by Alice Notley
Howdoyouknowthat, am seer or whate’erthereis
Cloud. Yoursin hallowèd inthecloud ’scatharsis.
No sin but pollen, where’sthe low word of the toberighthere
cloudhead notrailthat, for One is allthereisnow cloud.
Letus—who—beamist of ignorancedeep a sec.
Auto Iamword allit instru ment and objective
egos appearing do vanish apostately
explosive toys’re soto be entertainment, thereon.
I’m not allusive, cloudy heap standing softly.
FROM THE ANTHOLOGY
lone . . .
all of cloud th
unpainted living,
am the chaos as a primal
body no one.
never had to see you again?
who it was, tenses of me the world,
no to manners
cloud standing at a door verbalization
of the new brain’s bird.
FROM THE ANTHOLOGY
getting it leases
fl on yr pressured
you lesson in stricture
I am a poet
and so you can’t name me
though you aren’t here any more
r it isn’t émeutes
X in the consciousness’s
I, where does one go now
here where . . . no
doesn’t.
FROM THE ANTHOLOGY
Aphrodi of the words Loves
So long expelled . come here More
dewish old word sounds
XV
I HAVE BEEN LET OUT OF PRISON
The One tis oud anthropic moody ther pal-less
losing thepartsof words I think, swordless greyness
scoot on within it, tartarus or pluto’s chronos
mine, mart not human, whatisithere.
Will one’s interior claim thesupposèd outer—
Artthou my mind? Yes I’m answerin MacBoss.
Through rough boatbridge, ken?, unreputed motels,
floats of pasttimes find that buckledluminous
language, molten of whoI’mnow clasping mistparts
izoo allofmind, agatemelt liquidbone uncursed
inside thebloodof mondo, or that various
myth? Reamass mixupnow soIdon’tknow . . .
wst is to pan se arm apollox’s pronon.
. . clu. . . .
. it’s my first self. . avow
. in filmy conditio coded already
. . . . . . . . on grey in the sea’s pages
. as soon as . . lapping name a hell
. . word then it’s in its book
. . . .
ah but anthem
flower mid around
remem where, as misted
these words all th
sticks to my mind
. . redempt .
. One sees no poin
not accept
. . .
one time scratchy
help me noone live
find th line
this clou bless’d
but can’t
find one’s
heart
. . . . ragged
isn’t it, echo?
and echo calls back in strange tongue
nom . . youn . . sweetly k .
worldes words not fo you coherence
solicited in its youthe
ti . echoing back this blessing
a philometric petal
. an auton gluestick
puts it on you echoid
One’s sticking One’s pieces to all of it, the cloud of it—
or its to One’s—lotsa pieces that One’s in, ducky.
Someghost of langue. Clanks aboutinOnelikegod;
ego maybeOne’s or historicalelse’s
cultural uh somethin I ate long time ago—
dishonored or chthono word else disgracedly,
’member disgrace, echo? Gilt disgrace of the deader
than One pushing on in circuit cloudlike hoopoes
pass through here from outer deign, pros of mockery—
wheregoes yourhands that evolvedto killaone—
don’tbelievethatcrap, crass zeros of thelanguage
mouths of plaguey blames-o, cardial shivers.
I didn’t kill them they left, being unreal.
Press not towards the past its rank propitiation
to what wasputinones, cephalic dross: stay on cloudy path.
Bits of cloud, to One and each oth talk nuagese,
friends in substance these ones ever—shifting factions.
This word: I’mabitof or wholething—thatitiswhat path of
notpity why’mIhere—thou art destiny’s own fool?
Oh moan, whocaresabout—One’s looking—for a taxon . . .
no, mean langueinhere language or ur’s, chaos’s, own words . . .
Bein, yrbeinit, thisisit, I’mawordof.
Whatit’sfor, it’srighthere, I’minitamit right now.
Utmost precipitantly
One is, one is, one is beinit.
Clouded overit’sthere ofme, unthemedkissing droplets.
Inside allthesame. Thesewords soseemtrans ported.
One’s e’er ofitthough, speaks it inorderto bespeak.
And agnosticbirds praiseit in softreproach fore’er.
Aren’t I, aren’t I here but I’m someone else now.
And the same; different, whatdoIseemlike nothing
idioglot or poly undeliberate tongue.
O, there’s god’s fake blood all over here.
Nogod it’s grail water, daemon’s liquid language . . .
Don’t seeit sayit, in this ol’ human soul
thatisyer hairnet
one’s loitering eternally openmouth’d
O blood of conception, justanidea—thief
there’s voleur in me stealing stories—
where do such sparks come from?
what is one doinginthis goddamned diner
barred from anyfood, justice, or public?
