NEVERLAND OR BUST
Californian state officials have given pop star Michael Jackson one more day to come up with back wages for more than 30 employees at his Neverland ranch. If he fails to pay today, he faces a lawsuit from the state.
Spendthrift frenzy
buys effortless charm
as long as money flows
and no one is harmed.
It buys a world set aside
from the norms of the day,
buys a fantasy theme life
where one isn’t afraid
to immerse oneself wholly
in myriad dreams.
Enough money will paper
right over the screams
of the child locked inside
the desperate star
whose life is a frenzy
of plastering scars
and making his skin
become metaphor;
there are no shades of grey
behind Neverland’s doors.
The dream has been soiled
by fear and distrust.
Though proclaimed innocent
Michael Jackson disgusts
because he cannot begin
to face up to the truth –
the ranch was a perversion
of Jackson’s own youth.
It wasn’t second star on the right
and straight on til morning,
it was more Captain Hook,
more ‘horrible warning’
about the perils of stardom,
the absence of sense
and a grave misunderstanding
of innocence.
In the end it doesn’t matter
what Jackson did in his bed;
he’s damned by his inability
to simply tie up loose threads.
To never pay in Neverland
is not kindly or just;
so it’s down to the courts
to do what they must
and hope that brutalised Michael
sees sense in the end,
pays the money he owes
to his fair-weather friends
who served up the fantasies
for so many years
so the press can stop crying
their crocodile tears.