Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Word count: 142
Paragraphs: 27
When it sank it thundered
Wonderful cries luggage
The dancing bustle of water
Exaggerate shoulder
Nothing for all your trouble but a bruised
Everything takes place
“Good old desk” he said
Deliver us from swivels
Lean outward, I can remember more
beyond this and that
Bands of distracted emotions snap
Your words will be guides
Is your beauty parlor
inquiring after you
You would die first, wouldn’t you
Take off your games of chance
leading with his chin
The earth opens and swallows you
And the lights go out all over
the Flatiron building
which brings me to the part
6/19/16
Note: This poem is composed of lines taken from Bill Berkson's Blue is the Hero (L Publications) and Ted Greenwald's Jumping the Line (Roof Books).
Edmund Berrigan is the author of More Gone (City Lights, 2019). He is co-editor with Anselm Berrigan, Alice Notley, and Nick Sturm of Get the Money (Collected Prose 1961-1983) by Ted Berrigan (City Lights, 2022).