tribute to berryman from wash’t’n ave bridge east west side scene where he seen it through and all omne trium perfectum and the fucking like that much true though copy-cat vers’d begs leave, forgive, 50th anniv. of his going down to davy jones locker of a sort¹

#1

the mississippi runs through this city
there are bodies in it
ghosts
flicker spirits
smiley face victims illumined in star pages
suicide cases
old journals tipped just right
broken eyes,
in the thick mud

35W bridge souls
and just down river,
the john berryman bridge
wiry shards, spectral flashes
magnetic time waves
the college kids still toss
their shoes into the tree
right by where berryman did
his leap
Bones says not so leap just right though
water waves of dust crypts he says
time songs in lamplight
wait
but don’t wait
the haunted water moves but
moves never does it

#2

mississippi though
that one mississippi two
em eye ss eye pee pee eye
who though see eyes
three eyes
four eyes, abbrev’d
gliding history tracks
linoleum thought waves Bones
but Bones says not so
why not so Bones says even Bones
a person-ality split right through

well,
he be just some kind of
flim flam cadaverous human being
in the right decade capsule
have you seen him?
i ain’t
have you? Aye.

fancy you a bierce code dev-tee!
not so! well, partial
admittance of a cert’n reckoning
of character
but only view-ed from a cert’n
angle of sorts Bones,
doncha get that look
lust and such. Nay.

#3

that’s haunted water Bones!
trick’d magflies surface springs
a real whodunit! not really tho-
dust crypts, as i said it
but wet though too
paper mache dreamscapes, and
underwater death masks
but on-y for the nobility, as we calls it
even if he be hold’n dead plants
in his funeral hands
and silent through time,
not laughing like the style

so he was trick’d in his gizzards?
nah, was his dad who dun him in
a classic case Bones
not directly and such
the honey jaws of time
cramped cabins of the mind
and don’t you go a-lookin
ain’t no lamp to rub in those waves
it be just silence and the weeds
down there

1. To be published on January 7, 2022.