john and yoko

The love John felt for Yoko: ‘She’s an original. And she can come on strong as any man. She’s usually ahead of all of us. And at the same time she’s a woman. And when you meet someone like that, you drop everything. It’s good bye to the gang you used to drink with. Or, in my case, the guys in the band. You don’t go and play football anymore. Once I found the woman, the boys became of no interest whatsoever, other than that they were like old school friends: “Hi, how are you, nice to see you.  How’s your wife?” ’

            the old myth about people being half and the other half being in the sky or in             

            heaven or on the other side of the universe or a mirror image

            we are             two                  halves                     and together we're a whole

                        everyone you see is full of life

                        everywhere in town is getting dark
                                   no

                        it’s not dark yet

                        but it’s getting there

J. Edgar

success she tells me the air of competition

and I realize what has been sorrowfully absent

having been where I’ve been studied where I’ve studied

excelling without every really trying

what a fucking joke

no no no no a fire has been lit a seed planted a vineyard sown

in my own library of Congress

nowhere man

John and his insecurity

            his kindness

            including us all

            ‘isn’t he a bit like you and me?’

            lurching around in the dusk

            grown restless

            all he needs all he seeks all he wants

            is all that he writes for

            is all that he sings desperately about

            with crying eyes

            beneath a bloated neck

            and a ragged sprawl of hair

the girl the woman the ocean child with the fire off the reef

seashell eyes                     windy smile

                        holds me

how can I live without knowing that somewhere in the world John Lennon is alive?

knowledge that flooded incessant days

with magic

a relationship triggered by the simple word ‘yes’

something positive an upsurge for once in a belonely time

he’s buried ‘neath concrete in Central Park

and I get the feeling elsewhere

a smile a dance a quietly strummed guitar a girl

a circle drawn

Anyway Anyhow Anywhere

Long before the steel crashed over him,

enclosing him in a tomb of musky smoke

and grimy ash, my uncle attended

a legendary concert performed by the Who. 

Six years before I emerged in a storm of 

floodlights and blood, Ari watched as Pete

Townshend wind-milled his arms in

his trademark flail, eyes glazed over, while

Roger Daltrey whipped his cables around the

air through the lull in between verses.The shrieks
of John Entwistle’s pyrotechnics on the colorful,
fuzzy bass guitar didn't leave my uncle’s gushing lips
for weeks as he walked to class

along the autumn-tinged lawns of Cooper
Union where he'd roil in the underbelly
of applied physics. Books tucked in

the crook of his arms sagged as he'd recount
to thin-lipped friends the heights of the night.             
                                                 In his own

way he rose phoenix-like above the pottery shard

arrangements of a harried, shuffled youth

into a narrow frame where he could settle down

in relative comfort.                       Tears shed

over the news of Lennon’s murder led to slammed

doors opening the gates to raised eyebrows and

mouths curling with concern, though never to any

search above and beyond.  It wouldn’t have helped him,

he was a pilot, an anarchist of the

most skilled sort, a juggler adept at balancing the

squiggles of Homer with the psalm-like

jeremiads of Zimmy, all the while keeping

an eye on the progressing discoveries of Rob Laughlin.

and then
all of a sudden
he was gone

in a plane

somewhere over a mountain

       and me

       how I feel inside

       can’t explain