All photos by Jimmy King

Where is David Bowie?

New Single and Pre-Order of First New Album in 10 Years Exclusively Launching in the iTunes Store Today

New York, NY–January 8, 2013–In the early morning hours of Tuesday the 8th January, Iso/Columbia Records released a new single by David Bowie titled ‘Where Are We Now?’ exclusively launching in the iTunes Store in 119 countries. David Bowie’s first new album in ten years and his 27th studio recording, THE NEXT DAY is also available as a pre-order on iTunes with a wide release scheduled for March. January the 8th is of course David Bowie’s birthday, a timely moment for such a treasure to appear as if out of nowhere.

Throwing shadows and avoiding the industry treadmill is very David Bowie despite his extraordinary track record that includes album sales in excess of 130 million not to mention his massive contributions in the area of art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary. It goes without saying that he has sold out stadiums and broken ticket records throughout the world during this most influential of careers.

In recent years radio silence has been broken only by endless speculation, rumor and wishful thinking ….a new record…who would have ever thought it, who’d have ever dreamed it! After all David is the kind of artist who writes and performs what he wants when he wants…when he has something to say as opposed to something to sell. Today he definitely has something to say.

THE NEXT DAY was co-produced by David Bowie and long term collaborator Tony Visconti. ‘Where Are We Now?’ was written by Bowie, and was recorded in New York. The single is accompanied by a haunting video directed by Tony Oursler which harks back to David’s time in Berlin. He is seen looking in on footage of the auto repair shop beneath the apartment he lived in along with stark images of the city at the time and a lyric constantly raising the question Where Are We Now?

“The moment you know, you know you know” resonates from the new single’s lyric. Now we all know…David Bowie has been in the recording studio…just when we least expected it!!

To view the video for ‘Where Are We Now?’:
http://www.davidbowie.com

New David Bowie photo here:
http://www.shorefire.com/clients/davidbowie

Pre-order ‘THE NEXT DAY’ in the iTunes store:
Standard: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-next-day/id590825692?ls=1
Deluxe: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-next-day-deluxe/id590844404?ls=1

Reclaimed

Abandoned this ten years , a garden
that once fed a dozen, its gap
clogged by hawthorn, cluttered by briar.
I hacked and chopped and slashed
for an hour or more, heedless
of blood and scratch and gash, blind
to blister and tear and thorn, eager
as Livingstone- a venturesome child –
breathless in pursuit of the new.
And now, with final slash of hook
the lost field is revealed,
its grasses regenerated, again
and again, matted and tangled
and layered; its blackberry strings
stitched through wild whitethorn,
holding in, keeping out. A pheasant
explodes from its lair,
cracks a decade’s silence
and guides the eye to new horizons.

Mike Gallagher was born on Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland, but now resides in Lyreacrompane, Co. Kerry, having previously worked in London for 40 years.His poetry, stories, songs and haiku have been published in Ireland, throughout Europe and in America, Canada, Japan, India,Thailand, Nepal and Australia. His haiku have been translated into Croatian, Japanese and Dutch. He won the Eigse Michael Hartnett viva voce contest in 2010; was shortlisted for the Hennessy Award in 2011 and won the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry competition in 2012. He is the editor of thefirstcut, an online literary journal at: http://issuu.com/thefirstcut

Of Nobility
             [for Ian Ayres]

Noble to awaken and fire antique pistol

Noble to sleep the sleep of jaguar

Noble to scruff the neck or collar with your fur

Noble to grow nuclear habaneros in wild backyards

Noble to suffer another opening of Muscat

Noble to scratch the poet’s cock before unloading

Noble to wince at the mention of perdition

Noble to read and while away your solitary time

Noble to forever bleed

Noble to dance even when alone

Noble to lonesome crow

Noble to be ludicrous in knowledge you are so alone

Noble to spout inane wisdom to absolute strangers

Noble to burgle, thistle, and belch

Noble to cook a huge pot of beef stink stew

Noble to patronize Saint Baudelaire

Noble to bring lion’s head and dear heart to imagination’s table

Noble to burrow throughout the whole of Kafka’s writings

Noble to work and sweat and toil over single lost adage

Noble to mince words and not mince words as is your wont

Noble to cross before churches and curse all gods

Noble to strike blind the flag and worship thyself only joking

Noble to admit your fleshly brevity and ignorance before nature

Noble to enter the circle of existence and draw a crude triangle on                                                                                your navel

Noble to offer up your heart to posterity with a sigh!

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Larry Sawyer

Larry Sawyer is an American poet and editor. He edited Nexus magazine (Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio) and currently edits the online poetry magazine, milk.

For more visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sawyer_(poet)

Contact Of An Angel’s Hand

Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand
While lost and alone in a pitch-black night
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

Trail can be hard to walk or even stand
When lost in the dark with no guiding light
Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand

Sometimes the signs are hard to understand
With most of the answers hidden from sight
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

This mysterious globe is an island.
When the stars winked in response to this plight
Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand

Blowing fields of grass cannot see one strand
The great herds can block the message from sight
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

As beacons throb from high above the land
The secret pathways are hidden from sight
Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

While Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry, fiction or articles recently published and rejected. Recent credits include poetry in Scifaikuest and art in Carnival and Dreams & Nightmares. Denny does not have a Facebook page or Twitter account but does have a website with previously published works. http://www.dennymarshall.com/

The Corner of Desolation and Waste

Rundown like the toothless gums

of an apple doll left under a tree

last Christmas and missed until

Easter, the Veteran’s Hall stands,

a gray bunker of square brick, some

of the windows blocked off, no sign

of life and no cars outside…the men

who come here to ruminate and

reminisce are the old ones; only

their baseball caps or the odd patch

on a jacket gives you an idea of

what they would talk about –

if the words that populated their

nightmares would come forth to

the living in daylight and heal them.

The only time I saw my grandfather

without his walker was when he

hobbled his way to the counter

to get coffee, probably made during

the very same war he was in, with

powdered creamer that stayed stuck

to the stick like unbrushed teeth.

He’d smile and chat on the way,

methodically turn the black to

skin-colored beige with the focus

of a neurosurgeon, then chat

on the way back, to fall into

his favorite chair, sip and think,

until I helped him home for supper.

I came most days for a while to visit.  My

grandfather was always in the same

chair.  I never had to scan the sadness

or smell that peculiar smell of old

for very long.  And when we’d go home

until tomorrow, we’d think without words

that we both hoped the same men

would be there, because to think

any other way would be so horrible,

you might as well be back in the war.

Tobi Cogswell is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Credits include or are forthcoming in various journals in the US, UK, Sweden and Australia. Her fifth and latest chapbook is Lit Up, (Kindred Spirit Press). She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.sprreview.com).

Ashes and Pause

Beckett was a fraud.

No style.

Know nothing.

No nourishment.

No company. No tenants. No money.

No obligation. No art. No mention. No hero.

No No.

No defense from shadow as an ally

By calling a bomb darkness or Blake

Or an impulse

Soot as imprint and blood

You shit on the floor

Because it takes your mumbling

Causeway to a cracked tooth

When you wander or sleep in an agenda

That door opening and closing in the dark

Without fingers or wind

Again and again

Anger in light

Scratched record in the dance music

Old voice in acetate

Scratched dissolution

…A knife… A knife… A knife…

A butcher in the radius

An attack by a ghost whose entire body is also a fraud

Can become anything it wants to

When its skin comes off

Written in the language of bread as if it were a bed

Gathering evil as a shimmer in the static—

You were upset long before meeting Joyce.

Inappropriate laughter beneath the floor

A little tremor with a sailboat

And a clean wound

Read the history backwards

As an unfamiliar culture

Until it is interior in pieces

Back before embracing failure and sketch

To where Dublin was impervious

And could only be attacked by its preservation.

Tripwire in the imaginary sand with contempt

Breaking all those bones in a lion

As if it were a metaphor inside ambition

No hero. No woman could wait that long.

No way back. Say goodbye.

