by Alice Notley
XXIII
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
Between Oologah and Pawnee
A hand is writing these lines
In a roomful of smoky man names burnished dull black
Southwest, lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift
On dream smoke down the sooted fog ravine
In a terrible Ozark storm the Tundra vine
Blood ran like muddy inspiration: Walks he in around anyway
The slight film has gone to gray-green children
And seeming wide night. Now night
Is a big drink of waterbugs Then were we so fragile
Honey scorched our lips
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
Between Oologah and Pawnee
XXV
Mud on the first day (night, rather
I was thinking of Bernard Shaw, of sweet May Morris
Do you want me to take off my dress?
Some Poems!
the aeroplane waiting to take you on your first
getting used to using each other
Cowboys! and banging on my sorrow, with books
The Asiatics
believed in tree spirits, a tall oak, swans gone in the rain,
a postcard of Juan Gris not a word
Fell on the floor how strange to be gone in a minute
I came to you by bus to be special for us
The bellboy letters a key then to hear from an old stranger
The Gift: they will reside in Houston following the Grand Canyon.
XXVI
ONE SONNET FOR DICK
This excitement to be all of night, Henry!
Elvis Peering-Eye danced with Carol Clifford, high,
Contrived whose leaping herb edifies Kant! I’ll bust!
Smile! “Got rye in this’n?”
Widow Dan sold an eye t’meander an X. Whee! Yum!
Pedant tore her bed! Tune, hot! Full cat saith why foo?
“Tune hot full cat?” “No! nexus neck ink!
All moron (on) while “weighed in fur” pal! “Ah’m Sun!”
Dayday came to get her daddy. “Daddy,”
Saith I to Dick in the verge, (In the Verge!)
And “gee” say I, “Easter” “fur” “few tears” “Dick!”
My Carol now a Museum! “O, Ma done fart!” “Less full
Cat,” she said, “One’s there!” “Now cheese, ey?”
“Full cat wilted, bought ya a pup!” “So, nose excitement?”
XXVII
Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon
Bar. If only the Greeks were a band-
Aid, he thought. Then my woe would not flow
O’er the land. He considered his honeydew
Hand. “O woe, woe!” saith Andrew, “a fruit
In my hand may suffice to convey me to Greece,
But I must have envy to live! A grasshopper,
George, if you please!” The bartender sees
That our Andrew’s awash on the sofa
Of wide melancholy. His wound he refurbishes
Stealthily shifty-eyed over the runes. “Your
Trolleycar, sir,” ’s said to Andy, “you bloody
Well emptied the Parthenon!” “A fruitful vista
This Our South,” laughs Andrew to his Pa,
But his rough woe slithers o’er the Land.
XXVIII
to gentle, pleasant strains
just homely enough
to be beautiful
in the dark neighborhoods of my own sad youth
i fall in love. once
seven thousand feet over one green schoolboy summer
i dug two hundred graves,
laughing, “Put away your books! Who shall speak of us
when we are gone? Let them wear scarves
in the once a day snow, crying in the kitchen
of my heart!” O my love, I will weep a less bitter truth,
till other times, making a minor repair,
a breath of cool rain in those streets
clinging together with slightly detached air.
XXIX
Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear
Calm before a storm. Yet your brooding eyes
Or acquiescence soon cease to be answers.
And your soft, dark hair, a means of speaking
Becomes too much to bear. Sometimes,
In a rare, unconscious moment,
Alone this sudden darkness in a toybox
Christine’s classic beauty, Okinawa
To Laugh (Autumn gone, and Spring a long way
Off ) is loving you
When need exceeds means,
I read the Evening World / the sports,
The funnies, the vital statistics, the news:
Okinawa was a John Wayne movie to me.
XXX
Into the closed air of the slow
Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear
Each tree stands alone in stillness
to gentle, pleasant strains
Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon
Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets
This excitement to be all of night, Henry!
Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering
It is such a good thing to be in love with you
On the green a white boy goes
He’s braver than I, brother
Many things are current, and of these the least are
not always children
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
XXXI
And then one morning to waken perfect-faced
To the big promise of emptiness
In a terrible Ozark storm
Pleasing John Greenleaf Whittier!
