The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (68 page)

“Above his head

  
changed”

And then one morning to waken perfect-faced

Before my life began

cold rosy dawn in New York City

call me Berrigan

Every day when the sun comes up

I live in the city of New York

Green
TIDE
behind; pink against blue

Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame

not asleep, I belong here, I was born, I’m amazed to be here

It is a human universe: & I interrupts yr privacy

Last night’s congenial velvet sky left behind . . . kings . . . panties

My body heavy with poverty (starch) missing you mind clicks

into gear

November. New York’s lovely weather hurts my forehead

On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar

But, “old gods work” so sleeping & waking someone I

love calls me

into the clear

Somethings gotta be done! I thought.

Rusty I was?

BANG
!                     (“I fell right down

on the floor. Just like

Dave DeBusschere.”)

Slept a few days.

I woke up; just as Red’s voice

said, “She is

hurting, we

must
DEFEND
tons

of indistinguishable tones.”

I said, “This sense

there was a way, I met in the possible

O.K.

Under my roof.

Mars. Autumn. Bills (on the Bill

scene).

BILL ME
.

He eats toenails.

Is rude, vain, cruel, gloomy.

He talks with bitter cryptic wit.

Is unclean. “Is this some

new kind

of meatball?” . . . . sitting in

a rowboat,

waiting for a bite . . . . has

just asked—with considerable

gravitas—if he might be

allowed

to become one of my suitors.

And I said yes.

My friends are crazy with grief

& sorrows—their children are born

and their morning lies broken—

& now it’s afternoon.

I am lonesome after mine own kind—the

hussy Irish barmaid; the Yankee drunk who was once

a horsecart Dr.’s son, & who still is, for that matter;

The shining Catholic schoolboy face, in serious glasses,

with proper trim of hair, bent over a text by Peire Vidal,

& already you can see a rakish quality of intellect there;

Geraldine Weicker, who played Nurse in
MY HEART’S IN

THE HIGHLANDS
, on pills, & who eventually married whom? The

fat kid from Oregon, who grew up to be our only real poet;

& the jaunty Jamaica, Queens, stick-figure, ex US Navy, former

French Negro poet, to whom Frank O’Hara once wrote an Ode,

or meant to, before everything died, Fire Island, New

York, Summer, 1966.

Honey,

I wish you were here.

I wrote some poems about it.

And though it goes,

and it’s going,

it will never leave us.

O little town of Bethlehem,

Merry Christmas

to Jim

& Rosemary.

FOR BARRY & CARLA

Take me, third factory of life!

But don’t put me in the wrong guild.

So far my heart has borne even

the things I haven’t described.

Never be born, never be died.

The Nature of the Commonwealth

the whole body of the People

flexed her toes and

breathed in pine.

I’m the one that’s so

radical, ’cause all I do is pine. Oh I just

can’t think of anything—

No politics. No music. Nobody. Nothing but sweet

Romance. Per se. De gustibus non disputandum est.

Flutters eyelashes. Francis, my house is falling down.

Repair it. Merry Christmas.

Allen & Peter, heads close together, Allen

weeps magically during “Reds”:

later, drinking pepsi in my living room

they discuss with Robert Lowell Dr. Williams’

Communist wheelbarrow—but

Peter says his own

Wheelbarrow is blue.

Feb. 11, 1982. Last night reading
Permanent War

Economy
by Sennyor Melman for 30 pages

& toward the end of the book in the

appendix Says 1F-16 Super fighter plain costing

6 or 10 million could provide Houses for 240

families—Peter Orlovsky

(“Reading this note, and thinking about Thomas Wolfe:

12 Feb 82

—Ted Berrigan”).

“the taste is pleasant, and the insane

perfection, mild . . . .”

“I have always been emotional beyond belief, so

there simply must be plenty money in my life: it’s

not that I
like
money, I just need not to

not have enough, ever! So, if I had to be

a leaf, why ever so many kinds would do—

they all tremble, don’t they? I know that my

Redeemer liveth; there is a Lord will provide,

somewhere, for specialists! I’m not cold meat loaf,

after all, damp & wooly, dontcha know?”

“
You lack charm
.”

“Get a job at the railroad”

“Loan me a few bucks”

“I gotta buy some pills”

“So I can understand John Ashbery.”

Queen             name

ice            sign

was all that remained

of her suicide note.

it is a well-lit afternoon

across the incredible static of time-space-language

reading a book

“to be born again”

between bouts

through two layers of glass

I call your name.

In the mirror

Anselm’s dreams

the dimensions of the world

the performance of the world

my beauties

smoke

writing

Blindfold shores leaving sad

an audience of dancers

Frank O’Hara’s dead & we are not

The General Returns

From One Place

To Another

the program was dedicated to him

but I couldn’t make it

I have no brain.

