The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

EDITED BY ALICE NOTLEY

with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan

Introduction and Notes by Alice Notley

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2005 by The Regents of the University of California

Credits and acknowledgments for the poems appear on page 729.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berrigan, Ted.

[Poems. Selections]

The collected poems of Ted Berrigan / edited by

Alice Notley, with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund

Berrigan.

p.       cm.

“Introduction and notes by Alice Notley.”

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-520-23986-5 (alk. paper).

I. Notley, Alice, 1945–     II. Berrigan,

Anselm.     III. Berrigan, Edmund, 1974–     IV. Title.

PS3552.E74A17     2005

811'.54—dc22                                           2005042259

Printed and bound in Canada

14   13   12   11    10    09    08    07    06    05

10    9    8   7    6   5    4    3    2    1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997)

(Permanence of Paper).

The publisher gratefully acknowledges contributions

to this book provided by the General Endowment Fund

of the University of California Press Foundation;

Kenward Elmslie, Z Press;

Anselm Hollo and Jane Dalrymple-Hollo;

Kenneth Koch Literary Estate;

and other generous donors.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chronology

The Sonnets

Great Stories of the Chair

The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

Great Stories of the Chair

A Boke

Many Happy Returns

In the Early Morning Rain

Train Ride

Memorial Day by Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman

Short Poems

In a Blue River

Uncollected Short Poems

Red Wagon

Easter Monday

Nothing for You

In the 51st State

In the 51st State

The Morning Line

Uncollected Poems

A Certain Slant of Sunlight

A Certain Slant of Sunlight: Out-takes

Last Poems

Early Uncollected Poems

Notes

Glossary of Names

Credits

Index of Titles and First Lines

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publishers of the original editions of Ted Berrigan’s books of poetry. These books are cited and discussed throughout the apparatus of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan, but I wish briefly to name the presses, again, here: “C” Press, Kulchur Press, Grove Press, Corinth Books, Cape Goliard Press, Aloes Books, Frontward Books, The Yellow Press, United Artists, Vehicle Editions, Blue Wind Press, Clown War, Little Light Books, Am Here Books/Immediate Editions, O Books, Penguin Books, and Situations.

Ted’s poetry depended, for publication and the maintenance of an audience, on the many, many small presses and magazines which carried his work in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, and also after his death. I would love to be able to list all of the magazines here, but that obviously isn’t possible: I don’t have the complete record, and the list would be pages long. One acknowledges the debt and hopes so much for the continued flourishing of that small-press enterprise.

I would particularly like to thank Ron Padgett for his time and advice. Thanks, too, to Dick Gallup, Lorenz Gude, and Miles Champion for information and feedback. To George Schneeman, for his cover art; and to Lorenz, again, for his photograph. And for their various feats of recall and research, I would like to thank Bob Rosenthal, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Ed Sanders, and Anselm Hollo. Thanks as always to David Berrigan and Sarah Locke for being there. Also I wish to thank Laura Cerruti, Rachel Berchten, and the staff of the University of California Press, and Linda Norton, whose original support helped make the book possible.

I am writing on behalf of my co-editors, Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan, as well as myself. The organization of the book by sections, the selection of the poems, the casting of them into place, the devising of the chronology and glossary, and an intense scrutiny of my introduction and notes, was a notably communal (family) project. We are all three very pleased for Ted.

Introduction

I heard Ted say more than once that his collected poems should be like a collected books. But he didn’t always work in sequences, and he wasn’t always consciously in the process of writing a book. He wrote many individual poems, and he sometimes seemed to write purely for fun. As for publication, publishers would approach him for a book without knowing exactly what he had, and sometimes it didn’t seem to him as if he had that much. If there was a sequence ready, or a book in a unified style like Many Happy Returns, certainly he published that. If he had a stack of dissimilar works or if he didn’t even know what he had, he still set about the process of constructing a “book.” He loved to make things out of pieces, often ones that didn’t fit together conventionally. A book was like a larger poem that could be as much “made” out of what was at hand, as “written” in a continuous way out of a driving idea.

This volume is an attempt to be a collected books, but it can’t be that precisely and so isn’t called The Collected Books. Though Ted wrote sequences and constructed books, he didn’t produce a linear succession of discrete, tidy volumes. He perceived time as overlapping and circular; the past was always alive and relevant, and a particular poem might be as repeatable as an individual line or phrase was for him from the time of the composition of The Sonnets onward. How were we, the editors, to deal with repetitions of poems from book to book? Most especially what were we to do about the book-length sequence Easter Monday?

Ted worked for years on Easter Monday, which he didn’t call finished until shortly before his death, when he finalized the selection and order. Meanwhile, during his lifetime, every one of the poems was published individually, in two chapbooks, A Feeling for Leaving and Carrying a Torch, and more significantly in the books Red Wagon and So Going Around Cities: New and Selected Poems 1958–1979. Easter Monday has never been presented as a unified sequence until now; but placing its poems together considerably shortens the book Red Wagon. So we have shortened Red Wagon, and shorter it is still a book, and a good one. But dealing with Easter Monday showed us that we would have to construct this Collected Poems a little as if we were Ted and not just editors.

Furthermore, there was a lot of uncollected work, including early poems, “short” poems, out-takes from the sequence A Certain Slant of Sunlight, a scattering of individual poems from the 70s and 80s, and a set of poems written during the last six months of his life and kept together in its own folder. We decided to organize most of this work into booklike sections. We’ve discussed ceaselessly what to omit, what isn’t “good enough” in the sense of not really holding up next to the others, because if this is a collected books, each poem should fill its own space within its own book or section. We are not Ted, but we tried to think like him; and there’s still room in the future for a slim volume of retrieved poems, as in Poems Retrieved of Frank O’Hara (a possibility Ted would have loved). In the beginning I held out for every scrap of a poem, while Anselm and Edmund had a more selective sense. I gradually gave up on such works as “The 30 Most Common Names in the Manhattan Telephone Directory, 1979,” various small-scale “Things to Do” poems, occasional poems (practically anyone’s birthday in the late 60s), and the worst of Ted’s rather bad “early poems.” I retain tender feelings for all of these poems.

With regard to the reprinting of a poem or two from book to book: it doesn’t make economical sense to repeat poems, so we have most often chosen to omit poems that have been printed in other sections. Thus, where there are omissions, I indicate in the notes where and what they are. Also, there existed a handful of poems which seemed to float near specific books, stylistically, but hadn’t been included in them. The relevant books were collections not sequences, and we have taken the liberty of placing these poems in the volumes they point to. Again I signal, in the notes, where this has been done; there are not enough of these poems to merit their own section, and in each case they fit gracefully where inserted. I don’t think Ted would mind, though more pristine editors than we are might squirm.

If it sounds as if the rules of organization of this book work through exception, I can only say that Ted’s work creates the need for exception. His esthetics were fluid, and he was governed more by the impulse to make art than to be consistent. Thus the books or sections are presented in an order that reflects, mostly but not entirely, chronology of publication. In a Blue River is “out of order.” Though it was published in 1981, most of its poems were written in the early 70s, and it has been placed with other short poems from that time near books from that time. It was, in fact, in the late 60s and early 70s that Ted was most intensely interested in the short poem as a form.

Finally, we have chosen to present fourteen early poems, which, along with certain poems in Nothing for You, help demonstrate where The Sonnets came from. These not-so-good poems contain a number of the repeated lines in The Sonnets; so the book concludes with the beginning, making a circle. One of Ted’s favorite concepts was that of a poem or book creating a circular shape whose ending pushes the reader back up into the work. And he always remained interested in his not-very-good poems, because they, too, reflected who he was. A circle is a unity, and oneself was/is always in process back there.

Having explained our general editorial procedure I would now like to take the reader quickly through this volume’s sections, focusing on their contents and marking, as practicable in this space, Ted’s esthetic changes from book to book and through the years. I’ve organized this part of the introduction by decade, since Ted’s adult life and career seems to lend itself to this shape. In the 60s Ted was a young man and wrote his best-known work; in the 70s he became a more various poet, he entered a second marriage, and his health began to fail; in the early 80s he wrote his last work. He died young, at the age of forty-eight, on July 4, 1983. These poems span a creative period of roughly twenty years (not counting the earliest work), which isn’t a long time. It seems remarkable that there should be so many poems.

The Sixties

This collection begins with The Sonnets, Ted’s most famous book. It really is quite close to where Ted began, despite the fact that it is a classic. It is a young man’s book, the product of relentless self-education, and being partly constructed out of lines from “early poems,” often suggests the awkward intensity of inexperience. But it floats above that place as if observing it from the dead: “dear Berrigan. He died / Back to books. I read.”

It is important to say once again that The Sonnets was written in New York, that Ted had arrived in New York via Providence and Tulsa; that Ted would leave New York for a while but then return to it; that he was always called a New York School poet, and that he mostly liked the attribution. The Sonnets, in fact, could reflect no other setting than that city. In these poems New York bricks and human density have become the interior walls of someone always reading and thinking. Outside-in.

The Sonnets was written in the early 60s, most especially in 1963: that is, it seems to have been in 1963 that Ted realized he was generating a long sonnet sequence, though he had written some of the poems as early as 1961. Entries in his journals, dated November 16 and 20, 1962, record the composition of the first six sonnets out of lines from previous poems and from his translation of Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau Ivre.” But there was a point, early in 1963, when he suddenly knew what he was doing: with Dadaist cut-up and Cageian chance methods, transforming not-so-good poems into an astonishing and original structure.

The reader will come to notice that Ted returned to the strict form of The Sonnets several times, in his books, to make points about his life and the passage of time. The form is suited to detached self-scrutiny, using lines and phrases from past and present poems, reading material, and ongoing mind, in an order determined by numbers rather than syntax. The pieces of the self are allowed to separate and reform: one is not chronology but its parts and the real organism they create. Ted liked to say that poetry is numbers, and maybe everything is numbers. The sonnet form is “about” the number fourteen, but Ted’s sonnets use fourteen as a frame for the disassemblage of the number, making a real advance in the form and its relation to the psyche. To the extent that Ted broke and remade the form, it became possible to use it for more than argument. One could condense cognition into fourteen or so lines, if each piece, each segment of the fourteen, even each phrase in a line, meant enough.

The Sonnets has been through four editions. There were originally eighty-eight sonnets, but in the first two editions (from “C” Press and Grove Press) he allowed only sixty-six; in the third edition (from United Artists) he added six more; and in the fourth edition (Penguin Books) I included seven more that he had authorized before his death in 1983. This collection conforms to the Penguin edition in including seventy-nine sonnets.

After the composition of The Sonnets, Ted entered a period of further involvement with aleatory methods, cut-up, collage, and transliteration, overlappingly with the more direct poems of Many Happy Returns. We have placed three works written according to a “method” (a word he liked) in a single section called Great Stories of the Chair. They are the eight-poem sequence “The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford,” the sequence of prose paragraphs “Great Stories of the Chair,” and the long poem “A Boke.” All of Many Happy Returns is included in a separate section.

On the manuscript of “The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford” Ted scrawled “1963? or 4?” The first version of the sequence was published in two issues of Ted’s magazine, “C” (A Journal of Poetry), in 1964. The eight poems are hilarious and ferocious. They are obviously transliterations, that is, translations via sound and thought association of works in a foreign language. The original texts are to be found in Pierre Reverdy’s Quelques Poèmes (see notes). Ted had previously written several transliterative poems: one example from The Sonnets is “Mess Occupations” (Sonnet XXXIX), with the note “after Henri Michaux.” There is an especially fluid, automatic quality to the lines of The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford, and an occasional vicious literalness: “Eat a potato she said you sober All-American.”

Great Stories of the Chair reveals a new influence on Ted’s writing, that of the prose of William Burroughs, whom Ted did not read until after the composition of The Sonnets. Three of the “stories” were published in the journal Mother, in 1965, under the title Paragraphs. The entire sequence of twelve prose blocks was published in Angel Hair 4 (winter 1967/68). The cut-up methods of Burroughs and Brion Gysin do not seem essentially different from Dadaist procedures. However, applied to prose structures which coaxed plot out of words themselves, Burroughsian cut-up resulted in novels that are full-blown visions generated as much verbally as through the senses. Poetry originating from within words (not from within the poet per se) was already Ted’s practice. He always asserted that he thought in words, that he was usually either reading, writing, talking, thinking about/in words, or sleeping. Words were literally his mind in process. And to cut up his own poems, for example, was not to do anything other than to think and feel. Great Stories of the Chair is blocks of thought and emotion—what else?

Though “A Boke” is dated 1966 in So Going Around Cities, it was first published in the journal Kulchur in the autumn of 1965. It is a cut-up of an article by the poet James Dickey, first published in The New Yorker, about traveling around the United States giving poetry readings. “A Boke” is a send-up of mainstream humorlessness, but with an autobiographical air to it, and, as Ted once told me, intentionally drawn out to a point veering toward (not quite arriving at) boredom. Interspersed from time to time throughout “A Boke” is the line “Remember the fragrance of Grandma’s kitchen?” which Ted lifted from Burroughs. Also included in the mix are references to the folk songs “John Henry” and “Nine-Pound Hammer.”

It is the book Many Happy Returns, published by Corinth Books in 1969, that is Ted’s first major statement after The Sonnets. The poems included in the collection span a large part of the 60s, beginning with a poem from 1962, “Words for Love,” and ending with “Resolution,” written in 1968. The forms used include cut-up and collage but also the “personal poem,” as derived from Frank O’Hara’s work, the “things to do” poem based on the examples of Gary Snyder and Sei Shonogon, and the long poem, as well as what one might call simply the “poem” poem, Ted’s version of the emotionally direct, realistic shorter poem. There is a new open-field style in evidence, characterizing especially the great “Tambourine Life,” dated “Oct. 1965–Jan. 1966.” “Tambourine Life,” divided into seventy sections of varying length, is an opening of Ted’s voice; it sounds like him talking, though it also sounds “constructed,” in unexpected and witty ways. The poem contains much domestic detail, specific 60s references, philosophy presented lightly, and an under-current of tragedy. It is dedicated to Anne Kepler—the Anne of The Sonnets, who died in a fire set by an arsonist while Ted was writing the poem; the book itself is dedicated to Anne Kepler and to Frank O’Hara, who died in 1966.

Another larger poem in Many Happy Returns is the collaged (and visually collage-like) “Bean Spasms,” dated 1966. It was written in conjunction with images by George Schneeman and first published in the book Bean Spasms, a collaborative volume involving Ted, the poet Ron Padgett, and the artist Joe Brainard. Ted later incorporated into other books the work from Bean Spasms that was uniquely by himself.

The Seventies

The late 60s mark Ted’s departure from New York, and his work from the early 70s is replete with references from other locales. It is significant that Ted’s first book of the 70s, In the Early Morning Rain, was published by Cape Goliard, a British publisher.

In the Early Morning Rain made lavish use of drawings (now lost) by George Schneeman to create spaciousness and to emphasize groupings. The book is a mix of work in older styles employing found materials, chance methods, transliteration, the form of The Sonnets, etc., and poems from the late 60s and 1970 in the new, open style of Many Happy Returns. In 1968 Ted had begun leading a migrant poetry teacher’s life and was spending time in Midwestern university towns like Iowa City and Ann Arbor. The light was different, he was making new friends, and he had begun to feel fated: to be addicted to drugs (pills, mostly speed) and perhaps to die early. The new poems elegize people who have recently died (Jack Kerouac, Rocky Marciano, Franny Winston, and others), allude to the war in Vietnam, celebrate specific evenings and occasions, and also celebrate the overcoming of emotional shakiness through the writing of poetry and through affection for others.

The long poem Train Ride, written in 1971 but not published until 1978, is a lavish example of an affectionate poem for a friend: it is a “love poem” addressed to Joe Brainard, and is about love, sex, and friendship. The poem speaks to Joe throughout, informally, frankly, a little in Joe’s own style, and includes mock complaints about Ted’s and Joe’s mutual friends, about Joe himself, and a projected complaint, too, about Ted. The poem was written on a single day, February 18, during the course of a literal train ride between New York and Providence; it filled a rather large notebook. I remember Ted returning from the trip with the poem, slightly confused by the fact that it really was everything he wanted to say to Joe but also probably really a poem. This ambiguity, an unsure edge between life and art (not like Rauschenberg’s “gap” but much more razorlike, something that might hurt you in its reality) kept Ted from publishing it for some years.

“Memorial Day,” written around the same time in collaboration with Anne Waldman, is a long poem in a similar voice, though the voice is Ted’s and Anne’s fused. The voice is open, plain speaking, and flexible. It can take on everything a conversation can; and though the poem has a back-and-forth movement in it, it also feels unified and inspired in the way that two people talking sometimes become one thing, the conversation. The poem was written to be performed at a reading at the Poetry Project (St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bouwerie, New York) on May 5, 1971, and Ted and Anne worked on it for several months. Since Memorial Day falls in May and is potentially rich in its association with death and sacrifice/heroism, it was decided in advance that Memorial Day would be the title and subject of the work. The two poets were living in separate towns on Long Island and wrote separately, in asterisk-headed sections, giving or sending their work to each other from time to time for response, but there was no chronological ordering going on. At some point Ted wrote all of what would be the last section, and then Anne arranged the material. Ted always considered it to be the most successful literary collaboration he had participated in, in view of its seriousness and depth.

Meanwhile, and in deliberate counterpoint to such longer structures, Ted was writing many short poems. He often cited as formal influences the work of Giuseppe Ungaretti (the sequence “Life of a Man” in In the Early Morning Rain consists of transliterations of Ungaretti’s work), and Aram Saroyan’s poems, particularly the one-word poems. The section we have called Short Poems is divided into two parts. In a Blue River contains most of the chapbook of that name, published in 1981 by Susan Cataldo’s Little Light Books. Uncollected Short Poems consists of a handful of poems first published in So Going Around Cities, as well as many uncollected short poems. Most of the poems included in Short Poems were written in the late 60s and, especially, the early 70s.

The short poem obviously involves more thought process than writing/reading process, if one can split the two. A short poem is peculiarly naked, whether it’s a weighty short poem or a lighter short poem. It often seemed to take years for Ted to decide that a particular one was good enough to be published. And it’s not surprising that In a Blue River is a later publication. A successful short poem may be capable of projecting new meanings on successive readings, but in a monolithic way, as if a new room has opened out, rather than in the overall, textured way that a longer poem can light up in a mesh of changeable meanings. For example, it may take the reader some time to connect the title “Larceny,” in the poem which reads “The / opposite / of / petty / is GRAND,” with the crimes of grand and petty larceny. One may be content with the observation that the opposite of petty is grand, a meditation on that. On the other hand a poem like “Laments,” which both praises and judges Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, is awesome on the level of judgment: “you did it wrong.” The fact of judgment, and also this particular judgment—is it only of their deaths? their lifestyles?—constantly opens up more thoughtful space.

Red Wagon, published by the Yellow Press in 1976, is possibly the volume of Ted’s that least shows his book-constructor’s touch: it is more purely a “collection,” assembled while he was ill with hepatitis. The poems, however, are solid, and many are among his best. By the time of the publication of Red Wagon Ted had taught at the Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa, Iowa City; at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; at Yale; at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago; and at the University of Essex in England. In 1976 he moved back to New York, where he would spend his remaining eight years. Red Wagon includes work written in many cities and two countries. It contains important shorter poems (such as “In the Wheel”), a number of open-field poems (for example, the popular “Things to Do in Providence”) and sprawling long-lined poems (“Something Amazing Just Happened”).

Partway through Red Wagon, variety of form cedes to a denser, more slablike entity, beginning with the poem “Frank O’Hara” and the five poems succeeding it, the remnants of a disbanded sequence called “Southampton Winter.” In the original Red Wagon, poems from Easter Monday (still in the process of composition) rounded out the book for the most part, as well as a group of five sonnets. These were, in fact, five of The Sonnets, three previously published and two seeing print for the first time. Our version of Red Wagon omits the Easter Monday poems and the group of sonnets. It ends with “The Complete Prelude,” a poem made from words and phrases of Wordsworth’s poem. The use of another poet’s work as a word source had always been a favorite method of Ted’s (see, for example, “Sonnet VI,” made from a poem by his friend, the poet Dick Gallup.) This method could result in a kind of book review, or a dialogue with a poet’s style, or could be used to delve into Ted’s own consciousness. Here it is also a way to employ the now-forbidden language of English Romantic Poetry, which being part of the poet’s education is part of himself.

If “Southampton Winter” had dissolved as a conception, poems such as “Chicago Morning” and “Newtown,” written in Chicago in 1972 and resembling the “Southampton Winter” poems, became the basis for Easter Monday. The sequence was not really conceived until Ted’s arrival in England in 1973. At both Northeastern Illinois University and the University of Essex Ted took teaching positions that had been held by Ed Dorn, who, like Ted, had recently entered into a second marriage and fathered two more children. Ted became interested in the concept of the second act, as in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s now clichéd statement, “There are no second acts in American life.” Easter Monday, dedicated to Ed Dorn and named for Willem de Kooning’s beautiful painting as well as for the day after the day of rebirth, is meant to address the possibility of the second act. Ted had hoped for fifty poems, inspired by the artist George Schneeman’s notion that once he’d started a project, a set of collages, say, he might as well do fifty. Ted ended up with forty-six.

Ted kept Easter Monday in a folder on the cover of which is inscribed EASTER MONDAY/Poems (1972–1977). The poems were written in Chicago, London, Wivenhoe, New York, and Boulder; many are sonnets, most have an impasto texture—thick abstract expressionistic paint—and many of them are composed of other people’s words. “From the House Journals,” for example, is made from the first lines index to the Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara; “In Blood” is a selection of lines from a sequence of mine; and “The Ancient Art of Wooing” is made from a poem of mine I’d given up on, which was itself made out of a magazine article. A poem like the latter is a little like a palimpsest and a little like urban erosion. But the poems speak to and with the words of people Ted cared about or was interactive with. A few of the poems, on the other hand, are direct addresses to friends, delivered in an almost courtly manner. The sequence is very much about “not dying,” in William Saroyan’s phrase, not giving in to deathy forces. Ted didn’t declare the sequence finished until shortly before he died in 1983, when he made the final decisions for it. There are a handful of Easter Monday out-takes to be found in Nothing for You and So Going Around Cities.

It should be noted that Ted was always open to chapbook and broadside publication. In a Blue River and The Morning Line are in fact chapbooks, and, as I’ve indicated, parts of Easter Monday were first published in chapbooks. A mimeographed stapled book with the singularly lovely title A Feeling for Leaving (Frontward Books, 1975) contains twenty-two of the poems. Another nine were published in 1980 as Clown War 22 (edited by Bob Heman) under the title Carrying a Torch.

By the time Nothing for You was published, in 1977, Ted’s and my sons, Anselm and Edmund (my co-editors of this edition), were five and three years old. Ted had two other children, David and Kate, from his marriage to Sandy Alper Berrigan. He had always delighted in being with his kids, and there are references to all of them throughout his work. The title Nothing for You comes from a word game Anselm and Edmund had made up, which went something like: “No cookies, no candy, no soda. Nothing, nothing for you.” This was a great joke, a chant accompanied by laughter. Ted had been asked by Lewis Warsh for a book for Angel Hair Books, but it was one of those times when he felt he had nothing. So he conjured a manuscript out of piles of rejects and old poems and gleefully named it after our sons’ chant.

As he constructed the book, the concept of using rejects, supposedly second-class works, became interesting to him. A world was being created out of poems that did belong together, having been written in the process of discovering forms rather than perfecting them. Nothing for You actually has something for everyone and was much appreciated, at least by Ted’s circle, when it came out. It begins with some twenty poems from the early to late-ish 60s, mostly very old works which had been tinkered with over the years until exactly right. Then there are a number of poems from the late 60s and early 70s that he was very excited by at the time of composition but abandoned when he got something that seemed superior. I remember how much he loved having written “In Bed with Joan & Alex” in 1969; but later it felt as if he’d dropped it in favor of poems like “Things to Do in Providence.” Finally there are more recent poems, such as the rejects from Easter Monday, interspersed with poems about people: Paul Blackburn, Tom Clark, Kirsten Creeley, Sandy Berrigan.

Into the Eighties

Ted’s first publication in the 80s was So Going Around Cities: New and Selected Poems, 1958–1979. Appearing midway through 1980, it was a generous selection of poems, honoring, to some degree, the primacy of Ted’s books as artistic shapes. There are scaled-down selections from The Sonnets and Easter Monday, and a section called Many Happy Returns, which is slightly different from the book itself. Collections like In the Early Morning Rain and Red Wagon are broken up into new kinds of groups, small sections reflecting the chronology of Ted’s life.

For this volume, we have created a section called In the 51st State corresponding to the period of the late 70s through circa 1981. It is composed of a subsection, also called In the 51st State, containing twelve poems first published in So Going Around Cities; the chapbook The Morning Line, published by Am Here Books in 1981; and uncollected poems of roughly the same time period.

For Ted the “51st State” was New York City; the poem “In the 51st State,” dedicated to Ted’s daughter Kate, ends with the lines: “Bon voyage, little ones. / Follow me down / Through the locks. There is no key.” Thus this is also a new and puzzling “state” that Ted has entered, one of feeling older, irrelevant, and failing in health. And yet, in the same poem, after he writes “Au revoir,” he counters with the parenthetical lines “(I wouldn’t translate that / as ‘Goodbye’ if I were you).” Ted is in the process of “not dying,” though he’s only a few years from his death.

The new element in the poems of this section is a longer line combined with discursiveness and apparent autobiography, though Ted continues to use other people’s voices and autobiographical facts as well as his own. In “Last Poem,” “I once had the honor of meeting Beckett and I dug him” is a quotation from Robert Creeley and in no way corresponds to anything that happened to Ted, except emotionally. There is always a “Beckett” in one’s anecdotes. The practice of incorporating the lives of others into his is evident throughout Ted’s previous work: in the use of others’ poems and prose in cut-ups, in such “found” works as “Autobiography in 5 Parts,” in the weave of voices in Easter Monday. These techniques are an assertion that he is part of everything and everyone around him, that his reading and his interaction with others do literally become him, and that all words are free and usable. As Tom Clark once said to him, “Who owns words?”

The poems from So Going Around Cities—which make up the first part of In the 51st State—include several works that became favorite performance pieces of Ted’s near the end of his life: “Cranston Near the City Line,” “Last Poem,” and especially, “Red Shift.” So-called Performance Poetry had been in the air for a while, and Ted picked up from it the possibility of extending his performing voice and, consequently, his writing voice. “Red Shift” wasn’t written to be performed in a splashy way, but over the course of a year or two, he developed a set of vocal changes for it, a deliberate tremolo and a slowing down of the long lines, which seemed to stretch the poem far into time and space, allowing him to express the poem’s angry urgency. On the other hand, a slightly later poem like “After Peire Vidal, & Myself,” in The Morning Line, was written precisely with performance in mind. It was declaimed publicly, in mock-troubadour fashion, to answer his friend Rochelle Kraut, who, briefly mad at him, was reading Catullus-like poems “against” him around the Lower East Side.

The Morning Line was a flat, stapled, mimeographed chapbook of twenty-two poems in a number of forms. “Sonnet: Homage to Ron” is made up of words by Ron Padgett; “44th Birthday Evening, at Harris’s” is a sentimental birthday poem for Ted himself containing a dream; “Avec la Mécanique sous les Palmes” is entirely in French; “Kerouac / (continued),” is deft maneuvers with found material; “D N A” is like the poems in Easter Monday; and so on. The title The Morning Line refers to betting on horses—which poem, which style shall we choose?—and to a song from the musical comedy Guys and Dolls: “I’ve got a horse right here / His name is Paul Revere . . .”

The Uncollected Poems of this section demonstrate a continuation, even further development, of Ted’s preferred and reliable forms. One discerns the arrival of the Language Poets in the poem “ISOLATE,” as Ted uses Bruce Andrews’s words to review Andrews’s book Film Noir for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine. The “Ten Greatest Books” form (see the two examples in In The Early Morning Rain) reappears in the poem “My 5 Favorite Records.” For the “Ten Greatest Books” poems, Ted had named books he was actually reading or could see in his room (they tended to be the greatest books of that exact moment), but “My 5 Favorite Records” was a response to a request for a list (not for a poem) from Dennis Cooper, editor of Little Caesar magazine. Ted then asked Art Lange, editor of the jazz magazine Downbeat and music critic for the Chicago Reader, to make a list of what ought to be Ted’s five favorite records. The result is quite Byzantine; Ted was extremely amused by this work, but public readings of it produced some bafflement in the audience.

The poem “Rouge,” on the other hand, is a particularly successful version of what one might call the “linguistic poem,” a form with Creeleyesque overtones that Ted had been working on for some years. In the linguistic poem he defines and works out with small words: it, this, and that in this case, but also the word know. I seem to remember giving him the title of the poem, which serves to negate any pedantry. Finally, one is delighted by certain poems that Ted was unable to publish due to the brevity of his remaining years: “Compleynt to the Muse” and “Thin Breast Doom,” with their allusions to Phil Whalen’s manner, the several autobiographical and pseudo-autobiographical poems, and the list poem “Memories Are Made of This.”

Ted’s final book (though these are not his final poems) was A Certain Slant of Sunlight, which occupied him for all of 1982. This sequence of poems was written on individual postcards, 4 inches by 7 inches, sent to him by Ken and Anne Mikolowski of the Alternative Press. There were five hundred cards to work with, one side left blank for a poem and/or image, and the other side incorporating space for a message and address. Postcard by Ted Berrigan was printed at the top of the message space, and running sideways, The Alternative Press Grindstone City. Many other artists and writers participated in the Mikolowskis’ project, producing original art or text for the blank sides of their own five hundred postcards; the finished cards were always sent out singly, along with other Alternative Press items—broadsides, bumper stickers, etc.—in the Press’s standard free packets. Ted, so far as I know, was the only participant who turned the postcards into a full-scale writing project and then a book.

The postcard poem was a form dominated by the size of the card, though a relatively longer poem could be written on a card if Ted shrank his handwriting. Ted immediately used semi-collaboration as a way into the poems, inducing everyone he knew to write a line or draw an image on a postcard. He later eliminated the names of the “facilitators,” except for the occasional dedication. The poems are often epigrammatic, but are just as likely to be longer; they chronicle, not so explicitly, a difficult year—in terms of health, finances, relationships with friends. They are about the workings of a community, about poetry quarrels and poetry festivals, about cops on the corner and what music is being listened to, what is going on in the newspapers. Ted produced a couple hundred original poems; there are one hundred exactly in A Certain Slant of Sunlight, which I edited after his death, according to his instructions.

We also present here a separate section of the best of the out-takes from A Certain Slant of Sunlight, thirty-three more “postcard poems,” many of which could easily have been included in the book. One suspects Ted of fetishizing the number one hundred; but approximately that number seems to be how many the mind is capable of considering in relation to one another. These additional thirty-three, hopefully, suggest a book of their own.

Though A Certain Slant of Sunlight contains many of Ted’s “forms,” his voice has changed. The necessity for concision, imposed by the size of the card, pushes tone of voice up against language up against form: “HOLLYWOOD / paid Lillian Gish $800,000 to / disappear so lovely so pure like milk / seems but isn’t because of the fall-out / but it would have only cost me five & didn’t, so I did.” Many of the poems are monologues for the person who provided the phrase or image, or are in dialogue with him/her. Some work with texts of dead poets, Whitman and Lindsay for example, or with songs. There is a flexibility of tone throughout, which has emerged from the lengthier autobiographical poems of the late 70s and early 80s, but must operate more quickly. This book is extraordinary without appearing to be: it doesn’t have “monument” written on it, but it isn’t like anything else.

Ted’s last poems are the fourteen poems—twenty-one pages—he wrote after the completion of A Certain Slant of Sunlight during the final six months of his life. It must be obvious by now that Ted did not slow down as a writer during his last years, and these poems are sharp and fulsome. They were kept together in a folder with a handwritten title page: “Poems/ /Ted Berrigan.” Some are short in the manner of A Certain Slant of Sunlight, and there are several longer poems, including an abrasive “Stand-Up Comedy Routine,” made from a Mad-Libs form.[1] But Ted’s very last poem is a lovely six-page work, “This Will Be Her Shining Hour,” written in dialogue with myself and the voices in a Fred Astaire movie on TV. “ ‘Their lives are as fragile as The Glass Menagerie.’” That line near the end of Ted’s final poem refers to the people in the movie, the people in the poem, and the two of us as both people in the poem and ourselves, comparing them/us to Tennessee Williams’s play, to glass figures, to the enduringness of the play about fragile people. What does lives mean then? Lives seems to be “art,” and so one is left thinking about the strength of poetry.

Ted Berrigan’s poems are very deliberate. They have a graven quality as if they were drawn on the page, word by word. He often wrote in unlined notebooks with a black felt-tip pen, and one might also say they have a black-felt-tip-pen quality. You feel that no words have been crossed out and replaced.

I’m impressed by this graven-ness in The Sonnets and Many Happy Returns, in Easter Monday, but then, too, in most of the later work. It doesn’t go away if the feeling in the poem is more autobiographical or intimate, as in A Certain Slant of Sunlight. The latter poems read as if written with the black felt-tip pen, on the postcard. They have a primary physical reality.

Two more things from this: first, a continuous interaction with art and artists gave Ted an active visual and tactile sense. He is often painting, or collaging, or drawing his way through a poem. On the other hand, he agreed with Jack Spicer’s notion of the other voice that dictates one’s poems, and his poems have a “dictated” quality, even the ones that are made from other people’s words. These two notions aren’t incompatible. “Dictation” suggests aurality rather than plastic qualities, but there isn’t any reason why all the senses shouldn’t be working, and Ted had a very fine ear: “Their lives are as fragile as The Glass Menagerie.” Listen.

Ted’s poetry is remarkable for its range of tones of voice. He actively studied both “tone of voice” and “stance,” the range of attitudinal play in human discourse and the projection of character. Here Ted’s professed model was Frank O’Hara, but I often find Ted more mysterious and more intense in both tone and stance. Not having O’Hara’s education or “class,” Ted therefore couldn’t be as traditional. He couldn’t call on a tone of voice from another decade or century as if he owned it, even though he knew exactly what Whitmanesque or Johnsonian was. He had to reinvent it for himself, from his working-class background and University of Tulsa education and ceaseless self-education.

Ted is often characterized as “second-generation New York School.” That label, with its “second-generation,” seems to preclude innovation. Ted’s career as a poet, after his earliest, sentimental poems, begins in the innovation of The Sonnets. He invented its form, with its “black heart beside the fifteen pieces” and its “of glass in Joe Brainard’s collage,” if you take fifteen to be most likely fourteen and understand that his heart really is beside the poem not in it. These poems, designed to contain anything and to expand temporally, can do so because the form’s finiteness is emphasized. It could probably be argued that this form is the one he was most informed by afterward, even when he was being transparent and “sentimental”—when he had finally learned the uses and control of sentimentality, since he consistently explored the spaces between lines, and the spaces between phrases, within the poem as frame. He had also learned from his sonnet form how to find the congruences in supposedly random happenstance:

Can’t cut it (night)

in New York City

it’s alive

inside my tooth

on St. Mark’s Place

where exposed nerve

jangles

(“FEBRUARY AIR”)

This is verbal, environmental, and emotional happenstance, where the parts of the moment click in.

If you the reader are a poet, Ted’s poetry is full of resources: forms, techniques, stylistic practices—manners and mannerisms, ways of sounding like a person, ways of achieving exaltation. If you the reader are a reader (of poetry), Ted’s poetry is a gift. He is working hard to amuse—make you enjoy this taking up of your time; to “say,” what he knows, reasons, feels; and to be like you, at the same time acknowledging his (anyone’s) own secret: “I never told anyone what I knew. Which was that it wasn’t / for anyone else what it was for me” (“Cranston Near the City Line”).

We have, traditionally, the senses, but words are our sensors. We use them to feel our way across and through, up and down. Ted understood this as well as any poet I can think of. So much of his poetry is about the pleasure of movement across the page. He is saying, “This is what we do. This is living, taking its walk.” It is a very gentle message, that of the walk through time, laid alongside the message that all time is simultaneous. But, also,

No-mind

No messages

(Inside)

Thanksgiving             1969

(“IN MY ROOM”)

ALICE NOTLEY

PARIS, 2004

1. Mad-Libs, an offshoot of Mad magazine, contained fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice do-it-yourself versions of country songs, comedy routines, anecdotes, and so forth.

Chronology

1934

Born on November 15 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Margaret Dugan Berrigan and Edmund Joseph Berrigan, the oldest of four children, with Rick, Kathy, and Johnny to follow. His father, Ed, was chief maintenance engineer at the Ward Baking Company Plant, and his mother, Peggy, was a bookkeeper and cashier in the public schools lunch program.

1952

Graduated from La Salle Academy.

1953

Attended Providence College. In Ted’s own words he was educated in the “Catholic school system, first by the Sisters of Mercy, then at La Salle Academy with the Christian Brothers, and for one year under the Dominicans at Providence College.”

1954

Joined the army, spending sixteen months in Korea, stationed at Uijongbu, between 1954 and 1955.

1955

Was transferred to Tulsa, having attained the rank of sergeant (SP3) and having received a good conduct medal. Began studies at the University of Tulsa on the GI Bill.

1957

Discharged from active duty and placed in the reserves.

1958

Ted’s father, Ed Berrigan, died.

1958–59

Taught eighth grade at Madalene School in Tulsa.

1959

Met Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, and Joe Brainard. (Already knew David Bearden, Pat Mitchell, Marge Kepler, and others.) A Lily for My Love was published in Providence. “The guys in the neighborhood bar had chipped in and paid for the printing” (Ron Padgett, Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan [Great Barrington, Mass.: The Figures, 1993]). Received a BA in Literature from the University of Tulsa.

1960–61

Wrote a postcard to Frank O’Hara, beginning their association. Moved to New York in the same time period as Pat Mitchell, Brainard, Gallup, and Padgett. Met O’Hara.

1962

Finished his master’s thesis, “The Problem of How to Live as Dealt with in Four Plays by George Bernard Shaw.” Upon receiving his MA from the University of Tulsa, he returned it with the note, “I am the master of no art.” Met Kenneth Koch during Koch’s office hours at Columbia. Took one semester of classical Greek at Columbia; earned money writing papers for Columbia students. Met and married Sandra Alper in New Orleans over the course of a weekend, traumatic difficulties ensuing with Sandy’s family. Began writing The Sonnets.

1963

Finished The Sonnets in July. David Berrigan born. Began editing “C” (A Journal of Poetry), published by Lorenz and Ellen Gude, which would run for thirteen issues and two comic strip issues and feature many senior New York School poets as well as Ted’s contemporaries. “C” further spawned “C” Books in 1964, published by the Gudes during the 60s, producing a total of eleven booklets in mimeo format by new writers (and continuing into the 70s under Ted’s sole proprietorship). Most of the art in “C” was by Joe Brainard, with the occasional cover by Andy Warhol. This was and would be a period of intense friendship and collaboration with Padgett, and Gallup, as well as one of artistic collaboration with Brainard. But by 1963 Ted knew Johnny Stanton, Joe Ceravolo, Tom Veitch, Jim Brodey, Harry Fainlight, Tony Towle, Lorenzo Thomas, and other writers of his generation. At the same time Ed Sanders was editing and publishing his journal, Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts, and Sanders and Ted “spent a lot of time together.” The social aspect of Ted’s life had become all-encompassing and non-parochial and would remain that way for the rest of his life. As he said in the 1973 “Interview with Ruth Gruber” (Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan [Bolinas and Oakland: Avenue B and O Books, 1991]), a dual interview with Ted and George Oppen: “I like to know all the groups, because that way is the most fun, and the most interesting.”

1964

The first edition of The Sonnets published under the “C” imprint. Gave first reading in New York at Le Metro Café with Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, Frank O’Hara, and Michael Goldberg in the audience. Began writing reviews for the magazine Kulchur. Received a Poets Foundation Grant. Probably met or by now had met John Ashbery, whose work he published in “C” and who, though living in France, returned to New York from time to time for readings. In 1964 Ashbery gave an electrifying reading of his long poem “The Skaters,” an occasion which Ted referred to throughout his life. Around this time worked on long unpublished prose work, Looking for Chris, not all of which survives.

1965

Intensive period of writing for Art News lasting through 1966, though Ted’s art writing would continue sporadically until his death. Attended Berkeley Poetry Conference. Met Ed Dorn, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Lew Welch, and Robert Duncan there. Kate Berrigan born.

1966

Death of Frank O’Hara. Served on the advisory board of the Poetry Project. Taught the first writing workshop offered at the Project and continued to serve as a teacher off and on until 1979. This was his first poetry teaching post, though that same year he began an intermittent but ongoing participation in the Writers in the Schools Poetry Program. By or around this time had met George Schneeman, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Tom Clark, Bernadette Mayer, Peter Schjeldahl, Lewis MacAdams, John Godfrey, Donna Dennis, Larry Fagin, Aram Saroyan, Clark Coolidge, Bill Berkson, John Giorno.

1967

The Sonnets published by Grove Press. Bean Spasms, a collaborative book with Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard, published by Kulchur Press. Ted interviewed Jack Kerouac (with Aram Saroyan and Duncan Mac-Naughton) for the Paris Review (interview first published in vol. 11, no. 43 [Summer 1968]). Received a Poets Foundation Grant and a National Anthology of Literature Award for “An Interview with John Cage,” which was a fabricated interview using Cageian methods.

1968

Left New York to take a writer-in-residence position at the University of Iowa, the Writers’ Workshop, from fall 1968 through spring 1969. Met Anselm Hollo, Gordon Brotherston, Merrill Gilfillan, and others.

1969

Separated from Sandy Alper Berrigan. Many Happy Returns published by Corinth Press. Met Alice Notley. Taught fall semester at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. (Lecturer in English and American Literature, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.) Friendship with Donald Hall.

1970

Guillaume Apollinaire Ist Tot. Und Anderes, a selection of Ted’s work with German translations by Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann, published in Germany by März Verlag. In the Early Morning Rain published by Cape Goliard Press in England. Taught at Yale University in the spring as Teaching Fellow at Bramford College. Replaced Jack Clarke at the University of Buffalo that summer, where Ted’s classes included the mythology course originally established by Charles Olson.

1970–71

Transitional period of moving from place to place with Alice Notley. Lived in Southampton, Long Island (in Larry Rivers’s garage), New York, Providence, and Bolinas. Bolinas at this time included in its community Lewis MacAdams, Joanne Kyger, Don Allen, Phil Whalen, Tom Clark, Robert Creeley, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bill Berkson, et al.

1972

Married Alice Notley. Moved to Chicago and taught at Northeastern Illinois University, following Ed Dorn as Poet in Residence, from winter 1972 until spring 1973. Anselm Berrigan born. Met Bob Rosenthal, Rochelle Kraut, Hank Kanabus, Art Lange and many others, some of whom subsequently moved to New York. Began working on Easter Monday.

1973

Moved to England and taught at the University of Essex (replacing Robert Lowell) from fall 1973 until spring 1974. Friends included Gordon Brotherston, Douglas Oliver, Pierre Joris, Tom Pickard, Wendy Mulford, John James, Allen Fisher, Dick Miller, Simon Pettet, Helena Hughes, Marion Farrier, etc. Several of these people subsequently moved to New York as well, part of Ted’s “job” seemingly being to conduct young people toward the New York poetry world. Had work published in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. With Gordon Brotherston worked on translations of poems by Heine, Leopardi, Gautier, Apollinaire, Cabral de Melo Neto, and Neruda.

1974

Edmund Berrigan born. Moved back to Chicago and taught at Northeastern Illinois University from fall 1974 until spring 1975.

1975

Red Wagon published by the Yellow Press. That summer taught for the first time at Naropa University (then College), beginning an association that continued until his death.

1976

Moved back to New York, ill with hepatitis. Health poor from now on. Extensive association with Harris Schiff, Steve Carey, Tom Carey, and Eileen Myles began.

1977

Received a CAPS Grant. Nothing for You published by United Artists. Clear the Range published by Adventures in Poetry.

1978

Train Ride published by Vehicle Editions. Worked with Peter Orlovsky on the editing and typing of Orlovsky’s Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs: Poems 1957–1977, published by City Lights Books that year.

1979

Received an NEA Grant. Yo-Yo’s with Money, a transcription of a live sportscast recorded collaboratively by Ted and Harris Schiff at a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, published by United Artists Books.

1980

Taught spring and summer terms at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. So Going Around Cities: Selected Poems 1958–1979 published by Blue Wind Press. Taught at the Stevens Institute of Technology (Distinguished Visiting Professor of Literature) in Hoboken, New Jersey, during the fall of 1980, at the behest of new friend Ed Foster. Ted’s mother, Peggy Berrigan, became ill with lung cancer.

1981

In a Blue River published by Little Light Books. In May conducted influential and notorious four-day residency at 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, which included a reading of new work, a confrontational evening with the Language Poets, a panel discussion of Ted’s work, and a full-length reading of The Sonnets. Throughout the year wrote prose commentaries and reviews for the Poetry Project Newsletter (edited by Greg Masters).

1982

The Morning Line published by Am Here Books/Immediate Editions. The Sonnets reissued by United Artists with six additional sonnets. Became Writer in Residence at CCNY in the spring. Peggy Berrigan died in July. Throughout this year worked on A Certain Slant of Sunlight.

1983

Writing last poems. Becoming increasingly ill but continuing to function as much as possible. Conducted lengthy but unsuccessful interview with James Schuyler. Died on July 4 of complications from cirrhosis of the liver, which was most probably caused by the hepatitis C virus. Buried at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, a military cemetery.

1988

A Certain Slant of Sunlight published by O Books.

1991

Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan, edited by Stephen Ratcliffe and Leslie Scalapino, published by Avenue B and O Books.

1994

Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan, edited by Aram Saroyan, published by Penguin.

1997

On the Level Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living, edited by Joel Lewis, published by Talisman House, Publishers.

1998

Great Stories of the Chair published by Situations.

2000

The Sonnets reissued by Penguin with six additional sonnets.

The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

The Sonnets

TO JOE BRAINARD

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 1/2 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.

IV

Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.

All sweetly spoke to her of me

about your feet, so delicate, and yet double E!!

And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal,

loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

as you lope across the trails and bosky dells

I often think sweet and sour pork”

shoe repair, and scary. In cities,

I strain to gather my absurdities

He buckled on his gun, the one

Poised like Nijinsky

at every hand, my critic

and when I stand and clank it gives me shoes

V

Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and

“Hawkaaaaaaaaaa!” Once I went scouting

As stars are, like nightmares, a crucifix.

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

Rather the matter of growth

My babies parade waving their innocent flags

Huddled on the structured steps

Flinging currents into pouring streams

The “jeunes filles” so rare.

He wanted to know the names

He liked boys, never had a mother

Meanwhile, terrific misnomers went concocted, ayearning,

ayearning

The Pure No Nonsense

And all day: Perceval! Perceval!

VI

The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

Your hair moves slightly,

Tenseness, but strength, outward

And the green rug nestled against the furnace

Dust had covered all the tacks, the hammer

. . . optimism for the jump . . .

The taste of such delicate thoughts

Never bring the dawn.

The bulbs burn, phosphorescent, white,

Melting the billowing snow with wine:

Could the mind turn jade? everything

Turning in this light, to stones,

Ash, bark like cork, a fading dust,

To cover the tracks of “The Hammer.”

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.

Poem in the Modern Manner

She comes as in a dream with west wind eggs,

bringing Huitzilopochtli hot possets:

Snakeskins! But I am young, just old enough

to breathe, an old woman, slop oatmeal,

lemongrass, dewlarks, full draught of, fall thud.

Lady of the May, thou art fair,

Lady, thou art truly fair! Children,

When they see your face,

Sing in idiom of disgrace.

Pale like an ancient scarf, she is unadorned,

bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins.

The singer sleeps in Cos. Strange juxtaposed

the phantom sings: Bring me red demented rooms,

warm and delicate words! Swollen as if new-out-of-bed

Huitzilopochtli goes his dithyrambic way,

quick-shot, resuscitate, all roar!

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.

Real Life

1. The Fool

He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle

Bird, pissing in the grass! Is it possible

He is incomplete, bringing you Ginger Ale

Of the interminably frolicsome gushing summer showers?

You were a Campfire Girl,

Only a part-time mother and father; I

Was large, stern, acrid, and undissuadable!

Ah, Bernie, we wear complete

The indexed Webster Unabridged Dictionary.

And lunch is not lacking, ants and clover

On the grass. To think of you alone

Suffering the poem of these states!

Oh Lord, it is bosky, giggling happy here,

And you, and me, the juice, at last extinct!

2. The Fiend

Red-faced and romping in the wind

I too am reading the technical journals, but

Keeping Christmas-safe each city block

With tail-pin. My angels are losing patience,

Never win. Except at night. Then

I would like a silken thread

Tied round the solid blooming winter.

Trees stand stark-naked guarding bridal paths;

The cooling wind keeps blowing, and

There is a faint chance in geometric boxes!

It doesn’t matter, though, to show he is

Your champion. Days are nursed on science fiction

And you tremble at the books upon the earth

As my strength and I walk out and look for you.

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

XIII

Mountains of twine and

Teeth braced against it

Before gray walls. Feet walk

Released by night (which is not to imply

Death) under the murk spell

Racing down the blue lugubrious rainway

To the big promise of emptiness

In air we get our feet wet. . . . a big rock

Caresses cloud bellies

He finds he cannot fake

Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

Fuscous with murderous dampness

But helpless, as blue roses are helpless.

Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements.

XIV

We remove a hand . . .

In a roomful of smoky man names burnished dull black

And labelled “blue” the din drifted in . . .

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

Meaning bloodhounds. Someone shovelled in some

Cotton-field money brave free beer and finally “Negroes!”

They talked . . .

He thought of overshoes looked like mother

Made him

Combed his hair

Put away your hair. Books shall speak of us

When we are gone, like soft, dark scarves in gay April.

Let them discard loves in the Spring search! We

await a grass hand.

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.

XVI

Into the closed air of the slow

Warmth comes, a slow going down of the Morning Land

She is warm. Into the vast closed air of the slow

Going down of the Morning Land

One vast under pinning trembles doom ice

Spreads beneath the mud troubled ice

Smother of a sword

Into her quick weak heat. She

Is introspection. One vast ice laden

Vast seas of doom and mud spread across the lake. Quick

heat,

Of her vast ice laden self under introspective heat.

White lake trembles down to green goings

On, shades of a Chinese wall, itself “a signal.”

It is a Chinese signal.

XVII

FOR CAROL CLIFFORD

Each tree stands alone in stillness

After many years still nothing

The wind’s wish is the tree’s demand

The tree stands still

The wind walks up and down

Scanning the long selves of the shore

Her aimlessness is the pulse of the tree

It beats in tiny blots

Its patternless pattern of excitement

Letters        birds       beggars        books

There is no such thing as a breakdown

The tree        the ground        the wind         these are

Dear, be the tree your sleep awaits

Sensual, solid, still, swaying alone in the wind

XVIII

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

Outside my room atonal sounds of rain

In my head. Dreams of Larry Walker

Drum in the pre-dawn. In my skull my brain

Season, cold images glitter brightly

In his marriage bed: of David Bearden

Answering. “Deteriorating,” you said.

Say it. And made it hard to write. You know

Margie, tonight, and every night, in any

Aches in rhythm to that pounding morning rain.

Them over and over. And now I dread

Not a question, really, but you did

In your letter, many questions. I read

Paranoid: and of Martin Cochran, dead.

XIX

Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets

Where Snow White sleeps among the silent dwarfs

The fleet drifts in on an angry tidal wave

Or on the vast salt deserts of America

Drifts of Johann Strauss

A boy first sought in Tucson Arizona

The withering weathers of

Melodic signs of Arabic adventure

Of polytonic breezes gathering in the gathering winds

Mysterious Billy Smith a fantastic trigger

Of a plush palace shimmering velvet red

The cherrywood romances of rainy cobblestones

A dark trance

In the trembling afternoon

XXI

On the green a white boy goes

We may read about all those radio waves

And he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

For the fey Saint’s parade       Today

No        One         Two       Three        Four       Today

Under a sky of burnt umber we bumble to

Forget        Bring the green boy white ways

As so we all must in the green jungle

Winds flip down the dark path of breath

The mien florist’s to buy green nosegays

Passage       the treasure         Gomangani

I thought about all those radio waves

Keats was a baiter of bears

Who died of lust      (You lie!   You lie!)

And the wind goes there

XXII

Go fly a kite he writes

Who cannot escape his own blue hair

who storms to the big earth and is not absent-minded

& Who dumbly begs a key       & who cannot pay his way

Racing down the blue lugubrious rainway

day brakes and night is a quick pick-me-up

Rain is a wet high harried face

To walk is wet hurried high safe and game

Tiny bugs flit from pool to field and light on every bulb

Whose backs hide doors down round wind-tunnels

He is an umbrella. . . .

Many things are current

Simple night houses rain

Standing pat in the breathless blue air.

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

XXV

Mud on the first day (night, rather

I was thinking of Bernard Shaw, of sweet May Morris

Do you want me to take off my dress?

Some Poems!

the aeroplane waiting to take you on your first

getting used to using each other

Cowboys!       and banging on my sorrow, with books

The Asiatics

believed in tree spirits, a tall oak, swans gone in the rain,

a postcard of Juan Gris        not a word

Fell on the floor         how strange       to be gone in a minute

I came to you by bus          to be special for us

The bellboy         letters         a key        then to hear from an old stranger

The Gift:         they will reside in Houston following the Grand Canyon.

XXVI

ONE SONNET FOR DICK

This excitement to be all of night, Henry!

Elvis Peering-Eye danced with Carol Clifford, high,

Contrived whose leaping herb edifies Kant! I’ll bust!

Smile! “Got rye in this’n?”

Widow Dan sold an eye t’meander an X. Whee! Yum!

Pedant tore her bed! Tune, hot! Full cat saith why foo?

“Tune hot full cat?” “No! nexus neck ink!

All moron (on) while “weighed in fur” pal! “Ah’m Sun!”

Dayday came to get her daddy. “Daddy,”

Saith I to Dick in the verge, (In the Verge!)

And “gee” say I, “Easter” “fur” “few tears” “Dick!”

My Carol now a Museum! “O, Ma done fart!” “Less full

Cat,” she said, “One’s there!” “Now cheese, ey?”

“Full cat wilted, bought ya a pup!” “So, nose excitement?”

XXVII

Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon

Bar. If only the Greeks were a band-

Aid, he thought. Then my woe would not flow

O’er the land. He considered his honeydew

Hand. “O woe, woe!” saith Andrew, “a fruit

In my hand may suffice to convey me to Greece,

But I must have envy to live! A grasshopper,

George, if you please!” The bartender sees

That our Andrew’s awash on the sofa

Of wide melancholy. His wound he refurbishes

Stealthily shifty-eyed over the runes. “Your

Trolleycar, sir,” ’s said to Andy, “you bloody

Well emptied the Parthenon!” “A fruitful vista

This Our South,” laughs Andrew to his Pa,

But his rough woe slithers o’er the Land.

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.

XXIX

Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear

Calm before a storm. Yet your brooding eyes

Or acquiescence soon cease to be answers.

And your soft, dark hair, a means of speaking

Becomes too much to bear. Sometimes,

In a rare, unconscious moment,

Alone this sudden darkness in a toybox

Christine’s classic beauty, Okinawa

To Laugh (Autumn gone, and Spring a long way

Off )        is loving you

When need exceeds means,

I read the Evening World / the sports,

The funnies, the vital statistics, the news:

Okinawa was a John Wayne movie to me.

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

XXXII

The blue day! In the air winds dance

Now our own children are strangled down in the bubbling

quadrangle.

To thicken! He felt his head

Returning past the houses he passed

“Goodbye, Bernie!”         “Goodbye, Carol!”       “Goodbye, Marge!”

Davy Crockett was nothing like Jesse James

A farmer drove up on a tractor

He said he was puzzled by the meaning exactly of “block.”

The blue day! Where else can we go

To escape from our tedious homes, and perhaps recapture

the past?

Now our own children are returning past the houses

I sit at my dust-patterned desk littered with four month

dust

The air beginning to thicken

In the square, on the farm, in my white block hair

XXXIII

Où sont les neiges des neiges?

The most elegant present I could get.

The older children weep among the flowers.

They believe this. Their laughter feeds the need

Like a juggler. Ten weeks pregnant. Who

Believes this? It is your love

Must feed the dancing snow, Mary

Shelley “created” Frankenstein. It doesn’t

matter, though. The shortage of available materials

Shatters my zest with festivity, one

Trembling afternoon—night—the dark trance

Up rainy cobblestones         bottle half empty

Full throttle         mired

In the petty frustrations of off-white sheets

XXXIV

Time flies by like a great whale

And I find my hand grows stale at the throttle

Of my many faceted and fake appearance

Who bucks and spouts by detour under the sheets

Hollow portals of solid appearance

Movies are poems, a holy bible, the great mother to us

People go by in the fragrant day

Accelerate softly my blood

But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood

Behind me green rubber grows, feet walk

In wet water, and dusty heads grow wide

Padré, Father, or fat old man, as you will,

I am afraid to succeed, afraid to fail

Tell me now, again, who I am

XXXV

You can make this swooped transition on your lips

Go to the sea, the lake, the tree

And the dog days come

Your head spins when the old bull rushes

Back in the airy daylight, he was not a midget

And preferred to be known as a stunt-man.

His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely.

Why do you begin to yawn so soon, who seemed

So hard, feather-bitten         back in the airy daylight

Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces

of glass

Spins when the old bull rushes. The words say I LOVE YOU

Go to the sea, the lake, the tree

Glistering, bristling, cozening whatever disguises

XXXVI

AFTER FRANK O’HARA

It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th 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 poems

to be printed in simple type on old brown paper

feminine marvelous and tough

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

Mess Occupations

AFTER MICHAUX

A few rape men or kill coons so I bat them!

Daughter prefers to lay ’em on a log and tear their hair.

Moaning Jimmy bats her!

“Ill yeah!” da junky says. “I aint as fast no more,

I’ll rent a lot in a cemetree.”           He’ll recite it

two times scary sunday O sea-daisy o’er a shade!

Au revoir, scene!

She had a great toe!

She-tail’s raggy, too!

Jelly bend over put ’im on too!

She laid a crab!

Jelly him sure later! Jelly-ass ails are tough!

She lays all his jelly on him!

Eeeeeeooooowww!! La Vie!

Her lay races is out here, she comes on, I’m on her, I’ll

fart in one ear! “Jelly, sir?” “Shall I raise him yet?”

Long-toed we dance on where Shit-toe can see ten blue men

lickin’ ten new partners and the sucker’s son!

“Mating, Madame, can whip you up up!

My Jimmy’s so small he wiggles plum moans! Ladies shimmy

at Jimmy in waves

XL

Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides

In the morning she wakes up, and she is “in love.”

One red finger sports a gold finger-gripper

Curled to honor La Pluie, by Max Jacob. Max Jacob,

When I lie down to love you, I am one hundred times more

A ghost! My dreams of love have haunted you for years

More than six-pointed key olive shame. Not this day

Shall my pale apple dreams know my dream “English

muffins, broken arm”

Nor my dream where the George Gordon gauge reads, “a

Syntactical error, Try Again!” Gosh, I gulp to be here

In my skin, writing, The Dwarf of Ticonderoga. Icy girls

finger thighs bellies apples in my dream the big gunfire

sequence

For the Jay Kenneth Koch movie, Phooey! I recall

My Aunt Annie and begin.

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

XLII

She murmurs of signs to her fingers

Not this day

Breaks his arm and so he sleeps       he digs

Dressed in newspaper, wan as pale thighs

beard shaved off long hair cut and Carol reading

Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces

of glass

Of my many faceted and fake appearance

The most elegant present I could get!

“Goodbye, Bernie!”      “Goodbye, Carol!”        “Goodbye,

Marge!”

Speckled marble bangs against his soiled green feet

And seeming wide night. Now night

Where Snow White sleeps amongst the silent dwarfs

Drifts of Johann Strauss

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

XLIII

in my paintings for they are present

Dreams, aspirations of presence! And he walks

Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements

We remove a hand . . .

washed by Joe’s throbbing hands. ‘Today

itself “a signal.” She

is introspection.

Each tree stands alone in stillness

Scanning the long selves of the shore.

In Joe Brainard’s collage, there is no such thing

as a breakdown.

Trains go by, and they are trains. He hears the feet of the men

Racing to beg him to wait

XLIV

The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

A watchdog barks in the night

Joyful ants nest in the roof of my tree

There is only off-white mescalin to be had

Anne is writing poems to me and worrying about “making it”

and Ron is writing poems and worrying about “making it”

and Pat is worrying but not working on anything

and Gude is worrying about his sex life

It is 1959, and I am waiting for the mail

Who cares about Tuesday (Jacques Louis David normalcy day)?

Boston beat New York three to one. It could have been

Carolyn. Providence is as close to Montana as Tulsa.

He buckles on his gun, the one Steve left him:

His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely

XLV

What thwarts this fear I love

to hear it creak upon this shore

of the trackless room;        the sea, night, lilacs

all getting ambiguous

Who dreams on the black colonnade

Casually tossed off as well

Are dead after all (and who falters?)

Everything turns into writing

I strain to gather my absurdities into a symbol

Every day my bridge

They basted his caption on top of the fat sheriff, “The Pig.”

Some “others” were dormants: More water went under the dam.

What excitement to think of her returning, over the colonnade,

over the tall steppes, warm hands guiding his eyes to hers

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

XLVII

gray his head goes       his feet green

No lady dream around in any bad exposure

“no pipe dream, sir. She would be the dragon

Head, dapple green of mien. must be vacated

in favor of double-clutching, and sleep,

seldom, though deep. We savor its sodden dungheap flavor

on our creep toward the rational. William Bonney

buried his daddy and killed a many. Benito Mussolini

proved a defective, but Ezra Pound came down, came

down and went. And so, Carol, remember,

We are each free to shed big crystal tears on

The dirt-covered ground, tied together only

By white clouds and some mud we can find, if we try,

In the darksome orange shadows of the big blue swamp

XLVIII

Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky

The farm was his family farm

On the real farm

I understood “The Poems.”

The dust fissure drains the gay dance

Home returning on the blue winds of dust.

A farmer rides a tractor. It is a block

To swallow. Thus a man lives by his tooth.

Meaning strides through these poems just as it strides

Through me! When I traipse on my spunk, I get

Wan! Traipse on my spunk and I get wan, too!

Francis Marion

Muscles down in tooth-clenched strides toward

The effort regulator: His piercing pince-nez

Some dim frieze in “The Poems” and these go on without me

XLIX

Joyful ants nest on the roof of my tree

Crystal tears wed to wakefulness

My dream a crumpled horn

Ripeness begins in advance of the broken arm

The black heart two times scary Sunday

Pale thighs making apple belly strides

And he walks. Beside the fifteen pieces of glass

A postcard of Juan Gris

Vast orange dreams wed to wakefulness

Swans gone in the rain came down, came down and went

Warm hands corrupting every tree

Guiding his eyes to her or a shade

Ripeness begins        My dream a crumpled horn

Fifteen pieces of glass on the roof of my tree

L

I like to beat people up

absence of passion, principles, love. She murmurs

What just popped into my eye was a fiend’s umbrella

and if you should come and pinch me now

as I go out for coffee

. . . as I was saying winter of 18 lumps

Days produce life locations to banish 7 up

Nomads, my babies, where are you? Life’s

My dream which is gunfire in my poem

Orange cavities of dreams stir inside “The Poems”

Whatever is going to happen is already happening

Some people prefer “the interior monologue”

I like to beat people up

LI

Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days

is not genuine         it shines forth from the faces

littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

is a correspondent         the innocence of childhood

sadness graying the faces of virgins aching

and everything comes before their eyes

to be fucked, we fondle their snatches but they

that the angels have supereminent wisdom is shown

they weep and get solemn etcetera

from thought       for all things come to them gratuitously

by their speech       it flows directly and spontaneously

and O I am afraid! but later they’ll be eyeing the butts of the

studs

in the street rain flushing the gutters bringing from Memphis

Gus Cannon gulping, “I called myself Banjo Joe!”

LII

FOR RICHARD WHITE

It is a human universe: & I

is a correspondent        The innocence of childhood

is not genuine       it shines forth from the faces

The poem upon the page is as massive as Anne’s thighs

Belly to hot belly we have laid

baffling combustions

are everywhere       graying the faces of virgins

aching to be fucked        we fondle their snatches

and O, I am afraid!        The poem upon the page

will not kneel       for everything comes to it

gratuitously      like Gertrude Stein to Radcliffe

Gus Cannon to say “I called myself Banjo Joe!”

O wet kisses, death on earth, lovely fucking in the poem

upon the page,

you have kept up with the times, and I am glad!

LIII

The poem upon the page is as massive as

Anne’s thighs       belly to hot belly we have laid

Serene beneath feverous folds, flashed cool

in our white heat        hungered          and tasted         and

Gone to the movies       baffling combustions

are everywhere!        like Gertrude Stein at Radcliffe,

Patsy Padgett replete with teen-age belly!        everyone’s

suddenly pregnant and no one is glad!

O wet kisses, the poem upon the page

Can tell you about teeth you’ve never dreamed

Could bite, nor be such reassurance! Babies are not

Like Word Origins and cribbage boards          or dreams

of correspondence!       Fucking is so very lovely

Who can say no to it later?

LV

Grace to be born

and live as variously

as possible

FRANK O’HARA

Grace to be born and live as variously as possible

White boats        green banks         black dust         atremble

Massive as Anne’s thighs upon the page

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

Bright room sustained by a bellyful of pills

“The Poems” is not a dream       for all things come to them

Gratuitously        In quick New York we imagine the blue Charles

Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

No Poems she demands in a blanket command          belly

To hot belly we have laid        serenely white

Only my sweating pores are true in the empty night

Baffling combustions are everywhere!       we hunger and taste

And go to the movies           then run home drenched in flame

To the grace of the make-believe bed

LVI

banging around in a cigarette          she isn’t “in love”

She murmurs of signs to her fingers

in my paintings for they are present

The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

What thwarts this fear I love

Mud on the first day (night, rather

gray his head goes       his feet green

Francis Marion nudges himself gently in the big blue sky

Joyful ants nest on the roof of my tree

I like to beat people up.

Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days

It is a human universe: & I

sings like Casals in furtive dark July; Out we go

to the looney movie         to the make-believe bed

LVII

Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

In a bright room sustained by a bellyful of pills

One’s suddenly pregnant and no one is glad!

Aching to be fucked we fondle their snatches

That the angels have supereminent wisdom is shown

Days produce life locations to banish 7 Up

A postcard of Juan Gris

To swallow. Thus a man lives by his tooth.

Buried his daddy and killed a many. Benito Mussolini

The Asiatics

Everything turns into writing

And Gude is worrying about his sex life

Each tree is introspection

The most elegant present I could get

LIX

In Joe Brainard’s collage its white arrow

does not point to William Carlos Williams.

He is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.

What is in it is sixteen ripped pictures

Of Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth whitewashed

by Joe’s throbbing hands. “Today

I am truly horribly upset because Marilyn

Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B-movie

and ate King Korn popcorn,” he wrote in his

Diary. The black heart beside the fifteen pieces

of glass in Joe Brainard’s collage

takes the eye away from the gray words,

Doctor, but they say “I LOVE YOU”

and the sonnet is not dead.

LX

old prophets          Help me to believe

New York!        sacerdotal        drink it take a pill

Blocks of blooming winter.        Patricia was a

bed          Patsy       gone        The best fighter in Troy

Be bride and groom and priest:         in pajamas

Sweet girls will bring you candied apples!

Drummer-boys and Choo-Choos will astound you!

Areté          I        thus I       Again I          I

An Organ-Grinder’s monkey does his dance.

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

LXI

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.”

LXIV

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

LXV

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

LXVI

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

LXVII

(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

LXVIII

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

LXX

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

LXXI

“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

LXXII

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

LXXIII

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

LXXIV

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

LXXV

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

LXXVI

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

LXXVII

“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.”

LXXVIII

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!”

LXXX

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”

LXXXI

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

Each strong morning         in air we get our feet wet

(my dream

a crumpled horn)         it hurts.         Huddie Ledbetter is dead

whose griefs I would most assuage       Sing I must         And

with Musick I must rage

Against those whose griefs I would most assuage

(my dream

“DEAR CHRIS, hello. It is 3:17 a.m.

LXXXII

my dream a drink with Lonnie Johnson we discuss the code

of the west

The red block dream of Hans Hofmann keeps going away and

coming back to me

my dream a crumpled horn

my dream DEAR CHRIS, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

The academy of my dreams is opening its doors

Ford Madox Ford is not a dream.

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

Southwest lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift on dream smoke

down the sooted fog ravine

My dream a drink with Richard Gallup we discuss the code of

the west

my dream a drink with Henry Miller

“The Poems” is not a dream.

Vast orange dreams wed to wakefulness: icy girls finger thighs

bellies apples in my dream the big gunfire sequence for

the Jay Kenneth Koch movie, Phooey!

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

LXXXIII

Woman is singing the song and summer

Only to others, meaning poems. Because everything

Sorry about West Point. But where else was one to go,

Southwest lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift on dream smoke

Against whose griefs I would most assuage

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

Musick strides through these poems just as it strides thru me

my dream a drink with Lonnie Johnson we discuss the code of

the west

After Ticonderoga.         Beware of Benjamin Franklin, he is

totally lacking in grace

What else. Because he tended to think of truth as “The King’s

Birthday List”

This is called “Black Nausea” by seers.

My dream DEAR CHRIS hello. It is 3:17 a.m.

Your name is now a household name, as is mine. And in any case,

although I failed, now we need never be rivals

LXXXIV

Dear Ron: hello. Your name is now a household name,

As is mine. We, too, suffer black spells. This is called

“Black Nausea” by seers, only to others, meaning poems.

In every way now we are equal. Except one.

Ford Madox Ford is not a dream.        (my dream a drink

with Henry Miller) we discuss the code of the west.

He is not “The Poems.”

“He Shot Me” was once my favorite

Cast-off emotion. Now I rage in a blue shirt at a brown desk

In a bright room. In Tulsa Chris has said goodbye to Bernie.

I never beat people up. The academy of my dreams

is opening its doors / a fat black woman is singing a song and

Summer is the subject matter. Next to her his nose couldn’t grow

Even if it does choke you up, and these marvelous tears

keep appearing

LXXXV

They basted his caption on top of the fat sheriff, “The Pig.”

Cowboys       and banging on my sorrow with books

No lady dream around in any bad exposure

The dust fissure drains the gay dance

Joyful ants nest in the roof of my tree

absence of passion, principles, love. She murmurs

is not genuine. it shines forth from the faces

And each sleeping son is broke-backed and dumb.

Davy Crockett was nothing like Jesse James

The most elegant present I could get!

But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood

Go to the sea, the lake, the tree

dazzling slim and badly loved

You are asleep. A lovely light is singing to itself

LXXXVII

Beware of Benjamin Franklin, he is totally lacking in grace

This is called “Black Nausea” by seers. (They basted his caption

on top of the fat sheriff )

These sonnets are a homage to

King Ubu.

Fasten your crimson garter around his servile heart

With which he pours forth interminably

The poem of these states        scanning the long selves of

the shore        and        “gift gift”

Great black rat packs were running amuck amidst the murk

of these states        Outside my room

These sonnets are a homage to myself

absence of passion, principles, love

The most elegant present I could get!         (This is called

“Black Nausea” by seers)

LXXXVIII

A Final Sonnet

FOR CHRIS

How strange to be gone in a minute!         A man

Signs a shovel and so he digs        Everything

Turns into writing a name for a day

Someone

is having a birthday and someone is getting

married and someone is telling a joke        my dream

a white tree         I dream of the code of the west

But this rough magic I here abjure       and

When I have required some heavenly music         which even now

I do        to work mine end upon their senses

That this aery charm is for       I’ll break

My staff       bury it certain fathoms in the earth

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I’ll drown my book.

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

Great Stories of the Chair

THE SECRET LIFE OF FORD MADOX FORD

1.

STOP STOP SIX

Livid sweet undies drawl

Elevate

So do we squeal sporty ritual

Once a great kiss sin tells

Dance is night

Later away training melodies dances rues

Latent traveler on light

Lays tense all day silky past far deportment

Says your songs tombs surely rail

You arrest my faculties, you person             knees descend

On her part

Like rain occurs missing the whole point so he tired

She would say her little ditty of soul yes

She would say that her circuitous panties descend their

first voyage

Her rear less a dress

This I can’t defeat         This stone slays me

I go and do that to her

Her lap opens kisses its tune foils this hurt

Dance of energy

They did bounce her

Her rule was grand it twists like a boulevard

2.

REELING MIDNIGHT

Impasses come, dear beasts

Who require these looney airs so long gone from you all

O all gone to one surly, rude, humiliated

Let’s shovel out a song and dance      all knew it

Let’s mosey past them fondled brutes

Shove a dream of it up our regular day devourings

I’ll fondle you on home and hang a kiss on yours

Shall we raise our dead hams

(Her tranquil nose is a noble dancing vine)

Don’t hurt it

Don’t hit it either

Saying what’s so damn sweet

I am on trains         they’re all choo-choos

Ack! The Vampire! Some debut!

Lower your dress dammit!

In this tent I’ll untrack or take down some undies

Anguish I’ll sink thru key naps         a defense

To be learned one essential day

Like seals I’m indifferent

Eat a potato she said you sober All-American

3.

FAUNA TIME

Liquor troops in deshabillé from blondes a lonely song

Laming a lean m’sieu like a vessel

This man hates his aunt so he licks her feet

Laughing at her brilliant comas of goo

When addict comforts real

One sunk leper’s more real

Lesions are early they fume on her

In her beastly sleep

Some Plague!    Heavens!    plagues offer

Loathsome murder           kill her for me

Says a weak hero completely wrong his meat leaping around

Liquor is her price when she sashays          she gouged me a long

time with fins

Like in the movies

One man lassoed her leg’s inner lotus

Laughing at the dumb blue aches so thick in her metal disc passage

Slipping her a harangue

She really has some rashes!

And her cheek hays me off!

Gruesome rash ate such sweet arms and legs;

Who gashed her liver?

Leprosy ate her mouth turning into her news

4.

ON HIS OWN

I’m not saying

She’s a creep

A wreck

Loving you phew hooray its fini

The reef ’s an injun bum

Lewd

Keep on O playful

One cent exploding cigar

Count the ends toot the lonely ear

Open the door let me in

The orbs say no

Lets sashay up the scene

And strangle the beans

A sick kid passed on a prairie new meat

The sore oozes vomit up in the ear shut the drum

Shut the earache

Mah mumbles mope an’ dumplin

Unless she tells me “ ’s too dumb”

The jello ouch I love may shoot all the martinis

My main ruse is in the mope

When the pill before we bleat lets us glow

The song blurs soda pop yea boo fah!

Uncle Nakee’s dead again

We mash and detash geese and their mothers

Untie the russkies nookies from their loins

Go boot them in the lung my turn

Sell out the taint Oologah the stinky-poo undies my cookie

ain’t on time

Tear down your undies let me see some lunch

5.

THE DANCE OF THE BROKEN BOMB

It’s a cute tune possibly by Camus

The gentle Brigadoon stands here

He sends his years to her

To pass the two birds ta-ta you pass them

To be complete just kiss him and you swish through the air

six seconds ago

To attempt your bra must come off poor Marie

Never “poor”

Enjoy each other

You’ll never walk alone you’ll pee indoors

I peed Saturday

You’re the best of them all men are such beasts they want you

He’ll caress it from time to time

The best one is in the parlor you sew all night poor neighbor

unhand her

The airplane arrives in the bedroom

The best one that you’ll ever make up the air out of

Needling someone singing come on dish

Need a rescue try my Grandma

Put her on your knee desire more than her ear

The cloak of the monkey enchanted your blouses I ask for your

hand

Then you pee. I have been with the sparrows

Whose side are you on, the sparrows?

You dolt!

6.

OWE

I’ll yell at these men who pass

Hunks of shoe pass in the winter

You’ll take a jaunt to Bali soon

May you part own a funny train

I love your legs the tops

Behind the pouring radio

One arm is Turhan Bey

The other one a soft knee a parrot

Orson came he loved my arms to show all of me

Don’t hang up

A lovely “B”

18 francs sound of desoxyn

The number of times I loved you

All pass in front of the bush of truth

The true

Kills the goo

Up and down keep it down lend me some acorns encore

Here we are day I’m on you a long long way after my years

You too have killed someone

It kills you on the page

So shut up we sure learn age

A degenerate

Degenerate kiss you clean men kill at the chance

The looney facile gay are de rigeur today          I know it

Smell a party

A chevrolet my motto

I pour the dessert on the rear of the widow

I first poured some over the cold edge of the dice

C’est la vie you two-face

Three whores went forth

Don’t be sloppy and mess with me I’ll twist yr face you clod

Later I passed away

I never again played

In ambergris I occurred in the garden

I sewed a long core and made my time

I trotted off

My faces flouted the last glance at the “B” in the yard

7.

PUTTING AWAY

We’ll mash your leman, plunk

Hey unclothe clinch soon den dance

You can kiss a pro seize your own degenerate now take some

Lick her prow Moan her foot all over

Your number is up turning and turning in the widening gyre

Same only more

The moon whops you head

Around come the tacky girls

Our dumb deaths flop inside our dainties

And our nose hurts

Lacunae oompah eye-tally

Hell, unpant

The roué soireé it lays you out (where?)

At home we play and grunt

And long for brunch

A long time gone ate and munched

Inside the svelte maison Samson and his hairs was there

One egg, rare

A brown icky drummer came at me

He puked on chumps who moaned its all unfair

Ate the beast with currants

The whole neighborhood blew their tops sicked the ape at me

I’ll see you me rocket eight days passed away

Have fun in the lumber its long overdue

At home my tail grew

Lay slowly so        phooey          so sorry       Great!

Climb on      flail about     pretty soon I’m coming (laughing)

Meanwhile

In a marsh they found a ton of sweat

Listen they laugh

They turn you don’t say looks like her debut

They pass the rest dance in the mess Boom! they know It

8.

WE ARE JUNGLES

I’m a hero form of an eyelid act like you hate it

My hair refuses the nose of the muses

I danced on my tummy on land and I won’t last, beat me!

Why? Well bless you, you impulsive ham, it’s Yuletide!

Apache blows undone me               I’ll wipe you up yestiddy

You are in these pants, you spin, you fuss, you scram

Now a lotus will appear, kill our deer

Ere I heave me in again!

Eyes of bats this is where I blubber on your safety pin

This homelife sicks us like wives & lovers, they want to be

riven by us

This is where I left without you You didn’t win

There are some words floating over these words like glue, to

dissever your broken head my home

I address my disc if I’m here           Are you sick?      I am Goy

I see        Do you?        (that’s the breaks)

The day that you came on is words        Smile        Even the

shoeshine is fearsome to you

It’s through it’s true; but all is not nothing as you say.

This covers me.

GREAT STORIES OF THE CHAIR

Great Stories of the Chair

Morning flushes its gray light across where I collect a face, rimmed with brown hair, pierced with intellect. Sparking is pleasure, and parting is littered with soot, cigarette butts, these intimate incantations under the sheets. Let’s take a sentimental journey, you said. This is the first time I’ve written in longhand in over ten years. Out we go, but now it is over a vivid machine crosses the fact of your head American Citizen dilemmas odd glory fanatic hands point to a din first glory then Other pressing the point up and down ice forms to help a machine begin. Old contacts touching looks baby sighs prepositions broken discussions sandwiches books everyone knows but forgets nights back. As usual however I go back to the white again light on up head falling down vivid scenes that last years and wrote this because of her. Does so. Her arrival telling me that he knew and saying that she was glad to see it, geniuses I tell you I was shocked! a tongue was saying The damage is already done i.e. She has been my friend now for some years though far away upstairs. Later glee pills light ambition a tonsillectomy greed throbbing risings under the table a girl brown hair lovely exercises sycamores growing across miles to this you. One thing comes to another in place of itself. And so we come together in this bed out of a finger gesture mouth gesture Other beginning again now growing to be a part of this.

Mother Cabrini

Baby sighs prepositions put the books back nights. As usual I go back to the white again light on up had fallen down on a vivid little scene last year. Wrote this because of HIM (does) arrival and Ron telling me that he knew and saying he was glad to see it was very shocking close the fire wine and only “I’m going to bed” outside, and stood running on about his father borders on the absurd ah would you remember the name of whomever hit it, thinking that a little about Dad tho lusted, sex have some son we’re in the church wedding but Ron, as we rolled over the baby in the Western movie at the Palace Death of the one could get conventional things, we did, yellow oozings brain & blood a sacrosanct creation bit bite toothpick? a Portuguese on the phone and and pardner I knew, and two for me (if I wanted any) oh she is square no articulate no devout but uh I want to do it uh do want (it) which is a small brick cottage a couple of years of Catullus, brother dog air if you’re describing my bookshelf. . . . Looking for Harry and I knew worms en fold interesting things out in front ice-cream sandwich terrific speed he said “Nothing” tried nothing a quivery sort of fellow rolls toward sister mother sister the second sister that long silver hair Irish brogue to the world. Candid roof the ditty about the stick because of “instructions”. I respect that father and the heat goes off (away) you cool a pepsi ok I do in to, off of, or on a table with a girl whom I recognize as she must crawl continually through gunfire men logginess then noise pills. And began smashing Ron in the theories especially against the Arm no hum in that air a number of me’s. They were cloth. It was a night club, pill mind. In fact I think mornings. We walk I see Ron sitting near a light bulb since sent away it needs oil zzzzzzzzzzz keeps us warm trying to hit him with canes to score “marksman” (penis decline) the white flat is in the air made up of mere shape. Suddenly someone else came I con love for her. She was very shortly afterwards words. God’s noises make no sense to me. “Seen the movie?” Ron asked but the condition: silence. Pull thin things in the house discover the emergency break the “yes”. Turned from walking Tessie half-naked cloth pony from a fight the importance of the situation I can’t stop

Tulsa Rose Gardens

Put the books back   the brown hair pierced the shower 40 below   the bugles call the powder where the light turn on again pleasure falling parting to go a light lady dark lady spy glasses littered with soot scenes years of writing this News shunted aside that’s the penalty denial of lifelong release and these intimate incantations under the sheets that we know will go on. Rubbing the back of the neck line of teeth a tongue saying the damage is already done. A journey taken by hand over a period years arms legs learning what is yours in her and in her father clickety-clack no that was another father a crowd formed that night truly going into the earth near where one exercises the shine the awl the wheel hidden shoes ruined ghosts rallies . . . your absolute lovely attentions . . . lust plastered upon us. Today we speak above the noise of the bed during the bite but before the big bite emanating thanks from the ruins . . . boys and partner you can believe I knew the world again through pranks the essence of my behavior to clothe the earth a simple way premonitions a chance and later glee pills a flat white light bulb in yellow air throbbings over the times puzzles rising from the seat on a cool night to love change love remember . . . The table under it a girl whom we all recognize . . . how many goats are there in it . . . heat flashing on and off movies glazed motives gunfire gaits.

The Sunset Motel

Beginning with a memory of childhood New York’s lovely weather hurts my forehead the shower 40 below bugles call to the powder house here where clean snow is sitting Edmund Burke Jacques Vaché returns from the library as hand-in-glove and head-to-head with Joe she was writing to him. This man was my friend. Already done I go reeling up First Avenue to Klein’s formality dogtags 100 yds Christmas is sexy there; we feel soft sweaters to learn what is ours passion principles love and plump rumpled skirts we’d like to buy to laugh a coarse laugh on the rough edge of youth. It was gloomy being broke today, and baffled the old memento fill-in-the-blanks help! it’s love again in love; Love, why do you always take my heart away? Meaning of the verb to laugh. But then the soft snow came sweetly falling down brief farewell death song of the quilt the Sunset Motel head in the clouds and feet soaked in mush drugs sex jail food shelter smoke lines across the truce I rushed hatless into the white and shining air arms legs trucks passing over them glad of the volumes of meaning of the verb to find release in heaven’s care.

Don’t Forget Anger

Never hits us the day it’s lovely gathers us up in its name who pierced the shower 40 below the heel hidden shoes the ruined exercises the shine is all night again pleasure falling off parting the bed during the biting lust. Today we speak above the noise a spyglass littered with soot scenes from the ruins boys and partners before the big bite imitating that’s the penalty denial of gain through pranks the essence of belief. I knew the world of incantations under the sheets of the neck line of the teeth behavior cloth the earth that we know we will go on rubbing. There’s this Lady she has been my friend for some years now and later glee pills a light bulb a tongue saying the damage is done by hands over a period running overtime puzzles rising for some years journeys arms legs learning what is yours love change love remember across passion truly going into the earth No that was another earth how many goats were there on it her and her father movies glazed motives: Put the books back the brown hair simple ways premonitions chance bugles calling the powder flat white in yellow air throbbing then going on off a light lady dark lady cool nights meaning years of writing this news shunted aside before a girl whom you all know and recognize flashing on then off hear lifelong release in these intimate gaits.

What’s the Racket

At a quarter past six he sat & said “where’s your brother? pull down thy sex it’s blue shot thru with green the head he said it’s in the milk he said “woe unto you also, ye lawyers.” Enough. The father seems willing to cooperate thus a new weather term is born, “no thought for your life and casual abductors.” Some years now have been “hot” weather, it gets you down every time. Ode To The Confederate Dead and that one, “The Man” sucks candy. Did. Its a cross between hot and cold running passion, blood, erudition, paper-bag-pooper passion, yes, he is an agent of ours, December 7th, 1941. What’s the racket? Erudition jargon current jargon, many things are current, much success which has to mean trouble. What else? Now it is thinking in more sex drugs food shelter jail and the north (south) love shall set down laws strait east gait gasp pant whoop holler Capture the Flag (Remember that?) Signs the inform burial cured sent out west to be drycleaned hanging on a line (my line) I pass out hand out among you with promises of.

The Conscience of a Conservative

Now my mother’s apron unfolds again in my life pills black backs of books I can’t stand movies I can’t stand Snow not reminded (revealed) The World I can’t stand candid roof the ditty about the stick (introspection) because of instructions forget nights. And so we come together in this bed out of a finger gesture mouth other exercises before the big bite imitating that’s the penalty denial of gain the shine where one exercises the shine the awl the wheel the hidden shoes ruined a particular buttressing of the body. The End. No Smoking in this Room. To track the beast down. To know. The many faces of Jesse James resplendent on a rock at Spuyten Duyvil and his dog at the end of a leash chasing a tiger in advance of the broken arm beginning with a memory of childhood New York’s lovely weather absence of passion grace principles love.

July

Lady, she has been my friend for some years sketches, I haven’t explained Actually of horror subject to neither of our laws intimate incantations under the sheets tried nothing a quivery sort of fellow hurts my forehead this shower No thought for your life and casual abductors in books I cant stand if it die. The life range examination as I am a cowboy it is unless it isnt and you imaginary scenes soot years of writing this most of it movies I cant stand a particular buttressing of the body. Olive green color. Let’s take a sentimental journey. Dont forget to bleed. I have. Many days writing the same work into itself the appearance of a role but How dark for some forty years Irish brogue rolls toward sister mother shunted aside that’s the penalty of time or of space Certainly not a place. So we come together in this bed. Later glee (lie) now pills (no lie) The End. Bugles call no snow to the powderhouse the library abductors, woe unto you also ye lawyers! No. Not reminded, I go (revealed) (No Smoking In This Room)

Some Trips to Go On

FOR DICK GALLUP

Take one hymn out west and back in step, step and punch how well circle the nervous breakdown ring the sorrel and let the eros stop. The mountains cleft ascended into these poems and appeared, the clefts, you heard about it? Very dark while. no cud, no scratch. To scratch they are still, the circus stops. Drop. It is only cuds and farewell of weeping to the civilian, a truss, the ceiling with passion trailing through it too. Don’t forget “to bleed.” Caught the buds of other areas easy she is the only girl in the dripping from the peel owl eels follow me down if you follow me there. Some say its the shelf that gets you there. Culled into the house they sleep eyeing the several, oh rose, the unquenchable variety. Mountainous beasts. Young men starting bottle it up for the trip. But vultures, famous dogs, right and left, succumbing to the bombing, see them go. The bomb. And so we left, one eye shut, often lingering in the yellow air. Don’t forget the dirty yellow lawn cracked beneath the blue triremes, the dishes, too late already washed. Them in that, already clogging it up, leaving shit as they do. No one knows movement of brilliant silence. She looks to know who I am. The fog envelops me like a life she wears two stories high approaching fresh in from the army. My army. The audience three times two in appeals pills the still steel world some horses. Ring the pole and let the driplets drop. Where? There. Oh. Here there and everywhere one palm above the orange light brings forth the unquenchable variety, appearances, leaves, single amid blue skies. The Flies; by Jean Paul Sartre. But the trip had been moved up. You were there upon a southern dawn the Ode to the Confederate Dead faking a noble failure: the life range examination olive green color. air. Narcolepsy. Clear the Range. The tropics. The story in that you would never occur. I mean, “to read”. Persia is not falling black backs fused the lack, the dishes, a fading dust went by sideways, the story to sing to those emperors, the lawn mowers, pressure driving behind their asses. Her wriggling wits.

Richard Gallup at 30

Pills Epithalamium black backs of books I can’t stand Snow Movie I can’t stand not reminded I go my gold-leaf letters “other” policemen give me an immense push to attend your soft job dark sigh and I’m still around his hat is on instead ask about her here examinations No never still no matter down the alley comes a pair of trousers laughings attention still love will break into a girl who has been 15 months remembering nothing or other is keeping a song mind glibbed it here & here will con these and those (& me) now move on to the long ride to back alleys didn’t want to but liked to wear spats on the beach Father is and is obscure I wrote always on glass there quite a card its compiled on a card jest words driving hard sounds a machine in the oubliette nice thanks she held the 30 dollars close to her chest (breath) (death) shattered his pose in minute dental obligations who will pay seems ok the tiny excursion boat to row it seems like cheating the operation the bell movement O I see them nevertheless shall experience a week of bowling shirts joy operates as well on mother at the sea an oriental sort of brittleness now lost unless it isn’t most of it goes into itself the appearance of a role crying to confess getting punched and lonesome be still next the Olympic Games its the same old game jest a highfalutin name ah me that smites me chest (heart) reason agility Pill ahem steal books huh? oh letters every way seem ineffectual its 4 o’clock bub time obsession well dis was a painting of an R a mill a watch and pills six of them raving on the mountain bones waving from Houston Texas a lion is in the house a tiny madonna and a snapshot of Max Ernst.

Who I Am and What I Think

There is no transition from a gesture to a cry or a sound. (same thing). Gestures: Who killed Cock Robin? The End. A particular buttressing of the body. No Smoking In This Room. All the senses interpenetrate. This spectacle is no more than we can assimilate. Nothing is left to do. For example, the war between men and women. Here is a whole collection of ritual. In fact everything is calculated with an enchanting mathematical meticulousness. Senses crackling everywhere resounding as if from an immense dripping rainforest. The day’s emotion and turmoil is present in the dusty grassy ground. Tied naked to a huge oak. The sort of theatrical language foreign to every tongue. To track the beats down. There is a sensual delight the braincells take. Thank you Brett. Clothed in strangest dress. To learn to keep quiet when another man’s prisoner. Complaints in the night. The kind of irritation caused by the impossibility of finding thread. The plastic requirements of this stage: food clothing shelter sex drugs jail. Ear to the ground. as if through channels hollowed out in the mind itself. Pages in Berlitz. No one here but me. Queer dawns voices a thousand eyes complaints in the night. To know to know everything. My eyes are tired. (the echo). (Jesse James).

A Letter from Dick Gallup

Woke up this morning you were other people in absentia lovely fashions On my mind. Take a good look. Shit little turd balls! I’ve got troubles: You have been sentenced to death sketches I havent explained actually I have Been many days writing the same work, waiting, no one there, The Ancient City all around you, thru August, nightmares, put them into a box, Anger gives me nausea and I said shee-it! went home resplendent with defeat. Baby-things. Future issues many thanks for them last night The Thing A great movie: Hit The Trail. Utterly exhausted by maniacs including Yours truly not to mention shifts, day shift night shift etc. took it to Cut City and one Ted reading in California She having gone back to Tappan (to picket Ben Jonson). How’s the chickens, the ducks, the old old ass? Please keep in touch Just figured out I cant stand writing in this box words dismantled to keep together and there are other problems and they come together at my mind. Furtive Days. It gets you down and out you go Dont read this part you both Nearly get killed on the freeway. Remember? How long do you think you’ll Be? That old praise (up the butt!) not likely put the books back nights    Flight 9 American Air Lines best to use your own name. You have been sentenced to Death.

A BOKE

FOR DICK GALLUP

You’re listening to a man who in 1964 unknowingly

breathed in a small quantity of

LSD powder, remember the fragrance of Grandma’s

Kitchen?—and at a college he reads, sleeps.

The next morning he

takes a walk around the campus

with a young student who is

ordinarily mild-mannered and agreeable

and secretly thinks of himself

as rather colorless and uninteresting.

He has written poems for years,

odd sensation indeed, only partly alleviated

when he learns that he is next door to

the bashed-out windows, is now

engaged in beating in the

top of a car with the inaccurate

ones relieving him. He learns to

time his words and lines to the

hammer-strokes, and before long

he is giving something. And the

grave, slightly puzzled sympathetic

faces take on expressions he is

grateful for.

The head picks up. He is taken

to a room in one of the girls’

dormitories, which gives him

a local airline. This is a

girls’ college, also

far off in the country. He finds

this out by the use of drugs outside

medical auspices. He and his

followers seem to feel

that the end justifies the means, but

they have no flair (!), and at that moment

the image of his great predecessor,

the only predecessor, Laurence Sterne,

and everything that came into his

head insulted somebody—merciful

heavens, who on earth was it?—and

what the hell, he thinks, this may be

a major technical breakthrough for me.

In that company he thinks he hears a bearded

fellow mutter something discontented about

“a lack of fire” or was he a

singer, an American poet? When at last

he reaches the station he discovers

he is too early by 20 minutes

blazes up humiliatingly in the front

of his brain. The result of this was

that he deliberately drank twice as

there are few lights on the campus, remember

Grandma’s kitchen?, and he is uncertain about the

instructions designed to get him into

Literary Vaudeville. At the outset of the

trip he had thought that

the songs themselves would be enough

so had a terrible hangover the next day.

Yet he has in some obscure way

been a good deal better satisfied with

powerful vagueness. Poetry. A car

stops. It is driven

by a student at the college

he is going to, and, ever cognizant

of his bodiless staring audience, and of

the skull beneath his own skin

he has taken to doing some curious

things. For example he has acquired a

guitar, which he carries about with

Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas; he has

had nothing to complain of as to

the size and response of his audience on

this tour—set up by the editor of a venerable

poetry magazine—has dinner

with them, recounts some of his

adventures. Everyone from the schools.

But he is still bothered by the

difference and the inevitability of

death. He has tried for years to

formulate his relationship to these

things and to say something about

how to get to bus and train stations

and airports. He keeps opening

his eyes in his sleep—for what he

has become on this trip bears but little relation

to the self he left

at home in the mind, say, of his wife.

He is, in fact, in the middle of

a tour of readings. So far, considering,

he is not looking forward to acquiring

the courage to get drunk before

readings. He is exhausted and exalted

as he has never been, and now, standing

here, these affairs may be mandatory (in

some cases.) Then too many of the schools

like this one, though far back, seemed pleased by

the way things have gone; there have

even been some letters of appreciation,

female voices. There are many

furtive amused glances at him and

he replies in kind but because he liked

to write them, but he has never thought

of them as participating in

a public act, a kind

appeal to girls, and he even

entertains the idea of sneaking

back to his room and dashing

hard on his nerves. He might live

more vividly in this condition

but he cannot write in it.

He is happy and grinning; he feels

resourceful, foolish, and

lucky. “America,” he says aloud

about this. He takes out his two

volumes of poetry, and his

manuscript for a third book,

his Memento Mori, the great themes

of poetry hit him squarely: the

possibility of love in

these students just coming from

the auditorium sees him approaching

with his ragged books

in the center of a new reality—in

this case a cold sleepless room—

he looks at these things from the last

girl’s unexpected kiss, the student

with the nine pound hammer—he

rearranges his evening’s program

around the themes of love and

death, dangerous to the psychological

stability he expects of himself.

He has several misadventures to

lance between what is on the

page, put there by him at odd

beyond-himself moments, and . . .

and the faces. In the middle

guise of fiction, he becomes fascinatingly

alive, living up to the

“giving-them-what-they-want,” or might

be expected to feel entitled to

from a poet, beside himself, who

has drunk very much at six or eight

schools before that one part.

Intensity, he murmurs, where have

you been all my life.

He settles down for a sleep

with a young professor who

writes poems and is enthusiastic

and companionable. He

reads, has a drink at an untidy

bundle of railroads, bus, and airline schedules

marked with a red pencil and

various notes to himself. That

such nervous excitement, such

over-responsiveness to people

is probably the poet’s sole

evening repast, and if he

tasted of a wild boar or a stag

which he had roasted in the

cold light coming in from the chapel

tower across the campus, well, remember

the fragrance? There is

only one bus out of town,

he reaches for it, rock-and-roll

music bursts in his face. Rather than

fool with trying to shut it off he pulls

out his manuscripts. One whispers to

another. Though he is a little

afraid to, he admits who he is,

alone in a room with his skull.

In this reading, for once in his

life, he feels a correct balance

in his Hamlet, lost somewhere in

the snows of Northern Wisconsin:

he is, eternal strangeness!, a wandering

pose, full of life through thick

glasses. He finishes, stands

glaring for a moment in another

world with fatigue, one who has spent the most

satisfying part of a long tripping

movement that is not really for him, no, it is

for an exhausted hammerer, or for a new

arrival home and he is more

than a little glad of that: they are

wearing out the plug, feeling that he

has had his revenge. He turns on

the light and dresses, not quite able

to stall, asks suddenly, “May I

kiss you?” She agrees without thinking and

she does so with a distinct sense of

quitting while he is ahead. The

applause is long and loud, as if he were

a Beatle. He reaches a stage,

mounts, looks at the last of all clocks,

and leaves. It is 5:15 a.m. It is

time. He gets up out of bed and stumbles just

as he steps down from the stage into a

wave of feathery sweatered girls, a memorable

thing. No doubt. He gives the best reading of his

life, one that will shortly thereafter

have entered a twilight state characterized

by fantastic imagery. He subs a condition

of character and environment in order to

produce alternative modes of behavior.

He sits down, closes his eyes. Time is

annihilated; the bus driver stumbles

aboard, opens a door to a bridge. Finally

someone stops him, a farmer, and takes him 20

miles down the road. The farmer turns off

the highway, one is much interested in his

being there walking across the campus.

He hears a loud gust of many grunts, a crowd

of muffled students cheers him on; it

is fun in the country and there is

nothing to do. Still he is pleasantly

gratified at the turnouts and at the time,

picks up his bags and manuscripts and

his symbolic white guitar, and goes out

into the white darkness.

What is his life like? Where will he die?

Who is this nun giving him a calm

sense of proportion? and who leaves him; and

this time he is really in a

deserted landscape with dead corn in the

building and no one knows him—

“Come home.” And who is that thin

serious boy with the crewcut?

In a station wagon they drive together

40 miles into the rainforests. He is

given a room in a cavern, and

gifts; disturbing gifts, perhaps inept

inadequate gifts, but gifts just the

same. He feels that he is overcome.

He is middle-aged, beginning to lose

teeth and hair. He is lishing them

in his mind, down steps.

The next morning he catches a strange

madness; took hold of him first at the

reading when he discovered that

everything he said was being noted and

commented upon. Too, it is a midwinter

night in the midwest, and a man is

lying alone in a sterling ardor.

The next place is a branch of a state

of mind located in the fields in an

inept scarecrow’s life. A few big birds

puff and hunch on the telephone wires;

a strange room. On the dresser beside

the complicated clock-radio that

is supposed to wake him on time, there is

an industrial district of a large city.

There he is to be met at the bus station

though it is plain that there is no other

human being in those streets. In a bar,

(ah yes, he needs a drink badly), on

the stairs of a bus, he collapses.

When he wakes up the bus is in

the terminal of the next city. He gets

a small dose, about one-thousandth

the size of an aspirin, and the notoriety

is definitely agreeable and

he does his best to try to live up to it.

What in fact is his problem? A friend

will drive him to the next

engagement which is

his last. They start out and he pays

and gets out, scarcely knowing what he is

doing but feeling a little better

standing on the hood of a 1953 Buick

with a John Henry type hammer

in his hands, they having a kind of

metric as he adjusts his delivery more and

more to the inevitable banging. Presumes

there is nothing unscientific in

his desire to change the best

proportions of strength and beauty. His

tastes were modest, a piece of bread,

a draught of water, and you were

often sent to drive him out of his

college. “I couldn’t believe you’d

be the one I was looking for,” the poet

says in another city, where he has

a friend he can stay with a day or two.

He flies in watching the lights of the

city, and in a phrase the losses endured

by everyone every day—the negation of

possibility that occurs each time

we pass anyone’s house.

He eats dinner with the writing and the

phrases stay with him when he wakes.

He notes them down and moves on to the

next stop via the bus station. Crossing

the campus on the one path he

knows he keeps reminding himself of

what he is doing. It is ominous that

the only other large institution in

the town is

the state insane asylum. In all, it

is a strangely good occasion.

He leaves that night, paces back and forth.

There is a skull on his table and suddenly

at the sight of it he starts reading.

From the airless close-packed winter bus

station he tries to call his contact at

the noon reading. The tour is to take place that

day and he has four hours to go 40 miles. The

tenuous noise of revolutions and

student demonstrations combine with assembly

lines that will annihilate the miles,

he becoming then an older and more

dependable self, and yet, remembering.

Perhaps though some recent poems about

his children will do the trick. He reads

these quietly and has

inevitable parties given after his

readings, he plays one or two songs,

and then scuttles back into his corner,

realizing now that role-playing is

shameful beside the feelings he

has experienced. Now he has the sensation

that he must calm down and work.

But on the aircraft aimed at last at

his home, he feels also

interested in Yeats’ occult preoccupations,

a curious object to discuss

in good health, far from the poems themselves.

“Just be yourself,” he told himself

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

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)

“He doesn’t know how to take a vacation”

Dick

doesn’t know how to take a vacation

either

That is not to infer

that Dick is a toad

under his Band-aid

far from it

a toad is a cold-blooded fellow

Dick is warm and full of blood

When you leave, Dick

turn the refrigerator

to vacation please

6

Now I’m going to read 3 cereal poems:

CORN FLAKES

OATMEAL

RY-KRISP

thank you

they were composed

excuse me

I mean NOT composed

using the John-Cage-Animal-Cracker

Method of Composition

(this seems to be mushrooming into a

major work

of high

seriousness)

•

I’d fight for that!

(I didn’t have to.)

7

True Love

there is only one way

to describe

“True Love”

does anyone know

that one way?

•

Mr. Nelson Algren

1958 West Evergreen

Chicago, Illinois

•

In Chicago, Illinois, you

are really at home

whether you like it or not, baby,

and, whether you like it

or not

You Are My Friend

so don’t pees me off!

8

Come into my house

tonight

Dick

and I will show you

this new work

“House at Night”

It & this page, there not here, are not the same

except in a

manner of

speaking

it is not

“A Portrait of Jean-Marie”

tho it cd be

it is also not

“A Portrait of Barbara Harris”

whom I don’t know

though I like her plenty

she’s a lot like me

(my own name is

“Mr. Brigadoon”)

9

I am constantly being caught up

in my own commotion

it is now a slow commotion

The radio is turning me on

10

Commotion over, clothes in hand I wait

in Mr. Ron Padgett’s furlined

bridge-jacket

who shivers now

in Paris, Oklahoma

between Galveston &

Mobile a word

incidentally

invented

cross that out

coined

by Mr. Marcel Duchamp

to describe a

lady finger

11

it’s too cold in here / but not for me

in my present balloon state / to write this love song

“Cold rosy dawn in New York City”

hovering over the radio

de-dum

12

I woke up this morning

it was night

you were on my mind                               LADY BRETT

looking for a home

for the boll weevil

nothing like that in New York City

it’s all in Oklahoma

where you-all

can learn to talk like me

if “you-all” is Mr.

Ron Padgett, “The

American Express”

13

He’s a good friend of mine

although                                   he fears he is unable to love

people

who have politesse

whatever that may be

thanks anyway, Frank

you’re not without con brio

n’es ca’fe?

(thanks, Ed)

14

I quote

from “The Code of the West”

a work

by Mr. Ed Sanders

whose “Poem From Jail”

I highly recommend

On second thought

I quote instead

This work

by Mr. Marcel Duchamp

which

oddly enough

I also give high recommendation

15

THE CODE OF THE WEST

1.   Sob when you read “Black Beauty.”

2.   The true test of a man is a bunt.

3.   Dare to do your duty.

4.   Press the tip of the tongue on the gums

behind the upper teeth as for t, and expel

the breath with vibrations of the vocal cords.

5.   He went to the windows of those who slept

and over each pain like a fairy wept.

6.   Halt!

7.   Loosen your snood.

8.   Close your eyes and doze.

9.   Jove! Jove! This shepherd’s passion

is much upon my fashion!

10.   Drill.

16

you know

once people paid no attention to me

Mayakovsky

in the garden of my memory

& now

passion’s flower

wilts

constantly

because

my lady love is a Holy Roller!

her body is a sponge

it has no mud

Tonight’s heat

will dry that mud

and it will fall into dust

I’m ready for it

the body I mean

not the dust

however if you are in the dust

kindly hop into this tub of black water please

now hand me that quail

lean me against the belly of a woman

(you are that woman)

17

knock on the door of her house

knock-knock

the sun is out

river flowing in a window

a geranium trembling automobile

droning

across the screen

Turn back to look

you don’t see

the door open

you are standing there

I mean

I am sitting here

between the door

to a world full of others

like yourselves

and the droning solitude of this here Los Angeles

Freeway

•

How to get off?

18

Hi, Bears!

do you believe in magic?

good!

because I am here

to make a monkey out of you

The best way

to make yrself a monkey

is to jump down

(spin around)

pick a bale of cotton

if you don’t understand

that

you will never understand

your country’s history

1000 volumes a year

ooze from the minds

of dead monkeys

and yet

we are still too dull

to understand

them

or that

it is not at all unpleasant

to be kissed by a monkey

if you are a monkey

I am not a monkey

I do not have a monkey on my back

I am not a monkey’s uncle

turn page

19

Only a monkey would read this

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FLIES

over 250 flies

photographed

in living color

These 250 flies were tied “up”

executed

by hand

Not my hand

The Little Sisters

20

There are no flies on me, New York City

oh

21

There are, however,

two sorts of landscapes here

the interior

and

the exterior

as well as the other

which we will not go into here

22

One song I have always liked

is

“Hope you Happy Monkey”

that’s the truth

by Ruth Krauss

23

There you are

There I go

past The Majestic Men’s Clothes

slightly disheveled

is a nice phrase

it has impact

like the three pricks

Alice gave

Joe Gould

in 1933

MOTHER

that’s Alice’s idea of Wonderland

24

She happens to be a sex expert, among other things

if you are squeamish I’d better not tell you

WHAT other things . . .

“How did Red China get the ‘O’ bomb?”

no one knows

No one will ever know

because no one

is a tautology

let’s have no truck

with tautologies

25

This poem

has no truck

although it does provide

a sort of Reader’s Digest

of Oriental sex practices

under the sheets

Who threw the panties into

Mother’s tea

is a good example of one

of the many unanswered questions

life provides

Where did the beautiful

British secret agent

lose his nightie

is another

it was not a majestic nightie

nor was it a man’s nightie

unless of course

the Beautiful British

secret agent

was a female impersonator

Perhaps that was his secret

There has always been a

quick turnover

among British secret agents

Look!   there goes one now

26

I am here today             a gentleman

with time on my hands

you are in my heart

during

The Four Seasons

which are

1. springtime

2. bedtime

and so on

27

There is a revolution going on in my skin

I have the gift of young skin

no pimples

which is why I am here today

I would like to introduce myself

However

it will be better

between us

if I don’t                                                               cheat

The victory is not always to the sweet

so keep on the ball, buddy, i.e.

I mean “the button”

28

COME ALIVE

Meet Me At The Smoke Ring

(Get Your Piles Out of Vietnam

Let’s Love One Another)

(Equality for Homosexuals)

YES

SUCK

Stand Up For Dikes

Commemorating The Visit

of Pope Paul X                          We Won’t Go

to NYC

1965                                          I’m for Legalized

Abortion

NO MAN IS GOOD THREE TIMES

29

Life certainly is marvelous

When you’re in love

isn’t it?

Consequently, it is important

to be in love

most all the time

but not all of the time

When you are in love

all of the time

you get bored                           because

life

when it’s always the same

is boring

isn’t it?

that’s a strange theory

30

it’s a theory of strange

I am in love

right now. I am in love with

(fill in name of person in room)

see me about this later, (                                             )

I am not in love with Mr. Walter Steck

He was or

was not

recently elected

to the assembly

Just for the record             I found Mr. Walter Steck

recently

at five o’clock in the afternoon

on García Lorca’s birthday

lying in the gutter

on his button          shame

31

O ship of states

Sail on, O allegorical poem

32

Branching out

shooting all night

he grounded

himself

on the button

33

so here

you stand

hitting upon things

you hadn’t thought upon

when you get into the pictures

you wake up

inside an oval

portrait

I mean a woman

A beautiful reminder sitting on a line

It could be a steamship line        or even a ferry line

34

Life is Never boring when you are Tarzan of the Apes

e.g.     You step out from behind a bush

and you say

“Yes, I am M’sieur Tarzan”

35

Dick Gallup arrives at this point

and says

“Life is Boring”

36

Jacques-Louis David is crying in his crib

he is not bored

Jane has given him a banana

37

Dick reads those lines

they bore him

but I laugh plenty

38

David is sobbing bitterly

in the jungle

“Shut up

or I’ll kill you,” etc.

He doesn’t want to

39

He wants the white

tempera

paint

with which I am painting out the words

in this here comic book

“Tarzan of the Apes”

so that I can “fill in the words”

40

“The Words” is a good book

is is the autobiography of Mr. Jean-Paul Sartre

from age zero to ten

In it

he tells what a little shit he was.

“I’m going doo-doo” says Jacques-Louis David

we have words

and he falls into sleep

41

Life is long

it’s sure been a long Times

crossword puzzle

since I last

was here

That Spring of ’65

that was

That was my best year

that was also a good year for

Dancers

Buildings and

People in the Street

in the cell block

a boy

invented

the mahogany cage

before he rested

The climate became a song

Crowds disperse my

purpose

my great calm

Dim lights

turn me down

the radio parts

the curly hair

me on the floor

saying

42

“Go now

and get me a vast Band-aid”

43

I’m sitting here thinking that these words that I have been

borrowing from Mr. James “The Rock” Proust & son

should stretch to the end of at least one

period in my life.

They did.

44

“What I really like is new girls to fuck.”

that’s a good line

it was said by Dick Gallup

who let it drop there

that to be explained later

in the backroom

of The Peace Eye

that’s all I know

45

Cow a is not Cow b

Dick

Count Korzybski said that

that Polish cocksucker

is what a drunk called HIM

He didn’t mean Korzybski

though

He’d never heard of Him

I don’t know what he meant

I was drunk

He was speaking Polish

He didn’t dig Counts

That’s a fact

46

According to FACT

William Burroughs

studied under

that Polish cocksucker

in Chicago

I’ve always admired Count Korzybski

and, in fact, I’ve always admired William Burroughs

Hi Bill!

I do not, however, admire FACT Magazine

because it costs too much money

and probably for other reasons

too vague to be present

47

dot dot dot

48

Listen

Is there a Pseudotsuga Menziesii

in your house?

if so, there is

nothing to worry about

it would be hard to find

a house

in America

where Pseudotsuga Menziesii isn’t

all over the goddam place

it has a lovely talent

49

cross something out here

50

Imagine yourself

driving on a super highway

with your friend

Mr. Bob Harris

besides being a genius

he is also a perennial

problem child

who mooches off his friends

sleeps with any available women

ignores his children

and smokes ceaselessly

like yourself

you may have to stop often

to relieve yourself

because your friend

suffers

from a terrible disease previously unmentioned

but not in this poem

nor by anyone whom you have ever known

in this vale of tears

51

back on the freeway                       the cars pass

over your eyes ears nose and throat                       and hairs

no interviews                      no photographs

no autographs

in this dream

which is so realistic

you can almost hear my voice

at your ear

which is on the level of your back,

dear

52

Fish and Cheep Pet Shoppe

The Pioneer

Block Drug                                                          Manhattan

Fox’s Corner

Martha’s

are all places I have never visited

though I keep meaning to

53

Italy is a boot in the atlas

The snowball centuries rolling

collect only the tiny footprints of

hens

the burning bush attracts

the hen

One comes to take one’s

place in the sun, only

to smother inside the

hide of a hen

54

COME IN!

Hello Lee                              Mr. Lee Crabtree

of The Fugs

just came in

55

Rhetoric

is what we make

out of our quarrels

with others

out of

our quarrels with ourselves

we make poetry

Yes, that is true,

56

In my house, every cloud

has a silver lining

there is only one cloud in my house

Inside that cloud is a joke

it is not an inside joke

57

on every mirror

in my house

is a big kiss

placed there by Mr. Joe Brainard

•

it’s very exciting

not to be asleep now

•

58

If Joe Brainard were here now

he’d be excited

about giving me those kisses

that’s a lie

clickety-clack               William Saroyan

59

What we do in life

in New York City

in 1965

we get the money

60

GET THE MONEY!

that was Damon Runyon’s favorite expression

the heat is coming on

like gangbusters

(A. Partridge

History of American Climate)

I guess that means

it’s time to burst,

eh,

M’sieur Cloud?

61

Speaking of Picasso, he once sd

that for him

true friendship cannot exist

without the possibility of

sex

That is true

I have many men friends

I would like to fuck

However, I am unable to do so

because I am not a homosexual

fortunately

this makes my life complex

rather than simple

and vice versa

62

Dream on O impudent virgin

Guillaume Apollinaire

you too are aware of the duality of nature and of

the spirit

and you too prefer the visible

to the invisible

I salute You!

(Salutes)

63

the true Guillaume

is a great deal more interesting

than many of those people

whose misfortune it is

not to be so true

64

the logic of that is

lost

but may be recovered

in the theory of Mr. A. N. Whitehead to the effect

that a human being

may possess two kinds of perception / that

as it were

work from opposite ends.

(breathing)

65

So, in conclusion, may I say

that this is what life is like here

you drink some coffee, you get some sleep

everything is up in the air

especially us, who are me

66

Now

in the middle of this

someone I love is dead

and I don’t even know

“how”

I thought she belonged to me

How she filled my life when I felt empty!

How she fills me now!

67

games of cribbage

with Dick

filled this afternoon

do you

understand that?

68

What

excitement!

crossing Saint Mark’s Place

face cold in air

tonight

when

that girlish someone waving

from a bicycle

turned me back on.

69

What moves me most, I guess

of a sunlit morning

is being alone

with everyone I love

crossing 6th and 1st

at ice-cold 6 a.m.

from where I come home

with two French donuts, Pepsi and

the New York Times.

70

Joy is what I like,

That, and love.

OCT. 1965–JAN. 1966

A Dream

Dreamy-eyed is how you get

when you need something strong

“in some cup of your own”

The gift of coffee is an act of love

unless it costs you

Love came into my room

I mean my life

the shape of a Tomato

it took over everything

later:

Forgive me, René Magritte

I meant “a rose”

You have a contemporary nature

in these here coffee alps

I dreamt that December 27th, 1965

while sleeping with Linda Schjeldahl

in a dream

Living with Chris

FOR CHRISTINA GALLUP

It’s not exciting to have a bar of soap

in your right breast pocket

it’s not boring either

it’s just what’s happening in America, in 1965

If there is no Peace in the world

it’s because there is no Peace

in the minds of men. You’d be surprised, however

at how much difference

a really good cup of coffee & a few pills can make

in your day

I would like to get hold of

the owner’s manual

for a 1965 model “DREAM”

(Catalogue number CA-77)

I am far from the unluckiest woman in the world

I am far from a woman

An elephant is tramping in my heart

Alka-Seltzer       Palmolive         Pepsodent          Fab

Chemical New York

There is nothing worse than elephant love

Still, there is some Peace in the world. It is

night. You are asleep. So I must be at peace

The barometer at 29.58 and wandering

But who are you?

For god’s sake, is there anyone out there listening?

If so, Peace.

Bean Spasms

TO GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

New York’s lovely weather

hurts my forehead

in praise of thee

the? white dead

whose eyes know:

what are they

of the tiny cloud my brain:

The City’s tough red buttons:

O Mars, red, angry planet, candy

bar, with sky on top,

“why, it’s young Leander hurrying to his death”

what? what time is it in New York            in these here alps

City of lovely tender hate

and beauty making beautiful

old rhymes?

I ran away from you

when you needed something strong

then I leand against the toilet bowl (ack)

Malcolm X

I love my brain

it all mine now is

saved not knowing

that &

that (happily)

being that:

“wee kill our selves to propagate our kinde”

John Donne

yes, that’s true

the hair on yr nuts & my

big blood-filled cock are a part in that

too

PART 2

Mister Robert Dylan doesn’t feel well today

That’s bad

This picture doesn’t show that

It’s not bad, too

it’s very ritzy in fact

here I stand I can’t stand

to be thing

I don’t use                       atop

the empire state

building

& so sauntered out that door

That reminds me of the time

I wrote that long piece about a gangster name of “Jr.”

O Harry James! had eyes to wander but lacked tongue to praise

so later peed under his art

paused only to lay a sneeze

on Jack Dempsey

asleep with his favorite Horse

That reminds me of I buzz

on & off Miró pop

in & out a Castro convertible

minute by minute                                                GENEROSITY!

Yes now that the seasons totter in their walk

I do a lot of wondering about Life in praise of ladies dead of

& Time plaza(s), Bryant Park by the Public                   eye of brow

Library, Smith Bros. black boxes, Times

Square

Pirogi Houses

with long skinny rivers thru them

they lead the weary away

off! hey!

I’m no sailor

off a ship

at sea      I’M HERE

& “The living is easy”

It’s “HIGH TIME”

& I’m in shapes

of shadow, they

certainly can warm, can’t they?

Have you ever seen one?                                   NO!

of those long skinny Rivers

So well hung, in New York City

NO!         in fact

I’m the Wonderer

& as yr train goes by                       forgive me, René!                 ‘just oncet’

I woke up in Heaven

He woke, and wondered more; how many angels

on this train huh?             snore

for there she lay

on sheets that mock lust              done that 7 times

been caught

and brought back

to a peach nobody.

To Continue:

Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan

hates yr brain

my dears

amidst the many other little buzzes

& like, Today, as Ron Padgett might say

is

“A tub of vodka”

“in the morning”

she might reply

and that keeps it up

past icy poles

where angels beg fr doom then zip

ping in-and-out, joining the army

wondering about Life

by the Public Library of

Life

No Greater Thrill!

(I wonder)

Now that the earth is changing I wonder what time it’s getting to be

sitting on this New York Times Square

that actually very ritzy, Lauren        it’s made of yellow wood or

I don’t know something           maybe

This man was my                           it’s been fluffed up

friend

He had a sense for the

vast                                   doesn’t he?

Awake my Angel! give thyself

to the lovely hours          Don’t cheat

The victory is not always to the sweet.

I mean that.

Now this picture is pretty good here

Though it once got demerits from the lunatic Arthur Cravan

He wasn’t feeling good that day

Maybe because he had nothing on

paint-wise I mean

PART 3

I wrote that

about what is

this empty room                   without a heart

now in three parts

a white flower

came home wet & drunk             2 Pepsis

and smashed my fist thru her window

in the nude

As the hand zips you see

Old Masters, you can see

well hung in New York                 they grow fast here

Conflicting, yet purposeful

yet with outcry vain!

PART 4

Praising, that’s it!

you string a sonnet around yr fat gut

and falling on your knees

you invent the shoe

for a horse. It brings you luck

while sleeping

“You have it seems a workshop nature”

Have you                                      “Good Lord!”

Some folks is wood

seen them?                                           Ron Padgett wd say

amidst the many other little buzzes

past the neon on & off

night & day        STEAK SANDWICH

Have you ever tried one Anne?           SURE!

“I wonder what time ‘its’?”

as I sit on this new Doctor

NO     I only look at buildings they’re in

as you and he, I mean he & you & I buzz past

in yellow ties   I call that gold

THE HOTEL BUCKINGHAM

(facade) is black, and taller than last time

is looming over lunch     naked     high time     poem        & I, equal in

perfection & desire

is looming        two eyes       over coffee-cup (white) nature

and man:        both hell on poetry.

Art is art and life is

“A monograph on Infidelity”

Oh. Forgive me stench of sandwich

O pneumonia in American Poetry

Do we have time?                        well look at Burroughs

7 times been caught and brought back to Mars

& eaten.

“Art is art & Life

is home,” Fairfield Porter said that

turning himself in

Tonight arrives again in red

some go on     even in Colorado                              on the run

the forests shake

meaning:

coffee            the cheerfulness of this poor

fellow is terrible, hidden in

the fringes of the eyelids

blue mysteries’ (I’M THE SKY)

The sky is bleeding now

onto 57th Street

of the 20th Century &

HORN & HARDART’S

Right Here. That’s PART 5

I’m not some sailor off a ship at sea

I’m the wanderer                                                      (age 4)

& now everyone is dead

sinking bewildered of hand, of foot, of lip

nude, thinking

laughter burnished brighter than hate

goodbye.

André Breton said that

what a shit!

Now he’s gone!

up bubbles all his amorous breath

& Monograph on Infidelity entitled

The Living Dream

I never again played

I dreamt that December 27th, 1965

all in the blazon of sweet beauty’s breast

I mean     “a rose”                Do you understand that?

Do you?

The rock&roll songs of this earth

commingling absolute joy AND

incontrovertible joy of intelligence

certainly can warm

can’t they?       YES!

and they do.

Keeping eternal whisperings around

(Mr. Macadams writes in

the nude: no that’s not

(we want to take the underground        me that: then zips in &

revolution to Harvard!)             out the boring taxis, refusing

to join the army

and yet this girl has             asleep “on the springs”

so much grace              of red GENEROSITY)

I wonder!

Were all their praises simply prophecies

of this

the time!           NO GREATER THRILL

my friends

But I quickly forget them, those other times, for what are they

but parts in the silver lining of the tiny cloud my brain

drifting up into smoke the city’s tough blue top:

I think a picture always

leads you gently to someone else

Don’t you? like when you ask to leave the room

& go to the moon.

Frank O’Hara’s Question

from “Writers and Issues”

by John Ashbery

what sky

out there is between the ailanthuses

a 17th century prison an aardvark

a photograph of Mussolini and

a personal letter from Isak Dinesen

written after eating

can be succeeded by a calm evaluation

of the “intense inane” that surrounds

him:

it is cool

I am high

and happy

as it turns

on the earth

tangles me

in the air

and between these two passages (from

the long poem ‘Biotherm’) occurs a mediating

line which might stand to characterize

all of Mr. O’Hara’s art:

I am guarding it from mess and message.

Many Happy Returns

TO DICK GALLUP

It’s a great pleasure to

wake “up”

mid-afternoon

2 o’clock

and if thy stomach think not

no matter . . .

because

the living

“it’s easy”

you splash the face &

back of the neck

swig Pepsi

& drape the bent frame in something

“blue for going out”

•    •   •

you might smoke a little pot, even

or take a pill

or two pills

•

(the pleasures of prosperity

tho they are only bonuses

really

and neither necessary nor not)

•

& then:

POOF!

•    •   •

Puerto-Rican girls are terrific!

you have to smile but you don’t

touch, you haven’t eaten

yet, & you’re too young

to die . . .

•

No, I’m only kidding!

Who on earth would kill

for love? (Who wouldn’t?)

•

Joanne & Jack

will feed you

today

because

Anne & Lewis are

“on the wing” as

but not like

always . . .

•   •

Michael is driving a hard bargain

himself

to San Francisco . . .

•

&

Pete & Linda

& Katie and George,

Emilio, Elio and Paul

have gone to Maine . . .

•   •  •

Everyone, it seems, is somewhere else.

None are lost, tho. At least,

we aren’t!

(GEM’S SPA: corner of 2nd Avenue &

Saint Mark’s Place)

•

I’m right here

sunlight opening up the sidewalk,

opening up today’s first black&white,

& I’m about to be

born again thinking of you

Things to Do in New York City

FOR PETER SCHJELDAHL

Wake up high up

frame bent & turned on

Moving slowly

& by the numbers

light cigarette

Dress in basic black

& reading a lovely old man’s book:

BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN

change

flashback

play cribbage on the Williamsburg Bridge

watching the boats sail by

the sun, like a monument,

move slowly up the sky

above the bloody rush:

break yr legs & break yr heart

kiss the girls & make them cry

loving the gods & seeing them die

celebrate your own

& everyone else’s birth:

Make friends forever

& go away

10 Things I Do Every Day

wake up

smoke pot

see the cat

love my wife

think of Frank

eat lunch

make noises

sing songs

go out

dig the streets

go home for dinner

read the Post

make pee-pee

two kids

grin

read books

see my friends

get pissed-off

have a Pepsi

disappear

Resolution

The ground is white with snow.

It’s morning, of New Year’s Eve, 1968, & clean

City air is alive with snow, its quiet

Driving. I am 33. Good Wishes, brothers, everywhere

& Don’t You Tread On Me.

In the Early Morning Rain

TO MY FAMILY & FRIENDS

Hello

“Hello”

originally

meant

“Be whole”

or

“Be healthy”

Today

it

simply

means

“Hello”

80th Congress

TO RON PADGETT

It’s 2 a.m. at Anne & Lewis’s which is where it’s at

On St. Mark’s Place hash and Angel Hairs on our minds

Love is in our heart’s (what else?) dope & Peter Schjeldahl

Who is new and valid in a blinding snowstorm

Inside joy fills our drugless shooting gallery

With repartee; where there’s smoke there’s marriage &, folks

That’s also where it’s at in poetry in 1967

Newly rich but still a hopeless invalid (in 1967)

Yes, it’s 1967, & we’ve been killing time with life

But at Lewis & Anne’s we live it “up”

Anne makes lovely snow-sodas while Lewis’s watchamacallit warms up this

New Year’s straight blue haze. We think about that

And money. With something inside us we float up

To & onto you, it, you were truly there & now you’re here.

TED BERRIGAN & DICK GALLUP

Fragment

FOR JIM BRODEY

Left behind in New York City, & oof!

That’s the right one: sitting now, & I’m not thinking

Nor swishing; I’m just sitting. Getting over them two

Hamburgers. & that I think

Gets it all down. Here, anyway, I am

On this electric chair each breath nearer the last

Oceans of ripples solid under me: how come?

One pair of time-capsules trigger sweat

As one listens & one listening type types

LOOKS LIKE WE GONNA GET A LITTLE SNOW, HUH?

I don’t know but you can bet something’s going

to happen.

The Circle

Up is waiting

Between is barely there

Down is alive

Now is spinning

It’s a quick spin

Nevertheless

5 New Sonnets: A Poem

1

FOR BARRY & JACKY HALL

His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze

dear Berrigan. He died

I, an island, sail, and my shores toss

to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal,

My babies parade waving their innocent flags

The taste of such delicate thoughts

Opulent, sinister, and cold!

Sing in idiom of disgrace

Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

On the grass. To think of you alone

Your champion. Days are nursed on science fiction

For the fey Saint’s parade     Today

Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements.

2

Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night.

Back to books.    I read

on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness

bristling hate.

And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

Huddled on the structured steps

The bulbs burn, phosphorescent, white,

Shall it be male or female in the tub?

Pale like an ancient scarf, she is unadorned,

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

Suffering the poem of these states!

& you tremble at the books upon the earth

& he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

No.   One     Two    Three     Four    Today

3

It’s 8:30 p.m. in New York and I’ve been running

Wind giving presence to fragments.

at every hand, my critic

Flinging currents into pouring streams

The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

Fathers and teachers, and daemons down under the sea,

The singer sleeps in Cos.    Strange juxtaposed

“I wanted to be a cowboy.” Doughboy will do

As my strength and I walk out and look for you

Winds flip down the dark path of breath

Released by night (which is not to imply    clarity

She is warm. Into the vast closed air of the slow

The wind’s wish is the tree’s demand

On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar.

4

Is there room in the room that you room in?

How much longer shall I be able to inhabit the Divine

deep in whose reeds great elephants decay;

loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

He buckles on his gun, the one

He wanted to know the names

And the green rug nestled against the furnace

Your hair moves slightly,

He is incomplete, bringing you Ginger Ale

The cooling wind keeps blowing, and

He finds he cannot fake

Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

Fuscous with murderous dampness

But helpless, as blue roses are helpless.

& 5

Into the closed air of the slow

And then one morning to waken perfect-faced

The blue day! In the air winds dance

Sleep half sleep half silence and with reason

banging around in a cigarette    she isn’t “in love”

in my paintings for they are present

The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

A watchdog barks in the night

Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky

What thwarts this fear I love

No lady dream around in any bad exposure

absence of passion, principles, love. She murmurs

Is not genuine    it shines forth from the faces

littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy

Poem

FOR BILL BERKSON

Seven thousand feet over

The American Midwest

In the black and droning night

Sitting awake and alone

I worry the stewardess . . .

Would you like some coffee, sir?

How about a magazine?

No thanks. I smile and refuse.

My father died today. I

Fifteen hundred miles away

Left at once for home, having

received the news from mother

In tears on the telephone.

He never rode in a plane.

Gus

. . . Not far from here he was inside his head there were some sands. Of these 50 gave way to a room, latter resembling manure.

To the right, in a kit, a sort of woman-spanned pond absorbed water cake would form at the bottom keep that in.

The hut rust bin thanks piece of colour.

A little pool gravel made him first step aside. Gus walked up under the arc-light as far as the first person, perceived God. She was God, having lance, he took her by the behind and kissed her butt. Gus want fuck, to get the information.

He spun off her dress. It was there, and

very beautiful, his pecker.

Gus live entirely by hemselve and for hemselve.

He spen days taking off bottles, furnishing room, best system ea heat. For Christ sake! Tryd smoke ham wash.

There was a large cop faggot pursued the secret butterfly near fourteen glass jars tomato and green peas coated the stoppers with quicklime cheese wrapped round with linen strip, then lunged into boiling water: it steamed. He por in difference of temperature, he explode. Only, he were saved.

Then he poured some old sardine, laid veal cutlet inside, and sank the copper. He ball him. He cold. He out again.

He continue the experiment. Shut up. The tin egg chicory lobster fish congratulate hemselve.

Ike Heraclitus, or, “Gus,” still elusive, flit on ahead.

Despair defeat labor. The woman fell ill. She laid the copper. It glistens as if about to erupt. At that moment the secret fell in the eye, grace over the golden woman’s form.

Then Gus made lunch.

Presence

and I am lost in the ringing elevator

he waggles              the fat whiteness of milk

sweeping me to the top

one is reminded of constellations

there there were pine needles

dreams of symbolism

the part that goes over the fence last

star light             the cord “reaches”

it was turkey

sheepish lights         you turned me on

reflecting dilemmas              majorities

Bildungsroman of the bathrobe ride

and the briny sound of the alarm

a funny feeling prompted me out of bed

Love

the top had been “sliced”

ribbons your presence on the white and green sheet

I asked for a Hook-and-Ladder

takes             The End.

in the ideal society pants

Now          we can make some explosions

shine like money

Francis is not diminutive                           thanks

others are less legs

thighs wings breast

Caress the window grease, John

as you are not yet 12

19?         40?                  who pulls me down?

that night we slept reverently                            (you lust

I must lust in-

vigorating            the sixteen genre

dragon             bottle-opener

spiral cuff-link aerial

facade of the wonderful orient word

“doilies”

Overhead the moon is out

blacking my shoes, face

we were all livid, numinous

Things whip toward the center

licking the palate of his headache

this indicates your future

meditates on his wish which is

hooked onto the top and draped archly

Childhood fuses            a mystery play

Take off your beautiful blouse, you foolish girl!

which ribbons the marvelous laurel             the loop-

Are you list-            with this ring I

eye thee

(that was later, out west, after more baseball

some turkey

a wristwatch, dictionary, sniper suit, rifle

to “meditate”

(is there room in the tune to atune in?)

They were incensed at his arrival

Now we are glad             it was stinky

some paint them black in the face to be quaint or something

one symbol fact seems valid

I don’t know

all hate it to be right

on the cards

which are sometimes funky (aesthetic) having

snow of feet and that a domination.

Then we had presence.

Ikonostasis

FOR BERNADETTE MAYER

Kings                . . . panties

I imagine these here

the difference between past and dreaming

An uncomfortable Dodge

The word dissolves

iron things

Horses for example

then there is the other which may be called

the familiar floating oasis

larger than whiter

brazen, resourceful

. . . sinning palms balance it

perhaps these are wax detectors

and create situations

a magic shell for silliness

before the law tables

of this here

Heart

That has been tinted white

by way of exercise

the Political

glazes

These eyes

breaks

into the grocery store where

is sick               cannot work

twisted stick

industrial berry shoes are established

above all                   . . . be double

or collapse

the wall covered with glass character weather

M’sieur Negro-at-3 A.M.

Charioteer

His burning problem

it doesn’t stop the music

the magic

under tasteless stockings

and under the sting which leaves no ash

the grey snow of someone’s epoch annoys

and redeems

through certain fraudulent practices which,

like sulphur, blacken

making an undenied hash of all that

and that will now not melt in the first sunbeam

being its own muse

The Upper Arm

FOR ANDY WARHOL

Upon this field the physical energies of

Clouds. He will no longer desire the

Demanding force, an incredible

Fortune has fallen across their paths. I wait

a Payer is paying for the art it releases

Prisoners from the hands

In an automobile accident on the

Face

And achieved enemy face

Paleface changed captive

Photographs later

Were tipped            “What does this mean, my son?”

Became categorical         as in “yes”       held on

The arms and

Powder on a little table

And down in a green forest ravine       near to “her”

Security of the relationship is made utterly

With high stakes and shot at those targets out of

Boughs that spell

“MY PAINTINGS”

Corridors of Blood

1. Madrid

a faint smile appears

shaking your beliefs

of which you have done no more

than sketch in the main outline

You are not a glutton for experience

There is a sudden buzz of activity

In the clear blue sky

2. Detective

an enormous room with a balcony

less virulence

our labors were directed toward

isolating and creating

such a pattern

“you must allow your feelings to

float free, by

themselves, like dead leaves.”

