GONE POP: Michael Joseph Jackson

Author(s): Thomas Sayers Ellis

Source: Callaloo, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter, 2011), pp. 42-62
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Thomas Savers Ellis in Brooklyn, New York.

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 GONE POP*
Michael Joseph Jackson

by Thomas Sayers Ellis

For Bonnita Joanna Johnson (November 30, 1967-January 15, 2010)

who drove from Cleveland to New York,
said hello and goodbye to her friends,
then drove from New York to Cleveland
and went to sleep.

The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at

all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his
life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for
having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the
man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael. All that noise
is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks,
especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and
sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair - to all of which may
now be added the bitter need to find a head on which to place the crown of Miss
America. Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated - in the main,
abominably - because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us,
our most profound terrors and desires.
- James Baldwin

"The Negro ... is primarily an artist . . . His métier is expression rather than ac-
tion. He is, so to speak, the lady among the races/' When the white sociologist
Robert E. Park said this in 1918, black intellectuals responded with understandable
outrage. Nor did black male musical artists - bluesmen, jazzmen - have any use
for this feminized vision of themselves. But Michael has made use of it. He took
it up and bound it to a black gay aesthetic that has been pushed to the margins
of black culture: drag balls, voguing, club life and biracial and gender bending
eros. When Michael and his sister La Toya are photographed side by side, it's as
if ghostly twins have just floated out of a gothic mansion. They could be Roder-
ick and Madeline, the tormented siblings in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the
House of Usher." Janet blends right in when the three of them appear together, as
they did in court early on in Michael's trial, swathed in flowing white garments,
eyes hidden by white-framed dark glasses. The sisters' hair cascaded below their
shoulders. Michael's fell softly to his shoulders, then curled upward (the 1960's
Jackie Kennedy flip). Their resemblance was uncanny. A war of gender worlds
had been going on in the Jackson family for decades, and Michael had a long time
ago chosen to join the women.
- Margo Jefferson

* "Gone Pop" was published in Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2010). ©
Thomas Sayers Ellis.

Callaloo34A (2011) 43-62

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 CALLALOO

Falco Berigora
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 little falcons and got peacocks,
infinite vultures, a lonely prodigy.

Steeltown Boys

Magic City of Steel, The Steel City, U.S. Steel,

All this strength in a regular town with a regular name
: Gary,
City in Motion, City of the Century, GI, the G,
county consisting of Lakes, Lake County, Chicagoland,
land of poisonous air, hard to breathe, land hardened by agents,
hardening agents, recording agents like Gordon Keith
of Steeltown Records.

Gordon was no Gordy, but he was their first big break,

the one who got them "off the ground," off the flat,
t-shaped northwestern corner of Indiana.

A separate class of usefulness for each of their gifts:

Jackie, tool.
Toriano, alloy.
Jermaine, carbon.
Marlon, nickel.
Michael, stainless.

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 CALLALOO =

Being brothers prevents dislo

School, chores,
rehearsal, talent shows,
travel, strip clubs,
Kingdom Hall.

All the little boy in the stud

He does not want to be a Big
He does not want to grow up
like his brothers. All he want
All this rust-resistance in a r
: Jackson.
Motto: We are doing great things.

3
Three Screws
[Prince, Prince, Jr., Prince, III.]

Gone now, but (in life) each executed a proper turn.

Each progressed family,
the dominant leg of social order.
The first Prince was a slave,
assigned, after passing, the well-being of his great granddaughter,
Katherine Screws,
but even an ancestor, the best carrier of care,
couldn't protect her
from polio, the husband of her childhood.
There are parts of marriages that are wars,
and parts of wars
that are marriages, nasty civil ones.
Prince becomes a tenant farmer. Prince, Jr., a farm owner.
When Joseph is unfaithful,
the ghost of Prince punishes him with extra work,
the heavy cotton of potato picking.
To rescue his mother from all of the farmers
and the failed musician,
little Michael dreams he is a prince, harsh on his peasant brothers,
but nice to rodents

like mice and his bone-crushing snake.

