The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (65 page)

FOR TOM CAREY

Yea, though I walk

through the Valley of

the Shadow of Death, I

Shall fear no evil—

for I am a lot more

insane than

This Valley.

You’ll do good if you play it like you’re

not getting paid.

But you’ll do it better if the motherfuckers pay you.

(Motto of
THE WHORES

&
POETS GUILD
—trans.

from The Palatine Anthology

by Alice Notley &

Ted Berrigan. 20 Feb 82)

With

daring

and

strength

men

like

Pollock,

de Kooning,

Tobey,

Rothko,

Smith

and

Kline

filled

their

work

with

the

drama,

anger,

pain,

and

confusion

of

contemporary

life.

Just

like

me.

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is

on St. Mark’s Place too, beneath a white moon.

I’ll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded

against what is hurled down at me in my no hat

which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress

under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing

by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall

her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American

will be too; but

I’ll be shattered by then

But now I’m not and can also picture white clouds

impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken

to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,

buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie

her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling

across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941—

I’ll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight

they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.

FOR JIM CARROLL

Beauty, I wasn’t born

High enough for you: Truth

I served; her knight: Love

In a Cold Climate.

“Listen, you cheap little liar . . . ”

This distinguished boat

Now for oblivion, at sea, a

Sweet & horrid joke in dubious taste,

That once, a Super-Ego of strength, did both haunt

Your dreams and also save you much bother, brought

You to The American Shore; Out of The Dead City carried you,

Free, Awake, in Fever and in Sleep, to the

City of A Thousand Suns where, there, in the innocent heart’s

Cry & the Mechanized Roar of one’s very own this, The 20th

Century, one’s

Own betrayed momentary, fragmented Beauty got

Forgotten, one Snowy Evening, Near a Woods, because

The Horse Knows the Way; because of, “The Hat on the Bed,” and

Because of having “Entered the Labyrinth, finding No Exit.”, is

That self-same ship, the “U.S.S. Nature” by name, that D. H. Lawrence

wrote one of his very best poems about;

THE SHIP OF DEATH. (a/k/a THE CAT CAME BACK)!

Reborn a rabbi in Pinsk, reincarnated

backward time,

I gasped thru my beard full of mushroom barley

soup;

two rough-faced blonde Cossacks, drinking

wine,

paid me no heed, not remembering their futures—

Verlaine, & Rimbaud.

There isn’t much to say to Marxists in Nicaragua

with .45’s

afraid of the U.S. Secretary of State, eating

celery.

Back in New York, “we saw a beautiful movie,”

Allen said. “It made me cry.”

“I hadda loan him my big green handkerchief, so

he could blow his nose!” Peter Orlovsky laughed.

Abraham & Sarah.

Naomi—(“Call me not Naomi,

call me Mara; for The Almighty

hath dealt very bitterly with me.”)

Simon, who shall be called Peter.

St. Paul (formerly Saul).

Joseph of Arimathea.

Cain.

Libby Notley (“when I was six I found out my

real name was Alice”);

Francis Russell O’Hara; Didi Susan Dubleyew;

Ron Padgett; Dick Gallup;

STEVE CAREY:

Kenneth Koch (formerly Jay Kenneth Koch):

Jackson Pollock; “Rene” Rilke; William Carlos

Williams;

my mother, Peg;

Guillaume Apollinaire;

“Joe” Liebling: John Kerouac: Joe Howard

Brainard:     “Babe Ruth”:

Tom Clark; Anselm Hollo; Clark Coolidge;

George & Katie Schneeman.

Samuel R. “Chip” Delany.

Anselm!   Edmund!

Get me an ashtray!

No one in this house

In any way is any longer sick!

And I am the Lord, and owner

of their faces.

They call me, Dad!

I had angst.

Caesar,

I could care less

whether your Grandma

was black,

or white—

you’ll always be a nigger to me.

GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS

(TRANS. TED BERRIGAN)

I hear walking in my legs

Aborigines in the pipes

I am the man your father was

Innocence bleats at my last

Black breaths—and tho I was considered a royal

pain in the ass by

Shakespeare’s father, the high alderman,

All the deadly virtuous plague my death!

I could care less?

fiction appears) for I and only one person’s

eyes. In my more iconoclastic

moments I stifle the impulse to send

such poems, which I do come across

them, back to their authors, taking

same authors to task for presuming

too much and asking them to send

their poem right on to the faceless

As if you hands were innocent

and the lobsters in your groin

And the heart of the scarecrow opens like snow

And something in the branches makes the pigeons

spread their wings

You reach into the branches and grab the red herrings—

the

Fountain of Youth is uncharted

You are its overflowing outline

You can only laugh.

FOR JEFF WRIGHT

Stoop where I sit, am crazy

in sunlight on, brown as stone,

like me, (stoned, not brown; I

am white, like writer trash), see

that stick figure, chalky, also

white, with tentative grin, walking

toward us? Feel your blood stirring?

That’s Eileen, as typical as sunlight

in the morning; typical as the morning

the morning after a typical Eileen night

FOR GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

When she comes, landscape listens; heavenly

Winter afternoons; shadows hold their breath;

she is the seal on despair; affection; tunes

sent us of the air.

None may teach her anything; weight;

despair; imperious death;

She is light; she is certain; she

is where the meanings are.

Going, even, she’s impressive; like

internal distance; death; Myles

Where the meanings are; she sends us;

She is of and like the air; a star.

I like First Avenue

when the time of the fearful trip is come

& the Lady is for burning, as the day’s begun

to duck

behind the Levy-Cohen Housing Project

whose sand-pond can be seen still, through binoculars,

by the First Tyrant-Mistress of The Near West;

sky falls; & night; & me, too, yr star:

When the lilacs come I’ll flip

til thrice I hear your call, darkling thrush.

The Pope’s learning Welsh:

(he’s an alien)

More power to him!

Spring banged me up a bit

& bruised & ruddy &

devastatingly attractive

I made

2
A. M
.
Phone call to Bill Brown

‘How long is your foot?’

‘Oh about 12 inches.’

‘Well stick it up your Ass.’

“and Day rang from pool to hilltop

like a bell.”

those exhausting dreams

of angry identification, a dog

like ego, Snowflakes as kisses—the

ability to forget is a sign of a

happy mind—at least,

Philip thinks it is, & he’s happy,

sometimes.

But I don’t
want
no cornbread &

molasses!

Never. I don’t
want
to live in the untidy

moment! Forget it. I don’t want no

lover

who always wants to be the boss!

Want! Want! Want!—it’s all right, I’m

Just having a little fun, Mother.

unhappy love affairs,

are only for madmen

revery

or,

FOR KATIE SCHNEEMAN

a metal fragrant white

Capitol of beantown

sans dome; rubber & metal pieces

of Kentucky; chicken-bones &

Light Cavaliers; jeans; tops; balls; caps;

“Now I have to have life

after dreams”

“& now I’m running running

running

down the King’s Highway”

“& now I am Lily, Rosemary, & the Jack

of Hearts;

One-eyed Jill; Pietro Gigli; 2 cats:

Howard; & Katie, my heart; & mine”

“Mine is melancholy”

“Mine is ½ gristle, ½ dust”

“Mine is Luke Skywalker, & his parts:

the Wookie part; the Landro part; the Han dynasty;