Written by Shelby Rogers. Posted in Poetry.
Last night he was talking to Federico Fellini
in the bar on chili night, who told him “I’m not afraid
anymore of telling the truth.” John Lennon was celebrating
his 84th birthday, as if the years no longer mattered.
He wanted his whiskey. Like Jim Harrison, I said,
who wasn’t actually dead like everyone else.
His poems scared all the birds from his head.
“Fear makes for good servants.”
His body spun on his stool and the Liverpool boy
talked about Lake Superior singing outside.
Angry waves exploded in his chords
on a Gibson he had left out all night in my car.
It had an ugly sound that suited his darker edge.
His wire-rims were replaced by designer shades now,
all his shirts made in Rome. He cursed when his tie
dove into a chili bowl and stained his Piero Gherardi suit.
When Fellini had told Lennon about his wife in bed
his eyes opened wide, ready for outer space.
John slept alone with the television on.
Some nights he asked me to join him. We read
Harrison’s poetry of birds and rivulets
flowing between a woman’s legs
in her walk through Mulligan Creek.
John Lennon suddenly splashed on some trousers
and explained he was going to knock on Fellini’s door.
The Beatle standing alone on the fourth floor
would catch my nineteen-year-old girl walking to the bathroom.
She would smile at him just when we happened to see
Jim Harrison with his manual typewriter
telling us he was going to write a novel on the hotel roof.
The ingredients were the stars, he told Lennon,
as if he wanted one more song from him
to sing of a woman’s body bathing in a stream.
