A star has been plucked from the sky.
The sky is now dimmer.
It happened on June 25th.
A day, we will always remember.

Never again to see Michael’s smile light up the skies.
Never again to see him moonwalk across the stage as his fans cries.
Never again to hear him sing Billie Jean.
To the roaring sound of his fans’ screams.

A brother of the sun has been taken away.
But in our hearts his music will always stay.
Michael Jackson will now dance among the clouds.
And in the heavens, you will still hear him singing loud and proud.
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The most recent poem I had appear anywhere was in Travis’s hotline-forum, weird deer (weirddeer.com). He posted it on June 17th and it was about Michael Jackson, which feels like especially weird timing to me now, given the circumstances. Travis also happened to choose an excellent graphic, to accompany the poem, from the arcade game mentioned in the comment above. Alas. Coincidences.

Of course, this MJ death stuff has already been drawn out too far and is, in most ways, grotesque. The fact that it’s completely eclipsed any further coverage of Tehran hasn’t gotten any attention, from what I’ve seen. However, i think this obsession of America’s (the world’s?) is justified in ways we don’t even understand really, more closely linked to the horrors in Tehran than we realize, too.

In a recent post on his blog (http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/2009/06/michael-jackson-is-symptom-of-our.html), poet Philip Metres says “Michael Jackson is a symptom of our national illness.” I think this is spot on; the reason, I suspect, why people have not gotten over this musician’s death is because he was a real live person that perfect strangers felt comfortable hating and judging and treating horrifically from afar.

People go on about the litany of the man’s problems, speculating what is true, what is false, etc. But whether accusations are true or not is almost secondary in importance here. What’s of primary importance is that the majority of people who recognized that the man had problems–rather than being moved to compassion or some sort of action that could’ve helped resolve those problems–unionized only to crucify him.

Of course Michael Jackson was a prodigious pop musician and of course he affected many lives in positive ways…but I think the reason his death has been dwelled upon to this capacity is because he’s the most recent personification of human’s cruelty to human. Humans dehumanizing a person they don’t understand, and thereby taking the first important steps in completely devaluing human life. Now that Michael Jackson is dead, the rest of the world will never have a chance to redeem themselves from treating a stranger so inhumanely from afar. It’s obviously profane to compare Tehran to the King of Pop; that being said, I think Metres calling Jackson a “symptom” is apropos. However, I think the “disease” applies to our whole species, not just the nation. The thinking that dehumanized Jackson in the eyes of the world is the same thinking that is justifying mass murder across the globe today. The same thinking that has justified it since the first time. If we can’t manage to generate compassion in ourselves for one person who’s blatantly in trouble, what hope do we have in resolving wars that have existed longer than any of us?

Grieve not the death of Michael Jackson. Grieve for the living. Grieve us, who still have not found a way to exist on this planet together without brutalizing each other.

Too Grandiose?
Thanks again, Trav.
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The real tragedy here is that the commercialization of pop culture always ends up in the commercialization of the real life individual “star.” De-ja vu all over again.

Terreson
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Never have I teared up. I didn’t cry. But I teared up a couple of times. I wanted to make movies because of “Moonwalker”. I taped it off the TV and watched it again and again and again. I would wake up late at night and watch the “Scream” video he did with his sister because it just amazed me. The dancing, singing, the filmmaking. I couldn’t dance, not like him. But I listened to his music, watch what he did. And he was amazing.

I used to go to the local theater and play the Moonwalker arcade game. Just for that game. The man had an arcade game!

I am still in disbelief. I knew him before I was born…
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Love,

Your Mom
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My love said take
All my books,

You can take all my clothes,
My hats, my shoes, my gloves,

You can have my watchband
Take my sifters

You can have my glass head
And my silver darts,

Take my wild boar, my astronaut,
You can have my pots & pans,

And my replica
Of the United States, and take

While you’re at it, all of the
presidential figurines

You can have all my matchbooks,
My binoculars, my exceptionally fine

Collection of cleaning products,
My one-of-a-kind snake charming horn,

Take my sand dollars & beach glass,
Take all of my spices and salt & pepper,

You can have my smoked ham & brown mustard,
You can take away my Progesso Soup,

Take away my bread, take my spoons,
You can have my sheets and my pillows,

Take my rugs and my three erasers,
Take my pitcher and the scarf you gave me,

Take my feathers my fox took
From my hawk, take my walking stick,

You can have my broom and my glass eye,
You can take away my atomic clock,

Take my dog, take my rule book,
Take my decoy and my bamboo cage,

You can take my girl waiting on
Her suitcase, my Michael Jackson doll,

You can take my mother and her priest
And their holy water basin,

Take my drill and my hammer,
You can have all my brushes & combs,

Take my handkercheifs and my scissors,
Take all of the keys you can find

In the house, take my scythe my hoe,
My rags, my lamp with the lovers

Asleep in one another’s arms, take
My sprite sitting on a stump daydreaming

Over an empty book, take my moose,
Take my coffee can of loose change,

Take all of my ant traps, take my
Windowpanes, take my steps and my doors,

Take my chicken shack & my wheelbarrow,
Take my combat ship plaque, take my

Vatican champagne flutes, my earplugs,
Take my quilts, take all of my quilts,

I would not take one stitch
Of one of your quilts, though I love them,

I sweetly interrupted.
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