One, it seems, ’s gotten self-cloud to somewhere else not else, just here.
That may be th’ eternal, wandering in restes of tales and bloods of gods,
without there being god. Thus no reel langue . . . Don’t want it jis’ want cloud.
Oh but One’s somewhere else—Is it a room? Some kind of space the size
Everything is, une chambre ou une paysage—landscape with cloud—not fam-
iliar as, used to say, natural scape. What does one see it with?
Leftover optics, memory of eyes? Same questions, One reflects—
One reflects what One’s been—no past tense please. I see it with seeing.
Cloudlike figure approaches from a mass of the cloudlike ones.
I don’t see you at all. In fact you don’t. You are the dead, aren’t you?
Yes we are. And you don’t normally talk the way we’re talking now . . .
Correct. I’m in your mind. Trying to be delicately polite.
But I’m in the cloud of unknowing, something like that, the moist grey.
Yes. You don’t know we’re here. You don’t bother. These the elysian fields.
Or something. Can you tell me how to speak as you really do here?
Yes it will come to you, is already maybe seeping into.
It’s like you do and more. No vocal cords? All’s a big vocal cord.
Face it, or the One. One’s in process. Words are th
e only process—
it isn’t moving. Unsurpassable clauses here, the sentence doesn’t end
and it’s oneself now but don’t emote, for if you don’t. Counting eyes.
Stars mayhap bullets burst and frozen, I’m gonna get the firefly.
No, isn’t my baby. Do we have to go home now, to fatally
No. Don’t do the home to see the pigs and phoenixes. Like an if?
What if it keeps being the person One doesn’t want to see again?
You don’t have to recognize a soul; I don’t know who the One is
Where’s the vocal cord? We are all it. Call it the perceptual cord—
Oh that’s not good, says another one. I know that fall in love with
trusting a nice phrase, killed to the dance. It’s on the dresser or fire.
I’ve moved up front in myself, says One. Plucking a small rose yellow.
The periods are musical now, in one’s voicings. One’s other,
I don’t like the old stories though I like some of the people there.
But I’m not still I. Would like to see? One don’t accept these tenses . . .
Aren’t tense. Wanna see. It’s a perfectly in bloom peach tree, right there . . .
more than in bloom it’s zoned with radiance, couldn’t be seen pastly,
see that pinkish fleur area with “peach” aura there, not a word
essence of the word. Why is it here? Here isn’t here, so don’t ask.
Buh . . . Fits my thoughts and any words I’d say about it, the poem.
They’re in the park then, pastly, in mind but it’s really to be One.
One unifying each piece ent’ring kaleidoscopic timing . . .
What if one’s pastly a murderer? Translate that into a langue.
Losing on the sand or the grey chaos of competition—
there—that’s meaningless. No one’s better than one is but one kills one.
Is there some justice? Translate that please. Hierarchical judgment?
Oh please, forget it. One’s life’s pastly an illusion, and the pain?
Forget all those bargains made with the prevalent interpret—
interpretation . . . dominate . . . nation: starting to have trouble,
too much of sentence, empty syllables, all the tions, don’t mean things . . .
Aren’t any things here? Ideal tree but where’s rest of it, dammit?
Step into this poem scene O One!
Surrounded by new buildings
One’s seen before, in the oldest park. Bright blue in the corridor,
leaving the park or not, both at once. I see you don’t know me,
or simply we see each other, recognition doesn’t count
Translate. Leave and enter, be somewhere, several tenses at once.
The white blossoms, and the pink store’s small, Don’t hang on to it at all.
One doesn’t want to be in one’s culture when one’s dead does one
Leave then and stay too, learn a new thing, for the dead learn some new things,
I see you oh I see where you are, casting off your recognition
of your old self effluvium; bright aren’t you bright, aren’t you smart?
Everything One knew, here in transformation, dissolution . . .
What will come out of this here mouth, that’s what’s to look forward to.
Forget it’s a verb, nought happens. Straight from the washing machine
One’s geranium’s born again. We’re playing it, it recites
overtones distributed red, to know about that’s in mind
One has in mind, spooky insight. Both myself and it are dead,
if you learned that, that you were dead? No, hon, the tense is cheesy.
Sun doesn’t strike my petals here, yet I’m intelligible,
scarlet beyond belief in it. Like in a dream when you don’t
remember that it’s like being awake; but who that’s here can know that?
One keeps coming into a space, where we’re telling each other
some things without making a sound. It’s a mental vocal cord.
Didn’t the ones make what there is—if nature’s full of ones too—
sure but the future’s in the past—we wuz always here no tense—
Happens all at once. How does one translate in mind?
