The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  Some “others” were dormants: More water went under the dam.

  What excitement to think of her returning, over the colonnade,

  over the tall steppes, warm hands guiding his eyes to hers

  XLVI

  LINES FOR LAUREN OWEN

  Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets

  The fleet drifts in on an angry tidal wave

  Drifts of Johann Strauss

  The withering weather of

  Of polytonic breezes gathering in the gathering winds

  Of a plush palace shimmering velvet red

  In the trembling afternoon

  A dark trance

  The cherrywood romances of rainy cobblestones

  Mysterious Billy Smith a fantastic trigger

  Melodic signs of Arabic adventure

  A boy first sought in Tucson Arizona

  Or on the vast salt deserts of America

  Where Snow White sleeps among the silent dwarfs

  XLVII

  gray his head goes his feet green

  No lady dream around in any bad exposure

  “no pipe dream, sir. She would be the dragon

  Head, dapple green of mien. must be vacated

  in favor of double-clutching, and sleep,

  seldom, though deep. We savor its sodden dungheap flavor

  on our creep toward the rational. William Bonney

  buried his daddy and killed a many. Benito Mussolini

  proved a defective, but Ezra Pound came down, came

  down and went. And so, Carol, remember,

  We are each free to shed big crystal tears on

  The dirt-covered ground, tied together only

  By white clouds and some mud we can find, if we try,

  In the darksome orange shadows of the big blue swamp

  XLVIII

  Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky

  The farm was his family farm

  On the real farm

  I understood “The Poems.”

  The dust fissure drains the gay dance

  Home returning on the blue winds of dust.

  A farmer rides a tractor. It is a block

  To swallow. Thus a man lives by his tooth.

  Meaning strides through these poems just as it strides

  Through me! When I traipse on my spunk, I get

  Wan! Traipse on my spunk and I get wan, too!

  Francis Marion

  Muscles down in tooth-clenched strides toward

  The effort regulator: His piercing pince-nez

  Some dim frieze in “The Poems” and these go on without me

  XLIX

  Joyful ants nest on the roof of my tree

  Crystal tears wed to wakefulness

  My dream a crumpled horn

  Ripeness begins in advance of the broken arm

  The black heart two times scary Sunday

  Pale thighs making apple belly strides

  And he walks. Beside the fifteen pieces of glass

  A postcard of Juan Gris

  Vast orange dreams wed to wakefulness

  Swans gone in the rain came down, came down and went

  Warm hands corrupting every tree

  Guiding his eyes to her or a shade

  Ripeness begins My dream a crumpled horn

  Fifteen pieces of glass on the roof of my tree

  L

  I like to beat people up

  absence of passion, principles, love. She murmurs

  What just popped into my eye was a fiend’s umbrella

  and if you should come and pinch me now

  as I go out for coffee

  . . . as I was saying winter of 18 lumps

  Days produce life locations to banish 7 up

  Nomads, my babies, where are you? Life’s

  My dream which is gunfire in my poem

  Orange cavities of dreams stir inside “The Poems”

  Whatever is going to happen is already happening

  Some people prefer “the interior monologue”

  I like to beat people up

  LI

  Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days

  is not genuine it shines forth from the faces

  littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

  is a correspondent the innocence of childhood

  sadness graying the faces of virgins aching

  and everything comes before their eyes

  to be fucked, we fondle their snatches but they

  that the angels have supereminent wisdom is shown

  they weep and get solemn etcetera

  from thought for all things come to them gratuitously

  by their speech it flows directly and spontaneously

  and O I am afraid! but later they’ll be eyeing the butts of the

  studs

  in the street rain flushing the gutters bringing from Memphis

  Gus Cannon gulping, “I called myself Banjo Joe!”

  LII

  FOR RICHARD WHITE

  It is a human universe: & I

  is a correspondent The innocence of childhood

  is not genuine it shines forth from the faces

  The poem upon the page is as massive as Anne’s thighs

  Belly to hot belly we have laid

  baffling combustions

  are everywhere graying the faces of virgins

  aching to be fucked we fondle their snatches

  and O, I am afraid! The poem upon the page

  will not kneel for everything comes to it

  gratuitously like Gertrude Stein to Radcliffe

  Gus Cannon to say “I called myself Banjo Joe!”

  O wet kisses, death on earth, lovely fucking in the poem

  upon the page,

  you have kept up with the times, and I am glad!

