by Alice Notley
in chaos’s city , megalithic scripture , has copied
animal , feature placement , from memory
ours , intime epi c , who I’m unpollen ,
aid the soul , on there fore , dry lake
. in possession
of same phonic scale.
trophied p ollen
crocus bearing eyed
n ot memory
s petal-like deity
dealt wandering
lyre cunning, lost .
impressions, none
fix’d upon
round my lists now
to far shore
From the Anthology
doth One
. . . now trouve
why I’m
alive
. . the answer
the same noise . . I’m it . .
matter my fate poised
on same page Strip us of vagueness epiderm . awn
nothing without One O. elsewhere
One’s just . elsed
. . . . am the
substance
. . One eons
people
. city
abandoned to trance
there’s no law
in melissan essence
. . . . in bits
. liar . . . .
talking like part
break it up now
pull it out of past languages mellifluous am the One. Tu, dais,
stem me . . . . river, there’s none, not even Acheron, so face it—
One puts the alien cobalted chaos back into
obsédé, mouth obsessed the death master takes my cunning . . .
but must his phos phorical past—basilisk—be mine,
android, I am death—the word of it, One is. Do you like this tongue?
Where are ones now, inside enduring, going further.
So I am One, I am all these ones; put oneself back together,
newly; sucked into langue, its density and foliage, its eyes.
And in tune to one’s avowal, La Cité des Morts closes round—
words or creatures fluttering low, birds real or storied—One don’t say
mythical when living in a myth. Wall one chuckles, Newfangled?
When in hiatus—what they call space—seriffed ravens muttering
swoop ô misunderstood consciousness—One’s—couldn’t control One’s thoughts,
and they were the One’s! Were meaneth are. Invaded by letters,
quetzals, condors, rocs, apologies, hatefulness, explanations,
fears, everything that ever, alive. Of course it’s alive, it’s ours,
l’ours great bear and small. Taillights of perversions—what were they, dark nouns?
The words’re underfoot, brush against? Are any of them forgèd,
like other ones’ thoughts? But thoughts’re thoughts. What about thoughts of the One
observing One think? Want One’s real thoughts. Oh yeah, tired of invasion.
One stands within the within of words. Where one is now, my momma.
Chaos, the body of matter: art thou the body of language?
To remake, select . . . Shaker interposes, Pastly am of a
psychology: One is a one, as is everyone one knows,
identifiable by appearance, behavior, tones of voice,
affect, and et cet—now that there’s no class, race, gender, since really
there’s no one but us, being no one—what is a one . . . Remember,
that I don’t know any of those words. But one’s surrounded
by all of the ark-words brought and let loose. Have access to everything.
Unbreasted sucker says, Can’t stand that. They’re my—one’s—words after all.
One owns them by professional clout. They’re free and wild, Shaker says.
Perhaps they’re going to tell us themselves what new beings are like . . .
One says, But One knows just by being—Don’t want to be invaded . . .
One is the invasion, says Shaker. One’s in control of Chaos,
though not conspicuously. One doesn’t know what one is doing . . .
Of sudden the words—Word birds, says Wideset’s kid—open up beaks and speak:
Ones are for the ride, stressed but don’t fail. Ones will now describe this bit
(all in tiny voice, almost incomprehensible tonal
bird talk): There’s some light—don’t-let-too-much-in—or ones’ll be scor-chèd.
Ones brought a glo-bal fate with them TO this second u-ni-verse Peep.
So, light, enter roomz. Z of the life—final let-ter. New bird sounds:
Sit down, forms of matter just like us. This word chair’s mistletoe pal-
lid . . . pal-lid and slick—one can slide off words. One wants a green chair,
France’s kid says, shy. Historical green, or the new green, desert
banquet? Kind of jokey for a vert . . . Walls, indistinct, a debt beige . . .
What color are one’s eyes? asks Wideset. Fearrrfullll, a bird trills out, beak-
line of letters. One’s within a new concretion. It’s making One sick,
One says. Not unlike old. Everything interconnected with thought-talk.
Watch the beaks, the birds shriek. Strings of mots everywhere above one’s head.
There are no foreigners . . . No correct speak . . . And no one can give birth . . .
Why not? asks France the ghost. Those words are stupid, say the loud word birds,
We’re the words and we know. How do the ones reproduce? asks the One.
Same way One acquired all these others: par-then-o-gen-e-sis,
out of One’s own forehead. That’s not what it means!: unbreasted sucker.
That’s what it means now! a word bird’s cackling. What one thinks is what one
gets. Have to think hard to reproduce though. The key moment is shock
pastly; now comes up for grabs. Whaddaya think, words? Should be a long thought . . .
