The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  and no-one had stolen all the dazzling looks. But this

  one time the saboteurs sneaked up! Hah! I didn’t

  let them grind you, my little Coolie-Baby, who insures

  my factory. No, and it’s not bad to lay buried, in Hooversville,

  by wires, laid on us by gentlemen, & ladies flushed

  with gin. Except at night, when you are lying in the wind.

  2.

  I beat on the fruits of the gushy showers

  burning up ginger-ale, only a pantomime mother &

  father, doting on feelable widows, as my rent & these

  urgent denials in my plug-ugly vision hold out! I

  would take some corn to Minton’s & throw it on Dizzy

  Gillespie, & I mumble at babies on the bus, although

  I too am reading the nickel journals, while my axles

  are losing patience. Castles! my dearest, the whole town

  is hiding out in six cheap hotels, sorrowful you gaping at me

  as I continue to concoct ewe dreams! I would like very much

  to be in your hair, in hottest blood, my Saxon Thing was nursed

  on Western fiction with Doc Holliday my Christopher

  Columbus to help me. But it’s no use, you love Oliver Hardy, he’s

  the last of the old-time newsboys. I have a soggy bed.

  Francis à Bientôt

  The storms of Baudelaire fall on Judas’ head

  He send out rays of light with that river

  We saw it in his hair

  No use to call me again it isn’t right

  You string a sonnet around your fat gut

  And falling on your knees you invent the shoe

  For a horse Don’t cheat

  The victory is not always to the sweet

  That night arrives again in red

  André Breton is a shit! (He sneezed on the rum

  Turning it into a pun) One must live

  Even in Colorado (Take that, you horse!)

  Now we are all dead

  Charles, Ju, you, & Harry James

  There is no time(s) past (lost?) We

  Are in The Twentieth Century (The Christian Era), and

  The charms (bait) leave

  Under the heels of Children.

  This man was my friend.

  The TV Story

  1.

  It is after 7 in the evening and raining cold in bed. Next day

  12 noon Dick comes by we go to the Museum—with Sandy—

  lovely on my naked back through the open window. She has

  finished Nadja, make entry in my journal, work on my new

  poem, go to baby-sitting. Carol came, looking for Dick—kicks

  them out. Now I am—I carve a pumpkin. I read Nadja. 4 a.m.

  —lying naked on the bed. We start talking about Marcel

  Duchamp. All try to figure out how pay the rent . . . 12

  o’clock . . . ourselves . . . we begin touching one another in

  the dark, & she is reading Prolegomena to Greek Religion.

  She says she is—she takes off my clothes & we laugh. Dick & I

  discuss Wallace Fowlie, he gives me a copy of Nadja, not to

  keep—she says if it’s ever over between us in your mind

  please tell me. Talk about Dada, we do, drink whiskey. He

  makes coffee. We let him in, he knocks again—at the door—

  we show him a copy of Nadja—he dissipates—she interprets

  it for him in some new way, I translate it for him, he is

  sleeping, Dick comes over, we discuss Nadja extensively, next

  day 12 noon we are all to go To the Museum. (TV Show).

  2.

  I was charging others to love me, instead

  of doing so myself.

  3.

  The day I see my name in the papers, something

  snaps, I’m finished; I sadly enjoy my fame, but

  I stop writing.

  4.

  Now fifty years and nostalgic, I pushed open the door of a

  cafe and asked for a small beer. At the next table some beautiful

  young women were talking animatedly and my name is

  mentioned. “Ah,” said one of them, “he may be old, he may

  be homely, but what difference does that make? I’d give

  thirty years of my life to become his wife.” I looked at her

  with a proud, sad smile, she smiled back in surprise, I got

  up, I disappeared.

  El Greco

  A drop of boo the wounded ham

  might be

  Saint Francis’s knee

  in the sombrero of a tree.

  Mouth deep

  rope Owl hoot in spectral radiance

  & fix skull

  He prays.

  his vision

  broke his brain (lie a hen visage

  a plant among browns and grays.

  Crimson pot

  pierces finger gasp

  Drip fresh drips bright ow fring,

  Fellow, fring

  a miniscule wrist limp

  on a hollow headless

  bone

  Cento: A Note on Philosophy

  FOR PAT MITCHELL

  When I search the past for you

  We who are the waiting fragments of his sky

  “I who am about to die”

  Then was the drowsy melody of languish

  And staying like white water; and now of a sudden

  A too resilient mind

  Cajoling, scheming, scolding, the cleverest of them all

  And so we ride together into the peach state!

  (Remain secure from pain preserve thy hate thy heart)

  Those are the very rich garments of the poor

  The rack and the crucifix of winter, winter’s wild

  Which encases me. What about the light that comes in then?