Like with Chinese. Words aren’t the same, here, if yer in the same mind
kinda same mind but singular, yrself, you feel that you are.
But, to talk ones are coincident. Telepathy’s wordless words.
But, aren’t we talkin in these words? Do you talk out loud in dreams—
what tells you what’s said in a dream—Nuthin works like yer used to.
Talk spirals and the One rides it. Goin nowhere says the One
to itself, blind and is my love. Midnight’s now poised as concept
to occur blueblackly at heart same time as the risin sun.
I am glasses of water, I’m abalone nacre,
One wanders downstairs in the room that’s where ones are, to be greeted and say
“I have been let out of prison.” My ego crying those stairs,
sitting there, disheveled person, saying, “And I loved you. I did.”
Just come from prison, welcome to poise, la grande salle.
No one asks who in this big mind, filled with flowers of chance
become permanent as if planned. But no one is—cultivated.
One sees about all that tin foil glittering there, to explore decibels,
decilives, more than a little. Dabbled patches shadows on the glitz.
There’s the shape of a king declining its gender, painted water.
I walk up to the deep masses who shrugging shift the ocean’s form—
incidents of home waves you won’t drown in getting to the city.
Of the covered myriad airs, stalking the streets that lead to the farthest-
in compoundwords blurring of cloud-éclats withinthe full dish.
Vulture of spaces collapsèd spreadsitswings magnificent against One.
THE UNIVERSE IS A UNITED VOCAL CORD THINKING
I HAVE COME TO THE FOREFRONT
XVI
STARK STAR
How did one get here don’t matter. But was a life. Who can care about that . . .
Lot of time no it wasn’t that, isn’t that now. Doesn’t matter does it
Has to matter does it oh One. Memory drifts just a ribbon of it . . .
Connections what. It is a previous encounter between ones
compressed into a still exchange. Talkin to mah brothuh or mah fathuh.
What of ones who took the journey arkwise to sky’s other dimensioning—
One swallows them pastly does one? Does each of them swallow One—weren’t real—
Who is real? One is the only No of the known: One is not you:
Glib. But One is lib, of the langue, what and yes how doth one speak here
So . . . it isn’t a meantime dance, one is the no to the past of pain
But that is all one has of it—Wanting the pain? It’s winding around one
still; ribbony words of the corps, it’s all the nerves, la mémoire des réseaux
ignited existent in no time, No. One is No. To the memory’s press
Let them in they’re just fiery mages, that’s images, words to help keep speaking.
In this room in room of the ones, all of the ones, One’s drifting talking to,
know how to do so, how? And if one dies a babe inarticulate can
one do so? Is One asking of who? Ask oneself—Ask! Those are the rules? Bah, Ou
i.
Babes can talk here telepathic. Oh that’s so glib. All at the same old time,
same room same time all of the time. Don’t hafta talk, mentally thinking it
That’s where One was all last night, it’s just today—They keep talking to One,
Father brother dead babes the all, mimosa plants, and the mental of the rock . . .
Vraiment? As per past of the vast, in the expansive tense the universe hums,
neutral gears flowing electric—ones wired spinal—hot threads and glints yr nerves,
yr real nerves are some One can see. Party of ur. It’s the biggest conflab . . .
blab oh blab One’s a logician, One’s vertebral with a hot brain on top?
Nah but images come and go where, were always there—Optics are a part of.
If one’s here momentarily, it’s the whole mome . . . Back to the human face,
floating for One knows thee best—One’s here for good. Where? Where I’d see you again.
As ones are it, says a some one, always in place, langue goeth spiraling out—
Out how far? says another one. The clauses don’t need to be clipped, to be
perioded. As one’s sayin, emotion, what kin that mean here, sappho?
That’s a word not name or the one’s. No to names here? Glittering sea facets
Uncovered. So boy, and the limbs . . . Understand me . . . compoundedego
want to be sure isn’t here . . . but the words are—Can one follow strophic
No it needs spiral out of here—the one can’t here—Can. Let the ear attend,
Cannot see the ear, feel it’s there. Know one of old. Yes one has known the thee
compoundblazingstar wordablaze, even a king can’t eclipse thee of me,
so ones are all equal in fire, verbal fire coursing through loins lyred.
Things, none of these things are with ones here in the wind, room of the grey gone clear,
what’s here’s thine past presently glassed . . . Do not want it . . . There’s so much its details
come and go like grey of the sea, old greygreenblue, But unsorted now, they’re
unjudged it’s some other fact not a fact. Isn’t a shape of it. What was it.
This then is the langue, ça c’est le peau. Nothing else but, in thy vie
éternellement. It’s what calls one, voices calling to One’s one,
from this the room of. One doesn’t mean a meta phor—literal:
