The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Page 31
eyes clear & blue courteously
gravely rise
& lightly, turn turn &turn
again
& softly, go.
Part of My History
FOR LEWIS WARSH
Will “Reclining Figure, One Arm”
Soon become or is she already Mrs.
Ted Berrigan? “Take one dexamyl
Every morning, son,” my dead father
told me over the phone, and, “Be
A good boy. It’s called a ‘Life Style.’ ”
What you don’t know will hurt somebody else.
Cast in 1934, 5 ft. 14 in. in height,
The figure has three fingers missing
On the left hand (as did Mordecai, “three-
fingers,” Brown, which didn’t keep him
Out of Cooperstown!). Body well-preserved,
Chubby, flesh-colored, sweetly
Draped. Both ends are broken here & there,
But the surface is well preserved. I took
Another puff on my Chesterfield King, and,
As she walked around in my room, saw orange
& blue raise themselves ere she walked.
They were my mind. And then, I saw cupcakes,
pink & flushed pink, floating about
in the air, aglow in their own poise.
Cold air stabbed into my heart, as, suddenly,
In serious drag, I felt my body getting
Colder & colder, & felt, rather than saw,
My fez, hovering above my head, like a typical set
of Berrigan-thoughts, imprisoned in lacquer, European-
style, tailor-made. I could see I was sitting
at a table in a Hoboken Truck-Stop. When the smoke
Cleared I saw a red telephone on the table by my
Left hand. A heart-stimulant shot into my heart
From out the immediate darkness to my right. I picked up
The telephone, & that was all that kept me alive.
Contemporary Justice
tin roof slanting sunlight
cows
boys with sticks
a pick-up whines dust rises,
crows hover cane stalks
a Watusi
and on his porch my grandfather
watching
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
Somebody knows everything, so
Between friends nothing would seem stranger
to me than true intimacy, so
Pity me, Patty
or, on
the other hand
The insane brother was focussed malevolently on murder.
Which wasn’t me, was it?
Amityville Times
self suspended in age time warp put out to grass
seeing through ears ask intelligent questions
behind eyes doubt use formal balance a lot
to throw something on to it
by mildly defending honor of minor character endlessly
while positively seething with absolutely no emotion
whatsoever in any way shape or form & can this be done?
To Ron
Everybody is not so clever as you. You are cleverer than I
am. You are the cleverest of all. I think a great deal.
That is why you speak so little. Listen, are not all your
brothers going to the field? Have not all your sisters gone
to the field? My friend, I keep it in order to look at it.
Let us light a candle. Let us go into the field. I have
read this book so often that I know it by heart. I have a
word to say to you. Did you go to the Captain’s Ball?
The Morning Line
Every man-jack boot-brain slack-jaw son of a chump
surely the result of fuzzy thinking
parceled in his “noise of thousands”
is a poem to shove somewhere
The man on First Avenue
with a large suitcase knows that
He’s leaving town
asleep there, already back.
Velvet &
FOR STEVE CAREY
Voice of ride
Fire of sight
Value of late
taste of great
job of departure
Night Chick
sky-mate
fits
(also little aches.)
Avec la Mécanique sous les Palmes
C’est automne qui revient
Les arbres ont l’air de sourire
Le clou est là
Retient la tête
Les lampes sont allumées
Le vent passe en chantant
Les cheveux balayant la nuit
Il y a quelqu’un qui cherche
Une adresse perdue dans le chemin caché
La tête s’en va
Qu’on nous raconte cette histoire
C’est celle d’un malade
Il te resemble
Il fait froid sur la lune ma tête fume
Dreamland
FOR ELIO SCHNEEMAN
this steady twelve-tone humming inbetween my ears
weather sweeps in gentle wavelets across my features
the edges of space stacked into mostly indistinguishable images
on 3 sides: half a face, mine, clearly there
thick dark red and whitish flowers rise, & then drooping
over a purple waterfall, death, also clear
a suitcase—to stay—not to get out of here
on it, water, aspirin, glasses, a watch
above my head tones of voice, steady, clear
making lists in a life,
moving in the face of need, to be here.
Kerouac
(CONTINUED)
“appropriately named Beauty, has just been a star
halfback on the high school football team, and also
hit by a car, scribbling in his Diary. Over his bed
there hung contributing sports stories from the Lowell
Sun. For a time resided next to a Funeral Parlor: he
was a voracious consumer of Pop culture, of whatever
could be joyously drunk in; a phosphorescent Christ
on a black lacquered cross—it glowed the Jesus in
the Dark, in the movies, in the funnies, and on the radio
over Memere’s bed. I gulped for fear every time I passed it
at the moment the sun went down. Probably couldn’t have stood
this ‘double dose’, had it not been for the arrangement of
the shadows. Above all loved The Shadow, Lamont Cranston, Dr. Sax.
Ah, shadow! Ah, Sax!”
Shelley
I saw you first in half-darkness
by candle-light two round table-tops away
sitting in perfect attention with perfect self-awareness
waiting, for the poetry to begin, in The Blue Store;
I accepted a drink from your companion’s surprising flask,
never taking my eyes off of you, radiant nineteen-year-old,
and I thought, as I was losing my heart,
“Jesus, there’s obviously a lot more to Bob Rosenthal
than meets the eye!” . . .
That Poem George Found
In the year 1327, at the opening of the first hour,
on the 6th of April, I entered the labyrinth.
My wandering since has been without purpose.
Here, look at it. Wanna see this? No, I want
to find out what’s happening with the Indians.
What Indians, the ones that were torturing Jane Bowles
to death? No, the Algonquins & the Iroquois. Eileen
& I already finished that other book. Well,
Fuck yourself then.
DNA
FOR ALICE NOTLEY
: Ms. Sensitive Princess:
As furious as Ho Chih Minh
As clever as Mr. Pound
As gra
ceful as a Ben Jonson lyric, “this mountain belly of mine”
As noisy as Bob Dylan
As crooked as Lawrence, as bent as they come
As curious as Philip Whalen, like Beckett, say, is
As pale as Creeley, as Emily Dickinson
As frantic as Jane Bowles, or, as frantic as Jack Kerouac
As awkward as George Smiley
As scarce as Samuel Johnson
As ridiculous as Tennyson, or Kenneth Koch
As loyal as Henry Miller, like Charles de Gaulle is
As permanent as Israel must seem to Chas. Dickens
At as late as 3 o’clock in the morning, or 5:15 a.m., or noon!
Run a check on that, will you Watson?
Back in the Old Place
Thinking about past times in New York by talking
about them reminds me of talking on the steps
We took to get where we are and our current moral view
which is centered around loose suspicion
that our friends for example only tolerate us because
of our mysterious lack of magic
And so actually hate us because of our power, which we do have.
So pretty soon it’ll be Christmas, in about six months
& if we are lucky those friends will have been hit by trucks by then
the tea in the white cup is either half-gone or
I am, in any case, soon you will come back up from
Christmas sitting on the steps with the trucks roaring by
thinking I am not that person, so why did I act like that?
because I see one of my friends on a truck & he is talking
about his former friend, the enemy; and I see that I am that enemy &
I also see that the street is covered with fish because of a terrible
accident
No, I don’t see that, I only see that I am that enemy, & I dig that
it makes me feel like the street is covered with fish . . .
& the street is covered with fish, & they are my fish, those fish—
but it doesn’t matter, along comes a real truck, there’s a terrible
accident, & the street is covered with fish
The name of the street is Pearl Street & it is crawling with worms
Some of my friends come over, we have funny-tasting coffee
but it is not funny to be drowning
When the yellow bird’s note was almost stopped
it was then I spread a little bit of butter on my bread
& when the yellow butter covered the tiny top
I began to imagine that someone was there cooking it
It was fun to imagine that; fun standing still, & fun taking it
to be a fountain my friend said was a pile of old birds
but what my friend said was a pile of old words, yes sir,
I said to the mountain, why don’t you move out
of the country of the young & back down into the big city, where
all there is is muscle butter music?
WRITTEN WITH JACK COLLOM
Blue Tilt
FOR TOM CLARK
“But & then at that time
also . . .”
I could and would
often did
dig
the aesthetics of change:
the mechanics made me yawn so, tho,
to see all that to-do
over a simple little
ball
& all that money
involved? Jesus Christ!
Keep your electricity,
go dotty,
I’m tipsy!
“It’s simple. You’ve got a twisted pelvis.”
Dr. Reuben Greenberg said,
proving about as useful as his brother-
in-law,
Clement.
Just give me a good well-made hand-crafted
wooden leg,
& I’ll dig even my next, 45th,
Fall.
