(this is clearly just an example of venting without any regard to form or structure. Somehow I was tying Lennon’s death to the senseless shooting in Roanake, and intermingled recent controversy over Lennon’s past. Not quite sure where I was going yet.)

~

When I was a younger man, an impressionable lad,

I followed an icon, a singer named John,

he spoke of a need for peace, believed our only release,

meant song and love, his words cooed like a dove.

~

Now over thirty years later, we haven’t come any further,

last night two people again, with lives that’d just began,

snuffed out by another nut case, a mentally ill whacko in case

you haven’t figured it out, joined a legion of killer’s devout.

~

Over thirty years ago a man, slain by hands upon a gun

represented peace and love and forgiveness, his own demons newly address

a tormented life of abuse, he placed himself on the loose.

Yet demonized his attitude one time, canonized his life now sublime.

~

There are two stories being told in our daily lives, one first of our abused wives,

the second the hands of death by a bullet, in a world where exposed every minute,

we see the eyes of death in the hand, of the mentally ill with very little demand,

for scrutiny, or call of action, to stop the violence, to have a reaction.

~

Lennon, recently recalled as a wife beater, still in my eyes a leader,

smacked around yet later did acknowledge, his actions were no longer alleged.

He died at the hands of a shooter, by society’s terms, a mentally ill loser.

So when we pass judgment on our people, how do we define that towering steeple.

~

I suppose it doesn’t really matter as much to me that a visionary singer, was once abusive,

when across the country, a gun in the hands of a nut bag makes anything less permissive.