The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (23 page)

as you look, in your eyes

Now it’s yours & now it’s yours & mine.

We’ll have another look, another time.

I won’t be at this boring poetry reading

again!

I’ll never have to hear

so many boring poems again!

& I’m sure I’ll never read them again:

In fact, I haven’t read them yet!

Anne won’t call me here again,

To tell me that Jack is dead.

I’m glad you did, Anne, though

It made me be rude to friends.

I won’t cry for Jack here again.

& Larry & Joan won’t visit me here

again.

Joan won’t cook us beautiful dinners,

orange & green & yellow & brown

here again.

& Thom Gunn & Carol & Don & I won’t get high

with Larry & Joan here again

Though we may do so somewhere else again.

Harris & John & Merrill won’t read

in my class, again.

Maybe there’ll never be such a class

again:

I think there probably will, though

& I know Allen will follow me round the world

with his terrible singing voice:

But it will never make us laugh here again.

You Can’t Go Home Again
is a terrific book:

I doubt if I’ll ever read that again.

(I read it first in Tulsa, in 1958)

& I’ll
never
go there again.

Where does one go from here? Because

I’ll go somewhere again. I’ll come somewhere again, too,

& You’ll be there, & together we can have a good time.

Meanwhile, you’ll find me right here, when you

come through, again.

Pat Dugan . . . . . . . . my grandfather . . . . . . . . throat cancer . . . . . . . . 1947.

Ed Berrigan . . . . . . . . my dad . . . . . . . . heart attack . . . . . . . . 1958.

Dickie Budlong . . . . . . . . my best friend Brucie’s big brother, when we were

five to eight . . . . . . . . killed in Korea, 1953.

Red O’Sullivan . . . . . . . . hockey star & cross-country runner

who sat at my lunch table

in High School . . . . . . car crash . . . . . . 1954.

Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan . . . . . . . . my friend, in High School,

Football & Hockey All-State . . . . . . car crash . . . . 1959.

Cisco Houston . . . . . . . . died of cancer . . . . . . . . 1961.

Freddy Herko, dancer . . . . jumped out of a Greenwhich Village window in 1963.

Anne Kepler . . . . my girl . . . . killed by smoke-poisoning while playing

the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital

during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist . . . .  1965.

Frank . . . . . . Frank O’Hara . . . . . . hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966.

Woody Guthrie . . . . . .  dead of Huntington’s Chorea in 1968.

Neal . . . . . . Neal Cassady . . . . . . died of exposure, sleeping all night

in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico . . . .  1969.

Franny Winston . . . . . . . . just a girl . . . . totalled her car on the Detroit–Ann

Arbor Freeway, returning from the dentist . . . . Sept. 1969.

Jack . . . . . .  Jack Kerouac . . . . . . died of drink & angry sicknesses . . . . in 1969.

My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.

TO JACK KEROUAC

Bye-Bye Jack.

See you soon.

FOR LARRY FOR CHRISTMAS

Head of lettuce, glass of chocolate milk

“I wonder if people talk about me, secretly?”

Guess I’ll call up Bernadette today, & Dick

The Swedish Policeman in the next room, the Knife

Fighter. Why are my hands shaking? I usually think

Something like The Williamsburg Bridge watching the sun come

Up, wetly round my ears,

Hatless in the white & shining air. Throbbing

Aeroplanes zoom in at us from out there; redder

For what happens there. Yes

It’s a big world,

It has a band-aid on it, & under it

TRUE LOVE
,

in a manner of speaking.

of morning, Iowa City, blue

gray & green out the window . . .

A mountain, blotchy pink & white

is rising, breathing, smoke

Now, lumbering, an Elephant, on

crutches, is sailing; down

Capitol, down Court, across

Madison & down College, cold

clear air

pouring in

Now those crutches

are being tossed aside; the

Elephant is beginning to rise

into the warm regulated air

of another altitude

That air is you, your breathing

Thanks for it, & thanks a lot

for Pasternak: The Poems of Yurii Zhivago

& Mayakovsky: Poems.

They were great.

Now it’s me.

FEBRUARY 18TH, 1971
FOR JOE

Here comes the Man!

He’s talking a lot.

New York to Providence

&

I’ve got a ticket to ride!

SMOKING PERMITTED

The seats are blue

I’m sitting with
MYSELF

A long naked pair of legs,

about 17 yrs old

stare at me

across the linoleum

aisle

I’m a mild Sex Fiend!

But you can’t fuck

here

& what could you say

to smooth 17 year old

faces?

NOTHING
!!

So, they lose out.