Not in Ten Thousand Years

Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon almost thirty-two years, has his seventh bite at the apple of parole today. I realize people can change. Time and tide wait for no one but I hope Chapman stays in prison for the rest of his life and for a century or more after he dies. None of it has to do with justice and all of it has to do with vengeance.

I don't have anything profound or profane to say about John Lennon or the person who killed him that you cannot find elsewhere in the ether better and more intelligently articulated so I'll spare you the awkwardness of my embarrassment as I fail to adequately capture the passion and anger I still feel about this parole application. As soon as Lennon comes back from the dead, we can talk about a deal for Mark.  Enlightened? No. Deserved? Hell yeah.

Suffice it to say, I and tens of millions (I trust) around the world will join in a sigh of relief with and for  Lennon's widow and his two sons when this application meets the same fate as the previous half-dozen. Not only for what was done, but for what was left undone by someone whose flame burned brightly until Chapman thought of the unthinkable.

"On a cold December evening, I was walking through the Christmas tide. When a stranger came up and asked me if I'd heard John Lennon had died. And the two of us went to this bar and we stayed to close the place. And every song we played was for The Late Great Johnny Ace, yeah, yeah, yeah."   
-bill kenny