The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  of The Fugs

  just came in

  55

  Rhetoric

  is what we make

  out of our quarrels

  with others

  out of

  our quarrels with ourselves

  we make poetry

  Yes, that is true,

  56

  In my house, every cloud

  has a silver lining

  there is only one cloud in my house

  Inside that cloud is a joke

  it is not an inside joke

  57

  on every mirror

  in my house

  is a big kiss

  placed there by Mr. Joe Brainard

  •

  it’s very exciting

  not to be asleep now

  •

  58

  If Joe Brainard were here now

  he’d be excited

  about giving me those kisses

  that’s a lie

  clickety-clack William Saroyan

  59

  What we do in life

  in New York City

  in 1965

  we get the money

  60

  GET THE MONEY!

  that was Damon Runyon’s favorite expression

  the heat is coming on

  like gangbusters

  (A. Partridge

  History of American Climate)

  I guess that means

  it’s time to burst,

  eh,

  M’sieur Cloud?

  61

  Speaking of Picasso, he once sd

  that for him

  true friendship cannot exist

  without the possibility of

  sex

  That is true

  I have many men friends

  I would like to fuck

  However, I am unable to do so

  because I am not a homosexual

  fortunately

  this makes my life complex

  rather than simple

  and vice versa

  62

  Dream on O impudent virgin

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  you too are aware of the duality of nature and of

  the spirit

  and you too prefer the visible

  to the invisible

  I salute You!

  (Salutes)

  63

  the true Guillaume

  is a great deal more interesting

  than many of those people

  whose misfortune it is

  not to be so true

  64

  the logic of that is

  lost

  but may be recovered

  in the theory of Mr. A. N. Whitehead to the effect

  that a human being

  may possess two kinds of perception / that

  as it were

  work from opposite ends.

  (breathing)

  65

  So, in conclusion, may I say

  that this is what life is like here

  you drink some coffee, you get some sleep

  everything is up in the air

  especially us, who are me

  66

  Now

  in the middle of this

  someone I love is dead

  and I don’t even know

  “how”

  I thought she belonged to me

  How she filled my life when I felt empty!

  How she fills me now!

  67

  games of cribbage

  with Dick

  filled this afternoon

  do you

  understand that?

  68

  What

  excitement!

  crossing Saint Mark’s Place

  face cold in air

  tonight

  when

  that girlish someone waving

  from a bicycle

  turned me back on.

  69

  What moves me most, I guess

  of a sunlit morning

  is being alone

  with everyone I love

  crossing 6th and 1st

  at ice-cold 6 a.m.

  from where I come home

  with two French donuts, Pepsi and

  the New York Times.

  70

  Joy is what I like,

  That, and love.

  OCT. 1965–JAN. 1966

  A Dream

  Dreamy-eyed is how you get

  when you need something strong

  “in some cup of your own”

  The gift of coffee is an act of love

  unless it costs you

  Love came into my room

  I mean my life

  the shape of a Tomato

  it took over everything

  later:

  Forgive me, René Magritte

  I meant “a rose”

  You have a contemporary nature

  in these here coffee alps

  I dreamt that December 27th, 1965

  while sleeping with Linda Schjeldahl

  in a dream

  Living with Chris

  FOR CHRISTINA GALLUP

  It’s not exciting to have a bar of soap

  in your right breast pocket

  it’s not boring either

  it’s just what’s happening in America, in 1965

  If there is no Peace in the world

  it’s because there is no Peace

  in the minds of men. You’d be surprised, however

  at how much difference

  a really good cup of coffee & a few pills can make

  in your day

  I would like to get hold of

  the owner’s manual

  for a 1965 model “DREAM”

  (Catalogue number CA-77)

  I am far from the unluckiest woman in the world

  I am far from a woman

  An elephant is tramping in my heart

  Alka-Seltzer Palmolive Pepsodent Fab

  Chemical New York

  There is nothing worse than elephant love

  Still, there is some Peace in the world. It is

  night. You are asleep. So I must be at peace

  The barometer at 29.58 and wandering

  But who are you?

  For god’s sake, is there anyone out there listening?

  If so, Peace.

  Bean Spasms

  TO GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

  New York’s lovely weather

  hurts my forehead

  in praise of thee

  the? white dead

  whose eyes know:

  what are they

  of the tiny cloud my brain:

  The City’s tough red buttons:

  O Mars, red, angry planet, candy

  bar, with sky on top,

  “why, it’s young Leander hurrying to his death”

  what? what time is it in New York in these here alps

  City of lovely tender hate

  and beauty making beautiful

  old rhymes?

