Perpetual Notion

Job hunting season.
And who will make the killing?
Trudging through the snow.

No blaze orange outfit,
but a highlighter in hand.
Circles on paper.

Covering my smell,
with a shower and clean clothes,
will better my odds.

Take aim, give a shot.
For I have to eat somehow.
Will I land a buck?

Michael Jackson is a freak. For the spectacle that is his current life, the media lines up in hopes for a ticket to something, some sideshow. And Michael Jackson does not disappoint. Keep your eyes fixed long enough, and the man is bound to perform. He is after all, an entertainer.

The world is full of newsworthy events, and the media has been quite clear that when he is on the move, Michael Jackson is the front page news. Then we the readers/viewers eat what is fed us, and some acquire an appetite for it. Absent of the initiative taken by the press, people would not be requesting constant updates on a fallen pop icon, but here we are.

Before being an icon, Jackson was a kid. But just barely. Raised in a family where the father’s heart was more consumed in managing than paternal obligation, the spiral began.

The black Partridge Family, though actually talented, were known as the Jackson Five. An R&B group headed up by the youngest member, little Michael Jackson. Adorable, excessively talented, and a heck of a showman, Michael was an early center of attention. When kids grow up they play, and they play with other kids. Michael group up hanging out with his older siblings, and his older siblings’ groupies, and music industry people. No time for childhood in a lucrative business.

As it goes with bottling up emotions, childhood also cannot be repressed, only postponed. Having been the fortunate victim of awesome success, Michael Jackson remained quite busy and in the public eye through the later eighties. It was sometime after the bad album had been released and toured that Michael finally had an opportunity to relax and step out of the public focus.

During his retreat to the Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson began his more reclusive life. Now that he could do what he wanted/needed and not what the public dictated, his personality began a regression to that of a child’s. This is understandable as his mind and body were just compensating for something that had been previously ignored. Doing as any self-respecting kid would, Michael made a zoo and amusement park of his home. Lacking the ability to relate to those his age, his best friend was a monkey. During these days of isolation, Michael’s appearance began a path of drastic changes. His skin lightened, but that may have been beyond his control. However, the plastic surgery that was within his control, approached a level of excess. Perhaps he was attempting to match his physical being to his mental state. His reasons are his own.

The merits to the companionship of a monkey are limited. The time came when Michael felt the need to acquire playmates of his own age. His mental age. Unfortunately for Michael Jackson, society dictates that a man crawling into middle age may not inhabit the same space as a child unrelated to him. This is America, the land of prosperity, and if you have not yet earned your fortune, then you can sue somebody that has. An eccentric and increasingly recluse man living in a fairytale land and inviting children over for play dates is a fantastic target for accusations. Both sensational for the media, and lucrative for the lawyers.

Guilty or innocent, Michael Jackson has made himself into a target. He has fallen from grace so much that he has become a victim of the world. His life is no longer his to steer. Had a little bird placed a message in his ear nearly two decades ago, so much could have been avoided, and saved. If only Michael received the message that there are far superior methods of handing over the reigns to one’s life.

As many celebrities have eloquently demonstrated over the years, the best way to gain and maintain the public’s favor is to invest your soul in drugs. Smile at a stranger’s kid and face definite scrutiny. Become a recovering heroin addict and bathe in the flow of public sympathy. And should you die of an overdose, remember… your potential potential will far surpass that of your actual potential. The “could have been” is so much better than the “what kinda was.”

Looking at my compact disk of “Bad,” Michael’s last great album, I see that it was released in 1987. Were Michael to die within about a year of that release, he would have made the best career move possible. He would have created a momentum. The world would continue on, and bring his memory with it. Michael Jackson did not (to my knowledge) touch the drugs. He is accused of touching boys. His life has taken on a spiral that no drug can emulate. He is fixed on the media, and no opportunity of overdose.

Michael Jackson could have been historically perfect. Many have found the path to eternal greatness by reaching their peak and jumping off. Michael Jackson has found his peak, he teetered side to side, and has since had a long tumble down. His tumble continues. What he could have been no longer will be.

I biked home tonight
me in my bundles
the street was shared with every degree of readiness
I, ready for cold
the girl in a t shirt
ready for something else
I found warmth
in thoughts of natural selection
let the stupid be stupid
let the stupid die
long live the smart
I felt a chill
me with coffee
going home to write
her with vodka
to do what she will do
I make the words of today
she, the generation of tomorrow
what does nature say to that
does stupid win?

