by Alice Notley
Ones want to be on top, soul suckers cry. Where is the medium?
whe is medium,
within motional eyes
in med new wild-
erness, enchanted, One, and One says, One’s found One’s element. Mome,
moment. Not quite fixèd. One’s hair, one’s eyes, one’s hearing immater-
ial. One is the source of. For One comes back. Was I once a bird?
Nothing varies but the light: One means something else but what is it?
that One’s in and is of, émetteur quand même. Or the sound of it.
chruso chrusotera. Thrust out a word, just to keep talking, One.
aptete pur. Doesn’t—oesn’t—matter. Claw at paint for Xaos’s
sake. Nothing varies but light, or the gradation of the thinking—
seems
sk love .
di
one is tossed
One seeks confirmation nonetheless, says One, of the reality
of One’s langue, tongue of chaos. Can ones speak it? All ones now have left.
Qui begins to growl; is it words? Why not? the voyagers say.
Then the breasted soul sucker demands, One must see, must see more.
Of a sudden Qui who’s growling’s emergent from fresco—
Does one look like something now, ma’am? One sees One’s interior,
zounds! or sounds, One’s shamanic force, mystery’s on the near wall
Qui is in right there in the wall, right with those painted animals:
Is One’s interior a winged jaguar or snake abstracted,
yes perhaps anything fierce goes—fierce in the utmost chaos,
isn’t any quality part, One beist moi, a mélange
and a purity. What thou sayst, from Qui or who is red, blue,
yellow and white, is eyes if ones make out these marbles dedans,
in the assemblage of my forms—I’m the, your, my: bloody mouth,
reddest mouth in the universe. Let’s remake some of Being.
Only have words existing, sweethearts that’s enough to go.
And if one tries to suck one’s soul, will seal you in a black wall.
Parts of new universe are one’s words. What some one says is the case.
Do ones have bodies? asks Wideset. Well, says Wall Qui, one sees one there,
covered with words, but with those eyes. Why? What does one do with them
in this greyness? One’s some fed up. Everything’s based on before . . .
There was never an origin: creation, evolution,
All is poppycock! In the minds, interlocking is our truth . . .
Like, ones like two eyes hanging there. Like? Yeah ones like it, Qui says—
Isn’t shamanic, to like it. Oh right, live up to the word . . .
op boppy dabra, beat a drum, dumbdumbs in lightless neutral,
goose grey lack of happenstantial space, place or after math of.
Rendering of planet useless to the species ones were callèd.
Now to call it Loquacious Souls. Dead species covered with words.
One—yes—brings ones back from the death, to this here moment thrilling,
charged with what? Not believing things. With skeptical randomness.
Ones now proceed randomly as pleases. One don’t want to think more.
Let’s call this grey stuff light, says the One. The Celestial Presence.
Sudden shafts appear gold everywhere, play props, a little rigid,
aren’t they? comments Qui. Where are they from? (Who cares who asks?) Nowhere,
like where one is in fact—oh no fact here—making a bunch of facts.
Are ones still in the glyph? Where else but there. Of a sudden thick piles,
cuttings, are at one’s feet. More fuckin words, says the Shaker, like me.
Bits, more of pastness. How one’s concrete, by pulling it along . . .
ghan builu . . . enter war. Oh brother that wasn’t too brilliant, huh
ronmentalists are already argu. Papers flutter, a wind
there’s a wind in nowhere. dent to minister man; with foreign lead;
financial; dominates; degradation of fores. Don’t want these ones . . .
Already had the fuckers didn’t one. Main index down by 7
Let’s accept numbers. Then Wideset cries, Oh one’s lost difference
between one and others. Can’t perceive it, though there’s a voice from mouth—
Whose? It’s one’s? Is one located at all? One’s mass is slippery—
One sees your wideset eyes, two balls floating in pile of stuff . . .
What does one need to be? Pull self together around digestive
tubes, oh that’s just more words. If one eats it’s off to side. I’m not it.
Don’t have to. Don’t be that. What to become? Wideset is muttering.
One’s my mom, says her kid. Yeah but what else? Are the ones too dead for
relationships du corps? It’s that one don’t perceive the body parts the same way.
One came out of the one? When? One doesn’t have that past anymore . . .
Hysteric. It isn’t happening, now. Thou art thyself, one thinks . . .
Am I? I am my one . . . Pull thyself together, literally—
Does one want a body? Volition has nothing to do with that.
One could want to kill it, et cetera. Are ones going to kill?
Have taken selves to place of decision. One sees oneself as what,
as not stuck together. Hold pose a sec, says who me, the no pose.
Far as one can take it. Has one lost it? Is that good, after all?
Can’t get rid of reasoner—observer. I don’t want to be you.
Or is it that one’s not. Sick of questions. Pull pieces of one back
more less together. Don’t care what one looks like, am not eye-owned.
