by Alice Notley
literal is what One’s e’er, it’s vrai, right now I’m literal
here: dream does one think? One has dreams here. They’re just themselves, more facets?
Mabe. Nothing’s certain but identity, nameless individu . . .
Langue: No struct but never a structure either in life or la mort.
One is stoopid to think so to see. But everyone sees for me
No. What if One still can’t accept it . . . whatever One’s being told.
What the hell does One think ones are telling? . . . That I’m part of your room.
One is condemnèd, wandering lone, else, but I’d do it. No sosh.
No social structure. This isn’t a structure, it’s the chaotic form,
ones are the anarchs, words a chaos, one isn’t ordered, can’t be.
I always wanted to be here; or I always was, present.
I always want to be here where I’m always being, as One.
Don’t have to fit in or to be, denying own first premise.
Want to be able to deny, denying, One can do it,
go away denying it at the same time as you are here.
Why the emphases and why not. “You are the light of my life”:
won’t say that oh won’t ever say, that it’s another who is.
Now what can happen? oh nothing. Crowding a mome, chaotic,
disorder, no lack, in the crys drop where ones be, because are . . .
Tell ones One created Oneself . . . Nothing was created, silly . . .
Nothing’s created, nothing’s organized, nothing’s ownèd—
might want some or why would one want? There are the treelike words,
opening like hands or like buds or like pods from what planet.
If One isn’t social. That’s One’s struggle. Is that impossible
One don’t really mean that . . . Repetitive . . . Can’t not be part of ones,
even resisting them. All keep talking. One’s always listening.
ARIA
Comebyus hailingme zitherèd chaos’s musician
obsessed; e ven dead thou megaOne epic-poemer . . .
Yes One wantstosing masterof death lyricsnowbut Ima
mannish ghostlyone lackinghumanparts thouartsame moreove
tothe tongue ofnewspirit go likea blackbird say
dissenting Acheron impedesyounot, remember . . . don’t . . .
always knowthat opaque languagenessis butone’sbeing cato
ifyoucurse chthonic you justcurse make more dirtorairhere
Thas yrbasilisk gaze poteof chaosgirl nun justwords
thewind activeclear blowsthrough patho logic like goddess
. . . . . . animals arenotany likethey’dsaid
Words emanate from One as in a dark, ancient style of night,
Nox warm and ambient. I died but did I, aren’t I now here—
Aren’t I always in overlapping tenses or clauses, planes . . .
One’s talking while One’s talking in two places alive or in a dream,
really two conversations even more am I various
as settings overlap enclosing words mine delicate seashells . . .
One’s here and One’s before the Ark took off. One’s also on the Ark . . .
Is One where the new langue is perfected? As well as in past langues . . .
These, impressed, might be It, the realest langue. One can never be dead,
there is No, No of Dead. There is No clause that is silence fore’er,
extinction of cosmos. Comment s’appellent these, but is there in here?
Want to call something something but One can’t. Where be the things the things . . .
In this plane, call to things, what can I name, there’s nothing to speak of . . .
The Ones are all here though. Oh there’s no eau, par exemple, just O.
One, saith voice, need know one’s life or times, history, as insect’s time
in the socalled cosmos of all, civilization’s a blip,
thou as stylized one of species, blip too but not as one’s self . . .
What, asks One, but both voices static, is the language of the all?
Can’t make out one’s words, either of, either of black static and
One hears One’s thoughts badly even. I can’t hear me, my mind’s gone
not silent but distorted. Not distortion, says the voice.
Not a scale for, here. Who’s in me? One’s shouting. It’s just you, One,
One’s the only one in One’s head. Thinking’s changing for One . . .
But, the One can barely make out words . . . thoughts overheard in One’s mind
(How one thinks, right? Intuits . . .) One’ll no longer overhear . . .
Little gap between thinking and being to be closed right now!
One is whirling through what in cell, through medium if there’s that—
space or time shit—in a small cell, curled up in this sequin self.
One’s already gone somewhere, goes that is in the present.
Moi, the One turns inside out and thinks at same time as thinking . . .
The p’tit black sequin cannot stop thought as if thought were the all . . .
Gone here sposed wi no gross body, tongue to babble not there no,
who thinks inside me pastly now I’m taking over for good.
Smarty like the first midnight store, but, are no parts, for lasting . . .
ring me this minute I mean I, one is the ringer of tones:
Chooser. I choose light for my mind. We choose it all of the time,
you’re not allowed to think for me. One choosing light in the dark—
does it come on if there’s no sun. Yes it’s the thought, the white light . . .
No one else has to think for One. One has the light in One’s mind.
Days of skies, heavens of deserts. Surviving on dry clear love.
Calm of nerveless, One’s surfing solar waves, music One is, think again.
One thinks, To pay mind to so long, and never sleeping again.
