Vienna Teng Lyrics, Photos, Pictures, Paroles, Letras, Text for every songs

B i o g r a p h y
(by James M. Manheim)

Born Cynthia Shih in San Jose, CA, 1978; daughter of Taiwanese immigrant parents; took stage name Vienna Teng in recognition of the role of the city of Vienna, Austria, in classical music history. California-born singer-songwriter-pianist Vienna Teng has drawn numerous comparisons from journalists attempting to characterize her style---comparisons not only to other female singer-songwriters like Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos, but also to classical composer Fréderic Chopin. Teng studied classical piano from age five until she finished high school. After her graduation from Stanford University, she caught the public's attention with her graceful, intricately accompanied original songs. She has released two albums on the Seattle-based Virt label and has appeared on CNN, The Late Show with David Letterman, and National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. Teng was born in 1978 in San Jose, California. Vienna Teng is her stage name, taken at age 12 to honor the Austrian city that was home to classical composers Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; her birth name was Cynthia Shih. Teng's parents, natives of Taiwan, came to California to work in the San Francisco Bay Area's technology industry. She got some early exposure to the art of the singer-songwriter when her parents started listening to records by Carole King, James Taylor, and Simon & Garfunkel in order to improve their English skills. "It was sophisticated stuff--'You read your Emily Dickinson and I, my Robert Frost,'--that's not simple English," Teng recalled to Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was a tradition that was taken with the poetry of words and with the idea that lyrics should say something." Piano lessons also helped push Teng in the direction of a musical career. Many Chinese-American parents in California require piano studies of their children, but Teng asked for them on her own after trying out pianos at the houses of family friends. Her parents "didn't force it on me at all, and they never scolded me into practicing," she told Marian Liu of the San Jose Mercury News. Teng was a talented pianist, and for a while she dreamed of a concert career. She also began writing popular songs at age 10, and two songs she wrote while a student at Saratoga High School later showed up on her debut album, Waking Hour. After graduating from high school and enrolling at Stanford, however, she decided on a pre-med program.

That decision brought Teng to a crisis point. "I realized that I was not meant to be a doctor," she told Liu. "I thought I had the personality. I really love affecting people in a deep and personal way. But I realized music was another way to achieve the same effect." Teng began performing in her Stanford dorm, which had a piano, and friends encouraged her to get serious about music, distributing mp3 copies of her songs around campus. She switched her major, not to music, but to computer science, "a good way to save money for the music," she told Liu. An audio engineering student named Eric Miller recorded some of her songs for a class project, and Teng developed the nucleus of what became her first CD, Waking Hour. After graduating from Stanford in 2000, Teng got a job as a software engineer at computer giant Cisco Systems and started taking classical voice lessons, "which amounted to paying $40 a week to be told that I was doing it all wrong," she said in an interview posted on her website. She started performing at parties and coffee houses around the Bay Area. The early version of Waking Hour that she offered for sale found a thousand enthusiastic buyers over the course of a year, and she began to focus on developing her musical career. Miller helped Teng develop a website, and she began putting files on free mp3 distribution websites. She moved into an apartment in San Francisco's up-and-coming Mission District. Her songs, mostly romantic or narrative pieces drawn from her life at Stanford, resonated with young audiences. Asian Americans, too, flocked to her shows. "I didn't want to be billed as an Asian-American artist, but it is undeniable," Teng conceded to Jon Bream of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Asian Americans do come out to my shows in numbers that the promoters say they've never seen before." She added a Taiwanese folk song called "The Green Island Serenade" to her shows, and included it as a hidden track at the end of her second album, Warm Strangers.

Entrepreneur Michael Tarlowe, a former financial analyst bitten by the music bug, heard one of Teng's recordings on the Web. "I was floored," he told Selvin. He flew to see her perform in Mountain View, California, signed Teng to his new Seattle-based Virt Records label, and released Waking Hour in late 2002. Teng quit her Cisco Systems job, taking a 50 percent pay cut, and embarked on a schedule of nationwide touring. She expected to put in years in the trenches, but success came quickly. David Letterman heard National Public Radio's Weekend Edition profile of Teng, and invited her to appear on his show in January of 2003. Waking Hour skyrocketed to the top ten in sales at online retailer Amazon. One of her songs, "The Tower," written about a Stanford roommate who nurtured other students but cracked under the weight of her own unmet needs, was used on the NBC television series Ed. With her second album, Warm Strangers, Teng made a bid for mainstream success. She worked with producer David Henry, who had formerly worked with alternative groups REM and the Cowboy Junkies, creating a sound that backed Teng's lilting voice and piano with a variety of lush sounds ranging from guitars to orchestral strings or a string quartet. Teng and Henry collaborated on a radio-friendly anthem called "Hope on Fire." But mostly, Warm Strangers featured Teng's distinctive originals, this time with a storytelling emphasis. "Passages" was a haunting song written from the perspective of a woman who has died in an automobile crash, while in "The Atheist Christmas Carol" Teng made an unusual contribution to the seasonal repertoire. Warm Strangers landed Teng on the CBS television Early Show and the Wayne Brady Show, and it peaked at number two on Amazon's sales chart. Most important, it brought Teng to the attention of larger live audiences, who began to focus on her low-key but virtuoso music-making. She opened shows for Joan Baez, Patty Griffin, and the Indigo Girls, and in January of 2005 she performed at the 4,500-seat Ann Arbor Folk Festival in Michigan. Teng has continued to absorb new musical influences. "I try to keep my ears open to all kinds [of music]," she said in an interview quoted on her website. "I think Eminem is amazing. I can get high off of [classical composers] Josquin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Miles Davis hurts my brain in a good way." Another new influence was the sonically ambitious rock music of Radiohead. As Teng worked on her third album in 2005, expectations ran high for the young performer who had managed to find a place for her years of piano lessons in the music of today.