(La Toya, the anti-Tito, a revenge-masterpiece.)

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Katherine' s father,
Prince Albert Screws,
Prince III,
Michael's grandfather

migrates from Barbour County, Alabama,

the birthplace of a ghoulish man with a paralyzed face,
the King of Southern Populism.

Ghosts, even kindred ones, don't work for free.

They expect benefits, left and right,
and input - lifelong levels of fright constant as the thin
royalties of sibling rivalry.
There are things, scary things, no one can protect a child from,
like a broken guitar string,
but apparitions, like the ones haunting Katie's walk,
have been here before for a reason.
The older brothers are maturing, their dreams
more male than Michael's and Marlon's, and every flicker in
Suzanne de Passe, their gorgeous

Cherokee, French,
Bahamian, Russian,
and Caribbean coach,

is a phantom supreme.

Water balloons are falling, boyhood about to burst.

Which doors to be afraid of
and which doors to frighten from?
For this reason Suzanne nicknamed
Michael, Casper.

4
"Lemme Tell You Now"

Detroit is not Gary. Gary is in Indiana.

Detroit, Michigan. It is not the G. It is the D.
The D has a reputation for being dangerous and invincible.
The D does not make steel; it is made of steel.
If the D and the G were people,
they might be attracted to each other.
Michigan is famous for automobiles.
Indiana (or Indy) for speed.
Part "Goin' Places," part "Moving Violation."

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Ifsigned, the family will have

firstJoe and the boys,
then Katherine, the girls
and the baby boy:

Rebbie,
La Toya,
Janet
and Randy.

The material they used in the G

would not work in the D, so the group had to bend.
Motown made stars like Ford made cars.
Charm school.
Weekly, quality control meetings.
Family, a corporation.
The Corporation, a hit factory
with a blue, stenciled M on it.
The audition tape is famous, so leťs skip it.
"Sign them/' not their Steeltown skin.
Gordy doesn't want anything to do with Black Power
unless it's cute. Think "Dancing in the Streets," '
not "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay."
Detroit is not Memphis. Memphis is in Tennessee.
Detroit, Michigan. It is not Soulsville.
It is Hitsville. Hitsville will lose another engine
if Motown leaves Michigan.
Motor town, a portmanteau,
families and friends forced into crowded rearview mirrors.
Ed Sullivan was lied to, too.
A Diana did not discover them. A Gladys did.
"I may be young but I know what it's all about."
Michael was 11 years old not 9, the two years they took away
not enough
to give back what he'd already lost.

5
The Black Beatles

The screaming girls at the airport

want brothers. They want to race, not run,
their fingers through Afros
the shape of gold records.
The kinky work of pleasure as natural
as the kinky work of struggle.

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The only mop tops they've know

Want to be wanted back and sc
"i before e except after c."
"Maybe Tomorrow" not "Yester
longing not loss.
Their invasion, a soul-sation, com
Itis not from England; it is not
Favorite sport, Jackson-chasing,
ages and heights to match their
The only thing more exhaustive
than 1970 was 1971,
the large hysterical crowds.

Four consecutive number one hits:

"I Want You Back," Libra,

"ABC," Pisces,
"The Love You Save," Taurus,
"I'll Be There," Virgo,

but four is not enough of a crush. Five is.

Four is fab, Fab Four. Five, one more.
A chance for "ABC" to kiss "Let It Be," for
"The Love You Save" to stalk "The Long and Winding Road."
Hard to hear anything, in concert, because
of the screaming fan club positioned at the top of the charts,
the number of weak knees at number one.

Teen hearts everywhere. Hearts on posters,

heart stickers, sewable heart patches.
Jackson Five coloring books.
A J5 45 on the back of a cereal box. Cut it out.

Tito heart Dee Dee,

Jermaine heart Hazel
and everyone hearts Michael.

Cartoon portraits, framed by hearts.

