i am a middle-class home
i am a worn-out banjo
i'll never dance in swan lake
i'll never play the cello
i am the northern lights
i am invisible
i am a dandelion
i am forever wild
i am the fourth of july
throwing you a fire in the sky
you could go blind
in my light
but you were looking for an orchid
and i will always be
a dandelion
you were looking for a tea light
and i will always be a forest fire
a dandelion
a dandelion
a dandelion

this is antje duvekot, who's much more denim and sparkler and dandelion, a leafy-haired puck with turquoise highlights across magenta cheeks under the gels, easy laughter halfway between a giggle and a knowing grin on stage than the webpage lets on. her knees when she holds her guitar can't help but dance as she smiles shyly at the room, hiding the power of that magic voice behind bright acorn eyes and then closing them to silence the room with it. "magic" is trite and utterly non-descriptive, but the words that better suit--windchime, campfire, cinnamonned apple-cider, meltwater-waterfall--aren't adjectives and can't behave themselves properly in the sentence, and beside her songwriting, the poems i wish i'd written, the ones i already know by heart, their images arrayed like photographs on an old table beside a teacup barely steaming... i'm better silent. this boy posted a gushing, crushed-so-hard review of the only CD she has yet for sale if anybody wants to know more.

we saw her down in binghamton at the cyber cafe west; i'm sure it's west of something, and the lovely tiramisu coffee i spent the show sipping explains the cafe part (susanmarie had a bowl-mug full of something coffee-flavored and divine, and her birthday-girl partner janet started out w/a beer & ended up the evening with whipped cream & hot chocolate, and pdxstraycat was delighted to find rogue dead guy ale on tap--he and susanmarie agreed that the plastic fellow on the pull-handle looked less like a pirate and more like a particular race-car driver...), but i never saw evidence of the cyber. i did see the marvels of the old-house-turned coffee-shop, the rooms off of rooms crowded with armchairs and sofas, the warm muted colors and almost-cluttered collection of tapestries and art and found-objects, the curtained entrance to the deep blue walled stage room scattered with table-candles and christmas lights, bead curtains and fishtanks, mismatched chairs pulled up to mismatched tables--hans storsberg, who played before and between her sets and charmed us thoroughly in his own way (we bought his CD too), sat next to us when antje was onstage and swapped virginia geography with pdxstraycat, and between the two of them he & antje carried me several thousand miles and a handful of years and seasons, and stirred so many words together in my head that i'm still playing only their music, reluctant to intrude upon that space and its silences.

the light of glowing embers
as sweet as i remember
among the rustling of the trees
the legend of the harvest moon and
the sweet ballad of the loon
i felt as ancient as, as i was meant to be

l_stboy (who rocked my world last night, finding me the song i couldn't find before i'd hardly finished complaining about not having it--check out his page if you want to hear it) started it, sending me one of her songs, the most dazzling road-trip ballad i've ever heard, a year or so ago. he should have been there; in almost enough ways he was there anyway, a fire-lit smile across the table as i leaned on my baby's shoulder inside those walls that might have been the walls of any coffee shop in any city, with any world outside, in any year i've ever seen & probably a hundred that i haven't. there's so much i'll never explain.