The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (58 page)

I think

No, I’d just as soon be where you are, asleep,

Awake, kissing your neck before we’d fuck a lot

From behind holding your breasts which are warm

Nobody’s business but our own

Sleep, or don’t: do whatever you feel like

Stay as long as you like.

Thursday & Friday:

(Southampton, New York City)

Wake up & crash land

pat the old lady

have a drink

tie shoes

take bus

change trains

go, to the doctor

score

HIGH

eat, beans &

bread pudding, get

slightly smashed on cheap red

take a walk

to clear your head

smoke hash / shoot smack

nod out / wake up with a start / take off

Go to Canada.

borrow 50 from George

Spend 2 for
Tarantula

and 4 for a little Horse

and 5 for two meals

and 1 or 2 for King-size Chesterfields

and 2.50 to ride the bus

and 2 more for taxicabs

& 1 for tips & 25 cents for 1 more

bus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . buy a ticket

for 31. Check your bag, free.

Steal
Night Song
, &
Prison Letters

From
A
Soledad Brother
. Wait . . . . . . Fly:

15 cents is plenty to keep you in the sky.

Missing you

in Air Canada

Acid

aquamarine

squares

moving

up ashtray

Smoking

a soft white chick

head red

chic, tacky

fur ruffling over

leather

Or is that what that is?

“18”

she says,

to

the pretty, plain girl below

severe auburn

hair

her red shirt, cowboy

left pocket half-full of bosom

& on down

sleek curve of denim

thigh-meat

weird shoelets

tiny flesh-holes

Acid

green floor

waving, or

wavering

More & more

floor

shoes, black, “straight”, square

out front

of monumental black

dress

above

fatty calves, no

ankles

A city lady, O, obese!

Not me!

I’m just sitting

next the other green, plush

a sofa

rich

with recent presences

now presumably inside:

Light up!

a

slow cigarette

with my

Most Valuable Player

lighter:

Now

A Head

sucking

smokey air “in”         breathing out

Waiting

in the Waiting Room

to speak of Necessities:

& Now

my turn.

“Hello, again!

Remember me, Doctor?”

“Of course! You’re

the Poet. Come in,

What is it, this time?”

FOR TONY TOWLE

Mid-Friday morn, 10 o’clock, I go to India

At the suggestion of a man I barely know: André

Malraux. Benares. The first house I enter I see

A photograph of the murderer of Ghandi on the wall.

“There are too many Reactionaries still, in India,” I remember

Nehru telling André Malraux. I step closer to the picture,

Read the words printed at the bottom:
photograph by

Rudolph Burckhardt
. This is unreal! I leave India, return

On foot to Hyattsville, Maryland. 1705 Abraham Lincoln Road.

My hosts are absent still. Their children have swallowed Rat

Poison, & they are at the Hospital, caught in the puke

& ye shall be healed, that scene, fright, terror, nothing serious

In the end except it might have been. . . . The Rolling Stones fill this place

A sweet speed-freak is lost in Harlem. Mr. Chester Himes. Life

Going on quite merrily Hunting For The Whale. A wealth

Of fresh Whale-tracks considerably cheers us up.

Winter. You think of sex, but it’s asleep

Briefly you contemplate points of revolution

A naked artist smokes. Dreaming, you wake up & you say

“Everybody is a hero, everybody makes you cry.” Ah,

This morning I was footprints in the snow

Listening to the words from the burning bush all the day

We sleep & dream our lives away. You dream

I don’t live here, & when you wake up, what a relief,

I do. Someone to light the fire, babble for you

I dream a 7 ft. tall Watusi in full tribal regalia

& carrying a long spear promises to send me crumbly
LSD

In a New York
Times
. He does, & I am pleased, but amazed

It’s 9:45 of a Saturday morning, December the 26th. Through eight

Window-panes gray white light is pouring in. No, it’s leaning in

Sitting in, by the fire, a chair. “God, more money, please!” No

Coal in the bin. But there is the fire, still in sight. And there is

More wood, to light. The fire leaps up the flue. The artist’s smoke

Is fixed in space. Above my head is wood. I can’t see a warm bed, &

Inside it, you. But I’m beginning to see The light, not

a bit older, & less cold than last night.