Speckled marble bangs against his soiled green feet
And each sleeping son is broke-backed and dumb
In fever and sleep processional
Voyages harass the graver
And grope underneath the most serious labor
Darius feared the boats. Meanwhile
John Greenleaf Whittier was writing. Meanwhile
Grandma thought wistfully of international sock fame
Down the John G. Whittier Railroad Road
In the morning sea mouth
XXXII
The blue day! In the air winds dance
Now our own children are strangled down in the bubbling
quadrangle.
To thicken! He felt his head
Returning past the houses he passed
“Goodbye, Bernie!” “Goodbye, Carol!” “Goodbye, Marge!”
Davy Crockett was nothing like Jesse James
A farmer drove up on a tractor
He said he was puzzled by the meaning exactly of “block.”
The blue day! Where else can we go
To escape from our tedious homes, and perhaps recapture
the past?
Now our own children are returning past the houses
I sit at my dust-patterned desk littered with four month
dust
The air beginning to thicken
In the square, on the farm, in my white block hair
XXXIII
Où sont les neiges des neiges?
The most elegant present I could get.
The older children weep among the flowers.
They believe this. Their laughter feeds the need
Like a juggler. Ten weeks pregnant. Who
Believes this? It is your love
Must feed the dancing snow, Mary
Shelley “created” Frankenstein. It doesn’t
matter, though. The shortage of available materials
Shatters my zest with festivity, one
Trembling afternoon—night—the dark trance
Up rainy cobblestones bottle half empty
Full throttle mired
&nb
sp; In the petty frustrations of off-white sheets
XXXIV
Time flies by like a great whale
And I find my hand grows stale at the throttle
Of my many faceted and fake appearance
Who bucks and spouts by detour under the sheets
Hollow portals of solid appearance
Movies are poems, a holy bible, the great mother to us
People go by in the fragrant day
Accelerate softly my blood
But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood
Behind me green rubber grows, feet walk
In wet water, and dusty heads grow wide
Padré, Father, or fat old man, as you will,
I am afraid to succeed, afraid to fail
Tell me now, again, who I am
XXXV
You can make this swooped transition on your lips
Go to the sea, the lake, the tree
And the dog days come
Your head spins when the old bull rushes
Back in the airy daylight, he was not a midget
And preferred to be known as a stunt-man.
His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely.
Why do you begin to yawn so soon, who seemed
So hard, feather-bitten back in the airy daylight
Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces
of glass
Spins when the old bull rushes. The words say I LOVE YOU
Go to the sea, the lake, the tree
Glistering, bristling, cozening whatever disguises
XXXVI
AFTER FRANK O’HARA
It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July and
it’s probably 8:54 in Manhattan but I’m
in Brooklyn I’m eating English muffins and drinking
pepsi and I’m thinking of how Brooklyn is New
York city too how odd I usually think of it as
something all its own like Bellows Falls like Little
Chute like Uijongbu
I never thought on the Williamsburg
bridge I’d come so much to Brooklyn
just to see lawyers and cops who don’t even carry
guns taking my wife away and bringing her back
No
and I never thought Dick would be back at Gude’s
beard shaved off long hair cut and Carol reading
his books when we were playing cribbage and
watching the sun come up over the Navy Yard
across the river
I think I was thinking when I was
ahead I’d be somewhere like Perry street erudite
dazzling slim and badly loved
contemplating my new book of poems
to be printed in simple type on old brown paper
feminine marvelous and tough
XXXVII
It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears
Have blossomed in my eyes. Guillaume Apollinaire is dead.
The big green day today is singing to itself
A vast orange library of dreams, dreams
Dressed in newspaper, wan as pale thighs
Making vast apple strides towards “The Poems.”
“The Poems” is not a dream. It is night. You
Are asleep. Vast orange libraries of dreams
Stir inside “The Poems.” On the dirt-covered ground
Crystal tears drench the ground. Vast orange dreams
Are unclenched. It is night. Songs have blossomed
In the pale crystal library of tears. You
Are asleep. A lovely light is singing to itself,
In “The Poems,” in my eyes, in the line, “Guillaume
Apollinaire is dead.”
XXXVIII
Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons
For you I starred in the movie
Made on the site
Of Benedict Arnold’s triumph, Ticonderoga, and
I shall increase from this
As I am a cowboy and you imaginary
Ripeness begins corrupting every tree
Each strong morning A man signs a shovel
And so he digs It hurts and so
We get our feet wet in air we love our lineage
Ourselves Music, salve, pills, kleenex, lunch
And the promise never to truckle A man
Breaks his arm and so he sleeps he digs
In sleep half silence and with reason
Mess Occupations
AFTER MICHAUX
A few rape men or kill coons so I bat them!