The tower

The one who survives by making the lives
Of others worthwhile
She's coming apart
Right before my eyes
The one who depends on the services she renders
To those who come knocking
She's seeing too clearly what she can't be
What understanding defies

She says I need not to need
Or else a love with intuition
Someone who reaches out to my weakness and won't let go
I need not to need
I've always been the tower
But now I feel like I’m the flower trying to bloom in snow

She turns out the light anticipating night falling
Tenderly around her
And watches the dusk
The words won't come
She carries the act so convincingly the fact is
Sometimes she believes it
That she can be happy the way things are
Be happy with the things she's done

Reach out
But hold back
Where is safety
Reach out
And hold back
Where is the one who can change me
Where is the one
The one
The one

Reach out
But hold back
Where is safety
Reach out
And hold back
Where is the one who can save me
Where is the one
The one
The one

Momentum

Why am I walking barefoot
Upon this road with no one around
I close my eyes to this decision
The night's like coffee to my tongue
Like waking up without a sound
I map the words out
Maybe you will say them

Would you help me rise up
Touch my face and watch me try to breathe again
Would you let me do this
Burn down the final wall

Overcome me baby
Overcome me baby
Overcome me baby
Overcome me yeah
All I’m asking is to be alive for once

Always I am mistaken
I look for love I find a stone
Of all the seasons winter befriends me
I come to you in friendship
And hold my breath against the snow
What are you thinking as I gaze into you

Forgive me the confusion
Forgive me as I realize my thoughts betrayed
You are the answer
Cry and smile the same

Gravity

Hey love
Is that the name you're meant to have
For me to call
Look love
They've given up believing
They've turned aside our stories of the gentle fall

But don't you believe them
Don't you drink their poison too
These are the scars that words have carved
On me

Hey love
That's the name we've long held back
From the core of truth

So don't turn away now
I am turning in revolution
These are the scars that silence carved
On me

This is the same place
No not the same place
This is the same place, love
No not the same place we've been before

Hey love
I am a constant satellite
Of your blazing sun
My love
I obey your law of gravity
This is the fate you've carved on me

Daughter

Well it's you and it's me
Me with a drink in my hand
The ice is tinkling like a wind chime
And late afternoon settles over the land
And you're talking about things
Interesting just slightly
And things that matter too much
To say any way but lightly

Did you know you're so beautiful
On the edge of summer
That years from now
I'll cry to remember
How very close you were
Knowing this will I reach for you
Knowing this will I reach for you
The way you want me to

Well it's time to be wise
Wise in the ways of the heart
To come out from under the covers
This voluntary state of apart
From the faces, oasis
In this Sahara of sorrow
These graces that hold me
It's from you that I borrow

Between

We are not together here
Though we lie entwined
To make room for the other presence
We both draw back in our minds
I have a prophecy
Threatening to spill into words
This growing certainty
Of over

There once was a time I was sure of the bond
When my hands and my tongue and my thoughts were enough
We are the same but our lives move along
And the third one between replaces what once was love

Freedom is being alone
I fear liberation
But something more alive than silence
Swallows conversation
No pleasing drama
In subtle averted eyes
The swelling fermata
As the chord dies

There's no denying we feel the third one
We do
I'm tired of hiding and so are you

Say uncle

Everyone agrees it came too soon
It was only meant to be an intersection
You kept fear of death in back pocket of your jeans
In the palm of your hand, affection

It came like a sudden gust of wind
Leaving them, bewildered, to ask how
I recall last time we met you said we'd meet again
The irony is only bitter now

These days everyone cries "say uncle"
They want to touch your spirit lest it die
For this your sons and widow gather with us at the table
To form a healing circle for our new demise
These days everyone cries "say uncle"
I retrieve the memories quickly as I can
Add them to the portrait we all draw in our minds
Your body gone, we shall keep the man

I close my eyes and hope they do not fade
These remnants of a voice and of a smile
Images of landscape cloaked in forest green
Like your life unfolding mile by mile

A fierce embrace, a word of thanks
A cheerful whistle and hours in a van
Somehow these pieces must bring back the man you were
Though the ocean claims your ashes on the sand

These days everyone cries "say uncle"
They want to touch your spirit lest it die
For this your sons and widow gather with us at the table
To form a healing circle for our new demise
These days everyone cries "say uncle"
I retrieve the memories quickly as I can
Add them to the portrait we all draw in our minds
Your body gone, we shall keep the man

Drought

Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall
Wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all
How sweet is the day
I'm craving a darkness
As I sit tucked away with my back to the wall

And the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth
And the landscape of merry and desperate drought
How much longer dear angels
Let winter light come
And spread your white sheets over my empty house

Summer move forward and leave your heat anchored in dust
Forgotten him, cheated him, painted illusions of lust
Now language escape, fugitive of forgiveness
Leaving as trace only circles of rust

And the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth
And the landscape of merry and desperate drought
How much longer dear angels
Come break me with ice
Let the water of calm trickle over my doubts

Come let me drown
Angels no fire no salt on the plow
Carry me down
Bury me down

And the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth
And the landscape of merry and desperate drought
Once I knew myself
And with knowing came love
I would know love again if I had faith enough
Too far is next spring and her jubilant shout
So angels, inside
Is the only way out

Enough to go by

I'm at your back door
With the earth of a hundred nations in my skin
You won't recognize me
For the light in my eyes is strange
It was years ago, god knows
When you strained to tell me your whole truth
That you were not mine to save
That you could not change

Would it be enough to go by
If we could sail on the wind in the dark
Cut those chains in the middle of the night
That had you pulled apart
Would it be enough to go by
If there's moonlight pulling the tide
Would it be enough to live on
If my love could keep you alive

I've built a lot of castles
Built a lot of blazing speed-of-light machines
But it doesn't matter, you know
They all crumble in the winds of change
So I turned back to breathing
I learned a few good reasons to cry
And I finally called home
Praying you weren't out of range

Carry the weight
I'll carry the weight of you, I swear
Carry the weight
I'll carry the weight of you

