The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Page 20
lights up
Grand Valley
Now
Robert Creeley speaks:
the air is getting
darker
and darker
the Rose of Sharon
moves
towards the door
and through.
TED BERRIGAN & ROBERT CREELEY
Where
This
is as is
it goes
which does
as that was
that . . . or
over time & that
was, is,
that. Check: call it
WHAT.
Out the Second-floor Window
On St. Mark’s Place
She walked
with the aggressive dignity
of those
for whom someone else’s
irony
is the worst of disasters:
I loved her for it.
O Love
AFTER LEOPARDI
O love!
I have collected
a scar or two
& even a disturbing
memory or two
Since I fell for you.
Life in the Future
FOR DONNA DENNIS
White powder
purple pill
pink pill
white powder
(2)
Blue air
white mist
blue/white sky
MARS
& it’s Autumn in the Northern hemisphere
there.
Anselm Hollo
Come to Chicago
Go to the
Aspidistra Bookstore
Buy
THE LAST PURITAN.
Stay with us.
Poem
TO TOM CLARK
Autobiography
Men at Arms
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
Acid
Get your ass in gear
Ten Things to Do in the Closet
Turn around.
Turn around.
Turn around.
Feel.
Suss.
Whine.
Shut up.
Turn on light.
Exercise.
Kill Dog.
Orange Black
BACK DEATH
Strategy
Strategy is what you do how
Sitting Bull
Larceny
The
opposite
of
petty
is
GRAND.
I’m No Prick
The best way of
going all that way
to get something
and bring it back
is that way. This
is potent information,
that, a way to go, then.
Bolinas
get, in the complexity of our present
responsible element seething between
impasto excitation & somber, subtly evoked grandeur.
Congratulations
To
Lee & Mike.
I ride this bike
To your joy
For your little boy.
Déjà Vu
Discussing Max Beerbohm
with Mike Brownstein.
Neal Cassady Talk
“I’m standing toe-to-toe with you, see, looking you right in the eye,
you see, and at the same time digging that you are tapping your left foot, but,
and also, at the very same time, understand, I am digging that an American
flag is coming out of your left ear.”
surface
In the House
Sometimes it is quiet throughout the night
And you learn in the morning that
The man in the next room
Died in his sleep.
But there is no shortage of applicants
For the room.
Vignette
Kissed Maggie soundly; and the Doctor
declined to write me another prescription:
(if that “; and” meant what its weight does,
this would be ROMANCE.)
Inflation
It’s difficult
for the young queer
poets these days.
They
have to be
as good as
John Ashbery
(sigh).
I’m glad we
Only have to be
like Allen Ginsberg!
(Cheers)
WANT
CAN
DO
Flying United
Ladies & Gentlemen,
You will depart
The Aircraft
at the
Terminal Area
to your left.
Thank You for Flying United.
The D.A.
Today I had planned to fribble away
in “The Digger’s Game”
But Chemistry dictated that I lie on the bed
all day too fast to dig.
Song
“All things considered, it’s a gentle & undemanding
planet, even here.”
I seldom know it.
I do remember consistently
to feed it. Snore. In the air
in the house
in the night bear with me.
Red Wagon
TO ALICE NOTLEY
She
She is always two blue eyes
She is never lost in sleep
All her dreams are light & air
They sometimes melt the sun
She makes me smile, or
She makes me cry, she
Makes me laugh, and I talk to her
With really nothing particularly to say.
Remembered Poem
It is important to keep old hat
in secret closet.
3 Pages
FOR JACK COLLOM
10 Things I do Every Day
play poker
drink beer
smoke pot
jack off
curse
BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN
flower
positive & negative
go home
read lunch poems
hunker down
changes
Life goes by
quite merrily
blue
NO HELP WANTED
Hunting For The Whale
“and if the weather plays me fair
I’m happy every day.”
The white that dries clear
the heart attack
the congressional medal of honor
A house in the country
NOT ENOUGH
Conversation
“My name
“My name
“My name
“My name
“My name
“My name
is Wesley
is Wesley
Wesley
is Wesley
Jackson,
is Wesley Jackson,
“My name is Wesley Jackson,
I am
I am
I am
I am
25 years
25 years
old,
old,
I am 25 years old,
I am 25 years old,
I am 25 years old,
and
and
my favorite
my favorite
my favorite
favorite
favorite
and my favorite
song
song
song
and my favorite
and my favorite song
and my favorite song
my favorite song
and my favorite song
is
is Valencia.”
Valencia.”
“Isn’t
“Isn’t
that
“Isn’t that
beautiful,”
beautiful,”
“Isn’t that beautiful,”
“Isn’t that beautiful,”
Frank
Frank
said.
Frank said.
To Southampton
Go
Get in Volkswagen
Ride to the Atlantic
Step out
See
Your shadows
On fog
At the second stop
The same ocean as
At the first
Back in Volkswagen
Ron’s or somebody’s
Backs up
Steps on the gas
COCA COLA 20 Cents
Machine noise
Satisfaction
Home
Away from home.
sunday morning
FOR LOU REED
1.
It’s A Fact
If you stroke a cat about 1,000,000 times, you will
generate enough electricity to light up the largest
American Flag in the world for about one minute.
2.
Turnabout
In former times people who committed adultery
got stoned;
Nowadays it’s just a crashing bringdown.
3.
A Mongolian Sausage
By definition: a long stocking: you fill it full of shit,
and then you punch holes in it. Then you swing it over
your head in circles until everybody goes home.
