"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  --John Lennon

"I have no plans to stop." --Teena Marie


For John Lennon: forty years and one month of life.  Then the assassin struck.
The assasin: A messed-up mentality of banality and mediocrity.
Envious of Lennon's gifts.  He decided to bleed John Lennon to death, to drain his luck,
And steal some fame for himself.  The murder got him infamy.
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Teena Marie just died.  Fifty-four years old.  Fourteen more years
Than the evil assassin allowed John Lennon.  But fifty-four years is still far too brief.
What assassin took her precious life?  The news story says: Natural causes.
Natural causes?  I thought that was the category for age-related dying.
She was only fifty-four!  The natural human life-span calls for decades more. 
Yet it is the Number One cause of death: so-called natural causes.
There ought to be a telethon to help stamp it out.
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John Lennon and the Beatles: Travelers in time.  Time's station-stops can be peaceful,
Or they can be painful and frightening.  They can be quick as a flash of lightning.
Or they can be as slow
As the dark, inexplicable, inexpiable deeds done in a medieval dungeon.
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I grieved for John Lennon.  In fact, I still grieve.  That may be hard to believe.
But it is so.  Now I must add Teena Marie to my long list of mournful grief.
She was the favorite singer of one of my long-ago girl friends--Debbie--
And I learned to like Teena Marie a lot, too.  Teena Marie--as also John Lennon--
Was looking forward to many more years of making music and writing and singing songs.
For thirty years, from twenty-four years old, she did this.  She said, in an interview,
That she had no plans to stop.  She was my sister in song and music and poetry.
John Lennon was my brother in the same--
As he also was in his concern for others--and in some of his philosophy.
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Which one of them realized that death was about to swoop down so suddenly?
Like a seizing vulture from the void.
From the best available indications, the answer is: Neither.
What are the plans that YOU are making now?  For the future? 
I pray your good plans come true for you someday, somehow.
But death, usually seeming like a distant pinpoint on the horizon,
Can suddenly cease to be a patiently waiting carrion bird,
And turn killer--fast or slow--becoming a merciless swooping vulture:
At any time, for anyone.
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Make your plans: but seize the day.  Taste your time as it slips away.
Take and taste, now, all the fruits of life presently offered on your time's living bough.
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Lennon said: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
Even though YOU may have no plans to stop,
Live in the moment.  Show love now. 
Enjoy in every moment all its possible happiness and pleasure.
Experience and appreciate your life--blessings like love and friendship and beauty--
All the miracles and magic. 
Live and love in every day, as if--not morbidly, but mindfully--it might be your last.
Live and love in every day, as if there might suddenly clamp down,
Terrible and tragic,
A cutting off of years, with a sharp painful limit on your living time.
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Whatever else happens, the present and the future both flow at last into the past.
Live and love fully, as if you might suddenly have to stop:
Even though you have no plans to stop.
Lennon was right about life; but--probably without really knowing it--
He was also right about death.
Death can also happen to you while you're busy making other plans.
Quickly killing you: a sudden end.  Or slowly killing you: 
A drain of pain upon your joyful breath.
Don't morbidly fixate on this--but be mindfully aware.
Everyone should know, truly and deeply, and act on this.  I tell you this because I care.
So, while life is yours, live joyfully!
Love passionately!  And care compassionately.  For as long you can. 
Live and love now. Don't pack all of your life into your sand-founded plans.
Take my word for it.  I didn't have any plans to stop, either.


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Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Monday, December 27, 2010  12:36 pm PST
Temperature: 52 degrees F.  High: 58  Low: 38  Mostly sunny
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved