Jackson, My Friend Poem by Rahman Henry

Do you remember the celebration of the night, Michael,
When tribal chief of Ivory Coast placed the crown upon your head
After the name of King 'Sani'?
I remember it clearly, the night of reunion—
The sky of Gabon, the land of your fore-father,
First got red then gradually glowed golden lights
In a mystical way.

With no prior knowledge, right after you were born,
You immediately knew that
Art did not have a particular motherland;
Artists should not have any national barriers;
Beauty was for eternity,
And roses were always the same in every part of the world;
No more introduction was needed.

Indiana was a half-lighted city,
And more deep into it a calm and sleepy world, Garry,
Who took you into this vest ocean of agony,
Which is actually called life; immediately after you were born,
You have learned about a scattered and unsecured world,
Where even children were unsafe; where poverty, hunger,
War and germs were standing against whose children as opposition.

It was your father whose Gipsy life and the screams of uncountable firm workers,
And the soundless cry of your unprivileged mother
And your scary youth set you and your pearl-like voice,
Your vocal length for the rest of your life,
Which, now we have recognized it in many different ways
With countless prefixes.

Those misery and mystery of your youth let you
To think of the ones on the other side of the wall, in the dark...
And the surging current of those days that re-designed your path of life,
Gradually turned into a powerful tsunami of creation.

And we, black and colored people
Living in Asia, African and Latin America, who have
Learned that you were the light of our dream.
You, who have lit that light onto your own skin,
And learned that physical sickness could change skin color.
So, color did not define human beings,
It could only be the slaves of human behavior.

Your music, your dance, your voice, appearances
And the beautiful moon-walk
Orchestrated million agonies—
In the name of children and green,
In the name of human beings.
Countless wars, famine and curse of poverty,
Which became intolerable to every heart of the world,
You have sang against like Noah's Ark.

Your music was a unique protest
That pierced through the skies,
The skies of the world,
setting Gabon and Chicago on its cover page,
Setting the crystal sky of Never Land all over it;
Kept your journey towards centuries.

Jackson, you learned,
Art did not have a particular motherland;
Artists should not have any national barriers;
So, you could see our youths of the uniqueness
Walk with holding hands, walk through
the muddy and dusty paths of Asia, Africa
And Latin America.

Dear Michael Jackson, you were a poet,
A good friend of us—
Whose brown skin had painted with the germs of the world,
And you have corrected it,
And you have proved that color has no internal right,
And your heart was the gentle garden of Art,
Which could be recognized even by the simplicity of a child—
Art meant craziness, art meant babies;
And so you have lined to be crucified like Jesus Christ
In the human court, under social justification.

Art is not a social norm, nor was it the birthing ground of our values,
Keeping this truthfulness inside your heart
You have gone to an internal sleep with your own dignity.
You have seen yourself in the center of beauty and truth, ugliness too,
Moon therefore trembled beneath your feet...
Jackson, from the Never Land to Gabon and touching the Egyptian sky
You have spread your self into the vest sky of the world,
Not as a Black, nor as a white, as the perfect map of the world.
Your voice, your music, with your unique dancing style
Now waving through the water wave, clouds, countries and towards the horizon,
Into the barren land, dieing green and the everlasting skin of the grass.





*(A tribute to Michael Jackson/Translated by Hassanal Abdullah)