A song by Relax Max (With apologies to John Lennon)
Imagine there’s no liberals
Conservatives gone too
No safety nets below us
Just sunny skies all blue
Imagine all the people
Living so stress-free
Imagine there’s no labels
Just close your eyes and dream
No rudeness or agendas
Only lollies and ice cream
Imagine all the people
Walking hand and hand
You may say that I’m a dreamer
And likely the only one
But I hope someday you’ll join me
We’d all have lots of fun
Imagine there’s no hatred
Nobody calling names
Just working hard together
No need to point or blame
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I’m a dreamer
And likely the only one
But I hope someday you’ll join me
And our world can live as one
An admirable sentiment, even if derived from Mr Lennon who, it seems,never had a clear view about anything much, other than a rather woolly wish for peace, man.
ReplyDeleteAs a sign of the man's brilliance quotient, let's not forget he married Yoko, a woman nuttier than a bag of squirrels.
Still, if you are trying to decide which was the uber-beatle, Lennon's the only choice.
However admirable a sentient, it fails to take into account that nature is red in tooth and claw, and so is mankind.
If we re-started tomorrow, all with equal status and material assets, our society would re-stratify almost immediadetl, there'd be the core of decent hard working folk, like me, in the middle, who'll never be rich, but aren't too worried about it, there'll be a layer of wheeler-dealers and entrepreneurs above them, there'll be a layer of in and out of work manual labourers below, and at the ends of the spectrum, the chancers, spongers, drones and thieves.
The meek are highly unlikely to inherit the earth, the grabbers will have it.
I like the notion (except lollies and ice cream won't be enough for me. I like cheese and meat. Lotta happy dentists in your dream.). I don't know if it's a practical dream.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if some of us strive for it, we might be able to make pockets of it or at least diffuse a fraction of the ugliness.
Every one striving for peace and good, in my opinion, makes the world a little better.
There'll never be any change if nobody makes an effort.
ReplyDeleteI'm all in favour of dreaming and imagining. I'll have the ice cream.
I'll take free time to write, and the throw in some T-bone steaks, and the occasional six pack and I’m golden.
ReplyDeletethx
"Imagine no possessions" sang John Lennon, all the while playing on a white Steinway piano,and seated in a house, in an exclusive area, which in 1970 cost a million pounds!
ReplyDeleteThat sums up the Conservative/Republican attitude. If you have lots of cash you can do anything! Those with nothing are either scroungers or lazy!
Don't imagine anything - just let Jesus change you and your world will be changed for the better!
I have to admit I am amazed when the comments to a post, any post, talk about things I wasn't even thinking about when I wrote it. With regard to the title of the post and the accompanying picture, my only goal was to occupied my mind with opposite thoughts so I could spend 9/11 without dreaming of killing muslims by the gross, and it worked.
ReplyDeleteI should tell you that I took what I thought was a random song which met my need for a poem structure shell and only even mentioned John Lennon since I stole his structure. Truly, this post wasn't about the Beatles (whose music I did like but whose lifestyle I could never identify with.) Had I found a short easy poem written by Bart Simpson, it would have served as well.
All of you have points, grounded in the original words of John Lennon (which I tried not to use too many of) and they were all very interesting, and I thank you for it. This was only about 9/11 though, and my need to chase hateful thoughts out of my mind.
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Since you did bring up John Lennon and the Beatles, though, I don't want to waste this opportunity to tell you I thought they became very weird after the first year or so, and I never "got" their trips to India and Bangladesh and what have you, and I also thought John was pretty hypocritical (not to mention stupid and shallow with regard to..... arrrrrrgh! You know what he did!
Thank you all for your interesting comments. You may be assured this will be a VERY infrequent at poetry, even stolen!
ReplyDeleteI understand your reaction. I do. I don't have that because I had to wrestle with it ahead of time, for the Oklahoma City Bombing. Having lived there, seeing the children's bodies brought out from the wreckage, it was easy to hate, easy to want to punish every smug militant know-nothing redneck out there.
ReplyDeleteBut it occurred to me, as I watched and wept over the footage of the recovery, that it was only a small number of deluded sociopathic monsters that had done so much damage and hundreds--thousands--of people who came to help, who sifted through the rubble to pull out people, and then bodies, knowing their job was dangerous (I believe someone died doing so, though it might be my memory at fault), knowing it was going to bring far more misery than joy, especially as days wore on.
You won't get an argument from me on how heinous 9/11 was, what kind of monsters it would take to plan an execute such a horrible act. But, again, only a handful, a small cadre of monsters were involved, especially compared to the thousands of people who did what they could to help.
I always make a point to remember, especially, the NYC cops and firemen who stormed up there and helped reduce by thousands the number of people lost in that tragedy, many of them at the cost of their own lives.
As long as we refuse to have our humanity removed, refuse to become the monsters those hijackers (and their planners) were, they can never win. I believe that, even if it's as foolish as you thought your song was.