Color draining Blue Meanies, hustling a yellow submarine
out the back door.
Heart-shaped stars on their dressing-room doors.
Johnny's heart, two tragic drums, stabbed in the snare.
Soul merchandising, groovy valentines,

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 CALLALOO

the bass line's, heart-burst finish of darling th

A heart at the bottom of a cursive /.
A heart at the bottom of a cursive 5.

Right On!

Automatic Systematic
Like an illusion the cuteness either wore off
or was worked off,
or both, out there in the constant sunshine, chests out
in bare-chested, West Hitsville
where, out there, the material (they were
given) gradually weakened.
Think "Rockin' Robin," boys imitating birds.
Think "Ben," a ballad to a rat.
This would not have happened in the D.
Fail to chart (in the D)
and you were taken apart, right there
where it mattered, in Studio A, the snake pit of hits.
Fail again and you were never reassembled
or scrapped for parts,
saying what you said you never can say, "Goodbye."
The sun changed their bodies,
their bodies changed their voices.
Never a clear calendar, always something on it,
if not acne, then
sessions, studio-produced like seasons.
If not motorbikes, starting and stopping,
then the motors of Disco,
stopping and starting, like an earthquake locked in Campbellock.
A smart mime will either dance differently
or dry up,
not one but all five, bodies down to the ground.
Nature, fractured to a fault, has to be somewhat responsible
for mankind's mechanical behavior.

The sun the sets

the dime the stops
the ro the bots.

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 ===== CÁLLALO O =

Bye Bye 5
You could feel it.

It was special,
another dimension.

It was natural

and untouchable, a congruent mark of birth.

It was 5

and it did not belong to them.

It belonged to him.
He who trademarked it.
He who signed them.

Refer to him as "he" and as "some people"

like we don't know him
because most Sagittarians
like the upper hand.

If they take the 5 with them,

they might hurt it.
If they don't take the 5 with them,
it might hurt them.

A Jackson-Gordy wedding.
A marriage tougher than any audition.
Katherine' s 2 divorce petitions,
2 rescinded.

Some people just can't

control their feet,
former Golden Gloves sparring over
artistic control.

/tired of 5, 5 tired of/.

Now Jermaine is a second son
in two demanding families.
Sometimes it takes a legal battle
to be loved.

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 CALLALOO

Brotherly Triumph,
Destiny Love

Good times, enjoying themselves, posterized.

Let them show you

living together, the lipstick of it.
Grown-up, blow-out-kit smiles, the result of recording freedom.
Michael's clapping begins the celebration.
Marlon's necklace, Marlon's vest, his style of life
makes the cover pop.
Tito, think happy, Tito, this is the least like Joseph
you've looked in years.
Green for the eldest. Natural Jackie. Arm around Randy.
Being younger than Michael, is the only way to replace Michael
without really replacing Michael.
Randy's first time on an LP cover with his brothers.
First time Jermaine was not, but that's how loss goes.
Motown didn't leave them; they left Motown.
A new contract, two new labels, a union of logos:
Epic's open, scripted italics.
Philly International's symbol for balanced love, Ps of intercourse,
one up and one down.
The only thing solo, in the photo, is Michael's thoughts.
He can feel "Can You Feel It" already,
the weight of fashioning all forthcoming voyages,
if not every song, on his shoulders.
The strength of one man, his pre-superstar skin
unbuttoned to a victory.
All ten eyes in step as their brotherly noses.
They are young men now. They've learned how to work
female-shaped, soft, male mouths.

9
A Scare A Crow A Pea A Cock

Every morning, for five hours, mirrors are polite again.

The man in it, the one resembling a hidden him
and the one hiding him accepts this:

the fright wig,

the coil legs
and the tomato nose.

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 CALLALOO

All made-up, all of a slow-sudden, to scare nothing

but his blues away. His blues are pimples.
His pimples are witnesses, everywhere, ready to ea
and ready to eat off of him.
He's a vegetable, and veggies have enemies.
Abusive birds think of him as tenement entertainment.
Most can read scare but scare can't read them,
not without the straw stuff of

Bacon,
Confucius,
Socrates,
Cicero,

the scraps of wisdom he counters emptiness with.