My body is covered with vermin (a few).

People are calling me names.

I deserve these names.

My body is being transformed into glass,

with a few vermin on it.

So be it.

When seeking sky you’re left with sky, then

“we kill ourselves to propagate our kinde”—We sleep

and these guys come in with hypodermics & spray us

with ice water—

Monkeys press switches & little babies freak out & cry,

“pick me!” “pick me!”—Oh, Daddy, I was a flower, &

When I listened to George Shearing, they told me, I broke

the World’s Record for rapid eye movement! Then, I don’t know

What I did then, but it was green, & then red, & then

blue & yellow!

It’s a previous carnation, where?

I think it lived in the shiny lapel

of my rust colored dinner jacket

slung over the closet doorknob

the night of the senior prom

at St. Xavier’s High, when I was

Babe Harrington’s date and she

was selected queen of the prom

& we danced the first dance alone

just the two of us, to her own

personal request “Embraceable You.”

The closet was in the blue room

far away upstairs. Babe married

Joe Fogerty and gained four pounds.

“Another has

come to the

sky mirror . . .”

(He in the peeling silver eats my drugs)

FOR ANNE WALDMAN

a nose, heavy, square, & massive;

large, flesh irrigated with blood;

a light grave voice; his face

a long rectangle; pink; poetry

pours out of it like kool-aid

at unofficial noon it is crumpled

like a kleenex:

here, blow.

Geranium’s

another word

for

“my heart is on my

sleeve”

. . . coming from the corner,

heading for the stairs.

NOW APPEARING IN:

MANHATTAN

TODAY THRU
_______

They set you up. Took yr stuff. Gave

it to me.

I made a Little Monster with it.

He’s the enemy of a Wookie.

He turns grass black and puts it

on him so

You can’t see certain parts of his body.

(The
Bad
parts.) I can’t talk to you.

Hitch on here

My little timeless

Teeth & gums, you tiny

Particles of mid-Victorian Bakery

Furniture, that Dickens, Tennyson, &

Bob Creeley saw, where fingertip & moon

Remain infinitely separate, the way

Specific chemical hatred & twizzlers

Do, or one-inch foot in Nature’s

Chrysler Building, blue and gold, sí,

That is what they, we, are. And

Why not? You take a hike? I’ll be

Your legazine, oh buss! &

we’ll leave their golden worlds

while the band plays on, we drive us.

Now she guards her chalice in a temple

of fear; once

a Hardy Boy, a philosopher, a

blue Christmas light:

Boils secretly Biotherm . . . 

 . . . the time you . . . when you . . . 

In praise of %*@!!! *?@! and

in class shouting “Dig it!”

(I told them you were left-handed).

We commemorated a joyous (if

unrequited) love—because

it was in another country—

because we were each other people

—because the love that we

celebrated, did that in commemoration

of, had been neither ours,

nor, most certainly, unrequited. We

were both so sad, we laughed & then

we cried in Locarno. We wished

our ashes to be mingled together

forever & forever & forever. Next

year, in Cho-fu-sa.

Light, informal, & human

Are your seasons, danger

Waters coming, pass us by,

bye-bye—lightly warm &

humid are your tropics, high

above the footpath past the sty.

The pigs grunt no more beneath

the window, I’m glad we ate them

The goats are gone, so no one else

can get them—& the clouds’ reflections

look like a pride of lions

in your eyes. This disease isn’t terminal,

so it’s restful; we fuck & think over wine

here, there are eggs & cream in the fridge,

it’s so divine to be here!

FOR PEGGY DECOURSEY

For a brief time Acting Chief

Didn’t harmonize actively with an easy

View of life—pinball machines being played

By preposterous kid-wits on the backs

of Flat-bed Pick-up trucks—by

Land’s End in glad—or else sad-ness—But

Why should I care? Grace falls

On anyone who can walk out of Ballroom A;

And out off into the Sky-Vista!
Sure
. &

So does Peggy.

FOR ALEX & ADA

What’s the number I request.

When the band began to play?

a fragrant flowered shrub blush

and one cannot go back, except in time

This mushroom walks in.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!”

He is not really thinking.

Yet I take him purely as treasure.

This morning we were footprints in the

snow. And The Band Played On.

Listening to the words from the morning bush

all the day,

We sleep & dream our lives away. & so, a

tendency to get surprised rarely is absent,

this perfect day.

I’m not difficult but there are just certain things

that this here that are not this here, & no

matter what you say, No! (no) I don’t ever do that . . .

But when you think about it, it seems that

this here doing nothing could use a head if anyone

nice has one they aren’t using, no?