---

 

enjoy this writing from Kyle Hemmings in the free cc&d 2010 PDF file chapbook: Avenue C			But you can also get this as a 6" x 9" perfect-bound ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread to order a copy.

Order this writing in the 2010 poetry collection book		click on the book cover for an author & poem listing, order the 5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book order the 6" x 9" ISBN# book

The Death of John Lennon

Kyle Hemmings

1.

On a day of dizzying sunbeams,
My feet light as a thin Napa wine,
A day so quiet, one could hear
The skin peel off yellow grapes,
I stood at the edge of the pool,
Pulled in my elbows, ready to dive in.

There, at the bottom of the pool,
John Lennon’s body, floating,
The cheeks bloated, the lips open,
Ripples murky, shimmering.
I thought of kites lining the sky
Watching them through clouds,
Drifting, free from strings
That anchored them to tiny hands
Tight as knots.
He was smiling. I could not be sure.

I turned to my new wife, Yoko,
Playing cello on the patio,
Said, “Do you know John Lennon
Is at the bottom of our pool?”
Her lips pinched as if this
A mere inconvenience,
Asked to pass a salt shaker
At the table, or yell at a
Child rummaging the attic.

“He’s not dead, “ she said,
“he’s merely free from the burden
Of pretending to be a dead fish.”
She resumed playing the cello.

For days, I walked, walked nowhere,
Lifted on the notes, the vibrato of that cello,
Walked through deserted streets and deserts,
Not afraid of stray bullets, rabid dogs,
The iron fists of irate strangers.

Under the sole company of the sun,
I began to disrobe,
Dropped this pretense of being something
For somebody else.
Or of having somewhere to go,
Anywhere to go
When the whole world is a globe,
A grid of intersecting endings, beginnings.
And then, my flesh,
The sun-baked skin,
This thick barrier of coat,
This shroud of costly desires,
I would soon step out of that too.

2.

The day after Lennon’s death,
People huddled in Central Park,
Drew Lennon’s face on balloons,
Released them, watched them float
Over the trees and baseball fields,
Over the high-rises and swank hotels,
While the crowd chanted the words
To Imagine. I could imagine.
For a moment, everyone became John,
The streetwalkers, the clerks,
The roller skaters, the carpenters.
When the song was over,
A hush fell over the park.

I had known Lennon all my life. In a sense.
Listened to him, my ear pressed against
A pocket transistor when I should have
Been multiplying by nines, adding fractions.
Or later, hummed along to his words
In the front seat of my dad’s T-Bird,
My hand snaking along the nape
Of a girl whose face I can no longer see.

I left, nestled myself next to strangers
On a crowded subway, too immersed
In stock quotes and Iran’s newest hostages.
My stop, the doors whooshed and screeched,
I climbed to the top of the stairwell,
Spotted a woman slouched,
Crying in a corner. Normally,
I’m not so disposed to approach strangers
who sell their small tragedies for hours,
As if their losses should be celebrity news,
And no one has anything better to do
Than to sink time in a staggered line before a kiosk.

What’s the matter, I asked. Sometimes,
A stranger can help you more than you think.
Her lips pressed. She turned away to the light.
I reached for a carrot from my briefcase.
Here, I said, eat a carrot. They’re good for you.
I always bring a carrot to work but never eat them.
But they contain essential vitamins.
You really don’t want to live without carrots.
You’d go blind. Or worse, you’d stumble at night.
Think of a world without carrots. And rabbits.
My God, what would the rabbits do? Or horses?
No, she said, she doesn’t care for carrots,
The way your teeth crunch into them, the scrunch,
You can never eat them in a room of strangers.
Her lips trembled, she nodded her head at the carrot.
Said she just lost her job. Now, the rent.
Now, the kids. Now, nothing. And, God, her husband.
Why, the only thing she could afford now is carrots.
I smoothed her shoulder with slow circular strokes.
There are other jobs, I said, the city is full of them.
It’s not something that’s really taken away forever.
But, I said, this, here, there, what I once had, others too,
I’ll never get it back. Do you know, I said.
What, she said, you mean the carrot?
No. No, not the carrot. You don‘t get it do you, I said,
What’s all around us, colors fading, the echo of
Subways through tunnels, the plaster across people’s faces,
Not even a sheen across tiles, nothing reflects back;
Nothing. it’s everywhere. Don’t you see it?
What is? she said, what? If not about carrots. Tell me.
Please. . . Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Do you know John Lennon is dead?

3.
Tonight, I walk the streets, me, a private world
Among city blocks of such, as if our heads
Were the kind of boxes children sometimes
Cover their faces with, to block out the light, or
To sustain their new identities in a game of space aliens.
Tonight, the bars, their jukeboxes, play every song
Ever recorded by Lennon, his son, Julian,
The duos with Yoko.
I remember how the crowd used to toss tomatoes
Or how they posed nude to protest war, war of any kind.
And I wonder how it is that someone, so far,
Far as dust or stars,
Now, long ago, always,
Never to revisit this planet
of untimely coincidences and new fads,
Has guided me for so long
On this journey to now,
Which is another name for never.

