Joni Mitchell Album

She pulls the shade;
It's just another sunny Sunday
She dodges the light like Blanche DuBois
Bright colors fade away on such a sunny Sunday;
She waits for the night to fall
Then she points a pistol through the door
And she aims at the streetlight
While the freeway hisses
Dogs bark as the gun falls to the floor
The streetlight's still burning;
She always misses
But the day she hits
That's the day she'll leave
That one little victory, that's all she needs!
She pulls the shade;
It's just another sunny Monday
She waits for the night to fall

I pulled up behind a Cadillac;
We were waiting for the light;
And I took a look at his license plate-
It said, "Just Ice."
Is justice just ice?
Governed by greed and lust?
Just the strong doing what they can
And the weak suffering what they must?
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills ...
Sex kills ...

Doctors' pills give you brand new ills
And the bills bury you like an avalanche
And lawyers haven't been this popular
Since Robespierre slaughtered half of France!
And Indian chiefs with their old beliefs know
The balance is undone-crazy ions-
You can feel it out in traffic;
Everyone hates everyone!
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills ...
Sex kills ...

All these jackoffs at the office
The rapist in the pool
Oh and the tragedies in the nurseries-
Little kids packin' guns to school
The ulcerated ozone
These tumors of the skin-
This hostile sun beating down on
This massive mess we're in!
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills ...
Sex kills ...
Sex kills ...
Sex kills ...
Sex kills ...

(Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight)

Hard bodies
Soft emotions
So fast
So smart
The world is at your feet
But what about your heart?
Fame and fortune can't hold you tight
In the late late hours of the night

How do you stop
Before it's too late?
You choose and you lose
If you hesitate
How do you stop
Before it's too late?
You think love will wait
So you don't hold on
And then it's gone

You've had success-
Lots of fancy friends
You've tasted the good life
You thought it would never end
One day you're too young
Then you're in your prime
Then you're looking back at the hands of time

How do you stop
Before it's too late?
You choose and you lose
If you hesitate
How do you stop
Before it's too late?
You think love will wait
So you don't hold on
And then it's gone

How do you stop a runaway train?
How do you stop the driving rain?
How do you stop the ripening corn?
How do you stop a baby being born?

How do you stop
Before it's too late?
You choose and you lose
If you hesitate
How do you stop
Before it's too late?
How do you stop?
You're lost if you hesitate ...
How do you stop
Love from slipping away?
How do you stop
Before it's too late?

You wanna make Van Goghs
Raise 'em up like sheep
Make 'em out of Eskimos
And women if you please
Make 'em nice and normal
Make 'em nice and neat
You see him with his shotgun there?
Bloodied in the wheat?
Oh what do you know about
Living in Turbulent Indigo?

Brash fields, crude crows
In a scary sky ...
In a golden frame
Roped off
Tourists guided by ...
Tourists talking about the madhouse
Talking about the ear
The madman hangs in fancy homes
They wouldn't let him near!
He'd piss in their fireplace!
He'd drag them through Turbulent Indigo

"I'm a burning hearth," he said
"People see the smoke
But no one comes to warm themselves
Sloughing off a coat
And all my little landscapes
All my yellow afternoons
Stack up around this vacancy
Like dirty cups and spoons
No mercy Sweet Jesus!
No mercy from Turbulent Indigo."

Last chance lost-
In the tyranny of a long good-bye
Last chance lost-
We talk of us with deadly earnest eyes
Last chance lost-
We talk of love in terms of sacrifice and compromise
Last chance-
Last chance lost

Last chance lost-
The hero cannot make the change
Last chance lost-
The shrew will not be tamed
Last chance lost-
They bicker on the rifle range
Blame takes aim
Last chance-
Last chance lost

I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries

Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly
By her parish priest
We're trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the streaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries

Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me-
Fallen women-
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery ...
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know, and they'd drop the stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries

Peg O'Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring!
One day I'm going to die here too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring
No, not any spring
Not any spring

The story hit the news
From coast to coast
They said you beat the girl
You loved the most
Your charitable acts
Seemed out of place
With the beauty
With your fist marks on her face
Your buddies all stood by
They bet their fortunes
And their fame
That she was out of line
And you were not to blame

Six hundred thousand doctors
Are putting on rubber gloves
And they're poking
At the miseries made of love
They say they're learning
How to spot
The battered wives
Among all the women
They see bleeding through their lives
I bleed-
For your perversity-
These red words that make a stain
On your white-washed claim that
She was out of line
And you were not to blame

I heard your baby say
When he was only three
"Daddy, let's get some girls
One for you and one for me."
His mother had the frailty
You despise
And the looks
You love to drive to suicide
Not one wet eye around
Her lonely little grave
Said, "He was out of line girl
You were not to blame."

