by Alice Notley
universe imaginable. Or the funniest. But not the sexiest,
“I would like that she love me.” Why? One’s already old . . .
Fox become vox, denuntio, extravagance of heart deleted
pas de coeur, pas de hard-hearted. One is haunted:
former fundamentals crash in headwinds ghost-limned
(drawn with phosphorescent dotted lines): touch and feel me Why
And I don’t have to be a generation.
Novator, novatrix, and if one who renews refuses
gender? My name is ending refused . . . Novatendre. Or
nubigenum, born of a cloud. Glyphigenum, born of a glyph
and of Wideset: Or of One, the glyph’s first thinker. But I
was never born. I have always been. Exactly at the right time.
One’s excited to be, Wideset’s kid goes on. So many words in one,
new surges without legend finally: at the end of the street,
deserted quarter foot says sadness, means exhilaration.
France’s kid: Yes for one, body of words—for if one’s slow, now not.
Now nothing but the words the ones all know. Flourishing, electric.
Best, ones not care what’s said—what’s said or how—gentle rains, no memoire,
que’st-ce que c’est le pleuvoir? Why mark one’s path with fake memory?
Le pouvoir, ça c’est moi. Power’s this one, identity’s power . . .
retard eyes of cloud, the nebulous stars that brought ones here.
Just to be able to say that, those words. That’s worth being. One’s mine,
then, heart suspended in space, justly words—playing the dulcimer
in a lemon grove—ones don’t have those things: who ever had a thing?
Cypresses, eglantine, whistle anciently these old words that are ones,
don’t have senses, objects. One has the mind, retard holds, divine.
XII
THE NEW BRAIN
The Poem of France’s Kid
One’s caught en retard but now sans slow or fast one will last
spread across the wordful univers de la mort.
Once one lived—ah one lives pastly!—in an hôtel, Asiatic
the hostelleries across this voie lactée welcome one, cups of stay
or go—linguistic vortex or no—this retard can say anything.
One remembers, like hallucinated paint rose, how I think to live pastly.
Retarded is it mere physiology o ologies, one needs nothing évidemment
to be, to be can never be defective or damaged, it is me’s—ones—
there is no loss boss. No heart mart. Have a glass of tickets,
one can have that. I—one—everything the words are that ones
using think there is, o enter. The reason one speaks or thinks it—
the reason envelopment enow to enter, this is how. Dans l’air
de folie profonde. Moi je suis la mesure d’être,
no one creates or judges me. The hole of light with an aitch.
France enfolds kid with spirit arms: The language that the ones are,
both condensed and extensive, as an identity is
or one’s arms, arms of the one who. Qui volunteers, Continue.
Feel a change. Which warmth from heaven, since here countless immortals
that is fires, really being minds. Leave out certain verbs,
motion from the sun taken—fire?—one being warmth or a sun.
Moving because anyone moves, being the sun or a verb.
So, one doesn’t have to say it. Not always. Words don’t wish to
conquer, perhaps to, heaven-born, bind: and so whence this parole?
Binding one to the new course taken. These the words pulling the ones,
but is it motion? And France says: Minerals don’t move pastly—
save within themselves—is it safe? Condensed. But ones appear to
walk; and this one’s dead, walks ever or floats on legs—that, presumed:
image of previous motion. Don’t know now if one’s moving.
Parts one says, Let’s look at the parts. Parts of words, of motion.
Viz don’t always need all of it. Hest of the oth, examp:
Thou bad’st one contin: How one thinks. It’s Qui says, Go on.
Magic, caut—that’s caush—one’s warning: Why magic? asks thou. Mag, maj . . .
Tell the ones shortly, anything happens here
in the magic of one’s chaos. Put out thy foot, dancing
to find out . . . magica, a curve. Curve is a part, sleight.
These are parts. Arrive of spinel . . . Flash, rainbow par window
of the face facet lozenges. Drawn onto panoram gré:
No need horuspices—those parts. It’s not clear yet, says One.
Ones need new philos of the part. In fantasm one is,
bends the glints et cet and it’s real. One’s leaving the old parts.
Beautif there’s no fatality. Everythin won, par.
One thing not a part and that’s one. More than lens, one is the it.
Go on, almost in one’s mental. Getting peculiar hits.
Parts’re no longer discrete things. Messy borders, if that.
Parts of words do, quick—mebbe it’s this one or that part-word:
so one rides it, froth of the worth. Pict of part, or plural,
part depths, layered parts, picts, sev’ral: resolve cob of iron:
oh cobbled, oh irony flair. See hand pass it over.
When the wrinks gone, chao puckers new, flowers, not aggressive,
not to aggress but the borders . . . never there between tales.
