Crossing Bridges

For Mike O’Neill, Rocker, 1965-2006


I too have thought of jumping.
The cooling breezes, the lack
Of taxmen, the subtle shifts in sound.
I thought better of it when I took stock:
Three thousand in the bank, my friend
Jim Bob near Cannes, fifty Dylan
Bootlegs, the complete works
Of Milton and Dante. Alas, piety
And romance languages remain alien.

Better, I think, with a gun: the impact
That cleaves and cleaves, part hole,
Part re-shifted mass: too smart for new beginnings,
You now can concentrate on endings: mermaids fucking,
Endless tuna dinners, free kelp shampoo.

Each day the tennis ball comes back and
Someone with slippers walks near us. Our boss
Gets fired. The apartment becomes rent controlled.
Oriental babies shine in the moonlight.
You have always yearned for the lost,
The underrated, the forgotten past: The Kinks,
Freewheelin’, the Yardbirds without Eric.
Yards of unknitted yarn, moreover, gathered dust
In your dark closets as you thirsted vainly for fame:
Pulitzer Prizes, sailing, opening for the Ramones—
But the viscosity of pain prefers rejection.
And you had no one to turn to. Your wife
Switched to chardonnay and good friends asked
What your name was. The disproportionate climate
Was no help either, as the humidity of Florida
Became a steady intruder, like a newborn.
Tomorrow--we prayed--will never come.

Tampa’s Sunshine Bridge is steely and straight.
Nearby a woman waves, a crooked finger
Beckoning you. Oh, I was wrong: it is really
The heat from the Everglades torching everything
And everyone not living underground. Thank
Jesus, the water around you will never evaporate,
Allowing your luminosity to become re-animating
As your brown curls rise upward,
Like snagged, sleepless godheads.