From long ago, but I want to bring it to the front now. 

(c)2006 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I wrote this poem long ago. I've pretty much taken this advice about Fear . . . .

After drinking rondel tea from the Narrative Boutique , I wanted to try writing a rondel.   

Sunny has to work hard!  

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

---

Travis Lemle is the artist.

Once long ago we created the Solotramp website together, Travis' art, my poetry.  The title of this art is "Alone." 

Then we didn't go into the site for a period of time, and it vanished.

At last -- a new one.  I know that it's been awhile. It's on the long side--more than five minutes.

Happy new year! 

(c)2010 BINNINGS

 

 

 

FIRST ELEGY Excerpt from the Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke - Translation

My translation has attempted to somewhat simplify to make more accessible to Americans. I hope I have not lost the profundity of Rilke.

First Elegy (Excerpt)
Who, if I cried out, would listen among the classes of holy angels?
and should one clasp me to its breast,
its profound essence would dissolve me.  For beauty
is nothing but the first sight of a terror
that we can hardly stand except that it quietly refrains
from destroying us.  Every angel is too awesome.
And so I swallow my luring call and weep in the dark.
Who can help us us? Not angels, not men—and animals
know that we’re homeless in this world we’ve constructed.
Maybe along a hillside a tree stands that we can see
each day, and there are always yesterday’s streets
and the fidel habit moved in like a tenant who now secure
shall not move on.  Oh, and there’s night—night when a cosmic wind
erodes our faces—gentle, yearned for, but how it forces
us to confront the solitary beat of life.  Is it easier for lovers?
No, they only conceal the lottery from each other.
Don’t you understand yet? Throw the emptiness
from your arms into the clearing where we breathe—
maybe the bird in the widened air will fly viscerally.

  -Translation - Eleanor A. Binnings (c)2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
=================
Die erste Elegie
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Und so verhalt ich mich denn und verschlucke den Lockruf
dunkelen Schluchzens. Ach, wen vermögen
wir denn zu brauchen? Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt. Es bleibt uns vielleicht
irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich
wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern
und das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit,
der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie und ging nicht.
O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind voller Weltraum
uns am Angesicht zehrt –, wem bliebe sie nicht, die ersehnte,
sanft enttäuschende, welche dem einzelnen Herzen
mühsam bevorsteht. Ist sie den Liebenden leichter?
Ach, sie verdecken sich nur mit einander ihr Los.
Weißt du's noch nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere
zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel
die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.

It's after midnight on the sixth year after you inaugerated
the shattering of my heart, and I'm not thinking about the way
you held me in the palm of your long-fingered hand nor looking
for those letters I saved somewhere in a cardboard box,
but rather realizing how murdering the memory of you

didn't quite end the sense of your breath in my ear
nor your stroking of my leg that night before the taxi came
and took you permanently away from me.

You'll never know the way you lived in my cells . . .
Nor the way I used to gaze at the stars to feel close to you--
same stars, same old moon tonight -- reminding me

how small and alone I am, no one filling my pores
with hot, yearning music, no one carrying me
where I've never been before nor wanting to jump the fence
into my yard . . . Oh, this holy life in an expanding universe

where it's after midnight on the eve of a fading dream
of the impossible. I'm learning, at least, to sleep eyes open,
although I still sleep naked as if I were immune to the cold . . .

This body eclipsed so long, it's as though the world's turned dark.
And now the languid stretch of limbs, wanting the feel
of anything . . . even if just feeling my textured, soft skin.

(c)2007  Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jimmy Cacciatore and Jason Hollar produced Flowers for You  (c) 1999 Cacch a Smile Enterprises

Unique--Jimmy grew up with English and Sign Language together (spoken in the home!) -- born in Fort Carson and grew up in Fort Collins.  Great childhood, lotsa friends, lotsa sports--diving, football, soccer, baseball . . . and then one day Jimmy was on his way to diving practice, but did not make it.  The true headbanger: life changed with a head injury.  He had to relearn speech, etc., and is quicker at Sign Language than speaking the complexities of English.  But he can do music!!!

