for Ted Berrigan

And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem
Poem in the Traditional manner
Poem in the Modern manner
warm delicate words! Swollen as if new-out-of-bed
and the sonnet is not dead.
Making vast apple strides toward “The Poems.”
“The Poems” is not a dream. It is night. You
Stir inside “The Poems.” On the dirt-covered ground
In “The Poems,” in my eyes, in the line, “Guillaume
      Apollinaire is dead.”
I waken, read, write long letters and
My dream which is gunfire in my poem
Orange cavities of dreams stir inside “The Poems”
The poem on the page is massive as Anne’s thighs
and O, I am afraid      The poem upon the page

will not kneel      for everything comes to it

“The Poems” is not a dream      for all things come to them
O wet kisses, the poem upon the page
No poems she demands in a blanket command
And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem
Under the blue sky the big earth is floating into “The Poems”
I understood “The Poems.” Red faced and romping in the wind, I, too
      and my poems are coming.
the snowman in the Easter sonnet we made for him
“He Shot Me” was once my favorite poem
“He Shot Me” is still my favorite poem, and
musick strides through these poems
Coming back to me. He is not “The Poems,”
“The Poems” is not a dream.
“Black Nausea” by seers, only to others, meaning poems