It’s just another April almost morning, St. Mark’s Place

Harris & Alice are sleeping in beds; it’s far too early

For a Scientific Massage, on St. Mark’s Place, though it’s

The
right
place if you feel so inclined. Later

Jim Carroll’s double bums a camel from a ghost Aram Saroyan

Now, there goes Chuck, friend from out of a no longer existent past

Into the just barely existent future, wide-awake, purposeful

As Aram Saroyan’s dad: a little bit more lovely writing, & then

Maybe a small bet on New York’s chances this morning. It’s not

Exactly love, nor is it faith, certainly it isn’t hope; no

It’s simply that one has a feeling, yes

You always do have a feeling & over the years it’s become habit

Being moved by that; to be moved having a feeling,

So it’s perfectly natural to get up & go to the telephone

To lay a little something down on your heart’s choice

Calling right from where you are, in Anne’s place,

As to your heart’s delight, here comes sunlight.

FOR HENRY KANABUS

A colorful river of poetry drives forward

into what has never been named

where all women are fiery

all roses are scary

and all kisses are eternal

at its worst it leans into

soft oceans of romantic mush.

A little loving can solve a lot of things.

If a man is in solitude

the world is translated

and wings sprout from the shoulders of

The Slave.

In my solitude

I have seen things so clearly

that were not true.

For example

once I kissed a woman and nothing happened.

He is not really thinking.

His poems have too many

flaming ears

queens of daybreak

fallen stars and solar arrows

Power to the people and all like that.

He loves these things.

2.

When truth throws up

its translucent roosters

onto fountains of eggnog

He wants you to see

right through these things

Just behind them are

massive granite anguish shapes

humped over, feet on,

snout to, the earth.

If you want to see

the light show

touch that lump, you rooster!

3.

Who can like that?

I must admit I dislike

seeing human life

compared to something smaller than itself

making love

compared to a comma

death to periods.

4.

García Lorca pinched me again!

5.

I like about twenty lines

of this poem, the dust

of that mud which speaks

to sharpen silences. I like

the fiery butterfly puzzles of

this pilgrimage toward clarities

of great mud intelligence and feeling. Not

more deep, more shallow!

6.

Only the poem exists, like an

Ambassador, the American ambassador to

say, Africa. Like a vegetable, which says,

“Africa is hollow.” Like an empty tourist.

And then the tourist hears

The drums of the vegetables.

Africa flies up into his own frail arms.

“I feel an absence inside, when

I hear a lovely poem . . . True, as

it is good, knowing

that glasses are to drink from.”

7.

It is good, absence.

Robert Creeley reading

Mark Twain and Mr. Clemens

STOPS

while Philip Whalen

writing

“The Epic Airplane Notebook Poem”

Pauses
 . . .

to discuss their drinking problem

with the Hostesses in the Sky

I’m watching

writing

drinking

waiting for my change.

(AFTER MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN)

a band of musicians:         up tight

care not:         like

understanding:         dismissal

waiving:        automatic pilot

compared to:         no baloney

began to say:         shut up

engraft feathers in a damaged wing:         take a hike

experience to the full:         kill

cultivators of land they do not own:         friends

absolute:         ready

pity:         pull leg of

language here fails as mathematics has before it:         at

is skilled in:         oblivious

ended:         borne

delicate constitutions:         fascists

promoted:         serf

one who dispenses with clothes:        liar

lip to lip being the first, lip:       right on

to heart, through the ear, is the second:         “poof!”

graduate:       push around

too clever riders are not good at horseplay:         “Ma Femme”

food on a journey:         chow

center of the earth:         
hara

the full moon:         a friend to man

pineapples:         heavy

having no wants, quite content:         chatty

the power of slowly moving jaws:      camp

exquisite:         available night & day

critical, marking and epoch:         straight

And Into Glory Peep:       just for the hell of it.

dying now, or already dead

hello. It’s only Ted, interrupting

in case I hadn’t said, as clearly