So when I turned this book in, it was a few days
before Michael Jackson died.
And I was writing about skin and race.
Then Michael Jackson died.
And though I wasn't a Michael Jackson fan,
I mean he was really quite a study in skin and identity
repair, and identity destruction, and talent,
and the journey from soul.
Just everything that happened to him
actually contains a whole lot of tropes and ways
of either mythologizing or not mythologizing
hate and odd behavorial self-love or eccentrics.
So I begged the press if I could write a Michael Jackson
poem for the end of this book.
And they let me.
And once I started--
I had maybe six or seven months when
the book was in production--
I couldn't stop.
And I might have seen him perform twice, three times.
Twice as the brothers-- you know, the kids,
because I was that age--
and once as post-Jackson 5 The Jacksons.
And so I pretty much had some feeling, if someone asked me
what did I love about Michael Jackson,
I would say something like, he made
me want to dress up and dance with my brothers.
And I didn't have but one brother.
So why can't I have four more brothers?
[LAUGHTER]
To my mother.
So this poem is long.
I'm going to read few sections from it.
Tend to reading and see what it feels like I
haven't heard the whole thing.
But it's called "Gone Pop."
And I was in a poetry reading when I got the news.
And I walked out of the reading and wrote
that title, "Gone Pop."
So I'm going to begin section one.
This is called falco berigora, and that means brown falcon.
And all of you need to know that Joseph Jackson, who
the boys called Joe, was the head of a singing group,
a group called The Falcons.
And Joseph has red hair, too.
Green eyes.
But sometimes you don't know that on TV.
He's like one of the most hated men in America.
You know, Joe Jackson beat his kids.
Anyway, here we go.
How many people are Leo out there?
Well, this is in retro.
All Leos, raise your hand.
----Nobody is going to ask you at a poetry reading again.
Joseph Jackson was a Leo.
OK.
So you got something in common with Joe Jackson.
[LAUGHTER]
Be nice to your little kid.
[LAUGHTER]
Or else they will make more money than you.
[LAUGHTER]
Born Leo, fire, a masculine, extroverted lion.
Born three months and three days before Black Tuesday.
Up from that Odyssey, from fountain hill,
to Oakland to East Chicago to Gary.
An introverted Taurus, full of God's arrows at his side,
settled in the steel trap of steel mills, operating cranes.
A brown falcon with green eyes, and falcons like him
did not fly.
They fathered, then fought.
Then provided.
then managed.
Favoring often the ground, not the sky's
traffic of other talented talons,
because the ground favored family.
Poverty's abusive crossroads paved with small prey.
Young sickle-shaped feathers, nine dancing offspring.
Joseph wanted the little falcons and got
peacocks, infinite vultures, a lonely prodigy.