So will you let me come in
The mosquitoes have found me
And they're crowding 'round my blood
At least offer me a drink
Or a breaking of the ice
I'm wanting your anger
I only want to see if I can shake you out of sleep
And bring you out under this flooded sky
At any price

So carry the weight
Carry the weight of me in your heart
Carry the weight
Carry the weight of me

Unwritten letter #1

Nightfall we're brushing past your town
Destination not you my one
The driver doesn't know way down
How deep these bright-eyed feelings run
I've no intention of confessing today
I need to make distance awhile
But miles don't make your image fade
They don't erase this secret smile

Everything reminds me
Wet gray gold-lit street
Shop displays near-lovers meet
I feel the grasp of your hand still
This your face now in the glass
Breathing whisper what is this
Bent so close we nearly kiss
Although we never will

Strange that there's no hurtful need
Used to be my only sign
On my mind would make me bleed
Why is it that I’m feeling fine
Why is it this warmth within
No candlelight that causes burn
Memories of you begin
Well welcome friends
Glad you've returned

Everything reminds me
Music surging bedroom dance
Crazy spinning sultry glance
I inhale your presence still
These your arms of daring grace
Encircle me what pact is made
Desire is your masquerade
Want me you never will

You gave me truth I chose illusion
Now we are used to this confusion
But I know
Yes I know this story has to end
Never groped for a connection
Never hoped for more affection
For I know
I know I am your friend
Only your friend

Eric's song

Strange how you know inside me
I measure the time and I stand amazed
Strange how I know inside you
My hand is outstretched toward the damp of the haze

And of course I forgive
I've seen how you live
Like a phoenix you rise from the ashes
You pick up the pieces
And the ghosts in the attic
They never quite leave
And of course I forgive
You've seen how I live
I've got darkness and fears to appease
My voices and analogies
Ambitions like ribbons
Worn bright on my sleeve

Strange how we know each other

Strange how I fit into you
There's a distance erased with the greatest of ease
Strange how you fit into me
A gentle warmth filling the deepest of needs

And with each passing day
The stories we say
Draw us tighter into our addiction
Confirm our conviction
That some kind of miracle
Passed on our heads
And how I am sure
Like never before
Of my reasons for defying reason
Embracing the seasons
We dance through the colors
Both followed and led

Strange how we fit each other

Strange how certain the journey
Time unfolds the petals for our eyes to see
Strange how this journey's hurting
In ways we accept as part of fate's decree

So we just hold on fast
Acknowledge the past
As lessons exquisitely crafted
Painstakingly drafted
To carve us as instruments
That play the music of life
For we don't realize
Our faith in the prize
Unless it's been somehow elusive
How swiftly we choose it
The sacred simplicity
Of you at my side

Soon love soon

There'll be a fire burning in the temple of our peace
There'll be a soaring voice for our silent pleas
We will hold our broken circle and begin to pray
We will find a black and white in the gray

And we will be as one god
And we will be as one people

We will find illumination in unnatural light
You will travel a thousand miles without leaving my sight
We will find we never knew hatred ran so deep
Such a wide, wide chasm of faith to leap

But we will be as one god
And we will be as one people

There will be an evolution of the human soul
We will know that be a part is to be truly whole
We will know the pattern of centuries rise and fall
We will know that the fate of one is the fate of all

And we will be as one god
And we will be as one people

Lullabye for a stormy night

Little child, be not afraid
Though rain pounds harshly 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 tear-stained face
I am here tonight

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

Little child, be not afraid
Though storm clouds mask your beloved moon
And its candlelight beams, still keep pleasant dreams
I am here tonight

Little child, be not afraid
Though wind makes creatures of our trees
And their branches to hands, they're not real, understand
And I am here tonight

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 for fears
And to give a kiss goodnight

Well now I am grown
And these years have shown
That 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...

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

Decade and one

Once when I was thirty-one
I woke in the dead of night
And heard the vastness of the snowfall outside
Slipped downstairs in my bare feet
Soon forgotten freezing
And pour a milk glass full
To wait out the tide

Been a decade and one
Been a decade and one my friends
A decade and one
Since I

As the white went down
I thought of the child upstairs
I thought of the god upstairs
That I couldn't believe
I thought of the chosen man
Asleep on his side of the bed
How green becomes wood
In a family tree

Been a decade and one
Been a decade and one so soon
A decade and one
Since I stood
So proud
And so unsure

Ebony glowing by the window there
As always
Fingers kissed the keys oh so tenderly
Cool ivory returned in kind
I thought of anger and adulation
And the taste of dreams realized
And the waste dreams realized leave behind

A decade and one
A decade and one
I said out loud
A decade and one
And I am here
And I am here still standing

Feather moon

Feather moon
Scarlet sky
Living clouds
My blinded eye
Waters black
Wood in snow
Dead of night
How bright you glow

Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale
Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale

Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale
Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale

Seven sins
God of stone
All is true
Down to the bone
Feather moon
Scarlet sky
I love you endlessly
Not knowing why

Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale
Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale

Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale
Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale

Harbor

We're here where the daylight begins
The fog on the streetlight slowly thins
Water on water's the way
The safety of shoreline fading away

Sail your sea
Meet your storm
All I want is to be your harbor
The light in me
Will guide you home
All I want is to be your harbor

Fear is the brightest of signs
The shape of the boundary you leave behind
So sing all your questions to sleep
The answers are out there in the drowning deep

You've got a journey to make
There's your horizon to chase
So go far beyond where we stand
No matter the distance
I'm holding your hand

Hope on fire

Gotta fight gotta strike
'Cause there's no turning away
From what you don't want to know
Gotta see gotta be
If they're all going astray
Don't let them take you in tow

You're a one-man shift in the weather
You're the woman who just won't sell
Climbing up and ringing the bell

Ooh you're gonna make your mark this time
Ooh you're gonna set your hope on fire

Gotta leave gotta bleed
You've gotta stop lying still
'Cause this is no kind of life
You don't need guarantees
You just want something to build
Before you turn to the knife

