Poems and Texts

“Tryptentacle” by Anselm Berrigan

TRYPTENTACLE

Pregrets

roaming charges writing this tomorrow, on the drop
off way into nowness, little boy on wall releases grasp
of yellow painted bird shapes, light buckles wall
into plane, building angles hit up bushy mountains
for geometric incursion trips, got to dissolve our
opposites this chair in the corner says call me
something else, don’t settle on it, it’s messed up
to hear, to listen to the chair, I grew down in a dirty
block version, I hated those dealers on the corners
& hate was a word I wouldn’t use, some of them gave
the fragment that is advice goes hot & cold, your
way I like, your way I gauge, your current droopy
angelic high naive composition, I’m big, & I use
that, and lonely, dance with me, look at those lights
I see the other you seeing me as point of amusement
spry but leveled, now a helicopter just staggered by
sometimes I can’t distinguish flat from straight, this
is also the achievement talk of the clown face prevents
us from recognizing, toast toasted by painter painting
lazy heron blues pull on the picture, occupation’s a
target, “hold the joint of your thumb close to your eye
it could just as well be a thigh,” this heard in imagined
voicing, pinned near a grid, the grin more shark than idol

Regrets

leaping cretinism subs in, newboyish swirl blunted
scrabble ballast muscle, to be a what costume clocked
on, if you don’t think anyone’s looking, shroom slide
lifted from upstairs aptitude, why engage, eagle oil
peanut paper, on a decision-making level, metal
photograph, fabric, wood canvas buttons, the fantasy
they eventually will, stool screams for a sack, be on
my side, canyon adapts a special teams pan, eye drop
an elephant on your head module from a stone’s back
no sweat without fruit fly, thrills of soft anxiety, a
fused ankle, scissors in hand, only his torso was lost
suckers as rareties, all policy riders in indigo panic
punt blockers jumping to touch, shaky dots denying
entry, resurrection’s revenge in cut-out light, bobbing
resurgent cowbobs, leg whips in mole sauce, space
sleeping at intersections, out of the question’s abs-
olution, a pain in my lean’s asses, driftwood nanobots
& their fake accents, head butts on the swing spider-
style, tawdry shimmies w./safety features, jarred giant
centipede down twenty at the half, & then I’m joust
like ads against myself half-fast, but the cat waved from
what once was a planet, & the cat waved sliding across
Saturn’s rings, & the cat winked out of Jupiter’s eye

Degrets

tiger uneven texts dark age at night to self, not just
shining some shiny elephant dung I see Portugal
I see Spain, I see purple’s underbrain, costume
designated to implode calling its pop-up antipathy
fauna, things that could have, mauvely, cyanly
pucely, heliotropically eviscerating likeness, the cat
of yesteryear uses chartreuse power ring to will
a sun-sized packet of tender vittles into slowly
turning to pour upon the big blue marble, your
work with the whole room being part of it, oil
on feathers on wing bone goth broth, “a diversion,”
goes immutable emotively immobile elven face, do
you know hard it is to catch a monkey, hello dear
I am writing this, “ducks defeat predators”, with due
respect, & heartily of tears, since we have not known
or met ourselves previously, dosed toast followed you
looking for some juice on the wing, you really think
& fuck it?, they thought things looked like that
since now its mc commons for workaholics to be
placemats anywhere in a room, it’s muy impossible
for placemats to understand that poems on the floor &
the absence of a pedestal were inventions, you (& your
no-history’s less than seriously fucked) invented them

Anselm Berrigan

Anselm Berrigan‘s books of poetry include Something for Everybody, recently published by Wave Books, Primitive State, a long, demented fortune cookie list published by Edge Books, and Come In Alone, a book of rectangles also from Wave. He edited What Is Poetry? (Just Kidding, I Know You Know): Interviews from The Poetry Project Newsletter 1983-2009 (Wave, 2017). He’s also the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, a three-headed adjunct writing teacher, a former Artistic Director of The Poetry Project, and a person who likes to lean on the radiator by the lights in back of the parish hall.

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