Tonight is a slightly different Haiku. A friend and I, once at a coffee shop, created more of a free-verse haiku. The method: he writes one syllable, I write two, he three, me four, and so on until deemed done. He has stepped back home from Alaska, and we once more have done it, four of us in fact…

Touch
sour lips
if blood drips
use tourniquet
to quench the flow of
consciousness beneath a
a boarded plank bridge which shifts
swaying in the November wind
on this night, the last child of the month
why is it that the cheese continues on?
My bull-dog named Zed rode a pinkish skate-board
fire water spiked with sugar, chase with hip hop.

Black Friday is not
the day that I buy your love,
but instead, my own.

The comfort I find
in the chase of a purchase,
tucks me into bed.

It is not the case
that I dislike the giving,
but I buy for me.

Do not get me wrong.
Despite all the crap, for you
I would wait in line.

It is endearing
that Woody Allen loves sports,
the frail cat he is.

And Friday night starts,
and is done so correctly,
with one of his films

Humor sits tip top.
On his comedic coat tails
I ride through my eve.

A self-hating Jew,
for a night wrapped in chuckles,
to you I prescribe.

I just read a New York Times article that spoke to me in a way that very few do. It was an Op-Ed written by Richard Rubin titled Over There – and Gone Forever.

The editorial introduced me to a man named Frank Buckles. Frank lied about his age in order to join the Army and fight in World War I. He served his time and made it home to the states. Now, with 106 years beneath his belt, Frank is the only surviving American veteran of World War I. The United States sent 2 million soldiers to France, Frank is all that remains.

Maybe it has something to do with my Bachelor’s Degree in History, and perhaps it is just general humanity, but I have always felt a strong connection to the living past. I have felt it a loss that John Lennon died the year before I was born. Not that I ever would have met him or seen a concert, but the fact that we could never walk the Earth at the same time, I had missed something.

Two and a half decades into my life, I have come this far still sharing a world with the veterans of the First World War. To what extent I have benefited from this, probably not much. I have not made the effort to go out there, meet these people, and hear their stories. Honestly, until this moment I had not realized the immediacy of the situation. What I have enjoyed is the sense of closeness that their existence has granted me.

We can always remember the stories through conduits such as history books. Yet text has such a disconnect. I could be reading about World War I or about Ancient Greece, and the experience would be much the same. Now having a living breathing veteran, a first hand ambassador to the event, that has power. The individual, as is the case with Frank Buckles, may not even live nearby. But for the pure fact that they are living, adds a reality to what would otherwise be just history.

The author tackles reality by addressing that this will likely be the last Veteran’s Day to recognize a living soldier of the war. There are more wars and there are more soldiers, but if history can ever be alive then it is about to die. And the cycle continues, history being created, lived, and recalled.

It is as though I am standing beside death, and once more realizing mortality. As I write, World War I still has a heartbeat. Its memory still holds a level of tangibility, and is within reach. Soon the pulse will cease and it will thus become abstract. We will then gather to talk about the event that has passed, but none of us will have known it. Strangers assembled to eulogize the strange.

I see this moment almost gone, and I am made to think of what we do have. My grandpa, among many others, served in World War II. He still has stories to tell, and I have yet to give a good listen. And that is not to say that history is noteworthy only through war, it is just one more, of many examples. I cannot combat the progression of time and its details, though I do feel it. And I do intend to acknowledge its passing presence. The great grandfather of wars lies on his deathbed, but the family tree of history goes on. …And I see that I must stay in touch with the family, for it is mine.

I had my first snow,
today while upon my bike,
and I did not fall.

Snow first fell before,
but not on or around me,
and so I missed it.

It came to the cold,
while I sat beside the warm
sunshine of Nashville.

But I have returned
for greeting an old cold friend,
so hands we may shake.

“Patience is no longer a virtue. It is just another thing, a fact. A detail such as a color. It could be black or white. It is not absolute in its placement, always good and never questioned. I question it. I am done with it. No longer second nature but a seatbelt to a dead car. It holds me tightly to a road going nowhere. I have lost patience, and will be better for it.”

dHb 11-6-07

“Discrimination.”
We think we may use that word,
to build our case on.

The campus will cringe,
To hear us say such a thing
But the facts are in.

Appropriate funds,
whatever your wheels may be,
for all that commute.

So understand this:
Bikers are not second-class.
Please cover the racks.