When the streets are aflood like a fever
It's a holiday of the new
We're coming closer now to the truth

Gotta move gotta choose
You've got a difference to make
Don't watch it happen again
Gotta change rearrange
Something's bending to break
It's just a matter of when

Shine

In this desert land
I know some rain must fall
See where we began
We've come so far
On this harbor shore
We hear the ocean call
In our minds at war
We have so far to go

Shine with all the untold
Hold the light given unto you
Find the love to unfold
In this broken world we choose

In unending storms
We search for space to breathe
How our hearts are worn
We've come so far
In this desert
How we blossom and we cease
Tell your story now
We have so much to know

Mission street

Mission street is a striking dark-eyed stranger
Who speaks a language I don't know but long to learn
Its cadences fall endlessly beyond the windowpane
As I sit as though awaiting some return

And my hands are cold tonight
I'm sleepless in this dark
Forgetting what it was I came to find
And it seems that I’ve been wrong
More than I’ve been right
More than I’ve been right

Mission street calls out to me by name
Then hurries on before I’ve hardly turned my head
Promises of answers muttered underneath her breath
Like an offering of contraband misread

And my hands are cold tonight
On the strings of this guitar
Looking for the chords of what I’ve left behind
And it seems that I’ve been wrong
More than I’ve been right
More than I’ve been right

Mission street is alive at every hour
Like I’ve never been and feared I may not ever be
A light so steady on the mountains in the distance
A solitude so deep it might awaken me

Well my hands are cold tonight
But the sky is bright with stars
And I’m tearing through the veil that keeps me blind
And it seems the more I’m wrong
The more that I am right
The more that I am right

My medea

Inside the labyrinth walls
There lies a tiny child who sleeps alone
And as the daylight falls
The wind becomes so wild across the stone

For I have made her prison be
Her every step away from me
And this child I would destroy
If you tried to set her free

So come to me my love
I'll tap into your strength and drain it dry
Can never have enough
For you I’d burn the length and breadth of sky

For it's my thoughts that bind me here
It's this love that I most fear
And this child I would destroy
For I hold her pain most dear

No haven for this heart
No shelter for this child in mazes lost
Heaven keep us apart
A curse for every mile of ocean crossed

For I must die for what I’ve done
A twist of fate a desert sun
For I see what I destroy
Sweet reflection knife into me
For I see what I destroy
I can see what I’ve begun

Shasta (carrie's song)

So far so good
You're coming to the bend at the end of the road
You put a hand to the belly that's foreign more
With every day like an oversize load

And you're thinking about clouds the color of fire
And the scent of an orange peel
The way mt. Shasta explodes into windshield view
And your hands steady on the wheel

So far so good
Coffee motel coffee diner coffee go on
Styrofoam is drying like the tears that once did flow
Starting 10 o'clock and ending at dawn

And you can't go back but you're going back
And you don't know what you'll say
You've got half-formed sentences
Explanations for a life half-broken away
And they just may
They'll take you in their arms and then take out their knives
So you drive on thinking

So far so good
But you can't go on much longer like this you know
You're all alone in this world no that's not true
The nice christian lady told you so

She was handing out pamphlets by the clinic door
Saying "Jesus knows what you've been through
Take the savior into your heart my child
There's love waiting for the both of you"

Well you don't believe but you have to believe
It's still crumpled there in your back seat
Were you the hero or the worst kind of coward back there
Putting pavement back under your feet
Couldn't stand the heat
Couldn't stand the thought of ghosts with a negative age
Turn the page
Ok

So far so good
You try to sing along to the radio
But it's not your language not your song
It's from some other time ago

And you're thinking about how someone died that day
The you that was so carefully planned
But then again maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain
Waking up to shape the land

Calm calm let it come let it come back to you
Calm calm breathe on out you know you know what to do

Homecoming (walter's song)

It's desert ice outside but this diner has thawed my ears
Hot coffee in a clean white mug and a smile when the
Waitress hears
That I was born in North Carolina
Not an hour from her home town
And we used to play the same pizza parlor pinball

And there's a glance in time suspended as I wonder how it is
We've been swept up just by circumstance to where the Coyote lives
Where my days are strips of highway
And she's wiping tables down
Holding on and still waiting for that windfall

But I’ve come home
Even though I’ve never had so far to go
I've come home

I pay the check and leave the change from a crumpled ten-dollar bill
Head across the street where vacancy is burning in neon still
Well the night eats up my body heat
And there's no sign of another
And I find myself slipping down into that black

But things are good I’ve got a lot of followers of my faith
I've got a whole congregation living in my head these days
And I’m preaching from the pulpit
To cries of “amen brother”
Closing my eyes to feel the warmth come back

And I’ve come home
Even though I swear I’ve never been so alone
I've come home

I just want to be living as I’m dying
Just like everybody here
Just want to know my little flicker of time is
Worthwhile
And I don't know where I’m driving to
But I know I’m getting old
And there's a blessing in every moment every mile

Thin white terry bars of soap and a couple little plastic cups
Old gideons bible in the nightstand drawer saying “go on open up”
Well I’ll kneel down on the carpet here
Though I never was sure of god
Think tonight I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt

I switch off the lights and imagine that waitress
Outlined in the bed
Her hair falling all around me
I smile and shake my head
Well we all write our own endings
And we all have our own scars
But tonight I think I see what it's all about

Because I’ve come home
I've come home

Anna rose

Anna rose sleep well tonight
The stars are dancing on the carpet of the sky
Time to close your wondering eyes
Where I see the sleepiness creeping

Anna rose it makes my heart smile
To know you give love so freely
Anna rose it makes it worthwhile
Your love makes me see things so clearly
How it grows heaven knows
Anna rose sleep well tonight

Anna rose it's time to dream
I see that your imagination knows no bounds
There it flows like some magical stream
And carries you on its journey

