To Ray Johnson

I can't imagine what you thought you were doing
what was the point of jumping off that bridge
after so many years of playing it cool
w/yr mail art & collage
N.Y. success & enigmatic smile

I remember you once painted yr apartment white
the floor the -ceiling the windows all yr collages
all the same size in stacks all painted white
wasn't that enuf?

I think I hate you.
Your no-note, yr 3rd cousins claiming yr work &
leaving yr body for weeks in a Long Island morgue

What was the point? Did you want us to notice
to talk abt it? We did, you know.
It turned us a minute away
from the work we thought to be doing
before we died.

Stop grinning.

Diane di Prima, 1995
(to be published in the forthcoming
Death Poems for all Seasons)