The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  & reading a lovely old man’s book:

  BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN

  change

  flashback

  play cribbage on the Williamsburg Bridge

  watching the boats sail by

  the sun, like a monument,

  move slowly up the sky

  above the bloody rush:

  break yr legs & break yr heart

  kiss the girls & make them cry

  loving the gods & seeing them die

  celebrate your own

  & everyone else’s birth:

  Make friends forever

  & go away

  10 Things I Do Every Day

  wake up

  smoke pot

  see the cat

  love my wife

  think of Frank

  eat lunch

  make noises

  sing songs

  go out

  dig the streets

  go home for dinner

  read the Post

  make pee-pee

  two kids

  grin

  read books

  see my friends

  get pissed-off

  have a Pepsi

  disappear

  Resolution

  The ground is white with snow.

  It’s morning, of New Year’s Eve, 1968, & clean

  City air is alive with snow, its quiet

  Driving. I am 33. Good Wishes, brothers, everywhere

  & Don’t You Tread On Me.

  In the Early Morning Rain

  TO MY FAMILY & FRIENDS

  Hello

  “Hello”

  originally

  meant

  “Be whole”

  or

  “Be healthy”

  Today

  it

  simply

  means

  “Hello”

  80th Congress

  TO RON PADGETT

  It’s 2 a.m. at Anne & Lewis’s which is where it’s at

  On St. Mark’s Place hash and Angel Hairs on our minds

  Love is in our heart’s (what else?) dope & Peter Schjeldahl

  Who is new and valid in a blinding snowstorm

  Inside joy fills our drugless shooting gallery

  With repartee; where there’s smoke there’s marriage &, folks

  That’s also where it’s at in poetry in 1967

  Newly rich but still a hopeless invalid (in 1967)

  Yes, it’s 1967, & we’ve been killing time with life

  But at Lewis & Anne’s we live it “up”

  Anne makes lovely snow-sodas while Lewis’s watchamacallit warms up this

  New Year’s straight blue haze. We think about that

  And money. With something inside us we float up

  To & onto you, it, you were truly there & now you’re here.

  TED BERRIGAN & DICK GALLUP

  Fragment

  FOR JIM BRODEY

  Left behind in New York City, & oof!

  That’s the right one: sitting now, & I’m not thinking

  Nor swishing; I’m just sitting. Getting over them two

  Hamburgers. & that I think

  Gets it all down. Here, anyway, I am

  On this electric chair each breath nearer the last

  Oceans of ripples solid under me: how come?

  One pair of time-capsules trigger sweat

  As one listens & one listening type types

  LOOKS LIKE WE GONNA GET A LITTLE SNOW, HUH?

  I don’t know but you can bet something’s going

  to happen.

  The Circle

  Up is waiting

  Between is barely there

  Down is alive

  Now is spinning

  It’s a quick spin

  Nevertheless

  5 New Sonnets: A Poem

  1

  FOR BARRY & JACKY HALL

  His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze

  dear Berrigan. He died

  I, an island, sail, and my shores toss

  to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal,

  My babies parade waving their innocent flags

  The taste of such delicate thoughts

  Opulent, sinister, and cold!

  Sing in idiom of disgrace

  Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

  annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

  On the grass. To think of you alone

  Your champion. Days are nursed on science fiction

  For the fey Saint’s parade Today

  Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements.

  2

  Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night.

  Back to books. I read

  on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness

  bristling hate.

  And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

  Huddled on the structured steps

  The bulbs burn, phosphorescent, white,

  Shall it be male or female in the tub?

  Pale like an ancient scarf, she is unadorned,

  and the struggles of babies congeal. A hard core is formed.

  Suffering the poem of these states!

  & you tremble at the books upon the earth

  & he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

  No. One Two Three Four Today

  3

  It’s 8:30 p.m. in New York and I’ve been running

  Wind giving presence to fragments.

  at every hand, my critic

  Flinging currents into pouring streams

  The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

  Fathers and teachers, and daemons down under the sea,

  The singer sleeps in Cos. Strange juxtaposed

  “I wanted to be a cowboy.” Doughboy will do

  As my strength and I walk out and look for you

  Winds flip down the dark path of breath

  Released by night (which is not to imply clarity

  She is warm. Into the vast closed air of the slow

  The wind’s wish is the tree’s demand

  On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar.

