The day you left,
I forgot how to write.
I forgot the way it feels to feel my fingers wrap around a pen
and pour emotions in black ink into a white abyss of nothingness
filling it with words so that it doesn’t seem so empty
so terrifyingly alone.
Do you remember my fear of wide open blank spaces,
both dark and light?
You told me that blank white nothingness
is what it feels like to be at the centre of a star
just as it is falling apart.
I’m so sorry
I didn’t believe you.
I am there now,
and I know you weren’t lying.

here's to the glam rock messiah of outsiders and misfits,
the androgynous man of the stars with the music.

born in brixton,
he traveled the universe by spaceships and soundwaves
with wild hair and one eye dilated.
book-loving and queer,
in love with the thought of turning 50.
the world had never seen a man
living different lives at once,
but here the starman came reinventing himself:
ziggy stardust, thin white duke, aladdin sane, major tom—
all different selves tied together by his heart.

he lived his earthly mission, rightfully so
that even the gravity of the world could not keep him put.
so on and on he strummed his guitar and crawled on stage,
in spaceboots and dresses, in porcelain doll makeup,
reaching out to all the nobody and somebody people

but one day his cosmic vessel
was taken down by a secret sickness
and halted his mission here on earth,
and so the streets and little bars smelling of cigars
were flooded by the ones who mourned,
who looked up to the stars,
wondering where their starman went.
the world had never seen such an electric creature,
but here the star man came in music and dance,
saying it was alright to be weird—
to embrace strangeness
in a world where every earthling wanted to be the same.

and perhaps, he isn't really long gone:
his time here may have ended
but now he is out there, somewhere,
on some distant star,
watching over the Earth as he always has.

The grapes haven't spoiled yet, but
will now never be tasted.
The cut flowers
still have some perplexing
life in them.
Hanging from a
tree branch, I find a message
written by a dead woman.
There's a bookmark
embedded between the
pages of a hardback, like
Excalibur lodged in
stone, and I
cannot pull it out.
It hurts to walk along
certain corridors,
past certain doors, with
no one behind them
calling to me.  
The radio is tuned to Ghost FM,
and nobody with a pulse
gets airtime.  
Digital photographs of
fading analogue memories.

Yet still small shoots persist
in breaking through this dark, cold dirt, and
inexplicably blossoming.

Splitting my brain in two
Wisdom born from the chasm
Deepening my knowledge of all things made new
Relishing the mental muscle spasm
Learning anew the things I once knew

A natural rhythm to the revolving dance
Heightened awareness charged but serene
Exchanging energized particles of significance
Rendering meaningless the distance between
Fission in fusion refines the solution enabling both to advance

Darkness can fall upon us,
anxiety a planted seed,
we need to find the root of it,
and remove it like a ****,

Depression is a way to cope,
when a mind is had too much,
when you feel alone too long,
and yearn for human touch,

Addiction is a State of Mind,
don't believe that you just need it,
tell yourself that you're okay,
"I know that I can beat it,
take away the hurt and pain
pull it out and **** it,

Plant some new life in there,
and gently go and seed it,
add a lot of love on top,
so carefully to feed it,

A new and peaceful place,
your mind at ease at last
to find a thing called grace,
to forgive yourself the past,

Now go,
plant some beautiful
strong,
and wild flowers..
in there instead,

Ma Cherie  © 2017