Crows remind him, "Without a brain,
you can't get down."
Knock-kneed walk. Bigfoot spin.
The real Wiz is Q, Q for his saturated emerald scores.
Q for his bar-b-que love, of.
Not all peacocks are brilliant. Not all crows are dull.
The boys had seen their first train of eyes
at Gordy's mansion,
the day Michael first wished he was Berry's son,
but Jermaine beat him to it, legally,
so he beat Jermaine to everything else, naturally.
Family-hurt, fully fanned and iridescent, hotels the heart.
La Toya screamed for them because,
being Joe's boys,
they could not scream for themselves.
Slow piano, cello coda.
Embroidered robes, all edged in glow.
Brown peafowls, a famous line of them, keeping time with
pointing necks,
their signature, adult, choreography of blame.

10

Sonic Personality

Alone in the magic.

Thunder thumbs to heart, mummified heart. Heart to hand,
glittering hand.
Hand to crotch, accused crotch.
More kick and stuff.

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 CALLALOO

Pose, fedora on.

Drama-pelvis.
Kick and leave leg up to tap it.
Arm-jitsu, turn.
Kick and leave leg up to tap it.
Quick cat in a cat stance,
vogue-crisp.
Fedora off, pose
and stare at it a grand second, tossed fabulous.
Clap. Open triangle,
big masculine hands around the defendant.
Click. Pretend to comb.

Click, click.
Switch sides to comb.
Flow.

Pocket imaginary comb.

Mie grab, slap. Mie grab, choke. Smelly' s mad at it for not being ON.
Smelly' s trying to hide the size of it with his hands
but Big Nose ain't having it.
Smelly counters with a new look: a Jheri curl, rhinestones
and surgery, plastic.
First a favor, the old songs,
"I love those songs, those were magic moments
with all my brothers, including Jermaine."
Run from or rush through the medley of family just once more.
"... Those were good songs.
I like those songs a lot, but especially I like - "

Alone in the jelly.

Lyricon denial to reverb, defiant reverb. Reverb to hiccup,
womanized hiccup.
Hiccup to crotch, angry crotch.
A gnawing bass.

Unhuhuhnuhuh hee (point). Unhuhuhnuhuh woo (point).

Mime a throw, look both ways, spin.
Pull pulled-up pants up,
show-off socks, sock- tease.
Again-a-look again-both-ways,
famous pause.
Show the microphone.
Ready to glide backwards
KLAWNOOM, drag ball to heel.
Gravity's avi replaced by feet,

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 CALLALOO

three seconds of air,

lunar spin, toe-stop.

A real photograph, a real letter and a real gun

not a visual trick like wearing white socks to highl
your feet, but real mental illness
like baby hair, frozen in a webbed slide, on the sid
of a grown man's face.
Baby oil, not grease, is the word.
Mixing a nervous breakdown ninety-one times can'
your real snake, not Muscles,
the one that eats more than interviewers.
Yet, such royalty deserves extra royalties.
Astaire, an admirer.
Dates with Brooke, dates with Tatum.
Liza, a weird friend. Liz, a weirder white mother.
A public appearance and an intimate photo
with a black woman other than Diana Ross
might help.
The moment you do, in a video, you turn into your middle name.
You get Joseph's eyes.
" . . . be careful what you do," jump-kick with a twist.

The shaking hand gestures No, kick.

Right leg possessed,
fist, fist in glove,
twist, open fist.
A fury that sparkles.
A fury that stands the mie, grabs.
A mercy, weakening.
Body lowers, body rises.
Spin-a-versary to the edge of insistence.
Ankle-action, four forward moments
in search of reverse.

Lastly, a classic bow,

point down and point up,
but first, stomp the ground.

Alone in Katherine's jacket.

Door-to-door to paradise, the kingdom's paradise. Paradise
to truth, awake the truth.
Truth to the witness, Jehovah's Witness.
Applause, a Paris, burning.

