Low Heroes & the Lodger
Let’s not talk of DJ’s or of blackouts.
I’m breaking glass & crashing
through iron doors at Hansa with
a loaded Luger & a bunch of wonderful
people—all teeming with silent problems.
We’ll scrawl bright red graffiti & nail
it all down to a nouveau art millennium.
I’m sick of this rotting wine; the lustful
glances in drab streets & how they
burn all electric blue in fits of anger.
I’m talking about a whole new career
in Kyoto with you & those Japanese
doctors. So, shoot your grey eyes
through mine, as I slaughter someone
else inside me in a foreign tongue, before I
slowly draw the pale blinds of solitude.
©️Orion Foote, 2022
*The poem was precipitated by an old cassette tape (that I wish I still had) of a David Bowie radio interview that I taped one night in 1978 or ’79. He was talking about his recent work and the various things that he was into at that time, which included German Expressionist art.
He spoke at length about people such as Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt and Egon Schiele, but mostly about the ‘cut up’ writing techniques that he was deeply into at the time, which had been developed earlier by writers such as William Burroughs, amongst others.
The writing of this poem basically involved taking random words from the lyrics that formed the songs in his so called ‘Berlin trilogy ‘ of albums and weaving them into some kind of loose narrative.
For want of a better word, it is my tribute to Bowie.
Visions of Orion Poetry 