Anna rose it makes my heart smile
To know you give love so freely
Anna rose it makes it worthwhile
Your love makes me see things so clearly
How it grows heaven knows
Anna rose dream well tonight

Passage

I died in a car crash two days ago
Was unrecognizable
When they pulled me from the gears
No one's fault, no one's bottle
No one's teenage pride or throttle
Our innocence is all the worse for fears
The other walked away alive
Arms wrapped now around his wife

My lover sits, the silent eye
In a hurricane of warmth and word
My mother trembles with the sobs
Whose absence seems absurd
My sister shouts to let her see
Through the cloud of crowd surrounding me
My colleagues call for silence in my name

I died in a car crash three months ago
They burned me until I glowed
And crumbled to a fine gray sand
Now I am nothing, everywhere
Several breaths of strangers' air
And all thoughts ever written in my hand
They plant my tree out in the yard
It grows but takes the winter hard

My lover holds a knife to wrist
Says tomorrow comes, hold on a while
My mother tosses in the sheets
And dreams me holding my own child
My sister plays our homemade tapes
Laughs as tears run down her face
My office door now wears a different name

I died in a car crash four years ago
My tree drinks melted snow
Just eight feet tall a pale and fragile thing
Bee stings beaches bright vacations
Sunburnt high-school graduations
A sparrow healing from a broken wing
This year a glimpse of second chances
Tiny apples on my tree's branches

My lover hears the open wind
And crawls blinking into the sun
My mother leafs through photographs
And thinks "yes she was a lovely one"
My sister can't decide her truth
Asks aloud what I might do
In a conference hall my brief efforts engraved

I died in a car crash
A lifetime ago it seems
A decade or two or three
They've come out with a new design
Bars and bags front and behind
My fate now an impossibility
Safely packaged hurtling down
The highway hardly make a sound

My lover very much alive
Arms wrapped now around his wife

The atheist christmas carol

It's the season of grace coming out of the void
Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance
It's the season of possible miracle cures
Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown
Where time begins to fade
And age is welcome home

It's the season of eyes meeting over the noise
And holding fast with sharp realization
It's the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention
You are safe here you know now

Don't forget
Don't forget I love
I love
I love you

It's the season of scars and of wounds in the heart
Of feeling the full weight of our burdens
It's the season of bowing our heads in the wind
And knowing we are not alone in fear
Not alone in the dark

Blue Caravan

Blue blue caravan
Winding down to the valley of lights
My true love is a man
Who would hold me for ten thousand nights
In the wild wild wailing of wind
He's a house 'neath a soft yellow moon
So blue blue caravan
Won't you carry me down to him soon

Blue blue caravan
Won't you drive away all of these tears
For my true love is a man
That I haven't seen in years
He said "go where you have to
For I belong to you until my dying day."
So like a fool, blue caravan
I believed him and I walked away

Oh my blue blue caravan
The highway is my great wall
For my true love is a man
Who never existed at all
Oh he was a beautiful fiction
I invented to keep out the cold
But now, my blue blue caravan
I can feel my heart growing old
Oh my blue blue caravan
I can feel my heart growing old

Whatever You Want

He's a company man
Your right hand
Thirteen years and counting
No detectable ambition
A model of efficiency
Far as you can see
He knows every loophole
The art of fine print
Massages the numbers 'til they fit
And every time you ask him
For another vanishing act
He half-smiles as if to say

Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me

Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me

Never a real moment together but she understands
You're an important man
Another late night
Don't know if you're coming home or when she's alone again
But she goes on curating your domestic museum
She disappears in her loyalty
She is a dress wearing a face in the doorway
Opening her arms out to you

Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me

Oh whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me

No one would dare to question you, oh no
No one would dare to stand up
In the night she leaves the papers in a tidy pile
Evidence for her reasons
And in the night he takes the main accounts
And pulls the files detailing every treason
I am the last one you'd ever suspect
Of setting the fire, of setting the fire
But as you switch on your TV tomorrow morning
You'll hear me saying quietly

Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me

Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me
Oh whatever you say
Oh whatever you say
I'll do what you ask me
I'll do what you ask me

Whatever you say
Oh whatever you say
But do you know who's listening

Oh whatever you say
Oh whatever you say
You know it's over

Love Turns 40

She's holding a secret that she'll never tell
She's holding a secret that she'll never tell
'Cause the myth is not supposed to retire
We'd rather it lit itself on fire
Or overdosed in a 4-star hotel

She's holding a truth that she'll never reveal
She's holding a truth that she'll never reveal
'Cause truth this time is an ugly child
And mother and daughter may reconcile
But their faces will never heal

"Don't go," she says, but he's sleeping
She says it to herself
"Don't go"
She sees herself rising
Packing a suitcase with all of her shoes
But something keeps you faithful
When all else in you turns and runs
Love turns forty
The morning comes

She's holding a secret that she'll never tell
She's holding a secret that she'll never tell
Because we were once cinema gods in the night
And now all we've got is lunch-hour light
Where nothing photographs well
"Don't go," she says
But he's sleeping—she says it to the dark
"Don't go."
She sees herself rising
Dressing in silence for nothing to lose
But something keeps you faithful
When all else in you turns and runs
Love turns forty
The morning comes

I Don't Feel So Well

I don't feel so well
I thought that you should know
I thought that you should know
That I don't feel so well
I thought that you should know
Before you fall

I don't call them back
I thought that you should know
I thought that you should know
That I don't call them back
I thought that you should know
Before you fall

I saw it begin to dawn on us both
And somehow it wasn't surprising
And so you're preparing to swear every oath
But all the while, I'm realizing

I can't love you there
I thought that you should know
I thought that you should know
That I can't love you there
I thought that you should know
Before you fall

I saw it begin to dawn on us both
And somehow it wasn't surprising
And so you're preparing to swear every oath
But all the while, I'm realizing

I can't love you there
I thought that you should know
I thought that you should know
That I can't love you there
I thought that you should know
Before you fall

