Ticket to Ride
There’s an ancient train
leaving right on time…
it roars through a sudden door
cut open in the upper climes.
We are shocked the iron horse
scooped our beloved out of mid-air…
shocked to see the hinge-blown door
that has always been right there…
c.p.estés
And here on Earth, maybe a wisp of that locomotive smoke lingers here, and we are one soul less…
one soul less who fit perfectly the shape of some fangled combo of Fred Astaire and Yoruba dance-warrior,
one less soul whose power of voice at age ten was heavy with veldt and Gary Indiana steel town, and
whose voice by age fifty was weighted with having lived out, in some ways, the titles of his biggest hits:
Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995).
I think of this child who became so well known, this child without a childhood,
yet he became a part of the childhood of every child within reach of a radio’s yellow eye,
an MTV show, a video player, an audio cassette player, a seat in the cinema.
How tired he must have become from pulling the long bag
filled with his adult family members early on, how heavy
they must have been, not just for him, but for many of his gifted siblings too…
yet how strong he must have been to keep trying to acquiesce
to feed his father’s endless glittering eye, over and over again.
A person who is ‘famous’ is almost never truly known by others, no matter who pretends to know,
or allows their speculations to devolve into psuedo-certainties …
especially those making a living off the name either pro or con,
especially the gossip-snarks who collect other’s eccentricies and failures,
pretending these are oh so breath-taking ‘news,’ when they aren’t.
This soul…
Addicted to various? Starved, in more ways than one? Sadly, likely.
Talented? Massively. Irrevocably. Undeniably. Unequivocally.
At peace for the first time in decades? Credible.
Loss to those who loved him?
Watershed.
For many of us?
End of an Era.
Rest in Peace Michael Joseph Jackson
May all those who love you, be comforted.