... so long silky Mike ...

... this week they finally got around to interring Michael Jackson and the saga that has been with us for half a century continues to leave behind a palimpsest of a ripple effect ...

... one of my very first acts as a newly licensed teenaged driver was to cruise the Kingston Sheraton hoping to glimpse The Jackson Five who were in town for a show ... an event! ... I headed uptown from Wolmer's Boys' School drawn by the heart-pumping excitement of proximity to these contemporaries of mine from another world ... boys ... nay, young men ... in charge of their own destinies already ... tru' talent! ...

... in particular I hoped to see Michael who was born within months of me ... wonder if he had his driver's license ...

... I got close enough to see Jermaine and Tito and someone who could've been Marlon ... or another relative, enjoying poolside ... Michael was just disappearing down an adjacent walkway but there he was! ...

... such a fleeting, fan-fueled, faux-encounter carries poetic gravitas for me thirty-four years on ... and like everyone else I feel like I coulda saved silky Mike ...