Perfect tits

Cannibal in a mirage in Braille

Erasing one bullet at time

As a prayer to a target

Ashes in what takes too long to escape a mouth

Small coffin with big nails

It’s all mist longing for magic

J.J. Blickstein is a poet and former editor/publisher of Hunger Magazine & Press. Works as freelance copy editor, student and teacher of Chinese internal martial arts, and Tui Na (Accupressure) practice. Does not miss being a stone mason, loves good gin, gardening, herbal medicine, great music, art, film, a warm fire and good eats. Books in print include Barefoot on a Drawing of the Sun (Fish Drum Inc., 2006), a handmade artists’ book/CD collaboration with French painter, Jean-Claude Loubieres, titled Signs/Signe (Paris, France, 2007), Vision of Salt & Water (Bagatela Press, Mexico. 2002). In 2009, as part of a literary contingent, Blickstein journeyed to Cassis, France on a poet exchange and translation project sponsored by the Carmargo Foundation. POEM: Poets on an exchange mission (Fish Drum, Inc. 2009) is the resulting anthology. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A new book-length manuscript or two awaits a home. He lives in Woodstock, NY.

Andrew Franck (born Andreas Franck in the United States) is a philosopher, artist and author. As a visual artist, Franck works with oil,latex and carbon on paper, mixed media and encaustic. His catalog contains over two hundred works focusing on metamorphosis in plant life, alchemy and the rhythmical aspects of negative space. His series of action art, collage, word art and assemblages entitled Two In One Eye examines physical shape, language and the decay of the art object. Franck’s larger works have been exhibited at Centerpoint Gallery and Paralux in New York City, Basilica Industria and Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Hudson N.Y. and Jio in Montreal. The newest work, Reassembling, is comprised of sixty-four blackboard diagrams illustrating the holistic imagination of Goethean science. Franck’s writings include The Transparent Bride, The Art of Porosity, Mantras and Musical Solutions, The Alchemical Circus, Excoriated Light and The Holy Bodies Circuit, Dreaming The Luminous Frontier, A Book of Dances, The Painted Trout, As Above Inside Out BelowandButohmania. He currently resides in upstate New York.

Terry Brooks is without a doubt a fantasy icon. Brooks has delighted readers throughout his career. With 23 bestsellers reaching the New York Times bestsellers list and over 21 million copies in print he is without a doubt one of the most iconic fantasy authors of our time. His original Shannara series led to the Heritage of Shannara series and the prequel First King of Shannara as well as other novels based in that land. He also penned the Magic Kingdom of Landover series and countless other titles. Terry later went on to novelize Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace and Hook. His latest work Wards of Faerie: Book 1 is part of a highly anticipated trilogy with sequels to be released every six months. His biography titled Sometimes the Magic Works proves that is often true.

http://www.terrybrooks.net/

To read more of our interview with Terry please see: Terry Brooks

(Please note this interview previously ran at The Damned Interviews, we will be saving as many of those as we can here. Thank you for reading.)

As It Were

As it were. You did not want to
be there. But you came –
I thought that nights like this
might re-ignite a flame.
Yet your eyes burned:
‘We have played with fire before’.
Cigarette light falters.
Finishes autumn. Night blooms,
a temporary death.
Prometheus. I grieve.

(From the collection Rain At Watford Junction (2012), David Stewart)

David Stewart lives in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Current pre-occupations are environmental journalism and the life and works of Ted Hughes.

Promenade in Dunlaoghaire

For Alessia

Your words sound and taste of old leather,

Like some deep wine they resonate

In my mind long after you are gone.

As I listen to their timbre

Certain geographical features of place

Become illuminated, like light

Reflected in rain-filled pools,

Or the sudden darkness of a morning forest

Which descends upon the sea-swept boulevards.

Such strange wanderings of the dispossessed,

I have seen so many of your eyes

Staring out at me through the darkness,

Like tiny pools of light, minute constellations

Of sound. Can you hear sight?

There, on those same boulevards,

I have also witnessed ships sliding off

Like rulers into the sea, their water table,

Where we too sit around and pass the salt,

The dried grains, the basalt, the hurt, the years;

Though, through the musk of your eyes, by the touch

Of your down, you can obliterate all.

In short, I succumb to your Byzantine smile,

Which helps me forestall the further catastrophes of dawn

That hang like a great sheet suspended above this city.

Peter O’Neill has been writing poetry for over 25 years now. His works deal largely with the darker subjects of sex, alcoholism, violence, greed, and death.He has lived and worked in France and enjoyed reading Baudelaire, Beckett, Rimbaud and Proust very much.Dante is also one of his great loves.