The accident wiped out education, but he kept his all-time, all-good personality.  Who wouldn't love his music????

The first song put up here is "Empty Years."  Drummer is Rick Trinidad, and Jason is on electric bass.  Jimmy plays acoustic 12-string guitar.  Enjoy, enjoy!!!

DRAMA

I don't care to dwell in the past
that murky place of half-baked memories

my story begins here
now
on this Saturday afternoon in a strange city

Oh sure, there was this and that...
that
this
event
the epic
cast in others' stories
villain
friend
confidante
lover,
fallen idol

when cast in another's drama
and understand the role I am supposed to play
I potest "I am not like that!"
But he tries to convince me I am
He needs someone to play that role
and I care
and I am free

watching the rain beat against the window
my drama begins as a silent monologue

it is a Saturday afternoon in a strange city . . .

(c)2005 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

my mind spins

unable to empty

itself of you

 

i was born

without skin

you say standing

in the doorwary

contemplating

the rain

remembering

yourself

an altar boy

among candles

gregorian chants

& the strange

sad music

of the homeland

you left at 19

long before you

met me on a bridge

between the Sahel

and the suburbs

beneath a sky

of crossed stars

you pierced me

with a kiss

like a spear

carried me

to a cliff

at the edge

of the canyon

and then you flew --

a naked peregrine

against a sky clouded

by smoke from a bridge

on fire below leaving

my skin burnt

to ashes Ii hold

in my naked hands

and my mind spins

unable to empty

itself of you

 

(c) 2008 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

Generation 1999

It's in the headlines
in the tabloids
on the lips
of people
knocking on my door
almost before the sun comes up
"the end is almost here"

As children we were taught
to fold ourselves
under our desks at school
fallout shelter salesmen
knocked on our doors

and we knew
we were the first
generation
that could be
annhilated
in less time
than it takes
for a soulful kiss

and when we got older
our parents said:
"What's wrong with this generation?
they live like there's no tomorrow."

Most of us are seeing
middle age
in the mirror
in the morning . . .

and our children
are standing in
supermarket lines

where blaring headlines
announce the end
of the world . . .

 . . .watching people
stream
toward sem-hostile
borders
bombs and mines
flare
and boom behind them

some kids garb
a school
in explosives

Do you know the world
is coming to an end?

. . . But my tulips are up again
leaves unfurl on brown branches
young rabbits dart across my lawn

Everywhere is the music
of birds who have made
the long journey again.

Water falls
from the sky
and changes
 the color of the grass

We interpret symbols
and imagine we're equipped
to portend the future.

The wheel of fortune turns

Who stands to gain
from saying "THE END!"

Who stands to lose?

************************
(c) 2008 Binnings

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

---

It's be awhile & I listened to this one today, so I thought I would move it toward the front for a little while.

Time for a new photograph.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Two years ago today is when I flew to Phoenix to meet the surgeon for the brain bypass.  These two years have truly been an incredible experience.  I am alive.  Thank you, everyone!!! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo ==================================================== My first for 2008 . . . a poem I had sought . . . and here it is.  Cycles of life . . . I Wait We're slipping along the paths that lead away from each other-- no longer lovers and barely friends. The echo of your words of love throb in empty canyons ever more distant while day to day jargon swallows memories of when we once touched.  Even now a bond reaches from me to you, each day unraveling and growing more tenuous.  We don't talk except in empty phrases that neither move the earth nor us. I neither leave nor stay . . .  I wait. (c)2008 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

"Yielding" is a vilanelle. 

Are there times to cultivate indifference?

MY NAME IS LIGHT Those empty plates that lie beside the spoons are white and barren as November's moons; the candle on the table brings no scent, but time is never given--only lent. Strike up the match and touch it to dry bones; a barbeque of all our sad night moans and fears that choke us while we yearn but starve-- the world has done enough to dredge and carve a cruel gulf to keep us separate. The gumbo's on the stove; come fill your plate. The days that stretch ahead we cannot know; the candle burns too quickly or melts slow, but now my kitchen glows with hottest flame. Cross the line, come close, and know my name. eleanor (c)2000 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

What You Need

Tired of being alone, you open
your doors and invite people
to press their feet into your carpets,
drink wine, and talk
about politics, movie stars,
and the meaning of life.

