The Woman of Sanity

She's the one you love when you want sanity
when that crowd you run with eats your soul
when the routine life is all uncertainty -- then you love
the woman who exacts no toll.

You love her because she doesn't ask you to give
she's like a bright stroke of lightning, like the waiting earth
and she holds a piece of your heart...a shard of ice, a flake of stone...
That sturdy bit of sanity in a churning world
the live and let live woman, blood, flesh and bone....

(c)2005 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

         The Meaning of Touch

I want to know the meaning of touch  
if i touch you, you don't say so....
why do you hold back so much

of what you feel where there is such
possbility for where we might go?
Why do you hold back so much

when our hands and thoughts match
as do our songs and their echo
I want to know the meaning of touch,

want to slide off your shirt and caution
and look at you beside the window
why do you hold back so much?

Tonight I am tired of the watch,
wary and distant, lying low--
want to know the meaning of touch...

Let me caress your wounds -- wound me if
    you must
burn me to ashes; melt me like glass--
oh I want to know the meaning of touch
Why must you hold back so much?

(c) 2007
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The original of this has been on my website here for a few years:  http://geocities.com/tori_the_rose/

Or if it works this way:  http://geocities.com/tori_the_rose/
The website needs IE browser to open properly.

That webpage is the predecessor to this one.  The music there is completely different from here.  But yes.  Predecessor.

This poem was written after talking to a woman who had bulemia and got me thinking about loving our bodies . . .I will probably record it again, but in the meantime:


This body slid into the world with perfect limbs lungs and innocence
for years it did all the things bodies should do
moving breathing crying cringing
from bumps falls burns
bleeding touching the sweet the bitter the sour    salt
sleeping under blankets
and beneath stars
seeing objects and plants and animals
hearing music and voices and clicks and creaks

Maybe we don't enjoy the way our bodies hurt
or give warning
or the rough hands that press into our ribs
the bite and itch and burrow of feeding insects
the way colds can be too cold
or hot too hot
and how viruses and bacteria make us ill

when do we learn we're not to love these bodies
their colors their shapes the sounds they make?
the marks and scars that hint at our most dramatic stories

we conceal our bodies and some of us even keep out the lights
so our lovers will not judge our bodies as harshly as we do ourselves
those who remove their clothes have the bodies we're supposed to have
implanted liposuctioned rhinoplastied bo-flexed
waxed like fruit in a display ad

how do we come to be conscious of bodies
and then despire our own?
these bodies that entered the world to do the things
that bodies do . . .
these bodies that cook everything we can ever taste of life

(c) 2006

Complexities of life . . .

A couple years ago, I was emptying my life of everything I did not love.

And then . . .. among others things, someone robbed my home while I was in the hospital.  I sold that home, the home my daughter and I had never gone to live in again . . .

Open life . . . open arms . . .

Here's the first (unpoetic) poem of 2007.

what a year of loss it's been
what a year of loss
my home   my lover   my routine
what a year of loss

it used to be i had high hopes
but reality sank in
it used to be i could throw a rope
because i was so strong
what a year of loss it's been
the old path closed, destroyed

the new path does not permit
the user  the liar  the thief
'cause what a path of loss that was
what a path of pain

crafting a new path
is just a little hard
a path of strength
a path of peace
it's just a little hard

but i'm alive so i'll keep on
refueled and travelin' on
the time of loss behind me now
the rocks and rooks blown off

the new path does not permit
the user  the liar  the thief
i'm alive and i'll keep on
myself  my love  my dream

(c)2007 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED