Time charges its toll—
& it adds up

You only get so many
drives across the Golden Gate

so many times on its
stately grounds

& his was an exhausting
performance
every time out

the black Elvis—or
was it Elvis who was
the white Michael Jackson?

True, his father may
have pimped him and his
brothers

but he also unleashed a
mighty force—the
world’s top entertainer

But he had no background,
no grounding, no real education

Only great celebrity and money
out of which to invent himself off-stage

and it was not always a pretty sight
with only those few things as parameters

They say Liberace dressed
like the homeless
off the circuit

and Jackson had “Never, Never Land,”
nothing ever so aptly named

Was he, finally,
a sad figure?

He had been to the
pinnacle of all we hold
holy and back

I write this small
remembrance
because this evening
of his death
I felt like my being
had been telling me
something bad was coming

There was, such as it was,
a loss to the world

He had dwelt in the
House of the Lord