Music: Libera Me

Songs are waking me in the night
in swollen crescendo until my eyelids flap open
with words - their relentless codas, their meanings
transforming my dreams to music,
and my heart to sonorous beats of rhythm.
I cannot abandon this oracle, but wait
to hear its conclusion. I am moved to ovation
and new music enters - notes, sounds, lyrics,
surrounding my bed in a luminous corona.
I am inexorably caught up in the spontaneous gift
and am powerless to cease its intrusion into my rest.
I love and obey the song's presence
and await the diminuendo to sleep again.

Daylight brings the torrid, angry, crashing piano
fulfilling my need to cry, to understand.
Verdi comes at twilight: kyrie, kyrie eleison.
It is better to know and love it all as
the world opens up in lyrical and tonal diversity.
At nightfall libera me, salva me from that
which I cannot comprehend.
The gift, the rush, the orgasmic pleasure
of the counterpoint, and the chaotic, shattering climax.
The foreign language now holds my prayer.
The requiem overpowers me
and brings me
to my knees.
I await the
dies irae.
I pray:
agnus dei
libera me, salva me,
libera me.