MiPOesias Magazine

Anselm Berrigan

Anselm Berrigan was born in Chicago and grew up in New York City's East Village, the 70s/80s version. He currently lives in the early 21st century version which resembles the classic million dollar body/two-cent head figure. Berrigan walks to work at the St. Mark's Church where he directs the Poetry Project. On the surface and in the halls all is well, but the poems are getting angrier and more desperate by the minute. They seem to be developing their own vices. He has written three books - Integrity & Dramatic Life, the last bastion of primordial exuberance before the ghosts took over; Zero Star Hotel, in which the nap that was the New American Poetry is exiled from the heart of the young, pre-lawyers; and Some Notes on my Programming, soon out and destined to be a bestseller among machines and pariahs. Edge Books in Washington, DC has been able to publish all of these volumes despite the heavy federal inspection process.

Have a good one

You faked it, always serving the long life

fumbling a welcome mind.

Neglect it often.

He will be a brief arrival.

Blistering concrete, ages from

now, a hoax of the ordinary

my underling. Fancy skin rises

to a transcendent servant.

Dispense

laziness. Insert weeds

all night and ignore the

skies.

Have a good one

Bite of alluvial scoliosis

Mini-drawers seize the natural

Attacks unkempt with disbelief

Serious movies for serious suckers

Ahoy razor fluid whiskey of intent

Speaking of the unplugged imagination

The you in the you you you with, a great

Upward folding of the earth’s crust pre-demo-

Lition, an actively ruined race speaks freely without

Words, some anti-depressed cocoa butter. I have been

Overly introduced to such things as shapes. For punish-

Ment I got along with my teachers. Don’t you look at me

Have a good one

plastic fetid babe

arms upraised

scalp inscribed

in sharpie black:

“inner child”

at home

pink plaster baby

curled up on face

near trident

and “Happy Birthday

from Hell” card

at work

Have a good one

straddling violets

sniffle

A squirrel jet skis by

scaffolding’s

mitigating posture

of beauty

mimicking

permanence

any

honest

abode

Have a good one

So late I should wake up

tiptoe into bed

paste tomorrow’s

motivated skeptic face

onto the bathroom wall

unshake the moody clutter

of a shut eyelid

Lovely little shapes

behind eyes

rupture peacefully

without tapping to say they’re going

In the era, thinking of you

a vow’s form like hills echo-ed

and that cheer you may

succumb to shortly

My turtle’s smaller

than this paper football

A chopper is born

Pint balanced on beak

pre-emptive fluff

in quality trash sync

with gentrified protest

against the sweet song

of cronyism. No.

Calibrated scuzz demystifies

the crankshaft. O acid blood

dignitay for losers

in the meta-squall

aquiver. Poly-flammable

apparitions for sale.

They, comrade

spite the bitten neck

for throbbing so wound-like