The Last Ziggy Star Dust Show

                     (for David Bowie)

I watch him / bending time / young chameleon

wielding power / bowing bold / before mirrors 

of change / a dancing hero / playing brave / 

pointing his finger at suicide / his voice loud / 

impatient dramatic / constrained inside ascending chords / 

suddenly caught / he's breathing in / vulnerable now / 

down to a whisper / emotion beginning to soften 

the sound /still in sync with magician's hands /

(eternal the hands of the white-faced mime) 

he's Peter Pan / defining the cracks in our existence

his fingers find a chink in the wall / to break through

blissfull / only to fall / back to the shadow of a black

cabaret / staring now / mocking the monster /

knowing that monster is himself / taunting logic / 

spruiking magic / loving the image in the mirror / 

his fallible friend for this fragment of time / 

applying the glitter / the superficial gloss / 

standing tall in red plastic platform boots / 

dicussing death behind the door / stirring leaves 

in cemeteries / hovering in shadows / 

surveying tombs / consorting with aliens 

and other beings / like poets and players 

strut their stage / he gives himself over

to the pose and the play / the triumph 

and the terror of this brief script / 

in the spotlight / eyes straight ahead

arms reaching for heaven / a hero surviving

scoffing at life / raging at dying

 

Pamela Sidney 2004