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 CALLALOO

il

Ola Ray

There are many ways to read Thriller, the video.

My favorite is that it's a metaphor

for Joe and Katie's courtship.
Them on a date, in a film within a film, then a real life warning,
"I'm not like other guys."
О beautiful trusting Katie, О sly monstrous Joe.
When the moon says "Werewolf," a man must Werewolf.
The rest is sex hate. Michael was scared of it
(he had his reasons), so he frightened her
and pranked her and taunted her, in rehearsals, with "Brooke,
Brooke is coming!"
Fool, Ola Ray was so fine she was a lie,
a good one, like Technicolor.
A black pin-up with a runway vibe and a matinee smile,
nearly Dandridge.

34 (Bust)
23 (Waist)
35 (Hips)

Verse Beauty Story

Some modeling in St. Louis ... in a band in Japan.
Landis liked her work in Playboy, the nudity, the freedom
Michael loved her walk, wanted to borrow it,
and did,
but fake-fright put him right back
under his brother's hotel beds, hiding and spying,
while they had sex with fans. Her butt was his,
and she was willing, but, again, Michael was scared of it.
He only wanted to pretend-monster,
never a real zombie or wolfman like the producers
who expected sexual favors from her:

Body and Soul (1981)

Night Shift (1982)
48 Hrs. (1982)
The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
10 to Midnight (1983)
Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)

That's what you get, bad bit parts, for being pretty.
Get sent to Germany to pick up a Grammy you get to kee

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 CALLALOO

Owed so much more, so no one blames you,

all those brothas watching MTV
just to see you - a hot black, music video, damsel-in-
Robin Givens and Noia Darling
all rolled into one

two-piece, light blue, leopard strut, cream-scream,

our horro- tica noir thrill.

12

Typhoon Michael
He's too much to be a person. He just a people.
- James Brown

One of Japan's seasonal storms, Mai-ke-ru,

has caused another vigil.
Boys and girls, young right hands, offered to gloves,
leather pants, and black and metal studs.
An Asian Negro, a yellow one, writes the word "Bad" in blood,
graffiti blood,
on the paper wings at Narita International Airport.
Begins a trend: bleached skin, mascara, the cleft chin
and the butch, bitch-strutting
into press conferences with Bubbles, a chimp.
Empire of the bandaged arm, hair tied back, the late crotch-dynasty
Michael is his own action figure,
the ambassador of military rhythm and Tokyo loves it.
In Osaka, the key to the city,
to murder, to magic, to the minutia of the motion
of bodies folding,
of marching,
one massive origami zilla.
Hospital visits, orphanages. Donations to charities.
Tickets hanging, like cranes,
left for underprivileged children.
Years in a family-group designed like a bento box
and now this, his first solo tour,
a world tour, nominated for tour of the year:

16 months,
123 concerts,
4.4 millions fans,
15 countries,
$125 million gross,

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 CALLALOO

a soft drink's soft money, all proceeds payable to Pe

Tour sponsor, two commercials, one inferno.
Not a thing to throne, pyrotechnics.
Not a thing to be king of, a generation.
Every taste test, a yes, some guy in some other gro
would have done more than blink
for a share of the market shares.
Coke did not wish it were Pepsi any more than Pepsi
wished it had taken more precaution.
The angrier the dancer, the more at-risk the dance attacker.
A kiss can be like striking a match, forbidden.
Tatiana hired and Tatiana fired, both times for fires.
Captain, eventually, of his own burn center
of failed three-dimensional dawns,
but not of this fiery world.
The planet must make the planet make that change.

13

Wacko Jacko
He's a very sweet down-to-earth person. A lot like me.
- Naomi Campbell

The tabloids can't keep up with the surgeries,

the collecting, the animals, the shopping, all the candy wrappers
left like tabs everywhere,
so they make things up, things
hideous as hearsay, weird things, we believe:

He and Janet
are the same person.
Diana Ross is his lover.
They got married,
and adopted Webster.

The bandaged, leftover nose - a rhino.