Something Amazing Just Happened
FOR JIM CARROLL, ON HIS BIRTHDAY
A lovely body gracefully is nodding
Out of a blue Buffalo
Monday morning
curls
softly rising color the air
it’s yellow
above the black plane
beneath a red tensor
I’ve been dreaming. The telephone kept ringing & ringing
Clear & direct, purposeful yet pleasant, still taking pleasure
in bringing the good news, a young man in horn-rims’ voice
is speaking
while I listen. Mr. Berrigan, he says, & without waiting for an answer
goes on,
I’m happy to be able to inform you that your request for a Guggenheim
Foundation Grant
Has been favorably received by the committee, & approved.
When would you like to leave?
Uh, not just yet, I said, uh, what exactly did I say with regards to leaving,
in my application . . . I’m a little hazy at the moment.
Yes. Your project, as outlined in your application for a grant for the
purpose
of giving Jim Carroll the best possible birthday present you could get
him, through our Foundation, actually left the project, that is,
how the monies
would be spent, up to us. You indicated, wisely, I think, that we knew
more about what kind of project we would approve than you did,
so we should
make one up for you, since all you wanted was money, to buy Jim a
birthday gift.
Aha! I said. So, what’s up?
We have arranged for you and Jim to spend a year in London, in a flat
off of King’s Row.
You will receive 250 pounds each a month expenses, all travel expenses
paid, & a clothing allowance of 25 pounds each per month.
During the year,
At your leisure, you might send us from time to time copies of your
London works. By year’s end I’m sure you each will have enough
new poems for two books,
Which we would then publish in a deluxe boxed hardcover edition, for
the rights to which we shall be prepared to pay a considerable
sum, as is your due.
We feel that this inspired project will most surely result in The first major
boxed set of works since Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn!
Innocents Abroad
in reverse, so to speak! We know your poems, yours & Jim’s, will tell it
like it is, & that is what we are desperate to know! So, when
would you like to leave?
Immediately, I shouted! & Jim! I called, Jim! Happy Birthday! Wake up!
Today in Ann Arbor
FOR JAYNE NODLAND
Today I woke up
bright & early
Then I went back to sleep
I had a nice dream
which left me weak
so
I woke up again
dull, but still early.
I drank some coke
& took a pill
It made me feel ill, but
optimistic. So,
I went to the Michigan Union for cigarettes.
I cashed a check today—
but that was later. Now
I bought cigarettes, &
The Detroit Free Press.
I decided to eat some vanilla wafers
& drink coffee
at my desk
There was no cream for
the coffee. & the mail
wasn’t out yet.
It pissed me off.
I drank some coffee, black
& it was horrible.
Life is horrible, &
I am stupid.
I think. . . . . . . . . . NOTHING.
Then I think, more coffee. . .
upstairs!
Jackie’s face
picks me up.
She says, “there’s cream
upstairs”
Up more stairs via the elevator:
cream talk amiably to Bert
Hornbach
Come downstairs
&
the mail has
come!
Lots
of mail! I feel pretty good.
Together with my mail back in office.
Sitting.
Johnny Stanton says: “Ted,
you are a myth in my heart.”
He is a myth in my heart!
So, we are both myths!
Warmed by this, & coffee,
I go on. American Express
says:
“You owe us $1,906. Please
Pay NOW.”
I say, sure!
(“Now” means “later”)
Somebody else sends a postcard (Bill).
He says,
“I am advertising your presence
at YALE, so please come!”
I say to Bill,
“Have Faith, old
brother! I’ll be there
when you need me.”
In fact, I say that to everyone.
That is the truth,
& so,
I open a beautiful letter
from you. When we are both dead,
that letter
will be Part Two
of this poem.
But now we are both alive
& terrific!
In the Wheel
The pregnant waitress
asks
“Would you like
some more coffee?”
Surprised out of the question
I wait seconds “Yes,
I think I would!” I hand her
my empty cup, &
“thank you!” she says. My pleasure.
Wind
Every day when the sun comes up
The angels emerge from the rivers
Drily happy & all wet. Easy going
But hard to keep my place. Easy
On the avenue underneath my face.
Difficult alone trying to get true.
Difficult inside alone with you.
The rivers’ blackness flowing just sits
Orange & reds blaze up inside
the sky
I sit here & I’ve been thinking this
Red, blue, yellow, green, & white.
Things to Do on Speed
mind clicks into gear
& fingers clatter over the keyboard
as intricate insights stream
out of your head:
this goes on for ten hours:
then, take a break: clean
all desk drawers, arrange all
pens & pencils in precise parallel patterns;
stack all books with exactitude in one pile
to coincide perfectly with the right angle
of the desk’s corner.
Whistle thru ten more hours of
arcane insights:
drink a quart of ice-cold pepsi:
clean the ice-box:
past out for ten solid hours
interesting dreams.
2.
Finish papers, wax floors, lose weight, write songs, sing songs, have
conference, sculpt, wake up & think more clearly. Clear up asthma.
treat your obesity, avoid mild depression, decongest, cure your
narcolepsy,
treat your hyper-kinetic brain-damaged children. Open the
Pandora’s Box of amphetamine abuse.
3.
Stretch the emotional sine curve; follow euphoric peaks with descents
into troughs
that are unbearable wells of despair & depression. Become a ravaged
scarecrow.
Cock your emaciated body in
twisted postures grind your caved-in jaw
scratch your torn & pock-marked skin,
keep talking, endlessly.
4.
Jump off a roof on the lower East Side