  I ran away from you

  when you needed something strong

  then I leand against the toilet bowl (ack)

  Malcolm X

  I love my brain

  it all mine now is

  saved not knowing

  that &

  that (happily)

  being that:

  “wee kill our selves to propagate our kinde”

  John Donne

  yes, that’s true

  the hair on yr nuts & my

  big blood-filled cock are a part in that

  too

  PART 2

  Mister Robert Dylan doesn’t feel well today

  That’s bad

  This picture doesn’t show that

  It’s not bad, too

  it’s very ritzy in fact

  here I stand I can’t stand

  to be thing

  I don’t use atop

 
the empire state

  building

  & so sauntered out that door

  That reminds me of the time

  I wrote that long piece about a gangster name of “Jr.”

  O Harry James! had eyes to wander but lacked tongue to praise

  so later peed under his art

  paused only to lay a sneeze

  on Jack Dempsey

  asleep with his favorite Horse

  That reminds me of I buzz

  on & off Miró pop

  in & out a Castro convertible

  minute by minute GENEROSITY!

  Yes now that the seasons totter in their walk

  I do a lot of wondering about Life in praise of ladies dead of

  & Time plaza(s), Bryant Park by the Public eye of brow

  Library, Smith Bros. black boxes, Times

  Square

  Pirogi Houses

  with long skinny rivers thru them

  they lead the weary away

  off! hey!

  I’m no sailor

  off a ship

  at sea I’M HERE

  & “The living is easy”

  It’s “HIGH TIME”

  & I’m in shapes

  of shadow, they

  certainly can warm, can’t they?

  Have you ever seen one? NO!

  of those long skinny Rivers

  So well hung, in New York City

  NO! in fact

  I’m the Wonderer

  & as yr train goes by forgive me, René! ‘just oncet’

  I woke up in Heaven

  He woke, and wondered more; how many angels

  on this train huh? snore

  for there she lay

  on sheets that mock lust done that 7 times

  been caught

  and brought back

  to a peach nobody.

  To Continue:

  Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan

  hates yr brain

  my dears

  amidst the many other little buzzes

  & like, Today, as Ron Padgett might say

  is

  “A tub of vodka”

  “in the morning”

  she might reply

  and that keeps it up

  past icy poles

  where angels beg fr doom then zip

  ping in-and-out, joining the army

  wondering about Life

  by the Public Library of

  Life

  No Greater Thrill!

  (I wonder)

  Now that the earth is changing I wonder what time it’s getting to be

  sitting on this New York Times Square

  that actually very ritzy, Lauren it’s made of yellow wood or

  I don’t know something maybe

  This man was my it’s been fluffed up

  friend

  He had a sense for the

  vast doesn’t he?

  Awake my Angel! give thyself

  to the lovely hours Don’t cheat

  The victory is not always to the sweet.

  I mean that.

  Now this picture is pretty good here

  Though it once got demerits from the lunatic Arthur Cravan

  He wasn’t feeling good that day

  Maybe because he had nothing on

  paint-wise I mean

  PART 3

  I wrote that

  about what is

  this empty room without a heart

  now in three parts

  a white flower

  came home wet & drunk 2 Pepsis

  and smashed my fist thru her window

  in the nude

  As the hand zips you see

  Old Masters, you can see

  well hung in New York they grow fast here

  Conflicting, yet purposeful

  yet with outcry vain!

  PART 4

  Praising, that’s it!

  you string a sonnet around yr fat gut

  and falling on your knees

  you invent the shoe

  for a horse. It brings you luck

  while sleeping

  “You have it seems a workshop nature”

  Have you “Good Lord!”

  Some folks is wood

  seen them? Ron Padgett wd say

  amidst the many other little buzzes

  past the neon on & off

  night & day STEAK SANDWICH

  Have you ever tried one Anne? SURE!

  “I wonder what time ‘its’?”

  as I sit on this new Doctor

  NO I only look at buildings they’re in

  as you and he, I mean he & you & I buzz past

  in yellow ties I call that gold

  THE HOTEL BUCKINGHAM

  (facade) is black, and taller than last time

  is looming over lunch naked high time poem & I, equal in

  perfection & desire

  is looming two eyes over coffee-cup (white) nature

  and man: both hell on poetry.

