Anselm Berrigan
Stone Free
New Poems From the USA

 

I did not touch the bear sorted in short flight battery familiar

in its search for the first dog many prototypes believe their features

and needs have keen interests in these pariah dogs some ecological

niche like human settlement made that dog be that way to hear blue is the

salacious tone one heaves at the bright crowd gravitas to besmirch turn a

chiseled phrase into unstable air in which I delight accuity “do

I want anyone to understand my dream? No. Never.” ten years after

machine fucks floor fucks walls your face a template for pain you can see come

from miles away at eleven I began thinking of exit strategies

seven or eight years at least before the Powell Doctrine

how not to occupy the dope behind the public abstraction

a punctually thuggish version of outer space copper truants

back on the beat don’t know the local shopkeepers subversive turnip will see

beyond its dreams of coming true umbilical sense of stage the bird flies

onto my head borrowing a backdrop strategy we turn into one

another’s palest gleam of mind crescent getaways a leap over dirty

laundry into the other room no no to sway in festering rhythms

the greatest sea epic in the total face of cow time for fat heads ever

I wandered lonely as a ghost between St. Mark’s Place and 34th St.

swat the walkman for grievous enhancement is it the headphones

the body that multi-crossed intellect lubricant where debate is framed

twelve steps eleven negative eight tragedy breaded what’s a pinion

extended edition cloud formations in the basement storage locker

encircled by stray cats who know an exotic bird is made of edible

parts a little more space to space in as solution an encrypted via

baritone intelligence of lip shhhh polit tweezed out of eternity

to sign checks snagged in the belt buckle of focus strategies aplenty

out of earshot these lines will protect me in the future if not in the

future when I’m looking for a space to absorb when I aim to force

my mind out of its will to stay angry when I’m totally at ease on

the clock when I’m choosing to imagine sleep when I’m acting out a debt

to grease when I skip encounters because I can’t bear to take you in when

I ride with effort and stay pleased when I cut my losses and take the day

off I get it done feed the camouflage on this deck of war profiteering

cards making it hard to find them with music to resolve a husband-

sized hole does story bring you steady as in right mind my life expectancy

one hundred twelve according to a test in the New York Post a

blow for polite outrage never been interested in your mind righteous

derelict ignored in empire but yeah likes it that way just let me handle

the money we spend static loveliness together staring and laughing

temper of low-level paranoia sweetness outrunning you outruns

the wild too I’m a firm believer that a coach doesn’t just become stupid

overnight I could taste you seeping in between the blitz somewhere in the

shifter there’s an open-ended drifter and of all the callous trojans

to tuck in the slant and mean it and wear it like an army of the

digitally enhanced dead I’m sorry for your loud sigh and its defiant

hints of repression in the wake of bald fist versus hairy fist spiders

live in holes and webs and why demean them hand me the check and I will

operations of the corrosive kind inside the burger why bother

to bright in this fashion dot the ts pshaw tie on a horse only ani-

mated stoopside view anyone goes by greetings optional except when

trust is contracted heaps of fabric on the arm I know you dreamed a kind

of confession fazed on the interior surface I can’t inhabit

a sentence of epic proportions the Celebrex pen documents

our times from one second to the next whenever together trapezoid

fiddling periodically with shapes of of line of Viking spiral

ready to cut you down yes me friend bagels capers lemon breakdowns you’re

not you can lap dust off the floor at your leisure it’s an encouraging

tone demanding to be set so get there but I might freeze to break out of

other strategies finding me stuck to the ground’s complementors I see

there’s a black line where the money was supposed to be I am harvesting

these tiny humiliations to 1) just be in my life 2) what

now for a sample box 3) qualify for a percentage of your soul

4) your name is bait 5) pretty lights stone free letting ‘em know we’re standing

smack on top of an overt warning out the hole a known player restart

I’d like to write to a personal you but we vanished to think on my

toes while leaping off any given mountain an unpretentious mountain

preferably though Big Buck Hunter II let’s be the ball and take our time

about protections of liberty easily battered by force and its cunning

simplicity for all my heart I will never tell your minder to take

it easy on you my violent little space my harmless affront on

our good days ahead of us