The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (63 page)

My heart entire, thenceforth yours to keep forever

Locked up in your own heart’s tiniest room, my best hope, or

To throw away, carelessly, at your leisure, should that prove

Yr best pleasure, Who is that dumpy matron, decked out in worn & faded

Shabby army fatigues which pooch out both before & behind, now screeching

Out my small name in a dingy Public Library on the lower East Side? & now

Scoring me painfully in philistine Commedia dell’arte farce, low summer fare

Across a pedestrian Ferry’s stretch of water in some meshugganah Snug Harbor

And once more, even, fiercely pecking at me in the cold drab Parish Hall of

Manhattan’s Landmark Episcopal Church, where a once Avant-garde now Grade

School

Poetry Project continues to dwell, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bouwerie, whose

Stones hold in tight grip one wooden leg & all of Peter Stuyvesant’s bones?

Who is
that midget-witch who preens & prances as she flaunts her lost wares,

Otherwise hidden beneath some ancient boy’s flannel-shirt, its tail out &

flapping,/ & who

Is shrieking even now these mean words:

“Hey Ted!” “Hey, you Fat God!”

& calling me, “Fickle!”             “Fickle!”

& she points a long boney finger

at me, & croons, gleefully.

“Limbo!”      “That’s where you really live!”

& She is claiming to be you

as she whispers, visciously,

“Alone, &

In Pain, in Limbo, is where you live in your little cloud-9 home      Ted!

Pitiful!”

She has a small purse, & removing it from one of her shopping bags

She brings out from inside that small purse, my withered heart; & lifting it

high into the air over her head with her two hands, she turns it upside down

unzips its fasteners, & shakes it out over the plywood floor, happily. “Empty,”

she cries loudly, “just like I always knew it would be!” “Empty!” “Empty” “Empty!”

I watch her, and think,

That’s not really you, up there, is it,

Rose? Rochelle? Shelley?

O, don’t be sad, little Rose!   It’s still

Your ribbon I wear, your favor tied to the grip of my lance, when I

ride out to give battle,

these golden days.

I can’t sleep walking through walls

taking pleasure in nothing of either of us

losing shape in room clock lamp air

heavy & the inverse who now may see desire

hovering over the body, lifting, diminish

down into oversize misshaper head-size, inside

thin down to the fine bright line of white light

across under distant locked door too far for human feet

although your face stays, while I can will, & perform

in the same way that this is performance

you give it body, that face, and it is your body

it is yours & makes my own return

marks my own return striped with red, eyes, and lashes

that are stretch-marks breathing against your lashes.

“Members of the brain, welcome to New York City

on a soft day weighted with rain, where

slightly ahead of time, trifoliate, but humanly low,

reading in a man’s book this line, you fibrillate—

‘It is easier to die than to remember.’—

You turn to the nurse, but he shakes your hand

With the fin of a fish: &

Why this self-deprivation of full human heritage?

& this does not happen all that seldom.

However, these days you do get

to do what you will, if

not always what you would wish. Tell me, is it

Ghost or Dancer straight? Substance or shadow, who is swish?”

The weight of the rain remains inside

trying to read, sorting, ordering,

doing in the waves of her walking

from coffee to cup & back to chair, sitting unseen

by the bed

where by now I am

going in the execution position.

20th Century man strives toward the unfinished-machine exalted state.

Do not judge a man by his actions.

Birds cannot express the satisfaction I feel.

Happiness is often a rebound from hard work.

So, let us draw the patterns from the particulars—

In a pig’s butt!

Americans emphasize genius over discipline

& it isn’t going to work:

the temptation to remain alone in the house. . . .

to live Revolution his own way on a day-to-day basis. . . .

If you’re not out in 5 minutes, we’re going to burn the place down!

. . . . Never act one-on-one with a co-actor.

The past six months every knock on the door

has been someone in anguish. . . .

There I was

flat on my back at 30,000 ft.

getting my kicks

from a head

stuck in its own cloudy trousers

Your river is deep

it’s muddy

My river is wide brown mud from

it seems an unacceptable tube

You puzzle me

The corn is green

Goya doesn’t

Your blood is the color of baked clay

Your lines are always parallel

and short

Your orchards a chalice

Your acres one sandbox

after another

precariously balanced

tilt

you’re beneath my notice

up above my head it’s blue a funny thing

& I can hear a band of angels

& Joni James sing:

“it’s time you knew

Old girl you’re through

All you can do is count the raindrops

Falling on little girl blue.”

Now passing over Oklahoma

23 minutes in a life I

guess I was just passing through

That kind of love is awful

This wheel’s on fire

smoke clouds

hot wind

air-bag

Mayday
.

One and one

leave me alone

I have to get some sleep

It’s tiring always being a bore

sassy & fast but kind of crass

why am I writing now

this is the other thing to do

It’s all I do

you can go home again

Philadelphia likes that

Merlin & Herman like it too

The Prisoner of Second Avenue

Hubba Hubba

Help, he’s an intellectual dear dear

oh dear. The Mamas & The Papas

got old. The fat one died. I’m

practically asleep now.

