The True Story of What Was - Ani DiFranco

The light blue flickering rhythm

Of the neighbor’s big console T. V

Is basking on the ceiling

Of another insomniac 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

'cause

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 get a pen to work again

A lifetime of them!

Cough… cough…ahem…

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