I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
You know what you know so you go break the terror of the urban spell
This alliance you say 'I'm on the threshold of greatness girl' so you burn
Your pagoda through the congo till there's a broken bond
On the birth of the search white trash
My native son
It will all find its way in time
Blossom riot poof
You know what you know so you go chain her to your flow
She bites through your lean dried meatas she's
Going to the movie show
In a bath of gliter and a tiny shiver
She crawls through your lava sea
Black sahara
I'm stepping into your space oddity
It will all find its way in time
Blossom riot poof
The sun is warming
My man is moistening
On the bomb
On the bond
On the bomb
This alliance you say 'I'm on the threshold of greatness girl' so you burn
Your pagoda through the congo till there's a broken bond
On the birth of the search white trash
My native son
It will all find its way in time
Blossom riot poof
You know what you know so you go chain her to your flow
She bites through your lean dried meatas she's
Going to the movie show
In a bath of gliter and a tiny shiver
She crawls through your lava sea
Black sahara
I'm stepping into your space oddity
It will all find its way in time
Blossom riot poof
The sun is warming
My man is moistening
On the bomb
On the bond
On the bomb
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"To me Riot Poof is about one part of my family that is the conqueror and the other part who where being conquered. They fought at both sides. And you have to find out who you are. Many people don't want to see that they're partly victim and partly the executioner. Every evening I get letters. Hundreds of letters. A great part of them are letters from young women (and men) who where sexually abused by adults they trusted. They hate themselves because they think they made the adults do this. They are all wearing a little victim sign. Like they belong like some elite group. They're drown in a lake called victimhood. Instead of saying: 'No! I have the pride of a lioness. I will hunt. I will escape from this all.' I found this place when I lost my baby. Then I understood the life force you can get from it. So I could go to Venus, to make passionate records there. I can't define my new record yet. I only see this picture in front of me, like it is filmed from a camera that is circling round the heart of Venus. So I can look at her in all her darkness." [Tori; OOR Magazine, Sept. 18, 1999]
"This record talks a lot about the shadows and the shadow world," says Amos. "`Riot Poof' is for all the jocks out there who need to deal with their secret sexuality." [Tori; Tower Records' Pulse Magazine, NOV99]
"I'm surprised when I see, for instance, gay men being racist or women colluding with that patriarchal thing, when women are sexist against women. So men don't surprise me. Being a lioness, I know the teeth and claws of women. But, of course, women have always been blamed. We see it down the centuries - 'if she didn't have a wet pussy then we wouldn't have been with her'. Urgh! And they have a woody sitting at the fuckin' table but they see it as this sanctified, insatiable body part. And women aren't allowed that - if they do, they become bad. That's what the song Riot Poof is about. It's like I'm the tooth fairy, the homo fairy and this is my present to all the homophobes. I'm leaving it under all their pillows. [She pauses] Blossom riot poof."
"Well, that being a poof doesn't mean you're not a hunter, that you're not masculine, or a man. And also being feminine doesn't mean that you're not a hunter either. There are all these concepts around but now the paradoxes are starting to live." [Tori; Attitude Magazine, Nov99]
"Yeah... Because I was brought up in such a Christian household it is about the father. It's a father God and a son saviour so when I say "The sun is warming / My man is moistening" in Riot Poof, which is really about a guy who finds his feminine after he burns everything to ground and decides maybe, head, face down to the earth, 'Maybe I need to think about this for ten seconds'." [Tori; Much More Music's Speakeasy, Jan 2000]
[Julie]: So who wrote a song about you? [Darren]: Because I was cooking for Tori Amos when I came out,she wrote a song about me. It was called Drama Queen which when translated into Dutch and back into English becomes Riot Poof, so that's what she called it. [Darren Staats, Tori's chef during the 1998 Plugged Tour; Gay.com Interview, Early 2001]
Thank you for all those quotes - it does help verify some of what I suspected the song is about. I think the themes are clear but it's still hard to decipher Tori's language.
I'd always thought the song was partly about self-hatred brought on by prejudice against a person's sexual orientation. The verse:
you know what you know so you go chain her to your flow she bites through your lean dried meatas she's going to the movie show in a bath of gliter and a tiny shiver she crawls through your lava sea black sahara i'm stepping into your space oddity
This, I cannot help but think it's about trivializing martyrdom - turning it into a sort of fashion statement. "She bites through your dry lean meat as she's going to the movie show - in a bath of glitter and a tiny shiver" - it all conjures images of a social scene, a world of superficiality, sharp tongues and bitchiness. I think this is Tori's assessment of the gay scene or maybe just the idea that it's suddenly cool to embrace sexual diversity but it also works as a smokescreen to cover the fact that there's a whole lot of anger and hatred underneath it all. The scene, in fact, perpetuates this sort of behaviour but makes it out to be something cheap, fun and harmless.
I could be completely wrong but still. I do recall reading something about the gay scene and its superficiality.
This song is totally underrated. One of the best on Venus for sure.