City Hall

M and my baby on a February holiday
'Cause we got the news
Yeah we got the news

Five hundred miles
But we're gonna make it all the way
We got nothing to lose
We got nothing to lose

Been ten years waiting
But it's better late
Than the never we've been told before
We can't wait one minute more

Oh me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Oh me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine at city hall

Me and my baby been through a lot of good and bad
Learned to kiss the sky
Made our mamas cry
Seen a lot of friends, after giving it all they had
Lay down and die
Lay down and die

Ten years into it
Here's our window at the Vegas drive-thru chapel
Ain't too much for 'em all to handle

Oh me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Oh me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine at city hall

Outside they're handing out donuts and pizza pies
For the folks in pairs in their folding chairs
My baby's looking so damn pretty with those anxious eyes
Rain-speckled hair and my ring to wear

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

So oh me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Oh me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine

Oh me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Oh me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine at city hall

Nothing Without You

It's the quiet night that breaks me
I cannot stand the sight of this familiar place
It's the quiet night that breaks me
Like a dozen paper cuts that only I can trace
All my books are lying useless now
All my maps will only show me how to lose my way

Oh call my name, you know my name
And in that sound, everything will change
Tell me it won't always be this hard
I am nothing without you
But I don't know who you are

It's the crowded room that breaks me
Everybody looks so luminous, and strangely young
It's the crowded room that's never heard
No one here can say a word of my native tongue
I can't be among them anymore
I fold myself away before it burns me numb

Oh call my name, you know my name
And in your love, everything will change
Tell me it won't always be this hard
I am nothing without you
But I don't know who you are
I am nothing without you
But I don't know who you are

Transcontinental, 1:30 a.m.

Wait
Don't let this line go slack
Don't go alone into the cold

Wait
Don't give up on this yet
I know that there's more you haven't told

Wait, wait, wait
Wait my love
Just one more thought
Wait, wait
Wait my love
I haven't got time in my life
To watch you drift out to sea
So please

Wait
Don't let this line go slack
I want to bring you back to where I know you
Oh wait
Don't give up on this yet
I just want you to let you let me hold you

Oh wait, wait, wait
wait my love
Just one more thought
Wait, wait
Wait my love
I haven't got time in my life
To watch you drift away
But I've all kinds of time
All kinds of time
If you'll stay

I know we're transcontinental
1:30 a.m.
And there's not even a wire
Just a whispering in air
I know we're transcontinental
1:30 a.m. but I'm here

1br/1ba

One bedroom one bath
Hardwood floors with view of trees
One bedroom one bath
Parking space for extra fee
My little flock of boxes
And I surrounded by a painted-white unknown
Soon as this wall in my heart comes down
I'm gonna make it feel like home

One bedroom one bath
A/C was fine 'til yesterday
One bedroom one bath
Eighty-nine degrees today
My upstairs neighbours are making sounds
That I never want to hear
I hope they're just moving furniture around
And really liking their ideas

One bedroom one bath
Hardwood floors with view of trees
One bedroom one bath
Parking space for extra fee
My little flock of boxes
And I surrounded by a painted-white unknown
Soon as this wall in my heart comes down
I'm gonna make it feel like home
Gonna make it feel like home
Gonna make it feel like home
Gonna make it feel like home
Gonna make it feel like home
Gonna make it feel like home
Gonna make it feel
Gonna make it feel
Gonna make it feel
Gonna make it feel like home...

Now Three

City fast asleep
Clouds up on the hill
So quiet
So still
Dreams of rain in sheets
Dreams of ice and wings
So delicate
These things

Love, love, love is a word so small
Let it fill up up, up
'Til I can't see at all
I want to be blind
Only my hands to guide me
Bring all of you inside me

City fast asleep
Lights hum in the gray
Like her breathing will someday
Strangest beauty cries
One and one
By and by
Now three of us here lie

Love, love, love for one so small
Come fill me up, up, up
'Til I can't see at all
I want to be blind
Only my heart to guide me
Gather all the world inside me

Pontchartrain

Sunday
Dark water draining north,
The heat swells and bursts like plague

Sunday
Ever-so-faint slow tambourine
Glides onward toward the grave

Who drew the line
Who drew the line
Between you and me
Who drew the line
That everyone sees

Darling
Lake Pontchartrain is haunted:
Bones without names,
Photographs framed in reeds

Darling
What blood our veins are holding.
The overpass frozen,
Fires ablaze at sea

Who drew the line
Who drew the line
That cuts to the skin, buries me in
Tell me, who drew the line
Darling don't close your eyes

Lie as darkness hardens
Lie of our reunion
O lie if God is sleeping
O I believe you now

Darling
Lake Pontchartrain will cradle me,
And all you left behind
Listen
Ever-so-faint slow tambourine
Is marching back through time

Recessional

It's so beautiful here, she says
This moment now
And this moment, now
And I never thought I would find her here
Flannel and satin
My four walls transformed
But she's looking at me
Straight to center
No room at all for any other thought
And I know I don't want this
Oh I swear I don't want this
There's a reason not to want this
But I forgot

In the terminal she sleeps on my shoulder
Hair falling forward, mouth all askew
Fluorescent announcements beat their wings overhead
Passengers missing
We're looking for you
And she dreams through the noise
Her weight against me
Face pressed into the corduroy grooves
Maybe it means nothing
Maybe it means nothing
Maybe it means nothing
But I'm afraid to move

And the words: they're everything and nothing
I want to search for her in the offhand remarks
Who are you, taking coffee, no sugar
Who are you, echoing street signs
Who are you, the stranger in the shell of a lover
Dark curtains drawn by the passage of time
Oh words like rain, how sweet the sound

Well anyway, she says, I'll see you around...

