Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:
Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.
When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles
When I get olded, loosing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me the Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine
If I stay out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday morning go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,
if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
*******
Ancient dreams, dreamed:
To be born under a portentous sign. Ya, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay, maybe just half-smiling. He had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana, white as well, holding back her hair. She may have been just another blonde, another very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Trouble, big trouble. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the movie screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.
Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment dwell, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that brother, goes off to foreign places and one is left to ponder his own place in those places.
A cloudless day, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, starting to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means, that and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes but changes.
Endless walks, endless sea street walks, rocks strewn every which way, making way for the uptown drug store valentine night bushel, if only she, about five candidates she just then, would give a look his way his endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash would be quiet.
Nighttime fears, red Stalin-named fears, red bomb shelter blast fears against the dark school yard night and avoidance, clean, clear avoidance of old times sailors, tars, AND deaths in lonely seaside graveyards.
Walks, bus stop non stop walks, up crooked cheap, low rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets pass trees are green, endless trees are green waiting, waiting against infinite time for one look, one look that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots.
City square standing, waiting, standing going in, coming out, coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat for his efforts such is the way of young crime, no value, no look just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dreams make no more sense.
A bridge too far. Bicycle boy churning through endless heated streets, names all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea. Twelve-year old miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old grifter, midnight shifters friends hard against the named seas, against those slo-fast changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once.
Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, I don’t think, just some junior league dream fuss, some sweated night pastry crust and I too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic windows.
Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic nights but something else for something inside for some sense of worth in the this moldy shirt, mildewed shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval ,watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then.
Main street walked, main street telephone booth walked, searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Or rather courage, nickel and dime courage as it turns out, nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights, No way, no way, Jack, not my name, and then red-face, red-face even forty years later. Wow.
Multi-colored jacket worn, cigarette hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of fame, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson, very tough.
Drunk, whisky drunk in some bayside bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then.
Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no, one hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, and no earthly good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession.
The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black madonna of night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little.
Bloodless bloodied streets, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.
Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monkton, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarkederos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. Enough, okay.
He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle.
Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.
A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right.
White flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more dastardly fight against time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.
Desperately clutching his new white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.
One more battle, one more, please one more. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief . Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known then.
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