A Review (Kinda) of David Bowie's Blackstar (Who Am I Kidding? It's a Poem)

My great friend Nick Zaino has a cool website called The Department of Tangents wherein he writes music and horror film reviews and publishes comedy interviews.

Nick put out a call for friends and colleagues to write music reviews of records he missed in 2016. I said oh! I could write a review of David Bowie’s Blackstar! As I have been listening to it on a continuous loop for the entire year! And Nick responded great, yes!

I sat down to pen my review and realized I had no idea what to write. What was I thinking? So I wrote a poem instead. And Nick, lovely soul that he is, indulged me and published my poem right alongside the words of folks who obviously know how to write a record review.

Take a peek for my original poem. And explore The Department of Tangents, which is chock full of fascinating items (including interviews with literally every comedian you can name, for real). Happy New Year!

What Nick Missed in 2016, including a poem about Blackstar by Marian

What I Learned in the Orchard

I watched an old man

pruning apple trees in December

laddered during snowfall

straining for the farthest branch

and realized I had not considered

that quickening is a year-round

lifelong commitment to growth

through paring back

So you

bygone year of want

you my bygone sister

buried expectations

in awful post-truth

It’s snowing

Still I ascend the highest rung

and start cutting

limbs leggily reaching for sun

because flowering requires tending

brings fruit for sustenance

and only now have I learned

what fruit from labor really means

That man has taught me a few things

For Mama Zen’s Words Count in the Imaginary Garden. My poem went long but I beg forgiveness as frankly that never happens! :)

Rattled

So the longest darkest night

already came and went

the lowest Fahrenheit mark

accomplished last year

sooty depths of insecurity

experienced under a waxing moon

in a long-ago bone season

so we don’t have to worry anymore

File them all away

alongside the giddiest infatuation

scatterings of September chicory

sweet balsamic on the tongue

baby-milk breath

dust suspended in long sienna rays

all just under the surface

for retrieving in discomfiting times

Sharing with the Real Toads on the Tuesday Platform, typically late but at least I wrote something! *cheer*

Unpresidented

Verily

He proclaims

Unprecedented

Is this time

Great again

Soulless prevarication

From he who cries Wolf

Micro-poetry in the Imaginary Garden

Fugitive Justice

Preturnaturally

weepy eyes cloud glass

blurring troth for triumph

nothing to be realized

at half-light

Minor-chord score

obscures understanding

in endless gloaming

all the sad songs are so sad

the dark places pitch-dark