The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Page 18
Skinny!
Takes pills too
much!!
Talks to himself!
Solipsist!
Wants to have all the
fun!
Doesn’t like kids!!
Mean to his Mother!
Mean to his lovers!
Cynical!!
Stutters!!
Never comes to visit!!
Doesn’t like us
anymore.
An opportunist!!
Should get married!
Should do big oil paintings!!
Get Serious!!
Talk more!! Talk less!!
Tell the truth!!
Know the truth!!
Be perfect!!
God damn it!!
& the Train continues in the night. . . .
black outside
high inside.
What energy!
What a dumb book.
Glad I’ll never have to read
it.
Hope it gets a rise out of
SOMEBODY!
Train blows whistle
when approaching
Station.
Didn’t get to Fuck
on it.
Did eat a terrible
hamburger:
$1.75
& drink
a pepsi: .35
_____
Total $2.20
Plus tip: .50
$4.00 is about to get off
of a Train,
into a cab.
Taxi Fare will be:
$3.50 & tip: .50
But I have hidden resources:
95 cents
__________
You are my hidden resources!
You live in my world
at the other end of the train.
You give me brain-spasms,
& heart-bursts.
Writing to read &
Pictures to see
You give me love,
& I feel proud
that you really do
like me & respect me
despite everything
Because You are one of my big
heroes. . . . Smarter
than me, (tho really no
“better”, if you
know what I mean)
I love you a whole lot.
I’m glad we were together
on this train.
I had a really nice time
at your place today.
I felt really alive, &
warmed
walking toward the
train
That I just got up
in,
&
walked thru
&
now am off of,
at
the end of this book,
TRAIN RIDE
(Feb 18th, 1971)
For Joe
Memorial Day
BY TED BERRIGAN AND ANNE WALDMAN
Today:
Open Opening Opened:
The angels that surround me
die
they kiss death
& they die
they always die.
they speak to us
with sealed lips
information operating
at the speed of light
speak to us
O speak to us
in our tiny head
deep calling out to deep
we speak all the time
in the present tense at the speed of Life
dead heads operating
At the speed of light
Today:
& it’s morning
Take my time this morning
& learn to kill
to take the will
from unknown places,
kill this stasis
let it down
let it down on me
I was asleep
in Ann Arbor
dreaming
in Southampton
beneath the summer sun of a green backyard
& up from a blue director’s chair
I heard a dead brother say
into the air
“Girl for someone else in white walk by”
I was asleep in New York
dreaming in Southampton
& beneath the sun of the no sun sun up from my morning bed
I heard the dead, the city dead
The devils that surround us
never die
the New York City devil inside me
alive all the time
he say
“Tomorrow you die”
I woke up
as he typed that down:
“Girl for someone else in white walk by”
& then,
so did I.
So my thanks to you
the dead.
The people in the sky.
A minute of silent pool
for the dead.
& now I can hear my dead father saying,
“I stand corrected.”
Dolphins, (as we speak)
are carrying on 2
conversations simultaneously
& within the clicks of one
lie the squeaks of the other
they are alive in their little wandering pool
“I wonder what the dead people are doing today?”
(taking a walk, 2nd St. to GEM SPA)
(or loping down Wall St.
Southampton)
ghost the little children
ghost radio ghost toast
ghost stars
ghost airport
the ghost of Hamlet’s father
ghost typewriter
ghost lover
ghost story
ghost snow roasted ghost
ghost in the mirror ghost
happy ghost most ghost
I dreamt that Bette Davis was a nun, we
Were in a classroom, after school, collating
The World. Jr. High. A knocking at the door, I
Went to answer (as Bette disappeared), & found my mother
Standing in the hallway.
“Teddy,” she said, “here
Is my real mother, who brought me up, I’ve always wanted
for you to meet her.” Beside my mother stood
a tall, elegant lady, wearing black, an austere, stylish
Victorian lady whose eyes were clear & black; grand as
Stella Adler, but as regal & tough as Bette Davis.