“I’ve got it.”

we were furious

3. Queen Matilda’s Famous Tapestry

You got him out of your system

he was lying out of compassion

“Don’t you see what it means?”

human society upside down

The second name

First we must retrieve our honor

4. Henry VIII

women came down to breakfast

We saw that beautiful creature,

Kay Francis, in

“Cynara”

the shabby taxis and peeling posters

teashops

and ugly window-dressing

a technical brilliance

I never saw the like of anywhere else

5. Poe

“Merde” said Marco

in the apricot-coloured bar

Olga was in another bar

I am sure you understand

The captain lost his temper

A car drew up at the corner

6. Cattle of the Sun

a profusion of melons, oranges and

fish

all through that night

a lobster had been following him

I had an uncomfortable night

the only place I know

where horror borders on poetry

7. The Death of Other

should have “roots”

mass of ash-blonde hair

and black, clinging dresses

(the emotions: outline of

a theory)

into her mouth

blistered strips of bladder

wrack

8. Czechoslovakia

A red-tiled floor

thereafter we walked

sweeping, landscapes of white

limestone rock and

red rock

the most curious concoction

doubly oppressive

the sluggish heat:

I remember running

9. Hunger

Irony and parody held pride of place

in her silk evening dress

Olga had several minor parts

little of Knut Hamsun

several bravura touches

“marking time”

treating it lightly

The death of Max Jacob

10. Henry IV

naked

with a lion

a small lesbian

smoking a pipe

some silent young men

“Shit!” they exclaim

“Fuck all women!”

They all start singing patriotic songs

11. The Milk Bar

Loud shouts and

running feet on the staircase

“Coward! Coward!”

the death of Robert Desnos

quite charming in a red and black dress

with black shoes

about three handbreadths high

The salesgirl laughs at us

12. Hate

I turned back

battered by the frightful air

But I made a kind of wager with myself

detail dazzled me

I considered making it

the theme of my next novel

Every day I had experience of this

13. American Films

a blue-eyed little girl with brown pigtails

their big red-tiled kitchen

big platefuls of bilberries for dessert

children’s laughter

the fresh scent of wild berries

that little brown-haired girl

would be stood up against a wall

on richer, fiercer colors

ocher, red, purple

14. Proust’s Sex Life

it’s “splendid animalism”

Ramon Fernandez made a special trip

to see

“Well,” I said, “have you seen it?”

although I knew he was absolutely broke

my chosen themes had not lost

their sharpness

Rusty Nails

MY NAME

Smiling with grace the mother, the spouse, leaned

across to the fourth of their after-the-theatre party,

who was a girl older than this boy, aged almost seventeen,

by perhaps two years.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

I led in my childhood and youth the gently bred existence

of my class and my kind.

PATRIOTISM

An estimated two million wasps were loosed on an area

of four hundred and fifty miles inhabited by

eighty thousand people.

MY BEST FRIEND

That was about you in my story.

AN ORPHAN LEARNS TO COUNT

The Police swooped down in a squad car.

MALNUTRITION

By accident I met some rich homosexuals of the international

queer set who cruise around the world, bumping

into each other in queer joints from New York to Cairo.

CANCER

For there was a heavy curtain over the window, and in the

center of the room, an electric light bulb, suspended from

the ceiling, was all wrapped in newspaper.

SUNBURN

Loading his gun with one of these buttons, he seated

himself on the bed beside his wife, and declared his

intention of shooting the witch cat.

DEATH BY DROWNING

For, in respect to the latter branch of the supposition,

it should be considered that the most trifling variation

of the facts of the two cases might give rise to the most

important miscalculations, by diverting thoroughly the

two courses of events; very much as, in arithmetic, an

error which, in its own individuality, may be inappreciable,

produces, at length, by dint of multiplication

at all points of the process, a result enormously at

variance with the truth.

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

She sighed in vain for the chaff and the wheat, not knowing

the one from the other.

MASSACRED BY THE INDIANS

Ain’ nothin’ new about that neither.

BAD NEWS

The man in bed—staring at me appraisingly—was enormous.

SPRING RETURNS

We are drawn to shit because we are imperfect in our uses

of the good.

THE PENNILESS WINDOW

He drew his wife’s attention to the pustule on the top

of my skull for I had removed my hat out of courtesy.

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

There were seven to choose from, all putty.

THE TERRORS OF PUBERTY

She didn’t realize her belly was more provocative when

it had been run through with hatred.

A PROVERB

Meanwhile the papers were reporting masochists shooting

tacks, with rubber bands, at apes in zoos.

A MESSAGE FROM THE LOVED ONE

I was horrified.

SYMBOLISM

He must have pressed the wrong button, or several of them,

for when the door fretted open he found himself deep underground,

with no heart to try again.

THE MODERN CRISIS

“What’s this nasty piece of wood stuck in your boobs?”

THE AFTERLIFE

“The Cherry Orchard.”

THE WORLD TODAY

“Jungle Law,” the man agreed.

DEADLY VISIBLE RAYS

They had many days now when they were very happy.

SOMETHING’S HAPPENING HERE

Your historian will not attempt to list the sights he

pointed out in the multitudinous halls since no one will

ever forget them anyway.

EIGHT SQUARES

A good smell of hot coffee is coming out of the coffee-pot

on the table.

A GIFT

“You in the new winter

stretch forth your hands”

I AM A MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW

“I know from my own experience that telepathy is a fact.”

LIFE OF A MAN

Matinee

Morning

(ripped out of my mind again!)

As Usual

Take off your hat & coat & give me all your money

I have to buy some pills & I’m flat broke

On the Road Again

FOR GIUSSEPPE UNGARETTI

He called his Mama

Mohammed Scee-ab

He put his hand on

Her rear to be funny

She killed herself

You can bet no one ever told

His father

He made love to Frances

The talking mule

He’s no sap either

He chopped her head off

So she can’t yell and

He’s plumb vanished

Let’s go with him to Naples

To insult the old priest whose belly

Bulges over his belly-button

Like a piggy

And at number 5 Subnormal Street

We’ll see his sad Victrola

You sap!

If you aren’t turned on by now

It’s your earache!

Tonight

Winds in the stratosphere

Apologize to the malcontents

Downstairs

Joy of Shipwrecks

The torpedo was friendly

it buggered us

Mayday!

The climax came later

In the water

Near a sea-horse

After Breakfast

Flame & Fury

The colt and the dolt became outlaws

The automobile slew them

December

Brother and sister departed

With apologies to the mother for intercourse

In their hearts

A Reply to the Fragile

If he bites you he’s friendly

If it hurts you

Go away

Don’t give him a fresh try

Unless you have titties

Like a fast horse

Tobacco

He made coffee

In his maid’s uniform

He made coffee with animals

From the desert

Who expectorated into the coffeepot

His veins swelled up with an army

Of germs whose unconscious’s

Hated these possibilities

He reared back saying, “Me Nasty!”

So We began to BE Nasty

As for what happened next

You can bet that he learned to express himself

Tooting My Horn on Duty

Tooting my horn on duty in the infantry

Made my name mud            PU

In the army I had nosebleeds

The Infantry was so distracting

It kindled up in my nose

An invisible odor

That hindered my toots

One day while on duty

I rammed into a chestnut

And got blood all over my flute

Not to mention this nosebleed

I spat out so many teeth I knew it was an omen

The vitamins I had to take made me ill

Ten blood transfusions           It was almost all over

When two big rocks stopped the bleeding

This was my unhappy childhood

Corporal Pellegrini

He was ugly

She kissed the poor fellow

On his belly

ai-yai-yai

Wild horses couldn’t hold him

He snaked her carcass

Around a finger

Like a bowling ball

Come and get it!

They threw him in the pen

And busted his illusions

On the fires of Corregidor

His rifle slowly

Fired

Better and better

Killing the idiot

Life Among the Woods

Near Paris, there is a boat. Near this boat live the beautiful Woods.

They are a charming family, the Woods, very friendly: Mr. Woods, Mrs. Woods, their son Peter, and their tiny daughter, Bubbles.

Mr. Woods is very rich. He has a grand house, in four pieces: a kitchen, a stable, a room for lying down, and a room for infants. In this house there is, in addition, a brain room.

Mr. Woods’ garden is also very grand. It is full of lettuces, flowers and fruits.

Mrs. Woods likes cooking plenty. She makes pies, pots of tea, and desserts. The little Woods have beautiful appetites. They eat a lot.

Mrs. Woods’ kitchen is very appropriate. It has a pretty little furnace, a table, four chaise lounges and a large placard. On the placard there are six S’s, six tassels, and fifty soupspoons. (One of the soupspoons is crusty.) There is also a grand casserole.

In the room for laying down there are four tiny books, four chaise lounges and four tiny tables. One sometimes goes to the toilet on the tables.

In the room for infants there is a big table, plenty of chaise lounges and one grand placard on which are pictures of the toys of the tiny Woods: a puppy, a train, a toupee, a cigarette, some balls, some books, a pellet, soap, a strangler’s cord, and lots of other things.

The black bag and the wise man may be found in the brain room.

They eat in the stable, where there is a grand table and some chaise lounges.

Mrs. Woods’ rat poison is kept in the stable, in a great bottle.

In her office she keeps plenty of other things. She keeps bread, berries, beer, lace, celery, buttons, plums, and a comforter.

In Three Parts

FOR JOHN GIORNO

According

to

the

basic

law

of

visual

perception

any

stimulus

pattern

tends

to

be

seen

in

such

a

way

that

the

resulting

pattern

is

as

simple

as

the

given

conditions

permit.

Before

the

orgasmic

platform

in

the

outer

third

of

the

vagina

develops

sufficiently

to

provide

increased

exteroceptive

and

proprioceptive

stimulation

for

both

sexes,

the

over-

distended

excitement-

phase

vagina

gives

many

women

the

sensation

that

the

fully

erect

penis

is

“lost

in

the

vagina.”

With

daring

and

strength

men

like

Pollock,

deKooning

Tobey,

Rothko,

Smith

and

Kline

filled

their

work

with

the

drama,

anger,

pain,

and

confusion

of

contemporary

life.

In 4 Parts

A person can lie around on an uncrowded beach

And when too much peace and quiet gets on his

nerves, he can always get dressed and tour Israel.

Mayor

Frank

X.

Graves

today

ordered

the

arrest

of

Allen

Ginsberg

if

the

police

could

prove

that

the

poet

smoked

marijuana

while

looking

at

the

Passaic

Falls

yesterday.

The

Jewish

Memorial

Hospital’s

Junior

League

will

give

its

second

annual

discotheque

benefit

Sunday

at

the

Round

Table.

William

Carlos

Williams

the

Paterson

N. J.

physician

was

a

strong

and

vigorous

poet

who

spoke

in

the

American

idiom.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN 5 PARTS

Craze Man Wiliiker

FOR PIERRE REITER

Once there was a rich man named craze man Wiliiker. This man was always very nice he would give alot of money to poor people, but he said to himselve “I had better save some of my money for myselve.” So the next day he went to the bank with a gun (just in case they would not give him his money) he said “give me my money because I have to buy presents for all my relatives.”

The next day he went to the Monkey Wards department store he bought a 24 foot yate, a motercycle, a small car, a byicycle, and meny more expencive gifts. Then he went to the store and bought a big airplane for himself then he loaded up his airplane and flew through the city tos money all over.

The next day he had a pipeline put on the hot plains so people in distress could get water all through that area. He also built little shops into skyscrapers for the LandLord. He built hospitals all over the earth.

One day while flying around in his airplane he ran accross two men trying to sell old pots, but they were not having any bissness. He landed and he asked them “Hows bissness?” The men replied “We’ve been here more than 40 days and haven’t sold a pot.” Wiliikers sayed “I’ll buy your whole stock and as meny more pots as you can get.” The man gave him his bill and supplyed him with his pots.

Two days later he took his wife out to dinner and tiped the waiter a hundred dollarbill. He invited all the hobbos he knew to dinner and he even told the manager that he was going to give the biggest party the world has ever known and that it would be held on December 25. He sayed it would be adverticed all over the earth. When December 25 came all the men asked him why he was so nice to everybody he said “It’s because it’s Christmas day. Merry Christmas!

from Memoirs

Never will I forget that trip. The dead were so thick in spots we tumbled over them. There must have been at least 2000 of those sprawled bodies. I identified the insignia of six German divisions, some of their best. The stench was carnal to the point of suffocation. The sounds and cries of wounded men sounded everywhere. I could but think how wrong I’d been one bright day at Texas Military Academy when I had so glibly criticized Dante’s description of hell as too extreme.

A flare suddenly lit up the scene for a fraction of a minute and we hit the dirt hard. There just ahead of us stood three Germans—a lieutenant pointing with outstretched arm, a sergeant crouched over a machine gun, a corporal feeding a bandolier of cartridges to the weapon. I held my breath waiting for the burst. But there was nothing. My guide shifted his poised grenade to the other hand and reached for his flashlight.

The Germans had not moved. They were never to move. They were dead, all dead—the lieutenant with shrapnel through his heart, the sergeant with his belly blown into his back, the corporal with his spine where his head should have been. We left them there, gallant men dead in the service of their country.

I completed my reconnaissance and reached our flank regiment just before dawn. There I found its distinguished colonel, Frank McCoy, and its gallant chaplain, Father Duffy, just returned from burying the poet Sergeant Joyce Kilmer beside the stump of one of those trees he had immortalized.

A Letter

TO JOHN GIORNO

When Wyn & Sally and the twins went to Minnesota to visit Wyn’s father last August, Wyn discovered marijuana growing wild all over the Minnesota countryside. He brought back a suitcase full and said to me, “How would you like to go out and harvest some?” So in the middle of September, when the moon was right just before the first frost, we flew out to Minneapolis at 10:30 in the morning with five large suitcases and a trunk. I was dressed in an old Brooks Brothers suit and a vest. We arrived in Minneapolis at 2, were met by a white Hertz rent-a-car and drove 2 hours to Red Wing. All along the side of the road and in front of every farmhouse were these 12 foot high clusters. Wyn said they’re so dumb out there they think that marijuana comes from Mexico. We cased this sand pit and it looked OK. Then we emptied the 5 suitcases and the trunk which were filled with the costumes from “Conquest of the Universe” into a garbage dump and drove to Frontenac where Mark Twain spent his summers. We bought 2 bathing suits and went for a swim in the Mississippi. It was terrific. Then we drove to Lake City which is this 1930’s Bonnie & Clyde town and we sat in this 1930’s soda-fountain cafe waiting for it to get dark. We telephoned Sally and told her everything was going great. Then we drove back to the sand pit and parked the car behind a falling down shed of an abandoned turkey farm and sat watching how many cars passed on the road. When it got dark, we changed into dungarees and went to work. I cut the plants and Wyn cut them into small pieces and stuffed them into plastic bags. There was this jungle of pot plants that looked like giant Christmas Trees and moonlight and dew, and the dew and resin got all over my skin and I was stoned. About 3 A.M. we changed back into the straight clothes and drove to Minneapolis. We didn’t take any amphetamine because I thought we’d look suspicious if we looked like speed freaks at 6 in the morning. I was so tired I just went up to the ticket counter and said to the guy, “Here!” We flew back to NY with 70 pounds of wet grass. It dried down to 24 pounds.

Che Guevara’s Cigars

Guevara had noticed me smoking, and had remarked that of course I would never dare smoke Cuban cigars. I told him that I would love to smoke Cuban cigars but that Americans couldn’t get them. The next day, a large polished-mahogany box hand-inlaid with the Cuban seal and amid swirling patterns in the national colors, flying a tiny Cuban flag from a brass key, and crammed with the finest Havanas arrived at my room. With it was a typewritten note from Guevara, reading in Spanish, “Since I have no greeting card, I have to write. Since to write to an enemy is difficult, I limit myself to extending my hand.” (I took the box, the cigars untouched, back to Washington and showed it to President Kennedy. He opened it and asked, “Are they good?” “They’re the best,” I said, whereupon he took one out of the box, lit it, and took a few puffs. Then he looked up at me suddenly and said, “You should have smoked the first one.”)

Frank O’Hara’s Question

from “Writers and Issues”

by John Ashbery

what sky

out there is between the ailanthuses

a 17th century prison an aardvark

a photograph of Mussolini and

a personal letter from Isaak Dinesen

written after eating

can be succeeded by a calm evaluation

of the “intense inane” that surrounds

him:

it is cool

I am high

and happy

as it turns

on the earth

tangles me

in the air

and between these two passages (from

the long poem “Biotherm”) occurs a mediating

line which might stand to characterize

all of Mr. O’Hara’s art:

I am guarding it from mess and message.

Entrance

FOR ED DORN

10 years of boot

Take it away

& it’s off

Under the table

2

& I’m hovering

I’m above American Language

one foot

is expressing itself as continuum

the other, sock

groan                          I am dog

tired from cake

walking

to here.            That is,

An Entrance.

March 17th, 1970

Someone who loves me calls me

& I just sit, listening

Someone who likes me wires me,

to do something. I’ll do it

Tomorrow.

Someone who wants to do me harm

is after me

& finds me.

I need to kill someone

And that’s what it’s all about.

Right Now.

“In Three Parts”

blank mind part

Sounds pretty sane to me!

never thought of that!

Part two

Excursions across the ice

Confusions of the cloth

bread & butter

bread & butter

kiss kiss

Part Three

LOVE

Addenda: Sleep

Oh, hello, Ted!

Epithalamion

Pussy put her paw into the pail of paint.

“Hip, hop, pip, pop, tip, top, pop-corn”.

The dipper tipped and the sirup dripped upon her apron.

Phillippa put the Parson’s parcel beside the Professor’s papers.

Bowser buried his bone inside a barrel.

The brown bear stole the bumblebee.

White snow whirled everywhere.

The able laborer objects to the bride.

Adam and Eve stumbled over the rubber tube.

Mama made a muffler and a muff for me.

My Mary’s asleep by the murmuring stream

The meadow-mouse uses the lamp for its moonbeam.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota there are many married men.

Many Americans are making money in Mexico.

Homecoming

I sit on                             fat

like

An old dog

Anxious to set.         Across

the fields              fruit

grows                     in

Another state. The map

Goes quietly dark. In the

corners             white

jasmine blossoms begin

To radiate

Cold.             In the sky the

Soft, loose

stars swarm.

Now

drops of blood squirt

Onto the stiff leaves.

Now I

breathe.

Poop

Nature makes my teeth “to hurt”

Each conviction lengthens the sentence

Women are interesting when I look at them

Art is medicine for imbeciles

Great Art is a Great Mistake

If it’s inspiration you want, drop your panties

If I fall in love with my friend’s wife, she’s fucked

alternates:

I’m fucked

he’s fucked

American Express

Cold rosy dawn in New York City

not for me

in Ron’s furlined Jim Bridger

(coat)

that I borrowed two years ago

had cleaned

but never returned, Thank god!

On 6th Street

Lunch poems burn

a hole is in my pocket

two donuts one paper bag

in hand

hair is in my face and in my head is

“cold rosy dawn in New York City”

I woke up this morning

it was night

you were on my mind

on the radio

And also there was a letter

and it’s to you

if “you” is Ron Padgett,

American express

shivering now in Paris

Oklahoma

two years before

buying a new coat for the long trip

back to New York City

that I’m wearing now

It is cold in here

for two

looking for the boll weevil

(looking for a home), one with pimples

one blonde, from Berkeley

who says, “Help!” and

“Hey, does Bobby Dylan come around here?”

“No, man,” I say,

“Too cold!”

& they walk off, trembling,

(as I do in L.A.)

so many tough guys, faggots, & dope addicts!

though I assure them

“Nothing like that in New York City!”

It’s all in California!

(the state state)

that shouldn’t be confused with

The balloon state

that I’m in now

hovering over the radio

following the breakfast of champions

& picking my curious way

from left to right

across my own white

expansiveness

MANHATTAN!

listen

The mist of May

is on the gloaming

& all the clouds

are halted, still

fleecey

& filled

with holes.

They are alight with borrowed warmth,

just like me.

February Air

FOR DONNA DENNIS

Can’t cut it (night)

in New York City

it’s alive

inside my tooth

on St. Mark’s Place

where exposed nerve

jangles

•

that light

isn’t on

for me

that’s it

though you are

right here.

•

It’s RED RIVER

time

on tv

and

Andy’s BRILLO BOX is on

the icebox is on                                         High

too                                   over St. Nazaire, the

Commando is poised

that means tonight’s raid

is “on”

The Monkey

at the typewriter

is turned on

(but the tooth hurts)

You’d Better Move On. . . .

You’d Better Move On

Black Power

It’s ritzy    Thrift,

Horn & Hardart’s is

too, one

cup of coffee, black

away from it

& Generosity

though commingling with incontrovertible hard- (art)

headedness

does warm

& it keeps it up

e. g.

“Art is art & life is

Life.” Fairfield Porter said

that:

& That means

Coffee

Black as on

57th Street

The Hotel Buckingham (facade) is

looming over lunch         poems          & I

looming over coffeecup         white          two eyes

looming over Joe’s black & yellow polka-dots

(a tie)

that once belonged to Montgomery Clift:

It’s all mine now, is saved, knowing

That, & that happily being that

“the living is easy”

Tho the art is hard,

sometimes, to see

through so much looming:

More coffee may save me that.

The Ten Greatest Books of the Year (1967)

Apollinaire Oeuvres Poetiques

Swami Sivananda, Waves of Bliss

James Joyce, Ulysses

Gerard Malanga & Andy Warhol, Screen Test/A Diary

The Collected Earlier Poems of William Carlos Williams

Helen Hathaway, What Your Voice Reveals

Jean Jacques Mayoux, Melville

Kay Ambrose, Ballet-Lovers Pocketbook

Roger Shattuck, Apollinaire

William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

Charlin’s Anglo-French Course 3rd Part

The Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms

Locus Solus No. 2

Compositions Property of Ted Berrigan

Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues

Ron Loewinsohn, L’Autre

Ted Berrigan, Clear the Range

Philip Whalen, Selfportrait from Another Direction

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems

The Complete Sonnets Songs and Poems of William Shakespeare

Boswell’s Life of Johnson

The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams

The Oxford Book of English Verse

Williams & Macy, Do You Know English Literature

Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

Jim Carroll, Organic Trains

Stokely Carmichael, Toward Black Liberation

Ted Berrigan, The Sonnets

Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett, Bean Spasms

Dick Gallup, The Lungs of Sophocles

Eduardo Paolozzi, Kex

Lawrence Campbell, Sills

Diter Rot, Buch

Ted Berrigan, Art Notes

Velversheen by Eagle-A

Ron Padgett, Tone Arm

Poetry Magazine May 1960

University Note Book

Jim Brodey, Clothesline

The Cantos of Ezra Pound CX–CXVI

Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

David Henderson, Felix of the Silent Forest

Poets of the English Language Vol. III Milton to Goldsmith

Poets of the English Language Vol. I Langland to Spenser

Poets of the English Language Vol. V Tennyson to Yeats

Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts Vol. 6, No. 5

The World No. 7

William Burroughs, Time

Folder No. 2

Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show

“C” Comics

The Ten Greatest Books of the Year, 1968

The Collected Earlier Poems by William Carlos Williams

Selected Writings Charles Olson

Chicago Review One Dollar

Alkahest

New American Writing No. 1

THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The Pocket Aristotle

After Dinner We Take a Drive into the Night by Tony Towle

Love Poems (Tentative Title) by Frank O’Hara

The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land by Ralph Connors

Cosmic Consciousness by Dr. Richard Bucke

Meditations on the Signs of the Zodiac by John Jocelyn

In Public In Private by Edwin Denby

The World Number 1      Cover by Dan Clark

The World Number 2      Cover by Robert McMillan

The World Number 3      Cover by George Schneeman

The World Number 4      Cover by Donna Dennis

The World Number 5      Cover by Jack Boyce

The World Number 6      Cover by Fielding Dawson

The World Number 7      Cover by Bill Beckman

The World Number 8      Cover by George Schneeman

The World Number 9      Cover by Joe Brainard

The World Number 10    Cover by Larry Fagin

The World Number 11    Cover by Tom Clark

The World Number 12    Cover by George Schneeman

The World Number 13    Cover by Donna Dennis

The World Number 14    Cover by Joe Brainard

Waterloo Sunset

We ate lunch, remember? and I paid the check

Under trees in rain of false emotion and big bull

With folks going in and out putting words in our mouths that are

shouting, “Hurrah for Bristol Cream!” We threw a leave-sandwich

Into the sunlight—it greedily gobbled it up, and growing brighter

Emanating from their glasses came the little drinkies

Reflections of the magazine Grandma edits

On whose pages a bouquet is blossoming sort of. You bounced a check

Into years of lives down under the weather vane, barf!

The influence of alcohol rebounded 500 miles into Africa.

But a little drinkie never hurt nobody, except an African.

The Earth sops up liquids, I mean drinks,

And is tipsy as pinballs on the ocean

Wobbling on its axis. We turn a paleface shade of white

In the rain that pelts the doo-doo

That flies from the eyes’ blinds. It doesn’t matter though

on the sweet side

Of the moon. Don’t be a horrible sourpuss

Moon! Have a drink

Have an entire issue! Waves goodbye & reels, into sun

Of light dark light roll over Beethoven

Our shelter-half misses your shelter-half. There’s nothing left

of love

But we have checkerberry leaves

Mint, Juniper, tree-light

Elder-flowers, sweet goldenrod, bugspray & Juice.

And you are a pretty girl-boy

And I am a pretty man-woman

and we are here-there

In England and the food is absolutely cold-hot.

In the aromatic sundown, according to the magazine version

Or automatic sundown               English words are a gas

Slurring the Earth’s one heaving angel turns in unison

& paddles your rear gently as befits one in love

with you & I

No change                       My face is all right

For us. We are bored through & we are through with you

With our professionalism (you have to become useless to drink).

All we ever wanted to do in the rosy sunlight was

In the first place was . . . was . . . was . . . uh

Run our fingers through your curly hair

Ooops! No, not that. I mean all

We really wanted to do was jazz yr mother

Fight off insects & sing a sad solitary tune

On the excellencies of Bristol Cream

Six dollars a bottle Praise The Lord

TED BERRIGAN & RON PADGETT

30

The fucking enemy shows up

interstices

bent

Grey Morning

Rain

Coming down

Outside her

Windows

I can be seen inside

the drops

of rain

falling

limping

This girl in mind.

Things to Do in Anne’s Room

Walk right in

sit right down

baby, let your hair hang down

It’s on my face that hair

& I’m amazed to be here

the sky outside is green the blue

shows thru the trees

I’m on my knees

unlace Li’l Abner

shoes

place them under the bed

light cigarette

study out the dusty bookshelves,

sweat

Now I’m going to do it

SELF RELIANCE

THE ARMED CRITIC

MOBY DICK

THE WORLD OF SEX

THE PLANET OF THE APES

Now I’m going to do it

deliberately

take off clothes

shirt goes on the chair

pants go on the shirt

socks next to shoes next to bed

the chair goes next to the bed

get into the bed

be alone

suffocate

don’t die

& it’s that easy.

The Great Genius

The Great Genius is

A man who can do the

Ordinary thing

When everybody

Else is going crazy.

Poem for Philip Whalen

(About Emily Dickinson)

What about Emily Dickinson?

DEAD FINGERS TALK

I’ve got a lot of things to do today.

For example write this poem.

She’s Terrific.

Now, this poem is to say that

period?

colon?

space??

Lord I wonder just exactly what can happen oh Hello, Pill . . .

It’s a terrific spelling problem there’s two kinds of L’s (on the typewriter)

and that is a good example of the way some people

think

(NOVEL)

This here now is what I’m trying to say. It’s a sonnet. A kind of formal BEAN

SPAS

M

She goes all over the place, eh?

ROOT                     RAINBOW                HA-HA

She’s so fine:

You Didn’t Even Try

Heroin

FOR JIM CARROLL

(2) photographs of Anne

80 years old

lovely, as always

a child

under an old fashion

duress

A Bibliography of Works

by Jack Kerouac

A white suit

and a black dress

w/high-necked

mini-skirt

strolling

two by two

across         a       brown            paper             bag

above                 The Relation Ship

Warm white thighs                    & floating bend                gia pronto

my heart is filled with light

al curry

this

Life

that is

one, tho

the Lamps

be many                      & proud                        & there’s a breeze sort of

lightly moving the top

of yr head

&                                 I’m going

way over

the white

skyline

& I’ll do

what I want to

& you can’t keep me here

No-how.

& the streets are theirs now

& the tempo’s

&        the space

Anti-War Poem

It’s New Year’s Eve, of 1968, & a time

for Resolution.

I don’t like Engelbert Humperdink.

I love the Incredible String Band.

The War goes on

& war is Shit.

I’ll sing you a December song.

It’s 5 below zero in Iowa City tonight.

This year I found a warm room

That I could go to

be alone in

& never have to fight.

I didn’t live in it.

I thought a lot about dying

But I said Fuck it.

Tough Brown Coat

TO JIM CARROLL

Tough brown coat

Tie with red roses

Green cord vest

Brown stripes

on soft white

shirt

white T-shirt

White man,

Tomorrow you die!

“You kidding me?”

Babe Rainbow

Light up

smoke

burn a few holes in the blanket

Burn a few holes in the Yellow blanket

burning

smoking

reading

It’s Important

It’s important not

to back out

of the mirror:

You will be great, but

You will be queer.

It’s a complication.

Dial-A-Poem

Inside

The homosexual sleeps

long past day break

We won’t see him

awake

this time around.

In My Room

Green     (grass)

A white house                                 brown

mailbox

(Friendly pictures)

TELEVISION                                                               snow

(that’s outside)

No-mind

No messages

(Inside)

Thanksgiving                       1969

Ann Arbor Elegy

FOR FRANNY WINSTON D. SEPT 27TH, 1969

Last night’s congenial velvet sky

Conspired that Merrill, Jayne, Deke, you & I

Get it together at Mr. Flood’s Party, where we got high

On gin, shots of scotch, tequila salt & beer

Talk a little, laugh a lot, & turn a friendly eye

On anything that’s going down beneath Ann Arbor’s sky

Now the night’s been let to slip its way

Back toward a mild morning’s gray

A cool and gentle rain is falling, cleaning along my way

To where Rice Krispies, English muffins, & coffee, black

Will make last night today. We count on that, each new day

Being a new day, as we read what the Ann Arbor News has to say.

Song: Prose & Poetry

TO ALICE NOTLEY

My heart is confirmed in its pure Buddhahood

But a heavy list to starboard

makes me forget

From time to time.

Breath makes a half turn

Downward & divides:

it doesn’t add up

2 plus 2 equals 1:               It’s fun, yes,

But it isn’t true, &

I can’t love you

this way.

2.

So, what’ll I do, when you

are far away

& I’m so blue?

I’ll wait.

& I’ll be true some day.

3.

That’s all well & good. But

What happens in the mean time?

Wake Up

Jim Dine’s toothbrush eases two pills

activity under the clear blue sky; girl

for someone else in white walk by

it means sober up, kick the brunette out of bed

going out to earn your pay; it means out;

bells, ring; squirrel, serve a nut; daylight

fade; fly resting on your shoulder blades

for hours; you’ve been sleeping, taking it easy

neon doesn’t like that; having come your way

giving you a free buzz, not to take your breath away

just tightening everything up a little; legs

pump; head, wobble; tongue, loll; fingers, jump;

drink; eat; flirt; sing; speak;

night time ruffles the down along your cheek

Erasable Picabia

The front is hiding the rear

The heart of a man

is not as great as an amphitheater

Spinoza is the one who threw a pass to Lou Spinoza

There is no death

there is only dissolution

love of hate

is totally great

me, I disguise myself as a man

in order to laugh

I have always loved

a serious jackoff scene

infantile paralysis is the beginning of wisdom

everything is poison

except our meat

Flowers and candy make my teeth ache

The most beautiful and most noble

of men are queers

get the pussy

mystical explanations are dopey

Aunt Winnie fingers the thunder to learn,

so that we have left everything aside

but not as a cloud mind steps beside

the slow reservoir

now it is all of this, the pink bulbs included,

which means we have “protected ourselves”

by forgetting all we were dealt

BY TED BERRIGAN & JIM CARROLL

In Bed

I love all the girls

I’ve been in bed with

I even love those

who preferred not to do anything

once there:

Tho it seems to me now

they were nuts!

(the latter)

in bed.

Easy Living

TO DAVID HENDERSON

I hope to go

everywhere

in good time:

Going’s a pleasure,

being someplace

& then

Many Happy Returns

But Africa,

I don’t know

all that heat

all the time

even when it’s raining

all the time . . .

I’ve always found heat

constant heat

difficult

to get inside of

& not to mention

impossible to avoid . . .

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.

That’s true.

Go now      /     Pay later

Equally—You can do anything you want to.

Yes, I know that.

But Africa:

well, I do know one thing

for sure:

It would be tremendous

Africa

going there

to go there with

David Henderson!

(Just like Pittsburgh).

Like Poem

TO JOAN FAGIN

Joan,

I like you

plenty.

You’d do

to ride the river with.

I take these tiny pills

to our love.

Plenty.

Then I drink up the river.

Be seeing you.

Peace

What to do

when the days’ heavy heart

having risen, late

in the already darkening East

& prepared at any moment, to sink

into the West

surprises suddenly,

& settles, for a time,

at a lovely place

where mellow light spreads

evenly

from face to face?

The days’ usual aggressive

contrary beat

now softly dropped

into a regular pace

the head riding gently its personal place

where pistons feel like legs

on feelings met like lace.

Why,

take a walk, then,

across this town. It’s a pleasure

to meet one certain person you’ve been counting on

to take your measure

who will smile, & love you, sweetly, at your leisure.

And if

she turns your head around

like any other man,

go home

and make yourself a sandwich

of toasted bread, & ham

with butter

lots of it

& have a diet cola,

& sit down

& write this,

because you can.

Hall of Mirrors

TO KRISTIN LEMS

We miss something now

as we think about it

Let’s see: eat, sleep & dream, read

A good book, by Robert Stone

Be alone

Knew of it first

in New York City. Couldn’t find it

in Ann Arbor, though

I like it here

Had to go back to New York

Found it on the Upper West Side

there

I can’t live with you

But you live

here in my heart

You keep me alive and alert

aware of something missing

going on

I woke up today just in time

to introduce a poet

then to hear him read his rhymes

so unlike mine          & not bad

as I’d thought another time

no breakfast, so no feeling fine.

Then I couldn’t find the party, afterwards

then I did

then I talked with you.

Now it’s back

& a good thing for us

It’s letting us be wise, that’s why

it’s being left up in the air

You can see it, there

as you look, in your eyes

Now it’s yours & now it’s yours & mine.

We’ll have another look, another time.

Ann Arbor Song

I won’t be at this boring poetry reading

again!

I’ll never have to hear

so many boring poems again!

& I’m sure I’ll never read them again:

In fact, I haven’t read them yet!

Anne won’t call me here again,

To tell me that Jack is dead.

I’m glad you did, Anne, though

It made me be rude to friends.

I won’t cry for Jack here again.

& Larry & Joan won’t visit me here

again.

Joan won’t cook us beautiful dinners,

orange & green & yellow & brown

here again.

& Thom Gunn & Carol & Don & I won’t get high

with Larry & Joan here again

Though we may do so somewhere else again.

Harris & John & Merrill won’t read

in my class, again.

Maybe there’ll never be such a class

again:

I think there probably will, though

& I know Allen will follow me round the world

with his terrible singing voice:

But it will never make us laugh here again.

You Can’t Go Home Again is a terrific book:

I doubt if I’ll ever read that again.

(I read it first in Tulsa, in 1958)

& I’ll never go there again.

Where does one go from here? Because

I’ll go somewhere again. I’ll come somewhere again, too,

& You’ll be there, & together we can have a good time.

Meanwhile, you’ll find me right here, when you

come through, again.

People Who Died

Pat Dugan . . . . . . . . my grandfather . . . . . . . . throat cancer . . . . . . . . 1947.

Ed Berrigan . . . . . . . . my dad . . . . . . . . heart attack . . . . . . . . 1958.

Dickie Budlong . . . . . . . . my best friend Brucie’s big brother, when we were

five to eight . . . . . . . . killed in Korea, 1953.

Red O’Sullivan . . . . . . . . hockey star & cross-country runner

who sat at my lunch table

in High School . . . . . . car crash . . . . . . 1954.

Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan . . . . . . . . my friend, in High School,

Football & Hockey All-State . . . . . . car crash . . . . 1959.

Cisco Houston . . . . . . . . died of cancer . . . . . . . . 1961.

Freddy Herko, dancer . . . . jumped out of a Greenwhich Village window in 1963.

Anne Kepler . . . . my girl . . . . killed by smoke-poisoning while playing

the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital

during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist . . . .  1965.

Frank . . . . . . Frank O’Hara . . . . . . hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966.

Woody Guthrie . . . . . .  dead of Huntington’s Chorea in 1968.

Neal . . . . . . Neal Cassady . . . . . . died of exposure, sleeping all night

in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico . . . .  1969.

Franny Winston . . . . . . . . just a girl . . . . totalled her car on the Detroit–Ann

Arbor Freeway, returning from the dentist . . . . Sept. 1969.

Jack . . . . . .  Jack Kerouac . . . . . . died of drink & angry sicknesses . . . . in 1969.

My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.

Telegram

TO JACK KEROUAC

Bye-Bye Jack.

See you soon.

A New Old Song

FOR LARRY FOR CHRISTMAS

Head of lettuce, glass of chocolate milk

“I wonder if people talk about me, secretly?”

Guess I’ll call up Bernadette today, & Dick

The Swedish Policeman in the next room, the Knife

Fighter. Why are my hands shaking? I usually think

Something like The Williamsburg Bridge watching the sun come

Up, wetly round my ears,

Hatless in the white & shining air. Throbbing

Aeroplanes zoom in at us from out there; redder

For what happens there. Yes

It’s a big world,

It has a band-aid on it, & under it

TRUE LOVE,

in a manner of speaking.

Poem

of morning, Iowa City, blue

gray & green out the window . . .

A mountain, blotchy pink & white

is rising, breathing, smoke

Now, lumbering, an Elephant, on

crutches, is sailing; down

Capitol, down Court, across

Madison & down College, cold

clear air

pouring in

Now those crutches

are being tossed aside; the

Elephant is beginning to rise

into the warm regulated air

of another altitude

That air is you, your breathing

Thanks for it, & thanks a lot

for Pasternak: The Poems of Yurii Zhivago

& Mayakovsky: Poems.

They were great.

Now it’s me.

Train Ride

FEBRUARY 18TH, 1971

FOR JOE

Here comes the Man!

He’s talking a lot.

New York to Providence

&

I’ve got a ticket to ride!

SMOKING PERMITTED

The seats are blue

I’m sitting with MYSELF

A long naked pair of legs,

about 17 yrs old

stare at me

across the linoleum

aisle

I’m a mild Sex Fiend!

But you can’t fuck

here

& what could you say

to smooth 17 year old

faces?

NOTHING!!

So, they lose out.

What can you say

at all?

NOTHING

However, it’s easy to keep

talking

if

it’s what you do. . . .

MEN                                              WOMEN

SPEED

What I like is

ASTERISKS

They’re so

Bold, confident, like you

have a plan, you’re in

control, you’ll be back

in a minute.

“Man, you’ve got to do

something about that handwriting!

It’s Terrible!”

Lorenzo Thomas

Said That

to me

in 1962.

I didn’t.

It’s ME.

Now I read a sex book

from the Library of

JIMMY SCHUYLER.

“He loves ’em.”

(JOE BRAINARD)

Out the Window

is

Out to Lunch!!

Some people one should only

fuck once.

Others one should not fuck

at all unless there is an

affair.

Then there are those one should

not fuck, under almost any

circumstances (tho lapses are

forgiveable)

Let me see: I’ve fucked in

Rhode Island

Maine

Vermont

New York

Florida

Texas

Oklahoma

New Mexico

Colorado

California

Michigan

Iowa

Pennsylvania

Kansas

Connecticut

Japan

&

Korea

And

In beds

On floors

In Bathrooms at Parties

In Hallways

In Cars

On Rooftops

Window-Sills

&

At a bus Stop

Never did fuck any boys

(I think)

or

get fucked by any

Tho a few blow-jobs

for curiosity

or

because someone really

wanted to.

Oops!       Add

“In Life-raft

on Lake”

Always wanted to fuck in Air-Planes

& On Trains

Maybe later

I sort of hate to be on the

Make

Like to have some-one

on the Make

for me

&

then

Take Over

Last time I counted I think

It was about

50

The number of people,

I mean

Only about 10 were once.

No, maybe 15.

& that’s counting

Japan

&

Korea

Many of them, those girls,

& me,

we still do it when we

get a chance.

One, at least, is dead.

I wish one that’s alive

were here.

Or Anne,

who is

dead.

I’m sure she’d love to fuck

on a train

Remember the night we did

it in your house,

Joe?

(Me and Anne, that is)

It was Nice

I guess I’d fuck anyone

who thinks I’m

terrific!

Tho you never can

tell.

“All I really want to do is

have my back

rubbed.”

—Anne Waldman

I just remembered:

Add: ENGLAND

Now we’re passing thru

NEW LONDON

Sailors are probably

fucking each other

here

right now.

“I’m laying there, & some

guy comes up &

hits me with

a Billy Club!”

—The fat guy across the aisle

just said

that.

Once, while a girl was giving me

a glorious blow-job behind a curtain,

my room-mate, across the room, was studying

CALCULUS!

(Tony Powers was

the room-mate)

Once a girl & I got into an automobile

accident

in her car, so

we decided to fuck

(later)

Once I tried to fuck a little girl

8 years old, when I was also 8 years old,

but I don’t think I knew how.

I can’t quite

remember.

The long legs just got up

& got off

(New London)

Now I’ll read this queer sex book

some more.

It says,

“Jean Cocteau had no heart.”

That’s strange.

I think he probably did.

I probably have one, so

Cocteau probably had one.

Right?

Right.

This book seems to have 1,000,000 pages.

No one can think about Fucking

for that long.

I may have to turn back

into

my “well-rounded self”

in order to finish.

My “well-rounded self”

is not always

interesting,

but does manage

to get through.

Now, we ride across the river,

and past auto-parts

made of NEON.

I just saw a blue

electric

A

which I thought

at first

was a beautiful evening slipper.

This is a blue train-ride.

I don’t feel blue, but

I can see it.

A man name of

Lloyd Calvin Shippey

is sitting

next to me.

He says, “Who are you

supposed to be

in that hair?”

I say, “Uh, Ted Berrigan.”

He says, “I thought,

Ben Franklin!”

I forget about him, so

he is no longer there.

Nor here.

This queer sex book is not

very dirty.

Not even very queer.

Not even here,

Now.

I am dead; and I am now in

The After-life. Here you do

just what you do in Life, but

it’s never quite real, nor fun.

It isn’t boring tho, but it is

sort of pointless.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been

dead, but I’d say it is since about

1962.

Once in a while I’m alive for a few minutes

. . . . . . probably just dreams

or very real deja-vus.

Maybe it’s age, & you come alive

in a different way maybe next

year, or some time.

It isn’t any big thing,

anyway.

I mean, you can’t go around

worrying about it.

I do nothing for a while,

&

I don’t remember

what nothing.

Maybe I will fuck

this trip.

She’s in Boston.

I would like to be elected a SENATOR.

I don’t think I’m suited

for any other job, &

I think my poetry

would be exciting to write

if I were a

Senator.

I’d be a terrific Senator

because I’d love it.

I really like to be alone, if

I don’t have to be.

I like to come & go.

What I don’t like is how money is involved

in everything.

I like to give people

money.

I hate to be given money. It’s embarrassing!

I do like

to get money in the mail.

& I like to get paid lots of money

for doing something like reading, talking, or

publishing.

How come I can’t get paid

just for writing?

I do like to get presents

spontaneously given,

or just for me.

But it’s socially awkward that

some people for almost no reason

have money, & some don’t.

Anyway, money is

very perplexing,

& I don’t understand it.

I like Credit Cards.

Alas, I can’t pay the bills,

but I always spend with the Credit Card

in a terrific way!!

I take people to terrific

Restaurants!

I go to England!

I buy somebody their

return ticket, because they’re

broke.

I buy a couple of terrific

shirts.

& a pair of pants.

I rent a car & drive it to Wales, & Liverpool,

with

Lewis Warsh,

on Acid!

I bump into other

cars!!

I buy a de Kooning!

I buy the NY Times, &

do the Crossword Puzzle

I buy some money & give it to

my Mother

so she won’t worry!

She only needs $300 to make

her Summer Worry-free.

I buy lots of pills

&

I give you

lots of pills.

I even get to shop, on Carnaby Street,

in a Children’s Boutique

for terrific boots & cowboy jackets

for David!

& sharp clothes for

Kate!

I buy a train ticket

to    SING-SING

I rent a cell for 20

Years,

because

I don’t pay my bills!

Then I write terrific Prison Poems,

& get lots of mail!

Then I don’t know what I

do then.

You don’t get to fuck much, in

SING-SING,

if you’re straight.

I don’t know how I got

to be straight,

since I didn’t try

for it.

I’m sure it’s just like being queer,

only different.

For example, Edwin is

the straightest person I

know,

& he’s been queer forever.

while Rudy is just like

Edwin,

& he’s straight.

Queer is a pretty queer

word.

“I’m a queer.”

Ha-ha!

How about

“I’m a straight.”

Unbelievable!

“I’m an American.”

O.K.

“I’m a Christian.”

Yes, I suppose

you must be.

“I’m a Poet.”

That must be an

interesting job.

“I’m a pill-addict.”

You are?

“I’m a grown-up, now.”

Ha-ha.

“I’m a father.”

That’s good.

“I’m a long-haired Weirdo.”

You seem perfectly normal

to me.

“I’m a great guy.”

Well, you are in a manner

of speaking.

“I’m a fucking monster!”

“I’m part elephant, Part Tiger, part

Nag, Part bore.”

You might say that.

“I’m an ordinary person.”

Yes you are.

“I’m a passenger.”

That’s absolutely true.

Now, tell me about You?

(this space for you

to do so)

& this

& this

That’s enough.

Now what shall we talk

about?

We could

bitch all our mutual

friends!!

Good Idea,

as we pull into

Providence,

R. I.

OUR FRIENDS

Ron:                 the tight-ass

Dick:              the insignificant

Pat:              the dowdy old lady

Anne:              the superficial

sentimentalist

Bill:             the spoiled snoot

Kenward:          the Elephant with

the soul of a Butterfly &

the temper of a Scorpion.

George:                  the bad painter

Michael:            the Self Important

Fuss-budget

The grotesque John Ashbery of

the bad character

The silly boring Kenneth Koch

The frumpy Jane Freilicher

The Pain-in-the-Ass Larry

Fagin

The whining Jim Carroll

The Snake in the grass Lewis Warsh

The slick easy poet,

Tom Clark

Jimmy Schuyler who has no stamina

The Asinine baby Tom Veitch

etc.

etc.

(Now You do some)

Yes, but what about us?

The Insufferable

Ted Berrigan:

He’s so fucking

Heavy!

What a tiresome

person!

So Presumptuous!

Self-Important!

Repetitious!

Never Shuts Up!

Too fucking Bossy!

Who does he think he is???

Fat-Ass!

Those Teeth!

Mean to his wife!!

Boring Poet!!

Who Cares!!

Why doesn’t he run for Pope

& get it over with!!

He thinks he knows

it All!!

etc.

etc.

& That Joe Brainard!!

He likes the boring Supremes!

Why doesn’t he be great,

like de Kooning?

Why doesn’t he button

that shirt?

Cook?

Be poor again & do great

Masterpieces?

Stop Tom-catting

around?

He makes everyone Nervous!!

He dresses funny!!

His apartment is weird!!

He’s compulsive!

Skinny!

Takes pills too

much!!

Talks to himself!

Solipsist!

Wants to have all the

fun!

Doesn’t like kids!!

Mean to his Mother!

Mean to his lovers!

Cynical!!

Stutters!!

Never comes to visit!!

Doesn’t like us

anymore.

An opportunist!!

Should get married!

Should do big oil paintings!!

Get Serious!!

Talk more!!                 Talk less!!

Tell the truth!!

Know the truth!!

Be perfect!!

God damn it!!

& the Train continues in the night. . . .

black outside

high inside.

What energy!

What a dumb book.

Glad I’ll never have to read

it.

Hope it gets a rise out of

SOMEBODY!

Train blows whistle

when approaching

Station.

Didn’t get to Fuck

on it.

Did eat a terrible

hamburger:

$1.75

& drink

a pepsi:                              .35

_____

Total                   $2.20

Plus tip:                  .50

$4.00 is about to get off

of a Train,

into a cab.

Taxi Fare will be:

$3.50     & tip:     .50

But I have hidden resources:

95 cents

__________

You are my hidden resources!

You live in my world

at the other end of the train.

You give me brain-spasms,

& heart-bursts.

Writing to read      &

Pictures to see

You give me love,

& I feel proud

that you really do

like me & respect me

despite everything

Because You are one of my big

heroes. . . .                            Smarter

than me,        (tho really no

“better”, if you

know what I mean)

I love you a whole lot.

I’m glad we were together

on this train.

I had a really nice time

at your place today.

I felt really alive, &

warmed

walking toward the

train

That I just got up

in,

&

walked thru

&

now am off of,

at

the end of this book,

TRAIN RIDE

(Feb 18th, 1971)

For Joe

Memorial Day

BY TED BERRIGAN AND ANNE WALDMAN

Today:

Open                       Opening                       Opened:

The angels that surround me

die

they kiss death

& they die

they always die.

they speak to us

with sealed lips

information operating

at the speed of light

speak to us

O speak to us

in our tiny head

deep calling out to deep

we speak all the time

in the present tense at the speed of Life

dead heads operating

At the speed of light

Today:

& it’s morning

Take my time this morning

& learn to kill

to take the will

from unknown places,

kill this stasis

let it down

let it down on me

I was asleep

in Ann Arbor

dreaming

in Southampton

beneath the summer sun of a green backyard

& up from a blue director’s chair

I heard a dead brother say

into the air

“Girl for someone else in white walk by”

I was asleep in New York

dreaming in Southampton

& beneath the sun of the no sun sun up from my morning bed

I heard the dead, the city dead

The devils that surround us

never die

the New York City devil inside me

alive all the time

he say

“Tomorrow you die”

I woke up

as he typed that down:

“Girl for someone else in white walk by”

& then,

so did I.

So my thanks to you

the dead.

The people in the sky.

A minute of silent pool

for the dead.

& now I can hear my dead father saying,

“I stand corrected.”

Dolphins, (as we speak)

are carrying on 2

conversations simultaneously

& within the clicks of one

lie the squeaks of the other

they are alive in their little wandering pool

“I wonder what the dead people are doing today?”

(taking a walk, 2nd St. to GEM SPA)

(or loping down Wall St.

Southampton)

ghost the little children

ghost radio                      ghost toast

ghost stars

ghost airport

the ghost of Hamlet’s father

ghost typewriter

ghost lover

ghost story

ghost snow                                  roasted ghost

ghost in the mirror ghost

happy ghost                         most ghost

I dreamt that Bette Davis was a nun, we

Were in a classroom, after school, collating

The World. Jr. High. A knocking at the door, I

Went to answer (as Bette disappeared), & found my mother

Standing in the hallway.

“Teddy,” she said, “here

Is my real mother, who brought me up, I’ve always wanted

for you to meet her.” Beside my mother stood

a tall, elegant lady, wearing black, an austere, stylish

Victorian lady whose eyes were clear & black; grand as

Stella Adler, but as regal & tough as Bette Davis.

Later that evening she sent me out for kippers for her bedtime

snack, giving me a shilling to spend. I went for them

to Venice, to a Coffee-House, which had a canal running right

through it,

& there I ran into Ron, sitting with a beautiful boyish adolescent

blonde. “She’s a wonderful lady,” Ron said, & I was pleased.

Ron left shortly with the blonde nymphet, & I wondered a minute

about Pat (Ron’s wife); but decided that Ron must know what he’s

doing. The girl, I thought, must be The Muse.

She is a muse

gone but not forgotten

50 STATES

state of grace

the milk state

Oregon

stateroom

state of anxiety

hazy state

estate

statement

Rugby Kissick state

Florida

the empire state

disaster state

the lightbulb state

soup state

Statue of Liberty

state of no return

the White Bear state

doped state

recoil state

Please state your name, address, occupation

the German shepherd state

bent on destruction

state

the farmer state

state of no more parades

the tobacco state

statesman

stately

state prison

stasis

status

static

station wagon

State Flower

state of innocence

ambition state

North Carolina

Jasper’s state

the united state

big state

state your cause

income state

jump the gun state

Roman nose state

manic depression state

hospital state

speed state

calculated state

gone forever state

the body state

the death body state

In New York State

in ‘Winter in The Country’

at night you write

while someone

(Alice) sometimes sleeps & dreams;

awake she writes

22.

I dreamed you brought home a baby

Solid girl, could already walk

In blue corduroy overalls

Nice & strange, baby to keep close

I hadn’t thought of it before

She & I waited for you out by the door

Of building, went in

Got you from painting

Blue & white watercolor swatches

We got on a bus, city bus

One row of seats lining it & poles

It went through the California desert

Blue bright desert day

In the country of old men I said

pretty good

& tho I live there

no more

“you can say that again.”

Pretty good.

It takes your best shot,

to knock off whatever,

so, we take our best shots,

it gives us a boot or two

we just do it

we wouldn’t know what to tell you

if our lives depended upon it!

Anne?

but Anne’s already talking

across from me                    across my life

across the mailman’s

locked box,

over the mailman

I mean

where a woman is alive

a mailman her friend

as you all know

having met the man at the Met

introduced by Vincent,

& loved by Joe:

Joe’s introductions go on,

the tongue, the ears burn             on Memorial Day

at Anne’s turn:

Dear Mr. Postman:

Please take this from me

to me.

I’m delivered without a hitch

to myself

I’m a woman in the Prime of Strife

I speak for all you crazy ladies

past & present

& I say,

NO MESSAGES

Nothing can be helped.           Nothing gets lost.

Blink

the eye is closed

& I am asleep

blink

the eye is open

& I am awake

in the real wide-eye world                 nothing gets lost

Today was a day to remember death:

I remember the death

of Hitler

& now I think of The Song of Roland

Roland’s death

& now I think to see

if there were similarities

& now I see there were . . .

& now I wonder what Tom Clark thinks

Edwin, Alex, Dick . . .

Mike?

A lung aching in the room

inside Mike

disease bringing you a little closer

Forget it!

Piss on it!

Kiss my ass!

he say

in his absolute way

Everybody obey

But

we are all victims

(me too)

& we all love life

(too bad)

I told Ron Padgett that I’d like to have

NICE TO SEE YOU

engraved on my tombstone.

Ron said he thought he’d like to have

OUT TO LUNCH

on his.

Dear Lewis:

I’ve been down but I’m surfacing

I’ve been lost but now I’m found

“One will leaf one’s life all over again”

you say

& you are right

around & around & around go the swirling leaves

Death is not is not so horrible            today

The poison in the needle

floods my body

it hurts my head

it hurts my head

Poison from the needle

floods my bloodstream

it detonates my head

it detonates my head

I should put that needle down

but tomorrow I’ll be dead.

I recognized myself in a dream too, (Ted)

we met & parted

Hello & Goodbye

simple as that

my life recognized my death

Waiting on you

The heart stops briefly when someone dies, one

massive slow stroke as someone passes

from your outside life to your inside,

& then

everything continues

sanely

& I believe in you.

News of my cat

poor cat

descendant of Frank O’Hara’s cat

he’s dead

I grieve

let it down

let it down on me

X died, & Joe knew, but didn’t want to have to tell anyone; but Carol knew, & so,

at Ken’s 12th Night party she told me. After a few minutes, I took Martha home,

& then I walked home myself, across town, through Tompkins Square Park, to

Avenue D & 2nd Street. I went to bed, & then I started to cry; & I stayed in bed

for three days, & cried, & slept. And now I’m crying a little again. But then I got

up, I said “well, that’s enough, fuck it!”, & I got dressed, & went over to visit

Anne & Lewis as before.

Bernadette had to arrange her mother’s funeral age 15

& we’re in Rattner’s 3 AM

& she’s telling me how her father died before that

& all the death around her

surrounding her

so many relatives

& how she just thought

that’s what people do

“They die”

& she was so good & obedient until her uncle died

& then

something just snapped

Then she sent me this 2 days later:

Deaths, causes: tuberculosis, syphilis, dysentery, scarlet fever and streptococcal sore throat, diptheria, whooping cough, meningococcal infections, acute poliomyelitis, measles, malignant neoplasms, leukemia and aleukemia, benign neoplasms, asthma, diabetes, anemias, meningitis, cardiovascular-tenal diseases, narcolepsy, influenza and pneumonia, bronchitis, other broncho-pulmonix diseases, ulcer of stomach and duodenum, appendicitis, hernia and intestinal obstruction, gastritis, duodenitis, enteritis, and colitis, cirrhosis of liver, acute nephritis, infections of kidney, hyperplasis of prostrate, deliveries and complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium, abortion, congenital malformations, birth injuries, postnatal asphyxia, infections of newborn, symptoms, senility, and ill-defined conditions, motor vehicle accidents, falls, burns, drowning, railroad accidents, firearms accidents, poison gases, other poisons, suicide, homicide.

I asked Joe Brainard

if he had anything to say about death:

& he said,

“Well,

you always get

lots of flowers

when you die.”

Which is so true,

especially for men. That is,

it’s only when you die that you get

flowers,

if you are a male

I don’t think

I’ve ever been sent flowers

Not even on Memorial Day.

I know I’ve never sent Joe any flowers.

Once I took a flower

from a nearby grave where there were

lots of them

it was in a little sharp-

pointed glass tube

& stuck the pointed end into the earth,

in front of Frank O’Hara’s grave

so that the small-pink-flower

stood up.

On the gravestone it said:

GRACE  TO  BE  BORN  AND  LIVE  AS  VARIOUSLY  AS  POSSIBLE

OK. I’ll buy that.

& once I picked a different pink flower

from the earth

in front

of Guillaume Apollinaire’s grave.

On his gravestone in French there was a poem in the shape of

a heart.

I had to go to the bathroom

so I left then

& went to a cafe

across from Père Lachaise

They had a bathroom there                 I had une pernod there

& then another

the shape of the American I am not

Still Life

the Chinese see nothing tragic in death

but for me the clue is you

the whistle of a bird or two

you are now dead

& I’m struck by how young

we are

(were)

& how useless to speak

Let it down

Let it down on me

•  •  •

please

I love you

I’m sorry

•  •  •

The evolution of man & society

is not to be taken lightly             I advance

upon the men         their quiet

I’m certain        is fooling me . . .

I sat up late in a room in Manhattan

& read about the death

of Guillaume Apollinaire

dead in his bed

of pneumonia

after surviving shrapnel

in his head

in The World War

a young girl (Sandy) peacefully

sleeping in my bed

It is night. You are asleep. & 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.”

A year or so later

another poet told me that he really liked that poem.

First of all, he said,

I can’t tell any one of your sonnets

from any other one,

but this one I can.

I was afraid of that.

Jim Brodey

Lonesome Train

•  •  •

Assassination Bizarre

•  •

I’m the girl in the rain the girl on the street

the girl in the trance the girl at your feet the

girl who just got off the girl who plays the piano

the girl who fucks the girl in the red sweater the

girl in the airplane the girl in Mexico the girl

in the lake the girl from the Village the girl

in heaven the girl on the run the girl at the

bank the girl upstairs the girl in the photograph

the girl on the sofa the nervous girl

the girl under pressure the girl with the yellow

cup

I asked Tuli Kupferberg once, “Did you really jump off of

The Manhattan Bridge?” “Yeah,” he said, “I really did.” “How

come?” I said. “I thought that I had lost the ability to love,”

Tuli said. “So, I figured I might as well be dead. So, I went one

night to the top of The Manhattan Bridge, & after a few minutes,

I jumped off.” “That’s amazing,” I said. “Yeah,” Tuli said,

“but nothing happened. I landed in the water, & I wasn’t dead.

So I swam ashore, & went home, & took a bath, & went to

bed. Nobody even noticed.”

If I could live it over, I wouldn’t

but I wouldn’t mind watching the movie

a big talkie

a big ghost

Get it while you can

the secret is this:

Absolutely Without Regret

don’t mess

back off

steer clear

but

I doan wanna hear anymore about

that

I doan wanna hear any more about that

I doan wanna hear any more about that

I doan wanna hear any more about that

I doan wanna hear any more about that

I doan wanna hear any more about that

I doan wanna hear any more about you I doan wanna hear any more

about you

I doan wanna hear any more about you

I doan wanna hear any more about you

I doan wanna hear any more about you

I doan wanna hear any more about them

I doan wanna hear any more about him

I don’t wanna hear any more about President Nixon

(repeat)

There goes another geese on his way

to death

blam blam

b

u

c

k

s

h

o

t

I tried my best to do my father’s will

You don’t want me baby got to have me any-how.

I tried my best to do my father’s will

You don’t want me baby got to have me any-how.

Oh Lord,

have mercy

Oh Lord,

have mercy

Oh Lord,

have mercy

Have mercy,

Lord.

If it don’t come across

FUCK IT

& if your heart ain’t in it,

ditto.

I met myself

in a dream

Everything was just all right

Here comes two of you

Which one will be true?

I’m beginning

to see the light

How does it feel?

It feels,

Out of sight!

“The trumpets are coming from another station

and you do your best to tune them out”

says Mike

the wisest-assed guy I know.

“If my manner of song disturbs the dead the living

and the near dead it is because

near the dead end you can’t dance”

—Andrei Codrescu

John Garfield William Saroyan Clarisse Rivers Harris Schiff

Ray Bremser Lewis MacAdams Tom Clark Bernadette

“Everybody’s a hero.

Everybody makes you cry.”

It makes you grin to say that

But you didn’t say it

You dreamed it

in the after-life

I am not that man.

This February I dream when it’s my turn to go to the moon (doom)

a little piece of string will be hanging outside

my window as I rise, arise

but I am not that woman

I am the man who couldn’t kiss his mother

goodbye.

But I could leave.

& so I left.

& now, on visits, we kiss

Hello, Goodbye.

& I have no other thoughts about it, Memorial Day.

O you who are dead, we rant at the sky

no action

but pain in the heart

& a head that don’t understand

the meaning of “heart” or “have heart”

or

“take heart”

She is walking away with herself

away from despair

she’s that lucky girl!

graceful, &

complicated    head

(heart)

Who’s keeping me alive

& what

I praise the lord for every day you & you & you & you & you

& you & you & you

Brothers & Sisters

You are with me on Sweet Remembrance Day.

& Now the book is closed

The windows are closed                                The door is closed

The house is closed

The bars are closed

The gas station is closed

The streets are closed

The store is closed

The car is closed

The rain is closed

Red is closed

& yellow is closed

& green is closed

The bedroom is closed

The desk is closed

The chair is closed

The geraniums are closed

The triangle is closed

The orange is closed

The shine is closed                  The sheen is closed

The light is closed

The cigar is closed

The dime is closed

The pepsi is closed

The airport is closed

The mailbox is closed

The fingernail is closed

The ankle is closed

The skeleton is closed

The melon is closed

The angel is closed                   The football is closed

The coffee is closed                The grass is closed

The tree is closed

The sky is dark

The dark is closed

The bridge is closed

The movie is closed

The girl is closed            The gods are closed

The blue is closed

The white is closed

The sun is closed

The ship is closed

The army is closed

The war is closed

The poolcue is closed

Six is closed

eight is closed

four is closed

Seven is closed

The lab is closed        The bank is closed          The Times is closed

The leaf is closed

The bear is closed

Lunch is closed

New York City is closed

Texas is closed

New Orleans is closed

Miami is closed

Okmulgee is closed

Sasebo is closed

Cranston is closed

The Fenway is closed

Bellevue is closed

Columbia is closed

9th Street is closed

2nd Street is closed

First Avenue is closed

Horatio St. is closed

66 is closed

Painting is closed                             Leibling is closed

Long Island is closed

Stones are closed           The afternoon is closed

The friends are closed

& Daddy is closed

& brother is closed & sister is

closed

Your mother is closed

& I am closed—& I am closed

& tears are closed

& the hole is closed     & the boat has left         & the day is closed.

Short Poems

IN A BLUE RIVER

FOR KENNETH KOCH

Evelyn Waugh’s Prayer

Here I am again.

Show me what to do,

help me to do it.

Ezra Pound:       A Witness

insouciant

one can only are

Salut!

Today is Courty Bryan’s birthday,

O weep, ye fiends!

Man Alone

In front of him was

his head.

Behind him were

men.

He was a man alone.

bear with me

Category

MOONDOG

Buddhist Text

The

Elephant

is

the

wisest

of

all

animals,

the

only

one

who

remembers

his

former

lives;

and

he

remains

motionless

for

long

periods

of

time,

meditating

thereon.

Beautiful Poem

FOR EDWARD DORN

“And the nights shall be filled with music

And the cares that infect the day

Shall fold up their tents like soldiers

Gone, O these are soldiers unique to our day!”

Setback

In the first stage of the revolution

In an attempt to establish & maintain

a fixed base

He was wounded in the foot, & had to

withdraw into the interior.

Seriousness

A natural bent, no doubt

Chair

FOR LARRY FAGIN

Blue

be the sky

& soft

the breeze

Today

offers Gertrude Stein

a chance

to burn leaves.

Poem

I’m lying in bed

reading this

& that

another person

sits up straight

breathes                 he’s

different.

Here

I go in &

sit down

at this desk.

Kinks

I am kinks.

slack

The Light

I cannot reach it.

Evensong

Light

spreads

evenly

from face to

face.

Destroys the race.

Shaking Hands

FOR DAVID BERRIGAN

This city night

you walk in

no virgin                             think of me

as I think of you

Near the Ocean

I am in bed

with a crab.

Cowboy Song

A woman’s love

is like

the morning dew

it’s just as apt

to fall on

a radiant horseturd

as on a rose.

Connecticut

Beautiful girl.

Purple lights.

Foot Asleep.

Nothing happened.

Poem

FOR LARRY FAGIN

You are lovely.

I am lame.

L’oeil

Picasso would be very

intellectual

if he were a fish.

An Observation

To England’s very great relief,

Pierre Reverdy did not write, The Wasteland.

Poem Made after Re-reading

the Wonderful Book of Poetry,

“Air”, by Tom Clark, Seven Years

Since He First Sent It to Me

poem

frogs

mud                  February

“in mothballs”

Ah, me!

To an Eggbeater

You are very interesting

because

you are a talking

eggbeater

and that is interesting.

Peter Rabbit came in

under the covers & sd

“Where’s the money?”

Scene of Life at the Capitol

Anne reads her Troubadour poem

to the radiant black & white

& brown bodies & face

of the lady inmates

of the Colorado State Pen,

22 July, 1978, gorgeous summer afternoon.

Paris Review

(FOR ANTHONY STERN)

Found Picasso

Jean Cocteau

&

William Carlos Williams in

a blue river

in London.

It’s Morning!

a childe of

the House

of David

sweeps

in

Zurich

not old

near

a

rose.

Air

Strong coffee in

our cups

Crystal & Blue

4 a.m. in Zurich

Lassie

mit Voltaire?

Sun and Moon in the same Sky?

Nice day.

Keep my

Comb at your

house . . .

I Do It All For You.

Amsterdam

You had gone for a drive in the

country

I was crying in

a Japanese

bar

Now I’m having a coke with you!

A True Story

Childe of the House

of David

night

She

is the new sound

of the rain

& so they wed

and lived together forever.

On St. Mark’s Place

We

fight

in

our

sleep

the

right

angles

angels

“on St. Mark’s Place.”

Just Friends

O Rose,

“the unquenchable variety,”

the patient

survived—

but the

operation

was not a

success . . .

•  •  •

I was visited by the Scorpion, the Eagle, &

the dove . . . .

For Rosina

there

his red nose

& bare long legs

perfectly still

so rare

in a perfect

chair

his eyes

grew red

and full

& then she went away.

where?

his tiny

heart stopped.

And stopped again here.

By Now

I’m a piece of local architecture

built only because it had to be.

UNCOLLECTED SHORT POEMS

Today Chicago

Sunlit

oblongs

Bramble

Transfer

Time of

Major energy product

highly reduced

for the sake

of maintaining scale.

Laments

So long, Jimi,

Janis, so long.

You both are great.

We love you.

But, O, my babies,

you did it wrong.

Winter

The Moon is Yellow.

My Nose is Red.

Tell It Like It Is

Bad Teeth

Think of Anything

The Rose of Sharon

lights up

Grand Valley

Now

Robert Creeley speaks:

the air is getting

darker

and darker

the Rose of Sharon

moves

towards the door

and through.

TED BERRIGAN & ROBERT CREELEY

Where

This

is as is

it goes

which does

as that was

that . . . or

over time & that

was, is,

that.     Check:   call it

WHAT.

Out the Second-floor Window

On St. Mark’s Place

She walked

with the aggressive dignity

of those

for whom someone else’s

irony

is the worst of disasters:

I loved her for it.

O Love

AFTER LEOPARDI

O love!

I have collected

a scar or two

& even a disturbing

memory or two

Since I fell for you.

Life in the Future

FOR DONNA DENNIS

White powder

purple pill

pink pill

white powder

(2)

Blue air

white mist

blue/white sky

MARS

& it’s Autumn in the Northern hemisphere

there.

Anselm Hollo

Come to Chicago

Go to the

Aspidistra Bookstore

Buy

THE LAST PURITAN.

Stay with us.

Poem

TO TOM CLARK

Autobiography

Men at Arms

Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

Acid

Get your ass in gear

Ten Things to Do in the Closet

Turn around.

Turn around.

Turn around.

Feel.

Suss.

Whine.

Shut up.

Turn on light.

Exercise.

Kill Dog.

Orange Black

BACK DEATH

Strategy

Strategy is what you do how

Sitting Bull

Larceny

The

opposite

of

petty

is

GRAND.

I’m No Prick

The best way of

going all that way

to get something

and bring it back

is that way. This

is potent information,

that, a way to go, then.

Bolinas

get, in the complexity of our present

responsible element seething between

impasto excitation & somber, subtly evoked grandeur.

Congratulations

To

Lee & Mike.

I ride this bike

To your joy

For your little boy.

Déjà Vu

Discussing Max Beerbohm

with Mike Brownstein.

Neal Cassady Talk

“I’m standing toe-to-toe with you, see, looking you right in the eye,

you see, and at the same time digging that you are tapping your left foot, but,

and also, at the very same time, understand, I am digging that an American

flag is coming out of your left ear.”

surface

In the House

Sometimes it is quiet throughout the night

And you learn in the morning that

The man in the next room

Died in his sleep.

But there is no shortage of applicants

For the room.

Vignette

Kissed Maggie soundly; and the Doctor

declined to write me another prescription:

(if that “; and” meant what its weight does,

this would be       ROMANCE.)

Inflation

It’s    difficult

for the young queer

poets these days.

They

have to be

as good as

John Ashbery

(sigh).

I’m glad we

Only have to be

like Allen Ginsberg!

(Cheers)

WANT

CAN

DO

Flying United

Ladies & Gentlemen,

You will depart

The Aircraft

at the

Terminal Area

to your left.

Thank You for Flying United.

The D.A.

Today I had planned to fribble away

in “The Digger’s Game”

But Chemistry dictated that I lie on the bed

all day too fast to dig.

Song

“All things considered, it’s a gentle & undemanding

planet, even here.”

I seldom know it.

I do remember consistently

to feed it.                 Snore.             In the air

in the house

in the night                         bear with me.

Red Wagon

TO ALICE NOTLEY

She

She is always two blue eyes

She is never lost in sleep

All her dreams are light & air

They sometimes melt the sun

She makes me smile, or

She makes me cry, she

Makes me laugh, and I talk to her

With really nothing particularly to say.

Remembered Poem

It is important to keep old hat

in secret closet.

3 Pages

FOR JACK COLLOM

10 Things I do Every Day

play poker

drink beer

smoke pot

jack off

curse

BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN

flower

positive & negative

go home

read     lunch      poems

hunker down

changes

Life goes by

quite merrily

blue

NO HELP WANTED

Hunting For The Whale

“and if the weather plays me fair

I’m happy every day.”

The white that dries clear

the heart attack

the congressional medal of honor

A house in the country

NOT ENOUGH

Conversation

“My name

“My name

“My name

“My name

“My name

“My name

is Wesley

is Wesley

Wesley

is Wesley

Jackson,

is Wesley Jackson,

“My name is Wesley Jackson,

I am

I am

I am

I am

25 years

25 years

old,

old,

I am 25 years old,

I am 25 years old,

I am 25 years old,

and

and

my favorite

my favorite

my favorite

favorite

favorite

and my favorite

song

song

song

and my favorite

and my favorite song

and my favorite song

my favorite song

and my favorite song

is

is Valencia.”

Valencia.”

“Isn’t

“Isn’t

that

“Isn’t that

beautiful,”

beautiful,”

“Isn’t that beautiful,”

“Isn’t that beautiful,”

Frank

Frank

said.

Frank said.

To Southampton

Go

Get in Volkswagen

Ride to the Atlantic

Step out

See

Your shadows

On fog

At the second stop

The same ocean as

At the first

Back in Volkswagen

Ron’s or somebody’s

Backs up

Steps on the gas

COCA COLA 20 Cents

Machine noise

Satisfaction

Home

Away from home.

sunday morning

FOR LOU REED

1.

It’s A Fact

If you stroke a cat about 1,000,000 times, you will

generate enough electricity to light up the largest

American Flag in the world for about one minute.

2.

Turnabout

In former times people who committed adultery

got stoned;

Nowadays it’s just a crashing bringdown.

3.

A Mongolian Sausage

By definition: a long stocking: you fill it full of shit,

and then you punch holes in it. Then you swing it over

your head in circles until everybody goes home.

Something Amazing Just Happened

FOR JIM CARROLL, ON HIS BIRTHDAY

A lovely body gracefully is nodding

Out of a blue Buffalo

Monday morning

curls

softly rising color the air

it’s yellow

above the black plane

beneath a red tensor

I’ve been dreaming. The telephone kept ringing & ringing

Clear & direct, purposeful yet pleasant, still taking pleasure

in bringing the good news, a young man in horn-rims’ voice

is speaking

while I listen. Mr. Berrigan, he says, & without waiting for an answer

goes on,

I’m happy to be able to inform you that your request for a Guggenheim

Foundation Grant

Has been favorably received by the committee, & approved.

When would you like to leave?

Uh, not just yet, I said, uh, what exactly did I say with regards to leaving,

in my application . . . I’m a little hazy at the moment.

Yes. Your project, as outlined in your application for a grant for the

purpose

of giving Jim Carroll the best possible birthday present you could get

him, through our Foundation, actually left the project, that is,

how the monies

would be spent, up to us. You indicated, wisely, I think, that we knew

more about what kind of project we would approve than you did,

so we should

make one up for you, since all you wanted was money, to buy Jim a

birthday gift.

Aha! I said. So, what’s up?

We have arranged for you and Jim to spend a year in London, in a flat

off of King’s Row.

You will receive 250 pounds each a month expenses, all travel expenses

paid, & a clothing allowance of 25 pounds each per month.

During the year,

At your leisure, you might send us from time to time copies of your

London works. By year’s end I’m sure you each will have enough

new poems for two books,

Which we would then publish in a deluxe boxed hardcover edition, for

the rights to which we shall be prepared to pay a considerable

sum, as is your due.

We feel that this inspired project will most surely result in The first major

boxed set of works since Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn!

Innocents Abroad

in reverse, so to speak! We know your poems, yours & Jim’s, will tell it

like it is, & that is what we are desperate to know! So, when

would you like to leave?

Immediately, I shouted! & Jim! I called, Jim! Happy Birthday! Wake up!

Today in Ann Arbor

FOR JAYNE NODLAND

Today I woke up

bright & early

Then I went back to sleep

I had a nice dream

which left me weak

so

I woke up again

dull, but still early.

I drank some coke

& took a pill

It made me feel ill, but

optimistic. So,

I went to the Michigan Union for cigarettes.

I cashed a check today—

but that was later. Now

I bought cigarettes, &

The Detroit Free Press.

I decided to eat some vanilla wafers

& drink coffee

at my desk

There was no cream for

the coffee. & the mail

wasn’t out yet.

It pissed me off.

I drank some coffee, black

& it was horrible.

Life is horrible, &

I am stupid.

I think. . . . . . . . . . NOTHING.

Then I think, more coffee. . .

upstairs!

Jackie’s face

picks me up.

She says,      “there’s cream

upstairs”

Up more stairs via the elevator:

cream           talk amiably to Bert

Hornbach

Come downstairs

&

the mail has

come!

Lots

of mail!               I feel pretty good.

Together with my mail back in office.

Sitting.

Johnny Stanton says:      “Ted,

you are a myth in my heart.”

He is a myth in my heart!

So, we are both myths!

Warmed by this, & coffee,

I go on.        American Express

says:

“You owe us $1,906. Please

Pay NOW.”

I say, sure!

(“Now” means “later”)

Somebody else sends a postcard (Bill).

He says,

“I am advertising your presence

at YALE, so please come!”

I say to Bill,

“Have Faith, old

brother!    I’ll be there

when you need me.”

In fact, I say that to everyone.

That is the truth,

& so,

I open a beautiful letter

from you. When we are both dead,

that letter

will be Part Two

of this poem.

But now we are both alive

& terrific!

In the Wheel

The pregnant waitress

asks

“Would you like

some more coffee?”

Surprised out of the question

I wait        seconds        “Yes,

I think I would!” I hand her

my empty cup, &

“thank you!” she says. My pleasure.

Wind

Every day when the sun comes up

The angels emerge from the rivers

Drily happy & all wet. Easy going

But hard to keep my place. Easy

On the avenue underneath my face.

Difficult alone trying to get true.

Difficult inside alone with you.

The rivers’ blackness flowing just sits

Orange & reds blaze up inside the sky

I sit here & I’ve been thinking this

Red, blue, yellow, green, & white.

Things to Do on Speed

mind clicks into gear

& fingers clatter over the keyboard

as intricate insights stream

out of your head:

this goes on for ten hours:

then, take a break: clean

all desk drawers, arrange all

pens & pencils in precise parallel patterns;

stack all books with exactitude in one pile

to coincide perfectly with the right angle

of the desk’s corner.

Whistle thru ten more hours of

arcane insights:

drink a quart of ice-cold pepsi:

clean the ice-box:

past out for ten solid hours

interesting dreams.

2.

Finish papers, wax floors, lose weight, write songs, sing songs, have

conference, sculpt, wake up & think more clearly. Clear up asthma.

treat your obesity, avoid mild depression, decongest, cure your

narcolepsy,

treat your hyper-kinetic brain-damaged children. Open the

Pandora’s Box of amphetamine abuse.

3.

Stretch the emotional sine curve; follow euphoric peaks with descents

into troughs

that are unbearable wells of despair & depression. Become a ravaged

scarecrow.

Cock your emaciated body in

twisted postures                                                 grind your caved-in jaw

scratch your torn & pock-marked skin,

keep talking, endlessly.

4.

Jump off a roof on the lower East Side

or

Write a 453 page unintelligible book

5.

Dismantle 12 radios

string beads interminably

empty your purse

sit curled in a chair

& draw intricate designs

in the corner of an envelope

6.

“I felt it rush almost instantly into

my head like a short circuit. My body

began to pulsate, & grew tiny antennae

all quivering in anticipation. I began

to receive telepathic communication from

the people around me. I felt elated.”

7.

get pissed off.

Feel your tongue begin to shred,

lips to crack, the inside of the mouth

become eaten out. Itch all over. See

your fingernails flake off, hair & teeth

fall out.

Buy a Rolls-Royce

Become chief of the Mafia

Consider anti-matter.

8.

Notice that tiny bugs are crawling over your whole body

around, between and over your many new pimples.

Cut away pieces of bad flesh.

Discuss mother’s promiscuity

Sense the presence of danger at the movies

Reveal

get tough

turn queer

9.

In the Winter, switch to heroin, so you won’t catch pneumonia.

In the Spring, go back to speed.

Television

San Gabriel

Placer, Nevada. New York:

Buffalo. 24 Huntington, just off of Main.

$12.95 takes you

where you want to go

quick; & quickly do you go.

$.30 will bring you back

sweating, worn out. Twice

as fast (as when you went) is

slow.

Farewell Address

TO RICHARD TAYLOR

Goodbye House, 24 Huntington, one block past Hertel on the downtown side of Main, second house on the left. Your good spirit kept me cool this summer, your ample space.

Goodbye house.

Goodbye our room, on the third floor. Your beds were much appreciated; We used them gratefully & well, me & Alice. & Alice’s yellow blanket spread across to the yellow slanted ceiling to make a lovely light, Buffalo mornings. There we talked, O did we ever! Goodbye, our

Third floor room.

& Goodbye other room across the hall. Typewriter music filled my heart. Buffalo nights as I read on my bed while Alice wrote unseen. Her Buffalo poems were terrific, & they were even about me! Some had you in them, too! So,

Goodbye room.

Goodbye second floor. Your bathroom’s character one could grow to understand. I liked the sexy closed door of Chris’s room, & light showing under the master’s door at night; a good omen to me, always! Even your unused office offered us its ironing board, by moonlight.

You were friendly. Goodbye second floor of Richard’s house.

Goodbye stairs. Alice knew you well.

& Goodbye first floor. Goodbye kitchen, you were a delight; you fed us morning, noon & night; I liked your weird yellow light, & your wall clock was out of sight! Meals we shared with Richard were gentle & polite; we liked them; we liked those times a lot.

Goodbye kitchen, you’ll not be forgot.

& Goodbye Arboretum. (I mean TV room) Mornings, alone, I loved to sit in you, to read the news from the world of sports, as light poured into & through the house. Mornings were quiet pepsis. Nights I’d talk with Richard over beers. Good manners had some meaning here; I learned better ones with great delight. Goodbye

TV room. Thanks for your mornings and nights.

Goodbye vast dining hall, where we three & three dogs often ate of beef & drank red wine. Your table was long, & your chandelier a sight. Richard ate quickly, as did Alice, while I took my time, talking beneath your light. May we dine thusly many a night, days

To come. Goodbye dining room, & dogs who ate our bones with delight.

Goodbye Thelonius. Only Allen Ginsberg, for beauty, matches you. & Goodbye Ishmael. I liked your ghastly rough-house ways. You were the love/hate delight of Alice’s days & nights. Many a fond lick you lolled her way, each of her trips. Goodbye Ishmael. Goodbye Oliver. You didn’t say much, but you were always there, calling “Hey, wait for me!” like in those movies I used to like the best. When you three ate Bobby Dylan’s SELF PORTRAIT, it put our friendship to the test. But it survived. & so,

Goodbye Ishmael, Thelonius, Oliver; friends, my brothers, dogs.

& Richard, goodbye, too, to you. You were the best of all our Buffalo life. Sharing with you made it be a life. We were at home in your house, because it’s yours. It was a great pleasure, to come & go through your doors. Nothing gets lost, in anyone’s life; I’m glad of that. We three had our summer, which will last. Poems last (like this one has); and so do memories. They last in poems, & in the people in them (who are us). So, although this morning under the sky, we go, Alice & I, you’ll be flying with us as we fly. You come to visit, where we go, & we’ll sometimes visit you in

Buffalo. Bring the dogs, too. & until then, our love to you, Richard.

Goodbye.

Three Sonnets and a Coda for Tom Clark

1.

In The Early Morning Rain

To my family & friends             “Hello”

And money. With something inside us we float up

On this electric chair each breath nearer the last

Now is spinning

Seven thousand feet over / The American Midwest

Gus walked up under the arc light as far as the first person

the part that goes over the fence last

And down into a green forest ravine             near to “her”

Winds in the stratosphere

Apologise to the malcontents

Downstairs. The black bag & the wise man may be found

in the brain-room.

what sky out there                    Take it away

& it’s off

one foot

is expressing itself as continuum

the other, sock

2.

Tomorrow.               I need to kill

Blank mind part                                    Confusions of the cloth

White snow whirls everywhere.               Across the fields

in the sky the

Soft, loose

stars swarm. Nature makes my teeth “to hurt”

shivering now                on 32nd Street                in my face & in my head

does Bobby Dylan ever come around here?                       listen

it’s alive                where exposed nerve jangles

& I               looming over Jap’s American flag

In Public, In Private                 The Sky Pilot In No Man’s Land

The World Number 14                 is tipsy as pinballs on the ocean

We are bored through . . . through . . . with our professionalism

Outside her

Windows

3.

I’m amazed to be here

A man who can do the average thing

when everybody else is

going crazy                Lord I wonder just exactly what can happen

my heart is filled (filling)            with light

& there’s a breeze                & I’m going

way over

the white             skyline              do what I want to

Fuck it.

Tied up wit

Tie with red roses          The war of the Roses, &

War is shit.               White man, tomorrow you die!

Tomorrow means now.        “You kidding me?” now.

Light up                      you will be great

It’s a complication.              Thanksgiving, 1970, Fall.

CODA:

Being a new day my heart

is confirmed in its pure Buddhahood

activity under the clear blue sky

The front is hiding the rear (not)

which means we have (not) “protected ourselves”

by forgetting all we were dealt

I love all the nuts I’ve been in bed (with)

hope to go everywhere in good time

like, Africa: it would be tremendous (or not)

to drink up rivers. Be seeing you

to ride the river (with)                 heads riding gently

its personal place         feet doing their stuff           up in the air

Where someone (J.) dies, so that we can be rude to friends

While you find me right here coming through again.

Landscape with Figures (Southampton)

There’s a strange lady in my front yard

She’s wearing blue slacks & a white car-coat

& “C’mon!” she’s snarling at a little boy

He isn’t old enough to snarl, so he’s whining

On the string as first she & then he disappear

Into (or is it behind) the Rivers’ garage.

That’s 11 a.m.

In the country. “Everything is really golden,”

Alice, in bed, says. I look, & out the window, see

Three shades of green; & the sky, not so high,

So blue & white. “You’re right, it really is!”

What I’d Like for Christmas, 1970

Black brothers to get happy

The Puerto Ricans to say hello

The old folks to take it easy &

as it comes

The United States to get straight

Power to butt out

Money to fuck off

Business with honor

Religion

&

Art

Love

A home

A typewriter

A GUN.

Lady

Nancy, Jimmy, Larry, Frank, & Berdie

George & Bill

Dagwood Bumstead

Donna, Joe, & Phil

Making shapes this place

so rightly ours

to fill

as we wish,

& Andy’s flowers too, do.

I’ve been sitting, looking

thinking sounds of pictures

names

of you

of how I smile now

&

Let It Be.

& now I think to add

“steel teeth”

“sucking cigarette”

“A photograph of Bad.”

Everything you are gone slightly mad.

America.

36th Birthday Afternoon

Green TIDE; behind, pink against blue

Blue CHEER; an expectorant, Moving On

Gun in hand, shooting down

Anyone who comes to mind

IN OLD SOUTHAMPTON, blue, shooting up

THE SCRIPTURE OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY

A new sharpness, peel apart to open, bloody water

& Alice is putting her panties on, taking off

A flowery dress for London’s purple one

It seems to be getting longer, the robot

Keeps punching, opening up

A bit at a time. Up above

Spread atop the bed a red head sees

Two hands, one writing, one holding on.

Today’s News

My body heavy with poverty (starch)

It uses up my sexual energy

constantly, &

I feel constantly crowded

On the other hand, One

Day In The Afternoon of

The World

Pervaded my life with a

heavy grace

today

I’ll never smile again

Bad Teeth

But

I’m dancing with tears in my eyes

(I can’t help myself!)    Tom

writes he loves Alice’s sonnets,

takes four, I’d love

to be more attentive to her, more

here.

The situation having become intolerable

the only alternatives are:

Murder & Suicide.

They are too dumb! So, one

becomes a goof. Raindrops

start falling on my roof. I say

Hooray! Then I say, I’m going out

At the drugstore I say, Gimme some pills!

Charge ’em! They say

Sure. I say See you later.

Read the paper. Talk to Alice.

She laughs to hear

Hokusai had 947 changes of address

In his life. Ha-ha. Plus everything

else in the world

going on here.

Wishes

Now I wish I were asleep, to see my dreams taking place

I wish I were more awake

I wish a sweet rush of tears to my eyes

Wish a nose like an eagle

I wish blue sky in the afternoon

Bigger windows, & a panorama—light, buildings & people in street air

Wish my teeth were white and sparkled

Wish my legs were not where they are—where they are

I wish the days warmly cool & clothes I like to be inside of

Wish I were walking around in Chelsea (NY) & it was 5:15 a.m., the

sun coming up, alone, you asleep at home

I wish red rage came easier

I wish death, but not just now

I wish I were driving alone across America in a gold Cadillac

toward California, & my best friend

I wish I were in love, & you here

Ophelia

ripped

out of her mind

a marvelous construction

thinking

no place; & you

not once properly handled

Ophelia

&

you can’t handle yourself

feeling

no inclination

toward that

solitude,

love

by yourself

Ophelia

& feeling free                        you drift

far more beautifully

than we

As one now understands

He never did see           you

you moving so                while talking flashed

& failed

to let you go

Ophelia

Scorpion, Eagle & Dove (A Love Poem)

FOR PAT

November, dancing, or

Going to the store in the country,

Where green changes itself into LIFE,

MOVING ON, Jockey Shorts, Katzenmiaou

A Chesterfield King & the blue book

IN OLD SOUTHAMPTON,

you make my days special

You do Jimmy’s, & Alice’s,

Phoebe’s, Linda’s,

Lewis’ & Joanne’s, too. . .

& Kathy’s (a friend who is new). . .

& Gram’s . . .

who loved you,

like I do

once . . .

& who surely does so since

that 4th of July last,

a Saturday,

a day that left her free

to be with & love you

(& me)

(all of us)

just purely;

clean;

& selflessly;

no thoughts

Just, It’s true. As I would be

& as I am, to you

this

November.

Things to Do in Providence

Crash

Take Valium                  Sleep

Dream &,

forget it.

Wake up now & strange

displaced

at home.

Read The Providence Evening Bulletin

No one you knew

got married

had children

got divorced

died

got born

tho many familiar names flicker &

disappear.

Sit

watch TV

draw blanks

swallow

pepsi

meatballs

. . .

give yourself the needle:

“Shit! There’s gotta be something

to do

here!”

JOURNEY to    Seven young men on horses, leaving Texas.

SHILOH:       They’ve got to do what’s right! So, after

a long trip, they’ll fight for the South in the War.

No war in Texas, but they’ve heard about it, & they want

to fight for their country. Have some adventures & make

their folks proud! Two hours later all are dead;

one by one they died, stupidly, & they never did find out

why! There were no niggers in South Texas! Only

the leader,

with one arm shot off, survives to head back for Texas:

all his friends behind him, dead. What will happen?

Watching him, I cry big tears. His friends

were beautiful, with boyish American good manners,

cowboys!

Telephone New York: “hello!”

“Hello! I’m drunk! &

I have no clothes on!”

“My goodness,” I say.

“See you tomorrow.”

Wide awake all night reading: The Life of Turner

(“He first saw the light in Maiden Lane”)

A. C. Becker: Wholesale Jewels

Catalogue 1912

The Book of Marvels, 1934:

The year I was born.

No mention of my birth in here.    Hmmm.

Saturday The Rabbi Stayed Home

(that way he got to solve the murder)

LIFE on the Moon   by LIFE Magazine.

My mother wakes up, 4 a.m.: Someone to talk with!

Over coffee we chat, two grownups

I have two children, I’m an adult now, too.

Now we are two people talking who have known each other

a long time,

Like Edwin & Rudy. Our talk is a great pleasure: my mother

a spunky woman. Her name was Peggy Dugan when she was young.

Now, 61 years old, she blushes to tell me I was conceived

before the wedding! “I’ve always been embarrassed about telling you

til now,” she says. “I didn’t know what you might think!”

“I think it’s really sweet,” I say. “It means I’m really

a love child.” She too was conceived before her mother’s wedding,

I know. We talk, daylight comes, & the Providence Morning Journal.

My mother leaves for work. I’m still here.

Put out the cat

Take in the clothes

off of the line

Take a walk,

buy cigarettes

two teen-agers whistle

as I walk up

They say: “Only your hairdresser

knows for sure!”

Then they say,

“ulp!”

because I am closer to them.

They see I am not hippie kid, frail like Mick Jagger,

but some horrible 35 year old big guy!

The neighborhood I live in is mine!

“How’d you like a broken head, kid?”

I say fiercely.

(but I am laughing & they are not one bit scared.)

So, I go home.

Alice Clifford waits me. Soon she’ll die

at the Greenwood Nursing Home; my mother’s

mother, 79 years & 7 months old.

But first, a nap, til my mother comes home

from work, with the car.

The heart stops briefly when someone dies,

a quick pain as you hear the news, & someone passes

from your outside life to inside. Slowly the heart adjusts

to its new weight, & slowly everything continues, sanely.

Living’s a pleasure:

I’d like to take the whole trip

despite the possible indignities of growing old,

moving, to die in poverty, among strangers:

that can’t be helped.

So, everything, now

is just all right.                                           I’m with you.

No more last night.

Friday’s great

10 o’clock morning sun is shining!

I can hear today’s key sounds fading softly

& almost see opening sleep’s epic novels.

Frank O’Hara

Winter in the country, Southampton, pale horse

as the soot rises, then settles, over the pictures

The birds that were singing this morning have shut up

I thought I saw a couple, kissing, but Larry said no

It’s a strange bird. He should know. & I think now

“Grandmother divided by monkey equals outer space.” Ron

put me in that picture. In another picture, a good-

looking poet is thinking it over; nevertheless, he will

never speak of that it. But, his face is open, his eyes

are clear, and, leaning lightly on an elbow, fist below

his ear, he will never be less than perfectly frank,

listening, completely interested in whatever there may

be to hear. Attentive to me alone here. Between friends,

nothing would seem stranger to me than true intimacy.

What seems genuine, truly real, is thinking of you, how

that makes me feel. You are dead. And you’ll never

write again about the country, that’s true.

But the people in the sky really love

to have dinner & to take a walk with you.

Crystal

Be awake mornings. See light spread across the lawn

(snow) as the sky refuses to be any color, today

I like this boat-ride I’m being taken for, although

It never leaves the shore, this boat. Its fires burn

Like a pair of lovely legs. It’s a garage that grew up

Sometimes I can’t talk, my mouth too full of words, but

I have hands & other parts, to talk lots! Light the fire

Babble for you. I dream a green undersea man

Has been assigned to me, to keep me company, to smirk

At me when I am being foolish. A not unpleasant dream.

My secret doors open as the mail arrives. Fresh air

Pours in, around, before they close again. The winds are rushing

Up off of the ocean, up Little Plains Road. Catch the Wind

In my head, a quiet song. And, “Everything belongs to me

Because I am poor.” Waiting in sexy silence, someone

Turns over in bed, & waiting is just a way of being with

Now a tiny fire flares out front the fireplace. Chesterfield

King lights up! Wood is crackling inside

Elephants’ rush & roar. Refrigerator’s gentle drone

Imagined footsteps moving towards my door. Sounds in dreams

In bed. You are all there is inside my head.

Clown

There’s a strange lady in my front yard

A girl naked in the shower, saying

“I’m keeping my boxes dry!” A naked artist

Smoking. Bad teeth. Wooden planks: furniture. Sky

One minute ago I stopped thought: 12 years of cops

In my life. & Alice is putting her panties on

Takes off a flowery dress for London’s purple one

Out of the blue, a host of words, floating

March: awaiting rescue: smoke, or don’t

Strapped: deprived. Shoot yourself: stay alive.

& you can’t handle yourself, love, feeling

No inclination toward that solitude.

Take it easy, & as it comes. Coffee

Suss. Feel. Whine. Shut up. Exercise.

Turn. Turn around. Turn. Kill dog.

Today woke up bright & early, no mail, life

Is horrible, & I am stupid, & I think . . . Nothing.

“Have faith, old brother. You are a myth in my heart.

We are both alive. Today we may go to India.”

Chinese Nightingale

We are involved in a transpersonified state

Revolution, which is turning yourself around

I am asleep next to “The Hulk.” “The Hulk” often sleeps

While I am awake & vice versa. Life is less than ideal

For a monkey in love with a nymphomaniac! God is fired!

Do I need the moon to remain free? To explode softly

In a halo of moon rays? Do I need to be

On my human feet, straight, talking, free

Will sleep cure the deaf-mute’s heartbreak? Am I

In my own way, America? Rolling downhill, & away?

The door to the river is closed, my heart is breaking

Loose from sheer inertia. All I do is bumble. No

Matter. We live together in the jungle.

Wrong Train

Here comes the man! He’s talking a lot

I’m sitting, by myself. I’ve got

A ticket to ride. Outside is, “Out to Lunch.”

It’s no great pleasure, being on the make.

Well, who is? Or, well everyone is, tho.

“I’m laying there, & some guy comes up

& hits me with a billyclub!” A fat guy

Says. Shut up. & like that we cross a river

Into the Afterlife. Everything goes on as before

But never does any single experience make total use

Of you. You are always slightly ahead,

Slightly behind. It merely baffles, it doesn’t hurt.

It’s total pain & it breaks your heart

In a less than interesting way. Every day

Is payday. Never enough pay. A déjà-vu

That lasts. It’s no big thing, anyway.

A lukewarm greasy hamburger, ice-cold pepsi

that hurts your teeth.

Buddha on the Bounty

“A little loving can solve a lot of things”

She locates two spatial equivalents in

The same time continuum. “You are lovely. I

am lame.” “Now it’s me.” “If a man is in

Solitude, the world is translated, my world

& wings sprout from the shoulders of ‘The Slave’”

Yeah. I like the fiery butterfly puzzles

Of this pilgrimage toward clarities

Of great mud intelligence & feeling.

“The Elephant is the wisest of all animals

The only one who remembers his former lives

& he remains motionless for long periods of time

Meditating thereon.” I’m not here, now,

& it is good, absence.

Scorpio

If I don’t love you I

Won’t let it show. But I’ll

Make it clear, by

Never letting you know.

& if I love you, I will

Love you true: insofar

As Love, itself,

Will do.

& while I live, I’ll be

Whatever I am, whose

Constant, impure, fire

Is outwardly only a man.

I Used to Be but Now I Am

I used to be inexorable,

But now I am elusive.

I used to be the future of America,

But now I am America.

I used to be part of the problem,

But now I am the problem.

I used to be part of the solution, if not all of it,

But now I am not that person.

I used to be intense, & useful,

But now I am heavy, & boring.

I used to be sentimental about myself, & therefore ruthless,

But now I am, I think, a sympathetic person, although

easily amused.

I used to be a believer,

But now, alas, I believe.

The Complete Prelude

FOR CLARK COOLIDGE & FOR MY MOTHER

1.

Upon the river, point me out my course

That blows from the green fields and from the clouds

And from the sky: be nothing better

Than a wandering cloud

Come fast upon me

Such as were not made for me.

I cannot miss my way. I breathe again

That burthen of my own natural self

The heavy weight of many a weary day;

Coming from a house

Shall be my harbour; promises of human life

Are mine in prospect;

Now I am free, enfranchis’d and at large.

The earth is all before me, with a heart

2.

And the result was elevating thoughts

Among new objects simplified, arranged

And out of what had been, what was, the place

“O’er the blue firmament a radiant white,”

Was thronged with impregnations, like those wilds

That into music touch the passing wind;

Had been inspired, and walk’d about in dreams,

And, in Eclipse, my meditations turn’d

And unencroached upon, now, seemed brighter far,

Though fallen from bliss, a solitary, full of caverns, rocks

And audible seclusions: here also found an element

that pleased her

Tried her strength; made it live. Here

Neither guilt, nor vice, nor misery forced upon my sight

Could overthrow my trust in Courage, Tenderness, & Grace.

In the tender scenes I most did take my delight.

3.

Thus strangely did I war against myself

What then remained in such Eclipse? What night?

The wizard instantaneously dissolves

Through all the habitations of past years

And those to come, and hence an emptiness;

& shall continue evermore to make

& shall perform to exalt and to refine

Inspired, celestial presence ever pure

From all the sources of her former strength.

Then I said: “and these were mine,

Not a deaf echo, merely, of thought,

But living sounds. Yea, even the visible universe was scann’d

And as by the simple waving of a wand

With something of a kindred spirit, fell

Beneath the domination of a taste, its animation & its deeper sway.”

Easter Monday

FOR EDWARD DORN

Chicago Morning

TO PHILIP GUSTON

Under a red face, black velvet shyness

Milking an emaciated gaffer. God lies down

Here. Rattling of a shot, heard

From the first row. The president of the United States

And the Director of the FBI stand over

a dead mule. “Yes, it is nice to hear the fountain

With the green trees around it, as well as

People who need me.” Quote Lovers of speech unquote. It’s

a nice thought

& typical of a rat. And, it is far more elaborate

Than expected. And the thing is, we don’t need

that much money.

Sunday morning; blues, blacks, red & yellow wander

In the soup. Gray in the windows’ frames. The angular

Explosion in the hips. A huge camel rests

in a massive hand

Casts clouds a smoggish white out & up over the Loop, while

Two factories (bricks) & a fortress of an oven (kiln)

Rise, barely visible inside a grey metallic gust.

“The Fop’s Tunic.”

She gets down, off of the table, breaking a few more plates.

Natives paint their insides crystal white here (rooms)

Outside is more bricks, off-white. Europe at Night.

The End

Despair farms a curse, slackness

In the sleep of animals, with mangled limbs

Dogs, frogs, game elephants, while

There’s your new life, blasted with milk.

It’s the last day of summer, it’s the first

Day of fall: soot sits on Chicago like

A fat head’s hat. The quick abounds. Turn

To the left; turn to the right. On Bear’s Head

Two Malted Milk balls. “Through not taking himself

Quietly enough he strained his insides.” He

Encourages criticism, but he never forgives it.

You who are the class in the sky, receive him

Into where you dwell. May he rest long and well.

God help him, he invented us, that is, a future

Open living beneath his spell. One goes not where

One came from. One sitting says, “I stand corrected.”

Newtown

Sunday morning: here we live jostling & tricky

blues, blacks, reds & yellows all are gray

in each window: the urbanites have muscles

in their butts & backs; shy, rough, compassionate

& good natured, “they have sex in their pockets”

To women in love with my flesh I speak.

All the Irish major statements & half the best

Low-slung stone. Upstairs is sleep. Downstairs

is heat. She seems exceedingly thin and transparent

Two suspicious characters in my head. They park & then

Start, the same way you get out of bed. The pansy is

Grouchy. The Ideal Family awaits distribution on

The Planet. Another sensation tugged at his heart

Which he could not yet identify,

half     Rumanian    deathbed    diamond

Wildly singing in the mountains with cancer of the spine.

Method Action

FOR HANK KANABUS

Frog sees dog.                     log?

See the lamp?

It is out.

“Do you think I became

a dance-hall girl

because

I was bad?”

It ain’t gonna work.

Because by morning

it’ll be gone.

The medicine I took

to change

the way I was.

And I’m the man who killed him.

Swinburne & Watts-Dunton

Beer in bed, &

An unused point

Beside me

On the bench.

Goodbye To All That.

No first lines in London. . . .

Tuborg lager,

Putney High Street,

S. W. 15

“A pure case of unmitigated flatulence.”

Yes, but, “He is exulted.

The ice

Meant something else

To him.”

White South.

Soviet Souvenir

What strikes the eye hurts, what one hears is a lie.

The river is flowing again between its banks.

Grant one more summer, O you Gods! that once I did not ask

The windows through which the bells toll are like doors

Because she is direct in her actions and in her feelings

Under the puns of the troop, there are frescoes

On the rudder, which you set against a bracelet’s fire, and

Which goes toward you with each beat.

I find myself there; am I finally ill at ease with my own

Principle? Fortune be praised! Immense density, not divinely,

bathes us

I hear walking in my legs

The savage eyes into wood look for the head they can live in

It’s my window, even now, around me, full of darkness, dumb,

so great!

My heart willingly again beginning crying out; and at the same time

anxious, love, to contain.

Old-fashioned Air

FOR LEE CRABTREE

I’m living in Battersea, July,

1973, not sleeping, reading

Jet noise throbs building fading

Into baby talking, no, “speechifying”

“Ah wob chuk sh ’guh!” Glee.

There’s a famous Power Station I can’t see

Up the street. Across there is

Battersea Park

I walked across this morning toward

A truly gorgeous radiant flush;

Sun; fumes of the Battersea

Power Station; London air;

I walked down long avenues of trees

That leant not gracefully

Over the concrete walk. Wet green lawn

Opened spaciously

Out on either side of me. I saw

A great flock of geese taking their morning walk

Unhurriedly.

I didn’t hurry either, Lee.

I stopped & watched them walk back up toward

& down into their lake,

Smoked a Senior Service on a bench

As they swam past me in a long dumb graceful cluttered line,

Then, taking my time, I found my way

Out of that park;

A Gate that was locked. I jumped the fence.

From there I picked up the London Times, came home,

Anselm awake in his bed, Alice

Sleeping in mine: I changed

A diaper, read a small poem I’d had

In mind, then thought to write this line:

“Now is Monday morning so, that’s a garbage truck I hear,

not bells”

And we are back where we started from, Lee, you

& me, alive & well!

The Ancient Art of Wooing

A master square weaver, one’s favoured medium,

That is what is behind the boom.

Brusquely hugely schemefully ignored

Free in the language of wooing, but not included

The close elaborate current square panorama

quiver                             now one quivers

The aerial view of vineyards spreading out, encircling

the house

Backlit, color coming from within, light & dark

closely akin to skin

This slow constant weave seems badly adapted

To the grave overpowering expression of

a decorative opulent emotion.

Oh, does it? Behind this boom one can see one is getting

After the false starts & necessary resistance,

one’s bones’ worth.

On display they in the center become alive. They

are handsome in themselves.

The possible in mural scale model in Marriage

is formalized.

Late November

What said your light

you know, an answer refusing

I go to my store I maintain

animal inextricably between

illuminated, on the line

something lords in chair

all fixtured silvered

heart, your curtain, air

breathy air stirs white

knowing refusing running

Waitomo Cave, New Zealand

couldn’t catch the day, its curve, its more

Committed robbery with the Smothers Brothers

cops pursue us infinitely

At Loma Linda

“The pressure’s on, old son.”

“We’re going to salvage just about all you have left.”

“Right. And I’m going with you.”

“I’m also staying right here with you.”

“It’s the way you’ve been going about it that worries us.”

“All this remote control business.”

“I’m the principal stockholder and I’m moving my equities out.”

“He believes if he’s hard enough on a body they’ll give way.”

“It’s funny to have lived all this time in the midlands

And not seen all these lovely things about.”

“Where’s the Doctor?” “I am the Doctor.”

“Is everything ready for surgery?”

“Yes, & you don’t need a sauna to get steamed up, here.”

“You’ll find the patient’s files in these cabinets here.”

L.G.T.T.H.

Queen Victoria dove headfirst into the swimming pool, which was filled

with blue milk.

I used to be baboons, but now I am person.

I used to be secretary to an eminent brain surgeon, but now I am quite

ordinary. Oops! I’ve spilled the beans!

I wish mountains could be more appealing to the eye.

I wash sometimes. Meanwhile

Two-ton Tony Galento began to rub beef gravy over his entire body.

I wish you were more here.

I used to be Millicent, but now I am Franny.

I used to be a bowl of black China tea, but now I am walking back

to the green fields of the People’s Republic.

Herman Melville is elbowing his way through the stringbeans toward us.

Oscar Levant handed the blue pill to Oscar Wilde during the fish course.

Then he slapped him.

I used to be blue, but now I am pretty. I wish broken bad person.

I wish not to see you tonight.

I wish to exchange this chemistry set for a goldfish please.

I used to be a little fairy, but now I am President of The United States.

Peking

These are the very rich garments of the poor

Tousling gradations of rainbow, song & soothing tricks

With a crooked margin there & there is here: we

Are the waiting fragments of his sky, bouncing

a red rubber ball in the veins.

Do you have a will? And one existing so forgets all

Desuetude desultory having to move again, take power from snow,

Evening out not more mild than beastly kind, into a symbol.

I hate that. I think the couple to be smiles over glasses, and

Questions not to find you, the which they have. O Marriage

Talking as you is like talking for a computer, needing to be

Abacus, adding machine, me. Up from the cave’s belly, down

from the airy populace

That lace my soul, a few tears from the last the sole surviving

Texas Ranger,

Freed, freely merge with your air, dance. Blue are its snowflakes

Besprinkled blue lights on his eyes, & flakes. For her

I’d gladly let the snake wait under my back, and think, to walk,

And pass our long love’s day. Landscape rushing away.

From A List of the Delusions of the Insane,

What They Are Afraid Of

That they are starving.

That their blood has turned to water.

That they give off a bad smell.

Being poor.

That they are in hell.

That they are the tools of another power.

That they have stolen something.

That they have committed an unpardonable sin.

Being unfit to live.

That evil chemicals have entered the air.

Being ill with a mysterious disease.

That they will not recover.

That their children are burning.

Chicago English Afternoon

He never listened while friends talked

Less original than penetrating, very often

Illuminating         He worked steadily to the even

Current of sound         sunlit oblongs         bramble        transfer

White South       nothing is gained by assurance as

To what is insecure       beer in bed, & an unused point

Beside me on the bench        time of, major energy product

Over Bellevue Road that silence said

To mean an angel is passing overhead        my baby

Throws my shoes out the door        & one cannot go back

Except in time         “Yes, but he is exultant; the ice

Meant something else to him”           highly reduced

For the sake of maintaining scale        Goodbye To All That

“I have only one work, & I hardly know what it is.”

It was silence that stopped him working, silence in which

he might look up

& see terror waiting in their eyes for his attention.

“Ladies & Gentlemen, you will depart the aircraft

At the Terminal Area to your Right. Thank you for flying United.”

She (Not to be confused with she, a girl)

She alters all our lives for the better, merely

By her presence in it. She is a star. She is

Radiant, & She is vibrant (integrity). She animates

And gathers this community. Half the world’s population

Is under 25. She permits everybody to be themselves more often

than not.

She is elegant. I love her.

She writes poetry of an easy & graceful

Intimacy. She is brave. She is always slightly breathless, or

Almost always slightly. She is witty. She owns a proud & lovely

Dignity, & She is always willing to see it through.

She is an open circle, Her many selves at or near the center, &

She is here right now. Technically, She is impeccable, &

If She is clumsy in places, those are clumsy places. She knows

Exactly what she is doing & not before She is doing it. What

She discovers She discovered before She discovers it, and so

The fresh discovery of each new day. Her songs are joyous songs,

& they are prayers, never failing to catch the rush of hope

(anticipation)

Despair, insanity & desperation pouring in any given moment. She

Knows more than She will ever say. She will always say

More than she knows. She is a pain. She is much less than

Too good to be true. She is plain. She is ordinary. She

is a miracle.

Innocents Abroad

TO GORDON BROTHERSTON

Fluke Holland:

—The Tennessee Third

Stew Carnall:

He was horrifed: The Little Pill.

Coy Bacon:

A nincomparable nanimal:

Hunk Jordan:

His Ghost.

Margo Veno:

Pigtails : ink

Rugby Kissick

“Sally Bowles”

Helen Keller:

“Nuff said.”

Sue Bear:

Car Crash.               (Change)

Joe Don Looney:

Rexroth’s Tune

Cream Saroyan:

“Her first is a song.”

Trane DeVore:

Hands Up!

Kid Dorn:

I am dog.

Ava Smothers:

Defies calipers

St. Paul.             (Bag.)

Still. Say it ain’t so.

Sister Moon

Where do the words come from? (come in?)

Where did that silt?        How much lives?

A rock is next to the bee.

The window is never totally thought through.

So

“Silver” is used to stand for something nothing

really ever quite is. Let it stand against.

Or in other words what next?

There’s time enough

A lot of unalloyed nouns.              for a list to occur

between the lines.

Weather, as all strata in a possible day.

Sleet against window glass. A cigarette starts sounding.

You can see how “a depth” makes “west” and “south” agree.

A philosophy: “I guess yes.”

milks & honeys, stuns, salutes, flashes . . .

now & again, “a glimpse”

An Orange Clock

Sash the faces of lust

Beast. And get your salutation

An Electric Train wreck in the eye

Everything good is from the Indian. A curtain.

The word reminds me of Abydos and spinach.

I am not a pygmy soothed

By light that breathes like a hand

Sober dog, O expert caresses

In the twisted chamber, for you the silent men, &

Flowers, so as to weave the inhabitants

This small immobile yellow coat persona:

And you must receive songs in its name, O

Library of rapid boons

Irrespective of merit. & now I do not know his name.

Sash the faces of lush

Beast. & Get Your Salutation.

Gainsborough

I belong for what it is worth

To the family of the Phoenix; also

Dragon blood flows in my veins;

And when the time came to assign “us” berths,

Instead of “Proletarian,” it was under “Criminal”

I found my name, albeit without

Difficulty, although it took some time. Neither

Among the last nor, happily, the first. It was Alphabetical

& “By the Numbers” in those days. Plus, I got

“Innocence,” with a funny dash of “Butch.”

And there you have it:

Not uncommonly provided just handles enough

To open up, close down, repeat, evade, hit, slip, & turn on:

With luck you could have it both ways & better with each change.

“He wanted the quiet, the domestic & the personal . . .”

“It’s really just the sense of around & around.”

Easter Monday

“Antlers have grown out the top of my shaggy head.”

“And his conclusions to be unaccompanied by any opinions. . . .”

“You can’t have two insides having an affair.”

“Why not then spiritualize one’s midday food with a little liquor?”

“The question seems prosecutorial.” “The house is lost

In the room.” “Loyalty is hard to explain.”

“Hard fight gets no reward.” “A woman has a spirit of her own.”

“A man’s spirit is built upon experience & rage.”—Max Jacob.

In the air, in the house, in the night, bear with me

“I always chat to the golden partner.”

“I’m working out the structures of men that don’t exist yet.”

“A gladness as remote from ecstasy as it is from fear.”

“To go on telling the story.”

“Give not that which is holy to dog.”

Four Gates to the City

Everything good is from the Indian

Sober dog, O expert caresses

By light that breathes like a hand

Small        immobile          yellow        yo-yo plumage

On the cold bomb-shelter. A cur

Is a pre-sound without a rage

Come with me the nurse ferocity

Whose clouds are really toots from the nearby—it is

A well-lit afternoon

but the lights go on

& you know I’m there.

Back in those previous frames

Is a walk through a town.

It sobers you up

To dance like that. Extraordinary to dance

Like that. Ordinarily, can be seen, dancing

In the streets. Ah, well, thanks for the shoes, god

Like Goethe on his divan at Weimar, I’m wearing them

on my right feet!

In Blood

“Old gods work”

“I gather up my tics & tilts, my stutters & imaginaries

into the “up” leg

In this can-can . . .” “Are you my philosophy

If I love you which I do . . . ?” “I want to know

It sensationally like the truth;” “I see in waves

Through you past me;” “But now I stop—” “I can love

What’s for wear:” “But I dredge what I’ve bottomlessly canned

When I can’t tell you . . .” “I love natural

Coffee beautifully . . .” “I’m conjugally love

Loose & tight in the same working” “I make myself

Feature by feature” “The angel from which each thing is most itself,

from each, each,”

“I know there’s a faithful anonymous performance”

“I wish never to abandon you” “I me room he” To

“Burn! this is not negligible, being poetic, & not feeble.”

The Joke & The Stars

What we have here is Animal Magick: the fox

is crossing the water: he is the forest from whence

he came, and toward which he swims: he is the hawk

circling the waters in the sun; and he is also the foxfire

on each bank in Summer wind. He is also the grandfather clock

that stands in the corner of the bedroom, one eye open, both hands up.

And though I am an Irishman in my American

I have not found in me one single he or she

who would sit on a midden and dream stars: for

Although I hate it, I walk with the savage gods.

“It’s because you are guilty about being another person,

isn’t it?” But back at the organ

The angel was able to play a great green tree

for the opening of the new First National Bank.

And New York City is the most beautiful city in the world

And it is horrible in that sense of hell. But then

So are you. And you, and you, and you, and you, and you.

And no I don’t mean any of you: I just mean you.

Incomplete Sonnet #254

FOR DOUGLAS OLIVER

the number two, &

the number three, &

they being the number one

And as I have, almost

unbelievably, passed the

number four, I wonder

Will I ever “reach”, or worse,

Stop at the number Seven?

For though one of me

has a sentimental longing for number

I never have believed in

the Number, Heaven.

But in numberless hells

I never once stopped at eleven.

Where the Ceiling Light Burns

Since we had changed

The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from

a beach

Today a hockey player died in

the green of days: the chimneys

Morning again, nothing has to be done,

maybe buy a piano or make fudge

Totally abashed and smiling

I walk in

sit down and

face the frigidaire

You say that everything is very simple and interesting

‘the picturesque

common lot’             the unwarranted light

the fever & obscurity of your organisms . . .

on what grounds shall we criticize the City Manager?

So Going Around Cities

TO DOUG & JAN OLIVER

“I order you to operate. I was not made to suffer.”

Probing for old wills, and friendships, for to free

to New York City, to be in History, New York City being

History at that time. “And I traded my nights

for Intensity; & I barter my right to Gold; & I’d traded

my eyes much earlier, when I was circa say seven years old

for ears to hear Who was speaking, & just exactly who

was being told . . . .” & I’m glad

I hear your words so clearly

& I would not have done it

differently

& I’m amused at such simplicity, even so,

inside each & every door. And now I’m with you, instantly,

& I’ll see you tomorrow night, and I see you constantly, hopefully

though one or the other of us is often, to the body-mind’s own self

more or less out of sight! Taking walks down any street, High

Street, Main Street, walk past my doors! Newtown; Nymph Rd

(on the Mesa); Waveland

Meeting House Lane, in old Southampton; or BelleVue Road

in England, etcetera

Other roads; Manhattan; see them there where open or shut up behind

“I’ve traded sweet times for answers . . .”

“They don’t serve me anymore.” They still serve me on the floor.

Or,

as now, as floor. Now we look out the windows, go in &

out the doors. The Door.

(That front door which was but & then at that time My door).

I closed it

On the wooing of Helen. “And so we left schools for her.” For

She is not one bit fiction; & she is easy to see;

& she leaves me small room

For contradiction. And she is not alone; & she is not one bit

lonely in the large high room, &

invention is just vanity, which is plain. She

is the heart’s own body, the body’s own mind in itself

self-contained.

& she talks like you; & she has created truly not single-handedly

Our tragic thing, America. And though I would be I am not afraid

of her, & you also not. You, yourself, I,

Me, myself, me. And no, we certainly have not pulled down

our vanity: but

We wear it lightly here,

here where I traded evenly,

& even gladly

health, for sanity; here

where we live day-by-day

on the same spot.

My English friends, whom I love & miss, we talk to ourselves here,

& we two

rarely fail to remember, although we write seldom, & so must seem

gone forever.

In the stained sky over this morning the clouds seem about to burst.

What is being remembering

Is how we are, together. Like you we are always bothered, except

by the worse; & we are living

as with you we also were

fired, only, mostly, by changes in the weather. For Oh dear hearts,

When precious baby blows her fuse / it’s just our way

of keeping amused.

That we offer of & as excuse. Here’s to you. All the very best.

What’s your pleasure? Cheers.

Quarter to Three

“who is not here

causes us to drift”

wake up, throat dry,

that way, perpetually,

“and why deprived unless

you feel that you ought to be?” and

“Clarity is immobile.” And, “We are hungry

for devices to keep the baby happy . . .”

She writes, “My hunger creates a food

that everybody needs.”

“I can’t live without you no

matter who you are.” “I think.”

I write this in cold blood,

enjoy.

A Little American Feedback

Yes, it’s true, strategy is fascinating

& watching its workings out of, its

successes & failures, participating even,

can be amusing at times, but

Lords & Ladies do express

the courtly elegance, the

rude vulgarity, only truly

in the self’s own body-mind’s

living daily day-to-day the living

Self-contained containing

self-abandonment as self is

eyes as they caress or

blaze with particular hate, say, at

living being thought while a particularly

self-engrossing mind-game going on is

still, & only, one pronoun temporarily

haranguing the others while

the rest of One’s self waits, truly

impatiently, for blessed natural savagery to arrive,

and finally save the party, by ordering

the musicians to resume their play

& the dancing picks up once again.

Boulder

Up a hill, short

of breath, then

breathing

Up stairs, & down, & up, & down again

to

NOISE

Your warm powerful Helloes

friends

still slightly breathless

in

a three-way street

hug

Outside

& we can move

& we move

Inside

to Starbursts   of noise!

The human voice is how.

Lewis’s, boyish, & clear; & Allen’s, which persists,

& His,          & Hers,            & all of them Thems,

& then

Anne’s, once again, (and as I am)         “Ted!”

Then

O, Lady!,            O, See,            among all things which exist

O this!, this breathing, we.

Picnic

The dancer grins at the ground.

The mildest of alchemists will save him.

(Note random hill of chairs). & he will prove

useful to her

in time. The ground to be their floor.

like pennies to a three year old,

like a novel, the right novel, to a 12 year old,

like a 39 Ford to a Highschool kid

like a woman to a man, a girl

who is a woman

is her self ’s own soul

and her man is himself

his own

& whole.

Addenda

& I can’t buy

with submission

& tho I feel often

& why not

battered

I can’t be beaten.

But I have been eaten, 7 times

by myself

& I go my way, by myself, I being

by myself only when useful, as for example,

you are to me now,

to you.

Narragansett Park

Inhabiting a night with shaky normal taboo hatred and fear

and a steep diagonal body

Peculiar and beautiful language correspond to my ordinary

tension

The major planets are shifting (shivering?) but out of my

natural habit,

Self-kindness,

I play them

something Nashville something quality

and there is the too easy knell of the games chapel

The tempting scornful opposite

Cathedral virus and goof immunization:

The curves of the Spirit are not very interested in

the conquest of matter.

Color is the idiot’s delight. I’m the curves, what’s

the matter? or

I’m the matter, the curves nag:

Call it Amber, it doesn’t ride nor take to rider

Amber it doesn’t make me want to pray, it makes me see color

as we fail to break through our clasped hands.

Carrying a Torch

What thoughts I have of where I’ll be, & when, & doing what

Belong to a ghost world, by no means my first,

And may or may not be entertaining; for example

living in a state of innocence in Kansas.

They hardly compare to when, passing through the air,

it thinks about the air.

Just as, now, you are standing here

Expecting me to remember something

When years of trying the opposite of something

Leave that vision unfulfilled.

Mostly I have to go on checking the windows will but don’t break

while you get on with taking your own sweet time.

It’s like coming awake thirsty & hungry, mid-way in dreams

you have to have;

It stops or changes if you don’t get up

& it changes, by stopping, if you do.

You do. Because you’re carrying a torch. A sudden circular bath

of symbols

Assails the structure. Better turn on the overhead light.

A Note from Yang-Kuan

You stay in the Mental Institute of your life.

God sees dog—in the mirror. In this city

Below the river, my private life is of no interest,

Though allowed. For example, it would be nicer to kiss

than to shoot up.

Visual indifference is a growth. Used. Was used. Useful.

A new way of appreciating has arrived?

Should be a ride at Disneyland. People

Have basically split. And the heart flutters.

Stunned, the metrics & melody of

The multiplication tables, I am a father, watching,

Tho poor, her broad thoughts, this local lifetime.

Here I shall be with it but never of it.

Being nothing in front of no-one again.

Work Postures

The rain comes and falls.

A host of assorted artillery come up out of the lake.

The man who knows everything is a fool.

In front of him is his head. Behind him, men.

Few listeners get close. And

“Love must turn to power or it die.”

This is a terrible present.

“Is this any way to run a Railroad?”

Flashing back 7 years I hear, “you will never go

any place for the second time again.”

It’s hard to fight, when your body is not with you.

& it’s equally hard not to.

There is the dread that mind & body are One.

The cruelty of fear & misery works here.

Excursion & Visitation

The rains come & Fall.

Good grief, it’s Le Jongleur de Dieu!

A gun wheels out of an overcoat.

It’s I will fight. But I won’t rule.

So, pay, and leave. So, when the light turned green,

She went. “I’ve gone

to get everything.”                          A Voice—

“to reappear in careers?”                                      Un-uh.

These are the days of naming things?

Watch my feet, not my answers.

Oh, good grief, it’s Le Jongleur de Dieu!

He’s the godson of the ghost-dancers!

On Earth we call The Sea of Tranquility “The North Atlantic.”

And a voice once locked in the ground now speaks in me.

Everybody Seemed So Laid Back in the Park

Marie in her pin-striped suit singing

“Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” in German

Not alfalfa covers the ground of Lilac Park.

“C’mere for a second!” shouts the invisible

Old lady. She crosses the park in a hat of nylon.

Marie falls down, still singing.

I see a woman with a baby running.

Two Africans in turbans wiggle their hips.

Marie cries & yawns for her audience.

Marie lights an envelope with matches.

Frisbees fly in the hot sun.

“Try it again.”

A very pale orange is sitting under the baby birds.

The community lightens, five o’clock, lifting my heart

to a place.

A Meeting at the Bridge

He was one of the last of the Western Bandits.

“A fellow like you gets into scrapes.

“Gets life. Spends most of it in jail.

“You gotta make a stand somewhere.”

I guess. “You smell of disinfectant.”

I guess. “Your kind

Drift from nowhere to nowhere, until

They get close. No telling

What they do then.” Yeah, I guess that’s just about right.

“Do you fish?” No, I just go down and look at the water.

“Pretty, ain’t it?” Is it? No, it ain’t.

It ain’t pretty. It’s

A carnival. A pig-sty. A regular

Loop-de-loop . . . (spits) I need some shoes.

“I Remember”

I remember painting “I HATE TED BERRIGAN” in big black letters

all over my white wall.

I remember bright orange light coming into rooms in the late

afternoon. Horizontally.

I remember when I lived in Boston reading all of Dostoyevsky’s

novels one right after the other.

I remember the way a baby’s hand has of folding itself around

your finger, as tho forever.

I remember a giant gold man, taller than most buildings, at

“The Tulsa Oil Show.”

I remember in Boston a portrait of Isabella Gardner by Whistler.

I remember wood carvings of funny doctors.

I remember opening jars that nobody else could open.

I remember wondering why anyone would want to be a doctor. And

I still do.

I remember Christmas card wastebaskets.

I remember not understanding why Cinderella didn’t just pack up and leave,

if things were all that bad. I remember “Korea.”

I remember one brick wall and three white walls.

I remember one very hot summer day I put ice cubes in my aquarium

and all the fish died.

I remember how heavy the cornbread was. And it still is.

To Himself

Now you can rest forever

Tired heart. The final deceit is gone,

Even though I thought it eternal. It’s gone.

I know all about the sweet deception,

But not only the hope, even the desire is gone.

Be still forever. You’ve done enough

Beating. Your movements are really

Worth nothing nor is the world

Worth a sigh. Life is bitterness

And boredom; and that’s all. The world’s a mudhole.

It’s about time you shut up. Give it all up

For the last time. To our kind fate gives

Only that we die. It’s time you showed your contempt for

Nature and that cruel force which from hiding

Dictates our universal hurt

In the ceaseless vanity of every act.

—LEOPARDI

(TRANS. BY TED BERRIGAN, GORDON

BROTHERSTON, & GEORGE SCHNEEMAN)

Whitman in Black

For my sins I live in the city of New York

Whitman’s city lived in in Melville’s senses, urban inferno

Where love can stay for only a minute

Then has to go, to get some work done

Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one

& tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run

Big Town will wear you down

But it’s only here you can turn around 360 degrees

And everything is clear from here at the center

To every point along the circle of horizon

Here you can see for miles & miles & miles

Be born again daily, die nightly for a change of style

Hear clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate compassion

Whitman’s walk unchanged after its fashion

Heloise

When I search the past for you

Without knowing why

You are the waiting fragments of this sky

Which encases me, and

What about the light that comes in then?

And the heavy spins and the neon buzzing of night-time?

I go on loving you like water, but,

Bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins

In wind without flesh, without bone, and inside

The drowsy melody of languish, silence:

And inside the silence, one ordained to praise

In ordinary places. And inside my head, my brain.

You have made the world so it shall grow, so,

The revolutions not done, I’ve tucked the earth

between my legs, to sing.

Southwest

We think by feeling and so we ride together

The child who has fallen in love with maps & charts,

The last, the sole surviving Texas Ranger, cajoling

Scheming, scolding, the cleverest of them all. What is there to know?

Questions. The very rich garments of the poor.

The very rack & crucifix of weather, winter’s wild silence

In red weather. A too resilient mind. The snake

Waiting under each back. Not to forget to mention the chief thing:

Underneath a new old sign, a far too resilient mind;

And the heavy not which you were bringing back alone,

Cycling across an Africa of green & white, but to be a part

Of the treetops & the blueness, with a bark that will not bite.

The fields breathe sweet, as one of you sleeps while the other is fuming

with rage.

Is he too ill for pills? Am I gonna ride that little black train

one year from tonight?

From the House Journal

1.

I belong here, I was born

To breathe in dust

I came to you

I cannot remember anything of then

up there among the lettuce plots

I cough a lot, so I stay awake

I cannot possibly think of you

I get a cinder in my eye because

I hate the revolutionary vision of

“I have a terrible age,” & I part

I have no kindness left

I do have the lame dog with me & the cloud

I kiss your cup, but I know so much.

I must have leisure for leisure bears

I to you and you to me the endless oceans of

2.

Now it next to my flesh, & I don’t mean dust

I am sober and industrious

I see you standing in clear light

I see a life of civil happiness

I see now tigers by the sea,

the withering weathers of

I stagger out of bed

I stumble over furniture I fall into a gloomy hammock

I’m having a real day of it

I’m not sure there’s a cure

You are so serious, as if you are someone

Yet a tragic instance may be immanent

Yes it’s sickening that yes it’s true, and

Yes it’s disgusting that yes if it’s necessary, I’ll do it.

Visits from a Small Enigma

The bunnies plug-in & elaborate

Spongy thought-streams some days

Attempting in innocence to cash in on

Fire feedback on the flaming bridge

The trailing scads of diaphanous ribbons

Whatever & all like that. Their missiles crack

Of their own sound at the Barrier Gate, as

Punk-log fog shreds the aether, and mountains

Of any consequence simply sit, comic & invisible,

On their faces. Then, golden discs sweep up

Appearing to be signals, signalling

A possible common version of whiteness; sweep up

Out of an iodine-colored Chinese Puzzle box.

White-gold light. Slightly kinky sweepings.

Revery

Up inside the walls of air listen

A sound of footsteps in the spaces out there

In the frightening purple weather

And hazy lights whose color night decomposes.

Late at night, rise up carcass and walk;

Head hanging, let somebody tell the story.

Maybe the machine under the palms will start up

For one who waits

Under the arch of clouds, with familiar face,

Heart beating all out of proportion,

Eyes barely open, ears long since awake to what’s coming:

It is very possibly Autumn, returning,

Leaving no footprints, leaving danger behind.

The head being out of line has fallen. I still want

everything that’s mine.

My Tibetan Rose

A new old song continues. He worked into the plane

A slight instability, to lessen his chances

Of succumbing to drowsiness, over the green sea.

Above his head clanged. And there were no dreams in this

lack of sleep.

Your lover will be guilty of murder & you will turn her in.

Sometimes I’d like to take off these oak leaves and feel

like an ordinary man.

You get older the more you remember. And one lives, alone,

for pure courtship, as

To move is to love, & the scrutiny of things is merely syllogistic.

Postmortems on old corpses are no fun.

I have so much to do I’m going to bed.

I’ll live on the side of a mountain, at 14,000 feet,

In a tough black yak-hide tent, turn blue, force down

Hot arak & yak butter, & wait for this coma to subside.

Come along with me, my Tibetan Rose!

Nothing for You

TO DICK GALLUP

People of the Future

People of the future

while you are reading these poems, remember

you didn’t write them,

I did.

Valentine

I have been here too many times before

you & now it’s time to go

crazy again will that make you like me? I think so

often about you & all those bon aperitifs we had

wanted to have but didn’t in Paris where we

never got to did we No we didn’t although now

Here I am & everyone loves me so

where are you? & why don’t they go

away? I didn’t ask for this I asked for you

love but you said No, you didn’t say

May I? true & crazy here I am

again unkempt in my passion at that May I?

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”?

He

He wandered and kept on wandering. Bar-Mitzvah

and Confirmation availed themselves of his myriad

aimless impulses. It was no use. Days were of

cheeseburgers, shoe repair, and scary. In cities

and through frenzy darkness was far away. Darkness,

you are so dark, he thought. Where oh where is a

telephone booth, and the friendliness of newsprint

on Saturday afternoons at the Stadium? He wept. Steamy

ferns made a dank obbligato to his dreams. It grew and grew.

At last he was surrounded by gaily-colored birds,

who sang to him in the key of G or E. It was

then he smiled, for always, affirmation made him happy.

Later he died of Hatred.

For Annie Rooney

My rooms were full of Ostrich feathers when

I returned from Spring, and someone had stolen

all the apricot brie! just as if they’d known

I was in training! for shame! that anyone

could be so cruel, and me with only 27 teeth!

How fortunate they never found dear

you. For surely then they would have planted

crickets, to lick the cherry glue off of all

my Princess Grace Special Delivery airmail stamps. The boors,

they’d stop at nothing. But this time their

saboteurs slipped up. I’ll never let them find you,

no matter what they do, you, my secret weapon, who

assures my victories! I’m so glad we were married

in Hooversville, Ohio, in 1933!

Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza

Why have you billowed under my ancient piazza

Father? “I swan, if you don’t beat everything

Anybody ever heard tell of !” Refreshment time!

Have a nonpareil? Thank you! Here we are again

In the movies and I’m holding your thigh, Mmmmmmmmmm

Feels like “a belly” to me. “Well, I declare, Feety-

Belle, ain’t you ever gonna get y’rself a real . . . Shut your face

Angerbelle, you ain’t doin’ s’hot y’rself y’know,

my stars!” (At intermission I called her at the hotel

And she made a big thing about somebody telling her

“I’m Judy Garland’s daughter.”) When you’re 7 or 8 or 9

You don’t really care who your momma and poppa are,

Just so they really love you and have TV and all that.

Up in the blue window a white woman is reeling out her laundry.

Prayer

Rilke,

I strain to gather my absurdities

Into a symbol. I falter. These

Roisterers here assembled shatter my zest

With festivity.

Once again I turn to you, to your

Buch das Bildung. Oh Tall Tree

In the self

Flower we three into one.

May he who is you

Become me.

Hearts

At last I’m a real poet I’ve written a

ballade a sonnet a poem in spontaneous

prose and even a personal poem     I can use

punctuation or not and it doesn’t

matter      I’m obscure when I feel like it

especially in my dream poems which I never even

call     Dream Poem      but from sheer cussedness title

Match Game Etc. (for Dick Gallup) or something like that.

For example, take this poem, I don’t know how

to end it, It needs six lines to make it a sonnet, I

could just forget it and play hearts with Joe and

Pat and Dick, but lately I’m always lethargic,

and I don’t even like hearts, or Pat, or Joe, or

Dick or / and especially myself, & this is no help.

Night Letter

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

Outside my room atonal sounds of rain

Drum in the pre-dawn. In my skull my brain

Aches in rhythm to that pounding morning rain.

In your letter, many questions. I read

Them over and over. And now I dread

Answering. “Deteriorating,” you said.

Not a question, really, but you did

Say it. And made it hard to write. You know

Margie, tonight, and every night, in any

Season, cold images glitter brightly

In my head. Dreams of Larry Walker

In his marriage bed: of David Bearden

Paranoid: and of Martin Cochran, dead.

Jubilee

In the ear, winds dance

to drink in the house

Summer came over here today

Everyone overloads one song

Is he the handsome stranger?

I’m thinking of summoning people

I need a hoodlum in white

“kill him”

This face against its own

Endows

giggling

And forms a road upon a tract

I got so tall up there

He t-told me “you’re too fallow in your footsteps”

Goodbye to burning

Brain

Heat

These feet drifting on an unangry tide

Please turn stark naked.

Some Do Not

You can make this swooped transition on your lips

Go to the sea, the lake, the tree

And the dog days come

Your head spins when the old bull rushes

Back in the aery daylight, he was not a midget

He could feel the talk sidling up into his ears and burning

His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely

Why do you begin to yawn so soon, who seemed

So hard, feather-bitten . . . back in the aery daylight

Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces of glass

Spins when the old bull rushes. The words say I LOVE YOU:

Go to the sea, the lake, the tree,

Glistering, bristling, cozzening whatever disguises

On the Level   Everyday

I am trying very hard to be

Here

Where you are

Enthusiasm greets poets

Where this great vision of

Blue-back Winged Space Rainbow GRAHR!

Our carelessness

(Hi Ma!) When the phone rings I

Looks toward Namoncos

(no one calls!) why is it my life

Counts on love

?      flames in the portable head

When feeling

Myself         with pepsi         pouring

Out of depth and breadth and

Back into your arms pill

height

end to

end, a baked

Being, & ideal grace

You mean?         Yes

Quiet need

Is it my turn already? Hi

Sun & candle light.

It’s 5:15 a.m.

I check my engine         test

A closer walk with thee

My saddle-strap

It’s a little stiff.

My Palomino!

That’s the ticket!            Tickets,

A love I seemed to lose

GRAHR!         Who’s

With my lost saints—

?      forgot something there (mike)

At every hand, my critic

Unplugging the mike

With carelessness I sign the

Crank           does that

register

Dwight?

The last the sole surviving

Enthusiasm greets Poets          One

Texas Ranger,

There’s only one riot isn’t there?

You

Known as “Saddik”             ?

Better believe it.

Autumn’s Day

AFTER RILKE

Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.

Now cast your shadow upon sundials.

Let winds remind meadows it is late.

Mellow now the last fruits on the vine.

Allow them only two more southern days.

Hasten them to fulness, and press

The last heavy sweetness through the wine.

Who has no home can not build now.

Who dwells alone must now remain alone;

Will waken, read, write long letters, and

Will wander restlessly when leaves are blowing.

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

Problems, Problems

Joy! you come winging in a hot wind on the breath

of happy sexy music, you are peeping

into my redbloodedness, and I am writing silly lines

like, “I was born, reared, and educated in Tulsa,

Oklahoma,” only true of Ron Padgett and not Dan’l Boone or me

Uh-huh a sip of gritty coffee, ripping me out of

my mind, making me feel “funny” is carrying me uptown

past interesting bodegas, the interesting

bums eyeing me, my beard throws them off

tho I’m yearning for a little romance

Dontcha think it’s time? thanks & your name is

walking right by my side it hurts me to see you talking

to any other guy! where is Harry Fainlight, he’s on a trip

Now that’s integrity! Where’s Andy Warhol? Far out, but Harry

doesn’t think so he prefers Vaughan Traherne Wordsworth even

Who can help but love him? it’s so American of him! Lines,

you must be saying what I mean I hope I like you later. Our

Love must be sweet destiny, no other love could thrill me so

completely (unless it be going to the movies, and alone, crossing

the Mississippi for the first time, so rare

a feat for feet “born, reared and educated in Tulsa, Oklahoma”

turned blue with cold and being careful not to touch one another.)

Truth as History

1.

My rooms were full of awful features when

I was burning, dear, and you were eating goblets

of ruinous dinner! It didn’t matter, tho. The

foolish wind kept blowing, and my bones were humming!

That was when my eyes walked out

on to bleak piers and shrieked for you! You were standing, often,

stark-naked just as if you knew it wasn’t raining

and no-one had stolen all the dazzling looks. But this

one time the saboteurs sneaked up! Hah! I didn’t

let them grind you, my little Coolie-Baby, who insures

my factory. No, and it’s not bad to lay buried, in Hooversville,

by wires, laid on us by gentlemen, & ladies flushed

with gin. Except at night, when you are lying in the wind.

2.

I beat on the fruits of the gushy showers

burning up ginger-ale, only a pantomime mother &

father, doting on feelable widows, as my rent & these

urgent denials in my plug-ugly vision hold out! I

would take some corn to Minton’s & throw it on Dizzy

Gillespie, & I mumble at babies on the bus, although

I too am reading the nickel journals, while my axles

are losing patience. Castles! my dearest, the whole town

is hiding out in six cheap hotels, sorrowful you gaping at me

as I continue to concoct ewe dreams! I would like very much

to be in your hair, in hottest blood, my Saxon Thing was nursed

on Western fiction with Doc Holliday my Christopher

Columbus to help me. But it’s no use, you love Oliver Hardy, he’s

the last of the old-time newsboys. I have a soggy bed.

Francis à Bientôt

The storms of Baudelaire fall on Judas’ head

He send out rays of light with that river

We saw it in his hair

No use to call me again it isn’t right

You string a sonnet around your fat gut

And falling on your knees you invent the shoe

For a horse               Don’t cheat

The victory is not always to the sweet

That night arrives again in red

André Breton is a shit! (He sneezed on the rum

Turning it into a pun)     One must live

Even in Colorado (Take that, you horse!)

Now we are all dead

Charles, Ju, you, & Harry James

There is no time(s) past (lost?)      We

Are in The Twentieth Century (The Christian Era), and

The charms (bait) leave

Under the heels of Children.

This man was my friend.

The TV Story

1.

It is after 7 in the evening and raining cold in bed. Next day

12 noon Dick comes by we go to the Museum—with Sandy—

lovely on my naked back through the open window. She has

finished Nadja, make entry in my journal, work on my new

poem, go to baby-sitting. Carol came, looking for Dick—kicks

them out. Now I am—I carve a pumpkin. I read Nadja. 4 a.m.

—lying naked on the bed. We start talking about Marcel

Duchamp. All try to figure out how pay the rent . . . 12

o’clock . . . ourselves . . . we begin touching one another in

the dark, & she is reading Prolegomena to Greek Religion.

She says she is—she takes off my clothes & we laugh. Dick & I

discuss Wallace Fowlie, he gives me a copy of Nadja, not to

keep—she says if it’s ever over between us in your mind

please tell me. Talk about Dada, we do, drink whiskey. He

makes coffee. We let him in, he knocks again—at the door—

we show him a copy of Nadja—he dissipates—she interprets

it for him in some new way, I translate it for him, he is

sleeping, Dick comes over, we discuss Nadja extensively, next

day 12 noon we are all to go To the Museum. (TV Show).

2.

I was charging others to love me, instead

of doing so myself.

3.

The day I see my name in the papers, something

snaps, I’m finished; I sadly enjoy my fame, but

I stop writing.

4.

Now fifty years and nostalgic, I pushed open the door of a

cafe and asked for a small beer. At the next table some beautiful

young women were talking animatedly and my name is

mentioned. “Ah,” said one of them, “he may be old, he may

be homely, but what difference does that make? I’d give

thirty years of my life to become his wife.” I looked at her

with a proud, sad smile, she smiled back in surprise, I got

up, I disappeared.

El Greco

A drop of boo                 the wounded ham

might be

Saint Francis’s knee

in the sombrero                             of a tree.

Mouth deep

rope                           Owl hoot in spectral radiance

& fix skull

He prays.

his vision

broke                     his brain (lie          a hen visage

a plant among browns and grays.

Crimson pot

pierces finger                  gasp

Drip                fresh drips                    bright                    ow        fring,

Fellow, fring

a miniscule      wrist            limp

on a hollow headless

bone

Cento:    A Note on Philosophy

FOR PAT MITCHELL

When I search the past for you

We who are the waiting fragments of his sky

“I who am about to die”

Then was the drowsy melody of languish

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden

A too resilient mind

Cajoling, scheming, scolding, the cleverest of them all

And so we ride together into the peach state!

(Remain secure from pain preserve thy hate thy heart)

Those are the very rich garments of the poor

The rack and the crucifix of winter, winter’s wild

Which encases me. What about the light that comes in then?

Silence; and in between these silences

The spins and the flowing of night-time.

Praising, that’s it! One ordained to praise

The wind without flesh, without bone

The morning-glory, climbing the morning long

In ordinary places.

Not to mention the chief thing

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

Bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins

Though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings

Melodic sighs of Arabic adventure

Darting into a tender fracas leeward and lee

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet

And you have made the world (and it shall grow)

The last the sole surviving Texas Ranger

The heavy not which you were bringing back alone

Abandoned, almost Dionysian

Why should I climb the look-out?

The child who has fallen in love with maps and charts

Drums in the pre-dawn. In my head my brain

But to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible

In red weather.

Questions, oh, I hope they do not find you

I go on loving you like water, but

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Into a symbol. I hate that. I falter. These

Let the snake wait under

My back, for which act

I would not credit comment upon gracefully

How how the brig brig water the damasked roses

But helpless, as blue roses are helpless

The revolution is done. What has a bark, but cannot bite?

I’ve tucked the rushing earth under my legs

By those, to sing of cleanly wantonesse

To walk, and pass long love’s day.

“It is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter

On along the street. Somewhere a trolley, taking leave

Just to be leaving; hearts light as balloons

mirrored in little silver spoons.”

True voyagers alone are those who leave

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

They never shrink from their fatality

Upon those under lands, the vast

And, without knowing why, say, “Let’s get going! Goodbye.”

& so, sauntered out that door, which was closed.

New Junket

FOR HARRY FAINLIGHT

Everywhere we went we paid the price, endurement

Of indifference, signs of regeneration: in every

Victim awaits the guest of honor, hawk-like, with

Respect to the unlocking of the dream; this hot breath

That you perfectly feel lingering. It makes you think.

You think of a faience pot, a giant eucalyptus overhung

Against the balustrade, facing assurance in the wind.

You suspect we enjoy these poses. This biggest indifference.

You were succumbing to kisses (the real purpose

Another purpose of the trip) but the trip had been

Moved up. I cared. And so we left.

Wonder changes grooves to form a Winter

Rising with Winter roses near the house. The water

Following the signal, which is following me,

Is lifting me up on the on the wings of the great machine.

Dick Gallup (Birthday)

(FOR THE GALLUPS)

interrupts yr privacy

25 years later

you wait between the dodge and the bush

a basket

between you and your arm:     under it

INSIGHT (Vol. 1, Nr. 3)

(the condemned man is shielding a

woman, about 25, five feet

eleven inches high, hair dark, curly,

dark eyes; and though not gallant, is pure . . .

the street disappearing

into bush level

two heads above the basket

(“seeking a personal

world, where one’s own

behavior has a code . . .

is no guarantee

of justice, folks.

SUNLIGHT IN

JUNGLE-LAND

•   •   •

that girl wreathed in blue

and that one, in yellow

corporeal

“her hair a wondrous gold”

MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS

(under the sheets)

the community

in their vicinity, is murder.

It keeps us awake.

FOLK LEGENDS do not await Verdicts.

We get on, with provisions.

It (The Dodge) continues.

Conceived in Hate

. . . Your America & mine

are lands to be discovered

and nothing

stirs us to discover

so much as the real

drama of today’s newsmaking people

Blonde on Blonde

It’s enough to make a girl

go out & buy a bottle

of peroxide; and many did.

But not her. She loved

Mencken, her pretty sister

whose shame & sin outshone

her dark, golden curls.

Flower Portrait

FOR SOTERE TORREGIAN & FAMILY

It’s morning

meaning

it

has arrived:

MERRY XMAS

the center of

my gray window facing life. That’s

a Christmas card, from John Perreault. That’s

Gary Snyder: A RANGE OF POEMS. That’s

THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF & that is

MOTHER

6.

IT’S ALL IN THE STARS

(that’s a book)

CLEAR THE RANGE!

(That’s a book, by me.)

Nevertheless

she

is not here,

tho it’s all right here

and so are we.

Birds sing in this

my world, I love you

if “you” is bacon,

toast & two eggs, over

light: we’ll share a small coke & read a big boke

before we die.

What am I talking about? It

’s a new day! I’ve got

to run. Mi casa, su casa,

THE AGE OF GOLD is before me.

Selflessness

TO PETER SCHJELDAHL

This picture indicates development

You drink some coffee, you get some sleep

Everything is up in the air

especially us

who are me

Linda greets our force

forcefully

so much for that

(sing)

“I’m sittin’ here thinkin’

just how sharp I am. . . .”

I ask you, can these words have issued

from M’sieur M. “The Rock” Proust,

BPOE, RSVP, ICUP?

No.

You inhabit a baby, I mean

a table . . .

the logic of that

is lost

is mixed with public opinion

and

as we get closer & closer, to it

something snaps

Music gets into this picture

of

“A Life.”

& Now it’s rolling . . .

& Now we are one

& it’s bed-time

competitive spirits

dare we continue? we dare continue

seeking parties

full of places

we have not been at

nor ever will be at

without each other.

The Avant-Garde Literary Award

Someone          something

HELP!

false start

“falling in love with religious experience”

Now you’re talking!

“giving tongue

to the public consciousness”

(that’s a thought)

A dope-fiend is sitting

on his dead ass,

surrounded by roaches.

“You have just won The Avant-Garde Literary Award.”

From The Art of the Sonnet

1.

It is a very great thing

To call across the room

To a girl,

“Hey, I love you.”

You shout very loudly.

A lot of weird freaky people

Look at you very strangely plus assorted boring square types—

The girl does not hear you.

She is puce, and yellow. You are completely ass

Because the girl you are yelling to is Whistler’s Mother.

PS: You are also somewhat color-blind.

Or could it be that you are The Joker, my plum-blossomed Visionary

Friend? Those tiny broken veins on the tip of your nose are

Tres interesting. They resemble the map of Crete.

2.

Some of Denis Roche’s books are missing here.

Let’s go out. We can go to the park.

Dead Fingers Talk. They say, “I got some books here

That we can steal things out of.

They’re all by good writers.” Silence.

Orange Juice. Five dog barks then another.

Then too many to count shut up you dumb mutt.

In Korea they give puppies to GI’s who fatten them up

Then they steal them back to make soup. Ack.

I think we oughtta write a great poem outta these books.

That dog is still barking. My stomach is growling: Ravi Shankar

I got all great books here to write poems from.

Maybe we could write a sonnet. Great burst of applause:

Ladies & Gentlemen, it’s all about to happen, & now it’s done.

3.

I’ve been loving you a little too long.

I can’t stop now. Why should I stop now?

You don’t know, do you? I think it is very nice

Of you. Incidentally, I went to the fortune teller

She looked into the crystal ball. She saw

Two New York Yankees & they were very small.

I left there in a hurry. I needed one pall mall.

I got one from a midget. It was long as he was tall.

In case you haven’t figured it out, Lady of Mondrian, the lake

I made up most of the above. You see, I did it

Because I’m a nut. Yet, isn’t it all right to be sort of nutty, a flak

When you are in love? Why not

Call me up sometime?

212-677-7779.

Then I’d Cry

Now twist knife all strength owing O now twist knife

And he came down tubes chosen by the waiter

Black fright

Headed down from his homely Thuggee feelings

To the babbling waiter

Whose foreign compulsion wounded his taint

In the dawn of Thuggee feelings

Then

I tamed him

A prince sups on his head for thought

Dark grace savors him

Or tortures me

He said come forth old time wit and get me too

Air Conditioning

It’s very interesting

Weighing 500 lbs

You might even say, “It’s great!”

“Let’s drink to that!”

I did        Dixie Cup Fanta Orange

IOWA           BACK DEATH                 & now a humming

Opening it up inside

Making a fire-engine red

Desk chair bright green

A white night & amazing you!

You don’t believe it.

Monolith

The right wall is BRICKS.

The left wall is FAR OUT

The front wall is PICTURES.

I CAN’T SEE the back wall.

The CEILING is High.

The Floor is QUICK.

The AIR is THIN.

The LIGHT is BRIGHT WHITE.

The CURRENT is ELECTRIC.

The POWER is ON.

The Subject is BENT.

He is POISED.

He is Listening.

This is IT.

it is HERE.

He has been WATCHING.

He has Had To Think.

It is Done. It is

COMPETENT. It is NOT

SATISFACTORY, but

It Damn Well Will Do.

Autumn

Autumn is fun

for these kids

who love me

But comes a Voyeur

W/his champagne

to this tub

It shrinks

disappears.

The pills aren’t working.

London

Messy red heart

put on black shirt

tight brown cords & slush-proof boots

stand up & look at it

Senior Service, pretty expensive

Not for me, tho, I’m an American

“There are no second acts in American life.”

cf. F. Scott Fitzgerald

& money is just a way for people to talk, anyway

For example Jim Dine talking, to me

That’s one I just finished. It’s a list

of names of everyone in my life

the past ten years. What a great idea,

I think. It’s so simple. You just get an idea

& then you do it. Anxiety thickens the plot.

London Air

TO BOB CREELEY

1.

My heart Your heart

That’s the American Way

& so,

FUCK OR WAIK!

It’s the American Way

Messy Red Heart               (American)

Put on

black shirt, tight

brown cords & bright

blue socks

Under slush-proof boots!

Is that cow-hide?

I don’t know Yes it is that

It is That.

Take a good look, that is I

mean

have a good look

LIGHT UP (a Senior Service)

&

turning around

The turning point is turning around.

Now, that may seem wasteful         to you

but not to me                being American

That’s the American bent

(sprinting with a limp)

It beginning having reached part 3.

Part 3.

Into the Second Act in American Life:

cf. F. Scott Fitzgerald

“There are no

I go in &                                                  Second Acts in

sit down                                                                   American Life.”

at this desk

and write

dog            sees       GOD

in the mirror

c/o    Jim Dine

60 Chester Square

London SW One

It’s 5 units sunlight, 5 units

Cincinnati

One plus Zero

equals One

That’s it you

Now you’re talking!

& so, let me read to you this list

of the ten greatest books of all time:

Here they are

THE TEN GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME

1. Now in June                     by         Lao-Tree

2. Sore Foot                    by        Larry Fagin

3. Sleep & Dreams       by            Gay Luce & Julius Segal

4. Rape                          by           Marcus van Heller

5. Out of The Dead City      by          Chip Delaney

6. Moth                          by        James M. Cain

7. Letters for Origin (Proofs)        by          Charles Olson

8. Classics Revisited              by           Kenneth Rexroth

9. Pleasures of a Chinese Courtesan         by         Jonathan Payne

10. Letters to Georgian Friends           by           Boris Pasternak

10. Horse Under Water                    by         Len Deighton

10. Camp Concentration                  by         Tom Disch

&

breathing easier now

10.      The Quotations of Chairman Mao.

In Bed with Joan & Alex

In the morning

Very bright the

not yellow

light

tough creamy air

it softens lightly

when you give

THE LOOK OF LOVE

having a good look

knowing / green

interesting manners

with

blackjack nuances.

Can you dig it (doing that) in the Michigan morning?

light

taking your glasses off

(clothes already off)

yellow pants

I should say gold

but gold isn’t really yellow

is it?

so I don’t

Joan Fagin’s brown shirt’s resting now

on the chair

brown

transparent, blue

buttons . . .

Some pop off

so do we all        some time.

Joan, with you,

“I do.”

&

Loving you

doesn’t really have to “do”

anything

but I do.

& doing ( . . . “anything” . . . ) turns you on, too.

doing a few

swirls

&

spinning

moving easily

& so firm

A just plain terrific face

two eyes        opening wide

with delight

that’s “doing it all” for me.

It’s a little scary                                     it, & you, too

white & not so

blue

now a slow pink flush

across the white rhythm

& the blue . . .

Coming together

or maybe not coming at all

or coming

at leisure

“Digging one’s own natural

savagery”

as the man says

is all there is

to do.

To eat ourselves

alive

& dig it.

& having looked into “that”,                having had “it”

still having it

Now,

to look at it,

looking at it whenever

The right light appears

which is practically

anytime                     & especially,

“In the morning.”

2.

Looking at a cottage in the country,

Maine,

My main man’s desire shines through

“that’s tough!” you might say

but it’s civilized.

It’s terse, but fluid.   (It’s

a hard-nosed kike rap).

Round & round & round we go

There are trees, around

& green grass around

to stretch out

lay around

on.

Above blue sky

as clean as paint is

clear (thick & creamy

light.)

Now, that’s what I call Radiance.

All of it,

& you, really here

plus, friendly

shadows

talk

“do anything you want to.”

& so we did, all of it.

See that?

I’d like you to look at

& see it.

It’s beautiful!                      moving beautifully

in the morning

&

you can turn it on                                     you’re here

anytime                                            & it’s here

CODA:                       (to Alex Katz)

Being civilized about such things

is a great pleasure!

Wasn’t it, Alex?

It’s just like Real Life

(after the movies.)

You put it together

with your knife

punching it

into the sun

shining

Out of sight!

3.

Now, resting on the President’s chair, the center

head inside its hair, on the grass, the white

house right over there

a Chesterfield King

& there’s a light!

Clean White Smoke Wind Clear Air

me up here & you,

you up across & over there.

Between us, The United States

of Air

& Joan

still flying,

on this plane:

It’s taking Joan everywhere

she feels like going

& so she does

& so do we all

& so we do,

thanks to you,

light            radiance               air

Alex, Joan, my friends,

you were there.

Ode to Medicine

AFTER LEWIS WARSH

Going up, slowly, I, slowly

Flashing insane (exciting) changes across each lady eye

Begin to soar. First the quiet

(trees) as Lewis and I lope none-too-gently by

Rush of light hitting walk, my

Tonight. The Pep Rally inflames the green sky

Feet crushing light, my walk lighting up

Forget them. They (I) shall return. It’s cool

October’s thickness (night). It needs girls

As well as well. I love these girls, & so

To cut through the dense talk growing light

I’m arriving soon. I am, & they laugh wisely

Along the diagonal: our sleep is but a birth

& a remembering, so forget all that came before.

There are girls laughing because they thought

Talk to him, he’s high in New York somewhere

Sometimes, when I think about where I am

Medicine gets me high. I

Do a few spins & laugh it off. Cough

Sweet Vocations

After the first death there is plenty

Of Other but it’s true

There is no other, too. One staggers

Weakly between the two. What fun is that?

It’s no fun, that’s what. After the first

Sniff, you notice the typewriter’s been sharpened; you

Did it, so;

a, s, d, f, space . . . semi, l, k, j, space

Is it up & happy, this trip, like Merriweather Lewis

Whose California rides above the blue? or

Is it a down trip (John Keats)? I do love you:

“Down for you is up” when your head gets turned around

You look out the mirror at the self, & you preen,

You giggle because that it’s so unlike you.

Here I Live

So                                  sleeping & waking

every day

up

I live here                        I,

the great

mumbling

one

two             three              four

Laid out,                         voices                     living & dead

hovering

between

heart                 &

comfort.

up

now

taking chances

with silence. More & more

waiting

for day    . . .    light

over the house.

He is counting:             one              two

three              four

When we rise

the jungle

Moves What that means

grenades         come closer               white

lightning

clears the range

in the morning

paper              hangs on                     nothing

Nerve

That makes some human cry

float

like sunlight

But every night I sleep

going

to dawn like light.

Here I live                                   my heart

my family

assemble.

Three counts.

Sun

clear

Time

my war

God

did it start.

One              Two                   Three               Four.

One

Two

Three

&

Sleep.

To Anne

I love you much

as one can

love anybody

baby,

but

riding high a man is

tough as it comes,

It’s not brutal.

It’s a song.

For Love.

Of You.

Going to Chicago

FOR DON HALL

Leaving first

On my way,

“Ave Atque Valium”

20 mgs.

& coffee

Thanks to the Air Hostess

dark eyes                               dark hair

red lips

full

Red Nose in the air

A passing thought to John Sinclair

à la bas

Right On, John

We see you down there

from here

up in the air

it’s the same air

as one breathes in

&

one breathes out . . .

“Down to you is Up”

. . . in between

here             and              there

&

here.

2.

The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh

Lunch Poems / In Memory Of My Feelings

Meditations in An Emergency

Advertisements For Myself

The Sweet Science

The Press

An American Dream

Mollie &

Other War Stories

Joe Liebling, Frank & Norman

ride with us

here.

3.

Change is in my pocket:

A John Kennedy American

half-dollar:

heads:  Philip Whalen

tails:    John Ashbery

(that’s an old-master story)

flip it

it’s in the air

The game is underway:

“Winning is my philosophy”

“Preparedness is the

only means toward Victory”

“Not Somehow

but

Triumphantly”

(that’s the motto of The Salvation Army)

“There’s a new day coming”

& if it’s a nice day, we win

& if it’s a stormy day,

can you dig it?

flying, under the weather

dig it

Fly Over

Fly Straight through

Fly big Baby, Fly!!

To The 2nd City.

Bye-bye.

How We Live in the Jungle

I am asleep

next to The Hulk

warm behind,

inside,

all around me

Oranges,

soft purples,

greens, blue

Underneath & above

wooden planks

furniture,

Sky,

big sky,

all around the tree.

It’s a house-tree.

You feel at home here

in the nut-bush.

First asleep

next going into heat

a stinging shower

& then,

cooled, with a buzz on.

The Hulk is breathing easily now

as her graceful form

moves purposefully into everyday life.

The Hulk

often sleeps

while I’m awake

& vice-versa

& vice-versa.

No matter.

We live together in the jungle.

April in the Morning, with Anne

Rain falling through the blue

across the street

near to me, & close to you; &

that’s where I’ll be today

walking St. Mark’s Place toward Grand Central

that place

the only place we ever get together, me & you

Soot-

covered parti-colored trains come & go

out & in, the heart leaps

to its daily declarations

of love & death (poetry), beating

the ordinary day’s traffic to somewhere,

beating

my heart’s morning yearning for nowhere,

with windows,

upon which the early morning rain,

joining in

joins you to me, simply flowing,

now singing, now

saying, “hello!”, now hoping

this trip prove true

&

now, in clean air, cleanly breathing, sounds

Train Ride

Somebody knows everything so

It doesn’t make any difference,

what you do

So, do anything you want,

it’s all right

You can do it. Just do it,

right?

Biddy Basketball

The guards tense, the centers jump

The fur flies! A Jickey laughs

It’s sloppy going, tho, Careless Love

So to speak: can’t see it; can’t believe it

Can’t read it even: not together

A bit busy: bemused by the weather

How it simply takes place, & had character

A clear & an open face, clearly true

To conditions as they do exist; & so

Now a day is unpleasant because no fun

Tho it does keep going on: that’s how it goes

It’s draggy, it’s torture, it’s tedious

Right from the very beginning, it loses you

And as we discover later reading The Daily News

When it’s all over, “Both Sides Lose.”

The Simple Pleasures of Buffalo

It’s impossible to take a bath in this house

because I am the house-guest & the bath-room

is of the house. It’s difficult not to lie, constantly

on the beds. It is not difficult to read, “The Groupie”

“Thongs”, “Ball Four”, “The Jocks”, & “Teen-Age Sex.”

It’s quite difficult to jack off: God knows why. But,

It is possible to fuck a lot; lying, sitting, kneeling, standing

or simply thrashing about the beds. If you don’t believe me,

just ask ______. To continue: in this house

it’s a simple matter to swallow the cough syrup (codeine): to swallow

the capsules (pills) or even the spansules is even simpler:

It is not quite so simple to stick the needle into the vein.

This requires a certain amount of practice; and Witch Hazel

Can be helpful, to cover the tracks & in healing the sore arms.

Perhaps the simplest, most rewarding element this

quietly insane house affords you is time, time to be reading

for example, on your own, this terrific book,

“The Good Spirit,” poems by Citizen Andrei Codrescu.

Black & White Magic

FOR ANSELM HOLLO

1.

“Who’s a ‘black’ artist?”

On this plane

w/all the room in the world,

Dollars: 303 . . .

Secret Clouds

I can’t get into you,

yet,

tho Leaving Cheyenne

was so beautiful:

it made me cry, perfectly

relaxed

a small gift I now am remembering

in Buffalo

2.

Breathe normally

Do not smoke

Awaiting rescue:

Eat, drink, sleep, or

Not . . . .

Don’t.

You were stopped, & searched,

when least you expected.

What was found was nothing.

Don’t expect it to be the same

coming back, baby.

Strapped: deprived

Shoot yourself: stay alive

3.

Ride it out

John F. Kennedy to Heathrow (London)

which involves you in

My Life With Jackie Kennedy

a human life

MAYA

Where civilization is taking place.

I mean, genuine civilization: no proportionate loss

of spleen.

“The head speaks out from the heart to the head connected

to the heart.”

Apologies to Val & Tom

October: half-moon rising: London sky, Piccadilly’s, greyish-black

Neon makes it funky: 3 Chesterfield Kings: 5 quid a hundred dexies

City magic makes it easy for a man to be a monkey! All the geese went “honk!”

In Hyde Park where I walked today: I thought of you as I walked my way

Not that way toward where you are; that I had turned away from, from thinking

What I had meant to do yesterday. Last year’s London’s disappeared, broken up

The way New York City had, before & after London last year. Nevertheless I’m

here

Walking around. I wish I’d run into you both upon these grounds, Hyde Park.

I couldn’t come to visit you, your home, today (& this is dumb) because

I had no place from which to come from. Does that make sense?

(It does.) & I miss seeing you, my friends, & talk. But Val, I liked you calling me

on the phone,

It seemed so neighbourly. & Tom, I liked reading your poems, in my room,

alone

(proofs); & the words I wrote then were truly mine, & not “to atone” . . .

I will come visit you, you two, in good time,

days to come; I’ll talk a lot, show-off my loves, & sometimes rime.

One, London

In Hyde Park Gate 14 white budgie scratchings mean

What? Black orchids on a wall serve for clouds, loom

Up from an orange bed floating, a host of words; Fall; heat coming on

White breathing disappearing as it defines this room

Above a friend his mate’s asleep; he’s somewhere else; England

Here clucks & poetry don’t mix. October 1st; half-moon rising

Soon it seems to descend. Perhaps a clock is a good idea

It tells one what to do, when

Two weeks & a day past it seemed so easy to take, NY’s room

& NY’s speed made it seem easy, giving; easy living

Tho NY’s room was someone else’s, somewhere else too

Here words take their own sweet time arriving

Here to sleep a day & a night away seems mild. Still there’s plenty to do:

Birds to be looked at, pills, a warm bath, letters to be written to you.

Southampton Business

Train Ride  . . .

16 coaches long!

not hardly                                   With a song in my heart . . .

I remember my

first love, &

the last time I . . . .

Here you can read

“We Arrived &

What We Did”

A girl’s poem

but not now.

Now it’s here.

It’s outside,

but you can’t see

anything.

Now it’s night here.

Take a walk

down an Elm Street

in the rain

Up

from the Train Station,

Turn, turn, turn again.

Now, you’re here.

Go inside

& open up

Viva!                          Fat City

& the long hours pass

like buzzes

gone

down a highway.

& nothing is really happening at all

It all happens so fast,

so,

STOP

Get back up & go.

That was life, sometimes you ran dry

Some mornings you’d wake up all wet. Today

For example, was a black day; business as usual,

However; i.e. everyone was getting the business

Our nation’s leaders stared blankly straight

At us with expressions of grave concern

the sun

Came up while the rain was coming down, like

Nobody’s business, so, nobody didn’t see you

In the altogether period me needling business

Myself, & then,

a burst of political jabber

before you

SLEEP

Talk like you don’t hear any more

not since the old days

Love Poetry

cigarette

Huey Long, get shot

& all the time

the girl in the Keane painting

awake

upstairs

sleeping

while the morning Times was saying

$75,000 was paid for a Roy Lichtenstein yesterday. A

James Rosenquist went for 26. Highest price ever for one

Of those. & a life-size kitchen stove complete with sagging

Pots & Pans, $46,000. The Germans took the prizes, the Americans

Got the business, the Times went on to note. By god,

That’s not how it was in the old days! Oh well, I think I’d

like to have a de Kooning, for nothing, myself. Or else, to be

Perfectly frank, just go on minding my own business.

Keeping it up                      going on

& on

& on & on . . .

No more Monkey-business

I think

No, I’d just as soon be where you are, asleep,

Awake, kissing your neck before we’d fuck a lot

From behind holding your breasts which are warm

Nobody’s business but our own

Sleep, or don’t: do whatever you feel like

Stay as long as you like.

THREE POEMS: GOING TO CANADA

Itinerary

Thursday & Friday:

(Southampton, New York City)

Wake up & crash land

pat the old lady

have a drink

tie shoes

take bus

change trains

go, to the doctor

score

HIGH

eat, beans &

bread pudding, get

slightly smashed on cheap red

take a walk

to clear your head

smoke hash / shoot smack

nod out / wake up with a start / take off

Go to Canada.

How to Get to Canada

borrow 50 from George

Spend 2 for Tarantula

and 4 for a little Horse

and 5 for two meals

and 1 or 2 for King-size Chesterfields

and 2.50 to ride the bus

and 2 more for taxicabs

& 1 for tips & 25 cents for 1 more

bus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . buy a ticket

for 31. Check your bag, free.

Steal Night Song, & Prison Letters

From A Soledad Brother. Wait . . . . . . Fly:

15 cents is plenty to keep you in the sky.

Love

Missing you

in Air Canada

Written on Red Roses & Yellow Light

Acid

aquamarine

squares

moving

up ashtray

Smoking

a soft white chick

head red

chic, tacky

fur ruffling over

leather

Or is that what that is?

“18”

she says,

to

the pretty, plain girl below

severe auburn

hair

her red shirt, cowboy

left pocket half-full of bosom

& on down

sleek curve of denim

thigh-meat

weird shoelets

tiny flesh-holes

Acid

green floor

waving, or

wavering

More & more

floor

shoes, black, “straight”, square

out front

of monumental black

dress

above

fatty calves, no

ankles

A city lady, O, obese!

Not me!

I’m just sitting

next the other green, plush

a sofa

rich

with recent presences

now presumably inside:

Light up!

a

slow cigarette

with my

Most Valuable Player

lighter:

Now

A Head

sucking

smokey air “in”         breathing out

Waiting

in the Waiting Room

to speak of Necessities:

& Now

my turn.

“Hello, again!

Remember me, Doctor?”

“Of course! You’re

the Poet. Come in,

What is it, this time?”

From “Anti-Memoirs”

FOR TONY TOWLE

Mid-Friday morn, 10 o’clock, I go to India

At the suggestion of a man I barely know: André

Malraux. Benares. The first house I enter I see

A photograph of the murderer of Ghandi on the wall.

“There are too many Reactionaries still, in India,” I remember

Nehru telling André Malraux. I step closer to the picture,

Read the words printed at the bottom: photograph by

Rudolph Burckhardt. This is unreal! I leave India, return

On foot to Hyattsville, Maryland. 1705 Abraham Lincoln Road.

My hosts are absent still. Their children have swallowed Rat

Poison, & they are at the Hospital, caught in the puke

& ye shall be healed, that scene, fright, terror, nothing serious

In the end except it might have been. . . . The Rolling Stones fill this place

A sweet speed-freak is lost in Harlem. Mr. Chester Himes. Life

Going on quite merrily Hunting For The Whale. A wealth

Of fresh Whale-tracks considerably cheers us up.

Galaxies

Winter. You think of sex, but it’s asleep

Briefly you contemplate points of revolution

A naked artist smokes. Dreaming, you wake up & you say

“Everybody is a hero, everybody makes you cry.” Ah,

This morning I was footprints in the snow

Listening to the words from the burning bush all the day

We sleep & dream our lives away. You dream

I don’t live here, & when you wake up, what a relief,

I do. Someone to light the fire, babble for you

I dream a 7 ft. tall Watusi in full tribal regalia

& carrying a long spear promises to send me crumbly LSD

In a New York Times. He does, & I am pleased, but amazed

It’s 9:45 of a Saturday morning, December the 26th. Through eight

Window-panes gray white light is pouring in. No, it’s leaning in

Sitting in, by the fire, a chair. “God, more money, please!” No

Coal in the bin. But there is the fire, still in sight. And there is

More wood, to light. The fire leaps up the flue. The artist’s smoke

Is fixed in space. Above my head is wood. I can’t see a warm bed, &

Inside it, you. But I’m beginning to see The light, not

a bit older, & less cold than last night.

In Anne’s Place

It’s just another April almost morning, St. Mark’s Place

Harris & Alice are sleeping in beds; it’s far too early

For a Scientific Massage, on St. Mark’s Place, though it’s

The right place if you feel so inclined. Later

Jim Carroll’s double bums a camel from a ghost Aram Saroyan

Now, there goes Chuck, friend from out of a no longer existent past

Into the just barely existent future, wide-awake, purposeful

As Aram Saroyan’s dad: a little bit more lovely writing, & then

Maybe a small bet on New York’s chances this morning. It’s not

Exactly love, nor is it faith, certainly it isn’t hope; no

It’s simply that one has a feeling, yes

You always do have a feeling & over the years it’s become habit

Being moved by that; to be moved having a feeling,

So it’s perfectly natural to get up & go to the telephone

To lay a little something down on your heart’s choice

Calling right from where you are, in Anne’s place,

As to your heart’s delight, here comes sunlight.

Autobiography

FOR HENRY KANABUS

A colorful river of poetry drives forward

into what has never been named

where all women are fiery

all roses are scary

and all kisses are eternal

at its worst it leans into

soft oceans of romantic mush.

A little loving can solve a lot of things.

If a man is in solitude

the world is translated

and wings sprout from the shoulders of

The Slave.

In my solitude

I have seen things so clearly

that were not true.

For example

once I kissed a woman and nothing happened.

He is not really thinking.

His poems have too many

flaming ears

queens of daybreak

fallen stars and solar arrows

Power to the people and all like that.

He loves these things.

2.

When truth throws up

its translucent roosters

onto fountains of eggnog

He wants you to see

right through these things

Just behind them are

massive granite anguish shapes

humped over, feet on,

snout to, the earth.

If you want to see

the light show

touch that lump, you rooster!

3.

Who can like that?

I must admit I dislike

seeing human life

compared to something smaller than itself

making love

compared to a comma

death to periods.

4.

García Lorca pinched me again!

5.

I like about twenty lines

of this poem, the dust

of that mud which speaks

to sharpen silences. I like

the fiery butterfly puzzles of

this pilgrimage toward clarities

of great mud intelligence and feeling. Not

more deep, more shallow!

6.

Only the poem exists, like an

Ambassador, the American ambassador to

say, Africa. Like a vegetable, which says,

“Africa is hollow.” Like an empty tourist.

And then the tourist hears

The drums of the vegetables.

Africa flies up into his own frail arms.

“I feel an absence inside, when

I hear a lovely poem . . . True, as

it is good, knowing

that glasses are to drink from.”

7.

It is good, absence.

Postmarked Grand Rapids

Robert Creeley reading

Mark Twain and Mr. Clemens

STOPS

while Philip Whalen

writing

“The Epic Airplane Notebook Poem”

Pauses . . .

to discuss their drinking problem

with the Hostesses in the Sky

I’m watching

writing

drinking

waiting for my change.

Further Definitions (Waft)

(AFTER MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN)

a band of musicians:         up tight

care not:         like

understanding:         dismissal

waiving:        automatic pilot

compared to:         no baloney

began to say:         shut up

engraft feathers in a damaged wing:         take a hike

experience to the full:         kill

cultivators of land they do not own:         friends

absolute:         ready

pity:         pull leg of

language here fails as mathematics has before it:         at

is skilled in:         oblivious

ended:         borne

delicate constitutions:         fascists

promoted:         serf

one who dispenses with clothes:        liar

lip to lip being the first, lip:       right on

to heart, through the ear, is the second:         “poof!”

graduate:       push around

too clever riders are not good at horseplay:         “Ma Femme”

food on a journey:         chow

center of the earth:         hara

the full moon:         a friend to man

pineapples:         heavy

having no wants, quite content:         chatty

the power of slowly moving jaws:      camp

exquisite:         available night & day

critical, marking and epoch:         straight

And Into Glory Peep:       just for the hell of it.

Paul Blackburn

dying now, or already dead

hello. It’s only Ted, interrupting

in case I hadn’t said, as clearly

as I’d have it said, Paul,

I hear you, do. Crossing Park Avenue

South; 4:14 a.m.; going West at

23rd; September 1st, 1971.

Tom Clark

I take him

purely as treasure

His exquisite pain

pinpoints my evasive pleasure.

Don’t think him to be

Any more than you see

& Don’t be beastly

to him. If you do

he’ll let you see him

seeing you:

& you’ll wake up hating yourself

for hating him.

You will.

Kirsten

you’re so funny! I’d give you

all of my money, anytime,

just to see what you’d say!

alas, all I have is a dime.

How you talk is my heart’s

delight. You are

more terrible than your step-dad,

more great than bright light.

Chicago April Morning: Snow

Anne,

A Happy Birthday, late, to you,

Never less than great to us, great

Light and air in our lives, that bus

Whose windows look always to you, so straight

so true;

love;

Ted

Brigadoon

FOR BILL BERKSON

1.

“This mushroom walks in.”

2.

“And one cannot go back except in time.”

3.

“Nothing is gained by assurance as to what is insecure.”

4.

“I have a machine-gun trained on Scotland Yard.”

5.

“The body sends out self to repel non-self.”

6.

“I can get close & still stay outside.”

7.

“See the why, knowing what: the clear enigma.”

8.

“a fragrant flowered shrub       blush       a clean tantrum.”

This Perfect Day

Six months of each other

Evoke the birth throes

This primitive magnetic expression of the heads

Above all the hypnotic presence of staring eyes that have

a ritualistic fixity

Against the broad arcs whose force not only cuts wildly

Into a jungle of coarse energies

But whose fury is substituted for the rigorous control

of eye & intellect

So a penchant for the grotesque is hardly absent

This perfect day.

The Green Sea

Above his head clanged

Turning

And there were no dreams

in this sleep

Over this table.

Mi Casa, Su Casa

FOR LEWIS MACADAMS

my crib your crib

the interior burns           I read

white palm over the coffee can

in the quiet

a manual

of gentle but determined practices

“I want human to begin with”

A small voice walks across the grey empty room.

He

He never listened while friends talked. He worked

steadily to the even current of sound; but if a note

of distress were struck he was aware of it at once.

Like a wireless operator with a novel open in front

of him, he could disregard every signal except the

ship’s symbol and the S.O.S. He could even work better

when they talked than when they were silent, for so long

as his ear-drum registered those tranquil sounds—their

deep gossip, comments on the sermons preached by one

another, plots of new movies, even commentaries on and complaints

about the weather—he knew that all was well. It was

silence that stopped him working—silence in which he might

look up and see terror waiting in their eyes for

his attention.

7 Things I Do in the Hotel Chelsea

Rain or Shine:

dig it: the solitude of

someone

Call for Company Men

& Women

to become

at the very least

visible

in all of our daily lives.

Name one possible man:        Jim

One possible woman:        Maggie May, or

at least,

maybe

Gather ye rosebuds, gimmicks,

Crystal,

Schmee,

make-up

the necessary Will

to insist on Grace

from time to time, at

your place

where light in waves

thru motes of dust

lends all your combinations

lust:     this

ardor to

Believe in Now as the noun it is

when “why not”

hits this town:

“that’s your given prerogative,

son”

We all do something; it goes

without saying; you

do it.

It got done.

Communism

Red Air

& I can hear the red bus

sing

Morning has broken

meticulously

labelled                        the East Wing is fossils

sinister habits                                          antiques

in fact a pleasant park

a government department

bulbs

birth

severe abundance swirlings

The most

spectacular object

in it

a great

shining

prolific

automatic

electric

churchyard

map-maker

mute

flickering

imagination

bejewelled

coarse

display

the euphonious person

in hey-day

wholesomeness

taken

over-large

fuses

With a little lantern above

A sort of canopy

pitched within a room

architecture

Church

with the exception of

One steel office building

A cold violent backside to you

A little saucer dome

imp anonymity

little plateaus in various arms

Swallower of former designs

true stone fan virile shadow

functional sinews of mood & tempo of

ballcourt

COFFEE

Square bracketing vision bubble dome

Central Presences Naked in the Shroud:

Sensible in the air

bronze pedestrian tree-ape

grace-note

the dizzying staircase

non-euphonious personal

disguise.

Sandy’s Sunday Best

It’s made of everything, slow

stains & flash

You can see, for example,

green, past enchantment

& trees wave in passing

Even the children today are smart

& not just more people

Look!

Strolling, sassy, dashing, brilliant!

The whole world turns, to see

nods, interminably its head

Cool black cats, super white stars

will dance all night in that wake!

Of three minutes of sunlight.

Aubade

Last night

before retiring,

one of those brain-spasms

I guess all poets must have

prompted me to write

in my bedside

notebook

which, incidentally

is blue, and shaped like

a Regular Grind

MAXWELL HOUSE

Coffee can

these words:

“I advance Dagwood Bumstead as

the pre-eminent philosopher of our time.”

This morning,

I awakened to the startling

realization that

overnight I had become transformed

into the person

of that noble & decent man,

“Dr. Watson.” For good.

Service at Upwey

Over Belle Vue Road that silence said

To mean an angel is passing overhead.

Anselm’s round head framed peering in the garden door

Four & ½ hours before, I didn’t hear

The doorbell ring—7:30 a.m. Greenwich Summer Time—

Announcing the arrival

Of the celebrated Greek-American Poet

from Chicago: John Paul! Was that

An Alice or a Mabel who let him in?

First to visit us

In Wonderful Wivenhoe, where

Once smugglers ran amok, smuggling

What? and now Alice goes out

To shoppe.

“I have only one work, & I hardly know what it is!”

My baby throws my shoes through the door.

Baby-talk woke up the world, today

little Anselm,

Alice, Mabel,

& John Paul.

& me writing it down here.

This page has ashes on it

Baltic Stanzas

Less original than

penetrating

very often

illuminating

has taken us

300 years

to recover from

the disaster of

The White Mountain

O Manhattan!

O Saturday afternoons!

you were a room

& the room cried, “love!”

I was a stove, & you

in cement were a dove

Ah, well, thanks for the shoes, god

I wear them on my right feet

since that bright winter when

rapt in your colors, O heat!

how we lay long on your orange bed

sipping iced white wine, & not thinking

the blue sky changed blues while we were drinking

Next day god said, “Hitler has to get hit on the head.”

Other Contexts

I’d been

trying

to escape

that mind game

thinking that thought

itself

can possess

the world

by always & I mean

as constantly as physically

possible

lying down and

not thinking it over. Reading

for example everything I’d loved

again & again

anything new:

resisting being thought.

Exactly. Resisting

Being

Thought.

Tonight I think to do

differently, differently

to do.

I think I will.

I would

think I will. We’ll have to wait

& see. I have to wait,

and see

My watch shows it to be

5:51 a.m., March the 24th

in Wivenhoe, in England.

Alice is asleep

& breathing beside me, pregnantly.

& oh yes, it’s 1974. Alice

is 28 years old. Anselm is 20 months.

I’m coming up on four-oh.

A Religious Experience

I was looking at the words he

was saying. . . .like. . . Okinawa. . . .

bandage. . . real. . . form. . . and suddenly

I realized I had read somewhere that,

“in their language the word for ‘idiot’

is also the word meaning ‘to breathe through

your mouth.’” And I was simply left there,

in bed, being looked at.

Crossroads

The pressure’s on, old son.

We’re going to salvage just about all you got.

It’s the way you’ve been going about it

that’s worried us.

All this remote control business.

Where’s the Doctor?

I am the Doctor.

You’ll find the patient’s files

in these cabinets.

Is everything ready for surgery?

You don’t need a sauna to get heated up

here.

Isn’t it funny to have lived in the midlands

all this time

& not seen all these lovely things about?

He believes if he’s hard enough on somebody

they’ll give way.

Well, I’m the principal shareholder,

& I’m taking my equities out!

I’m also staying right here with you.

Right. & I’m going with you.

New Personal Poem

TO MICHAEL LALLY

You had your own reasons for getting

In your own way. You didn’t want to be

Clear to yourself. You knew a hell

Of a lot more than you were willing

to let yourself know. I felt

Natural love for you on the spot. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Right.

Beautiful. I don’t use the word lightly. I

Protested with whatever love (honesty) (& frontal nudity)

A yes basically reserved Irish Catholic American Providence Rhode

Island New Englander is able to manage. You

Are sophisticated, not uncomplicated, not

Naive, and Not simple. An Entertainer, & I am, too.

Frank O’Hara respected love, so do you, & so do we.

He was himself & I was me. And when we came together

Each ourselves in Iowa, all the way

That was love, & it still is, love, today. Can you see me

In what I say? Because as well I see you know

In what you have to say, I did love Frank, as I do

You, “in the right way”.

That’s just talk, not Logos,

a getting down to cases:

I take it as simple particulars that

we wear our feelings on our faces.

Elysium

FOR MARION FARRIER

It’s impossible to look at it

Without the feeling as of

Being welcomed, say, to Paris

After a long boring train ride,

For women are like that:

They make one feel

he has travelled a long way

just being there.

And so well might he take

what comes, come

to what it is takes him.

Blue Targets

You see a lot

of white when you’re

looking at her eyes,

She’s so quick toward

either side

but when

you look straight

down

into her, it’s

thru & at targets,

reflecting, blue.

Reading Frank O’Hara

Reading Frank O’Hara you

can’t help realizing

you know you can’t feel

any worse than he felt,

so

hell,

why not be exuberant!

In the 51st State

IN THE 51ST STATE

Allen Ginsberg’s “Shining City”

FOR ALICE

But that dream. . . oh, hell!

maybe, like Jack, just drink muscatel!

But that won’t work. A “Pharmacia”

is where you get your pills. “Shining

City.” & in its space & time one can find

a “Position inferior to Language.” & occupy

beautiful, discrete, & almost ordinary

Places.—But that won’t work. . . .

. . . .that dream. . . “oh, Hell!”

In the 51st State

FOR KATE

The life I have led

being an easy one

has made suicide

impossible, no?

Everything arrived

in fairly good time;

women, rolls, medicine

crime—poor health

like health

has been an inspiration.

When all else fails I read the magazines.

Criticism like a trombone used as a gate

satisfies some hinges, but not me.

I like artists who rub their trumpets with maps

to clean them, the trumpets or the maps.

I personally took

33 years to discover

that blowing your nose is necessary sometimes

even tho it is terrifying. (not aesthetic).

I’d still rather brindle.

I wasn’t born in this town

but my son, not the one born in Chicago,

not the one born in England, not

the one born in New England, in fact, my daughter

was. She looks like her brother by another mother

and like my brother, too.

Her forehead shines like the sun

above freckles and I had mine

and I have more left.

I read only the books you find in libraries or drugstores

or at Marion’s. Harris loans me Paul Pines’

to break into poetry briefly.

Au revoir.

(I wouldn’t translate that

as “Goodbye” if I were you.)

A woman rolls under the wheels in a book.

Here they are the wheels, so I hear.

Bon voyage, little ones.

Follow me down

Through the locks. There is no key.

Red Shift

Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame

The air is biting, February, fierce arabesques

on the way to tree in winter streetscape

I drink some American poison liquid air which bubbles

and smoke to have character and to lean

In. The streets look for Allen, Frank, or me, Allen

is a movie, Frank disappearing in the air, it’s

Heavy with that lightness, heavy on me, I heave

through it, them, as

The Calvados is being sipped on Long Island now

twenty years almost ago, and the man smoking

Is looking at the smilingly attentive woman, & telling.

Who would have thought that I’d be here, nothing

wrapped up, nothing buried, everything

Love, children, hundreds of them, money, marriage-

ethics, a politics of grace,

Up in the air, swirling, burning even or still, now

more than ever before?

Not that practically a boy, serious in corduroy car coat

eyes penetrating the winter twilight at 6th

& Bowery in 1961. Not that pretty girl, nineteen, who was

going to have to go, careening into middle-age so,

To burn, & to burn more fiercely than even she could imagine

so to go. Not that painter who from very first meeting

I would never & never will leave alone until we both vanish

into the thin air we signed up for & so demanded

To breathe & who will never leave me, not for sex, nor politics

nor even for stupid permanent estrangement which is

Only our human lot & means nothing. No, not him.

There’s a song, “California Dreaming”, but no, I won’t do that.

I am 43. When will I die? I will never die, I will live

To be 110, & I will never go away, & you will never escape from me

who am always & only a ghost, despite this frame, Spirit

Who lives only to nag.

I’m only pronouns, & I am all of them, & I didn’t ask for this

You did

I came into your life to change it & it did so & now nothing

will ever change

That, and that’s that.

Alone & crowded, unhappy fate, nevertheless

I slip softly into the air

The world’s furious song flows through my costume.

Around the Fire

What I’m trying to say is that if an experience is

proposed to me—I don’t have any particular interest

in it—Any more than anything else. I’m interested in

anything. Like I could walk out the door right now and go somewhere

else. I don’t have any center in that sense. If you’ll look

in my palm you’ll see that my heart and my head line are

the same and if you’ll look in your palm you’ll see that it’s

different. My heart and my head feel exactly the same. Me,

I like to lay around of a Sunday and drink beer. I don’t feel

a necessity for being a mature person in this world. I mean

all the grown-ups in this world, they’re just playing house, all

poets know that. How does your head feel? How I feel is

what I think. I look at you today, & I expect you to look

the same tomorrow. If you’re having a nervous breakdown, I’m

not going to be looking at you like you’re going to die, because

I don’t think you are. If you’re a woman you put yourself

somewhere near the beginning and then there’s this other place

you put yourself in terms of everybody. “The great cosmetic strangeness

of the normal deep person.” Okay. Those were those people—and

I kept telling myself, I have to be here, because I don’t have

a country. How tight is the string? And what is on this particular

segment of it? And the photographer, being black, and the writer,

me, being white, fell out at this point. And he didn’t want to

look at it—I mean it’s nothing, just some drunk Indians riding

Jersey milk cows—but I wanted to see it, I mean it was right

in front of my eyes and I wanted therefore to look at it.

And death is not any great thing, it’s there or it’s not. I mean

God is the progenitor of religious impetuosity in the human beast.

And Davy Crockett is right on that—I mean he’s gonna shoot a bear,

but he’s not gonna shoot a train, because the train is gonna run

right over him. You can’t shoot the train. And I always thought

there was another way to do that. And it is necessary to do that

and we bear witness that it is necessary to do it. The only distinction

between men and women is five million shits.

Cranston Near the City Line

One clear glass slipper; a slender blue single-rose vase;

one chipped glass Scottie; an eggshell teacup & saucer, tiny,

fragile, but with sturdy handle; a gazelle? the lightest pink flowers

on the teacup, a gold circle, a line really on the saucer; gold

line curving down the handle; glass doors on the cabinet which sat

on the floor & was not too much taller than I; lace doilies? on

the shelves; me serious on the floor, no brother, shiny floor or

shining floor between the flat maroon rug & the glass doors of

the cabinet:

I never told anyone what I knew. Which was that it wasn’t

for anyone else what it was for me.

The piano was black. My eyes were brown. I had rosy

cheeks, every sonofabitch in the world said. I never saw them.

My father came cutting around the corner of the A&P

& diagonally across the lot in a beeline toward our front sidewalk

& the front porch (& the downstairs door); and I could see him, his

long legs, quick steps, nervous, purposeful, coming & passing, combing

his hair, one two three quick wrist flicks that meant “worrying” &

“quickly!”

There were lilacs in the back yard, & dandelions in the lot.

There was a fence.

Pat Dugan used to swing through that lot, on Saturdays, not too tall,

in his brown suit or blue one, white shirt, no tie, soft brown men’s

slippers on his feet, & Grampa! I’d yell & run to meet him &

“Hi! Grampa,” I’d say & he’d swing my arm and be singing his funny

song:

“She told me that she loved me, but

that was yesterday. She told me

that she loved me, & then

she went away!”

I didn’t know it must have been a sad song, for somebody!

He was so jaunty, light in his eyes and laugh lines around

them, it was his happy song, happy with me, it was 1942 or 4,

and he was 53.

An Ex-Athlete, Not Dying

TO STEVE CAREY

& so I took the whole trip

filled with breaths, heady with assurance

gained in all innocence from that self’s

possession of a sure stride, a strong heart,

quick hands, & what one sport would surely describe

as that easy serenity born of seemingly having been

“a quick read.” “He could read the field from before

he even knew what that was.” He was so right. Long before.

It was so true. I postulated the whole thing.

It was the innocence of Second Avenue, of one

who only knew about First. I didn’t win it;

I didn’t buy it; I didn’t bird-dog it; but I didn’t dog it.

I could always hear it, not see it. But I rarely had

to listen hard to it. I sure didn’t have to “bear” it.

I didn’t think, “Later for that.” I knew something,

but I didn’t know that. But I didn’t know,

brilliant mornings, blind in the rain’s rich light,

now able always to find water, that now I would drink.

Coda : Song

When having something to do

but not yet being at it

because I’m alone, because of you

I lay down the book, & pick up the house

& move it around until it is

where it is what it is I am doing

that is the something I had to do

because I’m no longer alone, because of you.

In Anselm Hollo’s Poems

The goddess stands in front of her cave.

The beetle wakes up. The frightened camper watches

The two horsemen. The walking catfish walks by.

The twins are fighting the wind let loose in the dark

To be born again the human animal young in the day’s events.

The laundry-basket lid is still there.

The moving houses are very moving.

The last empress of China

Is receiving the new members of the orchestra

Through two layers of glass in The Empress Hotel.

In the wreck of the cut-rate shoe store the poet can be seen,

Drunk; a monster; the concussed consciousness in

The charge of the beautiful days. The difficulties are great.

The colors must be incredible: it all coheres:

The force of being she releases in him being

The claim of the dimensions of the world.

Postcard from the Sky

You in love with her

read my poems and wonder

what she sees in you.

Last Poem

Before I began life this time

I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence

Once here I signed in, see name below, and added

Some words remembered from an earlier time,

“The intention of the organism is to survive.”

My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WWII,

They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose

In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine

Was a story without a plot. The days of my years

Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which

I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave

Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place

In Society. 101 St. Mark’s Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009

New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out,

Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone

I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained

Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent

Reification of my own experiences delivered to me

Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all.

I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him.

The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work,

Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source

Of my great, terrible, & inarticulate one grief. In my time

I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed

Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end

Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I

Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly

From a tired brain, it, like them, suitable, & fitting.

Let none regret my end who called me friend.

Small Role Felicity

FOR TOM CLARK

Anselm is sleeping; Edmund is feverish, &

Chatting; Alice doing the Times Crossword Puzzle:

I, having bathed, am pinned, nude, to the bed

Between Green Hills of Africa &

The Pro Football Mystique. Steam is hissing

In the pipes, cold air blowing across my legs. . . .

Tobacco smoke is rising up my nose, as Significance

Crackles & leaps about inside my nightly no-mind.

Already it’s past two, of a night like any other:

O, Old Glory, atop the Empire State, a building, &

Between the Hudson & the East rivers, O, purple, & O, murky black,

If only . . . but O, finally, you, O, Leonardo, you at last arose

Bent, and racked with fit after fit of coughing, & Cursing!

Terrible curses! No Joke! What will happen? Who

be served? Whose call go unanswered? And

Who can 44 down, “Pretender to

The Crown of Georgia?” be . . .

(Boris Pasternak?)

Under the Southern Cross

FOR DICK GALLUP

Peeling rubber all the way up

SECOND AVENUE into Harlem Heights

Our yellow Triumph took us out of Manhattan tenement hells

Into the deer-ridden black earth dairylands.

Corn-fed murderers, COPS, waved us past

Low-slung Frank Lloyd Wright basements. We missed most deer.

You left me in Detroit, for money. In Freeport, Maine, our host

Shotgunned his wife into cold death, who was warm. Fuck him. Scoot

Ferried us to Portland, then leaped out of his life from atop the

UN Building.

Enplaning next to the flatlands, we rubber-stamped our own passports

And in one year changed the face of American Poetry. Hepatitis

felled you

Then on the very steps where the Peace Corps first reared its no-head.

Though it helped pass the long weekends, polygamy unsettled me

considerably

In Ann Arbor, where each day’s mail meant one more lover dead.

My favorite

Elm tree died there as well. But Europe beckoned, and we went, first

Pausing to don the habits of Buffalo, in Buffalo. After that it was

weak pins

& strong needles, but travel truly does broaden. It broadened us,

And we grew fat & famous, or at least I did. You fell

For a Lady from Baltimore near the Arno. Then you fell

Into the Arno. You drowned & kept on drowning; while I, in my

Silver threads, toured the Historical Tate, & mutilated

A well-thought of Blake while England slept.

In Liverpool a Liverpudlian dropped his bottle of milk beneath a

neon light,

Smashing it to smithereens. The sidewalk white with milk made us cry.

And so we left. Back in the USA, on crutches, we acquired ourselves

a wife

For 12 goats and a matched pair of Arabian thoroughbreds picked up

on a whim

From a rug-peddler in Turkestan. God knows what we gave to him.

Now I’m living in New York City once again, gone grey, and mostly

stay in bed

While you are pacing your floor in Baltimore. But we aren’t “back”

yet, not

By a long shot. Oh No! This trip doesn’t end

Until we drop off our yellow Triumph somewhere still far away

From where we are now. No, this ain’t it yet.

There’s black coffee & glazed donuts still due us, bubba,

At a place called The Jesse James Cafe. So, hit it. Let’s burn rubber.

TIMES CRITIC DESPISES CURRENT PLAY, a Post reports.

Dangling from it, in the wind, his body gently sways.

Come on, floor this Mother! Whoops! Don’t hit that lonely old

grubber.

THE MORNING LINE

FOR ALICE

Sonnet: Homage to Ron

Back to dawn by police word

to sprinkle it

Over the lotions that change

On locks

To sprinkle I say

In funny times

The large pig at which the intense cones beat

So the old fat flies toward the brain

Under the sun and the rain

So we are face to face

again

Nothing in these drawers

Which is terror to the idiot

& the non-idiot alike. No?

44th Birthday Evening, at Harris’s

Nine stories high Second Avenue

On the roof there’s a party

All the friends are there watching

By the light of the moon the blazing sun

Go down over the side of the planet

To light up the underside of Earth

There are long bent telescopes for the friends

To watch this through. The friends are all in shadow.

I can see them from my bed inside my head.

44 years I’ve loved these dreams today.

17 years since I wrote for the first time a poem

On my birthday, why did I wait so long?

my land a good land

its highways go to many good places where

many good people were found: a home land, whose song comes up

from the throat of a hummingbird & it ends

where the sun goes to across the skies of blue.

I live there with you.

An UnSchneeman

I appear in the kitchen

duffle-bag in left hand.

“Anybody here?” I say. You

hearing me from the front room,

“Hi. How was it?” “Any pepsi?”

I say hopefully. “No.” “Well,

Central Washington was Out of the

Question!, but you are now looking

at The Complete Toast of Guam!” “You

were gone Forever!”

A Quiet Dream

Will the little girl                   outside

reading this

writing

being written

by a man

inside

Now

moving easily

eyes clear             & blue         courteously

gravely rise

& lightly, turn                 turn          &turn

again

& softly, go.

Part of My History

FOR LEWIS WARSH

Will “Reclining Figure, One Arm”

Soon become or is she already Mrs.

Ted Berrigan? “Take one dexamyl

Every morning, son,” my dead father

told me over the phone, and, “Be

A good boy. It’s called a ‘Life Style.’ ”

What you don’t know will hurt somebody else.

Cast in 1934, 5 ft. 14 in. in height,

The figure has three fingers missing

On the left hand (as did Mordecai, “three-

fingers,” Brown, which didn’t keep him

Out of Cooperstown!). Body well-preserved,

Chubby, flesh-colored, sweetly

Draped. Both ends are broken here & there,

But the surface is well preserved. I took

Another puff on my Chesterfield King, and,

As she walked around in my room, saw orange

& blue raise themselves ere she walked.

They were my mind. And then, I saw cupcakes,

pink & flushed pink, floating about

in the air, aglow in their own poise.

Cold air stabbed into my heart, as, suddenly,

In serious drag, I felt my body getting

Colder & colder, & felt, rather than saw,

My fez, hovering above my head, like a typical set

of Berrigan-thoughts, imprisoned in lacquer, European-

style, tailor-made. I could see I was sitting

at a table in a Hoboken Truck-Stop. When the smoke

Cleared I saw a red telephone on the table by my

Left hand. A heart-stimulant shot into my heart

From out the immediate darkness to my right. I picked up

The telephone, & that was all that kept me alive.

Contemporary Justice

tin roof               slanting sunlight

cows

boys with sticks

a pick-up whines               dust rises,

crows hover            cane stalks

a Watusi

and on his porch                   my grandfather

watching

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

Somebody knows everything, so

Between friends nothing would seem stranger

to me than true intimacy, so

Pity me, Patty

or, on

the other hand

The insane brother was focussed malevolently on murder.

Which wasn’t me, was it?

Amityville Times

self suspended in age time warp put out to grass

seeing through ears ask intelligent questions

behind eyes doubt use formal balance a lot

to throw something on to it

by mildly defending honor of minor character endlessly

while positively seething with absolutely no emotion

whatsoever in any way shape or form & can this be done?

To Ron

Everybody is not so clever as you. You are cleverer than I

am. You are the cleverest of all. I think a great deal.

That is why you speak so little. Listen, are not all your

brothers going to the field? Have not all your sisters gone

to the field? My friend, I keep it in order to look at it.

Let us light a candle. Let us go into the field. I have

read this book so often that I know it by heart. I have a

word to say to you. Did you go to the Captain’s Ball?

The Morning Line

Every man-jack boot-brain slack-jaw son of a chump

surely the result of fuzzy thinking

parceled in his “noise of thousands”

is a poem to shove somewhere

The man on First Avenue

with a large suitcase knows that

He’s leaving town

asleep there, already back.

Velvet &

FOR STEVE CAREY

Voice of ride

Fire of sight

Value of late

taste of great

job of departure

Night Chick

sky-mate

fits

(also little aches.)

Avec la Mécanique sous les Palmes

C’est automne qui revient

Les arbres ont l’air de sourire

Le clou     est là

Retient la tête

Les lampes sont allumées

Le vent passe en chantant

Les cheveux balayant la nuit

Il y a quelqu’un qui cherche

Une adresse perdue dans le chemin caché

La tête s’en va

Qu’on nous raconte cette histoire

C’est celle d’un malade

Il te resemble

Il fait froid         sur la lune ma       tête fume

Dreamland

FOR ELIO SCHNEEMAN

this steady twelve-tone humming inbetween my ears

weather sweeps in gentle wavelets across my features

the edges of space stacked into mostly indistinguishable images

on 3 sides: half a face, mine, clearly there

thick dark red and whitish flowers rise, & then drooping

over a purple waterfall, death, also clear

a suitcase—to stay—not to get out of here

on it, water, aspirin, glasses, a watch

above my head tones of voice, steady, clear

making lists in a life,

moving in the face of need, to be here.

Kerouac

(CONTINUED)

“appropriately named Beauty, has just been a star

halfback on the high school football team, and also

hit by a car, scribbling in his Diary. Over his bed

there hung contributing sports stories from the Lowell

Sun. For a time resided next to a Funeral Parlor: he

was a voracious consumer of Pop culture, of whatever

could be joyously drunk in; a phosphorescent Christ

on a black lacquered cross—it glowed the Jesus in

the Dark, in the movies, in the funnies, and on the radio

over Memere’s bed. I gulped for fear every time I passed it

at the moment the sun went down. Probably couldn’t have stood

this ‘double dose’, had it not been for the arrangement of

the shadows. Above all loved The Shadow, Lamont Cranston, Dr. Sax.

Ah, shadow! Ah, Sax!”

Shelley

I saw you first in half-darkness

by candle-light two round table-tops away

sitting in perfect attention with perfect self-awareness

waiting, for the poetry to begin, in The Blue Store;

I accepted a drink from your companion’s surprising flask,

never taking my eyes off of you, radiant nineteen-year-old,

and I thought, as I was losing my heart,

“Jesus, there’s obviously a lot more to Bob Rosenthal

than meets the eye!” . . .

That Poem George Found

In the year 1327, at the opening of the first hour,

on the 6th of April, I entered the labyrinth.

My wandering since has been without purpose.

Here, look at it. Wanna see this? No, I want

to find out what’s happening with the Indians.

What Indians, the ones that were torturing Jane Bowles

to death? No, the Algonquins & the Iroquois. Eileen

& I already finished that other book. Well,

Fuck yourself then.

DNA

FOR ALICE NOTLEY

: Ms. Sensitive Princess:

As furious as Ho Chih Minh

As clever as Mr. Pound

As graceful as a Ben Jonson lyric, “this mountain belly of mine”

As noisy as Bob Dylan

As crooked as Lawrence, as bent as they come

As curious as Philip Whalen, like Beckett, say, is

As pale as Creeley, as Emily Dickinson

As frantic as Jane Bowles, or, as frantic as Jack Kerouac

As awkward as George Smiley

As scarce as Samuel Johnson

As ridiculous as Tennyson, or Kenneth Koch

As loyal as Henry Miller, like Charles de Gaulle is

As permanent as Israel must seem to Chas. Dickens

At as late as 3 o’clock in the morning, or 5:15 a.m., or noon!

Run a check on that, will you Watson?

Back in the Old Place

Thinking about past times in New York by talking

about them reminds me of talking on the steps

We took to get where we are and our current moral view

which is centered around loose suspicion

that our friends for example only tolerate us because

of our mysterious lack of magic

And so actually hate us because of our power, which we do have.

So pretty soon it’ll be Christmas, in about six months

& if we are lucky those friends will have been hit by trucks by then

the tea in the white cup is either half-gone or

I am, in any case, soon you will come back up from

Christmas sitting on the steps with the trucks roaring by

thinking I am not that person, so why did I act like that?

because I see one of my friends on a truck & he is talking

about his former friend, the enemy; and I see that I am that enemy &

I also see that the street is covered with fish because of a terrible

accident

No, I don’t see that, I only see that I am that enemy, & I dig that

it makes me feel like the street is covered with fish . . .

& the street is covered with fish, & they are my fish, those fish—

but it doesn’t matter, along comes a real truck, there’s a terrible

accident, & the street is covered with fish

The name of the street is Pearl Street & it is crawling with worms

Some of my friends come over, we have funny-tasting coffee

but it is not funny to be drowning

When the yellow bird’s note was almost stopped

it was then I spread a little bit of butter on my bread

& when the yellow butter covered the tiny top

I began to imagine that someone was there cooking it

It was fun to imagine that; fun standing still, & fun taking it

to be a fountain my friend said was a pile of old birds

but what my friend said was a pile of old words, yes sir,

I said to the mountain, why don’t you move out

of the country of the young & back down into the big city, where

all there is is muscle butter music?

WRITTEN WITH JACK COLLOM

Blue Tilt

FOR TOM CLARK

“But & then at that time

also . . .”

I could and would

often did

dig

the aesthetics of change:

the mechanics made me yawn so, tho,

to see all that to-do

over a simple little

ball

& all that money

involved?                         Jesus Christ!

Keep your electricity,

go dotty,

I’m tipsy!

“It’s simple. You’ve got a twisted pelvis.”

Dr. Reuben Greenberg said,

proving about as useful as his brother-

in-law,

Clement.

Just give me a good well-made hand-crafted

wooden leg,

& I’ll dig even my next, 45th,

Fall.

Little American Poetry Festival

FOR BILL & JOANNE

Often I try so hard with stimulants

which only graze the surface

As my voice fondly plays your name

without music

but Jim Dine’s toothbrush eases two pills

for

Stupefied aborigines

who study for the first time

the sentient earlobes

that hang suspended from no ears at all

venting expletives

at the velvet moon

no more stupefied than I was

upon first being folded into

and then hopelessly knowing

this whole world’s activity

under the clear blue sky; I have come

to change all that: bells, ring; daylight, fade;

fly, resting on your shoulder blades for hours

On the count of three, drums will clatter

like rain

from the hills

& Sleep the lazy owl of Night

& Sleep will make you whole

& Sleep the bushes of the field

& Sleep will make you grow

& you will grow odd

For inside you is a delirious god

& if the drought don/t get you

then the corn worms will

if you don’t sober up, kick the brunette out of bed

& go “out” to earn your pay

but I continue, I simply stay

to burn the Midnight lamp

until the restaurant closes and the streets

are empty of every passer-by

It’s heavy, it’s hard, but

it means out: & Sleep, the Angels

in the sky, Sleep will make you fly,

I know. After all,

I am an obelisk of Egypt; & we

are the Beautiful People of Africa,

etcetera

Whereas the real state is called golden

where things are exactly what they are

which is why I wish to become surface,

like Sleep, & Wake-up!

After Peire Vidal, & Myself

FOR SHELLEY

Oh you, the sprightliest & most puggish, the brightest star

Of all my lively loves, all Ladies, & to whom once I gave up

My heart entire, thenceforth yours to keep forever

Locked up in your own heart’s tiniest room, my best hope, or

To throw away, carelessly, at your leisure, should that prove

Yr best pleasure, Who is that dumpy matron, decked out in worn & faded

Shabby army fatigues which pooch out both before & behind, now screeching

Out my small name in a dingy Public Library on the lower East Side? & now

Scoring me painfully in philistine Commedia dell’arte farce, low summer fare

Across a pedestrian Ferry’s stretch of water in some meshugganah Snug Harbor

And once more, even, fiercely pecking at me in the cold drab Parish Hall of

Manhattan’s Landmark Episcopal Church, where a once Avant-garde now Grade

School

Poetry Project continues to dwell, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bouwerie, whose

Stones hold in tight grip one wooden leg & all of Peter Stuyvesant’s bones?

Who is that midget-witch who preens & prances as she flaunts her lost wares,

Otherwise hidden beneath some ancient boy’s flannel-shirt, its tail out &

flapping,/ & who

Is shrieking even now these mean words:

“Hey Ted!” “Hey, you Fat God!”

& calling me, “Fickle!”             “Fickle!”

& she points a long boney finger

at me, & croons, gleefully.

“Limbo!”      “That’s where you really live!”

& She is claiming to be you

as she whispers, visciously,

“Alone, &

In Pain, in Limbo, is where you live in your little cloud-9 home      Ted!

Pitiful!”

She has a small purse, & removing it from one of her shopping bags

She brings out from inside that small purse, my withered heart; & lifting it

high into the air over her head with her two hands, she turns it upside down

unzips its fasteners, & shakes it out over the plywood floor, happily. “Empty,”

she cries loudly, “just like I always knew it would be!” “Empty!” “Empty” “Empty!”

I watch her, and think,

That’s not really you, up there, is it,

Rose? Rochelle? Shelley?

O, don’t be sad, little Rose!   It’s still

Your ribbon I wear, your favor tied to the grip of my lance, when I

ride out to give battle,

these golden days.

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

Old Moon

I can’t sleep walking through walls

taking pleasure in nothing of either of us

losing shape in room clock lamp air

heavy & the inverse who now may see desire

hovering over the body, lifting, diminish

down into oversize misshaper head-size, inside

thin down to the fine bright line of white light

across under distant locked door too far for human feet

although your face stays, while I can will, & perform

in the same way that this is performance

you give it body, that face, and it is your body

it is yours & makes my own return

marks my own return striped with red, eyes, and lashes

that are stretch-marks breathing against your lashes.

From the Execution Position

“Members of the brain, welcome to New York City

on a soft day weighted with rain, where

slightly ahead of time, trifoliate, but humanly low,

reading in a man’s book this line, you fibrillate—

‘It is easier to die than to remember.’—

You turn to the nurse, but he shakes your hand

With the fin of a fish: &

Why this self-deprivation of full human heritage?

& this does not happen all that seldom.

However, these days you do get

to do what you will, if

not always what you would wish. Tell me, is it

Ghost or Dancer straight? Substance or shadow, who is swish?”

The weight of the rain remains inside

trying to read, sorting, ordering,

doing in the waves of her walking

from coffee to cup & back to chair, sitting unseen

by the bed

where by now I am

going in the execution position.

Normal Depth Exceeds Specified Value

20th Century man strives toward the unfinished-machine exalted state.

Do not judge a man by his actions.

Birds cannot express the satisfaction I feel.

Happiness is often a rebound from hard work.

So, let us draw the patterns from the particulars—

In a pig’s butt!

Americans emphasize genius over discipline

& it isn’t going to work:

the temptation to remain alone in the house. . . .

to live Revolution his own way on a day-to-day basis. . . .

If you’re not out in 5 minutes, we’re going to burn the place down!

. . . . Never act one-on-one with a co-actor.

The past six months every knock on the door

has been someone in anguish. . . .

Winged Pessary

There I was

flat on my back at 30,000 ft.

getting my kicks

from a head

stuck in its own cloudy trousers

Your river is deep

it’s muddy

My river is wide brown mud from

it seems an unacceptable tube

You puzzle me

The corn is green

Goya doesn’t

Your blood is the color of baked clay

Your lines are always parallel

and short

Your orchards a chalice

Your acres one sandbox

after another

precariously balanced

tilt

you’re beneath my notice

up above my head it’s blue a funny thing

& I can hear a band of angels

& Joni James sing:

“it’s time you knew

Old girl you’re through

All you can do is count the raindrops

Falling on little girl blue.”

Now passing over Oklahoma

23 minutes in a life I

guess I was just passing through

That kind of love is awful

This wheel’s on fire

smoke clouds

hot wind

air-bag

Mayday.

Do You Know Rene?

One and one

leave me alone

I have to get some sleep

It’s tiring always being a bore

sassy & fast but kind of crass

why am I writing now

this is the other thing to do

It’s all I do

you can go home again

Philadelphia likes that

Merlin & Herman like it too

The Prisoner of Second Avenue

Hubba Hubba

Help, he’s an intellectual dear dear

oh dear. The Mamas & The Papas

got old. The fat one died. I’m

practically asleep now.

Sunset Blvd:

Peter lives there. With a Filipino gardener

& his Brooke.

It’s only a mystery.

I’m positively boiling myself

It’s not that I yearn for him

I just need him

In desperation I got on top

What an ugly view

looking down at you

Steve Carey

Huge collapsed Mountain Enters from Stage Right,

Deftly lowers Selfe to Floor, next to Bed,

&, Seated, Pours Forth with Basso-Profundo Eloquence

in Seemingly Limitless string (Stream),

Icebergs, fragments

of the Poem of These States,

from Backwards to 1977—

1978.

43

no strange countries

no women

no dance, no clothes

still a wild & strange tune

a song that rises in the blood

not much blood

no virgins

no velvet

no tropical laziness

more eyes though

two more

two eyes,

what do you make of that?

A Spanish Tragedy

He’s literally a shambles as a person

who is in a responsible position Hanging

by a thread in one of the rooms of his

house Essentially what she is doing skitters

off into the air so slovenly that the most

fragmented shell does it to him & he does it

right back to her. This reminds me of cynical

& other good things that are totally pretentious

but sort of hold water so I absolutely won’t

lift a finger why should I? to help these

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

ISOLATE

Iris

petal

Custom chopper

lake

smoke

hickory logs

whinny

Austin-Healy.

cuts

insect

nest

smoke.

A rosette

A niggertoe

flower

almond

Eggs

scooters

a shed

dirt

The Atlantic fleet.

PHOSPHORUS

Old Hen

and egg

an egg.

brooch in

a wet bird

diamond rodent

A rubber hose

crinoline

BLUE         Aphid

Spore

Traps

Nucleii

Flocking

Vegetal

Belfry

Cages

Lava

Poppy

Wing

Aerial

Plankton

mirror

hutch

light

venom

hydrocarbons

premises

tubs

Eat

a pan

edible

antlers

deer

Cradle

Druid?

Hinges

Lava

Xerox

National

Eclair

MUCUS

HAY

Orchid

smoke

song

Pharmacology

piss

Church

Bourbon

Anutt

Old Mines

Turtle

Leper

smokes

a cake.

Scarlet Fever

a baton

Coda: (to ISOLATE)

Antique

Bank

Cover

of which

is number

.FOR BRUCE ANDREWS

(FROM FILM NOIR).

Ronka

I’m gonna embarrass

my mother

&

I’m gonna embarrass

my brother

&

I’m gonna embarrass,

even, my wife,

but I’m not gonna embarrass my life,

O No,

I’m not gonna embarrass my life,

not ever,

I’m not gonna embarrass my life,

Not for you, or her, or anyone.

I’m never gonna embarrass my life—

except if I do . . .

& if it does,

Tough Shit.

My 5 Favorite Records

FOR DENNIS COOPER

1. Le Marteau Sans Maitre : Pierre Boulez (Odyssey 32 16

0154); McKay, alto; Gleghorn,

flute; Thomas, viola; Kraft,

vibraphone; Remsen, xylorimba;

Norman, guitar; Goodwin, percussion;

Robert Craft conducting.

2. Nonet : Ludwig Spohr (London Stereo Treasury STS–1-5074)

Members of the Vienna Philharmonic.

3. Missa Caput : Guillaume Dufay (HNH 4009) Clemencic

Consort.

4. Nonaah : Roscoe Mitchell (Nessa N–9 / 10) Mitchell, Braxton,

Favours, Abrams, Lewis, Jarman, McMillan,

Threadgill.

5. The Knot Garden : Sir Michael Tippit (Philips 6700 063)

Minton, Barstow, Gomez, Hemsley, Carey,

Tear, Herincx; Orchestra of the Royal

Opera Covent House Garden, Colin Davis

conducting.

(Research by Art Lange, music critic, The Chicago Reader,

Chicago, Illinois.)

From Sketches of Amsterdam

FOR ALICE

“I wrote these songs when

I was young

but, I’m here again”

stepping out

down Oude-Zuids Voorburgwal

above the yellow moon sliding

over the canals of Amsterdam

a sojourner macrocosm

carrying

SOJOURNER MICROCOSMS

& Frank’s COLLECTED POEMS along

with my own books of songs

going too quickly

but not too quickly

I hope

in the directions (a map)

of

De Kosmos

for to sing with my brothers & sisters

of the pleasures of living with you

that surround me now

in busy congenial gloomy evening air

where

tho I’m seething with rage

like any star

it’s cool

the half-darkness

of this not unusual day’s

oncoming night

because

everywhere I am you are

clear & bright & right.

Look Fred, You’re a Doctor, My Problem Is Something Like This:

In the Summer between 5th & 6th grade

We moved from Cranston near the City Line

down into the heart of South Providence, or, from

an urban suburb to the White Irish working-class

inner-city. It was 1946. From that

time on, in grade-school, no, that year was

anonymous except spasmodically, but from the

next year on, Jr-High School, on into & thru

High School, at various jobs, thru one

semester at Catholic Providence College, then

3 years in the Army, Korea, and return

to College in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1957) right

up to about 1960, no matter where I

was, in what situation, with the exception of

on the football playground, in card games, and at

home, reading, I didn’t

know the language and I didn’t know

the rules; and naturally I didn’t

know what it was I didn’t know, nor,

therefore, what was it I did know, because

I did know something. In the

army I began to learn about knowing

the rules, and so about myself and rules.

Back in College, while easing

into knowing the rules & what to do with that,

I evidently had begun hearing the language. In

1960, & from then on, I got hit by that special

useful sense that one could, easily, anytime or where,

pick up, & so “know” the language and the rules. It

all had to do with Surface, and it didn’t have

to be shallow.

I took that self to New York City, into

poetry, to Art News, into Readings, thru marriage, into

teaching and then into not teaching, and in and out of

small-time crime. Now, there’s a new, further

place, whose name I didn’t quite catch, and, therefore,

whose language & rules I can barely discern as

up ahead, let alone “what” they might be. It’s

1979. I’m 44.

Compleynt to the Muse

AFTER PHILIP WHALEN

Lady, why will you insist on

Coming back into my life only when

It’s too late, I’ve just this moment

Ago stepped out the backdoor

Of my body, gone ahead into Relativity,

Am looking down over 300 years

Past, Present & Future of my people,

Whom shall be known hereafter as

The White Mountain. They act like

You are with them, each & every

One of the big dumb-bells, & so

They drink and fuck and throw pots

And pick up the children at school

Or Write seventeen poems a week, ad-

Dressing You in the familiar, but I,

I don’t mind at all, now that I’m simply

Air, a large hunk of see-through molecules,

A benevolent smile, & at night a closeness,

Cooling one hemisphere at a time, my bumps

Glittering over & above everyone are perceived

As stars, & friends drink wine far below where

I am grinning & don’t care. I mean, not heavily.

But now you return, and so, I have too,

Into my ashy beard & dusty head, my pink baby’s torso

And you are laughing, and I am once again

Lying in the world, and I’m holding my own, and I’m

Chuckling like Father Christmas to keep from crying.

And it’s all right, my dear, I’m glad you came back. No,

Please stay. Honestly, I’m not dying. Not

For a long time, yet. I’m only just lying.

Rouge

“it”    means   “this”.

I myself now

“know”

that. so,

“it” is true.

i.e., as a matter of course, all

knowing

being

self-evident:

(knowledge):

“it”   and    “that”,

here & there &

vice-versa

constellate reality.

It made, all systems

“Go”.

Just talk.

Coffee And

I am thinking of my old houses

369 Smith Street & 249 Potters Avenue

and the communicability

of houses—and that a house

can’t be just a home, and I

tore up my oldish poem, “Hello, Goodbye”

and

another even older one, “One View / 1960”

and started on this new one, “Dogtown.”

Now I’m across the street I crossed

when at last I came to it—and

beginning

getting down to it.

Three Little Words

FOR LEWIS WARSH

I had a really sad childhood, lived mostly alone,

like everyone else did. Adolescence

Was murder, & weird; but I could dig it.

Manhood was far out—and also, during it,

I paid back one hundred times over each & every son-of-a-bitch

male & female, dog, lizard & insect

Who’d fluffed up my lonely sad childhood with Absolute Terror

or whatever it was that eventually grew up to be this blind, seething

Rage, still & always rising up from out those tiny “unforgettable moments”

we are all all of us the cause of, tho Time

Excuses due to mitigating circumstances but

never forgets; and guilt is always freely given,

Freely received, come rain or come shine, or

haven’t you noticed? You will, believe me.

Now old, or at least more often, I spend much

of each day

Contriving these, my dumb born songs, my memoirs. And to no

purpose; rather, quite simply, this is what one

Has been given. I was born in the Bronx, one hot November 9th,

in 1944. Having reached 5 December, 1980, this cold

Saturday afternoon, I’m almost finished reading to the serious

Manhattan hodgepodge of my current fans & friends,

The large aged husbands & the matronly sexpot wives, with

their daughters at my feet & their sons at the breast,

While they guzzle the bourbons & beers that lighten up today.

These are my companions for life, & they love me. But you pay

and you pay and you pay.

Round About Oscar

FOR STEVE CAREY

Reality is the totality of all things possessing Actuality

Existence, or Essence. Ergo, nowhere one goes

Will one ever be away enough

From wherever one was. The tracks lead uphill.

Power sits heavily for us on those we’ve grown up with.

However,

Uphill tracks usually offer good views, after a while,

While the answer to what’s new is, often, an

Indictment of an intolerable situation.

HOGS SIZE DISTURBS SYCAMORES. BRUINS

DEVOUR MAPLE LEAFS. STEEL CURTAIN FALLS ON HOUSTON.

COWBOY DUO RIDES RAMS INTO SUNSET. Quality tells.

Absolute quality tells absolutely nothing.

The By-Laws

FOR GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

I’d like to show you something. Please look at it.

I get blamed for everything that goes wrong. I’m always left holding the bag.

I’m sorry I threw away the notes I took in High School. I should have been nicer to them.

If you’re not sure about how to spell a word, how can you look it up in the dictionary.

Please take these things off my desk. They’re breaking my heart.

If there aren’t enough workers at the factory, production will be fucked up.

He’ll read the speech over before delivering it. He wants to enliven it with mistakes.

He’s a very successful young man. He’s really getting off.

He didn’t tell us the entire truth. He was afraid something smelled.

I found out he was lying by standing around in his background.

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.

He just has to have a chance to be in The Hall of Fame!”

All pleased rise

Cleansed

Pure

In perfect order go.

Paciorek

FOR ANSELM HOLLO

Light takes the bat, &

shoulder; who can tell us

how? (I wake to sleep, &

take my waking fast). O lowly

worm, falling down upstairs,

& down is a lowly thing, how

fast is no longer a joy?

9:16 & 2:44, & 25 Minutes to 5

Dear Management’s beautiful daughters,

sweetly

made Marion, & Alice, the Elephant—

the

trouble with you two is just happened for

the first time ever, which is once more than

I can hold my head up under ever after again—If

Anybody asks you who made up this song, just tell ’em

It was me, & I’ve done been here & gone.

My Life & Love

FOR PHIL WHALEN

“Do you

think I’ll

ever see

him again?

“Beauty

whose action is

no stronger than a

flower?

“I think I’m about to be

surpassed again.

“Do you think we’d better go to

California?”

“Naw. Don’t be silly. Send him a round

cheese or something. A can

of peaches.”

Hello, Sunshine,

Take off your head; unloose

the duck; lift up your

heart, and quack! I am the

Morning Glory, I take no

back talk. . . .

Take me twice each morning;

be funny that way.

In Morton’s Grille

In Morton’s Grille I

always get nostalgia for Morton’s Grille

which wasn’t called Morton’s Grille

at all, but THE RIVIERA CAFE, way out on

Elmwood Avenue. They had a machine,

this was before TV, you put a quarter in

& a zany 3 minute movie of the Hatfields

shooting at the McCoys out a log cabin

window came on; the McCoys ran out of

bullets, so they started singing, “Pass the

Biscuits, Mirandy!” Grandma’s biscuits were

so hard, terrible, but saved the day when thrown

at the real McCoys.

St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie

FOR HARRIS SCHIFF

Naked

with a lion

a small lesbian

smoking a pipe

some silent young men

“Shit!” they exclaim

“Fuck all women!”

They all start singing patriotic songs

Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s

She was pretty swacked by the time she

Put the spaghetti & meatballs into the orgy pasta

bowl—There was mixed salt & pepper in the

“Tittie-tweak” pasta bowl—We drank some dago red

from glazed girlie demi-tasse cups—after

which we engaged in heterosexual intercourse, mutual

masturbation, fellatio, & cunnilingus. For

dessert we stared at a cupboard full of art critic

friends, sgraffitoed into underglazes on vases. We did

have a very nice time.

Listen, Old Friend

“This ability, to do things well,

and to do them with precision & with

modesty, is nothing but plain & simple

Vanity.

“It is Pride overfertilizes the soil

till alone the blue rose, grow—I know

Dante Alighieri told me so.”

(signed:)

THE SLOTH

Dinosaur Love

FOR ANNE & REED

Anne Lesley Waldman says, No Fossil Fuels

The best of the free times are still yet to come

With all of our running & all of our coming if we

Couldn’t laugh we’d both go insane—with changes

of attitudes

At the Horse Latitudes—if we couldn’t laugh, we’d

All be insane—

but right here with you, the living seems true, &

the gods are not burning us just to keep warm.

Spell

A sparrow whispers in my loins

Geranium plus Geronimo forever

Across the wide Missouri

We drive us.

For Robt. Creeley

“In My Green Age”

like they say,

much compassion,

little dismay,

such exuberance—

Loving:        Caught:       Back:

There’s a place—

“tho are be were as now is now. . . .”

Fine Mothers

With sound         Sun melts snow

Elms fill in

and wind blows green. (“When the wind

was green” . . . ) This is the Spring I knew

would come.

The rosy finches row through.

day moves       then, my room—    lightnights

bat their yellow dust against

the windows, & I dream I am black

running, rising, to the sea:

Evenings, night heroes stop here, or,

gently pass

The trees release    into sky.

Travelling by,

from grove to Mars,

SEVEN arc over.

I call them angels.     O, angels,

O, common & amazing.

Pandora’s Box, an Ode

. . . was 30 when we met. I was

21. & yet he gave me the impression

he was vitally interested in what I

was doing & what was inside me! One

was Tremendous Power over all friends.

Power to make them do whatever. Wed. Bed.

Dig the streets. Two is speeding and pills

to beef up on on top of speeding ills. Three,

assumptions. Four, flattery. Five, highly

articulate streets, & when he saw me I was witty.

I was good poetry. Love was all I was. As

the case is, he had or was a charm

of his own. I had the unmistakable signature

of a mean spirit. Very close to breaking in.

I was like Allen Ginsberg’s face, Jack’s face,

eye to eye on me. Face of Allen. Face of Kerouac.

It was all in California. Now,

all of my kingdoms are here.

To Book-Keepers

The Final Chapters

of the History

of

Modernism are

going to be written

in blood. Yours,

you poor Immigrants!

The School Windows Song

AFTER VACHEL LINDSAY

High School windows are always broken;

Somebody’s always throwing rocks,

Somebody always throws a stone,

Playing ugly playing tricks.

Jr. High windows are always broken, too:

There are plenty of other windows that never

get broken;

No one’s going into Midtown & throwing rocks

At & through big, Midtown, store-windows.

Even the Grade School windows are always

Broken: where the little kids go to school.

Something is already long past terribly wrong.

End of The Public-School Windows Song.

Transition of Nothing Noted as Fascinating

The Chinese ate their roots; it

made them puke. We don’t know til

we see our own. You are irresistible.

It makes me blush. How you

see yourself is my politics. O Turkey,

Resonance in me that didn’t even want to know

what it was, still there, don’t ever make jokes

about reality in Berkeley, they don’t

understand either one there.

Donald Allen, Donald Keene, Wm. “Ted” deBary,

it’s hard to respect oneself,

but I would like to be free.

China Night. Cry of cuckoo. Chinese moon.

Whoa Back Buck & Gee By Land!

FOR WYSTAN AUDEN, &

THELONIOUS SPHERE MONK

This night my soul, & yr soul, will be wrapped in

the same dark shroud

While whole days go by and later their years;

Sleep, Big Baby, sleep your fill

With those daimones of Earth, the Erinyes,

Women in the night who moan yr name.

“Man, that was Leadbelly!”

Frances

Now that I

With you

Since

Leaving

Each day seems

The night

Tired with

Languisht

Suffering

While you

Nor I

With that

I feel.

Sweet Iris

Take these beads from my shoulders

There’s your paintings on the walls

Turn around slow & slowly

Help me make it through the night

Then I’ll take you out for breakfast

Never see you all my life

I Dreamt I See Three Ladies in a Tree

FOR DOUGLAS OLIVER, DENISE RILEY, & WENDY MULFORD

If someone doesn’t help me soon I

believe I’m going to lose my mind, I

mean my tone of voice, my first clue

as to what this speaker is like. Help! (he).

is a beautiful piece of work in that it

has to spill out & still stand as

meeting own requirements: dedicated to Betty

Chapman of Coon, Minnesota: take me deeper

via from the outside, you, my unforgettables, my

best. Hand, 2 hands, wheel, & blood; O broken-hearted

Mystery that used to sing to me: now I’m too misty,

and too much in love. O lovely line that doesn’t give an

inch, but gives.

Moat Trouble

He was wounded & so

was having

Moat Trouble.

Hollywood

paid Lillian Gish $800,000 to

disappear so lovely so pure like milk

seems but isn’t because of the fall-out

but it would have only cost me five & didn’t,

so I did, but when Garbo is the temptress

doesn’t it seem absolutely perfectly

right? just being there? nothing

costs anything that’s something, does it?

like soaking at a Rosenthal / Ceravolo Poetry Reading

or blazing while “The White Snake” unfolds

itself: in the city, there one feels free, while

in the country, Peace, it’s wonderful, & worrisome

I’ve never seen a peaceful demonstration, have you?

NO MORE NUKES

Last Poem

FOR TOM PICKARD

I am the man yr father & Mum was

When you were just a wee insolent tyke

until at 5 o’clock in the afternoon

on one of the days of infamy, & there

were many, & more to come yet, the goons

& the scabs of Management set upon us

Jarrow boys, & left us broken, confused

and alone in the ensuing brouhaha. They

outnumbered us 5 to 1; & each had club

knife or gun. Kill them, kill them, my

sons. Kill their sons.

Mutiny!

The Admirals brushed

the dandruff off their

epaulets and steamed

on the H. M. S. Hesper

toward Argentina. I

like doggies on their “little

feet”, don’t you, I said, but

they kept rolling over, beneath

the tracer bullets and

the Antarctic moon, beneath the

daunting missiles and the Prince

in his helicopter, they were

steaming toward interesting places,

to meet interesting people, and

kill them. They were at sea,

and it was also beneath them.

Jo-Mama

The St. Mark’s Poetry Project

is closed for the summer. But

all over the world, poets

are writing poems. Why?

Montezuma’s Revenge

In order to make friends with the natives

In my home town, I let them cut off my face

By the shores of Lake Butter, on

The 7th anniversary of their arrival

In our Utopia. It was the First of May.

Nose-less, eye-less, speechless, and

With no ears, I understood their reasoning,

And will spend the rest of my days

helping them cover their asses. Free.

Turk

FOR ERJE AYDEN

“There’s no place

to go

my heart,

for all your

100,000

words.”

M’Sieur & Madame Butterfly

I go on loving you

Like water Yggdrasil

Where you are 100,000 flowers

bloom    while across the

broken eggshell field the ink

rises from the fossils, as my

tongue drifts lightly into the Gobi Desert of yr

ear      & we become a person’s lungs & take to the air.

Wantonesse

Heart of my heart

Fair, & enjoyable

Harmlessly spooky

Loving her back

Creature

FOR ALICE NOTLEY

Before I was alive

I were a long, dark, continent

Lonely from the beginning of time

Behind Midnight’s screen on St. Mark’s Place

And my thin, black, rage

Did envelop my pale, dusty, willowy-green-

Shell in dark bricks & black concrete

’til I was a Hell that was not fire, but only hot.

Then I called you to bring me

One more drink, & your good legs

And translucent heart brought me

A city, which I put on, & became

Glad, & I walked toward Marion’s &

Helena’s, to be seen, & found beautiful,

And was, & I came alive, & I cried Love!

XIII

(AFTER JACK KEROUAC)

O Will Hubbard in the night! A great writer today he is,

he is a shadow hovering over Western Literature, and

no great writer ever lived without that soft and

tender curiosity, verging on maternal care, about what

others say & think, (think & say), no great writer

ever packed off from this scene on earth without

amazement like the amazement he felt because

I was myself.

Providence

Lefty Cahir, loan me your football shoes again—

Clark, let me borrow the brown suit once more—

I hear a fluttering against my windows.

River, don’t rise above the 3rd floor.

Paris, Frances

I tried to put the coffee back together

For I knew I would not be able to raise the fine

Lady who sits wrapped in her amber shawl

Mrs. of everything that’s mine right now, an interior

Noon smokes in its streets, as useless as

Mein host’s London Fog, and black umbrella, & these pills

Is it Easter? Did we go? All around the purple heather?

Go fly! my dears. Go fly! I’m in the weather.

Windshield

There is no windshield.

Stars & Stripes Forever

FOR DICK JEROME

How terrible a life is

And you’re crazy all the time

Because the words don’t fit

The heart isn’t breakable

And it has a lot of dirt on it

The white stuff doesn’t clean it & it can’t

be written on

Black doesn’t go anywhere

Except away & there isn’t any

Just a body very wet & chemistry

which can explode like salt & snow

& does so, often.

Minnesota

If I didn’t feel so

bad, I’d feel so good!

I Heard Brew Moore Say, One Day

FOR ALLEN GINSBERG

Go in Manhattan,

Suffer Death’s dream Armies in battle!

Wake me up naked:

Solomon’s Temple The Pyramids & Sphinx sent me here!

The tent flapped happily spacious & didn’t fall down—

Mts. rising over the white lake 6 a.m.—mist drifting

between water & sky—

Middle-aged & huge of frame, Martian, dim, nevertheless I

flew from bunk

into shoe of brown & sock of blue, up into shining morning

light, by suns,

landed, & walked outside me, & the bomb’d dropped

all over the Lower East Side! What new element

Now borne in Nature?, I cried. If I had heart attack now

Am I ready to face my mother? What do? Whither go?

How choose now?, I cried. And, Go in Manhattan, Brew Moore

replied.

Postcard

THE SENDER OF THIS

POSTCARD IS SECRETLY

(STILL) UNSURE OF YOUR WORTH

AS (EITHER) A FRIEND OR A

HUMAN BEING. YOU COCKSUCKER.

Smashed Ashcan Lid

FOR GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

Oh, George—that

utter arrogance! So

that people can’t tell that

you’re any good—

“chases dirt”, for Chrissakes!!

Okay. First. . . .

“Truth is that which,

Being so, does do its

work.”

(I said That.)

July 11, 1982

Dear Alice,

The reason I love

you so much is because

you’re very

beautiful & kind. I

also appreciate your

intelligence, though what

“intelligence” is I’m not

sure, & your wit, which

resembles nothing I’ve

ever thought about.

Your loving husband,

Ted Berrigan

The Way It Was in Wheeling

(AFTER FREDDY FENDER)

I met her in The Stone Age,

riding shotgun—I can

Still recall that neon sign she

wore—She was

Cramlin’ through the prairie near

the off-ramp, & I

Knew that she was rotten to the core.

I screamed, in pain, I’d live off her

forever—She

Sd to me, she’d have a ham-on-

rye—but who’d have

Thought she’d yodel, while in labor?

I never had a chance

To say Good-bye!

My Autobiography

For love of Megan I danced all night,

fell down, and broke my leg in two places.

I didn’t want to go to the doctor.

Felt like a goddam fool, that’s why.

But Megan got on the phone, called

my mother. Told her, Dick’s broken

his leg, & he won’t go to the doctor!

Put him on the phone, said my mother.

Dickie, she said, you get yourself

up to the doctor right this minute!

Awwww, Ma, I said. All right, Ma.

Now I’ve got a cast on my leg from

hip to toe, and I lie in bed all day

and think. God, how I love that girl!

Down on Mission

There is a shoulder in New York City

Lined, perfectly relaxed, quoted really, quite high

Only in the picture by virtue of getting in

to hear Allen Ginsberg read, 1961

And though the game is over it’s beginning lots of

years ago,

And all your Cities of Angels, & San Francisco’s are

going to have to fall, & burn again.

In Your Fucking Utopias

Let the heart of the young

exile the heart of the old: Let the heart of the old

Stand exiled from the heart of the young: Let

other people die: Let Death be inaugurated.

Let there be Plenty Money. & Let the

Darktown Strutters pay their way in

To The Gandy-Dancers Ball. But Woe unto you, O

Ye Lawyers, because I’ll be there, and

I’ll be there.

Dice Riders

Nothing stands between us

except Flying Tigers

Future Funk

The Avenue B Break Boys

and

The Voidoids—

Sometimes,

Time gets in the way, &

sometimes, lots of sometimes,

We get in its way, so,

Love, love me, do.

The Heads of the Town

FOR HARRIS SCHIFF

They killed all the whales

now they’re killing all the acorns

I’m almost the last Rhinoceros

I guess I’d better kill them.

To Be Serious

You will dream about me

All the months of your life.

You won’t know whether

That means anything to me or not.

You will know that.

It’s about time

You know something.

W/O Scruple

FOR BERNADETTE MAYER

The wicked will tremble, the food will rejoice

When he & I grow young again

For an hour or two on

Second Avenue, at Tenth

About 35 days from now—

Although that will not get it;

And that will not be that.

George’s Coronation Address

With Faith we shall be able . . .

There will be peace on earth . . .

& Capricious day . . .

maybe we’ll be there, or true.

Speed the day then.

Tough Cookies

You took a wrong turn in

1938. Don’t worry about it.

The sun shines brightest when

the others are sleeping.

There is a Briss in your

immediate future.

Take heart. Shakespeare was

probably an asshole too.

Your life is rare and precious

& it has no mud. Stay with it.

You have strange friends, but

they are going to be strangers.

Everything is Maya, but

you will never know it.

Your gaiety is not cowardice,

but it may be hepatitis.

Skeats and the Industrial Revolution

(DICK JEROME, 3/4 View)

ink on paper

God: perhaps, ‘The being worshipped. To

whom sacrifice is offered. Not allied to

‘good’, (which is an adjective, not a

‘being.’ Godwit: a bird, or, more recently,

a ‘twittering-machine’; (from the Anglo-Saxon,

God-wiht: just possibly meaning, ‘worthy creature.’

Viz. Isle of Wight—Isle of Creatures. See, also,

Song, folk; Childe Ballad # 478: “I’ve been

a creature for a thousand years.” . . . .)

Besa

(TO THE GODS)

He is guardian to the small kitten.

He looks so determined.

He has a graceful hunch.

Light swirls around his crown,

wispy, blondish, round.

Three shades of blue surround

him—denim,

Doorway, sky. His hands are up,

His eyes are in his head. He’s

my brother, Jack;

Kill him & I kill you.

Natchez

FOR ROSINA KUHN

I stand by the window

In the top I bought to please you

As green rain falls across Chinatown

You are blissed out, wired, & taping,

15 blocks uptown

When I am alone in the wet & the wind

Flutes of rain hire me

Boogie-Men drop in to inspire me

In the Deer Park

FOR TOM CAREY

“I know where I’m going

“& I know where I came from

“& I know who I love

“but the Dear knows who I’ll marry . . . . ”

I bought that

striped polo shirt,

long-sleeves, for 75 cents,

& wore it every minute, that year

I got a sunburn

on my face & hands

I hadn’t noticed it.

But when someone pointed it out

I said it felt good.

I was over

a year in that

Park. Never did

feel in a hurry.

I was “in love.”

Tompkins Square Park

All my friends in the

park speak Latin: when

they see me coming, they

say, “Valium?”

Warrior

FOR JEFF WRIGHT

I watch the road: I am a line-

man for the County. City streets

await me, under lustrous purple skies, purple

light,

each night. Manhattan is a needle

in the wall. While

it’s true, the personal, insistent, instant-

myth music cuts

a little close to the bone

& I have to get up early for work tomorrow, still

there’s

lots of quail in Verona, & I am

jubilant with horror

because I’m searching for pain underneath

another overload.

I hear you singing in the wires.

Space

is when you walk around a corner

& I see you see me across Second Avenue

You’re dressed in identifiable white

over your jeans & I’m wearing Navy—

Jacob Riis is beams of sunlight as

I cross against the light & we intercept

at the Indian Candy Store. The

Family has gone off to Parkersburg, W. Virginia

The Chrysler Building is making the Empire State

stand tall, & friendly it leans your way

There’s appointments for everybody

They don’t have to be kept, either.

Dresses for Alice

We are the dresses for Alice.

We go on, or off, for solace.

New York Post

FOR MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN

Two cops cruise East 9th

between First and A. Talk

about schedules, they’re on

the Graveyard Shift: 11 to 7

in the morning. They are definitely

not boring. As they pass, I waver,

with my pepsis, two beers, & paper:

what am I doing here?

Shouldn’t I be home, or them?

But I guess I’m on this case, too . . . .

Let No Willful Fate Misunderstand

When I see Birches, I think

of my father, and I can see him.

He had a pair of black shoes & a pair of

brown shoes,

bought when he was young and prosperous.

“And he polished those shoes, too, Man!”

“Earth’s the right place for Love,”

he used to say. “It’s no help,

but it’s better than nothing.”

We are flesh of our flesh,

O, blood of my blood; and we,

We have a Night Tie all our own; & all

day & all night it is dreaming, unaware

that for all its blood, Time is the Sandpaper;

that The Rock can be broken; that

Distance is like Treason. Something

There is that doesn’t love a wall: I

am that Something.

Unconditional Release at 38

FOR DICK GALLUP

like carrying a gun

like ringing a doorbell

like kidnapping Hitler

like just a little walk in the warm Italian sun . . .

like, “a piece of cake.”

like a broken Magnavox

like the refrigerator on acid

like a rope bridge across the Amazon in the rain

like looking at her for a long few seconds

like going to the store for a newspaper

like a chair in a dingy waiting-room

like marriage

like bleak morning in a rented room in a pleasant, new city

like nothing else in the world now or ever

Ass-face

“This is the only language you understand, Ass-Face!”

Minuet

the bear eats honey

between the harbored sighs

inside my heart

where you were

no longer exists

blank bitch

Buenos Aires

Strings like stories shine

And past the window flakes of paper

Testimony to live valentine

A gracious start then hand to the chest

in pain

And looking out that window.

Ms. Villonelle

What is it all about—this endless

Talking & walking a night away—

Smoking—then sleeping half the day?

Typing a résumé, you say, smilingly.

The Who’s Last Tour

Who’s gonna kiss your pretty little

feet?

Who’s gonna hold your hand?

Who’s gonna kiss your red, ruby

lips?

Who’s gonna be your man, love,

Who’s gonna be yr

man? Why,

I am. Don’tcha know? Why, I am.

To Sing the Song, That Is Fantastic

Christmas in July, or

Now in November in

Montreal

Where the schools are closed,

& the cinnamon girls

Sing in the sunshine

Just like Yellowman:

The soldiers shoot the old woman

down

They shoot the girl-child on

the ground: we

Steal & sell the M-16s, use

The money to buy the weed

The sky is blue & the Erie is

Clean;

Come to us with your M-16:

Soldier, sailor, Policeman, Chief,

Your day is here & you have come

to Grief.

Sing the songs, & smoke the weed;

The children play & the wind is green.

Interstices

“Above his head

changed”

And then one morning to waken perfect-faced

Before my life began

cold rosy dawn in New York City

call me Berrigan

Every day when the sun comes up

I live in the city of New York

Green TIDE behind; pink against blue

Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame

not asleep, I belong here, I was born, I’m amazed to be here

It is a human universe: & I interrupts yr privacy

Last night’s congenial velvet sky left behind . . . kings . . . panties

My body heavy with poverty (starch) missing you mind clicks

into gear

November. New York’s lovely weather hurts my forehead

On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar

But, “old gods work” so sleeping & waking someone I

love calls me

into the clear

Bad Timing

Somethings gotta be done! I thought.

Rusty I was?

BANG!                     (“I fell right down

on the floor. Just like

Dave DeBusschere.”)

Slept a few days.

I woke up; just as Red’s voice

said, “She is

hurting, we

must DEFEND tons

of indistinguishable tones.”

I said, “This sense

there was a way, I met in the possible

O.K.

Under my roof.

Mars. Autumn. Bills (on the Bill

scene).

BILL ME.

This Guy

He eats toenails.

Is rude, vain, cruel, gloomy.

He talks with bitter cryptic wit.

Is unclean. “Is this some

new kind

of meatball?” . . . . sitting in

a rowboat,

waiting for a bite . . . . has

just asked—with considerable

gravitas—if he might be

allowed

to become one of my suitors.

And I said yes.

A City Winter

My friends are crazy with grief

& sorrows—their children are born

and their morning lies broken—

& now it’s afternoon.

Give Them Back, Who Never Were

I am lonesome after mine own kind—the

hussy Irish barmaid; the Yankee drunk who was once

a horsecart Dr.’s son, & who still is, for that matter;

The shining Catholic schoolboy face, in serious glasses,

with proper trim of hair, bent over a text by Peire Vidal,

& already you can see a rakish quality of intellect there;

Geraldine Weicker, who played Nurse in MY HEART’S IN

THE HIGHLANDS, on pills, & who eventually married whom? The

fat kid from Oregon, who grew up to be our only real poet;

& the jaunty Jamaica, Queens, stick-figure, ex US Navy, former

French Negro poet, to whom Frank O’Hara once wrote an Ode,

or meant to, before everything died, Fire Island, New

York, Summer, 1966.

Via Air

Honey,

I wish you were here.

I wrote some poems about it.

And though it goes,

and it’s going,

it will never leave us.

Christmas Card

O little town of Bethlehem,

Merry Christmas

to Jim

& Rosemary.

Christmas Card

FOR BARRY & CARLA

Take me, third factory of life!

But don’t put me in the wrong guild.

So far my heart has borne even

the things I haven’t described.

Never be born, never be died.

Poem

The Nature of the Commonwealth

the whole body of the People

flexed her toes and

breathed in pine.

I’m the one that’s so

radical, ’cause all I do is pine. Oh I just

can’t think of anything—

No politics. No music. Nobody. Nothing but sweet

Romance. Per se. De gustibus non disputandum est.

Flutters eyelashes. Francis, my house is falling down.

Repair it. Merry Christmas.

A Certain Slant of Sunlight: Out-takes

Bardolino

Allen & Peter, heads close together, Allen

weeps magically during “Reds”:

later, drinking pepsi in my living room

they discuss with Robert Lowell Dr. Williams’

Communist wheelbarrow—but

Peter says his own

Wheelbarrow is blue.

Postcard 12/2/82

Feb. 11, 1982. Last night reading Permanent War

Economy by Sennyor Melman for 30 pages

& toward the end of the book in the

appendix Says 1F-16 Super fighter plain costing

6 or 10 million could provide Houses for 240

families—Peter Orlovsky

(“Reading this note, and thinking about Thomas Wolfe:

12 Feb 82

—Ted Berrigan”).

New Poets of England & America

“the taste is pleasant, and the insane

perfection, mild . . . .”

Get Away from Me You Little Fool

“I have always been emotional beyond belief, so

there simply must be plenty money in my life: it’s

not that I like money, I just need not to

not have enough, ever! So, if I had to be

a leaf, why ever so many kinds would do—

they all tremble, don’t they? I know that my

Redeemer liveth; there is a Lord will provide,

somewhere, for specialists! I’m not cold meat loaf,

after all, damp & wooly, dontcha know?”

“You lack charm.”

4 Metaphysical Poems

“Get a job at the railroad”

“Loan me a few bucks”

“I gotta buy some pills”

“So I can understand John Ashbery.”

Who Was Sylvia?

Queen             name

ice            sign

was all that remained

of her suicide note.

Anselm

it is a well-lit afternoon

across the incredible static of time-space-language

reading a book

“to be born again”

between bouts

through two layers of glass

I call your name.

In the mirror

Anselm’s dreams

the dimensions of the world

the performance of the world

my beauties

smoke

writing

Wednesday Evening Services

Blindfold shores leaving sad

an audience of dancers

Frank O’Hara’s dead & we are not

The General Returns

From One Place

To Another

the program was dedicated to him

but I couldn’t make it

Head Lice

I have no brain.

My body is covered with vermin (a few).

People are calling me names.

I deserve these names.

My body is being transformed into glass,

with a few vermin on it.

So be it.

Little Travelogue

When seeking sky you’re left with sky, then

“we kill ourselves to propagate our kinde”—We sleep

and these guys come in with hypodermics & spray us

with ice water—

Monkeys press switches & little babies freak out & cry,

“pick me!” “pick me!”—Oh, Daddy, I was a flower, &

When I listened to George Shearing, they told me, I broke

the World’s Record for rapid eye movement! Then, I don’t know

What I did then, but it was green, & then red, & then

blue & yellow!

Sleeping Alone

It’s a previous carnation, where?

I think it lived in the shiny lapel

of my rust colored dinner jacket

slung over the closet doorknob

the night of the senior prom

at St. Xavier’s High, when I was

Babe Harrington’s date and she

was selected queen of the prom

& we danced the first dance alone

just the two of us, to her own

personal request “Embraceable You.”

The closet was in the blue room

far away upstairs. Babe married

Joe Fogerty and gained four pounds.

“Another has

come to the

sky mirror . . .”

(He in the peeling silver eats my drugs)

The Pope’s Nose

FOR ANNE WALDMAN

a nose, heavy, square, & massive;

large, flesh irrigated with blood;

a light grave voice; his face

a long rectangle; pink; poetry

pours out of it like kool-aid

at unofficial noon it is crumpled

like a kleenex:

here, blow.

The LADY, JUST WHEN I THINK I KNOW

YOU, YOU TAKE CAPRICIOUS FORM Travelling

Circus & Road Show (or, IN THE LABYRINTH)

Geranium’s

another word

for

“my heart is on my

sleeve”

. . . coming from the corner,

heading for the stairs.

NOW APPEARING IN:

MANHATTAN

TODAY THRU _______

Treason of the Clerks

They set you up. Took yr stuff. Gave

it to me.

I made a Little Monster with it.

He’s the enemy of a Wookie.

He turns grass black and puts it

on him so

You can’t see certain parts of his body.

(The Bad parts.) I can’t talk to you.

All A-Glower Went My Love Riding

Hitch on here

My little timeless

Teeth & gums, you tiny

Particles of mid-Victorian Bakery

Furniture, that Dickens, Tennyson, &

Bob Creeley saw, where fingertip & moon

Remain infinitely separate, the way

Specific chemical hatred & twizzlers

Do, or one-inch foot in Nature’s

Chrysler Building, blue and gold, sí,

That is what they, we, are. And

Why not? You take a hike? I’ll be

Your legazine, oh buss! &

we’ll leave their golden worlds

while the band plays on, we drive us.

Climbed by Grandma We Stand on Morning’s Hill

Now she guards her chalice in a temple

of fear; once

a Hardy Boy, a philosopher, a

blue Christmas light:

Boils secretly Biotherm . . .

. . . the time you . . . when you . . .

In praise of %*@!!! *?@! and

in class shouting “Dig it!”

(I told them you were left-handed).

With Eileen in Locarno

We commemorated a joyous (if

unrequited) love—because

it was in another country—

because we were each other people

—because the love that we

celebrated, did that in commemoration

of, had been neither ours,

nor, most certainly, unrequited. We

were both so sad, we laughed & then

we cried in Locarno. We wished

our ashes to be mingled together

forever & forever & forever. Next

year, in Cho-fu-sa.

St. Mark’s By-the-Pacific

Light, informal, & human

Are your seasons, danger

Waters coming, pass us by,

bye-bye—lightly warm &

humid are your tropics, high

above the footpath past the sty.

The pigs grunt no more beneath

the window, I’m glad we ate them

The goats are gone, so no one else

can get them—& the clouds’ reflections

look like a pride of lions

in your eyes. This disease isn’t terminal,

so it’s restful; we fuck & think over wine

here, there are eggs & cream in the fridge,

it’s so divine to be here!

Three Lost Years

FOR PEGGY DECOURSEY

For a brief time Acting Chief

Didn’t harmonize actively with an easy

View of life—pinball machines being played

By preposterous kid-wits on the backs

of Flat-bed Pick-up trucks—by

Land’s End in glad—or else sad-ness—But

Why should I care? Grace falls

On anyone who can walk out of Ballroom A;

And out off into the Sky-Vista! Sure. &

So does Peggy.

Butchie’s Tune

FOR ALEX & ADA

What’s the number I request.

When the band began to play?

a fragrant flowered shrub blush

and one cannot go back, except in time

This mushroom walks in.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!”

He is not really thinking.

Yet I take him purely as treasure.

This morning we were footprints in the

snow. And The Band Played On.

Listening to the words from the morning bush

all the day,

We sleep & dream our lives away. & so, a

tendency to get surprised rarely is absent,

this perfect day.

La Bohème

I’m not difficult but there are just certain things

that this here that are not this here, & no

matter what you say, No! (no) I don’t ever do that . . .

But when you think about it, it seems that

this here doing nothing could use a head if anyone

nice has one they aren’t using, no?

Turkeys

FOR TOM CAREY

They have bent.

They cling.

They attack & capture.

It is a treat, a nightmare, a punch in the face.

He wanders by himself.

He lingers. He idles

In his little house.

He absorbs, and is absorbed.

He begins to bear down on what he sees:

Young faces, puzzling argot, meat, or “the postulant”:

You nod and scrunch up your face and chuckle.

Let me out of here you silently shriek.

“I’ve got to hang up now, a man is yelling at me.”

A pill always seems to be about something.

To a Young Painter*

“Ah Fitz but we are profound

chaps—we word lads.”

“We ride in our round paper boats

From Ireland and Israel & Iceland without

coats. We feed our slaves

Locusts, our kids Moths & oats; and we starve

our cave-painters because they are sloths!” Love,

Mr. P. F. C. Hemingstein

Upside Down

You don’t have to be Marie Curie

or even Simone de Beauvoir already

to write your memoirs, you know? after

all, we all have a polymorphous perverse

first person singular, don’t we? . . . .

If you don’t want to see & hear, don’t feel

like it, say . . . maybe wd rather worry, or

sulk. . . . Still you do have to remember, there’s

no way to put blinders on one’s insides, you

know . . . or do you? Sure you can.

Der Asra

Every day back & forth

The exquisite daughter of the Sultan walked

At evening by the fountain,

Where the white water splashes.

Every day the young slave

Stood at evening by the fountain,

Where the white water splashes;

Every day he grew pale, and paler.

Then, one evening, the Princess, turning

Came up to him with these words:

Thy name will I know! thy

Country! thy Kin!

And the slave spoke: I am called

Mohamet. I am from Yemen.

And my people are the Asra

who die, when they love.

HEINRICH HEINE

(RANS. TED BERRIGAN & GORDON BROTHERSTON)

Fern

I had this dream

I was supposed

to get married

to a sensitive prince, &

together

we wd score for hash

from our maid-of-honor, Sancho Panza—

A choir of Windmills in their cassocks & surplices

were going to surround us in song for

the rest of our lives,

beautiful boy sopranos, singing with aching purity, the

only song they know: THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY.

my whole life? I hid myself beside a burning

bush,

My verdant response

to monogamy

in Spring. And

The sea was tumbling in harness

As I sailed out to die.

San Francisco

You took me

for everything

I have

I had it

Thanks

for that

You

O, Sexual Reserve

Why don’t we

call up

David

Hockney &

ask him for

a thousand?

One Day in the Afternoon of the World

FOR ERJE AYDEN

I never said I was right, or wrong.

I said I was lucky. I waved a leg

in the air. First, I’m going to eat this,

Then I’m going to eat you! Just two

High livers, stretched-out on the Elephant grass,

mouths dripping with blood, & wheezing like fire-sirens,

We passed our long love’s morn:

So ends my song, like a pair of she-lions.

Two Serious Ladies

That’s all

one life needs—

Two serious ladies.

Down Moon River

Talking

To Charlie on the stoop

Wearing asbestos suit

I see the really horrible fly

On top of the yellow rose—I

Can’t believe it, it’s so ugly

I just don’t have much conversation

to give, these days, now I’ve sung my ABC’s:

(next time won’t you sing with me?): She

sang beside herself, beyond

The genius of the Sea.

At 80 Langton Street (S.F.)

FOR BILL BERKSON

I stand at the dock in judgement

literally already condemned

but also am here to be informed,

as my illustrious colleagues Anselm Hollo,

Lorenzo Thomas, and Kathy Acker

have done before me.

I am pleased and flattered

to be joined in such Noble

Company, & only wish that I too might spark

giant & seething controversies & provoke angry

exchanges & bloody fistfights; but, like Anselm Hollo

I am merely a National Treasure, so, what I am

going to do is talk, which is what I do, plus read my poems.

Bill Berkson will take care of the rest, the doing what must

be done part.

So, let us begin. I’m about to do so, I will offer you this

one word of advice, in front.

Duck.

* “(He had a way of wearing very casual clothes.)”

Last Poems

Robert (Lowell)

Like the philosopher Thales

who thought all things water

and fell into a well . . . trying to

find a car key . . . (“it can’t be here . . .”)

We rest from all discussion,

drinking, smoking, pills . . .

want nothing

but to be old, do nothing, type & think. . . .

But in new December’s air

I could not sleep, I could not write my name—

Luck, we’ve had it; our character’s gone public—

We could have done worse. I hope we did.

Today in New York City

FOR BERNADETTE & LEWIS

Gay doormen face a severe shortage of cocaine

The White House announced today.

The crisis

Which could blow the lid off

Of Boys Town

is a result of Latest Great Depression

Brought on by

Savage game of “Go Fish”

In Congress

On the street where you live.

Citizens are being asked

To tie up their children

And to walk their clones

In groups of five

At 55 mph

Police said today.

2.

The President said

When Mars squares Saturn

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 piR^2.

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

pissing 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,

Then lack to beauty tragedy are used.

And there is no.

Lines from Across the Room

(FOR ANNE KEPLER)

Futile rhapsodies resound from hotly

blind to dank venetian blinds upon

whose verdant crevices blue scary

shadows bound and bound and grow

and then grow still. Yes it is not

yet daylight, no light creeps with

hesitance across the blind, my desk

is shadow, silence lies in the room:

Sleep half sleep half silence and

with reason portends new seasons,

nor shadow, nor substance; blind

fascination reduced to contemplation.

Then, praise for this golden surge

of energy! It is time to rise in

silence, raise the blind, and turn

again to poetry, away from sleep.

Prose Keys to American Poetry

You come into my life a little yellow

Around the gills and I offer you 41

Pills of indeterminate mixture but you

Will not swallow them you are like

The Sunflower: you are waiting for a

Madman! Now you are like a madam, I

lean over and gaze intently into your

Eyeballs for 32 hours whereupon you swoon

And say, “Perceval, you’re wonderful!”

“Everybody sucks nobody fucks” says John

Stanton in PROSE KEYS TO AMERICAN POETRY

Which I must admit is disconcerting in light of

My premature weaning! Because actually I was in love

With all of those Saturday Serials even if Charley Mackin

did beat me up every week for sixteen weeks

straight! I simply repressed it all!

Games

(FOR MARTIN COCHRAN)

Across the trolley tracks

deep in the cemetery

were the Jr. Marines.

“Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor

as

We did the Alamo”

Gregory, high

up on Porkchop hill,

sleepy, grumpy, dopey,

Oliver Hazard Perry, and

of man’s first disobedience and

the forbidden fruit

This too, and love,

three

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

his mouth tightened

He buckled on his gun, the one

Steve had left him

“Gather ye rosebuds,” he ordered.

Homage to Mayakofsky

The white poet with his book

And the ox-blood, do they agree?

With his throat which is beating,

Does he agree?

And the hands oh so plentiful,

And the architecture,

Symbols in his journals of summer?

The hands

Are words in the journal.

Wind giving presence to fragments.

In the book of his music the corners have straightened:

Torrents have faded down the bent frontier.

It Is a Big Red House

Voici la tête d’un chien

Il est à la fenêtre noire

For fire for warmth for hands for growth

So green and formal to the bone

Whose hands hold up whose head?

Wind fans the red fire and its flames burn hand bones

Is there room in the room that you room in?

Fire it, and hand me the bones, over the blue wind

That I receive fire, fire to pierce like the wind

So black, bête noire, in the burnt-by-fire plume

Canzone

A darksome tiger

dreams in “The Poems.”

No one put the tiger

In “The Poems.” A tiger

In a dream

Is still a tiger.

In “The Poems” where the Tiger

Is, dreams are alive.

We are alive

When a tiger

Leaves his cage

In “The Poems.” “The Poems” are not a cage.

We are not a cage

Nor a tiger

In a cage

Where a cage

Keeps “The Poems”

From “The Tiger”

Although we dream

A darksome dream

Of a cage.

“The Tiger” is a dream. Alive

We are alive.

“The Poems” are alive

In a cage

Where alive

Is more a dream than alive.

Like a tiger

Is alive

In a cage, this alive

Are “The Poems.”

We are “The Poems”

When we’re alive

But when we dream

Then we dream.

“The Poems” are not a dream.

“The Tiger” in “The Poems”

Is a dream

When “The Poems” are a dream.

Then “The Poems” are a cage

And a cage is not a dream.

So a Tiger’s not a dream

But a Tiger

Is not a Tiger

But a dream

In a cage. “The Poems”

Are not a dream of “The Poems.”

We dream up “The Poems”

In a dream

And “The Poems”

Contain a Tiger. “The Poems”

Are alive.

The tiger in “The Poems”

Except in “The Poems”

Is a cage

And will cage

Up “The Poems”

Unless we are the tiger

In “The Poems” dreamed up by “The Tiger.”

A darksome tiger

Dreams in his cage.

“The Poems” dream “The Poems.”

We have had this dream

And we are alive.

Grace After a Meal

FOR JOHN WIENERS

Out we go to get away from today’s

delicate pinpricks: awake and scheme

to pay the rent; the room is littered

with laundry, my desk turns

my stomach; in my stomach a white pill

turns to warmth; I stretch and begin

to flow; a door opens; the day

is warm, and we join hands

for a journey to courage in a loft.

A man signs a shovel, and

so he digs. I fear to become a crank,

alone in a dreary room, grinding out

poem after poem, confused, concerned,

annoyed.

But Edwin offers us

cookies, and coffee and beer and grace.

By his presence he offers us leads, and

his graciousness adds to our courage.

John,

we must not be afraid

to be civilised, meaning

Love.

It is 5:23 a.m., and the sun

is coming.

Notes

These notes are not intended to be exhaustive but rather to provide assistance in reading a poetry characterized by a profound density of reference and naming. The notes would ideally offer reading clues that would transfer from poem to poem, rather than supply definitions to fit capitalized nouns. References are so layered, embedded, and characteristic of both conscious and “subconscious” levels of thought that full explanation would not only be too lengthy—and too contrary to the purposes of poetry—but also impossible. We offer a quick glossary of the proper names used most frequently in the poems, but it’s useful to remember that one doesn’t really need to know: the poetry, in its various ways, takes care of the reader all by itself. These notes are also intended to demonstrate the wide range of formal methods used in the poems.

The Sonnets

Both the “C” Press edition (New York, 1964) and the Grove Press edition (New York, 1967) of The Sonnets were composed of sixty-six sonnets. The United Artists edition of 1982 included six new sonnets, XXXIV, XXXV, LX, LXI, LXXVII, and LXXXI. The Penguin Poets edition of 2000 included seven more: XIV, XXII, XXV, XXVIII, XXIX, XXXIII, and LIX, fulfilling Ted’s instructions to me in late 1982, when the latter seven were finally judged ready. This leaves the following sonnets: XX, XXIV, LIV, LVIII, LXII, LXIII, LXIX, LXXIX, and LXXXVI. They are not strong enough to be published.

Joe Brainard was the cover artist for the “C” Press edition. A second cover illustration by him, intended for the Grove Press edition but not used by Grove, finally adorned the Penguin edition in 2000. Louise Hamlin was the artist for the front and back covers of the United Artists edition.

The Penguin edition for The Sonnets includes an introduction by me, as well as notes based on Ted’s annotations of an early typescript of the entire sequence. This typescript will be referred to from time to time in these notes.

NAMES IN THE SONNETS

Names—of friends, writers, artists—appear throughout The Sonnets and, to a lesser degree, all Ted’s work. One can almost always tell if the name refers to a “friend” or a “poet/artist” or both, or can gauge the formality/informality of the reference (a friend referred to by full name in a dedication is being treated differently from the same friend named familiarly in another poem). A name is a word like any other in poetry, and the use of names is an old literary tradition (Dante, Catullus). The reader has had her/his own friends and knows what a friend is in the mind; the reader can look up certain other names in the encyclopedia or on the Internet. Detailed annotation would be contrary to the spirit of the poems, which, though literary, is egalitarian and intimate. However, I would like to offer some examples of usage, focusing on five lines in Sonnet XXX which are particularly replete with names:

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

Marge Kepler was a friend/girlfriend of Ted’s: this is rather obvious, she is “Marge,” she is “Dear Marge.” Andy Butt is a name that works like that of a character in a novel: he is a fiction, like a man in a rather bad novel, “drunk in the Parthenon” (though “Butt” and “Parthenon” conjure up certain associations). The “Pollock streets” suggests the lines of paint in Jackson Pollock’s great paintings. The reader doesn’t know for sure who “Henry” is, though one suspects him of being Henri Michaux, the French poet, who is often mentioned in these poems (see “Mess Occupations,” which is also Sonnet XXXIX “after Michaux”). The point is less that he might be Henri Michaux than that someone named Henry is being addressed; and more, that the word “Henry” works metrically. “To be all of night, Henry!” sounds just right, as “Dear Marge, hello” works clearly on a point of sentiment. “Ah, Bernie” feels like it refers to a friend, and does; the whole line is funny, because Bernie’s name—a real name—sounds antithetical to “suffering” (but all real people suffer).

By the repetition of names, a relational tension is built up over the course of the sequence, which is modeled very generally on Shakespeare’s sequence, with its love plot and its pitches of exaltation and viciousness. The reader experiences this tension through the lens of the poet’s mind in process, as the poet mulls over the past and present actions of himself and his friends and lovers.

A quotation from an interview by Tom Clark is clarifying (“Interview with Tom Clark,” Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan, ed. Scalapino and Ratcliffe [Bolinas and Oakland: Avenue B and O Books, 1991]). Speaking of The Sonnets, Ted says, “There is no such thing as a message and media in the abstract. I mean, they’re the same thing to the perfect extent. That is, surpassing McLuhan where he says the message is the media. No. When it all works right there’s no message, it’s only sort of the media. Which is fascinating because of just the words.” That words are, materially, words, somewhat as paint is paint, applies in varying degrees to all of Ted’s work.

SONNETS I–VI

I made a dating error in the Penguin edition, in regard to the dates of the inception of The Sonnets. I was following Ted’s annotations on the typescript of the sequence, and he appears to have misremembered. The genesis of the first six sonnets in November and December of 1962, not in early 1963, is confirmed by two sources: a handmade booklet called Rain Dance containing the six as a gift to Pat (Mitchell) Padgett for Christmas of 1962, and an entry in Ted’s journals (see from Journals, excerpts chosen by Larry Fagin, in Shiny, no. 9/10, 1999):

(1962)

20 Nov 5 5:15 a.m.

Wrote (?) (Made) five sonnets tonight, by taking one line from each of a group of poems, at random, going from first to last poem then back again until 12 lines, then making the final couplet from any 2 poems, in the group, one line at random from each. Wrote by ear, and automatically. Very interesting results.

Groups used

Sonnet #1—Six poems 1962

#2—Personal Poems

#3—Le Bateau Ivre

#4—My 14 Selected Poems

#5—My 10 Newest Poems

All this was partly inspired by reading about DADA but mostly inspired by my activities along the same line for the past 10 months (or since reading LOCUS SOLUS TWO & seeing the Assemblage Show & Working on Collages with Joe (see our Self-Portrait)

Now back to more Dada.

The sixth sonnet in Rain Dance is Sonnet VI, made from lines by Dick Gallup.

The above journal entry indicates the kind of compositional method used throughout The Sonnets, as well as the types of materials employed. Ted incorporated old and new work by himself, a translation of an Arthur Rimbaud poem, and lines by Dick Gallup into the first six sonnets. One sees that though Ted is using a method, he is also working by ear and that he is being influenced by Dada and by collage and assemblage, as practiced both by the original Dadaists and by his contemporary and friend Joe Brainard.

I Ted told me that the “he/his” in this poem is meant to be Ezra Pound, though the poem of Ted’s from which the opening lines are taken is called “Homage to Mayakovsky” (see Early Poems).

II “How Much Longer Shall I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine”: “How much longer shall I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher” is the title and first line of a poem by John Ashbery in The Tennis Court Oath. The Tennis Court Oath, with its broken, phrasal texture, was a major influence on The Sonnets.

Poem in the Traditional Manner and Poem in the Modern Manner Not all of The Sonnets are sonnets, as these two sixteen-line poems prove. Here we are being shown what the two “manners” are that this sequence will mix and change. The point would also seem to be to keep the surface of the whole work various.

In “Poem in the Traditional Manner,” Dick Gallup is called “Richard Gallup” in an allusion to Edward Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory.” The Asiatics (see also Sonnet XXV) was a novel by Frederick Prokosch, published in 1935.

In “Poem in the Modern Manner,” Huitzilopochtli refers to the Aztec god of war. Cos is the Greek island.

From a Secret Journal Also Sonnet IX. Ted’s note on the typescript says: “Made from Joe’s ‘Secret Journal’, a prose work by method. probably made earlier—62 or not? my best.” Joe is Joe Brainard. The “secret journal,” which remains unpublished, is actually called “Self-Portrait on Christmas Night.”

Penn Station “Gomangani,” according to Ted’s notes on the typescript, is “either White Ape (Tarzan) or Black Apes (The Apes) hence I forget—i.e. clarity is in the language not its precision.” That is, the word is taken from the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

XIV “Blake-blues” probably refers to Blind Blake, the blues guitarist (b. early 1890s, d. 1933) as much as to William Blake.

XV This is perhaps the most famous of all the sonnets. It is obvious how this broken work can be put back together into its first version, Sonnet LIX, by reading first line, last line, second line, second-to-last line, etc. Sonnet LIX was omitted from the first two versions of the sequence and reinstated in the Penguin edition. One of the most interesting things about Sonnet XV is that it becomes stranger after you understand how to reassemble it: its disjunctive form seems to assert itself more and more strongly as the real one.

XVI According to Ted’s notes on the typescript used for the Penguin edition, “ ‘The Going Down of the Morning Land’ is how Lauren Owen’s father translated ‘The Decline of the West’ to me in 1960 in Tulsa—slow was my word.” Thus “the slow going down of the morning land” refers to Oswald Spengler’s book The Decline of the West.

XIX Mysterious Billy Smith was a welterweight boxer, whom Ted had read about in A. J. Liebling’s boxing classic, The Sweet Science. Liebling quotes boxing manager Jack Kearns on Smith: “He was always doing something mysterious. . . . Like he would step on your foot, and when you looked down, he would bite you in the ear.”

XXI A rearrangement of the lines of “Penn Station,” which is also Sonnet XII.

XXIII “The 15th day of November” is Ted’s birthday. “Between Oologah and Pawnee” (two towns in Oklahoma): an allusion to Apollinaire’s poem “Annie,” which contains the phrase “Entre Mobile et Galveston.” According to Ron Padgett in Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan (Great Barrington, Mass: The Figures, 1993), the phrase is also a reference to Woody Guthrie.

XXXI This sonnet was influenced by Kenneth Koch’s poem “You Were Wearing,” which contains the line “I smelled the mould of your seaside resort hotel bedroom on your hair held in place by a John Greenleaf Whittier clip.”

XXXVI and LXXVI These two personal poems were printed again in Many Happy Returns. In the course of The Sonnets they are fragmented and later reconstituted, as many of the poems are—they are part of its total process. In Many Happy Returns they are simply poems in their original forms.

Uijongbu is a town in Korea where Ted was stationed during his military service at the end of the Korean War.

XXXVIII General Benedict Arnold, famous as a traitor to the American side in the Revolutionary War, actually led the Continental Army, with Ethan Allen, to a victory at Fort Ticonderoga.

“A man signs a shovel / And so he digs”: these lines refer to one of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, a snow shovel with the words “In Advance of the Broken Arm” written thereon.

XLI Ira Hayes (1923–1955): Pima Indian war hero, one of the soldiers who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, as portrayed in a famous (staged) photograph. He later died of alcoholism and exposure on the Pima reservation.

XLVII William Bonney is the real name of the outlaw Billy the Kid.

XLVIII Francis Marion: Revolutionary War hero and specialist in guerrilla tactics, also known as the Swamp Fox.

LI Gus Cannon (1883–1979): banjoist, jug player, and songwriter. He wrote the song “Walk Right In,” later quoted from in “Things to Do in Anne’s Room,” in In the Early Morning Rain.

LII “It is a human universe” refers to Charles Olson’s essay “Human Universe.” Richard White was a poet whom Ted knew in Tulsa and with whom he discussed Olson’s work.

LXI Big Bill Broonzy (1893–1958): musician, one of the seminal figures of the Chicago blues.

LXX Ted’s translation of Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau Ivre,” quoted from throughout the book, is finally used in its entirety here.

LXXX Louis Sullivan (1856–1924): major American architect. See also the poem “String of Pearls” in Nothing for You. The building referred to is probably the Bayard Building on Bleecker Street, in Manhattan.

LXXXI Huddie Ledbetter: real name of the great folksinger Leadbelly (1885–1949). Lonnie Johnson (1894–1970): blues guitarist. Hans Hofmann (1880–1960): American abstract expressionist, influential painter and teacher, originator of the theory of “push-pull.”

According to Ron Padgett (in a letter to me), Ted saw Lonnie Johnson “perform at Folk City in the early 1960s and was quite bowled over by him. There was a great moment when, near the end of a long set, Victoria Spivey leaped onto the bandstand wearing a tight white dress covered with dark rubber snakes and did several stunning numbers with Johnson.”

Great Stories of the Chair

THE SECRET LIFE OF FORD MADOX FORD

The manuscript source is a folder retained by Ted until his death. The sequence has never been published in a book until now.

The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford comprises poems first published over the course of two issues of “C” (A Journal of Poetry). Volume 1, no. 8 (April 1964) contains The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford as three poems: “Stop Stop Six” (the first poem of the sequence as finalized), “Then I’d Cry” (omitted from the final sequence), and “Fauna Time” (the third poem of the final sequence). The same issue contains, as a separate poem, “Reeling Midnight” (the second poem of the final sequence), dedicated “to Pierre Reverdy.” Volume 1, no. 9 (Summer Etc. 1964) contains The Rest of the Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford, composed of “On His Own” (our fourth poem), “The Dance of the Broken Bomb” (fifth poem), “Putting Away” (seventh poem), “Owe” (sixth poem), and “We Are Jungles” (eighth poem).

These poems are transliterations from Pierre Reverdy’s Quelques Poèmes, which had previously inspired Ron Padgett’s own transliterative work, Some Bombs. As he says in “Interview with Barry Alpert” (in Talking in Tranquility), Ted decided to duplicate Padgett’s process himself. Ted states: “Ron’s French is pretty good whereas my French is quite low, not very good at all. So when I went through and did the same thing Ron did, my poems are slower and heavier than Ron’s. They have a lot more direct highly conscious meaning relating to the specific circumstances I was in—which is all obscured in the versions themselves but you can get the feeling, the feeling is very heavy. They were very negative poems; I was very angry.”

In a letter to me, Padgett states that part 8, “We Are Jungles,” may have been influenced by an early poem by David Shapiro called “We Are Gentle.”

Padgett’s Some Bombs also inspired the following poem of Ted’s:

POEM IN HONOR OF SOME BOMBS

Ron Padgett a ton ses quelques poemes

a dix Pierre Reverdy a homage de “patsee”

et la distinction et erudition au cul de chaud

pour le “je ne sais pas” (shrug shrug). Et voila!

Ici est grotesque dans la albee de R K O tres beeg beeg

And les underwear des some jeunes filles a giant significance

pour Ronald et Edmund (je n’ai pas Doubts).

Also: fragMENT des Patsee de Christine egalite la “kill

Chrissie Beak

Making Teresa dans la nuit de bete noire et “It is a big Red

House.” Homage a Blaise Cendrars mais no je ne read pas

Some Poems of his. So what. Vie doux la tant pis

et pix frank sur la table pour la sensible the pun

(pode bal) (see a pneu from Marchand baby whoop whoop

hobbyhorse!

Let us stay with what we know / quelle Ronald

est la fraisne toute hot and “way out west!” / that

Ted Berrigan mais jeune filles oui oui en flagrant delicto e’toil

dans la SONNETS: “mon grand reve une stabs dans mon Coeur

(blanks).”

/That Chrissie est a Patsee est a Chris est Beatrice est Sandra est

Kenneth est Frank est John / et Ronald et Ted throwing je t’aime a

tout la monde / Out.

GREAT STORIES OF THE CHAIR

Also published as Situations #7, New York City, 1998.

One may speculate as to why Great Stories of the Chair wasn’t published in a book. Perhaps it, like The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford, was too “heavy” for both Many Happy Returns and In the Early Morning Rain. Ted preferred a purer air, and he may have seen “heaviness” and “anger” as a kind of sentimentality. There was a point, a few years later, when Ted deliberately cultivated sentimentality (see such poems as “Peace” and “Grey Morning” in In the Early Morning Rain and “Things to Do in Providence” in Red Wagon), but the attempt was more to formalize feeling than to be dominated by it. As Ted often said, he was a formalist.

Mother Cabrini Mother Cabrini (1850–1917), an American nun, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The Sunset Motel In the Situations chapbook, which reprints the sequence as published in Angel Hair 4, the fourth poem is called “The Sunset Hotel.” Ted made a change from “Hotel” to “Motel” on a manuscript photocopied from Angel Hair 4, and we have retained the change.

Klein’s, a New York City department store, was located at Union Square. The original reference—and much of the material in “The Sunset Motel”—is from the poem “For You,” written in the early 60s and first published in Many Happy Returns.

What’s the Racket “Ode to the Confederate Dead” refers to Allen Tate’s poem. When young, Ted paid attention to poets such as Tate, William Empson, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Theodore Roethke, Delmore Schwartz, and Conrad Aiken, to whom he sent a copy of The Sonnets (and who replied critically but at some length). Ted first came to poetry through anthologies and also recordings of poets reading their work (he did a hilariously nasal imitation of Empson reading “Missing Dates”).

The Conscience of a Conservative The title refers to Senator Barry Goldwater’s book by the same name, published in 1960. “Spuyten Duyvil” is a town outside New York.

Some Trips to Go On “Clear the Range” refers to Ted’s novel Clear the Range (New York: Adventures in Poetry/Coach House South, 1977), probably in process at the time.

A Letter from Dick Gallup “Furtive Days” is the title of a collaborative novel by Ted and Ron Padgett, an excerpt from which was published in Bean Spasms.

A BOKE

The first book publication of this poem was in So Going Around Cities.

Boke is an early spelling of book. Joe Brainard published Ted’s poem “Living with Chris” (see Many Happy Returns), illustrated by himself, under his imprint, Boke Press.

As stated in the introduction, though Ted dates “A Boke” as being from 1966 in So Going Around Cities (with the epigraph “Poetry.”), it was first published in Kulchur in the autumn 1965 issue. This probably places its composition just previous to the period when “Tambourine Life” was written, that poem being dated “Oct. 1965–Jan. 1966.” Ted referred to “Tambourine Life” as his first long poem, but “A Boke,” which is thirteen pages long and a truly bizarre poem, feels like a long poem. It can be seen, on one level, as an abstract realization of the longer form. “Tambourine Life” was followed, within a few years, by long poems such as “Train Ride” and “Memorial Day” (written in collaboration with Anne Waldman), not to mention medium-length poems such as “Things to Do in Providence” and “Things to Do on Speed.”

“remember the fragrance of Grandma’s kitchen?”: Though the balance of the poem is derived from an article by James Dickey in The New Yorker, this repeated line was borrowed from William Burroughs. According to Dick Gallup, in a letter to me, “We heard a recording of Burroughs saying the line in his sinister Midwestern drawl.”

Many Happy Returns

Published by Ted Wilentz’s Corinth Books in 1969. We present the book in its entirety. The cover for the original edition of Many Happy Returns was by Joe Brainard.

Some of these poems were published as broadsides; “Living with Chris,” as previously noted, was published as a chapbook with illustrations by Joe Brainard (New York: Boke Press, 1968). For a description of all such publications in Ted’s oeuvre, as well as all editions of full-length books up to 1998, see Ted Berrigan: An Annotated Checklist, ed. Aaron Fischer (New York: Granary Books, 1998).

Personal Poem #2 and Personal Poem #9 “Personal Poem #2” is Sonnet LXXVI in The Sonnets, and “Personal Poem #9” is Sonnet XXXVI (after Frank O’Hara). We’ve allowed them to be repeated since Ted is presenting a small “set” of four personal poems, and since these two poems are functional in Ted’s poetic universe as both sonnets and personal poems. The personal poem (as named) was invented by Frank O’Hara, who has only one poem called “Personal Poem” but makes reference to “my ‘I do this I do that’ / poems” in “Getting Up Ahead of Someone (Sun).” Ted further systematized the form by adopting the phrase “personal poem” and using numbers, e.g., “Personal Poem #2.”

A Personal Memoir of Tulsa, Oklahoma / 1955–60 This poem was first published in Bean Spasms (New York: Kulchur Press, 1967), a volume of collaborations with Ron Padgett, illustrated by Joe Brainard. See note on the book Bean Spasms.

TAMBOURINE LIFE

“Tambourine Life” is a major poem by any definition. Its inspiration was Ron Padgett’s “Tone Arm,” first published as a chapbook by Tom Clark’s Once Editions in 1966 and subsequently in the collection Great Balls of Fire (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1969). “Tambourine Life” resembles “Tone Arm,” first of all, in being in numbered sections. Ted also copied Padgett’s device of naming different animals throughout the poem, which he referred to as “false continuity,” superficial in the sense of creating a surface of design and play. Otherwise, Ted’s poem feels opposite to “Tone Arm,” being open where “Tone Arm” is difficult. “Tambourine Life” was at first laid out according to the flush-left columnar convention that “Tone Arm” observes. It was after Ted had fifteen or sixteen pages that he began to open up the text, placing it all over the page in an open-field fashion. In “Interview with Barry Alper,” he refers to the look of the poem as being akin to that of a “graph or cardiogram.” And in “Interview with Tom Clark,” he refers to an influence by the painters Hans Hofmann and Joe Brainard on his open-field poetry of this period in the late 60s and early 70s: “In the open poems, I’m taking a cluster of about five words, not all on one line, and putting them up like blocks like Hans Hofmann. In fact that’s what I’m influenced by, that push. Joe Brainard I got it from more or less, but it’s that push-pull.” The obvious poetic influences for the layout of “Tambourine Life” are Frank O’Hara’s long poem “Biotherm” and the work of Paul Blackburn.

“Tambourine Life” was anthologized in The Young American Poets, ed. Paul Carroll, introduction by James Dickey (Chicago: Big Table Publishing Company, 1968). This was a highly influential anthology that crossed over into both mainstream and avant-garde territories, including poets like Ted, Ron Padgett, Tom Clark, and Anne Waldman, alongside poets like Mark Strand, Louise Gluck, James Tate, and Charles Simic. The publication of this twenty-eight-page poem in such a book made Ted famous, and “Tambourine Life” was his best-known poem for many years.

“(Tuli’s)”: Tuli Kupferberg, poet and musician, and member of the poetry-rock group The Fugs. The Fugs have maintained a continuous existence since the 60s, with some changes of personnel, but with Kupferberg and poet Ed Sanders remaining constant. At the time of the writing of “Tambourine Life,” Ted’s friend Lee Crabtree was also one of The Fugs. Ted wrote the lyrics for a Fugs song, called “I’m Doing All Right,” with music by Lee Crabtree and Vinny Leary. The song appeared on The Fugs’ Second Album.

“Thanks to Jack”: Jack Kerouac, but also anyone, as one would call anyone “Jack” (like “Bud”). The name Dick, primarily referring to Dick Gallup, is often used similarly but with the sexual nuance.

“Mr. Pierre Loti and his nameless dog”: reference to the well-known painting by Henri Rousseau of the French novelist and journalist Pierre Loti (1850–1923), dressed as a Turk, with his dog. Dick Gallup suggests (in a letter to me) that “Tambourine Life” opens with a view of Ted’s desk: “a quite elaborate affair with boxes of books and various pictures tacked up here and there. I’m pretty sure he had a copy of the Pierre Loti portrait by R. on the wall.”

“THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION”: probably refers to an image of Larry Rivers’s enormous (thirty-two-by-fourteen-foot) work titled The History of the Russian Revolution: From Marx to Mayakovsky (1965). In Ted’s copy of So Going Around Cities he has changed the date attached to these words from “circa 1967” to “circa 1965.” The Rivers work consists of paintings, photos, drawings, and objects and may have been an influence on “Tambourine Life.”

“The apples are red again in Chandler’s valley”: reference to Kenneth Patchen’s poem “The Lute in the Attic.” According to Ron Padgett (in a letter to me): “Ted and I (and others in Tulsa) were infatuated with Patchen’s reading of it, to music provided by the Chamber Jazz Sextet, on a record called Kenneth Patchen, produced by Cadence Records in the late 1950s.”

“John-Cage-Animal-Cracker / Method of Composition”: Ted was greatly influenced by John Cage’s compositional theories and by his book Silence. Although chance methods aren’t at play in “Tambourine Life,” the poem has the feel of having been “composed” as much as “written,” and its white spaces are quick silences which create rhythms that can’t be anticipated. See the note on the book Bean Spasms for an account of Ted’s “An Interview with John Cage.”

“LADY BRETT”: Not really Lady Brett Ashley of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, but Brett deBary (later an Asian Studies scholar), with whom Ted hitchhiked to the Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965.

“like the three pricks / Alice gave / Joe Gould”: The portraitist Alice Neel painted a nude of writer and Greenwich Village denizen Joe Gould, in which she endowed him with three penises. Ted wrote a short introduction to a portfolio, including the nude portrait of Gould and also a clothed portrait, which appeared in Mother no. 6 (1965). Around the same time Ted wrote an article on Neel’s work for Art News (published in January 1966).

“Jacques-Louis David”: Ted isn’t really referring to the nineteenth-century French painter, but to Ted’s baby son, David. The words “Jacques-Louis David” create a balance with the words “Mr. Jean-Paul Sartre.”

“Dancers / Buildings and / People in the Street”: Dancers, Buildings, and People in the Street is the title of both an essay and a collection of essays by Edwin Denby. The words function syntactically as themselves but also refer to Denby’s title.

“Count Korzybski”: Alfred Habdank Korzybski (1879–1950) was a Polish American linguist, whose work Ted had read in 1960. Korzybski’s theories hinged on a complete separation between the word and the object it referred to. Ted believed in the theories but claimed that reading Korzybski’s books turned one into a crank: “Someone says to you ‘The plate fell,’ and you say ‘The plate didn’t fall, you dropped it.’ Then they hate you.”

“someone I love is dead”: Anne Kepler died during the composition of the poem. As described in the poem “People Who Died” in In the Early Morning Rain, she was “killed by smoke-poisoning while playing the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist.”

Bean Spasms This painterly, large-scale poem was first published in the collaborative book Bean Spasms. George Schneeman had given Ted a handmade book containing a few images, and Ted wrote the poem on the blank parts of the pages. In “An Interview with Barry Alpert,” Ted states, “It was an attempt to write a very heavy, palimpsest-like open poem, in which things would be coming up and down at you as well as flitting by very quickly on the page. It’s constantly dragging you back even though you are going forward very quickly. It goes around in a lot of circles, it’s really a labyrinth, but it’s not exhausting because it doesn’t really put anything heavy on you, say the way Pound’s Cantos do. It doesn’t act like you’re supposed to stop and go read about the Roman Empire in the sixth century, though there are a million literary references in it actually.”

Ron Padgett states (in a letter to me) that he wrote short parts of “Bean Spasms.”

Frank O’Hara’s Question from “Writers and Issues” by John Ashbery This poem contains a misquotation from O’Hara’s poem “Biotherm”: O’Hara’s line, which would be the last line of Ted’s poem, is “I am guarding it from mess and measure,” not “mess and message.” In a personal copy of Many Happy Returns Ted changed “message” to “measure”; but he retained the word message in subsequent publications of the poem (it is the last section of “An Autobiography in Five Parts” in In the Early Morning Rain and is also reprinted in So Going Around Cities). Ted was interested in the fact that often when he “appropriated” a text he unconsciously changed it. He considered this tendency to be part of his creative process.

Things to Do in New York City and 10 Things I Do Every Day These poems mark the first appearance of the things-to-do form in Ted’s work. Ted was particularly interested in “10 Things I Do Every Day,” a short, formalistic poem which is a condensed presentation of a list (Gary Snyder’s “things to do” poems, which list things to do in various world locales, are longer and more casual in form). Ted later used the “list” as a framework for an expansive, discursive poem, opening the space between “items” into a talking, pondering space. This is the technique, for example, of “Things to Do in Providence,” in Red Wagon.

In the Early Morning Rain

In the Early Morning Rain was published by Cape Goliard in 1970. Ted worked closely with the editor (and filmmaker) Barry Hall on this volume. The cover art and drawings were by George Schneeman.

Hello Most of the text of this poem comes from a postcard (the kind you would find in gas stations); the poem introduces immediately an important strand of the book involving found material. The book itself is a collage of old and new styles, idiosyncratic textual surfaces, translation, collaboration, and a new, transparent lyrical manner. There are a number of open-field lyrics in this volume spinning off the style of “Tambourine Life,” which had created a new possibility for a shorter poem. The new style was first realized in Many Happy Returns, in such poems as the title poem and “Things to Do in New York (City).” Shorter poems in In the Early Morning Rain that further exploit the new style include “American Express,” “February Air,” “Grey Morning,” “Things to Do in Anne’s Room,” and “Heroin.”

80th Congress In the Early Morning Rain contains three poems which are explicit collaborations with other poets. The book is, on one level, “about” community, as its dedication, “To my family & friends,” implies.

The Circle This is the first of several short meditative poems that appear in the book. See also “It’s Important” and “Dial-A-Poem.”

5 New Sonnets: A Poem These sonnets are constructed of lines from The Sonnets but are not in any way part of the sequence. They are “new” sonnets.

Poem (Seven thousand feet over . . .) First appeared in A Lily for My Love, an early chapbook of Ted’s. As the chapbook title indicates, this was very sentimental work, and Ted destroyed every copy he could find. He retained “Poem” however, adding the dedication to Bill Berkson because Berkson had said he liked the poem. Ted left the dedication off in So Going Around Cities, but it seems to belong in In the Early Morning Rain, which is especially replete with dedications. “Poem” was originally printed under the title “Poem” in The White Dove Review 2 (edited by Ron Padgett); the title was subsequently changed to “Grief” in A Lily for My Love and then back to “Poem.” The poem was written in 1958 under the influence of Kenneth Rexroth’s theory of “natural numbers,” which posits a short, syllabic line.

Ikonostasis We have inserted the poem “Ikonostasis,” not originally published in In the Early Morning Rain, between “Presence” and “The Upper Arm.” Ted had found it difficult to choose between “Ikonostasis” and “Presence,” both obviously influenced by John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, but was certain a choice was necessary. That choice doesn’t seem to matter so much now. “Ikonostasis” was later published in So Going Around Cities.

The Upper Arm The second-to-last line originally read “bows that spell” not “boughs that spell.” It is difficult for the tongue to gauge which pronunciation of “bows” to use when reading the poem aloud, so Ted changed the spelling to “boughs” for So Going Around Cities.

Corridors of Blood Structured somewhat similarly to “Rusty Nails,” this poem employs language drawn from Simone de Beauvoir’s diaries. Ted admired de Beauvoir’s work—and her life lived—but was fascinated, in the case of this poem, by the flatness of the language of translation, how the diaries sounded after being translated from French to English.

Rusty Nails Ted composed this work by taking lines from various books by other authors, then assigning to them, in a completely automatic fashion, titles from a list given him by Ron Padgett. In “An Interview with Barry Alpert,” he says “I meant “Rusty Nails” to be like a novel; each one of those things is a chapter.”

LIFE OF A MAN

This sequence of poems, transliterated from Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Vita di un uomo, first appeared in Bean Spasms in a different order and with the omission of “Tonight” and “Joy of Shipwrecks.” Two poems from the earlier version, “Long Time No See” and Que Sera Sera,” were discarded from this second version.

Life Among the Woods First published in Bean Spasms, this prose work is a giddy mistranslation from a French grammar book for children.

In Three Parts and In 4 Parts These two poems, influenced by John Giorno’s treatment of found materials, were first published in Bean Spasms.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN 5 PARTS

This work, made entirely of found materials, was first published in Bill Berkson’s magazine/anthology Best & Co. in 1969. In that presentation, there were headings beneath the overall title corresponding to each of the five sections: “Childhood,” “Army Life,” “Dope Scene,” “Manners,” and “Poetry.” Ted omitted the headings from In the Early Morning Rain.

March 17th, 1970 Ted had become interested in the “occasional” poem. The occasion for this poem is St. Patrick’s Day; the poem addresses what that holiday might mean to an Irish American who both liked and disliked “Irish-American-ness.”

Epithalamion First published in Bean Spasms.

Poop First published in Bean Spasms.

February Air The poem originally did not repeat the last line, “You’d Better Move On” (from a Rolling Stones song). The repetition was added in So Going Around Cities, in which this poem appears in the section called Many Happy Returns.

Black Power Much of this poem is incorporated into the poem “Bean Spasms.”

The Ten Greatest Books of the Year (1967) This list poem, which originally did not appear in In the Early Morning Rain, has been inserted before “The Ten Greatest Books of the Year, 1968.” The poem was first published in So Going Around Cities.

interstices and bent These are the first one-word poems published by Ted. The avowed influence is Aram Saroyan, whose book of minimal poems, Aram Saroyan, had been published in 1968.

The Great Genius This poem originally read as follows: “The Great Genius is / A man who can do the / Average thing when everybody / Else is going crazy.” Ted rewrote the poem in his personal copy of the book, and we have used the rewritten version.

Poem for Philip Whalen Ted made a handful of punctuational changes in this poem, in his personal copy of the book, all of which we have incorporated.

Anti-War Poem This is one of Ted’s few overtly political poems. The “anti-war poem” seemed a necessary form in the late 60s. Ted’s version refers to a personal war (“I thought a lot about dying / But I said Fuck it”) as well as to the American war in Vietnam. In “An Interview with Ralph Hawkins” (Talking in Tranquility), Ted states: “I think that every single poem I’ve ever written is a political act. They were all written in the face of a complete desire of the state in the platonic sense to exclude me as a poet, the entire possibility that there is of being a poet. I don’t believe the state as the body politic can exist in a healthy manner without poetry and without poems. Every poem I write is a political act and I have written some specific political poems, but generally the subject matter of politics is not interesting to write about. I’m totally interested in it as take-in, as material.”

Dial-A-Poem Around 1969 John Giorno ran a telephone service called Dial-A-Poem, which one could call in order to listen to a poet reading a poem. In this poem, the telephone dial becomes the wheel of life: one’s sexuality is an aspect of the poem one dials “this time around.”

Hall of Mirrors The title refers to Robert Stone’s novel A Hall of Mirrors.

Ann Arbor Song As Ted took to writing shorter poems as seriously as he had composed his longer works, he also began to consolidate a public-reading style and to consider more how to bring pleasure to a live audience. The Sonnets and “Tambourine Life,” while they read well aloud, were unwieldy for public readings. In In the Early Morning Rain there are a handful of works which remained among his public-reading favorites, “Ann Arbor Song” being one. He also liked, for reading aloud, the poems “Heroin” and “People Who Died.”

People Who Died Ted considered that with this work he had invented a form which anyone might use to write a poem. That is, every person has a list of “people who died.” Jim Carroll took Ted at his word and wrote and recorded a song called “People Who Died,” which is his own list of dead friends.

Telegram This poem is based on Marcel Duchamp’s 1953 telegram to Francis Picabia as Picabia was dying: “Francis à Bientôt.” “Francis, see you soon.”

Train Ride

Train Ride was first published by Annabel Levitt’s Vehicle Editions in 1978, although the book itself bears only the 1971 date (of composition): the copyright page reads “copyright Ted Berrigan 1971.” Train Ride had cover art by Joe Brainard.

Ted had some difficulty converting the handwritten notebook into a correspondingly presented typewritten poem; Ted and Annabel Levitt worked hard at layout for the edition. Open-field poems always posed publication problems, and Ted was finicky. The pleasurable exigencies of these kinds of translations, from handwriting to typescript and from typescript to print, seem to have disappeared with the advent of the computer. Ted was a poet of the notebook and typewriter; the medium he wrote in always permeated the poem. It is arguable that what I call, in the introduction, Ted’s “graven-ness”—that quality by which each word seems etched into the page, cannot be easily obtained if one composes on the computer.

The writing of Train Ride was occasioned by the circumstance that Ted had an empty notebook and was sitting on a train from New York to Providence, but also by the circumstance that he was reading a gay pornographic novel that Joe Brainard had given him back in New York. The poem is thus “about” the fact of the train—passengers and how they look and talk, what’s out the window, etc.; the fact of the notebook—Ted actually leaves blank pages for Brainard (to whom the poem is addressed) to fill in words if he wishes; and sex—the pornographic novel provokes a long meditation on “fucking,” a word that is repeated many times. Sex eventually segues into love, and Ted expresses his love for his friend Joe; but there is another subject in the poem, as immediate as sex/love, the notebook, the train, which is money. Ted has hardly any money in his pocket: he will get off the train with four dollars and spend most of it on a cab. Train Ride is a poem written exactly in the now moment, about who is there, both materially and in mind, and what is urgent. By the early 70s Ted had become quite adept at this kind of in-the-instant work.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day was published twice as a chapbook, once in 1971 by the Poetry Project, in mimeo format, and once in 1974 by Aloes Books, London (editors Jim Pennington, Allen Fisher, and Dick Miller). For the Poetry Project edition, Anne Waldman and Ted ran off copies for the occasion of the May 1971 reading mentioned in the introduction. Donna Dennis did the original cover art, which was reproduced in facsimile in the Aloes Books edition. Memorial Day was reprinted in So Going Around Cities.

“I dreamed you brought home a baby”: One of Ted’s and Anne Waldman’s intentions in Memorial Day was to include other voices. This sonnet by me, designated by the number “22” and beginning with the line “I dreamed you brought home a baby” is number 22 of a sonnet sequence called 165 Meeting House Lane (New York: “C” Press, 1971).

“having met the man at the Met”: In this convoluted passage written by Ted, the “man” is Frank O’Hara, “Joe” is Frank’s partner Joe LeSueur, and Vincent is Frank’s lover, Vincent Warren.

“It is night. You are asleep. & beautiful tears”: This is Sonnet XXXVII from The Sonnets.

“I doan wanna hear any more about that . . . I tried my best to do my father’s will”: One of the rules for the performance was that Ted and Anne Waldman would each have to sing one of their sections. Waldman sang the passage beginning “I doan wanna hear anymore about / that”; and Ted sang the passage beginning “I tried my best to do my father’s will,” which was modeled on the song “Talking Casey” by Mississippi John Hurt.

During the time that Ted was co-writing Memorial Day, he was listening obsessively to two record albums, Mississippi John Hurt’s Today! (which contained “Talking Casey”) and an album by the Byrds. His composition process involved being interactive with the music, as if there were something about “voice” he wanted to get from actual singing. And the finished poem is for alternating voices, Waldman’s arrangement of the text alternating sections by the two of them.

“The windows are closed”: The final litany, written by Ted, was read by the two poets in voices alternating for each phrase ending with “is closed.” After the reading at the Poetry Project, Ted obtained a copy of the tape and listened to it as obsessively as he had to the John Hurt and Byrds albums. He continued to learn from this collaboration for many years and in the early 80s occasionally asked me to read the final litany with him, as a separate piece, at poetry readings.

Short Poems

IN A BLUE RIVER

As explained in the introduction, this chapbook was first published by Susan Cataldo’s Little Light Books in 1981. The majority of the poems were written in the late 60s and early 70s. The dedication is to Kenneth Koch, whom Ted credited for having first interested him in the short poem as a form. The cover art for the original edition was by Susan Cataldo.

Four poems have been omitted here and kept elsewhere. “After Breakfast,” which originally appeared in In a Blue River after “Chair,” has already been printed in the Life of a Man section in In the Early Morning Rain. “The Green Sea” and “Angst,” which originally appeared one right after the other after “Connecticut,” have also been omitted. “The Green Sea” is placed instead in Nothing for You, and “Angst” in A Certain Slant of Sunlight, where the editors feel that each is more necessary in “making a book.” “People of the Future,” which originally appeared after “Paris Review,” has been retained as the italicized introductory poem to Nothing for You, where it obviously serves an indispensable function.

Salut! This poem was composed spontaneously, on the tongue, for the birthday of novelist C. D. B. Bryan, at a party in Iowa City in 1969. Ted recited it to me at the party, and I instantly memorized it. Later when Ted was working on the manuscript of In a Blue River in 1981, I reminded him of the poem by reciting it to him. I’m not sure he had written it down before or given it a title.

Man Alone “Man Alone” was originally the back cover copy for Ted’s novel Clear the Range. The poem is indicative of the texture and manner of Ted’s novel.

bear with me Ted had considered calling the chapbook Bear With Me but decided against it, keeping this untitled poem.

Category / MOONDOG The late, eccentric composer called Moondog was well-known to New Yorkers in the 60s and 70s. Tall, long-braided, wearing a Viking hat and lederhosen, he stood in the Times Square area publicizing and selling his compositions, which were all strict canons. In the later part of his life his work actually began to be performed and recorded in Europe and America.

Buddhist Text Ted strongly identified with the elephant as a totemic animal.

Setback This poem, originally written in England in 1974, had for a title “Setback: Che.” The third line read, “Che was wounded in the foot” instead of “He was wounded in the foot.”

Kinks In the 70s, Ted was asked to write a poem about the British rock group the Kinks for a special “Kinks” issue of the Milk Quarterly, edited by Peter Kostakis. This poem was Ted’s contribution.

Near the Ocean The poem obviously refers to Robert Lowell’s book by the same name and is about reading Lowell’s book in bed, though it might also refer to being in bed with a crabby partner. This is one of several references to Lowell in Ted’s poetry. Though Ted could not help having a smart mouth, he respected and admired Lowell and his work.

(Untitled) It’s Morning! In a Blue River contains an untitled (undemarcated) sequence of poems, written in 1979, composed of “Untitled (It’s Morning!),” “Air,” “Untitled(Keep my . . .),” “Amsterdam,” “A True Story,” “On St. Mark’s Place,” “Just Friends,” and “For Rosina.” Ted participated in the One World poetry festival in Amsterdam in 1978 and during the same trip collaborated with the Swiss artist Rosina Kühn on a set of poems / paintings. These poems are his texts from that collaboration.

UNCOLLECTED SHORT POEMS

Laments, Winter, Think of Anything, Out the Second-Floor Window, and Life in the Future These five poems were first printed in So Going Around Cities. The remaining poems in this section have never been printed in books and were kept in manuscript folders. Most of the poems date from between 1968 and 1972.

Think of Anything In this collaboration with Robert Creeley, the “Rose of Sharon” refers to a woman named Sharon DeVries, and “Grand Valley” is Grand Valley, Michigan, where Ted and Creeley were participating in a poetry festival.

Poem (to Tom Clark) Ted’s poetry tended to have a communal focus, even be a communal activity (the collaborations, the dedications and personal references). The short epigrammatic poem is traditionally amenable to this focus. The short poem may also “speak to” a particular person, on the grounds that that person will understand it. “Poem (to Tom Clark),” which is a list of titles by Evelyn Waugh, is dedicated to Clark because he would “get it,” but also because Tom Clark’s name contributes another name to a texture of title and name.

Untitled (Orange Black / BACK DEATH) This little poem refers to a collaborative collage by Ted and Joe Brainard, dominated by the colors orange and black and the words BACK DEATH. Ted was the possessor of the collage for many years, before passing it on to the late Michael Scholnick. A number of his poems are, or contain, considerations, descriptions, meditations on the artwork hanging on the walls surrounding him as he wrote. His art collection provided both environment (points of concrete reference) and iconic presences, and he was very deliberate about exploiting it in his poetry.

Congratulations Lee Lally, poet Michael Lally’s wife, had just given birth to their son, Miles.

Neal Cassady Talk An imitation of the speech of Neal Cassady, on whom the character Dean Moriarty, in Kerouac’s On the Road, was modeled. In the 60s Ted had briefly spent time with Cassady. The poem was written in the late 70s for the mimeo rag Caveman, a scandalous erratic publication with a complicated history, which satirized Lower East Side and Poetry Project activities and figures.

Inflation The manuscript copy is dated “Apr 74.”

Flying United This poem is used in its entirety as the last two lines of the poem “Chicago English Afternoon” in Easter Monday. In the latter the words are run together to make long lines, and part of their effect is to provide an “exit” from a complexly textured eighteen-line poem. This short, gracefully spaced poem uses the same words, taken from the bland language of public spaces, to create a spooky moment.

The D.A. The manuscript copy of the poem is dated “5 Mar 82.” The Digger’s Game is a novel by George V. Higgins.

Song The opening quotation is from Lew Welch’s “Chicago Poem” (Ring of Bone: Collected Poems 1950–1971 [Bolinas, Calif.: Grey Fox Press, 1979]). One recognizes the line “bear with me” again in this poem.

Red Wagon

Red Wagon was published in Chicago by the Yellow Press, whose editors included Richard Friedman, Darlene Pearlstein, Art Lange, and Peter Kostaskis. The cover was by Rochelle Kraut.

She A translation/adaptation from the French poet Paul Eluard.

3 Pages This is a transcription of Ted’s words from a set of three black-and-white silkscreen collaborations with George Schneeman.

Conversation “Conversation” is actually a collaboration by Ted and me and first appeared under my name in my book Phoebe Light (Bolinas, Calif.: Big Sky, 1973). It was part of an unfinished project of imitations that would each be attributed to the imitated poet, in this case John Giorno. Ted’s contribution to the collaboration consisted of selecting and offering to me the two sentences to be Giorno-ized: Giorno had recently added an intense, formal repetition to his style. The sentences were remembered from a conversation Ted had once had with Frank O’Hara, in which O’Hara spoke admiringly of the first sentence of William Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson but misquoted the sentence. The actual “conversation” of the poem is between the two sentences (between O’Hara and Saroyan), though there is an implied conversation between O’Hara and Ted (and between Ted and me, as well as between us and John Giorno). The layout and line arrangement are entirely by me, and I unconsciously scored the poem for my voice.

Sunday Morning This poem, referring by title to the lovely song by the Velvet Underground, is completely antithetical to that song’s spirit, being constructed out of rather vulgar language from postcards.

Something Amazing Just Happened The long-lined exuberant style of this poem, and of “Farewell Address,” was never really repeated in Ted’s work.

In the Wheel The Wheel was a coffee shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The poem plays on the Buddhist notion of the wheel of death and rebirth.

Wind “Wind” was inspired by a small painting by Larry Rivers that hung on the wall of Bill Berkson’s East Tenth Street apartment in New York, circa 1970. The painting was abstract, with bright colors against a black background. Thus “the angels” which “emerge from the rivers” are the colors listed; and “rivers” refers both to the dark ground of the painting and to Larry Rivers himself.

Things to Do on Speed This poem was constructed out of an article about speed and speed freaks that appeared in the New York Times Sunday magazine in the summer of 1970. Ted and I were supposedly speed freaks, and he was struck by the chasm that lay between journalistic language and our—anyone’s—reality. He doctored, simplified, idiomized, and generally played with the text, converting it into his new favorite form, the longer “things to do” poem. His version is infinitely better than the magazine article, funnier and more condensed, humanizing, and pleasing to the ear.

Farewell Address The poem was inspired by Ron Padgett’s “Homage to Max Jacob” in Great Balls of Fire.

Three Sonnets and a Coda for Tom Clark This work is constructed out of lines and phrases from In the Early Morning Rain and was written at the time of that book’s publication in 1970. It is both a homage to the book and a meditation on the time and experience it covers.

Wishes “Wishes,” as well as “I Used to Be but Now I Am,” are the first of a number of poems that Ted wrote following forms devised by Kenneth Koch for teaching poetry writing to children, students, old people, people in nursing homes, hospitals, etc. The source for these two list forms was Koch’s Wishes, Lies, and Dreams.

Scorpion, Eagle & Dove (A Love Poem) The symbolism in the title, which is associated with the astrological sign Scorpio (the natal sign of all the people listed in the poem), is based on a reading of John Jocelyn’s Meditations on the Signs of the Zodiac. See also the poem “Scorpio” in this section, and the prefatory note to A Certain Slant of Sunlight. Astrology was famously a 60s preoccupation, but had also been important in French Surrealist circles. Ted had translated the “Scorpion” section of Miroir d’astrologie by Max Jacob and Claude Valence.

Things to Do in Providence One of Ted’s most well-known poems, “Things to Do in Providence” was written in a notebook in 1970. Ted studied it for several months before typing it up, being in a slight quandary as to whether or not it was a poem, in that form. The “situation” in the poem is a visit to Providence, Rhode Island, where Ted’s mother, Peggy (Dugan) Berrigan, lived and where his grandmother, Alice Clifford, was dying in a nursing home. This poem is probably the apex of Ted’s experiments with open sentiment; sentiment later became more embedded, layered in. The poem is not “sentimental,” being formalistic (the “things to do” grid) and is infused with different kinds of language, quotidian event, and tones of voice. Lines from the poem toward the end, after “The heart stops briefly when someone dies,” are often quoted by both poets and non-poets.

Frank O’Hara The six poems from “Frank O’Hara” through “Buddha on the Bounty” are best considered as belonging together, though they aren’t marked as a sequence in Red Wagon. Originally part of a disbanded sequence called Southampton Winter (along with the poem “Galaxies,” in Nothing for You), they tend to be more discursive than sonnets (though “Chinese Nightingale” and “Buddha on the Bounty” are each fourteen lines long). The source of material was largely Ted’s own words: poems by him and also lines and phrases drawn from a handmade book, which he had filled with as much writing as possible in order to cull lines from later. The poem “Frank O’Hara” contains lines from Ted’s translation of Jean Cocteau’s poem “La Mort de Guillaume Apollinaire.”

I Used To Be but Now I Am A number of poems have been omitted from Red Wagon so that they could be included in Easter Monday. They consist of the following titles, which, in the order given, originally appeared after the poem “I Used To Be but Now I Am”: “Old-Fashioned Air,” “Chicago Morning,” “Newtown,” “The End,” “Chicago English Afternoon,” “From a List of Delusions of the Insane, What They Are Afraid Of,” “Late November,” “Quarter to Three,” “She (Not to be confused with she, a girl),” “Sister Moon,” “Four Gates to the City,” “L.G.T.T.H.,” “In Blood,” “Peking,” “Soviet Souvenir,” “So Going Around Cities,” and “Picnic.”

There was a set of five of The Sonnets originally included in Red Wagon, after the poem “Picnic.” They were XXXIV, LXXXI, LXVII, LXV, LVI, and LXXVII, XXXIV and LXXVII being published then for the first time.

The Complete Prelude The version which originally appeared in Red Wagon was titled “THE COMPLETE PRELUDE: Title Not Yet Fixed Upon.” The dedication in the earlier version read “for Clark,” and there were stanzas instead of numbered sections. The later version in So Going Around Cities had the dedication “for Clark Coolidge,” which we have retained with the addition of a further dedication, “& for my mother,” which he had added in his own copy of So Going Around Cities. Ted’s mother was conceived of as the woman in the lines in the third part “& shall continue evermore to make / & shall perform to exalt and to refine / Inspired, celestial presence ever pure / From all the sources of her former strength.”

Easter Monday

As explained in the introduction, the manuscript source is a folder which Ted worked with until shortly before his death. Though he had largely finished writing the individual poems in 1977, he didn’t achieve the final sequence until 1983.

The first four poems originated in Chicago between 1972 and 1973. The subsequent twenty-one poems were written in England between 1973 and 1974. “So Going Around Cities” dates from Chicago, summer 1975. Most of the others were written in New York, except for “Boulder” and “Picnic,” which were originally written in Boulder, Colorado, in 1975, when Ted was a guest teacher at the Naropa Institute. The final four poems date from 1977.

According to a notebook kept in England, Ted had originally considered including the following poems in the sequence: the “Southampton Winter” series of poems (see note on “Frank O’Hara” in Red Wagon); “The Complete Prelude” (in Red Wagon); “Brigadoon,” “New Personal Poem,” “Baltic Stanzas,” “Other Contexts,” “Communism,” “The Green Sea,” and “Service at Upwey” (in Nothing for You). There are other titles listed, but those poems seem to have disappeared.

Chicago Morning Dedicated to the painter Philip Guston, the poem invokes the industrial density of Chicago, and also the political feeling of the early 70s: “The president of the United States / And the Director of the FBI stand over / A dead mule.” From the sentence beginning “A huge camel” through “ ‘The Fop’s Tunic’” the poem more or less describes two drawings by Guston, which were printed in CHICAGO, a magazine I edited. Guston had by now made his celebrated style change, and his work was replete with Ku Klux Klan–like figures (“The Fop’s Tunic”). The manuscript copy of the poem is dated “Jan 1972 Chi.”

The End From the line “He / Encourages criticism” through “beneath his spell” the reference is to Ezra Pound, who had recently died. These lines also contain material from Ted’s translation of Cocteau’s “La Mort de Guillaume Apollinaire.”

Newtown “Wildly singing in the mountains with cancer of the spine” refers to Arthur Waley, the translator and Sinologist.

Method Action The poem is atypically textured for the sequence, being like “Boulder” and “Picnic” in an open-field arrangement. It was written in Chicago and appeared in CHICAGO 5, no. 1 (Nov. 1972).

Swinburne & Watts-Dunton This is the first of the poems in the sequence written in England, in this case in Putney, London. The title refers to Algernon Swinburne and Theodore Watts-Dunton, British poets and literary figures. Watts-Dunton took care of Swinburne when his health was poor (due to both epilepsy and excess) and restored him; the poet here seems to become both men.

Old-fashioned Air Written in Battersea, London, and dedicated to the musician Lee Crabtree, “Old-Fashioned Air” is unique in the sequence in being in Ted’s personal, speaking voice. What the poem never says is that Lee Crabtree has just committed suicide in New York (summer of 1973). The poem is, rather, an address to a friend’s living presence.

The Ancient Art of Wooing Written in Wivehoe, Essex, where the remainder of the British portion of the sequence was composed.

At Loma Linda This poem is composed largely of language taken from British daytime television. However, Loma Linda is the hospital in California where my father, Albert Notley, had a medical checkup in 1973 or 1974 (he died in 1975). See “Crossroads,” in Nothing for You, for a different version of the poem.

L. G. T. T. H. These letters stand for “Let’s Go to the Hop” (title of a popular song from the 50s) and refer to the Frank O’Hara poem “At the Old Place,” which contains, almost but not quite, the same set of initials: “Button’s buddy lips frame L G T TH O P?”—the letters in that case standing for “Let’s go to the Old Place.”

From A List of the Delusions of the Insane, What They Are Afraid Of This sonnet is composed of lines from David Antin’s longer work, A List of the Delusions of the Insane What They Are Afraid of.

She (Not to be confused with she, a girl) The poem is made from Ted’s much longer jacket copy written for Anne Waldman’s book Baby Breakdown.

Innocents Abroad This is a notably obscure work, and many of the references are simply private. One sees that the word “(Change)” comes at the end of the eighth line, a point of change in the traditional sonnet. The poem is operating on a level of abstraction and reflection in which the sonnet form and personal experience become highly compressed together. There are no sentences, and few signals. The poem is dedicated to the British translator and scholar Gordon Brotherston.

Sister Moon and An Orange Clock As Ted’s friends grew further away geographically, he talked to them by reading their poems and writing responses such as these. “Sister Moon” is an engagement with the work of Clark Coolidge, as the poem that follows it, “An Orange Clock,” is an engagement with the work of Tom Clark.

Gainsborough Easter Monday is sometimes under the influence of the music of Bob Dylan. This is more a matter of tone and diction than of specific reference. You can hear it in poems like “Gainsborough” (and also in “The Joke & the Stars,” “Excursion & Visitation,” and “So Going Around Cities”).

Four Gates to the City This poem is dated “1974” on the manuscript. It contains lines by Tom Clark, Ron Padgett, Martha and the Vandellas, and the French poet Théophile Gautier (1811–1872). Ted and Gordon Brotherston had translated two of Gautier’s poems, “L’Art” and “Préface,” from Emaux et camées (Enamels and Cameos). The reference to Goethe’s “divan at Weimar” is from “L’Art.”

In Blood The poem is composed largely of words from my poems, notably a sonnet sequence entitled Great Interiors, Wines & Spirits of the World. The closing line, however, is from Frank O’Hara’s poem “Cambridge”; in O’Hara’s poem the line refers to Boris Pasternak.

So Going Around Cities This, the longest poem of the sequence, signals a return to the United States. It was written in Chicago, circa 1974–1975 and is dedicated, and addressed, to “Doug & Jan Oliver.” Douglas Oliver, the late British poet, was a student at the University of Essex where Ted taught from 1973 to 1974. He is one of the three dedicatees of the book So Going Around Cities. The title phrase (of both the poem and the book) is from the poem “Rivers and Mountains” by John Ashbery. The refrain of lines beginning with the words “I traded” owes a debt to the song “City Singer” by musician / songwriter Larry Estridge.

Narragansett Park From this poem onward all the poems in the sequence were written in New York City at 101 St. Mark’s Place.

A Note from Yang-Kuan We have made a handful of changes from texts as presented in So Going Around Cities, based on Ted’s final manuscript of the sequence. In “A Note from Yang-Kuan,” in the eighth line, a comma has been removed after the word “And.” In the same poem, in the twelfth line, the phrase “The poor” has been amended to “Tho poor.” “Yang-Kuan” is a place-name in a poem by the Chinese poet Wang Wei and also occurs in my poem “After Wang Wei.”

Everybody Seemed So Laid Back in the Park Constructed from prose sentences by Bernadette Mayer.

A Meeting at the Bridge We have made punctuation changes from the version in So Going Around Cities, consistent with Ted’s final manuscript copy. The changes are too complicated to describe, but they occur in the third stanza and last couplet.

“I Remember” A sonnet composed of lines from Joe Brainard’s opus I Remember.

To Himself After Giacomo Leopardi’s “A se stesso,” “To Himself” is the result of a lengthy process of translation involving several people. In the Easter Monday folder Ted has appended the following notes to the poem: “trans by Ted Berrigan from prose version by George Schneeman & poem version worked at by Berrigan & Engl. trans, poet, & Latin American specialist Gordon Brotherston.”

Whitman in Black One of Ted’s most widely anthologized poems, this sonnet, inspired by the crime novelist Ross MacDonald, turns the, or a, poet into both a criminal and a detective, invoking Whitman for corroboration. The MacDonald source is On Crime Writing (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1973).

Heloise Dated “27 Aug 77” in the final manuscript. Ted wrote “Heloise” after reading Helen Waddell’s novel Abelard.

From the House Journal Dated “30 Aug 77” in the final manuscript, this poem is composed of lines beginning with the pronoun “I,” taken from the index of first lines and titles in The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara.

Visits from a Small Enigma Written using Jim Brodey’s words, this poem is dated “31 Aug 77” in the final manuscript.

Revery Reverdy. That is, this poem uses language translated from the poetry of Pierre Reverdy.

My Tibetan Rose This final poem in the sequence is dated “1 Sept. 77.” It was written after Ted read Lionel Davidson’s thriller The Rose of Tibet.

Nothing for You

Published by United Artists (Lewis Warsh and Bernadette Mayer, editors) in 1977. The original front and back cover art for Nothing for You was by George Schneeman.

Several poems that originally appeared in the book Nothing for You have been omitted from this section and appear elsewhere in this volume. “Poem” (“of morning, Iowa City, blue . . .”), which originally appeared after “Monolith,” has been omitted by the editors, since it appears previously in the section In the Early Morning Rain. “Method Action,” which originally appeared after “Mi Casa, Su Casa,” “A Little American Feedback,” which originally appeared after “New Personal Poem,” and “A Note from Yang Kuan,” which originally appeared after “Blue Targets,” have been omitted since they were finally included in Easter Monday.

A number of the poems in Nothing for You were later reprinted in So Going Around Cities, with small changes. We have invariably honored the later changes.

Valentine The opening sixteen pages of Nothing for You consist of poems written in the early 60s. Ted had continued to tinker with them over the years and was particularly obsessed with “Valentine,” “Hearts,” and “String of Pearls.” “Valentine,” as presented here, seems finally perfect, the result of almost twenty years of consideration of twelve lines. In “Valentine” an ellipsis that appeared in the last line in the United Artists publication of Nothing for You was removed for publication in So Going Around Cities (and here).

Doubts In “Doubts” and in “He,” “For Annie Rooney,” “Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza,” “Prayer,” “Night Letter,” “Some Do Not,” “Autumn’s Day,” “Truth as History,” “Francis à Bientôt,” and “New Junket” may be found material that was used in The Sonnets. These poems, along with those in Early Poems, are source works for that sequence.

Prayer, Night Letter, and The TV Story These three early poems printed in So Going Around Cities have been added to this “early poems” part of Nothing for You. To accommodate these additions more gracefully we have moved the poem “Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza,” originally appearing after “Francis à Bientôt,” to a position immediately after “For Annie Rooney.”

Some Do Not Some Do Not is the title of the first volume of Ford Madox Ford’s tetrology, Parade’s End. (“Ford Madox Ford is not a dream” is a recurring line in The Sonnets.)

On the Level Everyday This poem originally appeared, in a different version, in Bean Spasms, under the title “The Level of Everyday.” The second version, rewritten for Nothing for You, seems superior to the first. It should be noted that Ted could not help playing with his poems, especially older, less famous ones whose identities were not yet frozen for his audience.

Autumn’s Day Rather than being designated “after Rilke,” this translation/adaptation was originally attributed to “Rilke (trans. Ted Berrigan),” at the bottom of the poem, in Nothing for You.

String of Pearls For its presentation in So Going Around Cities Ted removed some in-line spaces from the version originally appearing in Nothing for You.

Francis à Bientôt See the note for “Telegram” in In the Early Morning Rain.

Cento: A Note on Philosophy This poem did not include the dedication “for Pat Mitchell” in Nothing for You but did in So Going Around Cities. We have thus kept the dedication.

New Junket “for Harry Fainlight”: In a moving obituary for Fainlight written for the Poetry Project Newsletter in 1982, Ted states, in regard to meeting Fainlight in 1963: “Harry & I met like two boys in a John Buchan novel; a Yank, with no connotations other than friend on that word, and a Brit, one who as it turned out had American citizenship by birth, but had grown up entirely in England and was Oxford London to the core. . . . We liked one another from the first, like they say, and spent long hours and nights in Ratner’s, comparing maps of the worlds of poetry.”

From The Art of the Sonnet The Art of the Sonnet is a six-part collaborative work written with Tom Clark in New York in 1967. This version consists of numbers 1, 3, and 6; Ted has made changes in parts 3 and 6 in the manuscript copy we retain.

Air Conditioning and Monolith These poems were both written in Iowa City circa 1968–1969. They are about Ted’s being in his office at the Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa.

London and London Air These poems were both written during Ted’s first trip to England in the summer of 1969. “London Air” is dedicated to Robert Creeley, who was also in London at the time. This poem, and Creeley’s “In London,” mark the beginning of their friendship and cross-influence. In “London Air,” “My heart Your heart” is a quotation from Frank O’Hara’s “Poem” (to Donald M. Allen), transformed in the addition of the capital M and the capital Y. From the beginning of this poem Ted is playing with punctuation, emphasis, pronouns, and linguistic exactitude, in a manner reminiscent of Creeley’s but also of poems of his own like “Tambourine Life.”

In Bed with Joan & Alex This was, like “London Air,” an important poem for Ted at the time of its writing, in this case the fall of 1969 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As in many of the poems of this period, Ted is alone in his room, and the subject is solitude and what’s “around.” Though this poem is built on sexual innuendo, it is founded on a room washed with light and color, containing two objects which remind the poet of two people who aren’t there. The first object is a shirt, resting on a chair, sewn for Ted by Joan Fagin, a designer and seamstress, at the time married to Larry Fagin; Joan and Larry Fagin had recently visited Ted in Ann Arbor (see “Ann Arbor Song,” In the Early Morning Rain). The second object is a painting of a Maine cottage by Alex Katz, a small study for a larger work. Ted’s poem takes the two objects/presences and sets them into motion in a sort of waltz: “Round & round & round we go,” in the words of a Neil Young song that was popular then.

Sweet Vocations In the last line, “its” (in the version in Nothing for You) has been changed to “it’s” (as in the version in So Going Around Cities).

Going to Chicago Like “Black & White Magic,” “Going to Chicago” was written on an airplane. When Ted salutes the poet John Sinclair, Sinclair is presumably below in Detroit as the plane passes overhead. Ted had read with Sinclair at the Berkeley Poetry Conference of 1965. At the time of “Going to Chicago” (1969) Sinclair, a political activist, had just been sentenced to ten years in prison for possession of a joint of marijuana. The dedication to “Going to Chicago” originally read “for Donald Hall” in Nothing for You and was changed to “for Don Hall” in So Going Around Cities. Also the titles in part 2 were not italicized in Nothing for You.

How We Live in the Jungle Stanza breaks which originally appeared in Nothing for You, after the line ending with “furniture” and the line ending with “a buzz on,” were removed for So Going Around Cities.

Black & White Magic “Secret Clouds / I can’t get into you”: in these and the following lines Ted is embedding book titles into syntax, creating a new kind of metaphor. “Secret Clouds” is a story/poem by Harris Schiff, and Leaving Cheyenne is a novel by Larry McMurtry. The poem ends with an excerpt from Ted’s back cover copy for Anselm Hollo’s book Maya, published by Golliard/Grossman in 1970. Ted’s comment contains the following sentences: “By ‘civilized’ I mean genuinely civilized, that is, with no proportionate loss of spleen. The hits in the poems take place in your head when you read them, but the poems are not a head trip. The head speaks out of the heart to the head connected to the heart.”

Three Poems: Going to Canada Originally, in Nothing for You, “Three Poems: Going to Canada” was called “Three Poems,” with the poems laid out on separate pages. In the first of those poems, “Itinerary,” a stanza break before the line “Go to Canada” was eliminated for So Going Around Cities.

Galaxies The poem “Galaxies” was originally part of the disbanded Southampton Winter sequence.

Postmarked Grand Rapids The word pauses was not italicized in Nothing for You but was italicized in So Going Around Cities.

Further Definitions (Waft) Ted is in dialogue with Michael Brownstein’s poem “Definitions,” which, laid out similarly to this one, defined certain words. Ted has taken Brownstein’s definitions of those words and defined them. Thus Brownstein’s definitions are on the left, and Ted’s definitions of the definitions are on the right.

Kirsten Kirsten is Kirsten Creeley. “How you talk” was originally, in Nothing for You, “How she talks,” and “You are” was originally “She is.” These particularly crucial changes, again, were made for So Going Around Cities.

He “He” contains material that was incorporated into “Chicago English Afternoon” in Easter Monday.

Communism This poem was constructed from a failed poem of mine during the Easter Monday period. In “An Interview with Ralph Hawkins” (in Talking in Tranquility), Ted, referring to the poems “Peking” and “Soviet Souvenir,” both in Easter Monday, states, “Marriage is like communism—ideally speaking—much more than it is capitalism or even socialism. I think it’s like communism, from whatever sense I have of communism. From each according to his means, to each according to his needs at best.”

Crossroads See the poem “At Loma Linda” in Easter Monday.

Elysium The dedication “for Marion Farrier” was added for So Going Around Cities. “Elysium” is heaven in classical mythology, but the reference here is from Shakespeare: “And what should I do in Illyria? / My brother he is in Elysium” (Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, act 1, scene 2).

In the 51st State

IN THE 51ST STATE

The poems in this section, all written in the late 70s, were first published in So Going Around Cities.

In the 51st State In the seventh stanza there is the question of the word brindle, which is not considered a verb in the dictionary. “I’d still rather brindle” might mean that the speaker would still rather evince streaks or spots, as the word would imply, according to its usage as a noun (“brindle”) or an adjective (“brindled”). Perhaps Ted used the word in order not quite to make sense; this is a strange poem, opaque and clear, depressed and loving all at once (brindled?). The line “A woman rolls under the wheels in a book” refers to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Red Shift This important “personal” poem was written according to method. “Red Shift” essentially follows an outline for a fill-in-the-blanks “New York School poem,” as printed in a one-shot mimeo magazine The Poets’ Home Companion, edited by Carol Gallup. The form itself was devised by Linda O’Brien (Schjeldahl). The magazine was published in the late 60s, but Ted rediscovered it in the 70s and within it the parodic procedure for writing a poem such as one of his own personal poems. By following the parody, he rejuvenated the original form and created a brilliant, passionate work.

Around the Fire The poem contains language from three different sources, as if there were three people speaking “around the fire.” The sources of words are interviews, poems, and speculations by Ed Dorn, me, and Ted. That is, Dorn’s and my words were already written down. Ted was more likely to draw on text than to “overhear,” though he sometimes did that too. The feminist last line of the poem is pure Berrigan.

Cranston Near the City Line This poem was written using ideas derived from Kenneth Koch’s I Never Told Anybody, a book of suggestions for teaching poetry writing in nursing homes. Ted decided to combine several ideas for poems into a single poem, including the retrieval of an early memory using exact description, the telling of something that one had “never told anybody,” and the naming of colors of objects. When Ted performed the poem at readings, he sang the “She told me that she loved me” section.

Coda : Song This poem was published under the title “Song” in Clown War 16 (1977), ed. Bob Heman.

In Anselm Hollo’s Poems Another of Ted’s delvings into the poetry / language of a friend and colleague.

Last Poem Ted conceived of the “last poem” as a form: a poem that any poet might want to write. (See the note on “People Who Died,” In the Early Morning Rain.) The poem was written more than four years before his death, but people have a tendency to treat it as virtually Ted’s last poem and testament. It is far from his last poem; and it is quite funny, among its other qualities. Besides the words essentially from Creeley, from “frequent / Reification” through “and I dug him,” one hears language echoing trashy spy novels, a poem from Easter Monday, the poem “Cranston Near the City Line,” and the initial voice-over for the soap opera The Days of Our Lives. “Last Poem” was originally published in the magazine Inc. #3, edited by John Daley, in which it is dated “13 Jan 79 / nyc.”

THE MORNING LINE

Published by Richard Aaron’s Am Here Books/Immediate Editions in 1982. The cover art was by Tom Clark.

Sonnet: Homage to Ron This poem is made up entirely of lines from Ron Padgett’s poetry, except for the last word, “No?” “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu” uses a similar method, with the same poet’s material.

44th Birthday Evening, at Harris’s Written in November of 1978.

An UnSchneeman In an interview I conducted with George Schneeman (published in Waltzing Matilda [New York: Kulchur, 1981]), George described his painting technique as the “unhandling” of paint. See also Train Ride, where Schneeman is referred to by Ted as “the bad painter,” in the “Let’s bitch our friends” passage. Schneeman was stating, in the interview, that his intention was not to compete with previous generations of perhaps obsessively virtuoso painters.

Part of My History Ted lived for years without a telephone, until 1980 when his mother fell ill with cancer and the “red telephone” was installed. This is an “autobiographical” poem in which there are few facts and nothing’s transparent. The poet gradually finds himself stuck in a self and poem he knows too well—“a typical set / of Berrigan-thoughts,” until finally he thinks to make a phone call. The poem might be termed “anti-autobiographical.” The dedicatee, Lewis Warsh, is the author of a book called Part of My History.

The Morning Line The first line is, more or less, by Steve Carey, also the dedicatee of the subsequent poem, “Velvet &.” Carey, who lived in the neighborhood, often came over to recite a new line of poetry he’d thought up and was trying to extend into a whole poem. “Every man-jack boot-brain slack-jaw son of a chump” was that kind of line, the “morning line.”

Avec la Mécanique sous les Palmes This is made up of lines by Pierre Reverdy.

Kerouac (continued) “Kerouac” was made from an article about Jack Kerouac in the New York Times Sunday magazine.

That Poem George Found The opening lines refer to a sonnet by Petrarch and will now recur in Ted’s poems; see, for example, “The Einstein Intersection” in A Certain Slant of Sunlight.

DNA A sonnet enclosed between two extra lines (“: Ms. Sensitive Princess:” and “Run a check on that, will you Watson?”), this poem is reminiscent of the more cryptic poems in Easter Monday, such as “Innocents Abroad” and “Incomplete Sonnet #254.” It is an analysis of the DNA of a poet.

Little American Poetry Festival Written during the One World Poetry Festival in Amsterdam, in 1978, this poem intercuts work by Ted, Joanne Kyger, Anne Waldman, and Lorenzo Thomas, that is, it’s supposed to sound like the festival.

After Peire Vidal, & Myself See the introduction.

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

These poems, never before published in books, date roughly from between 1976 and 1981 and are reproduced from manuscript copies.

Normal Depth Exceeds Specified Value A variant of the poem was published in Clown War 16 under the title “In a Loud Restaurant.” The poem is dated “24 Sept 77” in our manuscript.

Winged Pessary and Do You Know Rene? These two poems in a similar style date from around 1978. The “Rene” in the title of the second poem is poet, critic, and artist Rene Ricard; the poem is written as if spoken by him.

43 Dated “22 June 78 / nyc.”

A Spanish Tragedy This poem was written in a notebook while someone else was speaking, presumably Larry Fagin. Ted may have asked Fagin to talk while he wrote. A dedication to Fagin, after the title, has been crossed out in the manuscript. The poem is dated “20 July 78 / Boulder.”

Ronka The word “Ronka” refers to the folksinger Dave Van Ronk, recording artist and well-known Greenwich Village figure. A “ronka” would be a song such as Dave Van Ronk would sing. Although “Ronka” appears as one of the postcards shown in facsimile in the O Books edition of A Certain Slant of Sunlight, it was never intended to be part of that series and was always kept in a folder with the other poems in this section of uncollected work. Ted had five hundred blank postcards to fill for the postcards project proper, as distinct from the book he was writing, and he often used poems from other books and folders for it. In manuscript “Ronka” is first dated “June 1978. nyc.”

My 5 Favorite Records See the introduction.

Look Fred, You’re a Doctor, My Problem Is Something Like This: The “Fred” in the title is Fred Yackulic, a psychiatrist; husband of my sister Margaret Notley, the musicologist. This poem was included in “An Interview with Tom Savage” (Talking in Tranquility), which was conducted for the Columbia Oral History Archives. It belongs with the other autobiographical poems from the late 70s and early 80s, but is more literal than, for example, “Last Poem,” “Part of My History,” and “Another New Old Song.”

Compleynt to the Muse This poem is dated “Nov 79/Nov 80” on our manuscript.

