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The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan
By Alice Notley, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-94814-3
CHAPTER 1
People of the Future
People of the future
while you are reading these poems, remember
you didn't write them,
I did.
Doubts
to David Bearden
Don't call me "Berrigan"
Or "Edmund"
If ever you touch me
Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements
If you would own me
Spit
The broken eggshell of morning
A proper application
Of stately rhythms
Timing
Accessible to adepts
All
May pierce this piercing wind
Penetrate this light
To hide my shadow
But the recoil
Not death but to mount the throne
Mountains of twine and
Entangling moments
Which is why I send you my signal
That is why I give you this six-gun and call you "Steve"
Have you taken the measure of the wind?
Can hands touch, and
Must we dispose of "the others"?
String of Pearls
Lester Young! why are you playing that clarinet
you know you are Horn in my head? the middle page is
missing god damn it now how will I ever understand Nature
And New Painting? doo doot doo Where is Dick Gallup
his room is horrible it has books in it and paint peeling
a 1934 icebox living on the fifth floor it's
ridiculous
yes and it's ridiculous to be sitting here
in New York City 28 years old wife sleeping and
Lester playing the wrong sound in 1936 in Kansas City (of
all places) sounding like Benny Goodman (of all people) but
a good sound, not a surprise, a voice, & where was Billie, he
hadn't met her yet, I guess Gallup wasn't born yet neither was
my wife Just me & that icebox I hadn't read horn by John
Clellon Holmes yet, either
What is rhythm I wonder? Which was George & which Ira
Gershwin? Why
don't I do more? wanting only to be walking in the New
York Autumn
warm from coffee I still can feel gurgling under my ribs
climbing the steps of the only major statement in New York City
(Louis Sullivan) thinking the poem I am going to write seeing
the fountains come on wishing I were he
Words for Love
for Sandy
Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow
as like make me tired as not. I go my
myriad ways blundering, bombastic, dragged
by a self that can never be still, pushed
by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.
I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, darkness
of clouds at one o'clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh.
By day I sleep, an obscurantist, lost
in dreams of lists, compiled by my self
for reassurance. Jackson Pollock René
Rilke Benedict Arnold I watch
my psyche, smile, dream wet dreams, and sigh.
At night, awake, high on poems, or pills
or simple awe that loveliness exists, my lists
flow differently. Of words bright red
and black, and blue. Bosky. Oubliette. Dissevered.
And O, alas
Time disturbs me. Always minute detail
fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston
it is 2 p.m. It is time to steal books. It's
time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalypse
the year of parrot fever! What am I saying?
Only this. My poems do contain
wilde beestes. I write for my Lady
of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely
but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If
I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless
my heart still loves, will break.
For You
for James Schuyler
New York's lovely weather hurts my forehead
here where clean snow is sitting, wetly
round my ears, as hand-in-glove and
head-to-head with Joe, I go reeling
up First Avenue to Klein's. Christmas
is sexy there. We feel soft sweaters
and plump rumpled skirts we'd like to try.
It was gloomy being broke today, and baffled
in love: Love, why do you always take my heart away?
But then the soft snow came sweetly falling down
and head in the clouds, feet soaked in mush
I rushed hatless into the white and shining air,
glad to find release in heaven's care.
Personal Poem #2
I wake up 11:30 back aching from soft bed Pat
gone to work Ron to class (I never heard a sound)
it's my birthday. 27. 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 Gonzalez 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 Stevens
Pound and Frank O'Hara. I hate books.
