Vision of Herr Mozart

A bird shits square on the face of

A sculpture of a saint

And flits away.

Panic, not anger, arises—

Some satanic bird? Pure happenstance?

That night I fight my thoughts

And cannot sleep

Until Herr Mozart appears

And sits down beside a Viennese tree.

Overwhelming genius frightens me.

I am in the presence of a demi-titan.

One of the rare souls who comes around

Every two centuries or so;

And here he is, with me.

He’s conducting birds into a symphonic thunder of tweets

And then he

turns to me and says,

“Half my life I wanted to make music.

The other half, I wanted to fly.

Of course, I could not fly.

So I made music.”

It’s worth noting he did not wear a wig

And his hair was exceedingly beautiful.

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