  4

  Is there room in the room that you room in?

  How much longer shall I be able to inhabit the Divine

  deep in whose reeds great elephants decay;

  loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

  He buckles on his gun, the one

  He wanted to know the names

  And the green rug nestled against the furnace

  Your hair moves slightly,

  He is incomplete, bringing you Ginger Ale

  The cooling wind keeps blowing, and

  He finds he cannot fake

  Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

  Fuscous with murderous dampness

  But helpless, as blue roses are helpless.

  & 5

  Into the closed air of the slow

  And then one morning to waken perfect-faced

  The blue day! In the air winds dance

  Sleep half sleep half silence and with reason

  banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love”

  in my paintings for they are present

  The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

  A watchdog barks in the night

  Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky

  What thwarts this fear I love

  No lady dream around in any bad exposure

  absence of passion, principles, love. She murmurs

  Is not genuine it shines forth from the faces

  littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

  Poem

  FOR BILL BERKSON

  Seven thousand feet over

  The American Midwest

  In the black and droning night

  Sitting awake and alone

  I worry the stewardess . . .

  Would you like some coffee, sir?<
br />
  How about a magazine?

  No thanks. I smile and refuse.

  My father died today. I

  Fifteen hundred miles away

  Left at once for home, having

  received the news from mother

  In tears on the telephone.

  He never rode in a plane.

  Gus

  . . . Not far from here he was inside his head there were some sands. Of these 50 gave way to a room, latter resembling manure.

  To the right, in a kit, a sort of woman-spanned pond absorbed water cake would form at the bottom keep that in.

  The hut rust bin thanks piece of colour.

  A little pool gravel made him first step aside. Gus walked up under the arc-light as far as the first person, perceived God. She was God, having lance, he took her by the behind and kissed her butt. Gus want fuck, to get the information.

  He spun off her dress. It was there, and

  very beautiful, his pecker.

  Gus live entirely by hemselve and for hemselve.

  He spen days taking off bottles, furnishing room, best system ea heat. For Christ sake! Tryd smoke ham wash.

  There was a large cop faggot pursued the secret butterfly near fourteen glass jars tomato and green peas coated the stoppers with quicklime cheese wrapped round with linen strip, then lunged into boiling water: it steamed. He por in difference of temperature, he explode. Only, he were saved.

  Then he poured some old sardine, laid veal cutlet inside, and sank the copper. He ball him. He cold. He out again.

  He continue the experiment. Shut up. The tin egg chicory lobster fish congratulate hemselve.

  Ike Heraclitus, or, “Gus,” still elusive, flit on ahead.

  Despair defeat labor. The woman fell ill. She laid the copper. It glistens as if about to erupt. At that moment the secret fell in the eye, grace over the golden woman’s form.

  Then Gus made lunch.

  Presence

  and I am lost in the ringing elevator

  he waggles the fat whiteness of milk

  sweeping me to the top

  one is reminded of constellations

  there there were pine needles

  dreams of symbolism

  the part that goes over the fence last

  star light the cord “reaches”

  it was turkey

  sheepish lights you turned me on

  reflecting dilemmas majorities

  Bildungsroman of the bathrobe ride

  and the briny sound of the alarm

  a funny feeling prompted me out of bed

  Love

  the top had been “sliced”

  ribbons your presence on the white and green sheet

  I asked for a Hook-and-Ladder

  takes The End.

  in the ideal society pants

  Now we can make some explosions

  shine like money

  Francis is not diminutive thanks

  others are less legs

  thighs wings breast

  Caress the window grease, John

  as you are not yet 12

  19? 40? who pulls me down?

  that night we slept reverently (you lust

  I must lust in-

  vigorating the sixteen genre

  dragon bottle-opener

  spiral cuff-link aerial

  facade of the wonderful orient word

  “doilies”

  Overhead the moon is out

  blacking my shoes, face

  we were all livid, numinous

  Things whip toward the center

  licking the palate of his headache

  this indicates your future

  meditates on his wish which is

  hooked onto the top and draped archly

  Childhood fuses a mystery play

  Take off your beautiful blouse, you foolish girl!

  which ribbons the marvelous laurel the loop-

  Are you list- with this ring I

  eye thee

  (that was later, out west, after more baseball

  some turkey

  a wristwatch, dictionary, sniper suit, rifle

  to “meditate”

  (is there room in the tune to atune in?)

