The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Page 12
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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