Later that evening she sent me out for kippers for her bedtime
snack, giving me a shilling to spend. I went for them
to Venice, to a Coffee-House, which had a canal running right
through it,
& there I ran into Ron, sitting with a beautiful boyish adolescent
blonde. “She’s a wonderful lady,” Ron said, & I was pleased.
Ron left shortly with the blonde nymphet, & I wondered a minute
about Pat (Ron’s wife); but decided that Ron must know what he’s
doing. The girl, I thought, must be The Muse.
She is a muse
gone but not forgotten
50 STATES
state of grace
the milk state
Oregon
stateroom
state of anxiety
hazy state
estate
statement
Rugby Kissick state
Florida
the empire state
disaster state
the lightbulb state
soup state
Statue of Liberty
state of no return
the White Bear state
doped state
recoil state
Please state your name, address, occupation
the German shepherd state
bent on destruction
state
the farmer state
state of no more parades
the to
bacco state
statesman
stately
state prison
stasis
status
static
station wagon
State Flower
state of innocence
ambition state
North Carolina
Jasper’s state
the united state
big state
state your cause
income state
jump the gun state
Roman nose state
manic depression state
hospital state
speed state
calculated state
gone forever state
the body state
the death body state
In New York State
in ‘Winter in The Country’
at night you write
while someone
(Alice) sometimes sleeps & dreams;
awake she writes
22.
I dreamed you brought home a baby
Solid girl, could already walk
In blue corduroy overalls
Nice & strange, baby to keep close
I hadn’t thought of it before
She & I waited for you out by the door
Of building, went in
Got you from painting
Blue & white watercolor swatches
We got on a bus, city bus
One row of seats lining it & poles
It went through the California desert
Blue bright desert day
In the country of old men I said
pretty good
& tho I live there
no more
“you can say that again.”
Pretty good.
It takes your best shot,
to knock off whatever,
so, we take our best shots,
it gives us a boot or two
we just do it
we wouldn’t know what to tell you
if our lives depended upon it!
Anne?
but Anne’s already talking
across from me across my life
across the mailman’s
locked box,
over the mailman
I mean
where a woman is alive
a mailman her friend
as you all know
having met the man at the Met
introduced by Vincent,
& loved by Joe:
Joe’s introductions go on,
the tongue, the ears burn on Memorial Day
at Anne’s turn:
Dear Mr. Postman:
Please take this from me
to me.
I’m delivered without a hitch
to myself
I’m a woman in the Prime of Strife
I speak for all you crazy ladies
past & present
& I say,
NO MESSAGES
Nothing can be helped. Nothing gets lost.
Blink
the eye is closed
& I am asleep
blink
the eye is open
& I am awake
in the real wide-eye world nothing gets lost
Today was a day to remember death:
I remember the death
of Hitler
& now I think of The Song of Roland
Roland’s death
& now I think to see
if there were similarities
& now I see there were . . .
& now I wonder what Tom Clark thinks
Edwin, Alex, Dick . . .
Mike?
A lung aching in the room
inside Mike
disease bringing you a little closer
Forget it!
Piss on it!
Kiss my ass!
he say
in his absolute way
Everybody obey
But
we are all victims
(me too)
& we all love life
(too bad)
I told Ron Padgett that I’d like to have
NICE TO SEE YOU
engraved on my tombstone.
Ron said he thought he’d like to have
OUT TO LUNCH
on his.
Dear Lewis:
I’ve been down but I’m surfacing
I’ve been lost but now I’m found
“One will leaf one’s life all over again”
you say
& you are right
around & around & around go the swirling leaves
Death is not is not so horrible today
The poison in the needle
floods my body
it hurts my head
it hurts my head
Poison from the needle
floods my bloodstream
it detonates my head
it detonates my head
I should put that needle down
but tomorrow I’ll be dead.
