The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (62 page)

eyes clear             & blue         courteously

gravely rise

& lightly, turn                 turn          &turn

again

& softly, go.

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.

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

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.)

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

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.

(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!”

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!” . . .

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.

FOR ALICE NOTLEY

:
Ms. Sensitive Princess:

As furious as Ho Chih Minh

As clever as Mr. Pound

As graceful 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?

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

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.

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!

FOR SHELLEY

Oh you, the sprightliest & most puggish, the brightest star

Of all my lively loves, all Ladies, & to whom once I gave up