The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Page 6
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