One is saving words on the Ark, One’s changing them to get here?
Oh. But I’m not dead, I am thought—who are the yous, are none here
in the terrifiant day light word of the stark light starring,
and the langue fills one with connaissance, oh that is I in burst mot.
Walks someone walks here bodiless, imaged see thought of that step
heard, a clack clack on a wood word. Once is a she, now’s just One.
I am the breath word in your ear: One’s breath wording towards a one.
You could be the deity, you that one One’s breathing toward
as the One is too in that word. Smallest constituent of
of, the of—of One—is the word. Didn’t one name it, Sunshine?
One brings from Ark that One’s these words. Reconstructing the cosmos
or the chaos over and out, chaos being ever made
as the One renames the Oneself. I am that love, I mean thought—
I who think to thee effortless. Amid the bright the word bright.
And One’s still in the room—out towards the sun—out in the light the stark
but in room of voices—but and in in—arkwise and pondwise, too . . .
The ur words lie beneath, though, as ones speak, talk talking here, oh here.
Each clause—what are those claws—cuts in. What about spiraling out, oh that . . .
Clear would one please be clear? In the provocative, must be a case . . .
When One lives on the Ark amassing mots, crystalline thought blippings,
all ones are waves of blah.
Precisely, says dead scientifique, oh
waves waves waves, the words are. Here in the Ur . . . No, here in this chaos . . .
one means room, no it’s the Stark. What is that, plotinian god thing . . .
One’s sinking to the floor. There is no floor. Questioning the child moi . . .
The vocal cord, says one, infantine one—that’s the cosmos, the word
heard or what one is then. Knowing it’s what one is one vibrates . . .
any old thing, say that. Repeat it to remain in place longer.
Repeat oneself thusly to be born but one is always vibrant . . .
XVII
THE MEMORY OF NERVES
And then says, How’s one here? That one of ones: known previously as,
in no-past-tense, brothuh: Let’s get this langue. Don’t go with that one, huh?
pastly. No, but One’s here: with one now, huh. Don’t go with dead isn’t
isn’t unfriendly, One means? Then One’s not dead? One’ll never find out.
Langue, loving it the langue, which is thine soul liquid static of of.
I, moi, one, empty-voiced static of cloud, sheft shifting from a shelf,
wit to dance in the wet, as my vowels do. Changing for these events . . .
Whot events? thase avant or second part port of the witch’s watch.
With me cumes along flur—part of flurry—Sae? cuz abolish—lesh—past:
by changing this here langue. Whut evir’s done’s now diffirint words to.
Ef ya kill it’s a kell. Ya kelling them, then but I had to die
of it, o’ the kells come so beautif, noo fer ah’m the dead.
And that is byeutiful. Yr face is weird—but one don’t heve a fuce—
it melts, now ya have nu—new won of face—cuz it’s so lit of light.
Pastly. Kelling, one did do that. At same time someone else does.
One is someone else bejungled. Light my skeleton, burn it
with the guilt one’s always knowing, humans know it all of them.
I, one, kelling others like one. Like? how about leck? One’s not leck
any one else—this the One—refusing to be leck, aleck.
Even here I won’t be aleck. For is One not all there is?
Within; and one, keller, says, Like moi! No one’s like moi, who kelled—
but it’s changing, I almosted by now in these parts,
ports. One, says One, would shed it all now, shod in what’s won,
is this what goes on in the wind, crystal ruby wand of bless?
No one wants one to have been good—that wish is coming from one.
Thought ones don’t have “wish” any more. It’s a fossil, delicate.
One keeps it clean and dusted off, next to the iron buckle,
with its blunt yellow-stone upon. Walking to Devil’s Elbow.
Yellow stone’s agate or a park, lost to global destruction?
detail of lost civilization in room containing Elbow.
Towards which walking away from One. This is the real, in a dream,
ones containing all of their thought, un avec tous il contient
outside one for all to dream of. I am talking to you but
can’t get past these strong images. Don’t you mean those wee wordies?
Once after I died you placed your forehead against mine, absorb-
ing my blood, the blood of my thought. Past tense. One’s doing it now . . .
One can’t be alone, but I don’t have to be leck any one.
One shouts, One’s not leck any you, not because thou kelled some ones
but because don’t have to be leck, don’t have to speak like structure
blown in mist around the Elbow, ah those dead old rocks my love.
Some one understands what One’s sayin—maybe One—but one’s enough to ken—
it’s not private, it’s tied in knots. Oh images get set loose for the ones,
all’s outside one’s mind, as in it, so One can veer between full and empty . . .
Why dost One still want to be with me, murderer . . . Words. From time of those words—
That there must be justicia . . . Who is the just . . . Jest or the joust us ones—
if there’d be jist the ones one approves, appraves, art thou depraved O some one?