Everybody looks so ill at ease
So distrustful so displeased
Running down the table
I see a borderline
Like a barbed wire fence
Strung tight, strung tense
Prickling with pretense
A borderline

Why are you smirking at your friend?
Is this to be the night when
All well-wishing ends?
All credibility revoked?
Thin skin, thick jokes!
Can we blame it on the smoke
This borderline?

Every bristling shaft of pride
Church or nation
Team or tribe
Every notion we subscribe to
Is just a borderline
Good or bad, we think we know
As if thinking makes things so!
All convictions grow along a borderline

Smug in your jaded expertise
You scathe the wonder world
And you praise barbarity
In this illusionary place-
This scared hard-edged rat race
All liberty is laced with
Borderlines

Every income, every age
Every fashion-plated rage
Every measure, every gauge
Creates a borderline
Every stone thrown through glass
Every mean-streets-kick ass
Every swan caught on the grass
Will draw a borderline

You snipe so steady
You snub so snide-
So ripe and ready
To diminish and deride!
You're so quick to condescend
My opinionated friend
All you deface, all you defend
Is just a borderline
Just a borderline ...
Another borderline ...
Just a borderline

He met her in a French cafe
She slipped in sideways like a cat
Sidelong glances
What a wary little stray!
She sticks in his mind like that
Saying, "Avez-vous un allumette?"
With her lips wrapped around a cigarette
Yvette in English saying,
"Please have this
Little bit of instant bliss."

He's fumbling with her foreign tongue;
Reaching for words and drawing blanks
A loud mouth is stricken deaf and dumb
In a bistro on the left bank
"If I were a painter," Picasso said,
"I'd paint this girl from toe to head!"
Yvette in English saying,
"Please have this
Little bit of instant bliss."

Burgundy nocturne tips and spills
They trot along nicely in the spreading stain
New chills, new thrills
For the old uphill battle
How did he wind up here again?
Walking and talking
Touched and scared
Uninsulated wires left bare
Yvette in English going,
"Please have this
Little bit of instant bliss."

What blew her like a leaf his way?
(Up in the air and down to Earth)
First she flusters
Then she frays
So quick to question her own worth
Her cigarette burns her fingertips
As it falls like fireworks she curses it
Then sweetly in English she says,
"Please have this,
Little bit of instant bliss."

He sees her turn and walk away
Skittering like a cat on stone-
Her high heels clicking-
What a wary little stray!
She leaves him by the Seine alone
With the black water and the amber lights
And the bony bridge between left and right
Yvette in English saying,
"Please have this
Little bit of instant bliss."

Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness-
Born of grief and nights without sleep and festering flesh
Do you have eyes?
Can you see like mankind sees?
Why have you soured and curdled me?
Oh you tireless watcher! What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?

Once I was blessed; I was awaited like the rain
Like eyes for the blind, like feet for the lame
Kings heard my words, and they sought out my company
But now the janitors of Shadowland flick their brooms at me
Oh you tireless watcher! What have I done to you?
that you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?

([Antagonists:] Man is the sire of sorrow)
I've lost all taste for life
I'm all complaints
Tell me why do you starve the faithful?
Why do you crucify the saints?
And you let the wicked prosper
You let their children frisk like deer
And my loves are dead or dying, or they don't come near
([Antagonists:] We don't despise your chastening
God is correcting you)

Oh and look who comes to counsel my deep distress
Oh, these pompous physicians
What carelessness!
([Antagonists:] Oh all this ranting all this wind
Filling our ears with trash)
Breathtaking ignorance adding insult to injury!
They come blaming and shaming
([Antagonists:] Evil doer)
And shattering me
([Antagonists:] This vain man wishes to seem wise
A man born of asses)
Oh you tireless watcher! What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?

([Antagonists:] We don't despise your chastening)
Already on a bed of sighs and screams,
And still you torture me with visions
You give me terrifying dreams!
Better I was carried from the womb straight to the grave.
I see the diggers waiting, they're leaning on their spades.

([Antagonists:] Man is the sire of sorrow
Sure as the sparks ascend)
Where is hope while you're wondering what went wrong?
Why give me light and then this dark without a dawn?
([Antagonists:] Evil is sweet in your mouth
Hiding under your tongue)
Show your face!
([Antagonists:] What a long fall from grace)
Help me understand!
What is the reason for your heavy hand?
([Antagonists:] You're stumbling in shadows
You have no name now)
Was it the sins of my youth?
What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?
([Antagonists:] Oh your guilt must weigh so greatly)
Everything I dread and everything I fear come true
([Antagonists:] Man is the sire of sorrow)
Oh you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true