1.08.2017

Giving Everything Away

It’s hard
to pick a favorite
when swaddled with loss
tucked in penitence
caught flat-footed

Interstellar traveler
you’re a rock star
but your eyes
register discontent
earned with senescence

Cockily
you queue up Blackstar
and all is forgiven
in a rush
of empyreal foreboding

It gets dark early
elegiac
in listmaking season
turns out our heroes
are not immortal after all

Today is David Bowie’s birthday.
Posted by Marian at 10:31 AM
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14 comments:

  1. Kerry O'ConnorJanuary 8, 2017 at 10:49 AM

    The first posthumous birthday is a sad occasion. Your memorial is very poignant - a reminder that a life may touch that of others long after it is done.

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  2. ayalaJanuary 8, 2017 at 5:58 PM

    He was awesome!

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  3. RommyJanuary 10, 2017 at 3:40 PM

    I've cranked up a good bit of Bowie in the last couple of days. This is a beautiful tribute to the loss of a legend.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 10, 2017 at 3:45 PM

    Especially loved those last 3 lines -

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  5. JimJanuary 10, 2017 at 3:52 PM

    Nice reading, Marian. A little poem with a big reminder, our heros aren't perfect, goes for elected officials too. I am Star Wars ignorant so I right off related to 'ones' kids. About of the five, the one you love most very likely is the one you bail out of jail (at 3;30 in the morning).
    Thanks for hosting. I tried with young, animals first.
    ..

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  6. brudbergJanuary 10, 2017 at 4:27 PM

    Love how you weaved it in... It made me ponder David Bowie and his last recordings being released in an EP this week (I have not listened to them yet). I'm sure there is a black star up above..

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  7. Sherry Blue SkyJanuary 10, 2017 at 8:10 PM

    I love the interstellar traveler.

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  8. grapelingJanuary 11, 2017 at 1:21 AM

    just for one day ~

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  9. AnonymousJanuary 11, 2017 at 4:23 AM

    Bowie did give everything away, with lavish generosity, and yes, "Blackstar" is such a rush "of empyreal (empyrean?) foreboding" -- one reviewer called it the angst of drowning, which is not the ocean of death. How did we get a rock star at all who lived both as long and fertile as Bowie? And to die on the day you're hippest achievement ever is released -- that's like dying at 27. In memoriam, yes.

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  10. AnonymousJanuary 11, 2017 at 6:56 AM

    turns out our heroes
    are not immortal after all... so true!!!

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  11. Magaly GuerreroJanuary 11, 2017 at 12:06 PM

    That last stanza is like waking up one day and realizing that the darkness (and not the good kind of dark) is always around us, even when the sun is shining in the sky.

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  12. Ostensible TruthJanuary 11, 2017 at 5:21 PM

    ahh so poignant and well expressed

    turns out our heroes
    are not immortal after all

    there's a whole other sense of immortality that comes after their physical though - these stars reach a new level of hyperfame and are ironically much more celebrated and remembered than they ever were before

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  13. Sanaa RizviJanuary 12, 2017 at 6:59 AM

    This is such a beautiful tribute to Bowie!

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  14. cosmos camiJanuary 13, 2017 at 11:18 AM

    I love being in your head.
    I love being there when Bowie is there, too.
    Hello wonderful blog.

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