The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan
Page 10
in the beginning. Ah, but
what self? The self develops a full-
blown psychosis. Delusions set in,
along with restlessness; a sensation of
suffocation, withdrawal, excitation, satisfaction,
that he has done the something
idiosyncratic that people are expecting and
that much more, too.
It is more than he wants to pay, and, caught
up by a daring all or nothing plan,
he wants to tell, he does tell the driver to
take him to the high car, thinking
of the open road, the dear love of
comrades, Hart Crane. The long trip
back. He is instantly surrounded.
Someone points him in a direction
and he begins walking with students
trailing him as though he is uncomfortable,
even desperate: he is
sure he has not written any poetry that
would turn him around.
It begins to snow. Traffic
slows all around
him for miles. Finally a lucky kind of
exhilaration has come over him
and he sings with
white breath to the passing hours, followed by
complete recovery the next day.
He pulls out the packet of schedules:
something is wrong. He has forgotten
that his after-words are being received almost
as things, and toward the end he comes to
think that the things have the quality of a
college, but cannot reach him. He hails a
cab and asks the fare to the town he is going
to with a certain condescending benevolence,
and begins.
It is over. He relaxes with the
faculty party and goes to bed.
He dreams he is a scarecrow in a field
and writes poems
in his head all night. Some few
believe he is where he is: some place in
Wisconsin, where he has given a
poetry reading at a small college; he
has never been lionized by anyone,
not even his immediate family; but
these small repeated tastes of local
mints continue; he bellows louder and
louder and the flinching
audience is with him to the end of a couple
of things modelled on Walter Benton’s
“This is my Beloved.”
If they were good, and he read them well,
he could collect his money at
each stop with a clear
conscience. An hour goes by. He considers various
alternatives, but they are all
as absurd as the wish to grow
wings. Besides, another hammering is going on.
When an especially loud cheer comes in from
outside he looks up, thinking, “What is wrong
with such and such a concept?” Students
gather round him afterwards, pressing
their manuscripts into his hands,
telling him that the college he is to read in that
night is denominational. He goes up to the
priest, who has been in fact pointing to the right
direction all along. Remember now? He is now standing
alone in the snow, in a strange state, hitch-hiking.
He is 45 years old. For better or for
worse he has been moving and speaking among his kind.
But it is he who is not satisfied with this.
Remember the fragrance of Grandma’s kitchen? It is not
only poetry that is
involved, it is the poet as well. Vastly he resolves
to see if he can work something out
about this later, on the bus, at a reasonable hour.
He rides calmly back to a city within a
city, with a certain flair now, since he has forgotten
to telegraph his arrival. No one meets him at the
airport, he phones a friend in the city for a day
and a night before flying home. He sees the
people who sponsored as much liquor as he is
accustomed to at a party after the reading,
waves his arms wildly about and says, “Anything
amounts to something!” And, looking at his watch, he
turns it one way and another so his thin hands can catch
the keys. He has not played the
guitar for years but feels immediately
all out and looks around for whoever is
supposed to help him. There is no one
but a priest, and finally it happens.
One of them, a girl, not the one he would
have picked to pen such a thing, is already
half an hour late. They all reach
the college, then the building, a crowd-raising
scheme by some clod or other.
All through the reading all sorts of new and
poetic things happen to him. Each time he carries
it to another campus. At a turn he gets off
his freeway; they are not so far from the
college as they thought but he
was not gracefully but disgracefully
drunk, who is now halfway into a new frankness.
“I couldn’t believe in you, either,” says the
priest with candor. Riveting him with
astonishment, directly in front of the
building, a lanky student comes out of the
building and talks to him an hour or two before
dinner. He lies down on a bed, then gets up,
is finished. He finds his poems,
usually rather loose in rhythm, taking
on a thumping thunderment and
incoherent babbling. These symptoms lasted
several decades. Actually they have been
responded to to a degree he has come to
consider excessive and even manic, but he
suspects that attendance at college seems to
be all but inaccessible. There are no
buses or trains until after time confers her
particular favors on a stranger she
will never see again, one who last night
grew more emotional, more harried, more
impulsive. Yet he knows that these qualities
will die out, take a wrong turn somewhere.
On a highway complex as big as this one
it is hard to get tween his touring self and
his usual self. He has definitely been
another person.
Many Happy Returns
TO ANNE KEPLER & FRANK O’HARA
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.
