Take me to Vienna where the music walks.
Where the buildings invite you to sit,
And accompany them for a cup of melange.
Where the many palace gardens have jovial pique-niques,
With their bikes resting by the trees.

Take me to Vienna where life ebbs out
Where the past lives on,
And composers wave out the windows.

Take me to Klimt's golden city,
The city where even the grey Donau is welcoming.
Take me to Vienna and don't take me back.

Surround us in white light so that we may be your eternal servants of good
Temptation is pervasive as we remember what we should
Intend our curiosity
Empower creativity
Deliver us from evil
so we may live eternally
Amen

on the night train to Vienna I dreamt
as the soft tangerine light bled into the windows,
tumbling down infinities of Italian countryside
absorbing into my retinas in summer shades
of dusk-colored haze


entranced I was--
a nervous girl of sixteen years,
uncharted valleys sprawling ceaselessly
at the beds of my fingers,
love languages my tongue could not yet
stretch its fibers around
freedom forming its hunched silhouette
just outside of thin glass windows
cooled by the night’s apprehensive breeze


endless, it seemed
the rumbling blur of possibilities--
my hands sedated for the first time in years.
quietly existing in the jolt of a moving cab,
the subtle ricochet through the faint lamppost glow
of fragile Austrian dreams.


home-- four thousand and forever miles away
and yet here was fine, just fine
a girl with stringy hair and a steaming cup
of midnight European tea
as her mother sighed to herself in the
peak of her American afternoon,
wondering whether her baby had found sleep
in someone else’s morning.

Mother threw me away
****** me in and spit me out
The pavement still tastes like your thighs
Like bubble gum underneath the chemistry table

Where I first held hands with
Some other girl I loved
Not knowing her reaction but
We burned flowers cut with kitchen knives.

I woke up to ashes lining my breakfast
Tongue thick with Amaryllis
Thinking if God asks you my name
Say serpent,

Say hello —
A disaster of two elements
You and me
If we combined

Our neon wrists.
Does Ares care about
How I touch you, with the lights off
You tell me the walls

Already know
What I do with my wolf teeth
And your caffeinated bellybutton,
They find you in three nights.

Rebirth is not as kind
To my combusting spine, replace
Ghost sin with your birth right
Jacob’s carnage

I paid for with eyelashes,
Long glances — my dignity
Wrapped in ****** white, and impotent boy skin
Becomes a coffin.

(Scene by the brook)*                                

He came seeking solace to Heiligenstadt
    and walked alone by its crystal stream
        welcomed by songs the nightingale taught.

Its cheerful waters made Vienna seem
    a distant, cool and forbidding stage
        where few would embrace a pastoral dream.

He dotted his sketchbooks on every page
    with earthen tones born of peasant heart -
        (though fare rich enough for any age) .                

He poured from the stream the fiddle part,
    and woodwinds sang with the birds in the dell -
        all "choired" together by his masterful art.

At Heiligenstadt Beethoven attended well
    and bequeathed us his golden 'Pastorale.'

*July, 2006

Little child, be not afraid
The rain pounds harsh against the glass
Like an unwanted stranger
There is no danger
I am here tonight

Little child
Be not afraid
Though thunder explodes
And lightning flash
Illuminates your tearstained face
I am here tonight

And someday you'll know
That nature is so
This same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
And forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning

Little child
Be not afraid
The storm clouds mask your beloved moon
And its candlelight beams
Still keep pleasant dreams
I am here tonight

Little child
Be not afraid
The wind makes creatures of our trees
And the branches to hands
They're not real, understand
And I am here tonight

And someday you'll know
That nature is so
This same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
And forest and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning

For you know, once even I
Was a little child
And I was afraid
But a gentle someone always came
To dry all my tears
Trade sweet sleep the fears
And to give a kiss goodnight

Well, now I am grown
And these years have shown
Rain's a part of how life goes
But it's dark and it's late
So I'll hold you and wait
'til your frightened eyes do close

And I hope that you'll know
That nature is so
This same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
And forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning

Everything's fine in the morning
The rain will be gone in the morning
But I'll still be here in the morning