Not more than we can bear…more than we should have to…Those of us lacking the grace to kill ourselves take it in the gut…from a gun or gossip…what’s the difference…Anything in the name of the Lord…or Freud…and don’t forget the book contracts and possible made-for-TV-movies starring that cute little buttoned-down guy who you recently saw making some sort of deal with a game show host…It’s bad form to point out that Jesus didn’t wear no shoes nor carry any guns and wasn’t even known to have a choice on the presidential preference poll (though His father was quoted a lot)…He has been seen however a lot at football games cheering the Catholic teams on to victory…let us all be born just one more time…we may yet get it…right…
Something’s wrong and this is not a poem…the main difference being that you didn’t think it was…Unlike those who profess to be caring and Christian I didn’t fool you…it’s not about John Lennon either…he’s dead…And the man who killed him is cutting a deal…with doctors whose only operations are with lawyers over how to split the money and the 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol so solemnly promised…What a pitiful country this is…Our beloved mayor who prefers capital punishment to Jesus as a foolish belief all of a sudden defends the violence of New York by saying, “But golly gee fellows there is violence in England too”…Yes indeedy folks it’s not the gun but the man…Maybe the New Right is finally right about something…Let’s ban the men…Let’s make them justify their existence and their right to survival…Let us set up a board…a bureaucracy even…where each one must come in and fill out in triplicate the reasons why he should be allowed to live…All potential suicides need not bother to apply…They can save us all grief by killing them real selves instead of they play selves…Strange isn’t it if you try to live by getting a job or creating one there is no help…If you try to die by drugs or pills or slicing your wrists you become very very significant…No…Not more than we can bear…more than we ought to…
But those who ride the night winds must learn to love the stars…those who live on the edge must get used to the cuts…We are told if we live in glass houses to neither throw nor stow the stones…We are warned of bric-a-brac that easily breaks…IF YOU BREAK IT YOU BOUGHT IT…the store sign says…science being such a tenuous commodity we can only half believe for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…But if Newton was as correct about apples as the snake we are at the beginning not the end…Those who have nothing to offer take something away…Don’t cry for John Lennon cry for ourselves…He was an astronaut of inner space…He celebrated happiness…soothed the lonely…braced the weary…gave word to the deaf…vision to the insensitive…sang a long low note when he reached the edge of this universe and saw the Blackness…Poetry…like photography…functions best not only in the available light but in the timeliness of the subject…There are always those painters who think the only proper subjects are those who can rent the galleries…Others know we who cut stone must envision cathedrals…I don’t believe you know someone just because you like what they do for a living…or the product of it…You don’t feel you know David Rockefeller and you all like money…or what it can buy…You don’t feel you know or want to know Jerry Falwell and you all want to go to heaven…or so you say…No this is not about John Lennon…He only wrote and sang some songs…So did Chuck Willis…Johnny Ace…Sam Cooke…Otis Redding…The blood on city streets and backcountry roads isn’t new…but now we can call this game exactly what it is…This isn’t about somebody who killed…either…It’s always a nut though isn’t it…cashew…peanut…walnut…pistachio…yeah…a real pissedaschio nut…But take comfort music lovers…Reagan supports gun control…ling freaks…And those who ride the night winds do learn to love the stars…even while crying in the darkness…The whole may be greater than the sum of its parts…we’ll never know now…one part is missing. No this is not about John Lennon…It’s about us…And the night winds…Anybody want a ticket to ride?