I wonder
if Jan or Helen or Babe ever think about me. I
wonder if David 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
Personal Poem #9
It's 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it's the 26th of July
and it's probably 8:54 in Manhattan but I'm
in Brooklyn I'm eating English muffins and drinking
Pepsi and I'm thinking of how Brooklyn is New
York City too how odd I usually think of it
as something all its own like Bellows Falls like
Little Chute like Uijongbu
I never thought
on the Williamsburg Bridge I'd come so much to Brooklyn
just to see lawyers and cops who don't even carry guns
taking my wife away and bringing her back
No
and I never thought Dick would be back at Gude's
beard shaved off long hair cut and Carol reading
his books when we were playing cribbage and watching
the sun come up over the Navy Yard across
the river
I think I was thinking
when I was ahead I'd be somewhere like Perry street
erudite dazzling slim and badly-loved
contemplating my new book of poetry
to be printed in simple type on old brown paper
feminine marvelous and tough
CHAPTER 2
FROM THE SONNETS
I
His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze
Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night.
In the book of his music the corners have straightened:
Which owe their presence to our sleeping hands.
The ox-blood from the hands which play
For fire for warmth for hands for growth
Is there room in the room that you room in?
Upon his structured tomb:
Still they mean something. For the dance
And the architecture.
Weave among incidents
May be portentous to him
We are the sleeping fragments of his sky,
Wind giving presence to fragments.
II
Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
dear Berrigan. He died
Back to books. I read
It's 8:30 p.m. in New York and I've been running around all day
old come-all-ye's streel into the streets. Yes, it is now,
How Much Longer Shall I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine
and the day is bright gray turning green
feminine marvelous and tough
watching the sun come up over the Navy Yard
to write scotch-tape body in a notebook
had 17 and ½ milligrams
Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
fucked til 7 now she's late to work and I'm
18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better
III
Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,
deep in whose reeds great elephants decay;
I, an island, sail, and my shores toss
on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness
bristling hate.
It's true, I weep too much. Dawns break
slow kisses on the eyelids of the sea,
what other men sometimes have thought they've seen.
And since then I've been bathing in the poem
lifting her shadowy flowers up for me,
and hurled by hurricanes to a birdless place
the waving flags, nor pass by prison ships
O let me burst, and I be lost at sea!
and fall on my knees then, womanly.
Poem in the Traditional Manner
Whenever Richard Gallup is dissevered,
Fathers and teachers, and daemons down under the sea,
Audenesque Epithalamiums! She
Sends her driver home and she stays with me.
Match-Game etcetera! Bootleggers
Barrel-assing chevrolets grow bold. I summon
To myself sad silent thoughts,
Opulent, sinister, and cold.
Shall it be male or female in the tub?
And grawk go under, and grackle disappear,
And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,
An ugly ogre masturbates by ear:
Of my darling, my darling, my pipe and my slippers,
Something there is is benzedrine in bed:
And so, so Asiatic, Richard Gallup
Goes home, and gets his gat, and plugs his dad.
From a Secret Journal
My babies parade waving their innocent flags
an unpublished philosopher, a man who must
column after column down colonnade of rust
in my paintings, for they are present
I am wary of the mulctings of the pink promenade,
went in the other direction to Tulsa,
glistering, bristling, cozening whatever disguises
S of Christmas John Wayne will clown with
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.
"I wanted to be a cowboy." Doughboy will do.
Romance of it all was overwhelming
daylight of itself dissolving and of course it rained.
Penn Station
On the green a white boy goes
And he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir
No One Two Three Four Today
I thought about all those radio waves
Winds flip down the dark path of breath
Passage the treasure Gomangani I
Forget bring the green boy white ways
And the wind goes there
Keats was a baiter of bears
Who died of lust (You lie! You lie!)
As so we all must in the green jungle
Under a sky of burnt umber we bumble to
The mien florist's to buy green nosegays
For the fey Saint's parade Today
We may read about all those radio waves
XV
In Joe Brainard's collage its white arrow
He is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.
Of Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth white I
am truly horribly upset because Marilyn
and ate King Korn popcorn," he wrote in his
of glass in Joe Brainard's collage
Doctor, but they say "I LOVE YOU"
and the sonnet is not dead.
takes the eyes away from the gray words,
Diary. The black heart beside the fifteen pieces
Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B-movie
washed by Joe's throbbing hands. "Today
What is in it is sixteen ripped pictures
does not point to William Carlos Williams.
