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Poem for Michael Jackson, parts 1-9
i.[impromptu
celebration of a life, via the Apollo Theater, Harlem]
You
can see the hands
jutting, crisscrossed, zigzagged
into the
air, tapering off the edge
of the camera,
five fingers
part, a generation
of mimics, trying to reach out
to a ghost
(far above us) in
celebration of a life.
This
is where you started, they say,
this is where the break
dancers
came with no warning to gyrate
down the sidewalks
as though this were a movie.
ii.[Billy
Jean, south of 15]
That
crisp sound (falling rain)
dances in the background,
as
though you could deny the
synthesized thumping
of
beat
after
beat;
or a voice that slides
from the
edges of my
headphones like lace
with enough sequins
to
keep me intrigued.
Enough strange beauty
to stop me
flat in my
alone-dance to pull a pen
between my fingers,
and write.
iii.[Beat
it!]
Nothing reminds me of
my
childhood more then
the first few
angry notes of this
song.
He says: the
fire's in their eyes, and beat
it,
their words are really clear, so
just beat it
my
father and I are driving
along the sliding globe of a sunset,
my
hand tiny on the gear shift,
while he teaches me how to drive a
stick
even though I haven't even
started kindergarten yet.
We are singing alone together, even
though I don't
recognize the meaning
of the words jungle-gyming from my throat,
and
my hands cover the steering wheel awkwardly
with his hands
over mine.
No one
wants to be defeated;
no line of verse could portrait out relationship more then that
one.
iv.[Thriller,
because, how could I not?]
He has a love affair with the
moonlight,
with the way his jacket punches his shoulders
together
when he moves
along the concrete, echoed by a league
of
ghouls.
He was so beautiful back then, so
unchiseled,
before the purchased points of his new face
scared
the world away.
v.[Pedophilia]
Drunken weight is
like a cloak over a child;
his kiss could have been tender
or
torturous, allegedly.
vi.[Will
you be there, for Nana]
Your
voice takes up the black space
of the ending credits of
Free
Willy, a film Nana
bought me
shortly before she died.
I still have the
clamshell video
case tucked into a drawer - I will
never get
rid of it.
This is the one song that I cannot
listen to
without crying.
vii.[The way you make me feel]
He
sings: Hey pretty baby
with the high heels on,
and
a volley of wedge tap shoes strike the floor,
my white silk skirt
twists between my knees
while ankles sashay sideways, taking the
hips
of the girl in front of me, and someone behind
mimics,
the
older boys in the back clap their palms
together, making the
jazziest of decrees.
We changed the words to: 'You really
move me along,'
rather then Turn
Me On, because we were
kids
after all,
but the audience buzzes with proud
glee
while we sing the haunted lusty lyrics of
once-upon-a-time
love, move our chests forward
in mock agony, hands up to our
hearts in an exaggerated
plea;
the boys move forward, bow
before us, fall to bended knee
to take our hands in closure.
viii.[Black or White]
They
make us file into the auditorium
for another ridiculous Memorial
Day assembly
where a hand full of kids bring in their
grandparents
to talk about the war,
projecting the atrocities of the last
100 years
on a big screen, and I am always
asking my teachers
tersely why we don't remember
the veterans of the Civil War, or
the American
Revolution, or the war of 1812 - they after all
are
veterans too.
They always raise their eyebrows at me:
Well, I guess no
one's still alive from those
wars.
I
roll my eyes, wondering if the generation
enclosed from the Iraq
war will speak at the
assembles of my children.
This one,
is different though, rather then
war stories the projector slams
Michael Jackson's
Black
and White on the big
screen stunning
all of the side chatter
into a dull hypnoses.
For three minutes no one speaks; this music vided,
a cacophony of changing faces morphing into someone
else's,
our quiet O shaped reflections dizzy in the
technicolor
teach
us more about equality then the realism of
a war-vet.
ix.[Michael Jackson, in my car, June 26th,
2009]
He's in my car now,
tucked safe and tight in
my CD changer, dead, but his voice
still
fills the space up with sound.
I roll the windows
down, on the fence about
his past, and what he may, or may not
have
done, how he said he would kill himself
is he was not able
to help the children of the world,
that he does what he does, because of them.
The song rises on the air away from me,
up
to the sky. I sigh.