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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


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