Stores of instant, moment’s a tale, mome of vis; oh of rice,
does one see it in cobblestones? From wed, or dropped wasted—
see it like first days—don’t have days—of the virtual grace:
might visual anything past. Happens is in chao . . .
like this foo foot pedes of the poe—smelly foot in cahoots.
The Poem of Parts One’s Foot
One’s own hist might hold a mist lacrimorum visioned cloud
et puis todos los amigos de ma vida—dead or suffered
thoughts break up, spi spiral: stories dislocate from bodies
so that, one doesn’t know to whom what happens, mayhap all
haps to one, and that’s what “I remember” comatosely
thine coma of rays of light, as one memorator of one’s—
other’s—pains, words, longs . . . One now discovers personal
discove person memory hurts—take it off and give one another
to crowd in coma Berenices où sommes nous,
“I am all of you and not my painful story: you’re my parts”
one seeks: curve of bike’s neck; corduroy pants cuff: are peaceful.
Perpet dawn’s shadow—that’s another. Fated innocens
foreve embroil, and apolcalypt opera, notebook of graves . . .
One’s all of it, unpraised and somehow rational—that most inopine of all.
One’s infused, says the One. Talk as one thinks. Here road to the No talks for,
O prosodia mine. Not scientif, parts are linguist. Create
univers from poetic subconscious, submeasure, subchaos . . .
Oh that’s love, friends of One. Thoughts words zoom, keep up with zoo-truncated.
Trunc to not break it up: unbreak the mind, unagitate propos.
Nice hiatus now there: France’s ped, ghostly makes a ghost poem:
Poème
Je parle partialement co
mme je
comme je . . . suis double, en deux
univers. How can one be more
dead than thou? Is one measured too,
tan morte, tan vulture-eaten,
vautour-eviscerate by life . . .
more than you are? Come back Momma.
I remem insurpass running
through streets hôtel and cut to piece.
Tones again, créer, can I, one?
Suis déjà en train, love. But one’s words
disappear as soon as one says.
Is it ghost poem, only mist?
Exists, mist exists, says One, one read it. Should ones remem poems?
They quicken and vanish—where does thought go? Ones not really writing.
Or are ones? Different, maybe ones are scribes, somewhere in memory,
new memory, where ones impress into chaos all that is said, opus.
Qui: What’s measuring these poems of ones? Past ones don’t recall well,
one’s dear way of sounding, also some ear coming out of nowhere—
as this endroit’s nowhere: Creation’s mouth, open and onyx-black . . .
“Existed” never did; so this is new memory. One remems Greek
metrical vowelings in way of discovering these new sounds.
One remembers the Dead Sea in the dark—it is too shallow now;
one remems how small Mars, one remems glassy brittleness of choler—
I break your decoration and you die, you don’t die, you come here
whom I, one’s, within, like a scarlet heart. Black and red one’s floating
tween organ and symbol. Stick eyes on it popping, image in space . . .
there’s enough dead salt in water to keep the ones afloat.
In new dark, or new light. For cunningly invented eyes of one.
Have dug eyes up from tomb, seeing what one doesn’t remem sprayèd
with wordy posthumor, then so am I, sings possible dovetail.
Qui’s Foot’s Poem
Qui is yr godmouth, sweeting, one’s wilderness within wither,
unwound gladdening turfs of shunt of subvers—
one means, means what wha no discouraging wor
“See you in the foam!” says to a one. In the post-death ocean
lying togeth, floor of hypermarket in afterli
created and now one’s heah . . . with yr parts as necessaire
I that one may be pouring out of one.
One thought one might be an ange—not this—out of
the tips of yr treetops, of waves, of ghostly loathings comes Qui
exhaled by our mother as the instrumentum nigrum,
black spot. “I’ll see you in the foam!” Looking one in eye
at checkout count. Improvise linebreaks and config foreve, for
one’s wildern lying down just born. Canopic jar empt
in this city, city an enorm empty canopic jar. Black mouth.
Qui’s Other Foot
Comanchero, iconic acid, wet compass—it’d have to
mean something to one
wheedle, weed it up from the black hole within
the dist to the cent whilom you bat. Bat hard.
A coman has a chero: and one has marcasite or smoky.
These depths, debts. One owes to the mimetite flame,
I’ll no longer mime you tight. Not here
ici is running, and feed me. I’m inside thou,
thou inside thou, thousands of blind attentions—
la cécité de corundum. All past fakery
hardens to. Don’t have to “have” it any mo.
Faces from other dream, the other dream’s first,
says it, but nothing is first. Black and white faces
are glued on in-color bodies, old faces
having been cut off; these bodies heaped
down in the onyx or jet or tourmaline or hematite
hole. I don’t care about your face or body
I’m within, oh human hole.