The Last Snowfall

If this were the last snowfall
No more haloes on evergreens
If this were my last glimpse of winter
How would these eyes see

If this were the last slow curling
Of your fingers in my palm
If this were the last I felt you breathing
How would I carry on

This is not the last snowfall
Not our last embrace
But if I were that kind of grateful
What would I try to say

White Light

All of a sudden the conversation turns
And everyone concerned is looking down
Guilty party is right here in the room
But no one can assume the high ground
Oh it almost caught up with you
Caught up with you then
Oh you should've thought of this my friend

If you knew it was wrong why did you do it
You don't know, you didn't mean to, it slipped your mind
And it feels so good to feed a habit
You're just making the most of your borrowed time
Waiting for the white light

Heading home you swear that you'll be good
Do everything you should, and know the facts
But in the morning you're back to petty needs
Tragedy recedes to photographs
Oh it hasn't caught up with you
Caught up with you yet
No it hasn't taught you when to quit

If you knew it was wrong why did you do it
You don't know, you didn't mean to, it slipped your mind,
It is OK because everybody does it
This whole party is rolling on borrowed time
Waiting for the white light

Shine down
Wipe it all out again,
Show me how
It doesn't matter in the end

If you knew it was wrong why did you do it
You don't know, you didn't mean to, it slipped your mind
It is OK because everybody does it
No laws are broken if we're all committing the same crime

But I know it's wrong, why do I do it
I don't know, I don't mean for it to slip my mind
It just takes so much to break a habit
Even when I'm aware we are out of time
Am I waiting for a white light

Antebellum

In the fall
We circle through the leaves
And talk about the little ones
And we smile, but never say too much
The moment always vanishing
One by one the neighbors' lights come on
Our October day is almost gone

I know the border lines we drew between us
Keep the weapons down
Keep the wounded safe
I know our antebellum innocence
Was never meant to see the light of our armistice day

In the spring
We climbed the rolling hills
And talked about our budding plans.
And we smiled,
Our faces like a mirror
Showing us our secret sides.
But then the fights...
The sharp words splintering the night,
How I couldn't be what you'd need...
But oh how I could make you bleed...

I know the border lines we drew between us
Keep the weapons down,
Keep the wounded safe;
I know our antebellum innocence
Was never meant to see the light of our armistice.
But how much would I give to have it back again?
How much did we lose
To live this way

You'll go home...I'll stay here
Seasons keep on marching
I'll stay here...you'll go home
With only strangers watching

Kansas

Sun sets in an ocean of brown farmland haze
Power lines draped across roads you could drive on for days
Well it's all too perfect
Time to look back at us now

Endless and empty like Kansas
Our cities of clouds
Flat on the table like Kansas

I lay down in sheets suddenly worn threadbare
Every wall I lean on transforms to sliding doors and thin air
Well I hope yours is kinder
Let go of this when you find her

Bury this hard
Down underneath your white canvas
Our houses of cards
Flat on the table like Kansas

It's not regret
Just an unexpected accounting of debts
Only now called
No it's not regret
Just remembrance is all
Of how close we had come
The war almost won
But I sent up our flag and moved on

You and I
Lost to the winter like Kansas
And all my goodbyes
Flat on the table like Kansas

In Another Life

In another life
You and I worked West Virginia coal mines
Side by side
Collecting the black dust like sin
The day the main shaft caved in
I caught your eye
As the lantern light guttered out
And the afterdamp swallowed us slowly
I gripped your hand
And caught a glance
Of the next time 'round

In another life
You and I were Red Guards in training
Side by side
We marched on Tiananmen
Turned our own parents in
For hoarding rice
And in the Great Leap forward
We crawled on our bellies and died
A blood orange sky
Gave a cry
Of next time 'round

In another life
I was married at thirteen
You were killed at twenty-one
On a minor battlefield
I was buried beside my second stillborn child
My last thought it seemed
A fever dream

Now we sink into a summer afternoon
Central Park in June
Marveling at the bounty our days contain
And we feel it like the shiver
Of a passing train
That other life
Deep underground
You and I
Side by side
We are the next time 'round

Grandmother Song

Oh girl you think you got time
You're gonna get 'round to it way down the line
But one step, two step, you fall behind
So you better have a good plan
Oh girl you think you got time
You're gonna get 'round to it way down the line
But I'm telling you no matter what you have in mind
You're still gonna need a man

Take it from your grandmother I've been 'round
No one's gonna take care of you
In that world you've got yourself into
All the good boys, oh baby they're in grad school

Oh girl your story's all wrong
Your dream'll be a nightmare before too long
Turning thirty and still trying to sing your songs
Come on who do you think you are
Oh girl it's too heavy a load
Your mama and your baba they are worried souls
How you gonna raise a family when you're on the road
With some tattooed boy with a guitar

Take it from your grandmother I've been 'round
This music career isn't real life
It won't see you through to when you're sixty-five
When the tide turns you won't survive
You'll sit on the banks and cry

Oh girl you've never know war
When they come in the night and knock on the door
You can go from the high life to dirty poor
And lose everything you knew
But the one thing they can't take away from you
Is your mind and the education you've been through
O you find a man who understands that too
Make sure that he stays true
Gives respect where its due
Make sure he knows what he's got in you

Because a woman isn't just for cooking meals
Scrubbing floors, making babies
A woman's got ambitions same as he does
Maybe more
When the sirens wailed and the bombs fell
We ran from the schoolyard into hell
And what we could've been time will never tell
'cause we never had your chances
The advantages that you've been handed

Take it from your grandmother I've been 'round

Stray Italian Greyhound

Oh no not now
Please not now
I just settled into the glass half empty
Made myself at home
And so why now
Please not now
I just stopped believing in happy endings
Harbors of my own

But you had to come along didn't you
Break down the doors, throw open windows
Oh if you knew just what a fool you have made me

So what do I do with this?

