Collaborative Poems

Here are some of Carroll’s collaborations with other writers, all published only in magazines (or not at all, in the case of “Back Up Front”). “10 Things I Do When I Shoot Up,” published only in the Another World anthology, is here because it refers directly to Ted Berrigan’s “10 Things I Do Every Day.” I’ve also included the last piece, “Red Rabbit Running Backwards,” because it’s a sort of cutup of Organic Trains . . . quite possibly done by Ted Berrigan and published in Carroll’s name. Bonus trivia question: why is “Chez Rivers” included in this little collection?

True Love (for ee cummings)
By Carter Ratcliff, Jim Carroll, and Peter Schjeldahl
Penumbra 8 (1970)

With a little tooty shriek
The funny train tottered in
(Quilted overcoats!)
O China, there is a wall between us
A wall covered with velvet hangings
And between the hangings huge shields
And crossed weapons of fantastic make

It is not pleasant
To come upon death in a lonely place at midnight

Shriek

Why is the cry of the moorhen so lonely
When it is surrounded by all the other moorhens?
The wind is surrounding us like a question and
Then a question mark followed by an exclamation point
And then a parenthesis that locks us up on this planet like gravity

A sob like Mach 2 on Borthor

The egrets shuffle along the walls like a squirrel
They leap high
Pass beneath us
Wheel
And charge back

Under the mattress for a word with the mole

And here is longitude, looping

Over the fender like an exhaust pipe
While breath continues to slide along the wet pavement
And the hockey teams clumsily prepare for winter
“Ah, November!” shriek
the hockey teams, “you are here already with
your fierce skies and piercing flakes!” pounding
each other with their sticks for joy
(And here come the King, barons, courtiers,
soldiers, locusts from a cloudy sky, René
Ricard radiant in the blushing Cathedral,
Pastors swarming the alcove:

“Sanctuary!”) and

The crowd arose and dispersed in the noisy summer wind

July 21, 1968

Back Up Front (for Ted Berrigan)
By Bill Berkson and Jim Carroll
From the library of Ted Berrigan

Now that you’re coming back

I thought you’d never go
leaving us

with wet spots on our brains
like napkins tossed
across Second Avenue

you walking there
in that elephant way
See to it
that this time you stay

either way you play it
3 ladies are terrific
even a little terrifying
in their dotty chintzes
& haggish scowls
But they’re not you.
See to it
that you’ll try to
see it my way
as strides match up
yours is a light one
we ride on with it or fall
by the wayside, but not today

Ted, I’ve come to
miss you
like a Prodigal’s son

Now the only thing that’s missing is
The bloody moon in that kitchen sink

And today you’re back
To see about it,
you think.

1.20.70

10 Things I Do When I Shoot Up
Another World: A Second Anthology of Works from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, ed. Anne Waldman (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970)

Go to the mirror
comb my hair down straight
put on the Velvet Underground
nod out
my silver ring
read tiny poems
outline each future
everything fine
watch a Sherlock Holmes movie
check to see how much is left
go to the restaurants and flirt
sing I shall be released
nod out
giant beds with everyone I know
no sex

Chez Rivers
Transatlantic Review 55/56 (1976)

Go to the window
and raise these fingers
to the sun.

You won’t find it.

It’s night.

Sleep attentively instead and

If you close the door
The night might last forever . . .

(Leave the glasses where they are)

You’re in a house.
It’s a good house.
Babies breathe in this house.

Red Rabbit Running Backwards (for A. W.)
Stone Wind 4 (1973): 113-114

Frantic sounds of make-up torn from a face
no!
we are both sick of zoo fantasy
to feel that way
the true winter would expose the icy jaws
of meat hung up above expensive neckties
so a candy heart is now a rock that indicates silence
(dada)
& a song rises and realizes that its function is to be sung,
flatly,
not to sing. lead on fellow Americans
melt it on and fit my love
in a hurricane. The aesthetic value of a red tee shirt
you making me see that could be what I mean
if it were not for the fact that the hurricane has bent the trees
and I can’t see anything, in fact I can only feel. can only feel
the 8 colors inside which somehow seem to indicate that
all the clocks are falling on and around me from the sky.
The Communists know what I mean. But they hang out overseas
Which is why I am moving about in subway cars seeking
A jeweled carrot to feed this persistent rabbit which
a beautiful lady liar assured me actually had been cleverly
trapped for good last week in a cage of solid beef. The rabbit
Is probably the key to all of this. Rabbit ears.