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.