My poem Flip Side of the Ballad of John and Yoko was written the day
John Lennon was shot and today is the 33rd anniversary of that
tragic event.
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming autobiography, ‘Die Bibel:
The Authoritative History of Michael John O’Leary, Earl
of Seacliff ’, which describes the circumstances around the
writing of the poem:
I wrote ‘off the cuff’ the moment I heard the news that Mark Chapman had
murdered John Lennon in New York City : Que
pasa New York New York
It was a great shock to me and many of my generation all around
the world. That night I went to the Captain Cook and met Peter
Olds and we had a wake for John in remembrance for all he had
done for us over the years. It is interesting that Bob Dylan, not noted for his
eulogizing other artists of his generation, has written a song, ‘Roll on John’,
in praise of Lennon for his 2012 album Tempest – everyone copies me
eventually!
Flip Side of the Ballad of John and Yoko
6pm News, Tuesday, Ninth of December, 1980
“We have just heard from New
York
Ex-Beatle John Lennon was shot today . . . !!!!!!”
i
There I was sitting on a sofa
In one of the southernmost cities of the world
Listening to the radio whilst thinking about cooking tea
Well, how can you be honest about how you feel?
I’d just turned the station over
To get the “real” news of the world
When I heard the words written above: well fuck me!
What else can you do but swear at a time like this
I am thinking about my mother, his mother
Two of the responsible for bringing us into the world
And now John, you’re gone! There’s only me
Yoko and me, and the rest of humanity together in grief and love
Yoko’s in a black scumbag, I left the sofa
Wandered aimlessly around the room the day you left the world
Your death is a climax of events forcing mortality on me
Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout Pol Pot, Nazism, Socialism, I.R.A. and junkies
Give me a chance, brother
You have helped me understand this world
Now you’re dead, am I enslaved or freeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!
Fuck the revolution, we have bred another generation
ii
When it all began, I was just another
Beatle fan. A teenager from the other side of the world
Looking for something more interesting than school’s authority
Distances travelled in space, time and sorrow add up to one thing
Your songs and books helped me discover
In myself, what all the education in the world
Could not; that I could write and illustrate my own story
Knowledge to one is ignorance to another, unless there is love
1968, Hey Jude, the death of my father and mother
Like a lost black sheep I entered the outside world
Sold my records, went to work in a dark, thankless factory
If a person makes enough of one thing, he or she becomes a thing
While I got lost in nothing, you found your lover
For whom you left the Beatles, left the wife, shocked the world
Yoko, through the years of illusion, offered you reality
Eternity may be a stone in Wales
And so, lest the press smother
You and your love both withdrew from the world
Which had built you a boat of fame, then left you all at sea
How many oak trees have been allowed to grow from the acorns?
“Just like starting over”
Is not starting over, you are now dead to the world
Sean and Yoko no longer have the shade and strength of their tree
That fallen tree made them a house which they must make a home
iii
We were always a decade away from each other
Yet we were of the same generation
You were the spiritual pathfinder
I followed to the point of penetration
And I never lost you, but let you go
It was not lack of love, but life itself, caused the separation
Now you too have joined the dead and living dead
Who haunt and torment my existence
On this quaint and sadly crazy planet on which
To live is not just to breath, but an insistence
That each such breath is a test of courage and will
Which we understand at a metaphorical distance
Christ!
I know
It ain’t easy!
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