Curtain Calls

See....

A star is a metaphor

for many things

that a mere mortal

could never attain.

we hate and love few strangers

we love and hate a lot of metaphors

stand-In's for people we don't know

we communicate with them as what we think they are

not what they are

the Micheal Jackson in my mind

represented those who prey on Children

My issues used him as a media target

Where I could try to confess and purge my rage

I remember him

too

as a child star

a child myself

I would have told you back then that he was the luckiest child alive

we were raised to want and worship the rich and famous lives

our young minds were still just discovering

the worship of icons in the media

society just then beginning to crumble

destroyed by the new ministers of truth

the actors and writers and artists

the quoted and interviewed and photographed

L Ron Hubbard tried to buy icons for his religion

stars

ready made little media magnets

human billboards walking around promoting his con

An early take on Dungeons and Dragons

Before the deconstructionists got a--hold of all the myths

and began searching around inside for any hint of Truth

creating an Anonymous crew holding up the truth to their lies

They almost got Jackson... sent Lisa Maria Presley after his money

Gave him the sham marriage his career required

He was like Elvis in his rejection

They both had grown up with people trying to get their money

& recognized the con under the earnest smiles

Michael Jackson began to morph before my eyes

His music lost me at thriller

I was too rock n roll to care for what I thought of as Disco

No music aficionado in the first place -- I sort of assumed my taste was bad

Today I am reading all the notes left in his wake

The bits of information that make up my myth of the man

were forged in rage at predators and his seeming transformation

into a white woman

The politics just were bad....

Now I am learning just how horrible this man's life truly was

Just how complete he fits into the way I think of wealth and fame

He was a slave laborer throughout his childhood

beaten or watching beatings his entire life

Children being hit

He wanted to surround himself with children who were happy

to fill himself with feelings he felt he'd missed in childhood

An icon, he spoke the words and everyone wanted to go along

Now we find out he is taking 30 Valiums a day

... I used to take those for my back and they mess you up

no one likes living that fucked up

your life is a hell that you refuse to enter anymore when you are filled with needle marks

the only thing left in your real life is pain and withdrawal... why go there?

He was abused, used, and neglected

He grew up to be an abuser, a user, and a neglector

and a genius at dance and performance

I can never forgive people who go unpunished

Do the crime, do your time

come out and start over

be someone else

He was punished for his crimes

crippled his lifestyle at least

let a bit of how people see him

into his life

Good people want to say nice things to the family

stay on the better stories

b appropriate

at first when I heard he died

he completed a story that I had about him in my mind

a predator was gone

One down....

Now I see how the doctors kept him all wasted

He was slaughtered by modern medicine

beaten into a bruised and bleeding babe

dependent on a bottle of Jesus Juice

Can a man be judged for being created a monster?

Seems the creator himself is to the blame

the beatings given children that drive them to think

violence is the way to show someone who is right

who is almighty

who is making the rules

then they wonder why the gangs seem so natural to some?

I have seen enough life to know that some blows to the brain never heal

In the press the stars have to be Svengali

for every interview, auditions, performances

They play up whatever metaphor suites their target audience

toe the party line

stay away from the spotlight when they snort coke and whore out

Jackson's couldn't have gotten away

with having all the children over to never never land

if he was out and gay

That ain't right but prejudice is out there

Maybe if society were a little kinder

he would have evolved into someone adult

tempered by the moods of lovers

whose grace would have been more important than any drug

A gay black man in the media

Don't see too many of those

The pressure is too extreme to conform

and grows more extreme

with every step you take up the ladder

sexuality becomes an economic equation --

a gay loses some of their core audience

the screaming girls who were in the front row since his first memories

would have turned away

He was so afraid people would turn away

He tasted what it was like to hailed with love from all over the world

He swam in that love like an ocean of morphine

The life he went back to after the performance could never compare

He started shooting the concerts up into his veins

Getting all that glory without an audience

after a life of needing to be needed

he needed no one

His own chemical never never land

snorted, shot, swallowed, smoke and drank

The doc's were well paid to go along

employees

in a criminal operation to keep a human being controlled

docile

signing those checks

Told since infancy that it did not matter what he felt

what mattered was what he did

His feelings were secondary to the dance moves

the belt

he could feel it

even when his brothers were being beaten

And his father was beaten and someone is being beaten as I write these words

And someone else is saying that they wished their parents had spanked them enough

to avoid jail and go to school

He was told that what mattered was what people thought of him

Told WATCH PEOPLE WATCH YOU

Be What They Want

tried to hide that he drank, the drugs

got into a sham Scientology marriage

even as he changed his face into a perfect androgyny

He couldn't hide who he was

Anymore when the drug him into court for sleeping with kids

He was wasted and wearing pajamas one day

spry and defiant the next

now the people are coming out and talking about trips to south America with boys

gay lovers hidden in cheap motels

he quickly becomes a tragic figure

he knew he was almost too weak to live

that the od's were going to get him sooner or later

the anesthesia he was taking to sleep kills most people who abuse the stuff

told his daughter he would be gone soon

He was signed to do fifty concerts he and everyone around him knew

the sickeningly thing drug addict was never going to make

even his contractually obliged 13 minutes a show

I guess we all hope that God

or our conscious

buys the rationalizations

we've used to navigate

the human geography

I believe the only word

that means god

in the human language

is love

Endless love...

replacing the hatred

the cynicism

the cryptic con jobs

I forgive him now