Book Read Free

The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

Page 37

by Alice Notley


  With a trained squirrel

  He will burn whale blubber

  & is contemplating

  The return of Billy,

  Suicide,

  3-Mile Island,

  Unleashing “The Hammer”

  Running naked

  To breathe

  Evacuate

  Phone Grandma, if necessary

  During “60 Minutes”

  On television.

  3.

  At reduced temperatures

  During months having an “R” in them

  Wander lonely as a cloud

  Crawl on all fours when it’s time.

  4. (Coda)

  Enraged Shepherd

  Tears up his EXXON card

  Admits he is a droid

  Has his teeth bronzed

  Redesigns his novel

  Dies Early

  Bye-bye.

  The Short Poems

  FOR SUSAN CATALDO

  THE SOCIETY CLUB

  “I never shut my mouth, in case

  I have to yawn.”

  Too Late

  The boat has left.

  ARGENTINA

  Don’t cry, Argentina.

  TED RON

  BERRIGAN & PADGETT

  “Flow gently, sweet Thames,

  ’til I end yr song.

  fire-hydrant

  censored

  12TH NIGHT

  “I will go.”

  CITY MONEY

  In God we trust because she got

  something stuck in her throat

  and bent their ears.

  THE OLD ONE

  is Ted Berrigan.

  Something to Remember

  Caesar’s ghost must be above suspicion.

  To Jacques Roubaud

  I’m sorry for your trouble

  Jacques.

  I’m very sorry

  for your trouble.

  Villonnette

  Oh, Mrs. Gabriele Picabia-Buffet,

  why did they want so badly to be

  like us, those wonderful jack-offs of yesterday?

  And where have they gone? Where are they now? those jack-offs

  of yesterday?

  After Petrarch

  Inquiry & Reply

  FOR ANNE WALDMAN

  Virtue, Honor, Beauty, Kind gestures

  Sweet words have reached the high branches

  wherein my heart is warmly entwined.

  Then lead the person to the unmade bed.

  1327, at daybreak,

  on the 6th of April,

  entered the labyrinth;

  no exit have I found.

  So, old friend, not dead, don’t lead me on.

  Old Armenian Proverb

  “Only the guilty need money.”

  Ambiguity

  I am ambiguity.

  (FOR ED FOSTER)

  Stand-up Comedy Routine

  FOR: BOB HOLMAN

  OR ED FRIEDMAN

  Good Evening, ladies, and all you hungry children in Asia,” A very funny thing happened to me on my way over here from a tough Italian Neighborhood, where I just bought this suit made out of recycled lint. Any other paisanos out there? (Gives them the finger). A bum came up and asked me to call him a Taxi, so I did my impression of Richard Nixon, which goes something like this: (Gives audience the finger). But seriously, my friends, I just arrived in your fine city after three wonderful weeks of playing Sammy Davis Senior. During that engagement I ran into an old high school classmate who set off an alarm clock so everybody can wake up and go home, so I bit him.

  Speaking of that, what do you think about solitaire in the drunk tank of a southern jail, jerks? (Gives audience the finger). Believe me, when I was younger, nobody would even dream of refusing to die for his country, and I mean that sincerely. As you may know, I grew up in Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga. Also in Las Vegas. And Brooklyn. Anybody out there from Brooklyn? (Gives audience the finger again). I’ll never forget the first girl I dated. She was so buck-toothed that she ate corn on the cob through a picket fence! She grew up to be my close friend, Liza Minelli. She once told me a funny story about the Pope meeting Bo Derek on a train. Then she married me, so lets give her a big hand! (Gives audience the finger w / both hands). Now, as I’ve grown a little older, I’m just thankful for all you other women out there, and for my hotel room, which is so small the mice are all hunchbacks.

  Say, here’s a joke for you. A fella goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, I imagine I’m a rabbit.” So the psychiatrist says, “That’s nothing. My wife ran off with our marriage counselor.” How come nobody’s laughing at this material? There are hungry children in Asia who would gladly trade places with you.

  Incidentally, before I finish my act, I’ve been asked by several of you to add a little class to this routine by doing some gay Polish jokes. (Gives audience the finger). But what I’d really like to do is leave you with a bit of wisdom that was passed on to me by Sammy Davis, Senior. When I told him I was going into show business, he just smiled, and said, “The devil may wear many coats, but all of them need mending.”

  Are there any other psychotics out there? (Gives audience the finger viciously, first to the left side of the room, then to the center, and then to the right side).

  I hope you’ll remember that, as I have. Thank you, and God bless.

  Positively Fourth Street

  There’s nothing new under the sun, and

  There’s nothing new under the rock, either.

