There’s something of a let-down whenever I finish writing a poem, as if I have to leave what was an exciting adventure on foreign soil, and head back home.  Getting to the end of either requires a return to the daily rhythm of who I am.  Sometimes I wish I could stay in the poem, each and every day…

The time was 10:50 29 years ago, when he was taken from us amidst a hail of bullets, in much the same manner he entered the World…

At the height of World War II in Liverpool, during yet another German air raid, John Winston Lennon’s newborn cries were covered by the indiscriminate onslaught of bullets and bombs.  As Julia and Alfred Lennon held him, young John Winston Lennon’s aunt Mary ran through back alleys to reach the hospital, following the light provided by the explosions in the dark night.  Taking John’s little hands and covering them with her own, Mary made a silent promise to ensure John was always looked after, always cared for.

Not long after John was born, his father joined the merchant marines to help with the War effort, but wound up going AWOL.  Julie did her best to help her little family survive despite spotty checks arriving from Alfred  in the mail.  Aunt Mary helped as best she could.  A year later, in 1944, Alfred looked up his wife but found that she had moved on, pregnant by another man.

John’s aunt Mary, who had years earlier dodged bullets and bombs to get to him, was tired of what she saw as neglect of her young nephew.  Mary petitioned for and received custodianship of John.  Shortly thereafter Alfred arrived again, and during a failed attempt to take John with him to New Zealand, forced John to choose between himself and Aunt Mary.  John was incredibly torn, choosing his father, then Mary, in tears and distraught.  Alfred left his son’s life that day, not to be seen again for over 20 years.

Julia never gave up on her son, although she did not fight her sister in raising him.  She wanted John to be raised in a good, steady environment, and knew Maria and her husband George could provide it.  Julia visited infrequently, teaching John the banjo, and playing Elvis Presley records with him.  This was their biggest bond, the music they shared, the quiet times in each other’s company just listening.  The World was at peace.

Julia bought John his first guitar in 1957, and kept it at her place, because Maria did not support John’s wish to become a musician.  After Julia Lennon’s untimely death from a car accident one year later, Maria consoled John and helped him get into the Liverpool College of Art.  College was not for John, who spent his evenings with friends listening to a variety of bands in Liverpool and surrounding communities.  He dropped out his last year of college and pursued his first love, a career in music, a return to the place he shared with his mother…

John took guitar lessons but soon thereafter dropped them, finding them too constrictive to his creativity.  He began a band named The Quarrymen, meeting Paul McCartney during their second concert.  Despite his father’s statements that John “Will get you into trouble,” Paul maintained a belief in John’s ability, wisdom and heart.   From there they met George Harrison, (who convinced them he was needed for the band after playing for them on the top deck of a bus,) and eventually a young Ringo Starr.  They went through a number of name changes and settled on The Beatles.

John’s music career with fraught with controversy, often from thoughts he shared that were divergent from society’s norm.  He commented often against organized religion, jingoistic foreign policies, civil rights abuses, and always war.  These comments, of course, caused a backlash wherever he went…

• Because he did not care whether his friends were gay or straight, John was derided as a Homosexual during a time when gays and lesbians were undergoing political persecution.
• Because he was open to all possible political thought in solving the many crises he saw, he was labelled a Marxist, Trotskyist, Communist and Socialist when McCarthy was holding court to imprison those with “Anti-American sentiment.”
• Because John wanted to celebrate his open, physical love with Yoko Ono, he was called a sexual exhibitionist and deviant by a Society trying to squelch open sexual expression.
• Because he questioned organized religion’s ability and desire to create a better world, he was called an Atheist, and many a religious family limited their children’s exposure to his music.
• Because he was anti-war as a means to resolve problems between peoples, his FBI files grew considerably as he was watched ever more closely.

It would seem that John was trying to be everything that the greater Authority did not want him to be, exactly when they did not want it.

Tired of growing up in a divisive World, and seeing the terrible effects of war everywhere as he toured, John began to believe that our circumstances could be changed simply by changing our minds.  He began to write songs expressing a desire for nations to cease the quarreling, and to move toward greater peace and harmony.  The album Imagine was released in 1971, and the title song soon thereafter became an anti-war anthem.  The song Happy Xmas (War is Over) was released in December of the same year.  The album’s many topics included upholding women’s rights, pushing for better race relations, and asking for peace in Ireland.

From the moment John Lennon was brought into the World, someone reached out across the dark void of human madness to hold him, to protect him.  When his mother died, again someone stepped up to support him.  Despite his anger and confusion at the greater World around him, John always had supporters.  In each waking moment, he wanted his music to push us all to find each other in the darkness too, to reach out and hold each other.  Before he was taken from us, John Winston Ono Lennon worked diligently and creatively to persuade us all to find the hands of those weaker than us, and to hold them close in protection.

10:50 p.m.  There is a certain rhyme to the days of our life, isn’t there?  A deeper meaning that can be found (or created) even from the moment we are taken away from the World.  When John was taken from us, the face of the clock in the lobby of the Dakota apartment building symbolized John’s message.  The big hand covered the little hand, a symbol of protection and love. A contract between the youngest (and weakest) of us, and those that arrived beforehand and made their own place in the World.

When asked, Yoko Ono stated that there would be no funeral for John.  Some were angered by this choice, and some said that Yoko likely did not want there to be a public spectacle made over John’s life.  I would prefer to think that Yoko refused to say farewell to her love, to allow John’s presence to disappear from the World, so that he would live forever in our hearts and minds.  To this day, Yoko expresses her love for John as a living entity, commemorating and celebrating his message of peace and unity.  Recently she invited the public to join her in re-enacting the famous bed-in anti-war protest that she and John held in 1969 at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and again in Montreal.  It was during the latter bed-in that they recorded “Give Peace a Chance.”

Bless you, John.  Thanks for your message.  With the loving help of Yoko, may we remember you each and every year, commemoriating both your birth and loss by working diligently toward the day when no child comes into the world knowing the sound of war.  May our lives become together rhyming lyrics, and may we never awaken from the poetry of that song…

You can follow Yoko Ono on Twitter.  She tweets messages of love, will follow you back, and from time to time does respond…