Ani DiFranco-Reprieve Reprieve Lyrics

Manhattan is an islandLike the women who areSurrounded by children in the
carSurrounded by carsOr manhattan was a
projectThat projected the worst of mankindFirst one
and then the otherHas made its mark on my mindIt's sixty years later near the hypo-center of the
a-bombI'm standing in the middle of hiroshimaWatching a twisted old eucalyptus tree waveOne of
the very few lives that survived and lives onRemembering
the day it was suddenly thousands of degreesIn theShadeAnd what all of nature gave birth toTerror took in a blinding raidWith the kind of painIt would take cancer so many years just to sayOh
to grow up gagged and blindfoldedA great big mans world in
your little girls headThe voice of the great mother
drowned outIn the constant honking haunting the
accident scene up aheadOh to grow up hypnotized and then
try to shake yourself awakeCause you can sense what has
been lostCause you can sense what is at stakeYeah it took me a few years to catch on that those days
i catch everyone's eyeCorrespond with those nights of
the month when the moon gleans like an egg in the skyAnd
men are using a sense they don't even know they have just
to watch me walk byAnd me, i'm supposed
to be sensible, leave my animal outside to cryBut when all
of nature conspires to make me her glorious w____It's cause in my body i hold the secret recipe of
precisely what life is forAnd the patriarchy that
looks to shame me for it is the same one making war and
i've said too much already but i'll tell you something
moreTo split yourself in two is just the most radical
thing you can do so girl if that s___ ain't up to you, then
you simply are not free cause from the sunlight on my hair to
which eggs i grow to termTo the expression that i wear,
all i really own is meI mean to split yourself in
two is just the most radical thing you can doGoddess
forbid that little adam should grow so jealous of eve and in the
face of the great farce of the nuclear ageFeminism
ain't about equality, it's about reprieve