Rest in Music

“Not more than we can bear…More than we should have to”
- Nikki Giovanni

No, he wasn’t Jesus.
The bullets proved that.

And he wasn’t Orpheus
Because he wasn’t the kind to ever look back,
And he wasn’t Apollo
Because he didn’t believe in weapons.

Who was he then?
This beautiful lunatic,
This apparition straight out of our souls?

Is it possible for the spirit of a generation
To have a mirror?
And for the mirror to break
And leave the pieces of who we were
Jagged in our hands?

How do we recognize each other now?
Where do we turn
To make sure that we are still ourselves?

John is dead, they tell us.
But how do you kill
The tune you can’t get out of your head,
The rhythm in your feet,
The joy stuck in your heart
Like a pea in a whistle?

The silence hasn’t won yet.

We used to say his songs were to die for.
We were wrong.
It was he who died
And we, who lived on,
Have learnt that his songs were always and only
For the living,
His songs were the immediacy
Of being alive.

There have been other deaths since -
The guns have claimed many -
But never again has innocence demanded
So cruel a sacrifice,
Never again has beauty been destroyed so needlessly –
Like a massacre of flowers
To feed a schoolboy’s frustration.

Unbelievably,
The world goes on without him,
Spinning away like an old record,
And we, obedient like needles,
Fall back into the groove of our lives.

John Lennon is dead.

But no one has dared
To tell his Music.



John Lennon (October 9, 1940 - December 8 1980)