The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

by Alice Notley

  The two men wanted to fight, but their friends shouted them down.

  Because of rain the game was wet for several hours.

  Before the Vice-President can make a decision, he has to lock up the President.

  Before handing in your test, check it out for mistakes.

  The woman disliked the hotel, so she didn’t pay.

  She felt tired, so she went to the doctor for a speed prescription.

  She spent her money so fast that now she doesn’t hold it back.

  She’s been in a bad mood for days. Why does she get a kick out of it.

  I finally told him what I thought of him. I took charge of him.

  Jesse James was a famous outlaw, who ran out of banks and trains.

  Don’t forget to write to us soon. Look up to us. Take us into account.

  Thin Breast Doom

  That’s really beautiful!

  ‘thin breast doom.’ How’d

  ya ever think of that?

  PHILIP WHALEN

  I have these great dreams, like

  Sailing up on a lift, & then riding a bicycle

  Down through a flaming basket. I have the dream at night

  & the sailing in the dream is exactly what

  I would be doing the next day. “Fuck, I’m never

  Going to make my way.” Right. But it’s a beautiful feeling

  To outdo your own misjudgements in the air.

  That’s what happens to people who died.

  It slows things down instead of making them hectic

  & frantic. “I’m not going to be careful anymore.”

  I can see all my people flow by so slowly. But

  I’m still addicted to consciousness, tho I’ve probably

  Only been conscious once in the last six years. But

  I am conscious, that’s for sure. Plus, Purity.

  Purity means that you have something up

  Your sleeve besides a right or a left arm. My

  Arms are shot but my something is not. Because

  It’s something I learned when I was in a state.

  I may have been in a state, but it was my state,

  I even gave it a name: New York. Most people are in other

  York, they aren’t even in Old York yet, let alone York.

  If your new light is intact, your vision is in the tunnel

  & your decay has got to keep moving when it’s near the abyss

  (move your head). The world sucks, & everything is fucked up

  But just do your best within without and you try to get along

  Because in impure light things are coming apart because

  You have something to move toward and you are in a state:

  Don’t get rich

  Don’t understand through the heart

  Don’t strain your music with verbal skill

  but when you hear certain counterpoint

  Don’t try to fool the fist that’s tightening

  right beneath your heart

  Don’t lay back, look pretty, & strike a pose

  Don’t be a fool; be Showbiz naturally, &

  Give everyone a chance to regroup. Use your bag of tricks.

  Generosity is easy, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. But

  Don’t show up all substance & polish unless you can stop, look,

  listen, & then take off

  Taking at least one image away. Everyone has a right to be

  judged by their best.

  Be dumb enough to actually like it. Don’t worry about Nuclear

  War. You won’t get killed.

  Memories Are Made of This

  Mistress isn’t used much in poetry these days.

  Comrade isn’t used much in poetry these days.

  Moxie isn’t used much in poetry these days.

  The Spring Monsoons isn’t used much in poetry these days,

  which is a shame.

  Doubloons isn’t used much in poetry these days.

  I’m not blue, I’m just feeling a little bit lonesome for some

  love again, isn’t used much in poetry these days.

  O Ghost Who walks, Boom-lay, Boom-lay, Boomly, Boom! isn’t used

  much in poetry these days.

  &, I will gather stars, out of the blue, for you, isn’t used much

  in poetry these days.

  Now, “I’ve got a guy” isn’t used much in poetry these days

  And, “Tweet-tweet!” isn’t used much in poetry these days, at least

  not at all in its code meaning, which was, “Eat my Birdie!”

  Me & Brother Bill Went Hunting isn’t used much in poetry

  these days,

  & Uijongbu sure isn’t used much in poetry these days (sigh!).

  Oh well, Mary McGinnis isn’t used much in poetry these days,

  just like, & I have to say it,

  “Brigadoon” isn’t used much in poetry these days.

  Another New Old Song

  FOR DOBE CAREY

  My Grandfather was a Hasidic scholar,

  he had his picture in LIFE Magazine, swaying

  slightly from side to side, his voice with its

  characteristic quaver gently raised in sing-song pitch,

  engaged in high concentration in the now all but lost art

  of pilpul. Last year

  two Swiss scientists coined a new word, punding, now the name

  for obsessive behavior due to amphetamine abuse. Hah!

  The woman, now that I could see her,

  was wearing a plain but expensive summer print,

  no jewelry, her hair was dark & showed gray,

  it was neither short nor long. She was as grand as

  Stella Adler, as regal & tough as Bette Davis, a

  saltier Mary Worth, all at once or each in turn.

  Just what a semi-brokendown 44 year old Private Eye

  really needed.

  He lived in Cranston, near the city line, next-door to

  The Riviera Cafe. She

  used to work in Chicago, not in a Department Store. They

  are survived beautifully, that unlikely pair, by

  their daughter Peg,

  an indomitable beauty, who has herself survived

  these past 21 years

  her own husband, Ed, that enigmatic man,

  whose son each passing year makes more clear I am.

  Crossing Western Europe on an Eastbound train

  I had these half-thoughts & know well they will fade & remain.

  A Certain Slant of Sunlight

  FOR TOM CAREY

  Poem

  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.

  A Certain Slant of Sunlight

  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.

  Blue Galahad

  FOR JIM CARROLL

  Beauty, I wasn’t born

  High enough for you: Truth

  I served; her knight: Love

  In a Cold Climate.

  Salutation

  “Listen, you cheap little liar . . . ”

  The Einstein Intersection

  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)!

  Pinsk After Dark

  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.

  Reds

  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.

  People Who Change Their Names

  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.

  In the Land of Pygmies & Giants

  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!

  Angst

  I had angst.

  Caesar

  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)

  “Poets Tribute to Philip Guston”

  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?

  Blue Herring

  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.

  Joy of Shipwrecks

  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

  “Eileen” (detail)

  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.

  O Captain, My Commander, I Think

  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.

  Polish Haiku

  The Pope’s learning Welsh:

  (he’s an alien)

  More power to him
!

  Ode

  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.”

  Sunny, Light Winds

  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

  What a Dump

  or,

  Easter

  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;

  C-3PO”

  “Mine is this ‘Squeeze-box’;

  the Good; the Beautiful; the True; & Bucky Dent.