WHEN LABOURING TO BREAK

Perhaps one is in prison -- fidgeting as time draws to a close -- a scrap of house tunic between the fingers or when labouring to break cuticles on swollen fingers pressing both hands against ears that refuse to hear the stop sound of rushing blood. Then again, in the last hour before end time, before dawn's arrival and floodlit sky finds you -- knuckles clasping bars, pitiless bayonet-like with eyes swishing truncheons at all the getaway air your lungs will never take; wheezing in growing fear to the sound of footsteps, clank of keys and gallow's humour as they prepare to Skuttle your short life, wall up clouds of their own pestilence nakedly mask each firing squad gathering for its fighting chance. 75 Back to the Contents Page 

 

THIS WAY TO THE SIXTIES: JOHN LENNON'S DEATH FIVE YEARS AFTER

It was a red letter day and all within a decade, the sixties. Psychadelic and all because the Electric Circus opened up Walking Yonge Street in the December cold, aging "hippies", the word itself a joke, reminisced:  National Guardsmen, for one, doing post-mortems on their rifle butts, record covers carrying the first life- sized zippers and mashed up rubber dolls; Cher Bono getting up nerve and a career to name her child Chastity but walking off with a card. By the end of the decade they were asking questions. We had landed on the moon per schedule but who would have believed in the efficacy of Rock or the efficency of napham before Vietnam? Frosted hair. Body paint. The sixties produced a lot of it. With one bullet, the Beatles, the secular saviours, were breaking up. Before they had finished reuniting the world. Before the history of music could be written. Before John Lennon, did we dare trust ourselves, World leaders, gurus? That was the meaning of the assassination. History won't budge an inch for neophytes, The Clockwork Orange was instructive but didn't go far enough. Frodo wouldn't live in Yorkville today if given a chance. Now for the most poignant mental lapse of the Candle carriers, mourners and mock biers with frozen flowers. Simply the reminder half the population didn't share his vision. Veterans grumbled. The press paid more attention to this solitary event than Armistice Day. Schoolchildren tittered. What was that? The so-called generation gap seemed poised on that comment. Then John's comment the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ Donovan didn't survive tunes like Epistle to Dippy. Lennon won't survive the Elvis Beatle syndrome. The lights are going out on the sixties, The eighties are austere. Cherry cokes are 

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