Rick Davis is playing harmonica on this.  I'd love to have a solo.

---

Moonbeams & Thin Air

The way you love me is unfair
Your good intentions all turn to lies
all moonbeams and thin air

I no longer know what I may share
without clean water, the orchid dies
the way you love me is unfair

between us at first was something rare
but history tells me it's no surprise
it's all moonbeams and thin air.

for you i laid my raw skin bare
too often i've exposed myself unwise
the way you love me is unfair

some things in life are meant to wear
long....but .... still time grows wings and flies
it's all moonbeams and thin air

i recall the touch of your hands in my hair
but now i'm unreflected in your eyes
the way you love me is unfair
it's all moonbeams and thin air
i love you more than you care.......

(c)2008 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BEAT

On my block six girls are pregnant,
their bellies almost bigger than they are
so they can't see the ground when they walk
The way they walk is as if
the wind is blowing them back
four girls have babies
you can hear squalling day and night
and the girl-moms too yelling,
"Shut up! I can't stand it!" Slap slap
but the squalling goes on.
Over at the clinic some people march
with signs stepping on cracks with their big flat shoes
their shadows growing long
over the plants with wilted leaves.
And up on the hill the boys dress hot,
practicing moves while their music fills the street
with a scorching beat. Uptown cars roll
with their windows up and tinted dark
and no one comes out to play.


(c)2007 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For Shy Women in Solitude

Those of us who live in cages

pause to open cupboards

itemize and arrange boxes and cans

of prepared foods we eat

when we are not hungry

and we wash our plates unsated

 

our voices are tinny and crackle

we know the days of turning pages

the drowning waters of our tears

nights when we hunch

under a mound of blankets

touching our own skin

we imagine another's hand

our nipples erect, expectant

beneath a stomp and shout moon

 

curl our arms around our own backs

until it feels almost as if we are not alone

but then our breasts shrivel in waiting

and we get up to the assault of silence,

pace, stopping only to look in the cupboards,

to wind the ticking clock

Rebel nun of the 17th century.
Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz lived in the certainty that "all things come from God, who is the center and at the same time the circumference from which all the lines of creation issue and where they stop." Such was the life of this religious woman of 17th-century New Spain, who not only left her mark on Spanish-American literature but whose cry of revolt over their inferior position of women is timely even today.

Beatriz Berger.  World Press Review.  Oct 1994.
From http://www.lasmujeres.com/sorjuana/rebelnun.shtml

Here is your introduction to Sor Juana.

And here:  http://www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/culture/SorJuana/SorJuana2.htm


A Su Retrato
Este, que ves, engano colorido,
que del arte ostentando los primores,
con falsos silogismos de colores
es cauteloso engano del sentido;
este, en quien la lisonja ha pretendido
excusar de los anos los horrores,
y venciendo del tiempo los rigores
triunfar de la vejez y del olvido,
es un vano artificio del cuidado
es una flor al viento delicada,
es un resguardo inutil para el hado:
es una necia diligencia errada,
es un afan caduco y, bien mirado,
es cadaver, es polvo, es sombra, es nada.

My translation:

To Her Portrait

the artifice of colors  that here you see
testify to cunning and crafty grace
But if its false logic and gloss faded away,
we'd begin to see how illusory is the likeness,
how human vanity deceives us all into thinking
years erase the horrors those years
have etched into our faces
But to battle with time is insanity,
is a futile gesture you cannot hope to win,
 is an absence of caution, is wit put aside
is a delicate flower caught in the wind
is a weak defense against what Fate's contrived
is a conquest doomed, and you know in your mind
it's a corpose, dust, shadow, a reed's insides

(c) 2004  Binnings  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This is a vilanelle.

Are there times to cultivate indifference?