Little American Poetry Festival
FOR BILL & JOANNE
Often I try so hard with stimulants
which only graze the surface
As my voice fondly plays your name
without music
but Jim Dine’s toothbrush eases two pills
for
Stupefied aborigines
who study for the first time
the sentient earlobes
that hang suspended from no ears at all
venting expletives
at the velvet moon
no more stupefied than I was
upon first being folded into
and then hopelessly knowing
this whole world’s activity
under the clear blue sky; I have come
to change all that: bells, ring; daylight, fade;
fly, resting on your shoulder blades for hours
On the count of three, drums will clatter
like rain
from the hills
& Sleep the lazy owl of Night
& Sleep will make you whole
& Sleep the bushes of the field
& Sleep will make you grow
& you will grow odd
For inside you is a delirious god
& if the drought don/t get you
then the corn worms will
if you don’t sober up, kick the brunette out of bed
& go “out” to earn your pay
but I continue, I simply stay
to burn the Midnight lamp
until the restaurant closes and the streets
are empty of every passer-by
It’s heavy, it’s hard, but
it means out: & Sleep, the Angels
in the sky, Sleep will make you fly,
I know. After all,
I am an obelisk of Egypt; & we
are the Beautiful People of Africa,
etcetera
Whereas the real state is called golden
where things are exactly what they are
which is why I wish to become surface,
like Sleep, & Wake-up!
After Peire Vidal, & Myself
FOR SHELLEY
Oh you, the sprightliest & most puggish, the brightest star
Of all my lively loves, all Ladies, & to whom once I gave up
My heart entire, thenceforth yours to keep forever
Locked up in your own heart’s tiniest room, my best hope, or
To throw away, carelessly, at your leisure, should that prove
Yr best pleasure, Who is that dumpy matron, decked out in worn & faded
Shabby army fatigues which pooch out both before & behind, now screeching
Out my small name in a dingy Public Library on the lower East Side? & now
Scoring me painfully in philistine Commedia dell’arte farce, low summer fare
Across a pedestrian Ferry’s stretch of water in some meshugganah Snug Harbor
And once more, even, fiercely pecking at me in the cold drab Parish Hall of
Manhattan’s Landmark Episcopal Church, where a once Avant-garde now Grade
School
Poetry Project continues to dwell, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bouwerie, whose
Stones hold in tight grip one wooden leg & all of Peter Stuyvesant’s bones?
Who is that midget-witch who preens & prances as she flaunts her lost wares,
Otherwise hidden beneath some ancient boy’s flannel-shirt, its tail out &
flapping,/ & who
Is shrieking even now these mean words:
“Hey Ted!” “Hey, you Fat God!”
& calling me, “Fickle!” “Fickle!”
& she points a long boney finger
at me, & croons, gleefully.
“Limbo!” “That’s where you really live!”
& She is claiming to be you
as she whispers, visciously,
“Alone, &
In Pain, in Limbo, is where you live in your little cloud-9 ho
me Ted!
Pitiful!”
She has a small purse, & removing it from one of her shopping bags
She brings out from inside that small purse, my withered heart; & lifting it
high into the air over her head with her two hands, she turns it upside down
unzips its fasteners, & shakes it out over the plywood floor, happily. “Empty,”
she cries loudly, “just like I always knew it would be!” “Empty!” “Empty” “Empty!”
I watch her, and think,
That’s not really you, up there, is it,
Rose? Rochelle? Shelley?
O, don’t be sad, little Rose! It’s still
Your ribbon I wear, your favor tied to the grip of my lance, when I
ride out to give battle,
these golden days.
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
Old Moon
I can’t sleep walking through walls
taking pleasure in nothing of either of us
losing shape in room clock lamp air
heavy & the inverse who now may see desire
hovering over the body, lifting, diminish
down into oversize misshaper head-size, inside
thin down to the fine bright line of white light
across under distant locked door too far for human feet
although your face stays, while I can will, & perform
in the same way that this is performance
you give it body, that face, and it is your body
it is yours & makes my own return
marks my own return striped with red, eyes, and lashes
that are stretch-marks breathing against your lashes.
From the Execution Position
“Members of the brain, welcome to New York City
on a soft day weighted with rain, where
slightly ahead of time, trifoliate, but humanly low,
reading in a man’s book this line, you fibrillate—
‘It is easier to die than to remember.’—
You turn to the nurse, but he shakes your hand
With the fin of a fish: &
Why this self-deprivation of full human heritage?
& this does not happen all that seldom.
However, these days you do get
to do what you will, if
not always what you would wish. Tell me, is it