The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (8 page)

Ted        Ron        Dick         Didactic         un-melodic

Roisterers here assembled shatter my zest

Berrigan         secretly        
HEKTOR
           
GAME ETC
.

More books!         Rilke        Stevens        Pound     Auden

& Frank

Some kind of Bowery Santa Clauses          I wonder

Who am about to die         the necessary lies

How sweet the downward sweep of your prickly thighs

as you lope across the trails and bosky dells

defying natural law, saying, “Go Fuck Yourselves,

You Motherfuckers!” You return me to Big Bill Broonzy

and Guillaume Apollinaire and when you devour your young,

the natural philosophy of love,

I am moved as only I am moved by the singing of the

Stabat Mater at Sunday Mass.

How succulent your flesh sometimes so tired

from losing its daily battles with its dead! All

this and the thought that you go to the bathroom

fills me with love for you, makes me love you even more than

the dirt

in the crevices in my window

and the rust on the bolt in my door

in terms I contrived as a boy, such as

“making it”        “fuck them”         and

“I know you have something to tell me.”

Is there room in the room that you room in?

fucked til 7 now she’s late to work and I’m

18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better

Stronger than alcohol, more great than song

O let me burst, and I be lost at sea!

and I fall on my knees then, womanly.

to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal

Why can’t I read French? I don’t know why can’t you?

The taste of such delicate thoughts

Never bring the dawn.

To cover the tracks

of “The Hammer.”

Something there is is benzedrine in bed:

Bring me red demented rooms,

warm and delicate words

Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

and the struggles of babies congeal. A hard core is formed.

Today I thought about all those radio waves

He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle bird,

Pissing on the grass!

I too am reading the technical journals,

Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements

Someone said “Blake-blues” and someone else “pill-head”

Meaning bloodhounds.

Washed by Joe’s throbbing hands

She is introspection.

It is a Chinese signal.

There is no such thing as a breakdown

it was summer. We were there. And
THERE WAS NO

MONEY
                                                       you are like . . .

skyscrapers veering away

a B-29 plunging to Ploesti

sailboat scudding thru quivering seas

trembling velvet red in the shimmering afternoon

darkness of sea

The sea which is cool and green

The sea which is dark, cool, and green

I am closing my window. Tears silence the wind.

“they’ll pick us off like sittin’ ducks”

Sundown. Manifesto. Color and cognizance.

Then to cleave to a cast-off emotion,

(clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience

(clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience.

There is no such thing as a breakdown

To cover the tracks of “The Hammer”    (the morning sky

gets blue and red and I get worried about

mountains of mounting pressure

and the rust on the bolt in my door

Some kind of Bowery Santa Clauses         I wonder

down the secret streets of Roaring Gap

A glass of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-

Bearden is dead. Chris is dead. Jacques Villon is dead.

Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

I wonder if people talk about me
secretly?
I wonder if I’m

fooling myself

about pills? I wonder what’s in the icebox? out we go

to the looney movie         and the grace of the make-believe bed

I am closing my window. Tears silence the wind.

and the rust on the bolt in my door

Mud on the first day (night, rather

littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

getting used to using each other

my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of the west

I think I was thinking when I was ahead

To the big promise of emptiness

This excitement to be all of night, Henry!

Three ciphers and a faint fakir. And he walks.

White lake trembles down to green goings on

Of the interminably frolicsome gushing summer showers

Everything turning in this light to stones

Which owe their presence to our sleeping hands

AFTER ARTHUR RIMBAUD

Sweeter than sour apples flesh to boys

The brine of brackish water pierced my hulk

Cleansing me of rot-gut wine and puke

Sweeping away my anchor in its swell

And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem

Of the star-steeped milky flowing mystic sea

Devouring great sweeps of azure green and

Watching flotsam, dead men, float by me

Where, dyeing all the blue, the maddened flames

And stately rhythms of the sun, stronger

Than alcohol, more great than song,

Fermented the bright red bitterness of love

I’ve seen skies split with light, and night,

And surfs, currents, waterspouts; I know

What evening means, and doves, and I have seen

What other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen

“I know what evening means, and doves, and I have seen

What other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen:”

(to cleave to a cast-off emotion—Clarity! Clarity!)

my dream a drink with Richard Gallup we discuss the code

of the west        of the interminably frolicsome

gushing summer showers       getting used to “I am closing

my window.”         my dream a drink with Henry Miller

too soon for the broken arm.         Hands point to a dim frieze

in the dark night.         Wind giving presence to fragments.

Shall it be male or female in the tub?

Barrel-assing chevrolets grow bold. I summon to myself

“The Asiatic”     (and grawk go under, and grackle disappear,)

Sundown. Manifesto. Color and cognizance.

And to cleave to a semblance of motion. Omniscience

A SONNET FOR DICK GALLUP
/JULY 1963

The logic of grammar is not genuine         it shines forth

From The Boats         We fondle the snatches of virgins

aching to be fucked

And O, I am afraid!         Our love has red in it         and

I become finicky as in an abstraction!