Lips, a tattoo, not a relief but a permanent painting of a kiss.
Predators, like female owls, in both eyes.
Mouth, a sharp snake. Snake, a pale cave.
The wildlife in the songs comes from
the same venom stubble comes from, testosterone, the body's land
of seized porn.
Boy actors, special friends, alcohol to minors.

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The Elephant Man's bones,

how much would somethin
like that cost?

All he needs is rest, not the ki

into a photo of him in an oxyg
not his nightly media-funer
Fame loves fame, but fame tha
Paparazzi like commas.
The tip of the nose is real, the
but he can afford it: the expen
of speechless, bleached skin.
The only things entertaining ha
are all carnival and zoo-like,
but every fairy tale needs the
if it ever wants to become a Po
(since his handlers won't) and

a little Priscilla,
a princess,
a Presley.

What to do with her after the make-up of damage control

never wore off?
The record of their break-up, already broken
long before the awkward, televised kiss.
You know what they say about men with large, blotched hands
and big blotched feet.
The only d she got was divorce.
Only certain types of touching allowed, a heaven they faked.
You saw the video: skin glowing like a vow,
vow glowing like a lie, a smooth cry.

"I love you."

"I love you more.
Blanket me."

14

White Skin, Black Surgical Masks

"We are . . .,"

but what "we"
are we

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 CALLALOO

if a body,
gifted too
many gods,

black vs.
white, male
vs. female,

locks itself
in infinite

surgery,

Wellness
vs. wealth, the
operating

tables of Pop.
Pharmacies, nearby,
remastered.

Panic attacks
dance floor blood
every track.

For recovery, Slash.

For vitíligo,
make-up,

translucence,
the cellophane glow
of pigment

incognegro,
dermatology
vs. nutrition.

If race a

transvestite, penis
a dalmatian

prescribed protection,
the tight
green latex of

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bedtime fantasy,
" . . . straight on
till . . ." the

nomadic, black
fashions
of " morning."

Children
don't heal when
hidden in

the damaged
lungs of mileage.
Bahrain

to Ireland,
Ireland to the Platinum
Triangle.

Paradise sequins,
saturates,
platelet and palette,

but all brown

boys, except one,

stay black.

The rest,
left alone,
"can wait."

15

The Last Anti-Gravity Lean Dream

June tried to choke Google but the truth,

gaudy and eccentric as the magnetic sun, defended itself,
out running the Internet like one last supernova rumor.
This is it. This is pull. This is what happens,
equally and often, when the earth and the sky continue to call.
The body, stuck in the middle, considers living.
The body, stuck in the middle, considers dying.
Spirit needs seclusion. Mind, illusion,
another spotless Kingdom; the playful, false drugs of Disney.
This can't be the end, but most of the unhealed world

60

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 CALLALOO =

has already half-heard it, eith

the old fashion way, on car r
But no one heard it the way f
will always hear it.
Tito, by phone from Janet, on
To the Jack5ons, the helicopt
above a cathedral of mayhem
A mother and a father has lo
the most famous of their fam
the most talented of the talen

Yes, Maya, "We Had Him/

all of him - the needle marks
Although the lighter his skin
the more unlike us he got. Sti
we defended him, everything
and the pajamas, settled in co
Tragic mulatto, triumphant a
Faith loves to undo privacy.
Privacy loves to court addicti
Rehearsals, the same routines
over and over, sharp as incisi
not one but two autopsies.

Valium,
an anxiety drug,
a sedative.
Valium,
an anxiety drug,
a sedative.

Only one thing has ever felt like performing,

being put under, the sexual worriless rest of anti-gravity-lean
love,
a world rocked, Mercury on tiptoes, butterflies.

61

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 8
Q
с
о

¡g

о
л

A hat, glove, and sunglasses similar to those often worn by Michael Jackson sit
atop a stool onstage during a tribute to the late singer at Harlem's Apollo theatre
Tuesday, June 30, 2009, in New York. Jackson died Thursday in Los Angeles at the
age of 50.

Editor's Note: Michael Jackson died June 25, 2009.

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