Moi I’ll be that, one says a while back buck on bike. One remembers when one takes
the I’ll-do-yr-dirty-work-for-you oath at oat . . . Ate what does one eat here?
Have no digestion in the dream. From a barrel, unburrowed phantasms
dispensed unpantsèd from the chaos. Jist a little lace mire or moirae.
Itinerantly worded One’s here and can’t sleep, or is asleep fore’er
in words of the final version, I’m not sorry anymo I’m lexic.
Recognize that tune from the tone, that’s tone of voice? tine of vice one means that.
I sway this way that forgetting what my sin is. What’s yr sign? Dud planet.
Universe is my vocal cord, each one is it—aren’t you all of it too?
Covered with these stars—or are words, stars scratched on one, but one’s still coupable,
guilty of what in layered scenes, swift images alive fore’er in air—
I am doing that in firefight. Forget it now and it’s some zodiac
exuded by our skin of store, starry story, dissolved before it’s real:
one means one doesn’t ever do thing in chaos, ones are some chaos tale,
foam—it’s just grey sussuration, one did it din’t who did I did dint
do or don’t, dad di dawdlein, dead liddle earth, home on which one do dat,
not the me, chao ow oh how. Is called that word, anthropomorphism
that’s the what I’m anthropomore, I the universe, speak through me, guilty one,
get it? or gut it, one’s stone lips geologic—rock reason, stone bastard . . .
One as rock is subject to such violence who dreams of, ô tectonic
and the burningest of suns hit, or is it hurt—ask with yr gravity,
force and mass do yew have a mass? Chaos has shiftingness of e quay zhun.
And Bro goes for a spell, goes away to a coincidence of layer.
One in when. One’s a then who of au soudain I am all of thens.
Nows. Not only of One’s, thine O. Why would this a good animal . . .
do what other ones say they’re sure of? Brain turns away from their hands . . .
that’s influence, hell of a word. Any raccoon washes apple
because it understands that that’s what works . . . One goes to the story
fearing this timelessness I’m in. Yes One’s . . . ’member another body,
youth body? Now One’s the schmoo, anagram, the grammarian
of yr elation, don’t let it take over, ’member? Yer gilty;
I’m ridin through the trees creatures of night, hairy philosophers
saying Bingo, because they’re on. The alternate tide’s coming in—
I see myself, past baby, as some thou pretending to function.
I ain’t robotic, chum, fatal to be typecast as girl of dreams
or anything they have in stock. You’ve chalk legs and a hymen, say.
’Member something lovely. That isn’t my imagination, just yours.
GHOST OF NERVOUS SYSTEM SO CALLED, SPANGLED HAIRNETTY LIMBED THING
’PROACHES: Are you me? I’m what they said that you were . . .
without the meat on. Ah’m sketchy constellation—science’s
nanimal as nailed down, supposed. What ones wanted One to be . . .
Art here? I exis
t now imagined. Thou’rt a net of spelling.
Oh I’m a spell cast . . . Thou’rt called me? I? Oh did One call a phantom . . . ?
Ah am yr memory, they’d say. Who? Some formerly alive . . .
Separate from me like weather. Words’re within thy form then,
and the famous grammar is too. Yet here One is bespeaking . . .
All the things One remembers without experiencing them
are thought real. As if everything, like my brother heaven’s map . . .
One doesn’t learn how to be here. Nervous system suggests form
but it isn’t One’s form at all. New brain’s a dahlia flaming
hawk o’erspread black trou, another image. Nail langue.
Oh thou ghost of nerves, what’s the langue? Oh walking memory, what?
It’s a skeletal taxonom, lost unwebb’d floating like one . . .
all’d pin down the improvised. As the langue’s made up on spot
out of floaters, bits of chaos, huh? Make it up out of the dreams . . .
Who, then, nails it? One, the phantom . . . But one’s not part of One now . . .
Oh the poor outsider from bliss: No luck—that’s lock or that’s lack.
Don’t nail it, nile it, a rivoo. Rivoo winds round the Elbow . . .
of comes out of the mouth of One. How could Ah ever stand it
just to see them two-oo bloo eyes, glutinous bulbs of phantom . . .
Don’t make fun of one. Is One real without thou, the net of nerves?
Everthin exists sans study. I’m the product of learning—
but not One. Then how come One already knows what thou knowst?
Because everything is, just that. No differ between being
and knowing. Not here where all’s same, égal, indifferent too.
One is all the tenses again, that thou, phantom, filtered out.
One is concise as One spirals, O of the emotions calm.
I am almost home, I have always been there but there’s no home . . .
sailing grey void with soul suckers, and One’s truer companions . . .
warring with frescoed images, all the while here in true noth
nothing, with voices abandoned, we the ones are the ur day.
Noth is One’s vast concision bod. D’ya get it, my former nerves?
They do other things, them voices. Talkin’ to One all the day,
