When John Fell(Second Revised Version)

 

 

"I still believe in love."--John Lennon

 

It was war of the ancient order come to the farthest shore at last. No one leaves this world

without an arrow through his heart. Why should I lie to you now? We all fight the truth in different ways

because the enemy is so very good at mutating into the ones you love. It's a crime against

nature but most hardships are brought on by a dishonest approach to the young day at hand. Everything turns on that one awful wheel. And that brings me to tears more often than the current  knife in my back. Yeah so we

might as well gather our spoiled baby dreams out in the open fields at night and sell them on the pretty grey market places

the very next afternoon before they're stolen away from us anyway. I didn't want things to be this sad, they

just are. When John fell so did a star but it was hard to tell what was happening

because the sky is like a pickle jar full of countless shining jelly beans. Because a tremendous rainfall doesn't stop to

 

count itself for a silly eating contest...because so many of us are already too old to still be acting so stupid instead of just forever young. You

don't want to hear about any of that softheaded nonsense and I don't blame you. There are plenty of guitar-benders headed in the

opposite blues soaked mind-numb directions out there than me. They'll be more than glad to take you out after midnight dancing. I've got that on my list, too, believe it

or not, but when John fell I missed a step and might have flown over my own crying shadow. And then

there was suddenly an emptiness inside the same old bucket of lies spilling everywhere, where the sloshing world used to rub shoulders with the new wind's bony elbows for some kind of morbid good luck. And

I don't like to pretend that there's nothing's wrong with us. It does no good for anyone. But it's

also almost a moot,pathetic or sad point. You choose.The world isn't going to stop having love. Yeah I recognize that fact as my own doing and undoing. Children climb into

flowers as easily as any parade of goofy worker bees, just might be on purpose I suppose. Clouds come out smelling like warmed up coffins and drop to the floor as stinky mush . So is it a very real possibility, we just might become true enough to ourselves to the meaning of being here alone and together like this to make some real possible difference to the way things are? I don't know. And you don't know. You hope. I used to hope.

I give it a  half-hearted try anyway only because I might as well toss up my own dented two cents worth on someone else's possible happiness as not at all. Everybody gambles for one more day, one magic night, one more lingering kiss, one more bloated moon, one more summer's latest hour.

Only accountants are interested in the end of that long equation. But I swear when John fell the needle jumped off the prerecorded history of mankind and left a nasty scar in the wax for all time. No one

wants to hear a warped echo following them around all day long like a senseless wailing child . But that's not what I meant to say here either. Sooner or later you have to go down to the valley and see for yourself if you are meant to live

or die, knowing that you're always running out of the stuff that keeps you stuck here all together in the first place. I miss my old friend, John. Hell, I miss all my old friends. I hope I too gave you something then like new interesting music

to hold onto,  way back when I believed. I don't know any other way to say

this. And now there's this wicked new stuff going around the room, saying there's

 

always going to be someone else answering a ringing phonecall somewhere, saying, ooh, baby, baby, and that's alright with me. I like it like that. It's got a beat. I can relate.

I'm down with it. Have a great big pretend ball of your own making, if you can. I just can't pretend that it didn't happen once to me and mine,

too, you see. The sort of magic that makes life interesting. So when John fell we all ran off, retreated into our silly self serving (no electricity for us nature lovers allowed!) caves, turned our backs and decided to live on nothing but thin luminous fish for the rest of our natural born lives, but that's a diet that slowly eats you

out of your own skin, from the inside out, brothers and sisters, and leaves you more skeletal beggar than fabulous dreamer. It seals

you off from the other musicians of the soulful miles to come. You become another lonely one man band. It steals your ability to imagine a sly lover's smile. That's all I'm saying. Don't forget. Ask yourself. Do you like this life's track record so far? If you don't, what are you doing here? Don't wait. When John fell a train lifted off a golden track and it disappeared into the night's

wailing air sirens and it's never coming back, so we might as well get that fact straight right now. You can

 

hear the chorus of “so whats” growing ever louder and louder by the moaning, groaning minute, just like a bunch

of puffed-up bull frogs who don't believe in predators in the moonlit grasses surrounding their scummy happy pond. Until. Surprise! Pretty soon they won't even

know what their harmonizing was for. Everybody will head for home with a snooty flip and a phoney splash. When you

get there you realize it isn't there anymore, but only somewhere you used to feel pretty good about

yourself. Well, dear family of man and woman alike, that's the whole point of the delicious air we breathe isn't it? We carry on. In that sense we are always it.

When John fell so did the collective, knowing smile, but it's coming back. It's always been right there waiting to happen again.

Let's do what we can to meet that fearsome ghost with something brand new again, this time and every time after. That's what John would have wanted 

for us, to find a fresh way to carry each other forward. And have fun doing it. The

higher you fly the deeper you go, said John, who was by all accounts just about as free as a bird could get,  as they ever come,  into this wilderness of a world and out.

 

Bonus:

 

The Doomed Lecturer

by Darryl Price