Sunset Blvd:

Peter lives there. With a Filipino gardener

& his Brooke.

It’s only a mystery.

I’m positively boiling myself

It’s not that I yearn for him

I just need him

In desperation I got on top

What an ugly view

looking down at you

Huge collapsed Mountain Enters from Stage Right,

Deftly lowers Selfe to Floor, next to Bed,

&, Seated, Pours Forth with Basso-Profundo Eloquence

in Seemingly Limitless string (Stream),

Icebergs, fragments

of the Poem of These States,

from Backwards to 1977—

1978.

no strange countries

no women

no dance, no clothes

still a wild & strange tune

a song that rises in the blood

not much blood

no virgins

no velvet

no tropical laziness

more eyes though

two more

two eyes,

what do you make of that?

He’s literally a shambles as a person

who is in a responsible position Hanging

by a thread in one of the rooms of his

house Essentially what she is doing skitters

off into the air so slovenly that the most

fragmented shell does it to him & he does it

right back to her. This reminds me of cynical

& other good things that are totally pretentious

but sort of hold water so I absolutely won’t

lift a finger why should I? to help these

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Iris

petal

Custom chopper

lake

smoke

hickory logs

whinny

Austin-Healy.

cuts

insect

nest

smoke.

A rosette

A niggertoe

flower

almond

Eggs

scooters

a shed

dirt

The Atlantic fleet.

PHOSPHORUS

Old Hen

and egg

an egg.

brooch in

a wet bird

diamond rodent

A rubber hose

crinoline

BLUE
         Aphid

Spore

Traps

Nucleii

Flocking

Vegetal

Belfry

Cages

Lava

Poppy

Wing

Aerial

Plankton

mirror

hutch

light

venom

hydrocarbons

premises

tubs

Eat

a pan

edible

antlers

deer

Cradle

Druid?

Hinges

Lava

Xerox

National

Eclair

MUCUS

HAY

Orchid

smoke

song

Pharmacology

piss

Church

Bourbon

Anutt

Old Mines

Turtle

Leper

smokes

a cake.

Scarlet Fever

a baton

Antique

Bank

Cover

of which

is number

.
FOR BRUCE ANDREWS

(FROM
FILM NOIR
).

I’m gonna embarrass

my mother

&

I’m gonna embarrass

my brother

&

I’m gonna embarrass,

even, my wife,

but I’m not gonna embarrass my life,

O No,

I’m not gonna embarrass my life,

not ever,

I’m not gonna embarrass my life,

Not for you, or her, or anyone.

I’m never gonna embarrass my life—

except if I do . . . 

& if it does,

Tough Shit.

FOR DENNIS COOPER

1.
Le Marteau Sans Maitre
: Pierre Boulez (Odyssey 32 16

0154); McKay, alto; Gleghorn,

flute; Thomas, viola; Kraft,

vibraphone; Remsen, xylorimba;

Norman, guitar; Goodwin, percussion;

Robert Craft conducting.

2.
Nonet
: Ludwig Spohr (London Stereo Treasury STS–1-5074)

Members of the Vienna Philharmonic.

3.
Missa Caput
: Guillaume Dufay (HNH 4009) Clemencic

Consort.

4.
Nonaah
: Roscoe Mitchell (Nessa N–9 / 10) Mitchell, Braxton,

Favours, Abrams, Lewis, Jarman, McMillan,
Threadgill.

5.
The Knot Garden
: Sir Michael Tippit (Philips 6700 063)

Minton, Barstow, Gomez, Hemsley, Carey,
Tear, Herincx; Orchestra of the Royal
Opera Covent House Garden, Colin Davis
conducting.

(Research by Art Lange, music critic,
The Chicago Reader
,

Chicago, Illinois.)

FOR ALICE

“I wrote these songs when

I was young

but, I’m here again”

stepping out

down Oude-Zuids Voorburgwal

above the yellow moon sliding

over the canals of Amsterdam

a sojourner macrocosm

carrying

SOJOURNER MICROCOSMS

& Frank’s
COLLECTED POEMS
along

with my own books of songs

going too quickly

but not too quickly

I hope

in the directions (a map)

of

De Kosmos

for to sing with my brothers & sisters

of the pleasures of living with you

that surround me now

in busy congenial gloomy evening air

where

tho I’m seething with rage

like any star

it’s cool

the half-darkness

of this not unusual day’s

oncoming night

because

everywhere I am you are

clear & bright & right.

In the Summer between 5th & 6th grade

We moved from Cranston near the City Line

down into the heart of South Providence, or, from

an urban suburb to the White Irish working-class

inner-city. It was 1946. From that

time on, in grade-school, no, that year was

anonymous except spasmodically, but from the

next year on, Jr-High School, on into & thru