  Art is art and life is

  “A monograph on Infidelity”

  Oh. Forgive me stench of sandwich

  O pneumonia in American Poetry

  Do we have time? well look at Burroughs

  7 times been caught and brought back to Mars

  & eaten.

  “Art is art & Life

  is home,” Fairfield Porter said that

  turning himself in

  Tonight arrives again in red

  some go on even in Colorado on the run

  the forests shake

  meaning:

  coffee the cheerfulness of this poor

  fellow is terrible, hidden in

  the fringes of the eyelids

  blue mysteries’ (I’M THE SKY)

  The sky is bleeding now

  onto 57th Street

  of the 20th Century &

  HORN & HARDART’S

  Right Here. That’s PART 5

  I’m not some sailor off a ship at sea

  I’m the wanderer (age 4)

  & now everyone is dead

  sinking bewildered of hand, of foot, of lip

  nude, thinking

  laughter burnished brighter than hate

  goodbye.

  André Breton said that

  what a shit!

  Now he’s gone!

  up bubbles all his amorous breath

  & Monograph on Infidelity entitled

  The Living Dream

  I never again played

  I dreamt that December 27th, 1965

  all in the blazon of sweet beauty’s breast

  I mean “a rose” Do you understand that?

  Do you?

  The rock&roll songs of this earth

  commingling absolute joy AND

  incontrovertible joy of intelligence

  certainly can warm

  can’t they? YES!

  and they do.

  Keeping eternal whisperings around

  (Mr. Macadams writes in

  the nude: no that’s not

  (we want to take the underground me that: then zips in &

  revolution to Harvard!) out the boring taxis, refusing

  to join the army

  and yet this girl has asleep “on the springs”

  so much grace of red GENEROSITY)

  I wonder!

  Were all their praises simply prophecies

  of this

  the time! NO GREATER THRILL

  my friends

  But I quickly forget them, those other times, for what are they

  but parts in the silver lining of the tiny cloud my brain

  drifting up into smoke the city’s tough blue top:

  I think a picture always

  leads you gently to someone else

  Don’t you? like when you ask to leave the room

  & go to the moon.

  Frank O’Hara’s Question

  from “Writers and Issues”

  by John Ashbery

&nb
sp; what sky

  out there is between the ailanthuses

  a 17th century prison an aardvark

  a photograph of Mussolini and

  a personal letter from Isak Dinesen

  written after eating

  can be succeeded by a calm evaluation

  of the “intense inane” that surrounds

  him:

  it is cool

  I am high

  and happy

  as it turns

  on the earth

  tangles me

  in the air

  and between these two passages (from

  the long poem ‘Biotherm’) occurs a mediating

  line which might stand to characterize

  all of Mr. O’Hara’s art:

  I am guarding it from mess and message.

  Many Happy Returns

  TO DICK GALLUP

  It’s a great pleasure to

  wake “up”

  mid-afternoon

  2 o’clock

  and if thy stomach think not

  no matter . . .

  because

  the living

  “it’s easy”

  you splash the face &

  back of the neck

  swig Pepsi

  & drape the bent frame in something

  “blue for going out”

  • • •

  you might smoke a little pot, even

  or take a pill

  or two pills

  •

  (the pleasures of prosperity

  tho they are only bonuses

  really

  and neither necessary nor not)

  •

  & then:

  POOF!

  • • •

  Puerto-Rican girls are terrific!

  you have to smile but you don’t

  touch, you haven’t eaten

  yet, & you’re too young

  to die . . .

  •

  No, I’m only kidding!

  Who on earth would kill

  for love? (Who wouldn’t?)

  •

  Joanne & Jack

  will feed you

  today

  because

  Anne & Lewis are

  “on the wing” as

  but not like

  always . . .

  • •

  Michael is driving a hard bargain

  himself

  to San Francisco . . .

  •

  &

  Pete & Linda

  & Katie and George,

  Emilio, Elio and Paul

  have gone to Maine . . .

  • • •

  Everyone, it seems, is somewhere else.

  None are lost, tho. At least,

  we aren’t!

  (GEM’S SPA: corner of 2nd Avenue &

  Saint Mark’s Place)

  •

  I’m right here

  sunlight opening up the sidewalk,

  opening up today’s first black&white,

  & I’m about to be

  born again thinking of you

  Things to Do in New York City

  FOR PETER SCHJELDAHL

  Wake up high up

  frame bent & turned on

  Moving slowly

  & by the numbers

  light cigarette

  Dress in basic black