  They were incensed at his arrival

  Now we are glad it was stinky

  some paint them black in the face to be quaint or something

  one symbol fact seems valid

  I don’t know

  all hate it to be right

  on the cards

  which are sometimes funky (aesthetic) having

  snow of feet and that a domination.

  Then we had presence.

  Ikonostasis

  FOR BERNADETTE MAYER

  Kings . . . panties

  I imagine these here

  the difference between past and dreaming

  An uncomfortable Dodge

  The word dissolves

  iron things

  Horses for example

  then there is the other which may be called

  the familiar floating oasis

  larger than whiter

  brazen, resourceful

  . . . sinning palms balance it

  perhaps these are wax detectors

  and create situations

  a magic shell for silliness

  before the law tables

  of this here

  Heart

  That has been tinted white

  by way of exercise

  the Political

  glazes

  These eyes

  breaks

  into the grocery store where

  is sick cannot work

  twisted stick

  industrial berry shoes are established

  above all . . . be double

  or collapse

  the wall covered with glass character weather

  M’sieur Negro-at-3 A.M.

  Charioteer

  His burning problem

  it doesn’t stop the music

  the magic

  under tasteless stockings

  and under the sting which leaves no ash

  the grey snow of someone’s epoch annoys

  and redeems

  through certain fraudulent practices which,

  like sulphur, blacken

  making an undenied hash of all that

  and that will now not melt in the first sunbeam

  being its own muse

  The Upper Arm

  FOR ANDY WARHOL

  Upon this field the physical energies of

  Clouds. He will no longer desire the

  Demanding force, an incredible

  Fortune has fallen across their paths. I wait

  a Payer is paying for the art it releases

  Prisoners from the hands

  In an automobile accident on the

  Face

  And achieved enemy face

  Paleface changed captive

  Photographs later

  Were tipped “What does this mean, my son?”

  Became categorical as in “yes” held on

  The arms and

  Powder on a little table

  And down in a green forest ravine near to “her”

  Security of the relationship is made utterly

  With high stakes and shot at those targets out of

  Boughs that spell

  “MY PAINTINGS”

  Corridors of Blood

  1. Madrid

  a faint smile appears

  shaking your beliefs

  of which you have done no more

  than sketch in the main outline

  You are not a glutton for experience

  There is a sudden buzz of activity

  In the clear blue sky

  2. Detective

  an enormous room with a balcony

  less virulence

  our labors were directed toward

  isolating and creating

  such a pattern

  “y
ou must allow your feelings to

  float free, by

  themselves, like dead leaves.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  we were furious

  3. Queen Matilda’s Famous Tapestry

  You got him out of your system

  he was lying out of compassion

  “Don’t you see what it means?”

  human society upside down

  The second name

  First we must retrieve our honor

  4. Henry VIII

  women came down to breakfast

  We saw that beautiful creature,

  Kay Francis, in

  “Cynara”

  the shabby taxis and peeling posters

  teashops

  and ugly window-dressing

  a technical brilliance

  I never saw the like of anywhere else

  5. Poe

  “Merde” said Marco

  in the apricot-coloured bar

  Olga was in another bar

  I am sure you understand

  The captain lost his temper

  A car drew up at the corner

  6. Cattle of the Sun

  a profusion of melons, oranges and

  fish

  all through that night

  a lobster had been following him

  I had an uncomfortable night

  the only place I know

  where horror borders on poetry

  7. The Death of Other

  should have “roots”

  mass of ash-blonde hair

  and black, clinging dresses

  (the emotions: outline of

  a theory)

  into her mouth

  blistered strips of bladder

  wrack

  8. Czechoslovakia

  A red-tiled floor

  thereafter we walked

  sweeping, landscapes of white

  limestone rock and

  red rock

  the most curious concoction

  doubly oppressive

  the sluggish heat:

  I remember running

  9. Hunger

  Irony and parody held pride of place

  in her silk evening dress

  Olga had several minor parts

  little of Knut Hamsun