I recognized myself in a dream too, (Ted)
we met & parted
Hello & Goodbye
simple as that
my life recognized my death
Waiting on you
The heart stops briefly when someone dies, one
massive slow stroke as someone passes
from your outside life to your inside,
& then
everything continues
sanely
& I believe in you.
News of my cat
poor cat
descendant of Frank O’Hara’s cat
he’s dead
I grieve
let it down
let it down on me
X died, & Joe knew, but didn’t want to have to tell anyone; but Carol knew, & so,
at Ken’s 12th Night party she told me. After a few minutes, I took Martha home,
& then I walked home myself, across town, through Tompkins Square Park, to
Avenue D & 2nd Street. I went to bed, & then I started to cry; & I stayed in bed
for three days, & cried, & slept. And now I’m crying a little again. But then I got
up, I said “well, that’s enough, fuck it!”, & I got dressed, & went over to visit
Anne & Lewis as before.
Bernadette had to arrange her mother’s funeral age 15
& we’re in Rattner’s 3 AM
& she’s telling me how her father died before that
& all the death around her
surrounding her
so many relatives
& how she just thought
that’s what people do
“They die”
& she was so good & obedient until her uncle died
& then
something just snapped
Then she sent me this 2 days later:
Deaths, causes: tuberculosis, syphilis, dysentery, scarlet fever and streptococcal sore throat, diptheria, whooping cough, meningococcal infections, acute poliomyelitis, measles, malignant neoplasms, leukemia and aleukemia, benign neoplasms, asthma, diabetes, anemias, meningitis, cardiovascular-tenal diseases, narcolepsy, influenza and pneumonia, bronchitis, other broncho-pulmonix diseases, ulcer of stomach and duodenum, appendicitis, hernia and intestinal obstruction, gastritis, duodenitis, enteritis, and colitis, cirrhosis of liver, acute nephritis, infections of kidney, hyperplasis of prostrate, deliveries and complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium, abortion, congenital malformations, birth injuries, postnatal asphyxia, infections of newborn, symptoms, senility, and ill-defined conditions, motor vehicle accidents, falls, burns, drowning, railroad accidents, firearms accidents, poison gases, other poisons, suicide, homicide.
I asked Joe Brainard
if he had anything to say about death:
& he said,
“Well,
you always get
lots of flowers
when you die.”
/> Which is so true,
especially for men. That is,
it’s only when you die that you get
flowers,
if you are a male
I don’t think
I’ve ever been sent flowers
Not even on Memorial Day.
I know I’ve never sent Joe any flowers.
Once I took a flower
from a nearby grave where there were
lots of them
it was in a little sharp-
pointed glass tube
& stuck the pointed end into the earth,
in front of Frank O’Hara’s grave
so that the small-pink-flower
stood up.
On the gravestone it said:
GRACE TO BE BORN AND LIVE AS VARIOUSLY AS POSSIBLE
OK. I’ll buy that.
& once I picked a different pink flower
from the earth
in front
of Guillaume Apollinaire’s grave.
On his gravestone in French there was a poem in the shape of
a heart.
I had to go to the bathroom
so I left then
& went to a cafe
across from Père Lachaise
They had a bathroom there I had une pernod there
& then another
the shape of the American I am not
Still Life
the Chinese see nothing tragic in death
but for me the clue is you
the whistle of a bird or two
you are now dead
& I’m struck by how young
we are
(were)
& how useless to speak
Let it down
Let it down on me
• • •
please
I love you
I’m sorry
• • •
The evolution of man & society
is not to be taken lightly I advance
upon the men their quiet
I’m certain is fooling me . . .
I sat up late in a room in Manhattan
& read about the death
of Guillaume Apollinaire
dead in his bed
of pneumonia
after surviving shrapnel
in his head
in The World War
a young girl (Sandy) peacefully
sleeping in my bed
It is night. You are asleep. & beautiful tears
have blossomed in my eyes. Guillaume Apollinaire is dead.