  Down on Me

  It’s very interesting

  but

  The Buddha-minds are freaked out—

  translate

  Snake

  into

  Pea

  Turn around

  Look at me.

  Don Quixote & Sancho Panza

  It is 1934. Edmund

  Wilson is going to Russia

  Next year. There’s a brunette

  Dwarf asleep in his bed. Scarlatina.

  Bedbugs. Dear Henry Allen Moe:

  Can you wire me a $100 loan, to Paris?

  I have learned everything I can here.

  253 lbs later, it is May, 1983.

  Did Henry Allen Moe get burned?

  Tomorrow I will need $50, Summer Camp

  for Sonny, & supper. I can hear

  my own voice on the telephone: hello, Ed?

  (Edward Halsey Foster) Hi, Ed. Got any dollars?

  Today I am 48 years, 5 months and 16 days old,

  In perfect health. May Day.

  This Will Be Her Shining Hour

  “This movie has Fred Astaire and Robert Ryan in it!

  “He got off the train!

  “I have a feeling this is an unknown movie.”

  (laughs) Q: “What the hell is going on?”

  A: (laughing) “Dialogue.

  “This movie has no plot.

  “Fred Astaire was on this train with a whole lot

  of soldiers, going to Japan. And then, he got off

  the train!

  “Robert Ryan keeps saying, ‘Let’s kill Japs,’ &

  Fred Astaire keeps saying, ‘Fuck that.’

  “He fell in love with her!

  Q: “Who?”

  A: “Joan Leslie. She’s a photographer. There

  keeps being a whole lot of stuff by Johnny

  Mercer.”

  Q: “Joan Leslie is just my type. Is she?”

  A: “Un-uh. Fred Astaire is nobody’s type, either.

  (laughing) “He changed all the lyrics.”

  Q: “To what?”

  A: (sings)

  “This will be my shining hour

  drinking rum & bacardi

  like the face of Mischa Auer

  on the Beauty Shop marquee.”

  (laughs)

  “You have to watch it.

  “You have no right to get anything out of my

  evening!”

  Q: “Give me the Book Review section, will

  you
?”

  A: “Sure. You’ll love it.”

  “I haven’t written anything for years. I’m going

  to move away.

  “Oh God, she’s gorgeous:

  (for a little ugly person).”

  “I can’t tell which is Waldo.”

  “Pretty good line, huh?

  ‘I can’t tell which is Waldo.’

  Q: “Did you write that down?”

  A: “No.”

  (laughs)

  “You? Working?”

  (laughs again)

  (laughs)

  “This is my wife. She follows me around.”

  Q: “Where are they?”

  A: “They’re in some giant building. Fred Astaire

  is yelling, ‘Help, save me!!’

  “I think this movie is some Homage to Balanchine

  . . . . . . . It’s out of the question.

  “Man, instead of cracking an egg on that woman’s

  hand, they’re putting diamonds on it.

  “I think my life is really awful.

  “Oh God, write all this down.

  “Oh, what a great song!”

  “This is my night at the canteen. . . .”

  “It’s nice work if you can. . . .”

  “Oh, great. . . .”

  “She’s dancing.

  “They’re in New York City!”

  “Of course they are.”

  “Just like us.

  “Oh God, he’s so great!

  “Oh, he just got taken down from the table.

  He did a snake dance.”

  (It was a Johnny Mercer snake dance.)

  It’s 4 a.m.

  (laughs)

  “Wordsworth put it pretty well.”

  “He hasn’t done too much in this one.

  “Now he’s going to do it. . . .

  “It’s all so wartime.

  “It’s so wartime no one gets to do much of anything.

  “It’s all so unfair.

  “Are you having fun?

  “You are too! (sigh)

  “That’s Robert Ryan. You should come see him. He’s

  being in a musical.

  “Oh God, he looks so great!”

  “He looks too much like my father.

  “It has Averill Harriman in it.”

  “Doesn’t everything?”

  “Have you ever said to her how your life would be

  incomplete without her?”

  Setting: Beekman Place. The usual Penthouse. It’s

  almost summer.

  Hmmmmm.

  “I haven’t seen a movie in ten years.”

  “Oh God, I’m seeing double.”

  “You’re the one he’ll never forget.”

  “Will you keep it on while I get in bed?”

  “What?”

  “Will you keep it on while I get in bed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Their lives are as fragile as The Glass Menagerie.”

  Saturday Night on TV

  “Oh, she dances, Ted. . . . and it’s so great!!

  “She’s not supposed to be able to dance!

  “You’re making a big mistake,

  writing a poem,

  and not watching this.”