Alone again, you muse
about how women and men
long for extended seasons of love

and how all you know of the world
is asses braying -- a lion's roar --
garlands celebrating your house

--that if your philosophy is skepticism,
no one can dispute the words you spread
out on the sand under the sun,
that if you fill cups with water
and feed hungry children,
who will deny you your ambition?

--that favors turn up in unexpected places. . .
You meet a man in the road
carrying luggage with foreign stickers,
and ask him how things explode,
to explain spontaneous combustion,

to carry your grocery bags
to speak plainly of plans,
to sit down on your sofa
to write a letter that talks
about
how hard it is to see
the obstacles that lie
in the desert ahead.

And then you stand near the desert
not knowing if the sun rises or sets,
knowing only the time to cover your face
from the drying winds.

It's sleep . . .

or . . .love . . . .

or . . . God . . .you need.


####
(c) 2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

In the still dead of night, a fear takes hold,

a suggestion of giving too much, then being left alone.

Time breaks your heart, and you grow cold.

 

How many times have you yearned to be bold

but afraid the cord will break and drop you with a moan.

In the dead still of night, a fear takes hold.

 

You travel to the days when they tried to mold

you, dissatisfied with your natural skin and bond.

Time breaks your heart, and you grow cold.

 

You relieve the threat of getting ironed into the fold

of a cloth without txture, music, or tone.

]In the dead still of night, a fear takes hold.

 

Night after night, the stories are told

about houses burning that you don’t own.

Time breaks your heart, and you grow cold.

 

You lose sight of the rainbow as the days unfold

counting the minutes you have yet on loan.

In the dead still of night, a fear takes hold.

Time breaks your heart, and you grow cold.

An acquaintance with privilege
The walls are so high
Opportunity is perennial
yet underground like a sigh

Acquaintance with privilege
Who truly are you?
Behind those walls, what do you do?
Or think about when moments are spare
Or minister to with strong feelings of care?

Acquaintance with privilege
What matters to you?
What are your priorities?
In your life, what's new?


(c) 2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Shadows

though i hear your words
there is no action
so why should those words
mean anything to me?

you've held your secrets
you've hid in the shadows
you claim that's your right
and yes, yes it is

you can stay in the shadows
i'll not look for you there
nor will i care what you say

stay in the shadows
it's your right
but those shadows
will hide the jewels

I originally wrote "Bodies" after a conversation with a bulemic.  It was among the first I recorded after my surgery (quite body conscious then!) and experimented again with the sound.  I decided to re-do it, so here it is, a bit different.  Another change I still want to make in it . . . next time. . .

      Bodies
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
he sweet the bitter
he 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 cold can be too cold
or hot too hot
and how viruses 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
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 despise 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) 2007 Binnings  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

---

You inspire me
to remember walls of stone,
dead-end streets,
the razed hill where
the bulldozer sits idle.

Back at the house a man
is tuning the piano while you
and I walk over clumps
of dirt beside a cold lake.
I keep an arm's length between us,
knowing how thin my skin's become.

Tell me . . . what's the use of it?
One more step toward an abyss
where there are no words,
just a sucking gravity and darker dark--
and heat that sears old wounds.
That's the composition of emptiness . . .

I stand here with you and see
twisted, broken forms littering
the ground we walk upon,
and I can calculate the distance
between us by measuring the span
between me and the ragged moon.

What's the use of it? I take
my own hand to lead myself home.
Bridges burn behind me on the lake.
I can feel the flames; no need to hurry now.
Nowhere to go. You inspire me . . . so.

(c) 2007 Binnings  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A new musical background for this villanelle .