  LIII

  The poem upon the page is as massive as

  Anne’s thighs belly to hot belly we have laid

  Serene beneath feverous folds, flashed cool

  in our white heat hungered and tasted and

  Gone to the movies baffling combustions

  are everywhere! like Gertrude Stein at Radcliffe,

  Patsy Padgett replete with teen-age belly! everyone’s

  suddenly pregnant and no one is glad!

  O wet kisses, the poem upon the page

  Can tell you about teeth you’ve never dreamed

  Could bite, nor be such reassurance! Babies are not

  Like Word Origins and cribbage boards or dreams

  of correspondence! Fucking is so very lovely

  Who can say no to it later?

  LV

  Grace to be born

  and live as variously

  as possible

  FRANK O’HARA

  Grace to be born and live as variously as possible

  White boats green banks black dust atremble

  Massive as Anne’s thighs upon the page

  I rage in a blue shirt at a brown desk in a

  Bright room sustained by a bellyful of pills

  “The Poems” is not a dream for all things come to them

  Gratuitously In quick New York we imagine the blue Charles

  Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

  No Poems she demands in a blanket command belly

  To hot belly we have laid serenely white

  Only my sweating pores are true in the empty night

  Baffling combustions are everywhere! we hunger and taste

  And go to the movies then run home drenched in flame

  To the grace of the make-believe bed

  LVI

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

  She murmurs of signs to her fingers

  in my paintings for they are present

  The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

  What thwarts this fear I love

  Mud on the first day (night, rather

  gray his head goes his feet green
>
  Francis Marion nudges himself gently in the big blue sky

  Joyful ants nest on the roof of my tree

  I like to beat people up.

  Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days

  It is a human universe: & I

  sings like Casals in furtive dark July; Out we go

  to the looney movie to the make-believe bed

  LVII

  Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

  In a bright room sustained by a bellyful of pills

  One’s suddenly pregnant and no one is glad!

  Aching to be fucked we fondle their snatches

  That the angels have supereminent wisdom is shown

  Days produce life locations to banish 7 Up

  A postcard of Juan Gris

  To swallow. Thus a man lives by his tooth.

  Buried his daddy and killed a many. Benito Mussolini

  The Asiatics

  Everything turns into writing

  And Gude is worrying about his sex life

  Each tree is introspection

  The most elegant present I could get

  LIX

  In Joe Brainard’s collage its white arrow

  does not point to William Carlos Williams.

  He is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.

  What is in it is sixteen ripped pictures

  Of Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth whitewashed

  by Joe’s throbbing hands. “Today

  I am truly horribly upset because Marilyn

  Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B-movie

  and ate King Korn popcorn,” he wrote in his

  Diary. The black heart beside the fifteen pieces

  of glass in Joe Brainard’s collage

  takes the eye away from the gray words,

  Doctor, but they say “I LOVE YOU”

  and the sonnet is not dead.

  LX

  old prophets Help me to believe

  New York! sacerdotal drink it take a pill

  Blocks of blooming winter. Patricia was a

  bed Patsy gone The best fighter in Troy

  Be bride and groom and priest: in pajamas

  Sweet girls will bring you candied apples!

  Drummer-boys and Choo-Choos will astound you!

  Areté I thus I Again I I

  An Organ-Grinder’s monkey does his dance.

  Ted Ron Dick Didactic un-melodic

  Roisterers here assembled shatter my zest

  Berrigan secretly HEKTOR GAME ETC.

  More books! Rilke Stevens Pound Auden

  & Frank

  Some kind of Bowery Santa Clauses I wonder

  Who am about to die the necessary lies

  LXI

  How sweet the downward sweep of your prickly thighs

  as you lope across the trails and bosky dells

  defying natural law, saying, “Go Fuck Yourselves,

  You Motherfuckers!” You return me to Big Bill Broonzy

  and Guillaume Apollinaire and when you devour your young,

  the natural philosophy of love,

  I am moved as only I am moved by the singing of the

  Stabat Mater at Sunday Mass.

  How succulent your flesh sometimes so tired

  from losing its daily battles with its dead! All

  this and the thought that you go to the bathroom

  fills me with love for you, makes me love you even more than

  the dirt

  in the crevices in my window

  and the rust on the bolt in my door

  in terms I contrived as a boy, such as

  “making it” “fuck them” and

  “I know you have something to tell me.”

