Lookin' In

(album: Patchwork - 1971)

Can't seem to settle down
Maybe I'll just hang around
But every time you pick me up
I guess I take you down
But here I am again
You'll take me back and then
It won't be long till I'll be gone
Upon my way again

So I spend my days thinking up new ways
To do the same old thing
Seasons come and go without a name
And I spend my nights in the bright spotlights
Wishing I could let the people know
Can't win or lose unless you play the game

Sitting in the airport, awaiting on my plane
Nothing to do for an hour or two
So I try to find a message in a picture I drew
In the corner of a letter from a boy I knew

Off the plane and through the rain into a limousine
The traffic's slow so I miss my show
But looking out the window somehow I know
That they're about to play my record
On the radio

So I write another song as I go along
To let you know just where I been
Don't want to meet myself at the masquerade
You can tell in the verse if I get worse
By the chorus I may be fine
A line, my friend, can end the kind charade

Laying in my hotel room, wanting to be alone
Needing the time to rest my mind
But they bring in another stack of papers to sign
And L.A.'s awaiting on the other line

So I'm packing up and I'm checking out
I'm on the road again
Feeling like I'm bringing pen to mind
But the words will come to me in their own time
Tumbling and stumbling over in rhyme

And the ugliest word that I ever heard
My friends, is sacrifice
It's an easy out for all you should have been
And if there's one thing
That I just can't bring myself to compromise
It's blaming somebody else for the state I'm in
Oh, but then again
Daddy never loved his baby girl, no how
Ah, what's the difference now