Shot? Fakes? What would those be? Words are saying one ever makes birth up:
Wall. Like a language, One says broodingly. Not made up, a bird chirps,
Not after existing. Let’s sing some wordies: The surprise isn’t
o-ver of exist-ing in this dump-ling . . . We’re what there is too—
We’re ones, weird birdies all, incorrect lips, plus-que-parfait, dears.
One reflects: Does One reflect or generate illumination,
meaning thought? Is this One’s mind? One thinks so. Feared to be here—nowhere—
but it is Oneself, duration’s unbreakable experience;
solution to the problem of history—it isn’t One’s own,
so it isn’t. Yet the language warms One, sparkles upon one’s peau . . .
singing in air currents: sorry for everything that’s happening . . .
Moments of tragedy arise from belief in the world and one’s
agency within it—everyone backs someone or is that one,
if called lucky, the son. Can one do away with that, sweet oiseaux?
Sure thing chirp, back yrself. Take the e out? Yrslf the attitude.
The author, of horizons, agent of perceptions, at least one’s own.
In the city of words—such as fresco, warrior, unremembered
from the future of lack, I’ll remember a mode of coercion—
I’ll always say I when I think how the other words treated me.
So differ from the past—There isn’t that—Always there, ô worldlings . . .
Maybe it is
the future coming backwards to make ones chirp.
One, says word—meaning bird—further is, tries to make this langue happen.
It is one’s ville des cartes—Want you speaking, as if I were god . . .
isn’t that how it works? Try to extract difference from thou,
well self food, words have to eat, with their beaks. From the future recall,
fly backwards, one is innocent crisis. What is a crisis then?
Whatever happens, what else? Nothing happens though, city’s empty—
this new language existeth ’tween the crises within the emptiness
one so comes to adore. With static verbs—No I’m flying, says word,
bird. One, One says, can fly too, all words fly. Don’t fly to the future,
says a bword. Leave out stuff, put in some more, making same time of it.
Sit there in the word chairs being word hues having word emotions . . .
see with one’s beautiful word eyes the declensions of substance.
Strong feeling destroyed me pastly and can, One says to the pale bird . . .
Doesn’t matter if One’s a word or not. Who the fuck cares? One asks.
The names, everyone wants to know the names—kill this one or that one—
will real blood run again? Blood of the poet strangles one’s cut throat,
just words—don’t say that ones aren’t distraught, living because alive—
because there is no death—no, words were saved, from a death, in the ark—
no that’s just word logic. But, says a bword, we’re more than you can say,
No you aren’t, but you’re everything in this blasted cosmos—
and animals knew that, sending their thoughts to each other when they—
A jaguar from the wall growls, closes eyes, It’s a private matter . . .
One’s ravished by beauty; does one want to live and having no choice?
Is it really fore’er? Sure, cheeps a bird, You gotta get used to
time of it. Only way’s to get the langue right. We’re the ones in charge,
charge of the universe, charge of the births, charge of chaotic truth.
X
THE STUPID BATTLE
Parts one says, One thinks haven’t considered all the suggestions, yet—
requests, remember? How to change it, how ones jabber, for the best.
One keeps getting distracted, just talks . . . That’s what it’s like, to keep on.
What does one want to be able to say to a one? Anything?
Oh it’s whatever comes up but one hopes to have left the long time,
stretched out linear. This one entered this coma escaping that—
evolution’s or straight annual. One’s in a dreamier flux—
didn’t get here from there or pass through that. Suddenly one speaks it . . .
Begins the poem. It’s already begun. Again, says One.
Don’t want to tell one something, want to be living it, the poem
inseparable . . . That’s one of the suggestions, says, Parts one, to
say as one’s moving, say, I’m on my way to the death of the freeze.
Or birth of the bees. Winds are one’s time, carry new scenarios
begun on the living side of walls and maybe of the language.
Wall, another wall’s talk, talking to One. That one, says One, torn off
floating, incroyables les couleurs, bleu foncé, jaune et rouge, ocre—
naranjo y blanco—An animal’s talking to ones, winged coyote mebbe,
eye blue oh what is pouring from thy red mouth, teethed? a white voile scroll . . .
Yes, it says, it’s the form of this one’s thought, endless for all the ones.
One always thinks towards, speaks en façon, piling the thought on act . . .
Thou art frozen, says One. Not in my mind. Speak now to tell thee rules—
Don’t want rules, says Wideset—There’s always procedural crap, it says.
First, ones’ll just wear it, as doing now: no one’ll get to own
anything but what’s worn—words—by the oneself. One is one’s own poem.
Segundo: it will change.—Is it one’s thought?—It’s basically the one.
All others can understand each other as corporeal poems . . .
—Some are alike? Animals are alike?—No bodies are alike.—
Right. One knew that . . . But what language is this? Seems other than novel . . .
Mutational, repetitive, fancied: comes from wellsprings within
one’s chaotic makeup shared by company of las criaturas . . .
always is. And the words, they always is. Any parts of. Or wholes,
same thing, chingadero. Right, says Parts one. Charts’re what one wants, says
Unbreasted. Then the winged coyote: No. Ain’t like that, no status
to ones who master charts. Here we are now: cloth in its mouth unscrolls
dropping like waterfall. Always unfix’d layers faint beneath, in,
arising in a jif—if one wants, speak like the academy,
siècles of that shit are available.—Made its way onto ark?
Sure. Lots of unbreasteds wanted the stuff. We’re in repetition,
don’t we know all of this? How we’re alive, keep saying the stuff,
mind/body of the winged coyote says. Oneself is the way, the
truth—troot—and the lighight. Don’t have to beleeeve in me or a one—
just be ye and the langue be whatsoe’er it wants, état of grace.
Say what it is one wants. Shaker: Always wanted to have . . . to have . . .
started with . . . nothing comes. Filtered water, lots of socks, ideas.
It’s of exile that one wishes to sing. Pastly, what is it’s lost?
One one another loses, or edenic, for the first time I . . .
never did something for first time, that’s wrong. Here for the first time in
future abandoned burg? Don’t make one laugh. Once thou walked and talked for
the first time, Breasted says. Shaker: Don’t make one laugh. No first times if
what everyone has to do. What’s remembered is everything, all
the fucking while of it. All sleeps in one. All of all-y alley,
in feminis etiam. One can never be white as egg,
born coupable in knowledge. Well not guilty, maybe jaded, maybe
pointed in wrong directio—No word, says Unbreasted—Is now . . .
No action possible, it has been done. What would one like to do?
One would like to yodel. Or ululate. Or simply murmuring.
As the words on legs are changing, from sitting to towards that wall,
One, says One, gets up walking to. Walls. Thou to One art a wall . . .
Word birds accompany overhead; wall’s ocher red, a person—
pois-son—What a tone-changer One, One is thinking, words swarming
over One’s corps, starlike or bees, again, as the words sting—
bwords cheeping, they hoit, oh they hoit! And, by god, where’s a life here?
Not even divided into day and night, man and woman
man-an, no bo-oss, there’s no boss! Where are the submachine guns,
rhymes with buns duns; where are eeps, heaps of thingies and rit-u-als?
See the teeth in wall, the wa-all, it is a priest, it’s a boss!
Guy in brown and green is singing: I’m the big fat priest of the ville—
over and over, til you could believe his goddamned parole . . .
Same old shit! shouts guerrier from way back. Don’t listen to him,
repetition and herb juice make one a believer. Not One
One wants to know if this is the future, is it still one’s fight—
Fate, says bword, forfeit of a foot—fiddlesticks, one means futile . . .
Isn’t this a serious place after all, not a daydream?
Why art thou here with the war garb? Why’s this one here with priest juice,
stupid chaliced hand? One thought One didn’t have to do it again.
Shaker catching up ahead of others: Can’t ones knock walls down?
Warrior screams, Was courteous and we’re beautiful, beautiful . . .
Everyone talks like a bird now, Shaker says, Repeats the beat . . .
Priest incants: Woo wah oo wah goo, heathen wordbag I loathe you . . .
But come on into blood red wall, so one might thou sacrifice
to the god that keeps one in power, power in the wall all . . .
But the wall all’s just a wall, not all, we could knock it dowown—
What about god god about god? And power, what about that?
Power’s what One is, says the One. That’s all. What’s the name of here?
Thou named it in le futur, says the priest, Named it Lux.
One named it? Yes, ones are naming it right now, aren’t them uhns?
One likes Lux, says the unbreasted sucker, It means, in Latin, light . . .
Want more light, mutters Wideset, Have to make do with word, keep saying.
Just exactly why art ones in the walls and in profile? asks Shaker.
And Qui, why’s one there still? Priest answers first, profile’s more digne. Wall ones
will have come to be here when you will have locked us into these wall alls.
Do ones need future perfect tense? asks One. Sometimes it seems . . .
Qui answers, Comes and goes, ones already know tense, even dreamed it.
Twinkles like light then collapses into the Body of the Said . . .
Which is more effluvium of chaos, one’s real “us” . . . all this Said . . .
One—I—Qui—am in wall, all painted up, checking out artistic
immortality. Ones locked these guys up to trap them—needed it?
When? asks One. One thinks, Now! And au soudain, all those guys,
Guerrier and le Prêtre, various other frescoed humanoids
part animal, feathered, petaled, leafèd, leap out of the wall, whole
