Man in the White Room--MJ

Michael Jackson died on a Thursday, but it was the next Monday before I had a response to enlighten my twenty year old friend on what my opinion was about MJ now. Jennifer didn't know all the Jackson family history, but only j since the late 80's. I was two or three years older than Michael. I was 16, and he must have been about 13. Real teenage girls, White ones from Texas, didn't think Michael was all that. I was practically a grown woman, and little Michael was about 13. I'd never had a serious crush on Michael Jackson because he was just a kid. I'd seen and heard him since I was a teen. Now I am past 50 years of age myself. This monumentally iconic singing and dancing entertainer was dead and gone. I guess I was in shock a few days. I didn't know what I felt. But I had to say something to Jennifer.

"Michael's gonna be pissed when he wakes up, all dressed in his very finest, lying in a big box, and in the dark--of all places. Yeah, Michael is gonna be pissed about being in the dark when he comes out of it."

She laughed a little. The more days that passed, the more guilty I felt. I'd never given him his due. For all his weird behaviour and media scandles, he grew into a very talented adult.

I backed Michael on his first child involvement scandle, but the amount of amassed reporting by the end of the second child case against him, I had begun to faulter, question what I thought. I'm single without kids. I was a teacher. I enjoy young people in my life. I did at least reconcile the media blood bath he went through with negative media, and two court cases. In my heart, I wanted to believe Michael Jackson had not been inappropriate with kids.

Between the summer of 2009, and around Thanksgiving of the same year, Michael Jackson was with me every night. Every night when I went to bed and closed my eyes for sleep, I could see Michael. It happened in my bed in my bedroom, but the place we stayed together was like a luxury hotel room. There was always a bright light around him, so I just reffered to him as the man in the white room.



The white room is gone now, switched off from the wall of my mind.
I mislaid that emotionally narrowed perspective as the hosptial
antipsychotic drugs took effect, and then control. Michael departed.

No longer could I see Michael clearly inside that bright room: nevermore.
Desiring once more to see him--Michael's long lean body relaxing,
semi-lazed, without actually conforming to a reclined position,
Propped amidst our chosen bedroom trappings and comforts

For the sleep "they" say he sleeps, I now grieve in waves,
Overwhelming emotional tsunamis destroy then cleanse away
My version of reality, leaving pebbles of truth instead.

I feel a soft hand embracing my face of tears,
And I open my eyes to once more see Michael,
Enveloped in soft caressing folds of albatross white,
A white silk pajama shroud, with white glistening buttons
And drawstring pants, surrounded by a cloud, an aura
And an aura of white transparency. White filled the room,
As if the angels in Heaven had loaned us their gossemer wings.

This was Michael's uniform during the time we shared in my head/bed.
Neither smiling nor frowning, Michael projected love.
I feel his eyes pierce mine with awareness, entrancing my soul.
That recognition excited the white room to even greater brilliance.

xxx

edit pause

The room we shared was hardly bigger than the huge bed we shared.
But we lounged comfortably, leaning toward the direction of the conversation.
Pillows of every size and shape wait to be hailed to comfort duty:
"Tony the Tiger", a small white fuzzy "Bubbles", a couple of plush frogs,
And other animal shapes projected, and randomly planted across the bedding.
Propping an elbow, supporting a neck, caught in a cuddle fest.

Some of the ornamental trappings in the white room were my private
Room accessories, but the white room of white light was ours,
Aloof from Terran humanoid terrain. Built on hope, faith and love.
Every night, this environmental image and Michael's personality,
Pervaded my sleeping and waking thoughts.
I lay awake in my bed many entire nights in daydream state, psychotic.

We talked all night about love and heartbreak, pain and morality.
His life experiences spilled into my virgin receptacle, and I felt female,
And my emotions soared night and day, into heaven's spiritual haze.
I might have been truly in love, but never before true love like this.
This love enveloped me 24/7; friends noticed the change,
I only admitted that love was the cause.

No one would know of that special white room then,
Or Michael would have to move along to his fate, his ultimate destiny,
Other than me. I wouldn't let go.

I only saw this white room when I was in my bedroom,
Alone, in the dark with my grief and my cat,
The white room appeared like a cartoon bubble
Whether my eyes were closed or open,
I saw Michael beaming of white light in the white room.

I spoke to him easily, and we shared like two old friends, reunited.
Michael told me intimate life details, and thoughts behind lyrics.
We compared truths learned from experience, and theorized love and peace.
His concern for the earth was still intense, but eerily distant in time.
I understood of the love for many things he spoke, and the pain he deigned to words.
Words were not spoken for my benefit, but gave comfort when the grief came.

What wasn't then possible, for restrictions abounded, impounded,
The love affair that became my reason to live, live on.
And from a different place than in just my head.
Love fed my creativity, imagination, and lust.
My brain wrangled thoughts of life turned to dust.
I didn't understand so much, but lived for the man in the white room.

Lightly patterened soft sateen silk brocade, body caressing materials,
Nurturing paisleys writhe in every direction to enliven the white on white.
White stands the almost glimmering white nehru collar, another aura.
The dream Captain of this ship of slumbers sleeps not, not as others.
The Captain's white attire, perhaps with white crew socks invisible
Under the sheets, where he stretched his toes and tapped his feet,
Sans dancing shoes, as if the moment were to last forever.
No longer ensnared feet, traded for the self-exploration of reflexology.

That's what I remember of the place, the room where Michael stayed
During the time of my daze for many days, and our different dialogues.
I wasn't there physically, nor was I sure where "there" was.