(. . . but lately

I’m always lethargic . . .            the last heavy sweetness

through the wine . . . )

Who dwells alone

Except at night

(. . . basted the shackles the temporal music the spit)

Southwest lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift on

dream smoke

(my dream       the big earth)

On the green a white boy goes          to not

Forget       Released by night (which is not to imply

Clarity        The logic is not The Boats        and O, I am not alone

Dear Ron:        Keats was a baiter of bears        etc.

Tenseness, but strength, outward         And the green

flinging currents into pouring streams         The “Jeunes filles”

so rare        Today I think about all those radio waves

a slow going down of the Morning Land

the great Speckle bird at last extinct         (a reference

to Herman Melville)        at heart we are infinite, we are

ethereal, we are weird!        Each tree stands alone in stillness.

Your head spins when the old bull rushes        (Back in the city

He was not a midget, and preferred to be known as a stuntman)

Gosh, I gulp to be here in my skin! What thwarts this fear

I love        Everything turns into writing (and who falters)

I LIKE TO BEAT PEOPLE UP
!!!               (absence of principles, passion

) love.    White boats  Green banks          Grace to be born and live

The academy

of the future

is opening its doors

JOHN ASHBERY

The academy of the future is opening its doors

my dream a crumpled horn

Under the blue sky the big earth is floating into “The Poems.”

“A fruitful vista, this, our South,” laughs Andrew to his Pa.

But his rough woe slithers o’er the land.

Ford Madox Ford is not a dream. The farm

was the family farm. On the real farm

I understood “The Poems.”

Red-faced and romping in the wind, I, too,

am reading the technical journals. The only travelled sea

that I still dream of

is a cold black pond, where once

on a fragrant evening fraught with sadness

I launched a boat frail as a butterfly

Seurat and Juan Gris combine this season

to outline Central Park in geometric

trillion pointed bright red-brown and green-gold

blocks of blooming winter. Trees stand stark-naked

guarding bridal paths like Bowery

Santa Clauses keeping Christmas safe each city block.

Thus I, red faced and romping in the wind

Whirl thru mad Manhattan dressed in books

looking for today with tail-pin. I

never place it right, never win. It

doesn’t matter, though. The cooling wind keeps blowing

and my poems are coming.

Except at night. Then

I walk out in the bleak village and look for you

I wake up back aching from soft bed Pat

gone to work Ron to class (I

never heard a sound) it’s my birthday. I put on

birthday pants birthday shirt go to
ADAM
’
S
buy a

pepsi for breakfast come home drink it take a pill

I’m high. I do three Greek lessons

to make up for cutting class. I read birthday book

(from Joe) on Juan Gris real name José Vittoriano

Gonzáles stop in the middle read all

my poems gloat a little over new ballad quickly skip old

sonnets imitations of Shakespeare. Back to books. I read

poems by Auden Spenser Pound Stevens and Frank O’Hara.

I hate books.

I wonder if Jan or Helen or Babe

ever think about me. I wonder if Dave Bearden still

dislikes me. I wonder if people talk about me

secretly. I wonder if I’m too old. I wonder if I’m fooling

myself about pills. I wonder what’s in the icebox. I wonder

if Ron or Pat bought any toilet paper this morning

“
DEAR CHRIS

it is 3:17 a.m. in New York city, yes, it is

1962, it is the year of parrot fever. In

Brandenburg, and by the granite gates, the

old come-all-ye’s streel into the streets. Yes, it is now,

the season of delight. I am writing to you to say that

I have gone mad. Now I am sowing the seeds which shall,

when ripe, master the day, and

portion out the night. Be watching for me when blood

flows down the streets. Pineapples are a sign

that I am coming. My darling, it is nearly time. Dress

the snowman in the Easter sonnet we made for him

when scissors were in style. For now, goodbye, and

all my love,

The Snake.”

Too many fucking mosquitoes under the blazing sun

out in the stinking alley behind my desk!        too many

lovely delicious behinds fertilizing the park! the logic

of childhood is not genuine         it shines forth

so rare

Dear Ron: Keats was a baiter of bears who died

of lust! Today I think about all those radio waves

The academy of my dreams is opening its doors

Seurat and Juan Gris combine this season

Except at night!

Then I walk out in the bleak village

in my dreams, for they are present! I wake up

aching from soft bed        Back to books. It is 3:17 a.m. in

New York city

The Pure No Nonsense:
and all day “Perceval! Perceval!”

How strange to be gone in a minute

Bearden is dead         Gallup is dead         Margie is dead

Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

Dear Chris, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

I rage in a blue shirt, at a brown desk, in

A bright room, sustained by the darkness outside and

A cast-off emotion. A hard core is “formed”

That the angels have supereminent wisdom is shown

“He Shot Me” was once my favorite poem

Speckled marble makes my eyes ache as I rest on

The only major statement in New York city        Louis Sullivan

is dead       whose grief I would most assuage

“He Shot Me” is still my favorite poem, and

“I Don’t See Any Anchor Tied To Your Ass”

Musick strides through these poems

just as it strides through me! The red block

Dream of Hans Hofmann keeps going away and

Coming back to me. He is not “The Poems.”

(my dream a drink with Lonnie Johnson we

discuss the code of the west)

How strange to be gone

in a minute!

too soon for the broken arm. Ripeness begins corrupting every

tree