  “Shut up. I’m getting the last lines.”

  “You are not.”

  Early Uncollected Poems

  Sonnet to Patricia

  duty is the primal curse

  from which we must redeem ourselves

  G. B. SHAW 1891

  If by my hasty words I gave offence,

  Know I would stop my tongue in recompense

  Were that an answer or an end to rage:

  But I am no philosopher, nor sage;

  If love and friendship hasty words can kill,

  I would not speak; but I must speak my will.

  These days I burn: and I cannot be still:

  Burn I must; and with fire must I kill

  Those unmixed humours in me which bring rage

  Upon those whose griefs I would most assuage.

  Now then, I must myself ask recompense

  For cause which causes me to give offence.

  So Duty me no Duties: Be not strange:

  Give me your hand, your love, and I will change.

  One View/1960

  Now she guards her chalice

  In a temple of fear. Once

  She softly held me near, til

  Rain, falling lightly, flooded pain.

  Alone, the pale darkness

  Became too much to bear. Then

  She quickly drew away, drawing

  Darkness down on Summer’s day.

  Alone, this sudden darkness

  Became too much to bear.

  Then,

  Afraid to draw away,

  I closed my eyes

  To close of Summer’s day.

  In Place of Sunday Mass

  My beard is a leaping staff

  I love to hear it creak

  it gathers moss in the morning mist

  in the middle of my weakness and

  when I stand and clank

  it gives me shoes

  My eyes scurry towards the sea

  legs scuttling beneath them

  shell glistening like split peas

  in the sun. I have two, a right one,

  and a left. In spring my eyes go deaf

  and are rancid and rank with

  blue

  And my belly! ah, it is a shining thing

  it sings at sunup on the back fence of

  my buttocks, burping and belching in the sheer joy

  of strumps. It clumps. I offer my belly the sumps

  of my simple sorrow, which once knew

  whom to name, and so it grew.

  I am a bog, a ditch, a burrow beneath a

  sole survivor of study. Unbowed

  I am bloody with bad confetti, and I go

  in a flagon of gore. Oh sweet stalactites

  upon this shore,

  “I ain’t coming back

  No more!”

  What are you thinking . . .

  Did you see me that night

  I climbed the wallpaper tree, white

  with rage, whiskey in my pocket? Fright

  could never fathom my undressings, nor blight

  my loneliness, which sits here at my desk, in sight

  of homeless waifs, who bite

  my thighs my heart for sustenance. My plight

  Is insignificant but you, surely you saw my light

  burning for you alone, the night I sliced the slightly

  lengthy tail from the scraggly poet’s kite?

  For you I starred in the movie made on the site

  of Benedict Arnold’s triumph, Ticonderoga, and I indict

  you to take my hand, which reaches out for yours, in spite

  of the change of season, this Spring which holds me tight.

  Lady Takes a Holiday

  TO CAROL CLIFFORD

  became in Alamogordo. Then the blast-

  off into total boredom. Referred to as

  a “weird-o.” The sleeping sleazus of

  honey love. Circumference equals piR2.

  Evergreen concatenations of airmail stamps

  bringing me fearsome and rust. Wood in the dust

  bowl. Howl in the woodhole. Cold manifestation

  of last of the cruel and the “name” to the first.

  Sundown. Manifesto. Color and cognizance.

  Then to cleave to a cast-off emotion,

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

  For Bernie

  Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering

  from German measles, only a part-time mother and

  father

  bringing you ginger ale; and

  the great speckle bird now extinct;

  what frolicsome times we’d have had, eating

  ants and clover in the yard, Ayax

  pissin
g on the grass! Is it possible

  great black rat packs

  were running amuck amidst the murk away back east,

  and you, and me, and Ayax,

  giggling happy here? But it never was,

  never. You were a Campfire Girl

  and I was afraid.

  Homage to Beaumont Bruestle

  Giants in the sky; roses in streams that castle; rocks

  in roll; the flower-bird drops singing smitten low; and always

  waste of faces bullet it; and more than these: ground

  moons! High! and seas to rot upon the tides! the

  loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

  against the lack of pinned: there are in the world of vast

  reflected limp. And beauty piles stone. But every garden shows

  have learned the secret. Dreams beauties beauty in the world,

  blossoms, snatched, are thrown, and die men’s foes. And

  lack of soul is no to fill the youth.

  Of dumbed bondage the heavy accent of.

  The flames of love are horsed to pull the knee

  Of downward pressing lips. The Earth of waste’s

  Deep hill. It is. It need not go.

  Such powers weld by chain that must not know.

  When cart is in of progress, down saddest the world,

 

‹ Prev