Ted Berrigan

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

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

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

Stronger than alcohol, more great than song, deep in whose reeds great elephants decay, I, an island, sail, and my shoes 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.

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.

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 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!

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 streets, 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 lines 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 worst; & 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.

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 Greenwich 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 sickness….in 1969. My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.

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 Naïve, 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.

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.