December 2018
Kurt Luchs
Kurtluchs@aol.com
Kurtluchs@aol.com
Note: As I write this, I'm listening to the crazy-long version of "Helter Skelter" from the deluxe reissue of The White Album, and thinking about the day John Lennon was taken from us. I've had poems recently published in Into the Void, Antiphon, and The Sun Magazine. Last fall, Sagging Meniscus Press published my humor collection, It's Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It's Really Funny). A poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, is forthcoming next spring from Finishing Line Press.
The White Album
(from Fab Sonnets)
Somehow amid the group falling apart
They created this, their flawed masterpiece.
Is it a triumph of rock over art
Or art over rock? Each one who looks sees
Something different. What's abundantly clear
Is that the Beatles we knew are over.
They no longer want one another near.
Even George Martin has run for cover
And the drummer disappears for two weeks.
As the two motherless boys go solo
Paul trills like a blackbird, John finally speaks
His mind to Julia, who'll never know,
George commands Clapton's guitar gently weep
And Ringo the crooner puts us to sleep.
Sgt. Pepper
(from Fab Sonnets)
The Summer of Love has a soundtrack, and
This is it: brass, strings and guitars blaring
From every window on every block, the band
Pretending they're another band staring
Out at us with real eyes and eyes of wax
From the most elaborate album cover
Ever, and that's not mentioning the tracks.
Can there be even one music lover
Who doesn't own a copy? I doubt it.
How many years have I spent listening,
Diving deeper within and without it?
Their achievement endures, still glistening.
Out of their untold millions of fans, who
Could have predicted this from "Love Me Do"?
December 8, 1980
(from Fab Sonnets)
I turned, but never truly saw his face,
Bullets caught me before I caught a glimpse,
And all at once I no longer knew the place.
Up the same stairs with a staggering limp
I fell through the familiar vestibule
Now suddenly strange. The woman leaning
Over me was strange but strangely beautiful.
Someone over and over without meaning
Murmured a name alien to me
Till I rose like a mist from myself, crossed
The cleft of darkness into the sea
Of light and lost myself, and was lost.
While the great sky wheeled calmly overhead
I forgot Time, who forgets the dead.
The White Album
(from Fab Sonnets)
Somehow amid the group falling apart
They created this, their flawed masterpiece.
Is it a triumph of rock over art
Or art over rock? Each one who looks sees
Something different. What's abundantly clear
Is that the Beatles we knew are over.
They no longer want one another near.
Even George Martin has run for cover
And the drummer disappears for two weeks.
As the two motherless boys go solo
Paul trills like a blackbird, John finally speaks
His mind to Julia, who'll never know,
George commands Clapton's guitar gently weep
And Ringo the crooner puts us to sleep.
Sgt. Pepper
(from Fab Sonnets)
The Summer of Love has a soundtrack, and
This is it: brass, strings and guitars blaring
From every window on every block, the band
Pretending they're another band staring
Out at us with real eyes and eyes of wax
From the most elaborate album cover
Ever, and that's not mentioning the tracks.
Can there be even one music lover
Who doesn't own a copy? I doubt it.
How many years have I spent listening,
Diving deeper within and without it?
Their achievement endures, still glistening.
Out of their untold millions of fans, who
Could have predicted this from "Love Me Do"?
December 8, 1980
(from Fab Sonnets)
I turned, but never truly saw his face,
Bullets caught me before I caught a glimpse,
And all at once I no longer knew the place.
Up the same stairs with a staggering limp
I fell through the familiar vestibule
Now suddenly strange. The woman leaning
Over me was strange but strangely beautiful.
Someone over and over without meaning
Murmured a name alien to me
Till I rose like a mist from myself, crossed
The cleft of darkness into the sea
Of light and lost myself, and was lost.
While the great sky wheeled calmly overhead
I forgot Time, who forgets the dead.
©2018 Kurt Luchs
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