White line drawings on the black. Something
put them there—more light. Is there something besides
one, no. Not even thou, a one’s within. Night’s
falling all over the universe, andradite, titanite.
One might say “the river flows” of all the black minerals.
It would never have told you itself,
it speaks a puzzling language, little stick figures
inventing themselves in order to find out who they are.
Oh, One says one falls, walks down within, though there’s no down or up here,
no grief for either. As one steps one enters further no-image:
til images come that one’s not part of, as one was part of nature,
though maybe this is somehow nature. Natura mine, one’s esprit,
O further of words. Bent in a diz, locked in a one, borderless.
Wideset says, One hasn’t caught a poem, not yet trapped downtown
trapped underfoot on this non-sidewalk. Like a self—what a stoopid word—
trap youse one, a shape of sepulcher. Pulcher in that. Wuz pret-ty,
bite off those two t’s. Don’t wanna titubate, wanna dream better,
wanna see extra; want more marbles—that’s it! One needs The New Brain.
Pray, what? good cereb, lucubration, in this still unreal lumen—
One is tout cerebral without brain cells, but the thinking’s coming,
appearing via apparent foot at this moment. Look, poem!
Poured from the foot-brain! It teases one’s dream—won’t wake up—from this light.
The New Brain
Consciousness travels, my sweet: don’t you remember?
One sends one’s thoughts to thee as on this footfall,
or in this poem. But, truly, remember how we left our old meat-
heads to enter the glyph and ride the crystal ark, un-
bodied but worded. My mother is a starred thought—
and, Don’t You Remember? the Mind from nowhere is everywhere,
not just under your skin. The first mind, not evolved but absolute
rainbow with me, you and me. Nothing depends on it either.
Someday I will remember this very future I am in, image in space.
I will at least see her, I say to myself, she will be someone
else than one ever thought and her eyes will be blue words on white.
Consciousness travels from Neptune the planet to Neptune the god of the sea.
I travel to your irony and perambulation, your decibels and vehement
budget: I perceive you for you. You don’t have time. I
have time, I am the goddess of the smooth doorway. Let me in,
so I can abolish your description.
XIII
WALL OF WORDS
One stands still in the blur; wait til it calls itself something again.
Still seen as becoming, one to find out? Screw rest of finding out,
void isn’t separate. Rate it on scale, as void nine or zero . . .
These thoughts swirl up transferred, maybe even said, not special ’r cherished.
Species obliterates chère traversée between the ones for they’re one.
What does One look like now? Does not look like, or, requisite to voice
it’s turning back to One—one’s who’s spoken—image or self-chapel.
Not if words get weirder. Unlit nexus, illuminate grave
in which ones are bestuck. Are ones?: Wideset. This one digs the cloud sense
I am in not suff’ring, en fin like light. It’s got a lastingness,
a not necessarily leading up. Pick it up it’s in love,
think one looks like some dots, a few letters. Anything might spell one
but reelly one spreads out, ever changing in one’s orthography.
Thought one’d mind being, ever being, words at that, but I don’t.
One’s still standing there: One never looked like even a photograph.
Who can see who one is, pastly? So why doth bother thinking “Face”?
Still One’s got a new . . . new . . . face, brain, or langue. All. But One never saw,
perhaps One never spoke. Oh! using past. Am in state of prior . . .
Make langue change some more, One. Wideset avers. Like “avers” . . .
planes, not sentences, past being level that cuts in in the ones:
Operative blindly. Now or the past. Spy or mechanism,
either not being true, where’s da reel troot. Because dere is a dat—
Don’t know if that’s so: One. Looking at each other through étoiles,
estrellitas flicker, outline visage. One never looked like One.
Try to see the new face. One could pinpoint ones and that’s—ugh—control,
in this poem of now. Could know subject—being even more deader,
ones the constellations. In yr right mind, it is the way it is,
unremembered nature. No, always remember it unperjured.
What? There’s a veritable wall before one a wall of words:
As a punishment to remove, relegatio and oves
relegated to death like sheep, that’s what it’s like lamb faces
lambent facies of dot points, parts people of the dotted
swiss the tiny-mote fabric now must be a soul of whole cloth.
As a punishment an exile, grassari to walk about
footfully in gratia animi, as a punishment
condemned to grace of the self-soul, without detail and timeless.
Within skull of the universe, made out of word-pieces dear.
Never again to be corrupted—that was all one’s delight,
voluptas. Facies of deer, ones made of only purity.
Made only of words of grey light, lusci oculorum, one-eyed