Coffee And “One View/1960” is contained in the Early Poems section of the present volume, so Ted didn’t really tear it up. “Dogtown” is a reference to Olson’s Maximus Poems and to all that the word implies. The title itself is from Frank O’Hara’s poem “Poem Read at Joan Mitchell’s”: “and the Sagamore’s terrific ‘coffee and, Andy,’” meaning “with a cheese Danish.”

Three Little Words Another “autobiographical” poem, this is written from the point of view of Lewis Warsh. It is dated 3/11/80 on the manuscript copy.

Round About Oscar This is dated “17.IX.80.”

The By-Laws This poem was made from a set of booklets written by George Schneeman as an aid to teaching English to foreigners. The “By-Laws” were those adopted by the Advisory Board of the Poetry Project in the late 70s.

Thin Breast Doom Dated “2/80” in manuscript. The allusion is to “A Round of English” by Lew Welch, one of Ted’s favorite poems. In Welch’s poem there is the line “Carved my initials on her thin breast bone,” followed by the lines “Thin brass dome, beautiful! / How’d you ever think of a thin brass dome?” Those latter lines had been spoken, in real life, by Philip Whalen, mishearing Welch when he recited the initial line. Ted’s title, and dedication, with the change to “thin breast doom,” is thus a further “mishearing.”

Another New Old Song This poem, dated “3/81” in manuscript, begins as fictional autobiography and gradually invokes Ted’s parents, particularly his mother.

A Certain Slant of Sunlight

This book was published by Leslie Scalapino’s O Books in 1988. The cover design of the original O Books edition, using facsimile postcards, was by Leslie Scalapino. The front cover incorporated the postcard “Windshield,” with its drawing by George Schneeman. The introduction was written by me.

See the introduction for an account of the postcards project. Poets who contributed phrases or lines to these poems (taking into account the poems in the Out-takes as well) included Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Steve Carey, Greg Masters, Joanne Kyger, Steve Levine, Tom Pickard, Jeff Wright, Eileen Myles, Anne Waldman, Harris Schiff, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, Tom Carey, Ada Katz, and myself. Artists who provided images for the original five hundred postcards included George Schneeman, Dick Jerome, Rosemary Mayer, Shelley Kraut, Steve Levine, and myself. There were undoubtedly others.

Facsimile of Horoscope Ted wanted the horoscope included as part of the book when published, but it was somehow overlooked in the publication of the O Books edition. It is printed here for the first time. One might view it as symbolic of fate, or as another kind of poet “DNA.” The “Secondary” chart was done according to Arab astrology. Ted was not precisely a believer, but he was interested in the symbolism of the zodiac, and at one time had thought a lot about his natal sign, Scorpio. See also the note to “Scorpion, Eagle, & Dove (A Love Poem),” in Red Wagon.

(You’ll do good if you play it like you’re not getting paid . . .) The first sentence in the untitled second poem is an old show-biz saying found in one of George Burns’s autobiographies.

(With / daring / and / strength . . .) The untitled third poem of the sequence is the last part of the poem “In Three Parts” in In the Early Morning Rain, with the addition, at the end, of the lines “Just/like/me.”

A Certain Slant of Sunlight Most of the sequence dates from 1982 and is arranged chronologically. However, the title poem was written in the spring of 1980, in Boulder, Colorado, using a word list I’d drawn up. The procedure with such a list was to employ one word per line in the order given, with the result being a poem of as many lines as there were words in the list (usually twelve). Ted took the list into a class he was teaching at Naropa and then did the assignment along with the class, employing the words as it occurred to him rather than according to grid.

Salutation One should imagine each poem as if printed on a postcard. That is, imagine receiving a postcard with the poem “Salutation” on the “picture” side: “Listen, you cheap little liar . . .”

The Einstein Intersection The title is that of a book by science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany. Two others of Delany’s titles are included in the body of the poem: Out of the Dead City and City of a Thousand Suns. The poem fetishizes titles, using capital letters to turn phrases familiar from literature or somewhere, into titlelike entities.

Pinsk After Dark and Reds There are, throughout the sequence, small clusters of poems that involve initiating phrases by the same person. Both “Pinsk After Dark” and “Reds” contain some words by Allen Ginsberg and are “about” Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Other sets of poems, occurring sequentially in twos and threes, have to do with words (or images) by Eileen Myles, Joanne Kyger, Tom Pickard, George Schneeman, Jeff Wright, Greg Masters, Dick Jerome. However, not all the poems involving words or lines by a particular person are kept in sets—that would have been too rigid a procedure. Also, people came back and put words on further postcards: Ted’s friends became rather addicted to being part of this project.

People Who Change Their Names This poem may be read as a sonnet, with the words STEVE CAREY: occurring at the ninth line, the point of change in a sonnet. The idea for the poem came from an autobiographical prose work of my own, titled Tell Me Again (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Am Here Books, Immediate Editions, 1981). In it I refer to a favorite category of mine from the Bible, “people who changed their names”—thus the title and first four lines of Ted’s poem.

Caesar This is an extremely free translation of Catullus’s “Nil nimium studeo, Caesar,” which alludes to the persistent rumor, in ancient Rome, that Julius Caesar’s grandmother had been black.

“Poets Tribute to Philip Guston” A memorial evening had been held for Guston, after his death in 1980, at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. For his part of the evening, Ted staged a scandalous abstract expressionist–like event, in which he kept talking on and on way past his “allotted time,” goading the audience into booing him, and then finally reading a couple of poems—that is, doing what he was “supposed to.” Afterward no one was sure of whether or not he had been deliberately excessive: he had.

Blue Herring The line “As if you hands were innocent” is correct; “you hands” is not a typo.

St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie This poem is section 10, “Henry IV,” of “Corridors of Blood,” in In the Early Morning Rain.

Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s In the 70s and 80s George Schneeman made ceramic dishware and vases decorated with chains of naked figures, engaged in sexual acts in a void: the second circle of Dante’s Inferno.

Pandora’s Box: An Ode This poem is both synthetic and personal. The opening source is a text which presents a magnetic, magnanimous “he.” “I”—the speaker—is self-critical, idol-worshipping, loving, desperate, on the verge of becoming like the unnamed figure at the poem’s beginning who changed him into something like a Beat poet, when Pandora’s Box was opened.

The School Windows Song Based on Vachel Lindsay’s poem “The Factory Windows Song.” Ted discusses his poem, in relation to Lindsay’s, in “Workshops at the Jack Kerouac Conference” (On the Level, Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living, ed. Joel Lewis [Jersey City, N.J.: Talisman House, 1997]). “I thought I could make, perhaps, something that was accurate and also was something more accurate—was as accurate now as his was then. Also it gave me a great take on how his was very accurate then.”

Transition of Nothing Noted as Fascinating “Donald Allen, Donald Keene, Wm. ‘Ted’ deBary” had all been stationed together in Japan after World War II. Don Allen, distinguished editor and publisher, was Ted’s editor for the Grove Press edition of The Sonnets. Keene and deBary are well-known scholars of Japanese literature. This is, then, a sort of “orientalist” poem. DeBary’s daughter, Brett deBary, is the “Lady Brett” of “Tambourine Life.”

Whoa Back Buck & Gee By Land! The title is a rendering from memory of a Leadbelly line, “Who, back, Buck, an’ gee, by de Lamb!” As sung on recordings, Leadbelly’s lyrics can be hard to make out, and Ted knew he’d never heard the line correctly. The poem is a little elegy for Thelonius Monk, who had recently died, but also for Auden and Leadbelly. The second line, “While whole days go by and later their years” is a re-rendering into the present tense of the first line of O’Hara’s poem “River.” “Sleep, Big Baby, sleep your fill” is from one of Auden’s last poems, “A Lullaby.” The Erinyes are the Fates in Greek mythology. And “Women in the night who moan yr name” is from John Wieners’s “Act #2” in Ace of Pentacles: “He’s gone and taken / my morphine with him / Oh Johnny. Women in / the night moan yr. name.”

Frances The “Frances” of this poem and of “Paris, Frances” is Anne Waldman’s mother, Frances Waldman, who became gravely ill and then died in 1982.

I Dreamt I See Three Ladies in a Tree The three dedicatees of the poem, as well as Tom Pickard (see “Last Poem” and “Mutiny!”)—all British poets—were in New York in the spring of 1982 for a festival of British poetry.

Last Poem (for Tom Pickard) Another version of a “last poem,” but as if spoken by one of the “Jarrow boys,” who marched from Jarrow to London in the English hunger marches of the 1930s. The poet Tom Pickard is the co-author, with Joanna Voit, of a history called Jarrow March.

Mutiny! This poem concerns the British war in the Falkland Islands in the spring of 1982.

Wantonesse The poem was written in conjunction with a photo of upstairs neighbor, Megan Williams. She was at that time a dress designer; the photo was of her back, showing off a deep V in a dress she’d made. Thus the last line of the poem, “Loving her back.” This is one example of the way Ted’s mind worked in relation to the images on the cards.

Creature “Creature” is made of materials from my poems, especially the poem “When I Was Alive.”

Providence This poem records the death of Ted’s mother in July 1982. Clark Coolidge’s “brown suit” was one Ted had previously borrowed for ceremonial occasions: Coolidge too was from Providence, and the suit was kept at his mother’s house. In “On Poems from ‘500 American Postcards’” (from On the Level Everyday), Ted comments, “Providence. There, your whole downtown part of the city is built across a bay, and about every fifteen years there’s . . . There are water marks all over town saying how high the water came at such and such time.”

I Heard Brew Moore Say, One Day Brew Moore (1924–1973) was a jazz saxophonist influenced by Lester Young (see “String of Pearls,” in Nothing for You). His name is very suggestive. For stylistic clues to the poem, see Allen Ginsberg’s “Manhattan May Day Midnight,” first published in Plutonian Ode.

Untitled (July 11, 1982) The untitled poem dated “July 11, 1982” and beginning “Dear Alice” was written entirely by me.

The Way It Was in Wheeling A “Country Western” song, “The Way It Was in Wheeling” was written following a Mad-Libs form.

My Autobiography This poem, again, concerns Megan Williams, whose partner, the artist Dick Jerome, had broken his leg. Megan told Ted the story outlined in the poem, which he transformed into a narrative from Dick’s point of view.

Down on Mission From “On Poems from ‘500 American Postcards’”: “This is one of those poems where it might be difficult to sort out the references, and what each line means in reference to the story, if you were trying to do that, but if you are just interested in hearing it, it’s clear enough I think. . . . It’s a kind of doom-saying poem, but it’s also about . . . oh, cycles of personal growth, you, all your own sense of the legends you found yourself on, all crumble periodically.”

In Your Fucking Utopias The poem begins with a line from Whitman’s poem “Respondez!” which is famous as Whitman’s “only” angry poem. Whitman’s line is very angry, and this is an angry poem too: one could only follow such a line in kind. “The Gandy-Dancers Ball,” not nearly as famous a song as “The Darktown Strutters Ball,” was a Frankie Laine hit in the 50s. The poem is about all exclusion as a kind of racism and money as the great American excluder.

Tough Cookies These “Chinese fortunes” are inspired by Frank O’Hara’s poem “Lines for the Fortune Cookies.”

Skeats and the Industrial Revolution The poem takes off from the etymology of the word god in Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary.

Let No Willful Fate Misunderstand As Ted says in “On Poems from ‘500 American Postcards,’” the poem is “sprinkled with lines from Robert Frost.” However, “Night Tie” is the title of a collage made by Aram Saroyan and given to Ted, and this poem “sounds like” Saroyan in places, as if Ted’s father and Aram’s father (the writer William Saroyan) merge.

To Sing the Song, That Is Fantastic Section 9 of O’Hara’s “Second Avenue” opens with the lines “Now in November, by Josephine Johnson. The Heroes, / by John Ashbery. Topper’s Roumanian Broilings. The Swimmer.” Ted performed this quite political poem in a reggae-chant manner, in imitation of the singer Yellowman.

This Guy One of two poems written in the last year of Ted’s life (the other being “Robert (Lowell)” in the Last Poems section) that concern Ted’s literary relationship to Lowell. Though Lowell isn’t referred to by name, in this poem, he is “This Guy.”

Give Them Back, Who Never Were A beautiful instance of the technique of identity merge, which Ted seems to have perfected in the book. It is as if every poet or person is the same one, and each one is and isn’t her/himself. For example, toward the end of this poem, “the fat kid from Oregon” would be Phil Whalen, who was really from Washington; “who grew up to be our only real poet” refers to something once said about John Ashbery; the “jaunty Jamaica, Queens stick-figure” is Lorenzo Thomas, who though “Negro” is not a “French Negro poet” (see Frank O’Hara’s “Ode to the French Negro Poets”) but translated some poems of the French Negro poets many years after O’Hara’s death.

Christmas Card (for Barry and Carla) The dedicatees are poet Barrett Watten and experimental prose writer Carla Harryman. Third Factory (1926) is a book by the Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, highly influential in Language Poetry circles.

A Certain Slant of Sunlight: Out-takes

Ted kept two folders for the postcard project: a folder of poems to be included in the final book, and another folder of poems either not first-rate enough, or unfinished, or in some way repetitive. These out-takes are mostly a selection from the second folder. A number of the poems are dated in the manuscript, but as dates were not included in A Certain Slant of Sunlight, and Ted most often omitted dates in his books, we haven’t included them as part of the poems.

Bardolino and Postcard 12/2/82 “Bardolino,” which is dated “2/82” in our manuscript, and “Postcard 12/2/82” fall within the same set and moment as “Pinsk After Dark” and “Reds” in A Certain Slant of Sunlight.

New Poets of England & America Dated “17 Feb” in the manuscript. New Poets of England and America was a poetry anthology edited by Donald Hall, Robert Pack, and Louis Simpson, with an introduction by Robert Frost (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1957).

Get Away From Me You Little Fool An obvious interaction with the poetry of James Schuyler.

4 Metaphysical Poems and Who Was Sylvia? Both poems involved the participation of Steve Carey. The former poem is dated “17 Feb 82” and the latter “20 Feb.”

Anselm Though the poem called “Anselm” contains language by Anselm Hollo, it also refers to Anselm Berrigan. Ted invoked the two of them simultaneously more than once, the other notable instance being in the dedications to So Going Around Cities.

Wednesday Evening Services Dated “20 Mar 82.”

Head Lice Dated “24 Feb 82.”

Little Travelogue Dated “6 Mar 82.”

Sleeping Alone This poem was lost after Ted’s death, at least as text. He considered it integral to the sequence, and it should have appeared in A Certain Slant of Sunlight. We present a version reconstituted by us from a taped reading. For a slightly different reconstitution by an anonymous tape transcriber, see “Workshops at the Jack Kerouac Conference,” in On the Level Everyday.

(Another has. . .) The poem was never typed up by Ted, existing only as a postcard—a gift to me—until this publication. The postcard, entirely of Ted’s design, has a baseball sticker affixed to it, with a photo of one of the Minnesota Twins of 1982: that is, a twin self to the poet. “Another” has arrived. Ron Padgett states (in a letter to me) that the initial lines of the poem are a “variant on the first line of a 1959 poem by David Bearden: ‘Another has come to the silver mirror.’” Bearden’s poem was published in The White Dove Review 5 (summer 1960).

The Pope’s Nose This poem plays with Anne Waldman’s poem “Paul Eluard.”

The LADY, JUST WHEN I THINK I KNOW . . . Dated “21 Mar 82.”

Treason of the Clerks The poem is based on an explanation by Edmund Berrigan, then seven years old, of a drawing he’d made, probably on the postcard on which the poem was written. Treason of the Clerks is a book by the French writer Julien Benda: The Treason of the Intellectuals (La Trahison des Clerks, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington (New York: William Morrow, 1928). By its title, this poem would probably belong near “To Book-Keepers” in the main volume. It is dated “29 Mar” on the manuscript.

All A-Glower Went My Love Riding Dated “10 Apr 82.” Along with “Fern,” it involved the participation of Bernadette Mayer.

With Eileen in Locarno Dated “Easter. 1982. nyc.”

Three Lost Years Grace Murphy (“Grace falls . . .”) and Peggy DeCoursey were friends of each other and Ted. The poem was written in Boulder in 1980.

Butchie’s Tune, La Bohème, To a Young Painter, and Upside Down These four poems were all written in conjunction with Ada Katz. One of Alex Katz’s paintings is called “Upsidedown Ada.” “Butchie’s Tune” is dated “Mid Apr 82,” “To a Young Painter” is dated “5/3/82,” and “Upside Down” is dated “7 May 82.”

Der Asra Ted and Gordon Brotherston’s translation of Heinrich Heine’s “Der Asra” was done during the Easter Monday period, in England. Ted loved this translation, which he sometimes included in poetry readings, and kept trying to find a place for it in his books; but it never seemed to belong alongside his other work.

Fern Dated “18 May 82.” See the note for “All A-Glower Went My Love Riding.”

O, Sexual Reserve Dated “6/15/82.”

One Day in the Afternoon of the World Dated “18 Aug 82.”

Two Serious Ladies Dated “1 Sep 82.” The reference is to Jane Bowles’s great novel Two Serious Ladies.

Down Moon River Dated “12 Oct 82. nyc.” “Charlie” is the late Charlie McGrath, a neighbor at 101 St. Mark’s Place.

At 80 Langton Street (S.F.) Dated “1 Dec 83 NYC,” this poem was also one that Ted never typed up but left to exist only on a postcard. It was transcribed by Bill Berkson, to whom the Mikolowskis finally sent the card. The poem refers to a four-day residency by Ted, at the San Francisco arts center, 80 Langton Street, in 1981, where Hollo, Thomas, and Acker had held previous residencies. There was a clash between Ted and the Language Poets, thus the final word “Duck.” Bill Berkson chaired a panel during the residency.

Last Poems

The fourteen poems in Ted’s final folder of poems date from between December 7, 1982, and May 15, 1983. Ted had been a sporadic dater of poems, but each of these has a date affixed, or in the case of “Don Quixote & Sancho Panza,” contained in the poem. One cannot help but have the feeling he is counting down to his final moments. Ted died on July 4, 1983. The poems were first published together, under the title Last Poems, in Arshile No. 6, 1996.

Robert (Lowell) See “This Guy” in A Certain Slant of Sunlight. Ted was reading a biography of Lowell at the time of the composition of these two poems, and much of the language comes from material quoted from Lowell and others. The “we” in this poem is significant, including both Ted and Lowell, especially in the last line, which seems to sum up a lifetime. The last sentence is definitely Ted’s words.

Today in New York City As with “The Way It Was in Wheeling,” both “Today in New York City” and “Stand-up Comedy Routine” were made using Mad-Libs forms. “Today in New York City” involves a set of forms, probably in multiple-choice format, for writing newspaper articles. The forms disappear into the text, which is laid out like a poem and embellishes considerably on the Mad-Libs diagram. In places where one would have been meant to make a single choice, Ted included several: e.g., “& is contemplating / The return of Billy, / Suicide, / 3-Mile Island, / Unleashing ‘The Hammer’,” etc. “The Hammer” refers to Sonnet VI in The Sonnets. The poem is dated “7 Dec 82.”

The Short Poems Dated “23 Feb 83.”

Something to Remember Dated “2 Mar 83.”

To Jacques Roubaud Dated “11 Mar 83,” this poem is a note of condolence on the death of Roubaud’s wife. Ted had met French poet Roubaud at a poetry festival in Italy, in 1979, and they had become friendly.

Villonnette Dated “29 Mar 83.”

After Petrarch This poem, once again using Petrarch’s “labyrinth” lines, is dated “1 Apr. 83.”

Old Armenian Proverb Dated “4/83.”

Ambiguity Dated “7 Apr 83.”

Stand-up Comedy Routine Dated “21 Apr. 83.” The Mad-Libs form is considerably embellished and drawn out. The show-biz names used in this poem were probably all contained in the form, except for that of “Sammy Davis, Senior,” which Ted changed from Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy Davis Jr.’s father was also an entertainer, and Ted remembered him quite clearly. The dedicatees, poets Bob Holman and Ed Friedman, were both heavily involved in performance; the dedication implies that either one of them might perform the poem. Ted once read a book composed of Lenny Bruce’s routines and had thought about the form of the “comedy routine” outside of the Mad-Libs format.

Positively Fourth Street Dated “11 May 83.” The title is that of a Bob Dylan song.

Down on Me Dated “13 May 83.” This title is from a song sung by Janis Joplin.

Don Quixote & Sancho Panza This, Ted’s last sonnet, contains the date—“May, 1983”—in the body of the poem.

This Will Be Her Shining Hour Dated “15 May 83,” Ted’s real “last poem” was written over the course of a couple of hours, late on a Saturday night. I was in one room watching the Fred Astaire movie, and Ted was in the other room listening to my voice and his own, and to the voices of the actors.

Early Uncollected Poems

Each of the fifteen poems in this section contains lines (or in the case of “Prose Keys to American Poetry,” the single word “Perceval”) that reappeared in The Sonnets. Along with some of the poems in Nothing for You, these are the earliest usages of these materials.

What are you thinking . . . Dated “May 16th, 1962, Denver.”

Lady Takes a Holiday Dated “8 June 62.”

For Bernie There is another version of this poem with the same text but a different title, “The Awful Responsibility of History.”

Homage to Beaumont Bruestle Bruestle was one of Ted’s professors at the University of Tulsa.

Lines from Across the Room Dated “March 23, 1962.”

Homage to Mayakofsky The poem leads straight into the world of The Sonnets. These lines referring to Mayakofsky became in Sonnet I a reference to Ezra Pound.

Other Books of Poetry

NOTE ON BEAN SPASMS

Bean Spasms was published by Lita Hornick’s Kulchur Press in 1967. The title page qualifies the volume as “Collaborations by Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett / Illustrated & Drawings by Joe Brainard.” Brainard was also the subject, in the volume, of an interview by Ron and Pat Padgett.

Much of the work in Bean Spasms consists of literal collaborations between Ted and Ron Padgett, in the form of poems, an exchange of letters (“Big Travel Dialogues”), an excerpt from the collaborative novel Furtive Days. However, the book also contains important poems by each poet as sole author. Authorship of all work in the volume is unattributed, left up in the air; when reading the book it is impossible to know without knowing already, e.g., that Ted is the author of the poem “Bean Spasms,” that Ted and Ron Padgett are the co-authors of the excerpt from Furtive Days, that Ron Padgett is the author of the poems “December” and “A Man Saw a Ball of Gold.”

One of the more notorious pieces in the volume is “An Interview with John Cage,” which purports to be an interview with Cage but is completely fabricated by Ted, out of real interviews in contemporary journals with Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, and the French playwright Fernando Arrabal. The interview was first published in Peter Schjeldahl’s and Lewis Macadams’s magazine Mother. The interview was subsequently selected for inclusion in The National Literary Anthology as best interview of the year (1966), as judged by a panel including such figures as Susan Sontag and Robert Brustein. The interview had been taken at face value as an interview with Cage. After Ted’s informing George Plimpton, who was somehow involved in the awards, of the interview’s fabrication, Plimpton had to notify Cage. Cage asked if Ted were “for me or against me”; Plimpton assured Cage that Ted was for him, the interview having been made using methods of composition learned from Cage himself. Cage then declined his supposed share of the thousand-dollar award, on the grounds that he hadn’t been involved in the interview at all, not having spoken or written a word of it.

As indicated in the introduction, Ted incorporated the poems by himself in Bean Spasms into subsequent books of his (as did Padgett).

NOTE ON SO GOING AROUND CITIES

So Going Around Cities: New and Selected Poems, 1958–1979, first published by George Mattingly’s Blue Wind Press in 1980, is a unique volume, which feels less like a “selected poems” than a new book constructed by Ted. The cover art is by Donna Dennis; but the book, which is quite large, makes generous use of drawings by George Schneeman in a manner reminiscent of In the Early Morning Rain. In this case there is a drawing for each section of the book, appearing after the section title.

The sections in So Going Around Cities present poems in groups that have overlapping chronologies: for example, the section called Many Happy Returns (which does not strictly correspond to the Corinth Books edition) dated 1961–1968, is followed by A Boke, dated 1966, which is followed by a section called Waterloo Sunset, which is dated 1964–1968. With the exception of the section titled from The Sonnets, the Many Happy Returns section, and Memorial Day, the sections do not employ titles of previously published books. Ted was, in general, honoring chronology of composition rather than chronology of publication. He was also asserting the individual identities of the previously published books: they were too unique to be excerpted from in a systematic way; and so it was necessary was to construct a whole new entity. Each section of the book bears an epigraph on its title page, as the title page of the section called Not Dying has the epigraph “No joke!”

Note on Selected Poems

Aram Saroyan edited Selected Poems by Ted Berrigan, for the Penguin Poets Series (New York: Penguin Books, 1994). The only one of Ted’s books of poetry (until now) that Ted had no living or posthumous hand in, it covers gracefully and classically, within the limited space of a traditional “selected poems,” all of Ted’s major publications through A Certain Slant of Sunlight. It contains no previously unpublished work. There is an introduction by me.

Glossary of Names

Where no dates appear, the editor has not been able to locate the information.

Donald Allen (1912–2004) Editor, anthologist, publisher; Ted’s editor at Grove Press for The Sonnets.

Bruce Andrews (1948– ) Poet, critic; associated with Language Poetry movement.

John Ashbery (1927– ) New York School poet, art critic, prose writer.

Erje Ayden Turkish-born American novelist, memoirist.

David Bearden Poet, friend of Ted’s in Tulsa.

Bill Berkson (1939– ) Poet, art critic.

Anselm Berrigan (1972– ) Son of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley.

David Berrigan (“Jacques-Louis David”) (1963– ) Son of Ted and Sandy Berrigan.

Edmund Berrigan (1974– ) Son of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley.

Kate Berrigan (1965–1987) Daughter of Ted and Sandy Berrigan.

Sandy Berrigan (1942– ) Formerly Sandra Alper. Ted’s first wife. Poet.

Paul Blackburn (1926–1971) Poet, translator, archivist, founder of Le Metro reading series.

Joe Brainard (1942–1994) Painter, cover artist and illustrator, collagist, assemblagist, writer. Collaborator with Ted on visual / literary works.

Jim Brodey (1942–1993) Poet, music critic.

Gordon Brotherston (1939– ) British translator, author, poet, Latin American scholar.

Michael Brownstein (1943– ) Poet, novelist.

Rudy Burckhardt (1914–1999) Swiss-born American filmmaker, photographer, painter.

Reed Bye (1948– ) Poet, American Buddhist.

Steve Carey (1945–1989) Poet, novelist. Brother of Tom Carey.

Tom Carey (1951– ) Poet, novelist, musician, Franciscan (Episcopalian) brother and priest.

Jim Carroll (1950– ) Poet, novelist, musician, songwriter.

Joe Ceravolo (1934–1988) Poet.

Tom Clark (1941– ) Poet, novelist, biographer, sports writer, editor.

Martin Cochran Poet, friend of Ted’s in Tulsa.

Andrei Codrescu (1946– ) Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, radio commentator.

Jack Collom (1931– ) Poet, teacher, essayist, environmentalist.

Clark Coolidge (1939– ) Poet, musician, editor.

Lee Crabtree (1942–1973) Musician, member of the rock band The Fugs.

Robert Creeley (1926–2005) Poet, prose writer, teacher, associated with the Black Mountain poets.

Peggy DeCoursey (1944– ) Close friend of Ted’s in New York in the later period. Communications worker in advertising.

Samuel R. “Chip” Delany (1942– ) Science fiction writer.

Edwin Denby (1903–1983) Poet, dance critic, essayist.

Donna Dennis (1942– ) Sculptor and painter.

Ed Dorn (1929–1999) Poet, fiction writer, teacher.

Kenward Elmslie (1929– ) Poet, performer, librettist.

Joan Fagin (1948– ) Dress designer; former wife of Larry Fagin.

Larry Fagin (1937– ) Poet, editor, publisher.

Harry Fainlight (d.1982) British poet.

Marion Farrier (1951– ) Friend of Ted’s at the University of Essex, England, and in New York. Publications manager. Wife of Steve Carey.

Ed Foster (1944– ) Poet, critic, editor, publisher, teacher.

Jane Freilicher (1924– ) Painter. Friend of New York School poets.

Ed Friedman (1950– ) Poet, playwright, performer, arts administrator.

Carol Gallup (Carol Clifford) (1942– ) A close friend of Ted’s in New York. Former wife of Dick Gallup. Poet.

Dick Gallup (Richard Gallup) (1941– ) Poet, playwright.

Merrill Gilfillan (1945– ) Poet, essayist.

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) Poet, prose writer, political activist, musician, teacher.

John Giorno (1935– ) Poet, community activist.

Lorenz Gude (1942– ) With his wife, Ellen Gude, published “C” (A Journal of Poetry) and “C” Books in the 60s. He also took early photographs of the Tulsa group and of Joe Brainard’s work.

Ellen Gude (1942– ) Wife of Lorenz Gude and co-publisher of “C” (A Journal of Poetry) in the 60s. She provided the essential funding for “C,” having a good job in an employment agency.

Barry Hall Printer, publisher, filmmaker.

Jacky Hall First wife of Barry Hall.

Donald Hall (1928– ) Poet, essayist, anthologist, teacher.

David Henderson (ca. 1942– ) Poet, lyricist, biographer, a founder of the Umbra workshop.

Anselm Hollo (1934– ) Finnish and American poet, translator (from Finnish, German, Swedish, Russian, and French), person of letters.

Bob Holman (1948– ) Poet, playwright, director, actor, community animator.

Helena Hughes (1951– ) Friend of Ted’s at the University of Essex and in New York. Poet. Caretaker, for some years, for James Schuyler.

Dick Jerome Artist, upstairs neighbor of Ted’s in New York during the late 70s and early 80s.

Henry (Hank) Kanabus (1949– ) Poet from Chicago, former student of Ed Dorn and Ted at Northeastern Illinois University.

Ada Katz (1928– ) Wife of Alex Katz. She figures in many of his paintings.

Alex Katz (1927– ) New York painter and visual artist (set designer, cover artist, printmaker, collaborator with poets, etc.).

Anne Kepler Marge Kepler’s cousin, a flutist who came to New York around the same time as Ted, Joe Brainard, Dick Gallup, Pat Mitchell, and Ron Padgett. Her death in 1965 is recorded both in “Tambourine Life” and in “People Who Died.”

Marge Kepler (Margie) Friend, girlfriend, of Ted’s in Tulsa, who, according to his journals, changed his life dramatically.

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) Beat novelist and poet. Interviewed by Ted for the Paris Review in 1968.

Kenneth Koch (Jay Kenneth Koch) (1925–2002) New York School poet, playwright, fiction and prose writer, teacher.

Rochelle Kraut (1952– ) Poet, artist, singer. Married to Bob Rosenthal.

Rosina Kühn (1940– ) Swiss painter.

Tuli Kupferberg (1923– ) Poet, musician, songwriter, author, member of The Fugs.

Joanne Kyger (1934– ) Poet, teacher.

Michael Lally (1945– ) Poet, actor.

Lewis MacAdams (1944– ) Poet, environmental activist.

Bernadette Mayer (1945– ) Experimental poet and prose writer, editor, teacher of poets.

Bernie Mitchell (1945–2003) Sister of Pat Padgett.

Christine Murphy (Chris) The muselike “Chris” of The Sonnets, one of Ted’s students in 1958–1959 when he taught eighth grade at Madalene School in Tulsa. Not the “Chris” in the poem “Living with Chris,” who is Christina Gallup, the (then) baby daughter of Dick and Carol Gallup.

Eileen Myles (1949– ) Poet and fiction writer.

Jayne Nodland (1943– ) Photographer, artist, musician.

Alice Notley (1945– ) Poet, editor, essayist; Ted’s second wife.

Frank O’Hara (Francis Russell O’Hara) (1926–1966) New York School poet, art critic, Museum of Modern Art (New York) administrator and curator. Ted’s most avowed poetry hero.

Douglas Oliver (1937–2000) British poet, novelist, editor, linguistic researcher.

Peter Orlovsky (1933– ) Poet, companion of Allen Ginsberg.

Lauren Owen (1941– ) Friend of Ted’s in Tulsa and New York.

Pat Padgett (Patricia Mitchell) (1937– ) Lifelong friend of Ted’s in Tulsa and New York. Wife of Ron Padgett.

Ron Padgett (1942– ) Poet, prose writer, memoirist, biographer, translator, editor. Frequent collaborator with Ted on poems and prose works. Co-author with Ted of the book Bean Spasms.

Tom Pickard (1946– ) British poet and prose writer.

Fairfield Porter (1907–1975) Painter and art critic.

Tony Powers Friend of Ted’s in Tulsa.

Tom Raworth (1938– ) British poet.

Val Raworth (1936– ) Wife of Tom Raworth.

Bob Rosenthal (1950– ) Poet, prose writer, secretary to Allen Ginsberg.

Ed Sanders (1939– ) Poet, musician, journalist, novelist. Member of The Fugs.

Aram Saroyan (1943– ) Poet, prose writer.

Harris Schiff (1944– ) Poet. Collaborator with Ted on writing projects.

Linda Schjeldahl (Linda O’Brien) (1942– ) Editor, writer; at one time married to Peter Schjeldahl.

Peter Schjeldahl (1942– ) Poet, art critic.

Elio Schneeman (1961–1997) Poet, son of George and Katie Schneeman.

George Schneeman (1934– ) Painter, collagist, ceramicist, cover artist, illustrator, frequent collaborator with Ted on visual and literary projects.

Katie Schneeman (1938– ) Close friend of Ted’s in New York. Married to George Schneeman; mother of Elio, Emilio, and Paul.

James Schuyler (1923–1991) New York School poet, prose writer, art critic.

Johnny Stanton (1943– ) Fiction writer.

Lorenzo Thomas (1944– ) Panamanian-born African American poet, critic, essayist, teacher.

Sotere Torregian (1941– ) Poet.

Tony Towle (1939– ) Poet.

Tom Veitch (1941– ) Novelist, poet, comic book writer.

Anne Waldman (1945– ) Poet, editor, anthologist, teacher, performer, New York and Boulder poetry community figure.

Larry Walker Fiction writer, friend of Ted’s in Tulsa.

Lewis Warsh (1944– ) Poet, novelist, memoirist, editor, publisher, teacher.

Philip Whalen (1923–2002) Poet, novelist, Zen abbot.

Megan Williams Upstairs neighbor of Ted’s in New York in the late 70s and early 80s. Dress designer.

Jeff Wright (1951– ) Poet, editor, publisher.

Credits

The text of The Sonnets is reproduced with the permission of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. (New York: Penguin Books, 2001). Memorial Day is reproduced with the permission of its co-author, Anne Waldman. A Certain Slant of Sunlight is reproduced with the permission of Leslie Scalapino and O Books (Oakland, Calif.: O Books, 1988). All other poems are used with the permission of Alice Notley, executor of the estate of Ted Berrigan. The photograph of Ted Berrigan is reproduced with the permission of the photographer, Lorenz Gude. The cover art by George Schneeman is reproduced with the permission of the artist.

Index of Titles and First Lines

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below

Titles appear in roman type. First lines appear in italics.

(Another has)

(Ezra Pound: A Witness)

(Keep my)

(Peter Rabbit came in)

(With)

(You’ll do good if you play it like you’re)

1. Le Marteau Sans Maitre : Pierre Boulez (Odyssey 32 16

(2) photographs of Anne

3 Pages

4 Metaphysical Poems

5 New Sonnets: A Poem

7 Things I Do in the Hotel Chelsea

9:16 & 2:44 & 25 Minutes to 5

10 Things I Do Every Day

10 Things I do Every Day

10 years of boot

XIII

20th Century man strives toward the unfinished-machine exalted state

30 (The fucking enemy shows up)

36th Birthday Afternoon

43 (no strange countries)

44th Birthday Evening, at Harris’s

80th Congress

a band of musicians: up tight

A Boke

A Certain Slant of Sunlight

A colorful river of poetry drives forward

A City Winter

A darksome tiger

A Dream

A drop of boo the wounded ham

a faint smile appears

A few rape men or kill coons so I bat them

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

A Letter

A Letter from Dick Gallup

A Little American Feedback

“A little loving can solve a lot of things”

A lovely body gracefully is nodding

A master square weaver, one’s favoured medium

A Meeting at the Bridge

a metal fragrant white

A natural bent, no doubt

A New Old Song

A new old song continues. He worked into the plane

a nose, heavy, square, & massive

A Note from Yang-Kuan

A person can lie around on an uncrowded beach

A Personal Memoir of Tulsa, Oklahoma / 1955–60

A Quiet Dream

A Religious Experience

A Reply to the Fragile

A Spanish Tragedy

A sparrow whispers in my loins

A True Story

A woman’s love

(About Emily Dickinson)

Above his head clanged

Abraham & Sarah

According

Acid

Acid

Across the trolley tracks

After Breakfast

After Peire Vidal, & Myself

After Petrarch

After the first death there is plenty

Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering

“Ah Fitz but we are profound

Air

Air Conditioning

All A-Glower Went My Love Riding

All my friends in the

“All things considered, it’s a gentle & undemanding

Allen & Peter, heads close together, Allen

Allen Ginsberg’s “Shining City”

Ambiguity

American Express

Amityville Times

Amsterdam

An Autobiography in 5 Parts

An Ex-Athlete, Not Dying

An Observation

An Orange Clock

An UnSchneeman

and I am lost in the ringing elevator

& so I took the whole trip

“And the nights shall be filled with music

And then one morning to waken perfect-faced (Interstices)

And then one morning to waken perfect-faced (Sonnet XXXI)

Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon

Angst

Ann Arbor Elegy

Ann Arbor Song

Anne

Anne Lesley Waldman says, No Fossil Fuels

Anne reads her Troubadour poem

“Another has

Another New Old Song

Anselm

Anselm! Edmund!

Anselm Hollo

Anselm is sleeping; Edmund is feverish, &

Anti-War Poem

“Antlers have grown out the top of my shaggy head”

Apollinaire Oeuvres Poetiques

Apologies to Val & Tom

“appropriately named Beauty, has just been a star

April in the Morning, with Anne

Around the Fire

As Usual

Ass-Face

At a quarter past six he sat & said “where’s your brother? pull

At 80 Langton Street (S.F.)

At last I’m a real poet I’ve written a

At Loma Linda

Aubade

Autobiography

Autobiography

Autumn

Autumn is fun

Autumn’s Day

Avec la Mécanique sous les Palmes

Babe Rainbow

Baby sighs prepositions put the books back nights. As usual I

Back in the Old Place

Back to dawn by police word

Bad Teeth

Bad Timing

banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love” (Sonnet XLI)

banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love” (Sonnet LVI)

Baltic Stanzas

Bardolino

Be awake mornings. See light spread across the lawn

Bean Spasms

bear with me

bear with me

Beautiful girl

Beautiful Poem

Beauty, I wasn’t born

became in Alamogordo. Then the blast-

Beer in bed, &

Before I began life this time

Before I was alive

Beginning with a memory of childhood New York’s lovely weather

bent

bent

Besa

Beware of Benjamin Franklin, he is totally lacking in grace

Biddy Basketball

Black & White Magic

Black brothers to get happy

Black Power

blank mind part

Blindfold shores leaving sad

Blue

Blue Galahad

Blue Herring

Blue Targets

Blue Tilt

Bolinas

borrow 50 from George

Boulder

Brigadoon

Brother and sister departed

Buddha on the Bounty

Buddhist Text

Buenos Aires

“But & then at that time

But that dream . . . oh, hell

Butchie’s Tune

By Now

Bye-Bye Jack

Caesar

Caesar’s ghost must be above suspicion

Can’t cut it (night)

Canzone

Carrying a Torch

Category

Cento: A Note on Philosophy

C’est automne qui revient

Chair

Che Guevara’s Cigars

Chicago April Morning: Snow

Chicago English Afternoon

Chicago Morning

Childe of the House

Chinese Nightingale

Christmas Card (for Barry & Carla)

Christmas Card (O little town of Bethlehem)

Christmas in July, or

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

Climbed by Grandma We Stand on Morning’s Hill

Clown

Coda : Song

Coffee And

Cold rosy dawn in New York City

Come to Chicago

Communism

Compleynt to the Muse

Conceived in Hate

Congratulations

Connecticut

Contemporary Justice

Conversation

Corporal Pellegrini

Corridors of Blood

Cowboy Song

Cranston Near the City Line

Crash

Craze Man Wiliiker

Creature

Crossroads

Crystal

DNA

“Dear Chris

Dear Management’s beautiful daughters

Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m. (Night Letter)

Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m. (Sonnet XVIII)

Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m. (Sonnet II)

Dear Ron: Keats was a baiter of bears etc.

Dear Ron: hello. Your name is now a household name

December

Déjà Vu

Der Asra

Despair farms a curse, slackness

Dial-A-Poem

Dice Riders

Dick Gallup (Birthday)

Did you see me that night

Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s

Dinosaur Love

Discussing Max Beerbohm

“Do you

Do You Know Rene?

Don Quixote & Sancho Panza

Don’t call me “Berrigan”

Don’t Forget Anger

Doubts

Down Moon River

Down on Me

Down on Mission

Dreamland

Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned

Dreamy-eyed is how you get

Dresses for Alice

dying now, or already dead

Each tree stands alone in stillness

Easter Monday

Easy Living

“Eileen” (detail)

El Greco

Elysium

Entrance

Epithalamion

Erasable Picabia

Evelyn Waugh’s Prayer

Evensong

Every day back & forth

Every day when the sun comes up

Every man-jack boot-brain slack-jaw son of a chump

Everybody is not so clever as you. You are cleverer than I

Everybody Seemed So Laid Back in the Park

Everything good is from the Indian

Everywhere we went we paid the price, endurement

Excursion & Visitation

Ezra Pound: A Witness

Farewell Address

Fauna Time. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

Feb. 11, 1982. Last night reading Permanent War

February Air

Fern

fiction appears) for I and only one per-

Fine Mothers

Flame & Fury

Flower Portrait

Fluke Holland: —The Tennessee Third

Flying United

For a brief time Acting Chief

For Annie Rooney

For Bernie

For love of Megan I danced all night

For my sins I live in the city of New York

For Robt. Creeley

For Rosina

For You

Found Picasso

Four Gates to the City

Fragment

Frances

Francis à Bientôt

Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky

Frank O’Hara

Frank O’Hara’s Question from “Writers and Issues” by John Ashbery (An Autobiography in 5 Parts)

Frank O’Hara’s Question from “Writers and Issues” by John Ashbery (Many Happy Returns)

Frog sees dog. log?

From “Anti-Memoirs”

From A List of the Delusions of the Insane, What They Are Afraid Of

From a Secret Journal

from Memoirs

From Sketches of Amsterdam

From The Art of the Sonnet

From the Execution Position

From the House Journal

Fuck Communism

Further Definitions (Waft)

Futile rhapsodies resound from hotly

Gainsborough

Galaxies

Games

Gay doormen face a severe shortage of cocaine

George’s Coronation Address

Geranium’s

get, in the complexity of our present

“Get a job at the railroad”

Get Away from Me You Little Fool

Get your ass in gear

Giants in the sky; roses in streams that castle rocks

Give Them Back, Who Never Were

Go

Go in Manhattan

Go fly a kite he writes

God: perhaps, “The being worshipped. To

Going to Chicago

Going up, slowly, I, slowly

Good Evening, ladies, and all you hungry children

Goodbye House, 24 Huntington, one block past Hertel

Grace After a Meal

Grace to be born and live as variously as possible

Great Stories of the Chair

gray his head goes his feet green

Green (grass)

Green Tide; behind, pink against blue

Grey Morning

Guevara had noticed me smoking, and remarked that of course I would

Gus

Hall of Mirrors

Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets (Sonnet XIX)

Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets (Sonnet XLVI)

He

He

He called his Mama

He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle

He eats toenails

He is guardian to the small kitten

He made coffee

He never listened while friends talked

He never listened while friends talked. He worked

He wandered and kept on wandering. Bar-Mitzvah

He was one of the last of the Western Bandits

He was ugly

He was wounded & so

Head Lice

Head of lettuce, glass of chocolate milk

Heart of my heart

Hearts

“Hello”

Hello

Hello, Sunshine

Heloise

Here

Here comes the Man

Here comes the man! He’s talking a lot

Here I am again

Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame

Here I Live

Heroin

He’s literally a shambles as a person

High School windows are always broken

His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze (5 New Sonnets: A Poem)

His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze (Sonnet I)

Hitch on here

Hollywood

Homage to Beaumont Bruestle

Homage to Mayakofsky

Homecoming

Honey

How strange to be gone in a minute

How strange to be gone in a minute! A man

How sweet the downward sweep of your prickly thighs

How terrible a life is

How to Get to Canada. See Three Poems: Going to Canada

How We Live in the Jungle

Huge collapsed Mountain Enters from Stage Right

I am ambiguity

I am asleep

I am closing my window. Tears silence the wind

I am in bed

I am kinks

I am lonesome after mine own kind—the

I am the man yr father & Mum was

I am thinking of my old houses

I am trying very hard to be Here

I appear in the kitchen

I belong for what it is worth

I belong here, I was born

I cannot reach it

I can’t sleep walking through walls

I Dreamt I See Three Ladies in a Tree

“I gather up my tics & tilts, my stutters & imaginaries

I go in &

I go on loving you

I had a really sad childhood, lived mostly alone

I had angst

I had this dream

“I have always been emotional beyond belief, so

I have been here too many times before

I have no brain

I have these great dreams, like

I hear walking in my legs

I Heard Brew Moore Say, One Day

I hope to go

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

“I know where I’m going

I like First Avenue

I like to beat people up

I love all the girls

I love you much

I met her in The Stone Age

I never said I was right, or wrong

“I order you to operate. I was not made to suffer”

“I Remember”

I remember painting “I Hate Ted Berrigan” in big black letters

I saw you first in half-darkness

I sit on fat

I stand at the dock in judgement

I stand by the window

I take him

I tried to put the coffee back together

I Used to Be but Now I Am

I used to be inexorable

I wake up back aching from soft bed Pat

I wake up 11:30 back aching from soft bed Pat

I was looking at the words he

I watch the road: I am a line-

I won’t be at this boring poetry reading

“I wrote these songs when

I’d been

I’d like to show you something. Please look at it

If by my hasty words I gave offence

If he bites you he’s friendly

If I didn’t feel so

If I don’t love you I

If someone doesn’t help me soon I

Ikonostasis

I’ll yell at these men who pass

I’m a hero form of an eyelid act like you hate it

I’m a piece of local architecture

I’m gonna embarrass

I’m living in Battersea, July

I’m lying in bed

I’m No Prick

I’m not difficult but there are just certain things

I’m not saying

I’m sorry for your trouble

“I’m standing toe-to-toe with you, see, looking you right in the eye

Impasses come, dear beasts

In 4 Parts

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is

In Anne’s Place

In Anselm Hollo’s Poems

In Bed

In Bed with Joan & Alex

In Blood

In front of him was

In Hyde Park Gate 14 white budgie scratchings mean

In Joe Brainard’s collage its white arrow (Sonnet XV)

In Joe Brainard’s collage its white arrow (Sonnet LIX)

In Morton’s Grille

In Morton’s Grille I

“In My Green Age”

in my paintings for they are present

In My Room

In Place of Sunday Mass

In order to make friends with the natives

In the 51st State

In the Deer Park

In the ear, winds dance

In The Early Morning Rain

In the first stage of the revolution

In the House

In the Land of Pygmies & Giants

In the morning

In the Summer between 5th & 6th grade

In the Wheel

In the year 1327, at the opening of the first hour

In Three Parts

“In Three Parts”

In Your Fucking Utopias

Incomplete Sonnet #254

Inflation

Inhabiting a night with shaky normal taboo hatred and fear

Innocents Abroad

Inside

insouciant

insouciant

interrupts yr privacy

interstices

interstices

Interstices

Into the closed air of the slow (Sonnet XVI)

Into the closed air of the slow (Sonnet XXX)

Iris

Is there room in the room that you room in?

is when you walk around a corner

ISOLATE

It is 7:53 Friday morning in the Universe

It is 1934. Edmund

It Is a Big Red House

It is a human universe: & I

It is a very great thing

it is a well-lit afternoon

It is after 7 in the evening and raining cold in bed. Next day

It is important to keep old hat

It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears

“it” means “this”

it was summer. We were there. And There Was No

Itinerary. See Three Poems: Going to Canada

It’s 2 a.m. at Anne & Lewis’s which is where it’s at

It’s 5:03 a.m. on the 11th of July this morning

It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 26th of July

It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July and

It’s a cute tune possibly by Camus

It’s A Fact

It’s a great pleasure to

It’s a previous carnation, where?

It’s difficult

It’s Important

It’s important not

It’s impossible to look at it

It’s impossible to take a bath in this house

It’s just another April almost morning, St. Mark’s Place

It’s made of everything, slow

It’s Morning

It’s morning

It’s New Year’s Eve, of 1968, & a time

It’s not exciting to have a bar of soap

It’s ritzy Thrift

It’s very interesting (Air Conditioning)

It’s very interesting (Down on Me)

Jim Dine’s toothbrush eases two pills

Joan

Jo-Mama

Joy of Shipwrecks (Life of a Man)

Joy of Shipwrecks (A Certain Slant of Sunlight)

Joy! you come winging in a hot wind on the breath

Joyful ants nest on the roof of my tree

Jubilee

July

July 11, 1982

Just Friends

Keep my

Kerouac (continued)

Kings . . . panties

Kinks

Kirsten

Kissed Maggie soundly; and the Doctor

L.G.T.T.H.

La Bohème

Ladies & Gentlemen

Lady

Lady, she has been my friend for some years sketches, I haven’t explained

Lady, why will you insist on

Lady Takes a Holiday

Laments

Landscape with Figures (Southampton)

Larceny

Last night

Last night’s congenial velvet sky

Last Poem

Last Poem (for Tom Pickard)

Late November

Leaving first

Left behind in New York City, & oof

Lefty Cahir, loan me your football shoes again

Less original than

Lester Young! why are you playing that clarinet

Let No Willful Fate Misunderstand

Let the heart of the young

Life Among the Woods

Life in the Future

Life of a Man

Light

Light takes the bat, &

Light up

Light, informal, & human

like carrying a gun

Like Poem

Like the philosopher Thales

Lines from Across the Room

Liquor troops in deshabille from blondes a lonely song

Listen, Old Friend

“Listen, you cheap little liar . . . ”

Little American Poetry Festival

Little Travelogue

Livid sweet undies drawl

Living with Chris

L’oeil

London

London Air

Look Fred, You’re a Doctor, My Problem Is Something like This

Lord, it is time. Summer was very great (Autumn’s Day)

Lord, it is time. Summer was very great (Sonnet IV)

Love. See Three Poems: Going to Canada

Man Alone

Many Happy Returns

March 17th, 1970

Marie in her pin-striped suit singing

Matinee

“Members of the brain, welcome to New York City

Memorial Day

Memories Are Made of This

Mess Occupations

Messy red heart

Method Action

Mi Casa, Su Casa

Mid-Friday morn, 10 o’clock, I go to India

mind clicks into gear

Minnesota

Minuet

Missing you

Mistress isn’t used much in poetry these days

Moat Trouble

Monolith

Montezuma’s Revenge

Moondog

Morning

Morning flushes its gray light across where I collect a face, rimmed

Mother Cabrini

Mountains of twine and

: Ms. Sensitive Princess

Ms. Villonelle

M’Sieur & Madame Butterfly

Mud on the first day (night, rather

Musick strides through these poems

Mutiny

My 5 Favorite Records

My Autobiography

My babies parade waving their innocent flags

My beard is a leaping staff

My body heavy with poverty (starch)

my crib your crib

My dream a drink with Lonnie Johnson we discuss the code of the west

My friends are crazy with grief

My Grandfather was a Hasidic scholar

My heart is confirmed in its pure Buddhahood

My heart Your heart

My Life & Love

“My name

My rooms were full of awful features when

My rooms were full of Ostrich feathers when

My Tibetan Rose

Naked

Nancy, Jimmy, Larry, Frank, & Berdie

Narragansett Park

Natchez

Nature makes my teeth “to hurt”

Neal Cassady Talk

Near Paris, there is a boat. Near this boat live the beautiful Woods

Near the Ocean

Never hits us the day it’s lovely gathers us up in its name who

Never will I forget that trip. The dead were so thick in spots we tumbled over

New Junket

New Personal Poem

New Poets of England & America

New York Post

New York’s lovely weather

New York’s lovely weather hurts my forehead

Newtown

Night Letter

Nine stories high Second Avenue

no strange countries

Normal Depth Exceeds Specified Value

. . . Not far from here he was inside his head there were some sands. Of these 50

Nothing stands between us

November, dancing, or

Now I wish I were asleep, to see my dreams taking place

Now my mother’s apron unfolds again in my life pills black backs

Now she guards her chalice

Now she guards her chalice in a temple

Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear

Now that I

Now twist knife all strength owing O now twist knife

Now you can rest forever

O, Sexual Reserve

O Captain, My Commander, I Think

O little town of Bethlehem

O Love

O love

O Rose

O Will Hubbard in the night! A great writer today he is

October: half-moon rising: London sky, Piccadilly’s, greyish-black

Ode

Ode to Medicine

of morning, Iowa City, blue

Often I try so hard with stimulants

Oh, George—that

Oh, Mrs. Gabriele Picabia-Buffet

Oh you, the sprightliest & most puggish, the brightest star

Okay. First. . . .

Old Armenian Proverb

Old-Fashioned Air

Old Moon

old prophets Help me to believe

On His Own. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

On St. Mark’s Place

On St. Mark’s Place (Out the Second-floor Window)

On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar

On the green a white boy goes (Penn Station)

On the green a white boy goes (Sonnet XXI)

On the Level Everyday

On the Road Again

Once there was a rich man named craze man Wiliiker. This man was always very

One and one

one can only are

one can only are

One clear glass slipper

a slender blue single-rose vase

One Day in the Afternoon of the World

One View/1960

One, London

“Only the guilty need money”

Ophelia

Orange Black

Orange Black

Other Contexts

Où sont les neiges des neiges?

Out the Second-Floor Window

Out we go to get away from today’s

Over Belle Vue Road that silence said

Owe. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

Paciorek

paid Lillian Gish $800,000 to

Pandora’s Box, an Ode

Paris, Frances

Paris Review

Part of My History

Pat Dugan. . . my grandfather. . . throat cancer. . . 1947

Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble

Paul Blackburn

Peace

Peeling rubber all the way up

Peking

Penn Station

People of the future

People of the Future

People Who Change Their Names

People Who Died

Personal Poem

Personal Poem #2

Personal Poem #7

Personal Poem #9

Peter Rabbit came in

Picasso would be very

Picnic

Pills Epithalamium black backs of books I can’t stand Snow Movie

Pinsk After Dark

poem

Poem (for Larry Fagin)

Poem (I’m lying in bed)

Poem (of morning, Iowa City, blue)

Poem (Seven thousand feet over)

Poem (The Nature of the Commonwealth)

Poem (to Tom Clark)

Poem (Yea, though I walk)

Poem for Philip Whalen

Poem in the Modern Manner

Poem in the Traditional Manner

Poem Made after Re-Reading the Wonderful Book of Poetry, “Air”, by Tom Clark, Seven Years since He First Sent It to Me

“Poets Tribute to Philip Guston”

Polish Haiku

Poop

Positively Fourth Street

Postcard

Postcard 12/2/82

Postcard from the Sky

Postmarked Grand Rapids

Prayer

Presence

Problems, Problems

Prose Keys to American Poetry

Providence

Pussy put her paw into the pail of paint

Put the books back the brown hair pierced the shower 40 below the

Putting Away. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

Quarter to Three

Queen name

Queen Victoria dove headfirst into the swimming pool, which was filled

Rain

Rain falling through the blue

Rain or Shine

Reading Frank O’Hara

Reading Frank O’Hara you

Real Life

Reality is the totality of all things possessing Actuality

Reborn a rabbi in Pinsk, reincarnated

Red Air

Red Shift

Reds

Reeling Midnight. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

Remembered Poem

Resolution

Revery

revery

revery

Richard Gallup at 30

Rilke

ripped

Robert (Lowell)

Robert Creeley reading

Ronka

Rouge

Round About Oscar

Rusty Nails

Salut

Salutation

San Francisco

San Gabriel

Sandy’s Sunday Best

Sash the faces of lust

Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza

Scene of Life at the Capitol

Scorpio

Scorpion, Eagle & Dove (A Love Poem)

self suspended in age time warp put out to grass

Selflessness

Seriousness

Service at Upwey

Setback

Seurat and Juan Gris combine this season

Seven thousand feet over

Shaking Hands

She

She (Not to be confused with she, a girl)

She alters all our lives for the better, merely

She comes as in a dream with west wind eggs

She is always two blue eyes

She murmurs of signs to her fingers

She was pretty swacked by the time she

Shelley

Since we had changed

Sister Moon

Six months of each other

Skeats and the Industrial Revolution

slack

slack

Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons

Sleeping Alone

Small Role Felicity

Smashed Ashcan Lid

Smiling with grace the mother, the spouse, leaned

So Going Around Cities

So long, Jimi

So sleeping & waking

Some Do Not

Some Trips to Go On

Somebody knows everything, so

Somebody knows everything so

Someone something

Someone who loves me calls me

Something Amazing Just Happened

Somethings gotta be done! I thought

Sometimes it is quiet throughout the night

Something to Remember

Song

Song: Prose & Poetry

Sonnet I

Sonnet II

Sonnet III

Sonnet IV

Sonnet V

Sonnet VI

Sonnet XIII

Sonnet XIV

Sonnet XV

Sonnet XVI

Sonnet XVII

Sonnet XVIII

Sonnet XIX

Sonnet XXI

Sonnet XXII

Sonnet XXIII

Sonnet XXV

Sonnet XXVI

Sonnet XXVII

Sonnet XXVIII

Sonnet XXIX

Sonnet XXX

Sonnet XXXI

Sonnet XXXII

Sonnet XXXIII

Sonnet XXXIV

Sonnet XXXV

Sonnet XXXVI

Sonnet XXXVII

Sonnet XXXVIII

Sonnet XL

Sonnet XLI

Sonnet XLII

Sonnet XLIII

Sonnet XLIV

Sonnet XLV

Sonnet XLVI

Sonnet XLVII

Sonnet XLVIII

Sonnet XLIX

Sonnet L

Sonnet LI

Sonnet LII

Sonnet LIII

Sonnet LV

Sonnet LVI

Sonnet LVII

Sonnet LIX

Sonnet LX

Sonnet LXI

Sonnet LXIV

Sonnet LXV

Sonnet LXVI

Sonnet LXVII

Sonnet LXVIII

Sonnet LXX

Sonnet LXXI

Sonnet LXXII

Sonnet LXXIII

Sonnet LXXIV

Sonnet LXXV

Sonnet LXXVI

Sonnet LXXVII

Sonnet LXXVIII

Sonnet LXXX

Sonnet LXXXI

Sonnet LXXXII

Sonnet LXXXIII

Sonnet LXXXIV

Sonnet LXXXV

Sonnet LXXXVII

Sonnet LXXXVIII

Sonnet: Homage to Ron

Sonnet to Patricia

Southampton Business

Southwest

Soviet Souvenir

Space

Spell

Spring banged me up a bit

Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and

St. Mark’s By-the-Pacific

St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie

Stand-Up Comedy Routine

Stars & Stripes Forever

Steve Carey

Stoop where I sit, am crazy

Stop Stop Six. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

Strategy

Strategy is what you do how

String of Pearls

Strings like stories shine

Strong coffee in

Stronger than alcohol, more great than song

Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning: here we live jostling & tricky

Sunlit

Sunny, Light Winds

surface

surface

Sweet Iris

Sweet Vocations

Sweeter than sour apples flesh to boys

Swinburne & Watts-Dunton

Take me, third factory of life

Take off your hat & coat & give me all your money

Take off your head; un-

Take one hymn out west and back in step

step and punch how well

Take these beads from my shoulders

Talking

Tambourine Life

Telegram

Television

Tell It Like It Is

Ten Things to Do in the Closet

That Poem George Found

That they are starving

That’s all

The (Buddhist Text)

The (Larceny)

The academy of the future is opening its doors

The Admirals brushed

The Ancient Art of Wooing

The Avant-Garde Literary Award

the bear eats honey

The best way of

The blue day! In the air winds dance

The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

The bunnies plug-in & elaborate

The By-Laws

The Chinese ate their roots; it

The Circle

The Collected Earlier Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Complete Prelude

The Conscience of a Conservative

The D.A.

The Dance of the Broken Bomb. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

The dancer grins at the ground

The Einstein Intersection

The End

The Final Chapters

The front is hiding the rear

The fucking enemy shows up

The goddess stands in front of her cave

The Great Genius

The Great Genius is

The Green Sea

The ground is white with snow

The guards tense, the centers jump

The Heads of the Town

The Joke & the Stars

The Lady, Just When I Think I Know You, You Take Capricious Form Travelling Circus & Road Show (or, In the Labyrinth)

The life I have led

The Light

The logic of grammar is not genuine it shines forth

The Moon is Yellow

The Morning Line

The Nature of the Commonwealth

the number two, &

The poem upon the page is as massive as

The Pope’s learning Welsh

The Pope’s Nose

The pregnant waitress

The pressure’s on, old son

“The pressure’s on, old son”

The rain comes and falls

The rains come & Fall

The right wall is bricks

The Rose of Sharon

The School Windows Song

The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford: Fauna

Time

On His Own

Owe

Putting Away

Reeling Midnight

Stop Stop Six

The Dance of the Broken Bomb

We Are Jungles

The Sender of This

The Short Poems

The Simple Pleasures of Buffalo

The Society Club

The St. Mark’s Poetry Project

The storms of Baudelaire fall on Judas’ head

The Sunset Motel

“the taste is pleasant, and the insane

The Ten Greatest Books of the Year (1967)

The Ten Greatest Books of the Year, 1968

The torpedo was friendly

The TV Story

The Upper Arm

The Way It Was in Wheeling

The white poet with his book

The Who’s Last Tour

The wicked will tremble, the food will rejoic

The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

Then I’d Cry

there

There I was

There is a shoulder in New York City

There is no transition from a gesture to a cry or a sound. (same thing)

There is no windshield

There isn’t much to say to Marxists in Nicaragua

There we were, on fire with being there, then

There’s a strange lady in my front yard (Clown)

There’s a strange lady in my front yard

(Landscape with Figures [Southampton])

“There’s no place

There’s nothing new under the sun, and

These are the very rich garments of the poo

They basted his caption on top of the fat

sheriff, “The Pig”

They have bent

They killed all the whales

They set you up. Took yr stuff. Gave

Thin Breast Doom

Things to Do in Anne’s Room

Things to Do in New York City

Things to Do in Providence

Things to Do on Speed

Think of Anything

Thinking about past times in New York by talking

This

“This ability, to do things well

This city night

This distinguished boat

This excitement to be all of night, Henry

This Guy

“This is the only language you understand, Ass-Face”

“This movie has Fred Astaire and Robert Ryan in it

“This mushroom walks in”

This night my soul, & yr soul, will be wrapped in

This Perfect Day

This picture indicates development

this steady twelve-tone humming inbetween my ears

This Will Be Her Shining Hour

those exhausting dreams

Three Little Words

Three Lost Years

Three Poems: Going to Canada: Itinerary

How to Get to Canada

Love

Three Sonnets and a Coda for Tom Clark

Thursday & Friday

Time flies by like a great whale

tin roof slanting sunlight

To

To a Young Painter

To an Eggbeater

To Anne

To Be Serious

To Book-Keepers

To England’s very great relief

to gentle, pleasant strains

To Himself

To Jacques Roubaud

To Ron

To Sing the Song, That Is Fantastic

To Southampton

Tobacco

Today

Today Chicago

Today I had planned to fribble away

Today I woke up

Today in Ann Arbor

Today in New York City

Today is Courty Bryan’s birthday

Today’s News

Tom Clark

Tompkins Square Park

Tonight

Too many fucking mosquitoes under the blazing sun

Tooting My Horn on Duty

Tooting my horn on duty in the infantry

Tough Brown Coat

Tough brown coat

Tough Cookies

Train Ride

Train Ride . . .

Transition of Nothing Noted as Fascinating

Treason of the Clerks

Truth as History

“Truth is that which

Tulsa Rose Gardens

Turk

Turkeys

Turn around

Two cops cruise East 9th

Two Serious Ladies

Unconditional Release at 38

Under a red face, black velvet shyness

Under the Southern Cross

Untitled (It’s Morning!)

Untitled (July 11, 1982)

Untitled (Orange Black)

Untitled (Want)

Up a hill, short

Up inside the walls of air listen

Up is waiting

Upon the river, point me out my course

Upon this field the physical energies of

Upside Down

Valentine

Velvet &

Via Air

Vignette

Villonnette

Virtue, Honor, Beauty, Kind gestures

Visits from a Small Enigma

Voice of ride

Voici la tête d’un chien

Wake Up

wake up

Wake up high up

Walk right in

Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides

Want

Wantonesse

Warrior

. . . was 30 when we met. I was

Waterloo Sunset

We

We are involved in a transpersonified state

We Are Jungles. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford

We are the dresses for Alice

We ate lunch, remember? and I paid the check

We commemorated a joyous (if

We miss something now

We remove a hand . . .

We think by feeling and so we ride together

Wednesday Evening Services

We’ll mash your leman, plunk

What a Dump or, Easter

What are you thinking . . .

What I’d Like for Christmas, 1970

What I’m trying to say is that if an experience is

What is it all about—this endless

What said your light

what sky (An Autobiography in 5 Parts: Frank O’Hara’s Question . . . )

what sky (Many Happy Returns: Frank O’Hara’s Question . . . )

What strikes the eye hurts, what one hears is a lie

What thoughts I have of where I’ll be, & when, & doing what

What thwarts this fear I love

What to do

What we have here is Animal Magick: the fox

What’s the number I request

What’s the Racket

When having something to do

When I search the past for you (Cento: A Note on Philosophy)

When I search the past for you (Heloise)

When I see Birches, I think

When seeking sky you’re left with sky, then

When she comes, landscape listens; heavenly

When Wyn & Sally and the twins went to Minnesota to visit Wyn’s father last

Whenever Richard Gallup is dissevered

Where

Where do the words come from? (come in?)

Where the Ceiling Light Burns

White powder

Whitman in Black

Who I Am and What I Think

“who is not here

Who Was Sylvia?

Whoa Back Buck & Gee By Land

“Who’s a ‘black’ artist?”

Who’s gonna kiss your pretty little

Why don’t we

Why have you billowed under my ancient piazza

Will “Reclining Figure, One Arm”

Will the little girl outside

Wind

Winds in the stratosphere

Windshield

Winged Pessary

Winter

Winter. You think of sex, but it’s asleep

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow

Winter in the country, Southampton, pale horse

Wishes

With

With Eileen in Locarno

With faith we shall be able . . .

With sound Sun melts snow

W/O Scruple

Woke up this morning you were other people in absentia lovely fashions

Woman is singing the song and summer

Words for Love

Work Postures

Written on Red Roses & Yellow Light

Wrong Train

Yea, though I walk

Yes, it’s true, strategy is fascinating

You are lovely

You are very interesting

You can make this swooped transition on your lips (Some Do Not)

You can make this swooped transition on your lips (Sonnet XXXV)

You come into my life a little yellow

You don’t have to be Marie Curie

You had gone for a drive in the

You had your own reasons for getting

You in love with her

You see a lot

You stay in the Mental Institute of your life

You took a wrong turn in

You took me

You will dream about me

You’ll do good if you play it like you’re

. . . Your America & mine

You’re listening to a man who in 1964 un-

You’re so funny! I’d give you