Colors of Me

I’m familiar with Locke Street at this time of year

It seems every snow’s thaw I can find myself here

Staying just for a while in fashion and style

With rosemary mint and my predicaments

It’s a journey of senses among the pretenses

Of therapeutic vices…the water and ice

Is just melting away like the hours and days

It’s my tiny reward for the things I afford

And I’m finding my place and I’m weak and I waste

All the chances I have to be brave, to be chaste

But I’m biding my time while I stumble the line

Towards the distant city…so perfect, so pretty

Self-pity and doubt isn’t working it out

So I’m here with a beer…it’s apparent and clear

That I’m falling in ways reminiscent of days

Gone before – and it’s for all the things that I’m storing

I hide well inside with the colors of me

Don’t you see…pretty please

That it’s all…history

And the future is bright…it’s all right

In the colors of me

Yes, the words only work when I’m all by myself

And that’s how I prefer it – I’ll keep on deferring

‘Cause these parts of me that are so hard to see

Take on colors so golden in stories unfolding

And she’s smoking at nine out of habit and time

Her smile discreet from her frame of six feet

It’s acceptable – spectacles fill the receptacle

Billowing up as the ashtray fills up

Metaphorically speaking, the waste bin is peaking

With hope she discarded…she can’t stop what she’s started

I can see her in me…my reflection perceived

In her soul-baring smile…and yes, we’re on trial

“Not guilty” she cries from inside, but the outside

Is showing the signs of a criminal mind

Orchestrating a symphony of her own measure

She judges at leisure the wealth of her treasure

I can steal what I’ve seen for the colors of me

Won’t you see…pretty please

That it’s written so well in my own history

And it’s so hard to fight, but the future is bright

It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right

In the colors of me

So I go and I pray that I will not return

And I know that I’ll say that I’ll grow, that I’ll learn

Not to bathe in the water that’s tainted with poison

Polluted with weakness and all of its noise

And to march with integrity, discipline sound

Not with question or regret of what I have found

‘Cause from here you go there and you reap what you sow

Knowing that you might fail…maybe not, maybe so

But at the end of it all, all the trippings and falls

They fall neatly in place and you’re part of it all

And you’re down on your knees and you understand why

All the chapters in your story fall neatly in line

And then so clear will be all the colors of me

Then I’ll see…pretty please

All the purpose and reason in my history

When it’s so hard to fight, know the future’s so bright

And it’s always all right…it’s all right

In the colors of me…

Won’t you see…can’t you see…don’t you see

All the colors of me