XXIII
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
Between Oologah and Pawnee
A hand is writing these lines
In a roomful of smoky man names burnished dull black
Southwest, lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift
On dream smoke down the sooted fog ravine
In a terrible Ozark storm the Tundra vine
Blood ran like muddy inspiration: Walks he in around anyway
The slight film has gone to gray-green children
And seeming wide night. Now night
Is a big drink of waterbugs Then were we so fragile
Honey scorched our lips
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
Between Oologah and Pawnee
XXVIII
to gentle, pleasant strains
just homely enough
to be beautiful
in the dark neighborhoods of my own sad youth
i fall in love. once
seven thousand feet over one green schoolboy summer
i dug two hundred graves,
laughing, "Put away your books! Who shall speak of us
when we are gone? Let them wear scarves
in the once a day snow, crying in the kitchen
of my heart!" O my love, I will weep a less bitter truth,
till other times, making a minor repair,
a breath of cool rain in those streets
clinging together with slightly detached air.
XXX
Into the closed air of the slow
Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear
Each tree stands alone in stillness
to gentle, pleasant strains
Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon
Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets
This excitement to be all of night, Henry!
Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering
It is such a good thing to be in love with you
On the green a white boy goes
He's braver than I, brother
Many things are current, and of these the least are
not always children
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
XXXI
And then one morning to waken perfect-faced
To the big promise of emptiness
In a terrible Ozark storm
Pleasing John Greenleaf Whittier!
Speckled marble bangs against his soiled green feet
And each sleeping son is broke-backed and dumb
In fever and sleep processional
Voyages harass the graver
And grope underneath the most serious labor
Darius feared the boats. Meanwhile
John Greenleaf Whittier was writing. Meanwhile
Grandma thought wistfully of international sock fame
Down the John G. Whittier Railroad Road
In the morning sea mouth
XXXVII
It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears
Have blossomed in my eyes. Guillaume Apollinaire is dead.
The big green day today is singing to itself
A vast orange library of dreams, dreams
Dressed in newspaper, wan as pale thighs
Making vast apple strides towards "The Poems."
"The Poems" is not a dream. It is night. You
Are asleep. Vast orange libraries of dreams
Stir inside "The Poems." On the dirt-covered ground
Crystal tears drench the ground. Vast orange dreams
Are unclenched. It is night. Songs have blossomed
In the pale crystal library of tears. You
Are asleep. A lovely light is singing to itself,
In "The Poems," in my eyes, in the line, "Guillaume
Apollinaire is dead."
XXXVIII
Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons
For you I starred in the movie
Made on the site
Of Benedict Arnold's triumph, Ticonderoga, and
I shall increase from this
As I am a cowboy and you imaginary
Ripeness begins corrupting every tree
Each strong morning A man signs a shovel
And so he digs It hurts and so
We get our feet wet in air we love our lineage
Ourselves Music, salve, pills, kleenex, lunch
And the promise never to truckle A man
Breaks his arm and so he sleeps he digs
In sleep half silence and with reason
XLI
banging around in a cigarette she isn't "in love"
my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of
the west
my hands make love to my body when my arms are around you
you never tell me your name
and I am forced to write "belly" when I mean "love"
Au revoir, scene!
I waken, read, write long letters and
wander restlessly when leaves are blowing
my dream a crumpled horn
in advance of the broken arm
she murmurs of signs to her fingers
weeps in the morning to waken so shackled with love
Not me. I like to beat people up.
My dream a white tree
XLVI
LINES FOR LAUREN OWEN
Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets
The fleet drifts in on an angry tidal wave
Drifts of Johann Strauss
The withering weather of
Of polytonic breezes gathering in the gathering winds
Of a plush palace shimmering velvet red
In the trembling afternoon
A dark trance
The cherrywood romances of rainy cobblestones
Mysterious Billy Smith a fantastic trigger
Melodic signs of Arabic adventure
A boy first sought in Tucson Arizona
Or on the vast salt deserts of America
Where Snow White sleeps among the silent dwarfs
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan by Alice Notley, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan. Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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