ring cause I don't want to know why I don't want to hear you explain I don't want to hear you cry I have written so much about you so...

i wish i didn't have this nervous laugh i wish i didn't say half the stuff i say i wish i could just learn to cover my tracks i guess i'm not concerned about ge...

In a coffee shop in a city Which is every coffee shop in every city On a day which is every day I picked up a magazine Which is every magazine Read a story, and...

I am looking for the holes the holes in your jeans because I want to know are they worn out in the seat or are they worn out in the knees there are so many ways...