White ibis/blue crane, the arch of wings in full sail over leafy barques a wise stork scanning water like the Disney character, conductor on his train with eye-glasses & stop watch.
Sift of wind, unseen hand exploring the pond the stork ungainly on a single leg the bird-man Jolly Roger a pirate burrowing in the muck add skull and cross bones upending frightened fingerlings the snout of the bandit a rifle shot away creasing the shallows.
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.
page 76 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.
Page 77 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.