Ted Berrigan

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:32:46 -0700

Words for Love

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, dark-
ness 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. Dis-
severed. And O, alas

Time disturbs me. Always minute detail
fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston
it is 2 pm. It is time to steal books. It's
time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalpyse
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.

--Ted Berrigan

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"They loved these things too" by Lisa Jarnot

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:14:48 -0700

The sun the moon the stars the polar ice caps

and the ice cream cones the city streets the
side streets and the small tv the curve of
flesh around the food the road maps and
November and the tiny birds and also certain
people and they loved the special chairs and
also stuffed things and the carnival and big
rings and the o rings and they loved the
oranges in bags and florida and texas and the
hotel room and they loved the chili on the
highway that they loved as if they loved the
onramp and the way that people called and
the natural forces of destruction and the sea
they loved the sea and also boats and sailing
ships and whales they loved and sea birds in
varieties and then they loved the choice of
drinks to drink and also beer they loved
the times that others liked them that they loved
and also they loved things all shaped like
tapirs and they loved the zoo.

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Renee Marie

Ted Berrigan

"They loved these things too" by Lisa Jarnot