Drunk On The Striped Table Lyrics - Rickie Lee Jones

in my featherless, sagging, saffron wings, 

i dance 

my Phoenician, waterlogged, orchestrated and forty foot wings 

wave in the air 

i am drunk laying against the striped table 

pushing these banners into the airless beach 

waving these flags as i murmur the recipes of prayers to the vendors 

and the pharisees in bikinis pumping iron against the sun 

the recipes of semitic vendors, egyptian vendors 

shaking their backs against the sun 

laughing with the sounds of sheets of metal 

splashing the naked pharisees 

with wild bikinis and the soft fragrance 

of dreams 

and morning 

i walk on the beach looking for a place to sleep 

My arms are hidden beneath my sailing skin 

i am broke and fucked up and i fall in the sand 

and sleeping in the warm cradle of a billion rocks 

i dreamed of cher 

she came to us in babylon 

and she was rattling fluently 

her true language 

and she was dressed in high syrian rags 

her face had white powder on it and there were 

little brown moons beneath her eyes 

and i saw into her 

an arabic women parading around naked 

powerful, irreverent but still after all 

doing it the old egyptian way 

with sparkling clothes and force 

now i awake in the afternoon 

the arcade is filled with children 

families are walking by staring at me 

pre-pubescent faces are coming a little too close 

i don't even remember if i have on any underwear 

i get up and walk away 

i never even knew this stuff was here 

the twirling music, the games, the money 

this commune living sucks 

these black panthers suck 

these harmonica players 

should all go back to the north 

canada, new jersey, where ever they do that 

blowing 

II. 

I abandon the old way when i first got to san diego. I fucked anybody i wanted to. I was, however, gang raped by a blues band in an old school bus. That was pretty 

horrible. There were only three of them. I can't remember if i got the third on e off me. I think i did. I was so ashamed. 

Perhaps people think if you don't scream you're not being raped. Perhaps they think if you say to yourself, just let him do it and he won't hurt you. Or even more 

provocative, just let him do it and maybe he'll like you. And of course you've been saying no, no, don't . Or pushing but not pushing too much. Because you're just a little 

girl really, and you're afraid, and you're so tired, and you just want someplace to sleep. 

That's what it's like when you run away from home. 

Lots of people will rape you. And you'll let them. Just to have a place to sleep. 

The thing was, after they fucked me, and all this juice all over my thighs, they didn't even let me sleep there. 

You think this only happens to me? You're crazy. You think this only happens to girls who are rough? You're wrong. You think this only happens in stories? 

Look behind you. 

Still i liked the idea of being assertive. I liked the idea of free love in san diego. i liked the idea of saying i want you instead of waiting around so some guy can get his rocks 

off thinking you didn't really want him that he won something from you that you didn't want to give him. This strategy, this tradition, is a kind of rape. 

This idea that men are suppose to win you, that you are suppose to be aloof, is a small but significant dramatization of rape. I do not like it. not one bit. that sam i am that 

sam i am. i do not like that sam i am. 

now i could no more say get down here and eat this sweet me than i could 

swallow a bull fighter 

or write names on the walls in blood 

or wear the victims horns on my head 

or row a boat across the atlantic ocean again 

and though sometimes i am sitting at the desk, or 

at a table eating dinner 

and there is some one, some slave, or some anything 

underneath 

eating mine alone 

and no one knows 

or eating every ones 

and everyone is coming 

i could never bring anything to reality now 

reality is cracked by the blows of terrible 

men and nights with pointed teeth 

snapping poison at the air 

i breath 

and all good things now 

take place inside my many layered 

silence 

my eyes 

my lips 

are sealed 

where did you go 

when things went bad, anyway? 

i sat beside you in that bathroom all night. 

you were crying 

you were talking to me like a baby 

you were gone, man, gone 

you just kept getting in the bath 

and getting out and letting the water run out 

and then getting in again 

and all that food i made 

it was all over the walls in the kitchen 

and there was a heat wave 

and the waves were very, very high 

and the dogs were turning into carrots 

and the valentines were melting beneath 

burrito and neon 

where shattered places pave the road 

the winding road through echo park 

that echoes still 

your naked body 

the bed you brought 

those stupid lamps 

your body echoes 

the last shadows 

of me against you 

you loved me. 

you loved me madly 

where did you go?i knew you like that scene of girls chasing you down the street. that's why you always liked to have a very hip car, because it was important that they 

chase you in the right car, and i was not about to chase you. 

i knew that story of that italian girl in philadelphia chasing you down the night street you were in a taxi cab, that's a nice image. then the japanese girl. but then my feet 

were starting toward you and you were turning the corner onto sunset and you left me there in a second day cold turkey. and all i can think of i philadelphia cheese steak 

sandwich philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. 

philadelphia cheese steak and every time i think cheese steak i see all this wet cheese and steak. 

Here comes the parade! Look! Here it comes! 

I let you go. 

I let you go. You like to rip girls. I had to let you go.