They Killed, Henry, John Berryman & Me

Fading away on tramadol and ganja takes my pain away; Lord, take me to the Upper Room  

John Berryman wrote Dream Songs— here's number 1,

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it that made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world, like a woollen lover, once did seem on Henry's side
Then came the departure.
Thereafter, nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, we survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be
once again a sycamore. I was

kicked off the stage by the MC.

In the face of every motha fuckin thing in the world They Killed, Henry, John Berryman & Me

John Berryman, high on something, scribbling a poem in the English Department,

remembering, 

a hot, mixed-up, cockeyed day in Chinatown at the opium den, dreaming of wooden ships, the god Neptune and flying fish.  

Catnapping in a rusty bed, he's pulverised by cockroaches, mosquitos, and lice magnifying 1000 times in the coterie of his dying brain,

he told the screws to mix his ashes with tobacco, and Bougainvillea pedals in a tin of Prince Albert Tobacco and to place it in the trunk of a Cadillac sedan because in his words,

there won't be a body this time.

The street people follow the cheerleader to Wicker Zoo where she hands the gorilla a hand-rolled Cuban cigar.

King Kong lights the blunt and blows a mighty ring of smoke around the moon.

All in all, it was a lovely remembrance just south of Elysian Field,

where all things meet.