This stray Italian greyhound
These inconvenient fireworks
This ice-cream-covered screaming hyperactive thought
God I just want to lay down
These colors make my eyes hurt
This feeling calls for everything that I am
Not

I'm not that kind
I'm so good at shooting down any notion
This tired world could change
It's all been bought
Or at least that was my line
No use in spending all that emotion
When there's someone else to blame

But you had to come along didn't you
Rev up the crowd, rewrite the rule book
Where do I go when every 'no' turns into 'maybe'

So what do I do with this

This sudden burst of sunlight
And me with my umbrella
Cross-indexing every weatherman's report
I was ready for the downslide
But not for spring to well up
This feeling calls for everything I can't afford
To know
Is possible now

What do I do
With a love that won’t sit still
Won't do what it's told
What do I do
With a love that won't sit still

Augustine

Oh my god
What have I done
Chasing some mirage in my Mojave sun
Don't say every chance is lost,
Please don't say anything at all

In sand and thorns
I'm walking forth
Bare and blinking as the day that I was born
Bells in spires of China white
Ring for an Augustine tonight

Oh now, I'm breaking down
Oh let me be
Let me be your Augustine

Lead me now
I understand
Faith is both the prison and the open hand
Bells on low on high
Will you ring for Augustine tonight

Oh now I'm breaking down,
Every illusion in between
All the lies that I have seen
Oh let me be your Augustine

No Gringo

Father says head down
We don't want them finding you
Mother says practice now
All the words you know

Oh Arizona's burning
They say the fence turned round
Now the razor wire keeps us out

Mother says with luck
We'll sleep under a roof tonight
Father says in the truck
We'll be crushed in tight

Oh Chicago don't forget me
As the miles between us grow
Keep the maple tree carved with the name of my love
The hills we would sled race down
Lake Michigan stay endless and painted in sky
Goodbye

Mother says years ago
The whole world was ours to rule
Father says let it go
Those days are gone for good

All the signs read no gringo
But somehow we'll find our way
Maybe waiting at dawn by the factory doors
Sunburnt and bent in the fields
Please don't turn us in
We'll be silent as the grave
As time

No gringo
No Gringo aqui
Words as levies against the flood
Hoy cerrado
There's too many to feed
Room for only our own kind, our own blood
No gringo, no gringo aqui
You have stayed in this land for too long
Tan amargo
But there's no time to grieve
You just pack up your things and move on

Watershed

While you were building your empires
I was still sleeping
I was still sleeping
While you were setting your woods afire
I was still dreaming
I was still dreaming

Now I will unsettle the ground beneath you
Send my waters ashore
Creep into your bed
Find you in every corner

While you argue it over
I am not waiting
I am not waiting
While you retreat to your comforts
I am not fading
I am not fading

I've done this many times before you
Old Shanghai
New Orleans
Amsterdam and Mumbai
Strange new creatures
To scavenge your pores
Oh I've done this many times before you
Ashen sky
Lightning storms
Deltas to desert plains
Wartime on every border

I've done this many times before you
Watched the pattern take form
Children your time is done
If you say it's done together

Radio

It came from nowhere
On the 38 Geary
A girl with a backpack of shrapnel and wire
Through spiderweb windows
Of blood stained glass
A pagoda's shadow and a cruel sunny sky
Oh the flash then the silence
Shouldn't there be screaming praying crying
Oh anything at all
Tell me where are the sirens
Fire's getting closer but I've got to stay calm

It's just the radio darling,
Just the radio and your runaway imagination
Just the radio darling
We can turn away to another station

Outside they're handing out
Fate to the wounded
Little tags in black red yellow, and green
It's now my twenty-fifth hour
With a scalpel in hand
If I stop moving I will sleep on my feet
And the rumors are seething
Gunfire at freeway exits, bridges mid-barricades
I can feel the fog creeping
God where is the morphine, the sweet lidocaine

It's just the radio

Sing me a love song dear
What good has the news ever done me
Come on it'll never happen here, oh no
We are not some third world country
This is not some third world country

I'm sorry Mama
I held on for as long as I could
I'm sorry Papa
There was nothing more I could do

It's just the radio

St. Stephen's Cross

He was there the night the wall came down.
He lost her in the endless crowd,
In the shadow of St. Stephen's cross.
He sent cries aloft for his fellow man,
His fingers slipping from her hand,
The rain clouds prowling overhead.

She was there the night the wall came down.
She faded into that newborn crowd
Like a warning of what could be lost.
Through the perforated night she ran,
Her fingers slipping from his hand,
And she breathed in freedom
Before daylight tread.

They were there the night the wall was drowned
In the surging of that tidal crowd:
An old world made new
On the same holy ground.
She found him standing, looking lost
In the shadow of St. Stephen's cross,
And he closed his eyes and heard no sound
But her breathing warm against his mouth.

Boy At The Piano

Ten fingers. Ten dancers.
An uncanny intuition of when and how to pirouette
Eyes darting over the invisible page
Which is riddled with a road map
Of chords that guide without regret.
Into the precarious land of improvisation,
A one player band amid conversation.

Two hands, a measurin' leisure time
Two hands skimmin' over keys, "that's fine"
Says the girl in the corner, the kid on the ledge.
And the boy at the piano plays on...

Well often, I've come to watch him play.
And it seems to me so funny, he doesn't even know I'm there.
Well the music, it takes him to another world.
Sudden playful pauses, dramatic clauses,
Melodies from empty air.
Noontime master of improvisation,
A one player band amid conversation...

Two hands, a measurin' leisure time
Two hands skimmin' over keys, "that's fine"
Says the girl in the corner, the kid on the ledge.
And the boy at the piano plays on...

Undone

There's a moment made of frozen hopes
Put under lights in an empty space
In my little museum
In my little museum
And at closing time with the crowds dissolved
I slip right past the velvet ropes
Press my fingers to the case
And I hold you in my arms

This isn't where I should be
I stand and stare when I should run
Why am I only waiting
For what can only come undone

You were hidden in a highway curve
Solid lines a silent shield
Against metal twisted cold
I am twisted
Like sudden daylight there you were
Took all I had just not to swerve
And slow instead to yield
But then your light was gone

This isn't where I should be
I stand and stare when I should run
Why am I only waiting
For what can only come undone