  LXIV

  Is there room in the room that you room in?

  fucked til 7 now she’s late to work and I’m

  18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better

  Stronger than alcohol, more great than song

  O let me burst, and I be lost at sea!

  and I fall on my knees then, womanly.

  to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal

  Why can’t I read French? I don’t know why can’t you?

  The taste of such delicate thoughts

  Never bring the dawn.

  To cover the tracks

  of “The Hammer.”

  Something there is is benzedrine in bed:

  Bring me red demented rooms,

  warm and delicate words

  LXV

  Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

  annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

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

  Today I thought about all those radio waves

  He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle bird,

  Pissing on the grass!

  I too am reading the technical journals,

  Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements

  Someone said “Blake-blues” and someone else “pill-head”

  Meaning bloodhounds.

  Washed by Joe’s throbbing hands

  She is introspection.

  It is a Chinese signal.

  There is no such thing as a breakdown

  LXVI

  it was summer. We were there. And THERE WAS NO

  MONEY you are like . . .

  skyscrapers veering away

  a B-29 plunging to Ploesti

  sailboat scudding thru quivering seas

  trembling velvet red in the shimmering afternoon

  darkness of sea

  The sea which is cool and green

  The sea which is dark, cool, and green

  I am closing my window. Tears silence the wind.

  “they’ll pick us off like sittin’ ducks”

  Sundown. Manifesto. Color and cognizance.

  Then to cleave to a cast-off emotion,

  (clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience

  LXVII

  (clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience.

  There is no such thing as a breakdown

  To cover the tracks of “The Hammer” (the morning sky

  gets blue and red and I get worried about

  mountains of mounting pressure

  and the rust on the bolt in my door

  Some kind of Bowery Santa Clauses I wonder

  down the secret streets of Roaring Gap

  A glass of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-

  Bearden is dead. Chris is dead. Jacques Villon is dead.

  Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

  I wonder if people talk about me secretly? I wonder if I’m

  fooling myself

  about pills? I wonder what’s in the icebox? out we go

  to the looney movie and the grace of the make-believe bed

  LXVIII

  I am closing my window. Tears silence the wind.

  and the rust on the bolt in my door

  Mud on the first day (night, rather

  littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

  getting used to using each other

  my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of the west

  I think I was thinking when I was ahead

  To the big promise of emptiness

  This excitement to be all of night, Henry!

  Three ciphers and a faint fakir. And he walks.

  White lake trembles down to green goings on

  Of the interminably frolicsome gushing summer showers

  Everything turning in this light to stones

  Which owe their presence to our sleeping hands

  LXX

  AFTER ARTHUR RIMBAUD

  Sweeter than sour apples flesh to boys

  The brine of brackish water pierced my hulk

  Cleansing me of rot-gut wine and puke

  Sweeping away my anchor in its swell

  And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem

  Of
the star-steeped milky flowing mystic sea

  Devouring great sweeps of azure green and

  Watching flotsam, dead men, float by me

  Where, dyeing all the blue, the maddened flames

  And stately rhythms of the sun, stronger

  Than alcohol, more great than song,

  Fermented the bright red bitterness of love

  I’ve seen skies split with light, and night,

  And surfs, currents, waterspouts; I know

  What evening means, and doves, and I have seen

  What other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen

  LXXI

  “I know what evening means, and doves, and I have seen

  What other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen:”

  (to cleave to a cast-off emotion—Clarity! Clarity!)

  my dream a drink with Richard Gallup we discuss the code

  of the west of the interminably frolicsome

  gushing summer showers getting used to “I am closing

  my window.” my dream a drink with Henry Miller

  too soon for the broken arm. Hands point to a dim frieze

  in the dark night. Wind giving presence to fragments.

  Shall it be male or female in the tub?

  Barrel-assing chevrolets grow bold. I summon to myself

  “The Asiatic” (and grawk go under, and grackle disappear,)

  Sundown. Manifesto. Color and cognizance.

  And to cleave to a semblance of motion. Omniscience

  LXXII

  A SONNET FOR DICK GALLUP

  /JULY 1963

  The logic of grammar is not genuine it shines forth

  From The Boats We fondle the snatches of virgins

  aching to be fucked

  And O, I am afraid! Our love has red in it and

  I become finicky as in an abstraction!

  (. . . but lately

  I’m always lethargic . . . the last heavy sweetness

  through the wine . . . )

  Who dwells alone

  Except at night

  (. . . basted the shackles the temporal music the spit)

  Southwest lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift on