I'm standing in the wind.
We had five years left to cry,
stay in, get things done.
But don't change the power to charm.
It's all artifice.
That's why we have television.
Press your space close to mine,
lay the real thing on me,
and spit in the eyes of fools.
Let's dance for fear
in this serious moonlight,
discovering morning.
I turn myself to face myself
[like some cat from Japan]
where things are hollow
in the stream of impermanence.
My brain hurts like a warehouse.
It's not my favorite thing to do.
No, it's just what I do.
So how could they know?
- Sources:
- Modern Love
- Moonage Daydream
- Rebel, Rebel,
- Five Years
- Life on Mars
- Let’s Dance
- Changes
- Ziggy Stardust
- David Bowie’s answers to the Proust Questionnaire
- David Bowie On The Ziggy Stardust Years: 'We Were Creating The 21st Century In 1971'.
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from Bangalore, India. She loves experimenting with Japanese short-forms of poetry, as well as found/remixed pieces alike. Her poems have most recently appeared in After the Pause, Jazz Cigarette, Under the Basho, Right Hand Pointing, Failed Haiku, and so on. Shloka is the founding editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom.
He made it possible. He was formerly a fabulist.
He was faceless, but he was ugly, graceless
and he made everything disappear.
aligning
as fingers
deftly dance
on checkered
smooth plastic
disco stage
Adam’s countenance: beer cask-heavy
his eyes: glazed shallots
his smile: a split itself
Now take away the need
for moisture and the deteriorating
qualities of autumn. The veins
and stems will release as well.
Take away the release. Take
away the seasons.
When Taylor Swift was at the gym in Japan
she watched the muscled back of a man
moving up and down a heavy machine
made by other heavy machines for men.
of spontaneous human combustion,
of pictures with the Cherry Hill Mall Santa,
of a stapler after getting my wrist stuck to my teacher’s green bulletin board,
and on the tv
a drag queen
sharing her recipe
for sun tea
asks us if we want to
watch her take a break
and we take a break
Honeywell closed their Minnesota plant quietly
and the addition of warning stickers on album covers
would save the children along with D.A.R.E., Nancy
and Tipper directing the conversation, for some reason.
I read, I traveled, I, Lina, thief’s daughter, a discarded toy by the campfire
at night, my planets – burned by sparks,
burned by coincidences, in my eyelashes – stalagmites of ashes.
Because Phil Collins is for fools and old ladies.
Because the ocean’s too wide a body of water
for a commando to cross alone. Because gentlemen
never kiss and tell, and soldiers never share
their kill count. Because you teach the meaning
of words like ‘amorous’ and ‘varnish’ and ‘leave.’