  Silence; and in between these silences

  The spins and the flowing of night-time.

  Praising, that’s it! One ordained to praise

  The wind without flesh, without bone

  The morning-glory, climbing the morning long

  In ordinary places.

  Not to mention the chief thing

  We think by feeling. What is there to know?

  Bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins

  Though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings

  Melodic sighs of Arabic adventure

  Darting into a tender fracas leeward and lee

  The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet

  And you have made the world (and it shall grow)

  The last the sole surviving Texas Ranger

  The heavy not which you were bringing back alone

  Abandoned, almost Dionysian

  Why should I climb the look-out?

  The child who has fallen in love with maps and charts

  Drums in the pre-dawn. In my head my brain

  But to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible

  In red weather.

  Questions, oh, I hope they do not find you

  I go on loving you like water, but

  I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn

  I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

  Into a symbol. I hate that. I falter. These

  Let the snake wait under

  My back, for which act

  I would not credit comment upon gracefully

  How how the brig brig water the damasked roses

  But helpless, as blue roses are helpless

  The revolution is done. What has a bark, but cannot bite?

  I’ve tucked the rushing earth under my legs

  By those, to sing of cleanly wantonesse

  To walk, and pass long love’s day.

  “It is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter

  On along the street. Somewhere a trolley, taking leave

  Ju
st to be leaving; hearts light as balloons

  mirrored in little silver spoons.”

  True voyagers alone are those who leave

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer

  They never shrink from their fatality

  Upon those under lands, the vast

  And, without knowing why, say, “Let’s get going! Goodbye.”

  & so, sauntered out that door, which was closed.

  New Junket

  FOR HARRY FAINLIGHT

  Everywhere we went we paid the price, endurement

  Of indifference, signs of regeneration: in every

  Victim awaits the guest of honor, hawk-like, with

  Respect to the unlocking of the dream; this hot breath

  That you perfectly feel lingering. It makes you think.

  You think of a faience pot, a giant eucalyptus overhung

  Against the balustrade, facing assurance in the wind.

  You suspect we enjoy these poses. This biggest indifference.

  You were succumbing to kisses (the real purpose

  Another purpose of the trip) but the trip had been

  Moved up. I cared. And so we left.

  Wonder changes grooves to form a Winter

  Rising with Winter roses near the house. The water

  Following the signal, which is following me,

  Is lifting me up on the on the wings of the great machine.

  Dick Gallup (Birthday)

  (FOR THE GALLUPS)

  interrupts yr privacy

  25 years later

  you wait between the dodge and the bush

  a basket

  between you and your arm: under it

  INSIGHT (Vol. 1, Nr. 3)

  (the condemned man is shielding a

  woman, about 25, five feet

  eleven inches high, hair dark, curly,

  dark eyes; and though not gallant, is pure . . .

  the street disappearing

  into bush level

  two heads above the basket

  (“seeking a personal

  world, where one’s own

  behavior has a code . . .

  is no guarantee

  of justice, folks.

  SUNLIGHT IN

  JUNGLE-LAND

  • • •

  that girl wreathed in blue

  and that one, in yellow

  corporeal

  “her hair a wondrous gold”

  MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS

  (under the sheets)

  the community

  in their vicinity, is murder.

  It keeps us awake.

  FOLK LEGENDS do not await Verdicts.

  We get on, with provisions.

  It (The Dodge) continues.

  Conceived in Hate

  . . . Your America & mine

  are lands to be discovered

  and nothing

  stirs us to discover

  so much as the real

  drama of today’s newsmaking people

  Blonde on Blonde

  It’s enough to make a girl

  go out & buy a bottle

  of peroxide; and many did.

  But not her. She loved

  Mencken, her pretty sister

  whose shame & sin outshone

  her dark, golden curls.

  Flower Portrait

  FOR SOTERE TORREGIAN & FAMILY

  It’s morning

  meaning

  it

  has arrived:

  MERRY XMAS

  the center of

  my gray window facing life. That’s

  a Christmas card, from John Perreault. That’s

  Gary Snyder: A RANGE OF POEMS. That’s

  THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF & that is

  MOTHER

  6.

  IT’S ALL IN THE STARS

  (that’s a book)

  CLEAR THE RANGE!

  (That’s a book, by me.)

  Nevertheless

  she

  is not here,

  tho it’s all right here

  and so are we.

  Birds sing in this

  my world, I love you

  if “you” is bacon,

  toast & two eggs, over

  light: we’ll share a small coke & read a big boke

  before we die.

