Last Ziggy Star-Dust Show

for David Bowie

I watched 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 begins to soften the sound/still in sync

his 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 the 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/discussing 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 2003

Bad Seeds

For Nick Cave - Australian


He croons like a singer
back in the forties
makes a suit and tie look cool

brave performer, takes tragic themes
turns a soap-opera heroine
to Lady of Shallot drowning

decades filling stages left bare
by the 'Sex Pistols' and 'David Bowie'
never bowed to public taste
an artist of the eternal now

always playing Moon's dark face
devil's advocate in human form
subterranian plutonian poison
bringing it home you

rips open the guts of everything
lances the wound draws out the pus

finds a hope-seed in the dark
a tiny glimmering of human hope

perennial troubadour
gothic high-priest, obsessed
with antithesis, biblical mythology
bearer of a strange kind of fruit
horror high-art, beastly visuals
chord structure, mediaeval
Berlin stages reverberate
abyss's of murder, regret, suicide
and eternal war - society's disease

raging in black invariably
incredibly tender, son never lost
just had to be, on the other side
of the world, where wars spawned
Hitler born, burning crosses
of Ku Klux Klan
where cradles of rascism
grew bad-seeds.



Pamela Sidney 1995

Haroon

(Haroon @ Speakers Corner Hyde Park London 1977)
re: "in camps thirty years" : insert today 2008 - "in camps sixty years"


He could have been a young Omar Shariff
teeth gleaming, lips pouting
finely chiseled brown face
gold glinting on wrists and fingers
tailored suit, snow white shirt
wearing soft Gucci shoes - he's confident
in his 'work clothes' - the bonus earned every Sunday
for taking the rostrum at Speaker's Corner.

French, English, Arabic at his command
he stands above the crowd
passionately unfolding the tragedy
of the Palestinian people -
in camps thirty years
waiting for their State of Palestine.

Time off from busking at a loose end
standing in a crowd mesmerised, listening
to an adept immersed in his subject
when a heckler interjects
shouting insults and racist slurs.

The spruiker deals swiftly with the 'plant'
he's done this before - words his world
eloquent under harassment - the heckler
dissolves back into the crowd.

Meeting him later, instinct told me
he needs to remain a mystery -
not too many prying questions.

Invited back to his Chelsea flat
for coffee and conversation
he ushered me in through the door
checked efficiently behind curtains
under beds, inside cupboards.

'In this business' he said
'You always check first - for bombs'




Pamela Sidney 2003