ANSELM BERRIGAN
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Have a Good One

Fathom cost by merit
             of vainly wracked advances
        to light takedown’s mist.

        sagely decreed to be harmful
          if inert, figment bars standing
         in covert details keeping

                  underwrapped pace with market
              forces multi-orbital though
                  self-revolving miscirculation

            of service’s inference. You will
              have more or less money at less
                     value in the near future. Ideas?


			             Have a Good One

				     Missed yr duration while streaming
                                     forth backwards gazing getting ready
                                     to isolate paunchable staid vitriolic
                                     intimacy with the just purely not 
                                     believable destruction of Troy. Nope.
                                     Now I’m fusticating flarf suppositories
                                     in my own bought-into home. But
                                     my truths equate to, are as, desert
                                     holes, secreted in absentia, tears. 
                                     Mine. Boom. It is like that around me.
                                     Ask the animals. 19-1? On King
                                     George’s birthday? Senility managing
                                     back page stability.


           Have a Good One

	    	Tone Dead, I mean deaf
                                           she calls me
                                               with joy.
 	“Unprofessional”
             a punk from Hell calls me.

                                      I should
 
                                           do                    research?


Have a Good One

						“You seemed distant yesterday.” – an unnamed source
I was distant because
            I mistrust my face

I was distant because I
            didn’t want to engage your interruption

I wasn’t distant, but I
            was preparing for an onslaught

I have incorporated new strategies
            into approaching large, active
                    somewhat known crowds
           & I was mulling over possibilities

I drank some coffee & was trying
            to remember the bathroom’s location
                                 & go there

Blame it on biology, psychology
       self-consciousness, familiarity
    amiable dread, calculation and
            general contentedness


						Have a Good One

						It’s a comfort to pine
						for a drill sergeant.

						Be eating out yourself
						some time & smile at me

						but don’t come to me.
						Impressive mind, not in skull.


           Have a Good One

                Schwag measures the night
                         meaning I’ve been through
           the drawers of this stranger’s house
                  & found the path
                                  to mild depravity.

                  Have I not walked it before?
                      By, oh, anyone’s standards?
                           Anyone’s high
                                  non-exclusionary
                                            standards?


						    Have a Good One

                                              It’s no small amount
                                                                of information, the history
                                                         of food production. My name
                                                   is soft eerie music. There’s
                                                            a they for you
                                                                           out there. There
                                                                                                is?
                                                                                       There
                                                                                   is.


				       Have a Good One

                                       Tell it what it is.


Have a Good One

There’s being overwhelmed
by passion & there’s functionality

Can you manage both? Or has
your life inserted you somewhere

between significantly & thoroughly
detached from both. Things

they may be, and yet, hmmmmm.
I’ve been punished into caring

about how it all shakes out for
us too. Resentment does drive

me into the arms of that or who
I resist, momentarily. I will

drink your father’s wine & move on
You won’t care! A thank you note

may will itself your way in some
store-bought form. Make me

stop telling the form to rethink
its life. Pleather clouds beckon

to us assassins. That’s your 
whole fucking work, enemy.


				Have a Good One

		  So what				Call me down
		  that you’re			         but don’t play
		  independent.			       it like you’re
		  Everyone here			      so damn free
		  is independent.		       it doesn’t matter
		  That’s why we			      that you can’t see
		  can be nukers. 		       how thoroughly
					  	            you humiliated me.


Have a Good One

        Explanation befits a mirrored
                version of me, so I
                             move on. 

				
							Have a Good One

                                                              pay the date to remember you
                                                                           enemy of salience

                                                              history’s meet & greet
                                                                           calls upon your caption


											Have a Good One

                                                                               only through porous antique
                                                                                    gestures of will can our love
                                                                                      be truly maintained as the set
                                                                                 of administrative functions we
                                                                               require it to be so as to burn
                                                                                    with philanthropic glee.


Have a Good One

Champion dwellers bask
& so they bask. Deal

forensic careers in heavy
equipment (suits) that you

can run, hard, in. Wild
turkeys in the summer drizzle?

Off hours as sight gag? Charred
bodies littered across the suburbs?

Dance so fast you fade me 
out of sight?


								Have a Good One

                                                               Who would you like
                                                                to have make the big
                                                                decisions for you?


Have a Good One

		Waving goodbye to an era
		of abundant impersonal accumulation
		I mean, waving goodbye to instant
		reflection (voice-over) & non-stability
		disguised as someone’s in charge. Moths
		divebombing lights, for instance, as
		they’re “on”, as they say. Our truculent
		inattention wound its way forward
		in so far as seen true. Scene? 
		Cleaned out. Maxed out degrees
		with no one left to brutalize from
		a distance, or even minimally please.