---

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 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

What You Need

Tired of being alone, you open
your doors and invite people
to press their feet into your carpets,
drink wine, and talk
about politics, movie stars,
and the meaning of life.

Alone again, you muse
about how women and men
long for extended seasons of love

and how all you know of the world
is asses braying,
a lion's roar,
garlands celebrating your house
that if your philosophy is skepticism,
no one can dispute the words you spread
out on the sand under the sun;
that if you fill cups with water
and feed hungry children,
who will deny you your ambition?

that favors turn up in unexpected places. . .
You meet a man in the road
carrying luggage with foreign stickers,
and ask him how things explode,
to explain spontaneous combustion,

to carry your grocery bags
to speak plainly of plans,
to sit down on your sofa
to write a letter that talks about
how hard it is to see
the obstacles that lie ahead.

And then you stand near the desert
not knowing if the sun rises or sets,
knowing only the time to cover your face
from the drying winds.
It's sleep . . . or . . .love . . . .
or  . . . God  . . .you need.

(c) 1997 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

La Gitana will take you where you've never gone before
La gitana who dances between moon and star
has the power to touch you at your core

Revealing the nuances between venus and mars
she'll take you where you've never gone before
guiding you through an enchanted door
her ability to lead you past walls and bars
has the power to touch you at your core

she'll take you where you've never gone before
to worlds described only in ancient lore
she causes you to yearn and to dream more dreams t
han floated on the evening air
Her breath lifts you to the heavens to soar
to dance with her among gasping stars

Her voice on the strings of a sweet guitar
have the power to touch you at your core
the power to touch you -- caressing and stimulating every pore.

she'll take you where you've never gone before
la gitana who dances between moon and star
has the power to touch you at your core


(c) 1999 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

               Buffalo

I had such a prejudice against rednecks
I got in a relationship with one
just to find out what it was all about

A relationship with a redneck
means when you go camping
there's got  to be a Colt 45 in the tent
You learn the names of all the guns
his special room is filled
with pelts and horns
just to remind him of what he killed

he drives a big red truck
and takes the back roads
away from population
his hero is John Wayne

One time I asked him
if he could go back
to any time in history
what it would be

and he said he'd find himself
on a hill in Texas
on a day the buffalo converged . . .
millions of buffalo black on the earth

commercial bison slaughter
last year was a record 34,444 animals
consumers turned to bison
as an alternative
to beef in the wake of the discovery
of mad cow disease
someone's dreaming of
buffalo ranches in Hokkaido, Japan,
to serve at a specialized restaurant
like the media mogul
Ted Turner's Montana Gill

but i listen
and i hear
the drums
and the song
within the winds --
and in the distance
I see the herd . . .
blackening the plain

(c) 2005

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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

"Essence"  

We meet in a place where
words and pictures begin to occupy
some apartment
or maybe a dance hall
park bench
or chair in the back of an auditorium
in the back of the mind

sometimes i lay a kiss on your cheek
but you don't feel it
sometimes you dance with me
in abandoned circles to music
I don't hear it

there's a room of desire with a locked door
a succession of past lives
marching around the periphery of the colonnade
dancing around your landscape
near the sea and palms and brown women
shaking my landscape of mountains and sky and pink children

what could make these landscapes collide
and quake open that locked door?

a car a train a plane
a thumb held up to the wind

But time is not of the essence
The essence is this time

(c)2006 eleanor a binnings  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The name of this poem is "Half."  This poem is for those who are close to someone who has Post Tramatic Stress Disorder.

---

(c)2005 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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This is one of the early ones when I first began experimenting with laying the music behind the poems.  Some shades of the music exist in another one, and I'll either change this one or that one.  Meanwhile, here is "Bad Lover," with the hope you never experience one.  But if it happens, well . . . write a poem . . .

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I wrote this poem shortly after the Downing Street memos were reported -- awhile back.  It is in my combination here titled Political Propaganda, but now I've decided to set it up here alone.  (My poems are mostly still packed away; that's why the poem's words aren't visible here.)