4.

If I could take two steps back for each day of the week,
I’d wind up swinging the door out of Tower Records,
Holding a plastic bag of new cassettes,
And then, stepping into the street,
the gun raising in slow motion, incremental steps,
I’d throw my body into the bullet’s path,
An imploding burn, something final, more treacherous
Then dying in a back draft,
My body crumbling to the curb,
And John, stunned, yelling for an ambulance,
Yoko pressing her hand against the hole
Widening in the pit of my stomach.
This blood gushing, my silent, liquid lifeline,
Turning to blue, turning to sky.
But too late, too late,
And I would never live to enjoy my celebrity,
this single act of heroism,
But at least, I’d figure, I’ve helped John
To make a hundred years
And at least ten more albums.
Or twenty.

5.

The last time I interviewed John,
He sat lotus-styled in a black love seat,
Yoko, somewhere in the palatial house,
Ordering the servants to fix something Hungarian.
John lifted a glass of Burgundy wine to his lips,
The aroma wafting towards me, African Violets in a heat.
He told me his theory of evolution while
My pencil scrawled to the end of the pad.
“It’s not like all the rubbish, y’know, they taught
you in school. I mean, that God created ev’ry bloke
And bee to continue the process. No, not like that.
It started with rocks, then flowers, lilies, huckleberries,
Onto birds, finches, Marions, then us. Get me drift?
And someday, we give way to another being, stronger,
Stronger than us, but not perfect, not perfect yet,
But then, someday, yeah, perfect, and this being
Far more beautiful and intelligent than we could
Imagine, and then, all time ‘ill stop. Just like that.
He dropped his glass of wine on the hard floor.
I watched it smash and splatter.
He rose, shook my hand, said, “Sorry, Gov.,
Gotta run now, we’re ‘avin’ guests, ya know,
The interview’s over.” He breezed out of the room.

I studied the broken glass, the red streams of dark wine,
The pieces reflecting rainbow prisms of light.
Perhaps, Yoko would snap a picture of it for an art show.
I wondered: could this be how the world began?
How it would begin again?

6.

Slowly, they took John down from the cross.
Yoko Ono showed us the veil imprinted with John’s blood
And sweat. Elvis showed up with the Colonel,
he lay a heavy Fender at the foot of the cross,
Said, “My brother, may we meet again in rock n’ roll heaven.
The Liverpool Apostles: Paul, George, and Ringo,
Crossed themselves, vowed never to sign another record contract.
They cursed the Pharisees, the producers, the media,
The imitators, The A.M. stations, the censors, Cousin Brucie.
Yoko picked up a stone, inspected each and every
One of our faces. “Who sold him out?” she said.
“Who! It was all of us. Each and every one of us.”
An old woman, perhaps from Syria, perhaps once,
a hip Hittentite, hobbled over with a cane,
said her bed would be forever made of bricks.
Imagine sleeping on nails, or hot cinders, she said.
I carried John in my arms, his body, slumped, growing lighter,
The blood draining out. Over there, said Yoko, heading the procession.
She pointed. “We will not bury him. Lay him there.”
I lowered John on a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
We bowed our heads and sang the words to Dear Prudence.
A young woman walked up to us, said she would never again
Sleep with another man for money, food, this false tranquility of flesh.
The crowd dispersed, a few argued over who should get his platinum records.
“My husband,” said Yoko, “his voice of wind and broken pearls,
May you rest in peace. The world will never understand sacrifice.
Here. Lay him here. Where his flesh and bones will turn to yeast,
the bark of trees, the wings of a blackbird, a filament of sky.
In this way, John will become everything.
And everything is everything.
There will be no more wars of separation.
Everything is everything.”
Then, we treaded slowly into the void of dusk.

7.

Today I sit on the back patio
immersed in a swatch of blood-orange sunset.
not even the buzz of my thoughts
could wake up the gladiolas, the insects.
Yesterday, my wife announced
that she was leaving,
without explanation or stretching the facts.
She left me with a jade of silence
& a whole cabinet of spice.
I should be thankful she didn’t take
the old Beatles collection,
or the one with John and Yoko,
peaceful lovers under a tree,
the way we ourselves once designed
that summer of love.
We managed to survive a karma
of rainy days, a fondue of hopes
nettling the skin. We always wondered
just what happiness was.
& now with that buzz of thoughts
shifting to foreground, the drone of days
stretching out before me,
this empty goblet filled
with my distorted reflections,
I suppose Lennon and I
are alone together
again.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...