Read Online The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan by Alice Notley - Free Book Online Page B

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