IN THE TIME OF DANNY BLANCHFLOWER

Tags

Britain, History, John Lennon, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, THE BEATLES

IN THE TIME OF
DANNY BLANCHFLOWER

I watched the ’62, ’63
same score cup finals
just to take a walk
down memory lane

(you know that hallmark track
sweetly framed and
with flowered border
slips into
Flanders mud if
you go
too far back)

Oh, what happened to
that gentility, you ask? Well,
it’s sweet, but reeks
a bit too much of
docility, civility,
would you
not agree?

And we have
in the studio
this chirpy Scouse chap
by name John Winston
(no not that Winston
imprisoned in South Africa
or in Room 101
where the truth
to be extracted
is thing you do not know)
so this
Johnny-boy, come lately, spent
Johnny-fellow
rambles on and on and on
in whiny, nasal voice

nothing here
quintessential, nothing
you could sell

no English musical hall viewed
through the lens
of lysergic acid

no yellow submarine
sailing
around Nelson’s Column

no heroic colonialism
to be resuscitated here
(free health!
that’s socialism, need
to torpedo that dream)

Victoria University, there I was
studying
the great Tory satirists
first
writers of the
novel
seemingly
Enlightened time to be

Belinda’s dressing table blessed
with the sexual spices of
Arabia and India
enhancing the demi-monde
making the ritual of
courtship
thing of high finance
of class propriety

meanwhile John Winston
imagining himself
a hero of
the revolutionary class
(bitter sarcasm here)
death by
idolized bullet
in
former colony awaiting
place that
gave you those slave rhythms
taught you
a British narrow French
windows out onto
creative possibility

I watched the old cup finals
Blanchflower and Greaves, Quixhall and Charlton
time is statue
stuck like a statue

until it isn’t
you see.

LIBATION

Tags

Astrological, John Lennon, Nietzsche, philosophical, poem, poetry, Rimbaud, THE BEATLES, TS Eliot, writing

LIBATION

Nietzsche
Bietzsche

I have
deep planets in
Libra

I feel in myself sometimes
moments of exquisite balance
between
good
and
evil

male and
female

that the world of a sudden
made transcendent sense

in your
songs stretching me
dragging me off
to follow the
Mersey of your imagination

or beside you mon frere
in your beautifully anarchic drunken boat

and you
with your special ear for the ghost
voices of
poets become one
true
choral host
taking me down the seedy
passageways of a
corrupt and fallen civilization
to be reborn

and what better rebirth, Herr Professor
than up here
on your mountain

smiling as each aphorism, unlocking itself,
bursts into light

yes, dear Zarathustra, I have the will
to impose my meaning,
reinterpret, write this poem

the ruling love of Venus
guiding us all.

MR LENNON

Tags

Hamburg, Inagine, John Lennon, Lenin, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, poem, poetry, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, THE BEATLES, wordplay

MR LENNON

I thought you
were a
lowly insect

but now you tell me
you are the
Working Class Hero
interred in
Red Square

my brain
reeling from this, and
from smudge of
Hanoverian in
your saucy scouse accent
gone turned
pink and white
and bubble-gum blue marshmallow
(top ingredient in the pies
rocking-horse
people like)

yes, I read of your death
browsing the backseat
in a newspaper taxi

“imagine that!” the taxi-driver cried,
they were all
in dress uniform
waiting for outbreak
of war
or some vaudeville event

and Alice, through the mirror, out
in one of your deftly landscaped gardens
wondering, as we
we will
all be
wondering forever and ever

as aliens
in distant galaxies will be wondering
what
it all
meant

what “Day in
the Life” might have
done to our heads.

LEMON LENNON

Tags

corporate, Creativity, imagine, John Lennon, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, rock music, satire

LEMON LENNON

imagine there
are no
universities
no art schools where
you can
grow your hair

put your ideas
through a synthesizer

just iconic brick or brutal
concrete spaces fully integrated
where you can study
fully work-
interfaced synergistic modules

on people management and other
resource regulation,
power-station fastbed-physics
and
other delightful

unless
called to the high
carbon-fiber pantheon
of true economic truth

imagine