The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (66 page)

C
-3
PO
”

“Mine is this ‘Squeeze-box’;

the Good; the Beautiful; the True; & Bucky Dent.

He just
has
to have a chance to be in The Hall of Fame!”

All pleased rise

Cleansed

Pure

In perfect order go.

FOR ANSELM HOLLO

Light takes the bat, &

shoulder; who can tell us

how? (I wake to sleep, &

take my waking fast). O lowly

worm, falling down upstairs,

& down is a lowly thing, how

fast is no longer a joy?

Dear Management’s beautiful daughters,

sweetly

made Marion, & Alice, the Elephant—

the

trouble with you two is just happened for

the first time ever, which is once more than

I can hold my head up under ever after again—If

Anybody asks you who made up this song, just tell ’em

It was me, & I’ve done been here & gone.

FOR PHIL WHALEN

“Do you

think I’ll

ever see

him again?

“Beauty

whose action is

no stronger than a

flower?

“I think I’m about to be

surpassed again.

“Do you think we’d better go to

California?”

“Naw. Don’t be silly. Send him a round

cheese or something. A can

of peaches.”

Take off your head; unloose

the duck; lift up your

heart, and quack! I am the

Morning Glory, I take no

back talk. . . .

Take me twice each morning;

be funny that way.

In Morton’s Grille I

always get nostalgia for Morton’s Grille

which wasn’t called Morton’s Grille

at all, but
THE RIVIERA CAFE
, way out on

Elmwood Avenue. They had a machine,

this was before
TV
, you put a quarter in

& a zany 3 minute movie of the Hatfields

shooting at the McCoys out a log cabin

window came on; the McCoys ran out of

bullets, so they started singing, “Pass the

Biscuits, Mirandy!” Grandma’s biscuits were

so hard, terrible, but saved the day when thrown

at the real McCoys.

FOR HARRIS SCHIFF

Naked

with a lion

a small lesbian

smoking a pipe

some silent young men

“Shit!” they exclaim

“Fuck all women!”

They all start singing patriotic songs

She was pretty swacked by the time she

Put the spaghetti & meatballs into the orgy pasta

bowl—There was mixed salt & pepper in the

“Tittie-tweak” pasta bowl—We drank some dago red

from glazed girlie demi-tasse cups—after

which we engaged in heterosexual intercourse, mutual

masturbation, fellatio, & cunnilingus. For

dessert we stared at a cupboard full of art critic

friends, sgraffitoed into underglazes on vases. We did

have a very nice time.

“This ability, to do things well,

and to do them with precision & with

modesty, is nothing but plain & simple

Vanity.

“It is Pride overfertilizes the soil

till alone the blue rose, grow—I know

Dante Alighieri told me so.”

(signed:)

THE SLOTH

FOR ANNE & REED

Anne Lesley Waldman says, No Fossil Fuels

The best of the free times are still yet to come

With all of our running & all of our coming if we

Couldn’t laugh we’d both go insane—with changes

of attitudes

At the Horse Latitudes—if we couldn’t laugh, we’d

All be insane—

but right here with you, the living seems true, &

the gods are not burning us just to keep warm.

A sparrow whispers in my loins

Geranium plus Geronimo forever

Across the wide Missouri

We drive us.

“In My Green Age”

like they say,

much compassion,

little dismay,

such exuberance—

Loving:        Caught:       Back
:

There’s a place—

“tho are be were as now is now. . . .”

With sound         Sun melts snow

Elms fill in

and wind blows green. (“When the wind

was green” . . . ) This is the Spring I knew

would come.

The rosy finches row through.

day moves       then, my room—    lightnights

bat their yellow dust against

the windows, & I dream I am black

running, rising, to the sea:

Evenings, night heroes stop here, or,

gently pass

The trees release    into sky.

Travelling by,

from grove to Mars,

SEVEN
arc over.

I call them angels.     O, angels,

O, common & amazing.

. . . was 30 when we met. I was

21. & yet he gave me the impression

he was vitally interested in what I

was doing & what was inside me! One

was Tremendous Power over all friends.

Power to make them do whatever. Wed. Bed.

Dig the streets. Two is speeding and pills

to beef up on on top of speeding ills. Three,

assumptions. Four, flattery. Five, highly

articulate streets, & when he saw me I was witty.

I was good poetry. Love was all I was. As

the case is, he had or was a charm

of his own. I had the unmistakable signature

of a mean spirit. Very close to breaking in.

I was like Allen Ginsberg’s face, Jack’s face,

eye to eye on me. Face of Allen. Face of Kerouac.

It was all in California. Now,

all of my kingdoms are here.

The Final Chapters

of the History

of

Modernism are

going to be written

in blood. Yours,

you poor Immigrants!

AFTER VACHEL LINDSAY

High School windows are always broken;

Somebody’s always throwing rocks,

Somebody always throws a stone,

Playing ugly playing tricks.

Jr. High windows are always broken, too:

There are plenty of other windows that never

get broken;

No one’s going into Midtown & throwing rocks

At & through big, Midtown, store-windows.

Even the Grade School windows are always

Broken: where the little kids go to school.

Something is already long past terribly wrong.

End of The Public-School Windows Song
.

