HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN LENNON

Graphic created by Susan Joyner-Stumpf

(Written October 9, 2016)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JOHN WINSTON LENNON, who would have been 76 today, October 9th. John was born October 9, 1940, in war-torn Liverpool, England; was shot down in cold blood one frosty New York City evening a little after 10 pm, December 8th, 1980, right out in front of his exclusive-luxury apartment at the Dakota. He had just recently, of course, turned 40, and was making a comeback to the studio to create music again after a five year hiatus of just relaxing, re-finding HIMSELF after all of his life spent belonging to OTHERS, and raising his son Sean who was only five years old at the time of his father’s murder. Yoko was busy handling their Business Affairs. John at the time was working on the DOUBLE FANTASY album. Here are just a few of the great and timeless songs, among others, born on that last JL CD:

Woman

(Just Like) Starting Over

Watching the Wheels

Beautiful Boy (dedicated to young son, Sean)

Who knows what John Lennon would have gone on to brilliantly create . . . sadly, we will never know the answer to that, will we? What choice do we have NOW but to cherish his body of work left to us and the rest of the cheated world, where it ended abruptly without warning, and so shockingly untimely? And all because someone else we never even heard of before comes along out of the ebony anonymous mist and makes that choice for us while we were sleeping in our beds thinking all was right with the world as much as it could be at the time. How safe and happy we felt in the knowledge that our beloved four lads from Liverpool, though no longer together as a group, were at least by this time on talking terms and continuing to create their music individually.

As far as we were concerned, John Lennon was alive and well along with the other three lads and that was enough for us to go about our little days and nights working hard and playing harder, laughing, loving, crying, paying taxes, walking dogs or whatever, and waiting excitedly for the next album to be released.

No doubt we lost a Legend that day. I’m sure in some far off part of the cosmic Universe too many light years away for even our powerful Hubble Telescopes to detect, some ancient star (no pun intended) fell into a soundless vortex, swallowed infinitely inside a Black Hole of unfathomable, intergalatic sorrow. I know some of us back here on Earth were sucked into our own leviathan abyss of which there would and could be, no return.

Why? Because along came an unknown chap named David Chapman, who even had the gall to refer to himself as a so-called “John Lennon Fan;” who even went as far as to have a girlfriend that looked a lot like Yoko Ono. Whose deviant agenda was to make a name for himself because he was sick and tired of being a nobody, a “Nowhere Man.” And, sure enough, and notoriously, he carried out his Machiavellian plot to alter history forever yet not for the better . . . (just as long as he would be IN the History Books). Like a Play writer, he had previously scripted out the role for himself to play out the scene of his dastardly deed to the minute detail; down to even having a copy of the Double Fantasy Album tucked beneath his malodorous armpit while waiting patiently in the shadows for his “idol” to emerge home so that he, the Great Fan David Chapman, could weasel out an autographed copy from the ex-Beatle who had become too complacent over the years with his retired-Celebrity/Stardom Beatle Status. John had begun, believe it or not, to think of himself as just a regular Joe-Blow walking down Central Park holding hands with his wife and a young, rambunctious son in tow. It wasn’t uncommon to go into a swanky uptown Coffee shop and see THE John Lennon sitting there alone in a corner booth with a newspaper, drinking de-caf herbal tea. A café owner once told the press in an interview that John was a patron regular and walked in there, nonchalant, like any John Doe, not incognito nor any elaborate disguise, simply adorning his signature round glasses and dapper black leather cap reminiscent of “the old days.” Perhaps the only thing that gave him away was that thick, typical English dry-wit Liverpudlian accent he never lost despite having lived, by this time, over a decade in the U-S-of A.  This owner of the coffee shop, as a side note, felt the fervent need to add that ex-Beatle John was “a greater tipper.” No sh*t Sherlock.

Now I can’t get a verse from John out of my head: I can still hear his innocent boyishly mocking, monotone croon, “Life is What Happens To You While You’re Busy Making Other Plans. . .”

All this was nothing we ever expected: a Musical Nuclear Fall-out, an apocalyptic catastrophe of Epic proportions no less worse than Chernobyl, once the unbelievably horrific news hit a stunned media and the remaining numbed masses of those who loved, respected, admired and were influenced not only by this Musical Genius larger than life that they grew up listening to, but the Man he himself was and unabashedly so, naked and all, vulnerable, humble, perhaps a tortured Soul but a man who, nonetheless, was NOT afraid to love, who LOVED LOVE, who shared loved, gave love, received love, made love, sang love, preached love, and wanted Peace for ALL, not just for some of us; well IMAGINE that.

“And in the end

The love you take

Is equal to the love you make.” ¹

¹ ~ (Excerpt from the song “The End,” a song by the Beatles composed by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon–McCartney) for the album Abbey Road. It was the last song recorded collectively by all four Beatles, and is the final song of the medley that comprises the majority of side two of the album.

My tribute Poem to the Beatle:

To the Singer/Songwriter/Poet/Musician/Artist/Actor, Comic-Sardonic Teddy Boy, Husband, Father, Brother, Cousin, Environmentalist and Wildlife Conservationist, Humanitarian, Vegetarian, Transcendental Meditation Apprentice/Scream Therapy Student, Dreamer, Mother Nature’s Son, the Jealous Guy, Son to the father who was a Sea Merchant that abandoned him and his mother when he was the same age as his son Sean (5) when Sean lost him (like father, like son?) Son to a mother who’d given him up to an Aunt, though right before her horrible death they reunited when he was 15 and were just starting to rekindle their mother-son relationship; she taught him the banjo and guitar.  Then he watched as his mother was ripped away once again from him by a drunken hit-and-run-driver and he never got over it, whom he lovingly referred to in his song written for her, Julia ~ Ocean Child, another song where his Soul cried out for her called Mother, Friend if you gained his trust, the Walrus, the MAN we shall always call (but never again will he answer to) John Lennon, for all he’s left us, for all that could have been, and for all that because of HIM, will FOREVER be and NEVER BE forgotten:

****

Feel

(For John Lennon, my late Hero)

i feel a weep

turn inside out

nowhere to flow

nowhere to go

endless limbo

back inside

the same nameless

grief

i know a tear

turned outside in

nowhere to fall

no one to call

i feel so small

it’s the end of all

i ever loved

in a hero’s song

i listen still

his songs unwind

within my being

consume my seeing

have i stopped breathing?

left bleeding

endless grieving

still believing

deafness seeks

his lost voice

like a broken heart

that won’t give

up its wounded beating

i know a man

he changed the world

got us to care

reminded us to feel

to become aware

of not just ourselves

but everyone

here, there, everywhere

love everyone

hold everyone

because we’re one

don’t leave it undone

we should have listened

ain’t it a sin

look at us now

we’re strangers again

i feel a weep

of a million souls

that shattered with him

that mattered to him

that cried with him

even died with him

if that’s what it took

to find love again

i should know

i was one of them

that followed him

never to look back

he wanted peace then

never to end

ain’t it a sin

we only found it

once we left

never to touch this

lonely earth again . . .

– – –

John Lennon, shot 12/8/80,

An infamous day all Hell broke loose

And Heaven received a Hell of a

Musical Legend/Genius. A Loss

and a Gain ~ where NO ONE

would ever be the same.

Copyright © Susan Joyner-Stumpf ® 2016♫

* No part of this poem may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way or form or by any means electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise without the written permission of the author.*

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Graphic created by Susan Joyner-Stumpf

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Graphic created by Susan Joyner-Stumpf