Read The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Online
Authors: Alice Notley
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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