Big as mind, body parts merge into void—cosmic contained in mind—
ego sense dissipates, words for these states glitter and swarm on one,
never still. Never still! They are the bits, cells of thine existence,
have to be changeable, somewhat stable; one changes in chaos,
that manages itself, that is the one. I am of it—one is—
Wideset’s eyes glowering, more apart now. Can still see all of ones!
Ability to see simply exists—Has always been somewhere.
No way to evolve without preexistence, assholes! Pre-seeing,
post-seeing. Existence of thing posits thing. A kind of logic.
VIII
FUTURE
ANCIENT FRESCOES
From the Anthology
Who’re you Mac, cratered, epic-taunted no one?
Worse one’s opera toy, ariatic also,
making noise. Beat you, aren’t I supposed to?
Where are we, nowhere?
Since nothing sugared exists now of the doctrine—
undefined, unanimaled we, not a chorus—
is it one destabilized is more like
the gods than before?
We are chaotic elements among them
set to emerge never seen, but yesterday’s self
perceives who I am now
somehow, memoryless
without objects . . . to be of or love.
Cruising I’ve seen . . . So you say . . . One’s now transfigured . . .
Who is one unarrayed, for whom is one nectar—
oneself and that only?
Try speaking newly, seeing what’s here, don’t bother with one’s lostnesses.
Is there another way to rem
ember? And who’d be inquiring,
from prehistory . . . For I am a piece of the one, narrator,
call one simply one. Slowly to be more sensical—oh but why—
one’s traveling through, rough but thorough, this is one’s way of alive.
Within this cité—abandoned now, from after one had come—
when hadn’t one always left it—see in some memory’s fashion,
walls, what’s alive there. This glyph of one, reassembling in second
cosmos, universe, cheap word of prior discursive mishegoss—
forget what means. Don’t be charming. Everything’s over but void—
yes still so vide here. Wideset’s trembling. Who the hell’s that? Once dreamed of.
Consort too, and kid. The ones’d suck my soul. And France, dead, and her kid.
Who can dead France be? Came here with me, One, everything seems random.
It is. Parts man says. Why one needs parts. Fix up some trucs. Stabilize.
Go back over things, slowly is to create them, as ones all know,
backwards and forwards, not a vivid moment in time—there’s not that.
On wall, where Qui looms, just for chuckles, where pond once was, then the ark,
is frozen warrior—who’ll one battle?—always someone—with a word,
long blue spiraling, parole is issuing from frozen frozen stuck,
does it have to be? City to come, gone, oh that’s why one’s changing
the langue, to change parole from the bouche. Warriors all feathery,
blue, green, as of old, when colors reign pastly and world’s not so dry.
Qui, in the frescoed world, is talking; grinning in plastered profile
towards paroling one: who says, isn’t a warrior—malinterpreted.
One is mere trappings. Come out of future to welcome ones to town.
Tell one the ones don’t have a future condition or tense of it.
He’s here to give ones pleasurable syllables. That’s unlikely—
No, Shaker, it’s not. Why not wear a shield and sword to speak? Why not?
Welcome, poetic refugees! Those no longer organic . . .
Think back till now if one’s thinking, well thinking’s all that there is—
blessed and morbid, right? what a lens. I, oneself, hang puppetlike,
painted clutter trying to talk. One hears that ones’re inventing
circuit breaker of anomie. What’s that mean? Some syllables . . .
I don’t even know how to talk. Don’t have to know. In this wall
one’s always righteous, articulate, masterpiece after I died.
Cultcha, love ya, irony bored. What does one want not in time?
To keep talking. Could be any. Think one’s always been alive . . .
One’s the part that’s always been alive. Speaking how it’s spoken,
this is the ur-language, ô ones: how the animals first talked:
I’m a nanimal, essential. Not speaking English phonemes
(big word): simply transmitted. Cause one don’t need to get it.
There’s no reason why the ones need to understand the ones.
But the ones understand, says One. Gonna push it now, Wall says.
Story of someone; historic. Like bullshit ones’d swear by . . .
digression floods, pile it onions. Take sanctimonious:
Hope. Can’t have it. Why? Meaningless . . . Morning glories, magenta.
Didn’t one ever have a hope? Have it, you even have it . . .
In the new thickness, there’s more light. Imagined light, says Wideset.
In one’s story, says wall guerrier, in the old frescoes of hope,
one, a docile one to a one. Possessing a penis—
penis president! The frescoes proclaim the penis leader,
mine’s penis of hope, et cetera. Remember? Ur-language lets
one be true. Penis was our hope. Penis was not the One’s hope,
says the One. No, says the wall one, Hope is gibberish. Penis, behest:
One will be the most peaceful penis this war has ever seen.
In the ur-language peace means war. Didn’t have to say peace, see
peace being what was—true past tense. In the ur-language—Animal—
ones do hear one in English, like; but I’m not even talking,
I’m whistling like a bird—hear it! Or just thinking pictures towards—
well not pictures . . . thoughts! They’re themselves. Can’t cha hear one calling out?
Ones—the youse guys—aren’t even in history, cause it’s dead.
Like this unanxious city ours. Unwind more heralds and they’ll
welcome you to nowhere with glee. Is glee something? asks Wideset.
Dancing at night, why not it’s real? Mama Chaos goes shimmy.
There by god, limping, soul suckers, are they those who want some stuff?
Get over it, ya wadda. Water! Have to get o’er, over it.
When I was alive, says la France. Quand je vivais dans une rêve,
mais maintenant il n’y a pas de la texture, la piquance,
c’est où? Oh it’s here, in the words, in the thought, geranium.
One’s scarlet sometimes, or coyote. One don’t imitate, one is.
Does anything happen? asks soul sucker. Why should one read
one’s own self words if nothing happens here? Gonna redefine it—
happens—are in process. Happens and remember. Remaking being
as one is. And seeing. How does one recall? asks breasted sucker.
Try. Who is one, as you? Will one say I? I was beeyoutiful girl.
What is that? asks the Wall. Another thing about eyes, nose, and mouth—
tits—floating uselessly now in some void. Chaos lets me keep them
near? Oh they’re yours, my babe. Let’s see events, no ones,
not much, reflected shit. I am almost, woman an almost thing.
We like it—we have to: don’t one love him? Can’t remember how to talk . . .
It’s stupid, a life. I get too dumb. Am an almost poet—
What’s poet, to you? asks the guerrier. Everyone and no one—
hardly any one knows how; everyone lives inside poetry,
blind to the words of it. I become half unblinded, write my shit
hope it isn’t reelly shit—they say it ain’t—isn’t—they don’t lie,
but they don’t know a thing. Other poets, big shits. Why am I so direct?
Am I in a truth machine, who am I? Who the fuck am I now?
Whoa! says the guerrier. Don’t want to tell the truth I say, don’t know
it! Unbreasted sucker: Of course one does. Qualified by degree . . .
speaking of which, where are, there must be some wall paint professors . . .
Oh, says guerrier, No. Just creatures like me who in the ideal
’d kill thee, fatally. We are revered. We are often dead though,
but transferred to the wall monumentally, who’d want more than that?
But, suckers still want things! Ah, learn to sigh. Sighing’s so musical . . .
Are ones still in ur-talk? asketh the One. Like, says the guerrier,
one is walking down street—as in the wall—ones just have to get it—
when one gets to corner, pure wind gusts by, pure a pure crystal wind.
And thou thinkest, One knows what the concept of a wish means. Blows through.
Some concepts raise a wind, some elicit vacuumic reactions.
One, says France, quietest one, being so dead, feels a truth within me,
as all I’m. D
ost thou remember something?—Shaker.—Nothing happens,
since pastly it goes and becomes fiction. Who could trust it? Made up
on the spot. Does one remember loving one? asks the kid. Don’t have
to recall, still love the one. If one didn’t still, couldn’t recall it.
Who is one? asks the One. How much of One—me—figuratively?
Not a country but one dead in hotel, elsewhere than that country.
Colonized, they would say, as women were—One remembers that so well.
One remembers, says the kid, when one died there. One remembers dying,
France says. Not everything ends, nor ever, if there is an ever . . .
no ever and no end ’d be one’s guess. See that one’s always lived . . .
Parts one says, Is that the nature of one’s coma, after all then?
It seems so concrete, one’s previousness. Nothing to say of it.
What else does one dead, France, remember now? Mostly songs and poems;
they’re facts, inscribed. All else fluid like present, interpretable . . .
Lyrics remain and tunes, some things spoken. One must be written
to endure as a presence, spirit in stone, on wall as accepted . . .
France goes on, Don’t want to endure oneself: must watch out for the kid . . .
The dead know everything, understand much. Any mind in any
language if it calls out. How can that be? Don’t believe it.—Shaker.
True ur-language mental—untranscribed—animals speak it. Ones’re
always translating the language of thought—décalage—not quite right.
One don’t have to make sense—think of poems—to translate it, you know . . .
The dead know everything, believe one. Try to get new language
closer to that of thought. River beneath appearances. Poems.
These words on one are one translating oneself without knowing it;
country of few images, gone with weather, gone with old nature.
IX
TEMPORARY FURNITURE
From the Anthology
my noise there , so thou to say echoes sane phoenix ,
for one knows thought , will care for me , as mine own ,
as unseen , it sees ones , quickswordlike ,
mirrored and lithe , what’s other than it , enter
soon myself , the ones anthology , to be classic ,
