Edmund Berrigan

 

 

Found Poem for E.

 

Ugh stalagtites, the gentry aflame, pork asbestos gutter flow

made of discarded baby shells & potato massacre sunsets,

the dumbest shade of blue I am & peppy in the thaw. I’m glad

you’re here it keeps me from having to wait for you.

Why I keep seeing a gale coming heart attacks my mentat

as someone once said half thinking about being an object.

Rudderless dumbness writhing away. I am shortly Julius.

 

 

Shaded Branches

 

Work wash jingle bells with

mad literature cliteratosis

   a malformed idea asleep in

the Laundromat

open field ain’t all that

leeches may dig scrub

   but I ain’t photo disaster

or maybe I am. I am not

proto privileged liberal teacher

path a-paved

I tend to enjoy my problems

   though even if occasionally

I feel like I’ve been hit with a Homer

Not all problems identify as problems.

Fisherman’s famous burlesque

the wonder stuff at Irving Plaza

thrillbell digs

the clockwork

   busses make me think of

la dentiste

 if you look in my mouth

you’d think of machines

a quick

conversation has made

   apples seem new again whose

      name I dunno

 

this out detritus of the I-beam

scene has reproportioned my diversions.

let me tell you why life is good

   there are these monks made of static, see

& their porch

 eyesockets are made of cherries,

see, & you pass it off as other because you’re

afraid

   to feel proud of the pain

 

 

Fear

 

I rolled out from under the ether crisp & dug into

spaces that harness blood, a personal fave’ pepsi shooting out

the ducts where normal masculine guys harbor tennis rackets

& kid memorabilia before burning anger out of sexual fears

beard shaved long hair cut fix Maximus adult double

would you like champagne in your sugar market pulse

the wires we’re trying to make it smoke this switch this

spleen this oral recall to life $1.00 popcorn soon to be

flavored Uncle Engels in the jungle brother I popped off

my “Megatron rejuvinate” it’s scared this flesh to be

devoured this automatic cake, this hard of hearing bartender

these animals reveling in eating other animals I lost

my arm when my daughter ate it off, being dead has

made her strong a hunch of moths barked through

the table became my beer & slipped into the silt

a fine glass I cracked my ass on

 

 

Diamonds are an Alain Robbe-Grille

 

I feel lucky

to show this to you

& lucky if it’s received

more emporium than Helsinki

tho I know not of what I speak

the sheiks come out at night leaving

a paper trail. Just thinging thistle or

bonk the prosody. That word for me is more

about having heard it said than herd its stead. My

old poems would never talk themselves to me that way tho

I have always been somewhat diagonal that space there

Don’t lean on the door jamb if you don’t want to bloom elbows up

we lock poor salt employer of hard rain but the nickel bordering

it’s trace on paper. Re-ember the feel of paste when you were 5?

She argued with you about whether you were 5 or 6. I don’t seem crazy

She’s becoming more like her mother, they’re all getting younger again.

Figure the group emotion as it strikes out at originality or isolation.

Images of ourselves reacting to images of ourselves, shaking hands with the

toaster. This is for me, by the way.