Michael was hidden, no others were with him, but he was not alone.
Mentally immersed in him I lived, nowhere to run and hide had I wanted.
Chatting like kids, we giggled, and I laughed till I cried.
Other times we shared memories of good moments,
Too often the precursors of what would be painfully lost.
I tried to comfort his sadness, and when I closed my eyes
He reciprocated, healing my pain paranormally.
I could feel the comfort of his arms around me, holding tightly,
As if he wanted to extend the moment as much as I.

We exchanged parts of our lives to each other every night for months
Sharing personal favourites. . . memories, mezmerized moments, mania,
And the granite of a heartless soul too often hidden behind anguished eyes.
Overall, an experience of pleasure and contentment, like when
You kick off tight shoes from swollen, aching feet,
Releasing your feet and legs from duty confinment.
Your own swollen, aching foundation, released and nurtured
By finger and hand manipulation, the rejuvenating touch of massage.
Each answering the others unspoken needs and desires and
Foundation, from afar in place, but not in time.


So he's rubbing his feet in meditation from time-to-time. I'd rub mine.


And just talking was good,
Exceptionally fulfilling on multiple levels.
And he never grabbed his crotch.

I can assume to speak only of my feelings, relay my experience,
As I don't know his facts or facets by touch,
But by something else, a paranormal prestidigitation,
Cold air spaces, disembodied voices, half dreams, half vision.


The Captain of the low large bed with white silk sheets, reclined
In his bright white room, bathed in light, lit as if the first and last,
Both daylight and dusk, white hot sunlight, but not a spotlight.
Never the dark of night, or a lure of shadows close to midnight,
The white room serves the essential aura of our architecture--
Both he and his room, in sight during the dark of my night.

Tufted pillows of white silk damask, other mountainous mounds
Woven in shades of white, with no ivory, no neurtral, no gray.
Light weight linen sheets, linen coverlets of a soft sensuous blend
The finest natural fleeces, topped by a bride's white feather down spread.

Falling from above, all around the bedsides like mosquito netting,
Or a regal bedstead, nay. an elegance not dare spake of in Victorian times,
Yards and yards, layers upon layers of sheer bright whiteness.
Draped from the ceiling above the bed frame,
Serving as their mysterious design deigned,
Both as bed covering, and body wrapping,
Sliding about and between human waves in oceans of silk.

******

The two mattresses rising barely two feet from the cold floor,
With the only dark furniture lines I saw, of a dark wooden poster bed.
Regally carved wooden dumbwaiters adorned each corner of the bed
To ferry whatever was food, drink, or object desired by either or both:
Perhaps they were just large dark square bed posts obscured by the white.

I don't remember him requiring or requesting, during our time together,
Anything outside the white room. What I wanted I received:
Spiritual presence, thoughtful processess, and a unique
Awareness of love and loss, tempered by the spirituality in each of us.
I never would change anything;
Imagination was enough, and finally, more than enough.
I saw us from inside my eye lids, each time my eyes shut.
Michael and I drew emotionally closer with life shared each night.
Weeks became months. He arrived every darkness. Lights were low.
But, I always saw the room so brightly,

Editing/restart here.


He never wore his sunglasses,
Because he didn't hide his eyes from me then,
So untypical of Michael's previous wordly ways.
Later, I realized the difference between sunshine,
And the room's glowing bursts of loving Son shine.
God bless Michael for sharing that with me. I knew love.
I can still remember tactile answers to so many of life's quandries.
I knew it would be okay, if Michael could come and get me . . .
Though I never envisioned sexuality in the white room.
There were other rooms, areas of the barn full of hay and frolic.

I thought the biggest light source must be
A giant skylight in the ceiling directly over the bed,
Not a hot white light, but well enough lit to ban shadows.
I never saw you get out of the bed, just squiggle and readjust.
Sometimes you'd spend lots of time staring,
Absolutely still, focused on a box invisible to me,
But directly in front of your concentrated gaze.
At first I thought it was your own bedroom tv set,
Until I realized how useless you'd find that now.
You were watching parts of your life--pennance like.


I wasn;t needing to know the details of your painful life challenges,
And the tears I cried were for your absence from my open hearted gestures.
I never interrupted you then.
Now I wish I could find that place
Where you loitered awhile with me,
Letting me know I wasn't alone,
Gifting me a spiritual love I'd never known.

If I could dream what I imagined,
Just one night,
If you could dwell nearby again,
Not as psychosis,
But as a fulfilling dream
I'd burn that scene of our love
Into the recesses of my brain
To tender the flame
All that emotional pain
That is me loving you today.


We talked as childhood friends,
Catching up on life since school days, sharing happiness,
Stress, undue duress, fashionable dress, incessant negative press,
Relationships of more, but mostly less significant others,
Whether it was one your media overwrought stories,
Or my quiet desperation, before recanting trust as a quality
That has become redundantly absent and societally moot?

Had you become that XXXXXXXXXXX, my dear Michael?
Was it trust that killed you? How does one beat it with Faith?

We both wanted love, just like all humans crave.
But a year's passed, and I'm still proverbally struck
Like a black sheathed widow, waiting for her own day.
Now different from the way we always heard it should be.

From securely inside my head.
You loved me then, and I grew to love a you I never knew.
I remember the ambulance ride--yours and mine--
And I know I saw you as I waited in the hall
Outside some centralized hospital wing
Where you tried to laugh off your necessary departure.

I knew you had to go,
But damn that anti-psychotic med.
It killed my fantasy, my imagination,
And my desire to live in reality.

So now I'll live in on-demand reality,
And keep my secret lover,
In a niche in my head, umbilically bound to my bed,
and I'll call for him nightly.
When God's breath rustles the leaves of trees,
And the leavings of a lover I never never got enough of.

And he would say to me, sing to me:

"Don't stop till you get enough."

wc 2,222