Audre Lorde's Michael, They Disturbed The Peace

My favorite person in the world—well, besides my mother and my grandmother—has to be Michael Jackson. I wrote this piece, Michael, They Disturbed The Peace, partially as an ode to some of his most profound works. I was also inspired by For Assata from Audre Lorde’s The Black Unicorn, and wrote this as a decidedly less personal take on the status of the black plight in America. Recently, a meetup was held in Washington D.C. to discuss black missing persons cases. Unfortunately, the only people who turned up to this meeting were other black people. This sick irony in so many nonblack “allies” not showing up for our issues, but black people showing up—in droves—for events organized by white people seeped its way into Black Twitter. At its core,

Though this may take away from the idea that this poem is supposed to be letter-like in nature, it serves to accomplish a certain goal. This goal, for me, is speaking to Michael in the language he best understands. In the same way Lorde relates to Assata in For Assata, calling her a “sister-warrior”, I wanted to relate to Michael by using his most universally-known talent to speak with him. Thus, in the first two stanzas, I laid the groundwork for a pseudo-analysis on Michael’s most charged songs about race in America— “They Don’t Care About Us” and “We’ve Had

Though, throughout the poem I have trace elements of Lorde, Michael Jackson, and the Washington D.C. Missing Persons meetup, I feel that each shines most brightly in the fifth stanza.

First, the tone of the stanza is inspired by Lorde’s approach in her last stanza in For Assata. From her first stanza to her second stanza, Lorde deviates from a grim and drab tone to a more hopeful and romanticized tone. Lorde goes from not being able to “look into your [Assata’s] eyes” to “dream[ing] of your [Assata’s] freedom”. In my poem, I go from “they messed us up” in my first stanza to “We don’t need them, we’ve got our own Spirit”.

Next, my word choice, and even my slight imagery is inspired by Michael Jackson’s “We’ve Had Enough”. The song, much like a lot of Michael’s music, is about black families being ripped apart thanks to racial politics in America. At the apex of the masterpiece, Michael