Daughter prefers to lay ’em on a log and tear their hair.
Moaning Jimmy bats her!
“Ill yeah!” da junky says. “I aint as fast no more,
I’ll rent a lot in a cemetree.” He’ll recite it
two times scary sunday O sea-daisy o’er a shade!
Au revoir, scene!
She had a great toe!
She-tail’s raggy, too!
Jelly bend over put ’im on too!
She laid a crab!
Jelly him sure later! Jelly-ass ails are tough!
She lays all his jelly on him!
Eeeeeeooooowww!! La Vie!
Her lay races is out here, she comes on, I’m on her, I’ll
fart in one ear! “Jelly, sir?” “Shall I raise him yet?”
Long-toed we dance on where Shit-toe can see ten blue men
lickin’ ten new partners and the sucker’s son!
“Mating, Madame, can whip you up up!
My Jimmy’s so small he wiggles plum moans! Ladies shimmy
at Jimmy in waves
XL
Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides
In the morning she wakes up, and she is “in love.”
One red finger sports a gold finger-gripper
Curled to honor La Pluie, by Max Jacob. Max Jacob,
When I lie down to love you, I am one hundred times more
A ghost! My dreams of love have haunted you for years
More than six-pointed key olive shame. Not this day
Shall my pale apple dreams know my dream “English
muffins, broken arm”
Nor my dream where the George Gordon gauge reads, “a
Syntactical error, Try Again!” Gosh, I gulp to be here
In my skin, writing, The Dwarf of Ticonderoga. Icy girls
finger thighs bellies apples in my dream the big gunfire
sequence
For the Jay Kenneth Koch movie, Phooey! I recall
My Aunt Annie and begin.
XLI
banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love”
my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of
the west
my hands make love to my body when my arms are around you
you never tell me your name
and I am forced to write “belly” when I mean “love”
Au revoir, scene!
I waken, read, write long letters and
wander restlessly when leaves are blowing
my dream a crumpled horn
in advance of the broken arm
she murmurs of signs to her fingers
weeps in the morning to waken so shackled with love
Not me. I like to beat people up.
My dream a white tree
XLII
She murmurs of signs to her fingers
Not this day
Breaks his arm and so he sleeps he digs
Dressed in newspaper, wan as pale thighs
beard shaved off long hair cut and Carol reading
Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces
of glass
Of my many faceted and fake appearance
The most elegant present I could get!
“Goodbye, Bernie!” “Goodbye, Carol!” “Goodbye,
Marge!”
Speckled marble bangs against his soil
ed green feet
And seeming wide night. Now night
Where Snow White sleeps amongst the silent dwarfs
Drifts of Johann Strauss
It is 5:15 a.m. Dear Marge, hello.
XLIII
in my paintings for they are present
Dreams, aspirations of presence! And he walks
Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death
Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements
We remove a hand . . .
washed by Joe’s throbbing hands. ‘Today
itself “a signal.” She
is introspection.
Each tree stands alone in stillness
Scanning the long selves of the shore.
In Joe Brainard’s collage, there is no such thing
as a breakdown.
Trains go by, and they are trains. He hears the feet of the men
Racing to beg him to wait
XLIV
The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see
A watchdog barks in the night
Joyful ants nest in the roof of my tree
There is only off-white mescalin to be had
Anne is writing poems to me and worrying about “making it”
and Ron is writing poems and worrying about “making it”
and Pat is worrying but not working on anything
and Gude is worrying about his sex life
It is 1959, and I am waiting for the mail
Who cares about Tuesday (Jacques Louis David normalcy day)?
Boston beat New York three to one. It could have been
Carolyn. Providence is as close to Montana as Tulsa.
He buckles on his gun, the one Steve left him:
His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely
XLV
What thwarts this fear I love
to hear it creak upon this shore
of the trackless room; the sea, night, lilacs
all getting ambiguous
Who dreams on the black colonnade
Casually tossed off as well
Are dead after all (and who falters?)
Everything turns into writing
I strain to gather my absurdities into a symbol
Every day my bridge
They basted his caption on top of the fat sheriff, “The Pig.”
