Sound+Vision, 1990 tour

Ziggy Stardust descended on southern Europe

An event that asked time to stop for a weekend

And it was humid, Dad said—

That April night when he peeled that poster

Off the top of an overpass in Milan—

Cause the glue couldn’t hold it up right
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Dad hung it up everywhere he lived

A proud neighbor on the wall

Next to Klimt and the secessionists for decades

In his college dorm

To his apartment

To his first house

Then second house

Then he lost it
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Probably somewhere in the U-Haul

He’d go back to the old house every Halloween

Dressed up in his money man suit

With his late-thirties facial hair and glasses

And they’d actually let him look around

But no dice
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My fourth grade teacher never told us

The day Ziggy Stardust went back to his planet

But I do remember Dad coming home that day

And telling me his hero died

Paul McCartney?— I asked

It was the other one

The one that sang about Major Tom

On Saturdays on the way to Kung Fu

The one my mom never understood

She preferred Phil Collins
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Dad still has his Austrian posters

Klimt made a new friend in Bucan

But doesn’t care as much about Croatian operas

And dad has an even newer house

Where he put his money man suit away

Where he looks on eBay from time to time

Cause he says he’d settle for a replica
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And every so often I’d go down to my mom’s basement

Rummaging through old furniture and school supplies

Moving around plastic boxes and retired armoires

With a faint wish that I could find it

That maybe Ziggy would come back

That maybe Dad would come back too