  What am I talking about? It

  ’s a new day! I’ve got

  to run. Mi casa, su casa,

  THE AGE OF GOLD is before me.

  Selflessness

  TO PETER SCHJELDAHL

  This picture indicates development

  You drink some coffee, you get some sleep

  Everything is up in the air

  especially us

  who are me

  Linda greets our force

  forcefully

  so much for that

  (sing)

  “I’m sittin’ here thinkin’

  just how sharp I am. . . .”

  I ask you, can these words have issued

  from M’sieur M. “The Rock” Proust,

  BPOE, RSVP, ICUP?

  No.

  You inhabit a baby, I mean

  a table . . .

  the logic of that

  is lost

  is mixed with public opinion

  and

  as we get closer & closer, to it

  something snaps

  Music gets into this picture

  of

  “A Life.”

  & Now it’s rolling . . .

  & Now we are one

  & it’s bed-time

  competitive spirits

  dare we continue? we dare continue

  seeking parties

  full of places

  we have not been at

  nor ever will be at

  without each other.

  The Avant-Garde Literary Award

  Someone something

  HELP!

  false start

  “falling in love with religious experience”

  Now you’re talking!

  “giving tongue

  to the public consciousness”

  (that’s a thought)

  A dope-fiend is sitting

  on his dead ass,

  surrounded by roaches.

  “You have just won The Avant-Garde Literary Award.”

  From The Art of the Sonnet

  1.

  It is a very great thing

  To call across the room

  To a girl,

  “Hey, I love you.”

  You shout very loudly.

  A lot of weird freaky people

  Look at you very strangely plus assorted boring square types—

  The girl does not hear you.

  She is puce, and yellow. You are completely ass

  Because the girl you are yelling to is Whistler’s Mother.

  PS: You are also somewhat color-blind.

  Or could it be that you are The Joker, my plum-blossomed Visionary

  Friend? Those tiny broken veins on the tip of your nose are

  Tres interesting. They resemble the map of Crete.

  2.

  Some of Denis Roche’s books are missing here.

  Let’s go out. We can go to the park.

  Dead Fingers Talk. They say, “I got some books here

  That we can steal things out of.

  They’re all by good writers.” Silence.

  Orange Juice. Five dog barks then another.

  Then too many to count shut up you dumb mutt.

  In Korea they give puppies to GI’s who fatten them up

  Then they steal them back to make soup. Ack.

  I think we oughtta write a great poem outta these books.

  That dog is still barking. My stomach is growling: Ravi Shankar

  I got all great books here to write poems from.

  Maybe we could write a sonnet. Great burst of applause:

  Ladies & Gentlemen, it’s all about to happen, & now it’
s done.

  3.

  I’ve been loving you a little too long.

  I can’t stop now. Why should I stop now?

  You don’t know, do you? I think it is very nice

  Of you. Incidentally, I went to the fortune teller

  She looked into the crystal ball. She saw

  Two New York Yankees & they were very small.

  I left there in a hurry. I needed one pall mall.

  I got one from a midget. It was long as he was tall.

  In case you haven’t figured it out, Lady of Mondrian, the lake

  I made up most of the above. You see, I did it

  Because I’m a nut. Yet, isn’t it all right to be sort of nutty, a flak

  When you are in love? Why not

  Call me up sometime?

  212-677-7779.

  Then I’d Cry

  Now twist knife all strength owing O now twist knife

  And he came down tubes chosen by the waiter

  Black fright

  Headed down from his homely Thuggee feelings

  To the babbling waiter

  Whose foreign compulsion wounded his taint

  In the dawn of Thuggee feelings

  Then

  I tamed him

  A prince sups on his head for thought

  Dark grace savors him

  Or tortures me

  He said come forth old time wit and get me too

  Air Conditioning

  It’s very interesting

  Weighing 500 lbs

  You might even say, “It’s great!”

  “Let’s drink to that!”

  I did Dixie Cup Fanta Orange

  IOWA BACK DEATH & now a humming

  Opening it up inside

  Making a fire-engine red

  Desk chair bright green

  A white night & amazing you!

  You don’t believe it.

  Monolith

  The right wall is BRICKS.

  The left wall is FAR OUT

  The front wall is PICTURES.

  I CAN’T SEE the back wall.

  The CEILING is High.

  The Floor is QUICK.

  The AIR is THIN.

  The LIGHT is BRIGHT WHITE.

  The CURRENT is ELECTRIC.

  The POWER is ON.

  The Subject is BENT.

  He is POISED.

  He is Listening.

  This is IT.

  it is HERE.

  He has been WATCHING.

  He has Had To Think.

  It is Done. It is

  COMPETENT. It is NOT

  SATISFACTORY, but