						Have a Good One

                                             Paid loan payment before
                                   
                                                    sending masters on
                                                        
                                                               their way. Time,

                                                       you ruinous agent of
 
                                                          possibility, will you ever

                                                      truly get your point across?

                                                Or unfreeze & send back,

                                                         more to the point,

                                                      all them corrosive

                                                                   explanations of your work?

                                                     Monolithic derelict fuck.


				Have a Good One

                        “The choices your work

                                    left me were to submit

                                 or walk out

                                          &  you have not

                                  earned my submission.”


Have a Good One

Production values
among other grandchildren
of Mallarme

                                               spilling frozen
                                               chicken thighs
                                               all over the tracks


							    Have a Good One

                                                           On the birthday hunt
 
                                                                ‘tis quaint
 
                                                                       is it not

                                                                  to kill for peace

                                                                  to saw through bone

                                                                        as sample

                                                                        of surgical 
 
                                                                              precision

                                                                          to throw a ball

                                                                                 around with

                                                                           your fellow prisoners?


Have a Good One

                                      In the error
                                           thinking of non-intervention
                                               with you. A red sun
                                                 (don’t look) pokes
                                                through. Staging
                                           development and the cutting
                                     loose of its facile integrity
                                          of disproportionate
                                                     personal non-response.
                                              The wince. The shrug. The
                                                   belated non-acknowledgment
                                                        of owning just not
                                                            enough to take part.
                                              In the era, thinking of you
                                                    will quit my job
                                                               in one year to get
                                                           more done, work harder
                                                               to insert myself into
                                                            the fragile extension
                                                          of space between us
                                                                 to get something done.
                                                                         In the ear
                                                                             thinking after you.


Have a Good One

                                              let me
                                              swim in
                                              the grease 
                                              I love


Have a Good One

A vow’s form
like hills echo-ed

that cheer you may
succumb to shortly


										Have a Good One

		   We refused to enter Tompkins
	       	   Square Park by 1986
 	           though we were always told
                   by the grumpier neighbors
                   who thought our wiffle balls
                   would break their windows
                   the park was where we were
                   supposed to be. The park wasn’t
                   for us, and we knew that. And
	           you couldn’t play wiffle ball
                   in the park – you needed stories
                   to hit against. We didn’t mind
                   that the park was fucked up
                   but we weren’t going there.
                   Then those neighbors made
                   us move up to the corner of
                   St. Mark’s and First Avenue.
                   The site was okay, but then
                   all these dealers appeared
                   and wanted to get just one
                   swing which of course 
                   turned into a million.


					   Have a Good One

theme: I am supposed to be asleep

        ordered to chair tractable 

 downy platitudes

                                                       smoked some resin before landing

           velvet nodding pony nodding

                             strafe jingle soothes momentary hex

 sinking be the ship

                         the scholastic revelation paradox

while quietly bludgeoning when I want

                                                        a strand of painterly disaffection. The mind

                arrives with inept wonder imitating

trumpets or some shit that’s thoroughly

                   made the transition              from court to commercial.

                                                                   What are you defending

                                                     if the use of the right is in question?  So

                          deeply ingrained as to be gone. Watched

it go. But we’re still here and I’m handing

you this gun you’re already holding


						Have a Good One

                                                     It’s hard
                                                              to be
                                                             a good
                                                        boy. Harder
                                                            than being
                                                                  magick. I
                                                                        think I
                                                                   look better
                                                                 when I
                                                                     don’t shower.


	  Have a Good One

                              Not bellowing for mercy.


                             

                              Not arming the donkeys.


								Have a Good One

                     Birdy shoots out from treetop



                             swallow pen


                                   laid down


                           leave them bugs alone boy



                sleep – dream back to

                      
                     yourself – the you you


                       remember yourself to be


                 when I sleep                it takes


                             less from me than


                  I need it to


                                      I belong anywhere


                          want to belong to


                          no particular place


                                          but there’s              a city of


             strangers for me despite


                            my predilections


       mind invents or retrieves faces


                                                when I shut my eyes


                              my chest has been


                                  weakened by my own hand


                          am on a farm


                             writing             eyes closed


                                            back to grass


                          I don’t aim to kill anything


                                 but I will take responsibility


                                                  for thousands upon 


                                        billions of deaths if


                                                         these bugs stop


                                                                crawling on me.


	Have a Good One

     If today is the day
                     of the plunged

    pliable if

                  may I speak
     
           from the resourceful
 
                       catastrophe
                                  of our basic

                                                   public services

                                                                   & cry tears of relief?


						Have a Good One
	
                                                       You are

                                                               what your

                                                          record says

                                                you are