I've heard that political poetry fades when the issue is resolved.  But gosh, today it's hard to believe we live in a democracy when the dog on top kicks crap over all others except those who feed him treats. 

Brainwashing.  Last year at this time when I was awaiting my brain surgery and Sharon was como-ed out with his stroke, I was watching a lot of TV since I was supposed to do anything strenuous (that is just about nothing so my there'd be no interior-head explosion.  It was clear that a lot of people were coming out of the Cave, i.e. Plato's Cave. 

When it had become clear that the U.S. was going to Iraq, I began researching to find out why since all the puzzle pieces weren't fitting logically together.  I expected to find a good, solid answer.  Nope, I found seriously nasty answers.  Depressing, aggravating, frustrating, ugly.  The Downing Street memos were just one more nail in the sociopathic coffin.

How were all these people who encourage or make terrible decisions raised?  Raised to be sociopathic . . . psychopathic?

Anyway, I wrote this political poem in a little state of irritability given the news of the Downing Street memos.  Soooo, it is . . . my irritable poem??

I wish I knew who the person I'm quoting in the poem is.  I found it as an anonymous quote.  I'd love to give that wise person credit!!

P.S.  There's a Downing Street memo webpage here: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org  -- and another here: http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/  

Here are the words . . . .

sow a thought; reap an act...sow an act; reap a habit...sow a habit; reap a character; sow a character; reap a destinty, someone wise person once said....being sensible is not the same as being overcautious...being reckless is not the same as being courageous...being stubborn is not the same as having conscious resolve....blind faith is not the same as confidence...; getting the answer you want is not the same as the Truth.......when a leader fixesintelligence and facts around a policy...?
 Lead time 90 days . . .Use forces already in theatre ...lies, lies, lies . . .sow a thought, reap and act, shed blood....
sow an act; reap a habit . . .

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This is "Birds." 

Since my aneurysm., most of my stuff is packed away, and I'm not sure where the poem is.  I'll pop it up here as soon as it turns up for me. 

It's a little different . . . maybe . . .

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The blizzards have made me think of this poem, "Drought," since it appears that the drought has ended.

People must wonder how many people the water here can support.  Definitely xeroscaping is a good idea here.

Sprout, grow, bloom, go to seed . . .

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 For a Man

You light a fire in an ash can           
under the willow and sliver moon
setting with Venus 
over the open sea. 

We talk of shifting continents,
how this wind may breathe over us
the mingled dust  of our ancestors' bones. 
Mars rises behind the moon.

The fire casts violent shadows 
over your face.    I am  a continent
of women to you---but to me . . .

you are one man . . .
who fires a thousand years
of rage into me-- 
enough rage to burn the sky--

I am no continent--but an ocean 
swallowing fire whole. 
Watch now how Mars trails the moon...

and the moon is falling into the sea

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Now I'm wondering if it was the aneurysm pressing in my brain, creating a Pressing-Feeling.  I know there was a day before the doublevision set in that I got up in the morning and started down the stairs, and the doubling existed for a few seconds. 

Prior to my awareness of the aneurysm, I had two bad falls on ice about one year apart from each other.  It is impossible to know if they influenced the aneurysm or not.  But they were memorable falls.  Here's a picture taken a month or so after the first fall -- still the bump & bruise.

And here is "Pressed."  (Next I hope to put up translations.)

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Among a few other of my love poems -- "La Gitana," "Carnival Man," and "What Is a Love?" -- is:

Guaranteed Love Spell to be Chanted During a Blue Trapper�s Moon

i am everywoman whose eyes have held yours, who has steamed your nettles has raised welts in your mind
made you laugh, weep ......drift
i strip away your barricades,
your hesitation to love

my breath stuns enchants you with the scent of ginger sassafras and then fills your bowl 
i am a mosaic of spices that awakens your taste
my touch sings to your skin like a harem of bells
i am the yeast leavening your dough to ecstasy

 i host your roots ....make you lucid

i lay my claim to you
you will never forget me

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The poems contained here are:

 "Generations," "Trackin'," "Greed?" and "Sow a Habit." 

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