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 #7
FOR JOHN STANTON
It is 7:53 Friday morning in the Universe
New York City to be somewhat exact
I’m in my room wife gone working Gallup
fucking in the room below
had 17½ milligrams desoxyn
last night 1 Miltown, read Paterson, parts
1 & 2, poems by Wallace Stevens & How Much Longer
Shall I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine Sepulchre
(John Ashbery). Made lists of lines to
steal, words to look up (didn’t). Had steak & eggs
with Dick while Sandy sweetly slept.
At 6:30 woke Sandy
fucked til 7 now she’s late to work & I’m still
high. Guess I’ll write to Bernie today
and Tom. And call Tony. And go out at 9 (with Dick)
to steal books to sell, so we can go
to see A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
Personal Poem
It’s 5:03 a.m. on the 11th of July this morning
and the day is bright gray turning green I can’t stop
loving you says Ray Charles and I know exactly
what he means because the Swedish policeman in the
next room is beating on my door demanding sleep
and not Ray Charles and bluegrass does he know
that in three hours I go to court to see if the world
will let me have a wife he doesn’t of course it wouldn’t
occur to him nor would it occur to him to write
“scotch-tape body” in a notebook but it did occur to
John Stanton alias The Knife Fighter age 18 so why
are my hands shaking I should know better
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
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.
A Personal Memoir of Tulsa, Oklahoma / 1955–60
There we were, on fire with being there, then
And so we put our pants on
And began to get undressed. You were there, then
And there where you were, we were. And I
Was there, too! We had no pants on.
And I saw your penis there. It was right there, where
We were, and it was with us. We looked at it, there
And you said, “Why hello there, Oliver!” to me, there
Beside you, without any pants on, there where I
Could hear you saying, “Why hello there!”
Then Frank came in, and George, and Bill, and Cannonball, and Frank;
And Simon, Jonas, Jennie-Lou, and Bob; and gentle Millie-Jean;
And Hannibal the Alp; and they took off their hats and coats
And all began to puke. They puked on Cal, and on Billy, and
On Benjamin, Lucifer, Jezebel, Asthmador and Frank. Then they left.
Frank was much younger then, there, and he had hair
On his belly; he looked like a model-aeroplane; a dark, gloomy
Navel in its tail; and you were there, there
In his tail: you were there and
Hair was there, and air was there, there, up in the air, among
The hair. And you were saying, “Why, hello there!”
And your pants, when you finally put them on there
Had a hole in them, there, where your penis was, before it flew
Away from there to find itself. And the hole there was wide
And it was deep. It was dark there; and
Supersonic Aeroplanes were there. And they were whirring.
“Whirrr-whirrr-whirrr,” went the throbbing aeroplanes, as
They zoomed out at us from in there; for we were there, where
Your pants met the sea, and we were glad! I was there, and Jock
And Zack, and Brett; and we met your penis passing by. It said,
“Goodbye mild starlight of The Sign of Fawn,” as it rode
into the galaxy named ‘Fangs.’
TAMBOURINE LIFE
FOR ANNE KEPLER
1
FUCK COMMUNISM
it’s red white and blue
in the bathroom
(Tuli’s)
One dollar, you Mother!
Make all your friends
STOP!
(now there’s an idea)
ARTFORUM
723½ North Cienega Blvd
&
nbsp; Los Angeles, California
Back to the wall
(it’s all in California)
Thanks to Jack
I mean it’s all right here
it’s morning
and I’m looking over the wall
at Mr. Pierre Loti and his nameless dog
they work well together
on paper i.e. this here
chasing a tiger across white expansiveness
that is not lacking in significance
(what is?)
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
circa 1967
2
The apples are red again in Chandler’s valley
redder for what happened there
never did know what it was
never did care
The End
on a pillow
naturally
a doormat lust steam a hiss Guilty!
I see some handwriting on the wall
of the Williamsburg Bridge
intersection
New York Post ten cents
tip the newsboy
over
a million
laughs
that’s the party line
yes
he’s working on the paper:
Mr. Horatio Alger
(he has a lovely talent)
thank you
here’s your change
3
I’m touched
here, take this penny
there is no need for the past
the sun is out
it’s night
I mean
it is night
and I love you better
since
this seizure / of my eyeballs
•
Take off those Fug panties!
Go ahead
it’s a big world
The big guys do it
TO ANNIE
(between Oologah & Pawnee)
Guillaume Apollinaire
4
The bodies of my days
open up
in the garden
of
my memory,
America
•
I have had the courage to look backward
it was like polio
I shot my mouth off
•
I NEED MONEY
that money
that at least
at last
means less
than a Band-aid
or a toadstool
•
OUCH!
that Band-aid has an OUCH! in it
Who notices a toadstool in the street?
Everyone
who has on
a Band-aid
That toadstool has a Band-aid on it
5
(to Brett deBary)