The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (16 page)

born again thinking of you

FOR PETER SCHJELDAHL

Wake up high up

frame bent & turned on

Moving slowly

& by the numbers

light cigarette

Dress in basic black

& reading a lovely old man’s book:

BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN

change

flashback

play cribbage on the Williamsburg Bridge

watching the boats sail by

the sun, like a monument,

move slowly up the sky

above the bloody rush:

break yr legs & break yr heart

kiss the girls & make them cry

loving the gods & seeing them die

celebrate your own

& everyone else’s birth:

Make friends forever

& go away

wake up

smoke pot

see the cat

love my wife

think of Frank

eat lunch

make noises

sing songs

go out

dig the streets

go home for dinner

read the Post

make pee-pee

two kids

grin

read books

see my friends

get pissed-off

have a Pepsi

disappear

The ground is white with snow.

It’s morning, of New Year’s Eve, 1968, & clean

City air is alive with snow, its quiet

Driving. I am 33. Good Wishes, brothers, everywhere

& Don’t You Tread On Me.

TO MY FAMILY & FRIENDS

“Hello”

originally

meant

“Be whole”

or

“Be healthy”

Today

it

simply

means

“Hello”

TO RON PADGETT

It’s 2 a.m. at Anne & Lewis’s which is where it’s at

On St. Mark’s Place hash and Angel Hairs on our minds

Love is in our heart’s (what else?) dope & Peter Schjeldahl

Who is new and valid in a blinding snowstorm

Inside joy fills our drugless shooting gallery

With repartee; where there’s smoke there’s marriage &, folks

That’s also where it’s at in poetry in 1967

Newly rich but still a hopeless invalid (in 1967)

Yes, it’s 1967, & we’ve been killing time with life

But at Lewis & Anne’s we live it “up”

Anne makes lovely snow-sodas while Lewis’s watchamacallit warms up this

New Year’s straight blue haze. We think about that

And money. With something inside us we float up

To & onto you, it, you were truly there & now you’re here.

TED BERRIGAN & DICK GALLUP

FOR JIM BRODEY

Left behind in New York City, & oof!

That’s the right one: sitting now, & I’m not thinking

Nor swishing; I’m just sitting. Getting over them two

Hamburgers. & that I think

Gets it all down. Here, anyway, I am

On this electric chair each breath nearer the last

Oceans of ripples solid under me: how come?

One pair of time-capsules trigger sweat

As one listens & one listening type types

LOOKS LIKE WE GONNA GET A LITTLE SNOW, HUH
?

I don’t know but you can bet something’s going

to happen.

Up is waiting

Between is barely there

Down is alive

Now is spinning

It’s a quick spin

Nevertheless

FOR BARRY & JACKY HALL

His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze

dear Berrigan. He died

I, an island, sail, and my shores toss

to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal,

My babies parade waving their innocent flags

The taste of such delicate thoughts

Opulent, sinister, and cold!

Sing in idiom of disgrace

Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

On the grass. To think of you alone

Your champion. Days are nursed on science fiction

For the fey Saint’s parade     Today

Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements.

Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night.

Back to books.    I read

on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness

bristling hate.

And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

Huddled on the structured steps

The bulbs burn, phosphorescent, white,

Shall it be male or female in the tub?

Pale like an ancient scarf, she is unadorned,

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

Suffering the poem of these states!

& you tremble at the books upon the earth

& he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

No.   One     Two    Three     Four    Today

It’s 8:30 p.m. in New York and I’ve been running

Wind giving presence to fragments.

at every hand, my critic

Flinging currents into pouring streams

The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

Fathers and teachers, and daemons down under the sea,

The singer sleeps in Cos.    Strange juxtaposed

“I wanted to be a cowboy.” Doughboy will do

As my strength and I walk out and look for you

Winds flip down the dark path of breath

Released by night (which is not to imply    clarity

She is warm. Into the vast closed air of the slow

The wind’s wish is the tree’s demand

On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar.

Is there room in the room that you room in?

How much longer shall I be able to inhabit the Divine

deep in whose reeds great elephants decay;

loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

He buckles on his gun, the one

He wanted to know the
names

And the green rug nestled against the furnace

Your hair moves slightly,

He is incomplete, bringing you Ginger Ale

The cooling wind keeps blowing, and

He finds he cannot fake

Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

Fuscous with murderous dampness

But helpless, as blue roses are helpless.

Into the closed air of the slow

And then one morning to waken perfect-faced

The blue day! In the air winds dance

Sleep half sleep half silence and with reason

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

in my paintings for they are present

The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

A watchdog barks in the night

Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky

What thwarts this fear I love

No lady dream around in any bad exposure

absence of passion, principles, love. She murmurs

Is not genuine    it shines forth from the faces

littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

FOR BILL BERKSON

Seven thousand feet over

The American Midwest

In the black and droning night

Sitting awake and alone

I worry the stewardess . . .

Would you like some coffee, sir?

How about a magazine?

No thanks. I smile and refuse.

My father died today. I

Fifteen hundred miles away

Left at once for home, having

received the news from mother

In tears on the telephone.

He never rode in a plane.

 . . . Not far from here he was inside his head there were some sands. Of these 50 gave way to a room, latter resembling manure.

To the right, in a kit, a sort of woman-spanned pond absorbed water cake would form at the bottom keep that in.

The hut rust bin thanks piece of colour.

A little pool gravel made him first step aside. Gus walked up under the arc-light as far as the first person, perceived God.
She
was God, having lance, he took her by the behind and kissed her butt. Gus want fuck, to get the information.

He spun off her dress. It was there, and

very beautiful, his pecker.

Gus live entirely by hemselve and for hemselve.

He spen days taking off bottles, furnishing room, best system ea heat. For Christ sake! Tryd smoke ham wash.

There was a large cop faggot pursued the secret butterfly near fourteen glass jars tomato and green peas coated the stoppers with quicklime cheese wrapped round with linen strip, then lunged into boiling water: it steamed. He por in difference of temperature, he explode. Only, he were saved.

Then he poured some old sardine, laid veal cutlet inside, and sank the copper. He ball him. He cold. He out again.

He continue the experiment. Shut up. The tin egg chicory lobster fish congratulate hemselve.

Ike Heraclitus, or, “Gus,” still elusive, flit on ahead.

Despair defeat labor. The woman fell ill. She laid the copper. It glistens as if about to erupt. At that moment the secret fell in the eye, grace over the golden woman’s form.

Then Gus made lunch.

and I am lost in the ringing elevator

he waggles              the fat whiteness of milk

sweeping me to the top

one is reminded of constellations

there there were pine needles

dreams of symbolism

the part that goes over the fence last

star light             the cord “reaches”

it was turkey

sheepish lights         you turned me on

reflecting dilemmas              majorities

Bildungsroman of the bathrobe ride

and the briny sound of the alarm

a funny feeling prompted me out of bed

Love

the top had been “sliced”

ribbons your presence on the white and green sheet

I asked for a Hook-and-Ladder

takes             The End.

in the ideal society pants

Now          we can make some explosions

shine like money

Francis is not diminutive                           thanks

others are less legs

thighs wings breast

Caress the window grease, John

as you are not yet 12

19?         40?                  who pulls me down?

that night we slept reverently                            (you lust

I must lust in-

vigorating            the sixteen genre

dragon             bottle-opener

spiral cuff-link aerial

facade of the wonderful orient word

“doilies”

Overhead the moon is out

blacking my shoes, face

we were all livid, numinous

Things whip toward the center

licking the palate of his headache

this indicates your future

meditates on his wish which is

hooked onto the top and draped archly

Childhood fuses            a mystery play

Take off your beautiful blouse, you foolish girl!

which ribbons the marvelous laurel             the loop-

Are you list-            with this ring I

eye thee

(that was later, out west, after more baseball

some turkey

a wristwatch, dictionary, sniper suit, rifle

to “meditate”

(is there room in the tune to atune in?)

They were incensed at his arrival

Now we are glad             it was stinky

some paint them black in the face to be quaint or something

one symbol fact seems valid

I don’t know

all hate it to be right

on the cards

which are sometimes funky (aesthetic) having

snow of feet and that a domination.

Then we had presence.

FOR BERNADETTE MAYER

Kings                . . . panties

I imagine these here

the difference between past and dreaming

An uncomfortable Dodge

The word dissolves

iron things

Horses for example

then there is the other which may be called

the familiar floating oasis

larger than whiter

brazen, resourceful

. . . sinning palms balance it

perhaps these are wax detectors

and create situations

a magic shell for silliness

before the law tables

of this here

Heart

That has been tinted white

by way of exercise

the Political

glazes

These eyes

breaks

into the grocery store where

is sick               cannot work

twisted stick

industrial berry shoes are established

above all                   . . . be double

or collapse

the wall covered with glass character weather

M’sieur Negro-at-3
A.M.

Charioteer

His burning problem

it doesn’t stop the music

the magic