The Chinese ate their roots; it

made them puke. We don’t know til

we see our own. You are irresistible.

It makes me blush. How you

see yourself is my politics. O Turkey,

Resonance in me that didn’t even want to know

what it was, still there, don’t ever make jokes

about reality in Berkeley, they don’t

understand either one there.

Donald Allen, Donald Keene, Wm. “Ted” deBary,

it’s hard to respect oneself,

but I would like to be free.

China Night. Cry of cuckoo. Chinese moon.

FOR WYSTAN AUDEN, &
THELONIOUS SPHERE MONK

This night my soul, & yr soul, will be wrapped in

the same dark shroud

While whole days go by and later their years;

Sleep, Big Baby, sleep your fill

With those daimones of Earth, the Erinyes,

Women in the night who moan yr name.

“Man, that was Leadbelly!”

Now that I

With you

Since

Leaving

Each day seems

The night

Tired with

Languisht

Suffering

While you

Nor I

With that

I feel.

Take these beads from my shoulders

There’s your paintings on the walls

Turn around slow & slowly

Help me make it through the night

Then I’ll take you out for breakfast

Never see you all my life

FOR DOUGLAS OLIVER, DENISE RILEY, & WENDY MULFORD

If someone doesn’t help me soon I

believe I’m going to lose my mind, I

mean my tone of voice, my first clue

as to what this speaker is like. Help! (he).

is a beautiful piece of work in that it

has to spill out & still stand as

meeting own requirements: dedicated to Betty

Chapman of Coon, Minnesota: take me deeper

via from the outside, you, my unforgettables, my

best. Hand, 2 hands, wheel, & blood; O broken-hearted

Mystery that used to sing to me: now I’m too misty,

and too much in love. O lovely line that doesn’t give an

inch, but gives.

He was wounded & so

was having

Moat Trouble.

paid Lillian Gish $800,000 to

disappear so lovely so pure like milk

seems but isn’t because of the fall-out

but it would have only cost me five & didn’t,

so I did, but when Garbo is the temptress

doesn’t it seem absolutely perfectly

right? just being there? nothing

costs anything that’s something, does it?

like soaking at a Rosenthal / Ceravolo Poetry Reading

or blazing while “The White Snake” unfolds

itself: in the city, there one feels free, while

in the country, Peace, it’s wonderful, & worrisome

I’ve never seen a peaceful demonstration, have you?

NO MORE NUKES

FOR TOM PICKARD

I am the man yr father & Mum was

When you were just a wee insolent tyke

until at 5 o’clock in the afternoon

on one of the days of infamy, & there

were many, & more to come yet, the goons

& the scabs of Management set upon us

Jarrow boys, & left us broken, confused

and alone in the ensuing brouhaha. They

outnumbered us 5 to 1; & each had club

knife or gun. Kill them, kill them, my

sons. Kill their sons.

The Admirals brushed

the dandruff off their

epaulets and steamed

on the H. M. S. Hesper

toward Argentina. I

like doggies on their “little

feet”, don’t you, I said, but

they kept rolling over, beneath

the tracer bullets and

the Antarctic moon, beneath the

daunting missiles and the Prince

in his helicopter, they were

steaming toward interesting places,

to meet interesting people, and

kill them. They were at sea,

and it was also beneath them.

The St. Mark’s Poetry Project

is closed for the summer. But

all over the world, poets

are writing poems. Why?

In order to make friends with the natives

In my home town, I let them cut off my face

By the shores of Lake Butter, on

The 7th anniversary of their arrival

In our Utopia. It was the First of May.

Nose-less, eye-less, speechless, and

With no ears, I understood their reasoning,

And will spend the rest of my days

helping them cover their asses. Free.

FOR ERJE AYDEN

“There’s no place

to go

my heart,

for all your

100,000

words.”

I go on loving you

Like water Yggdrasil

Where you are 100,000 flowers

bloom    while across the

broken eggshell field the ink

rises from the fossils, as my

tongue drifts lightly into the Gobi Desert of yr

ear      & we become a person’s lungs & take to the air.

Heart of my heart

Fair, & enjoyable

Harmlessly spooky

Loving her back

FOR ALICE NOTLEY

Before I was alive

I were a long, dark, continent

Lonely from the beginning of time

Behind Midnight’s screen on St. Mark’s Place

And my thin, black, rage

Did envelop my pale, dusty, willowy-green-

Shell in dark bricks & black concrete

’til I was a Hell that was not fire, but only hot.

Then I called you to bring me

One more drink, & your good legs

And translucent heart brought me

A city, which I put on, & became

Glad, & I walked toward Marion’s &

Helena’s, to be seen, & found beautiful,

And was, & I came alive, & I cried Love!

(AFTER JACK KEROUAC)

O Will Hubbard in the night! A great writer today he is,

he is a shadow hovering over Western Literature, and

no great writer ever lived without that soft and

tender curiosity, verging on maternal care, about what

others say & think, (think & say), no great writer

ever packed off from this scene on earth without

amazement like the amazement he felt because

I was myself.

Lefty Cahir, loan me your football shoes again—

Clark, let me borrow the brown suit once more—

I hear a fluttering against my windows.

River, don’t rise above the 3rd floor.

I tried to put the coffee back together