by Alice Notley
Unhurriedly.
I didn’t hurry either, Lee.
I stopped & watched them walk back up toward
& down into their lake,
Smoked a Senior Service on a bench
As they swam past me in a long dumb graceful cluttered line,
Then, taking my time, I found my way
Out of that park;
A Gate that was locked. I jumped the fence.
From there I picked up the London Times, came home,
Anselm awake in his bed, Alice
Sleeping in mine: I changed
A diaper, read a small poem I’d had
In mind, then thought to write this line:
“Now is Monday morning so, that’s a garbage truck I hear,
not bells”
And we are back where we started from, Lee, you
& me, alive & well!
The Ancient Art of Wooing
A master square weaver, one’s favoured medium,
That is what is behind the boom.
Brusquely hugely schemefully ignored
Free in the language of wooing, but not included
The close elaborate current square panorama
quiver now one quivers
The aerial view of vineyards spreading out, encircling
the house
Backlit, color coming from within, light & dark
closely akin to skin
This slow constant weave seems badly adapted
To the grave overpowering expression of
a decorative opulent emotion.
Oh, does it? Behind this boom one can see one is getting
After the false starts & necessary resistance,
one’s bones’ worth.
On display they in the center become alive. They
are handsome in themselves.
The possible in mural scale model in Marriage
is formalized.
Late November
What said your light
you know, an answer refusing
I go to my store I maintain
animal inextricably between
illuminated, on the line
something lords in chair
all fixtured silvered
heart, your curtain, air
breathy air stirs white
knowing refusing running
Waitomo Cave, New Zealand
couldn’t catch the day, its curve, its more
Committed robbery with the Smothers Brothers
cops pursue us infinitely
At Loma Linda
“The pressure’s on, old son.”
“We’re going to salvage just about all you have left.”
“Right. And I’m going with you.”
“I’m also staying right here with you.”
“It’s the way you’ve been going about it that worries us.”
“All this remote control business.”
“I’m the principal stockholder and I’m moving my equities out.”
“He believes if he’s hard enough on a body they’ll give way.”
“It’s funny to have lived all this time in the midlands
And not seen all these lovely things about.”
“Where’s the Doctor?” “I am the Doctor.”
“Is everything ready for surgery?”
“Yes, & you don’t need a sauna to get steamed up, here.”
“You’ll find the patient’s files in these cabinets here.”
L.G.T.T.H.
Queen Victoria dove headfirst into the swimming pool, which was filled
with blue milk.
I used to be baboons, but now I am person.
I used to be secretary to an eminent brain surgeon, but now I am quite
ordinary. Oops! I’ve spilled the beans!
I wish mountains could be more appealing to the eye.
I wash sometimes. Meanwhile
Two-ton Tony Galento began to rub beef gravy over his entire body.
I wish you were more here.
I used to be Millicent, but now I am Franny.
I used to be a bowl of black China tea, but now I am walking back
to the green fields of the People’s Republic.
Herman Melville is elbowing his way through the stringbeans toward us.
Oscar Levant handed the blue pill to Oscar Wilde during the fish course.
Then he slapped him.
I used to be blue, but now I am pretty. I wish broken bad person.
I wish not to see you tonight.
I wish to exchange this chemistry set for a goldfish please.
I used to be a little fairy, but now I am President of The United States.
Peking
These are the very rich garments of the poor
Tousling gradations of rainbow, song & soothing tricks
With a crooked margin there & there is here: we
Are the waiting fragments of his sky, bouncing
a red rubber ball in the veins.
Do you have a will? And one existing so forgets all
Desuetude desultory having to move again, take power from snow,
Evening out not more mild than beastly kind, into a symbol.
I hate that. I think the couple to be smiles over glasses, and
Questions not to find you, the which they have. O Marriage
Talking as you is like talking for a computer, needing to be
Abacus, adding machine, me. Up from the cave’s belly, down
from the airy populace
That lace my soul, a few tears from the last the sole surviving
Texas Ranger,
Freed, freely merge with your air, dance. Blue are its snowflakes
Besprinkled blue lights on his eyes, & flakes. For her
I’d gladly let the snake wait under my back, and think, to walk,
And pass our long love’s day. Landscape rushing away.
From A List of the Delusions of the Insane,
What They Are Afraid Of
That they are starving.
That their blood has turned to water.
That they give off a bad smell.
Being poor.
That they are in hell.
That they are the tools of another power.
That they have stolen something.
That they have committed an unpardonable sin.
Being unfit to live.
That evil chemicals have entered the air.
Being ill with a mysterious disease.
That they will not recover.
That their children are burning.
Chicago English Afternoon
He never listened while friends talked
Less original than penetrating, very often
Illuminating He worked steadily to the even
Current of sound sunlit oblongs bramble transfer
White South nothing is gained by assurance as
To what is insecure beer in bed, & an unused point
Beside me on the bench time of, major energy product
Over Bellevue Road that silence said
To mean an angel is passing overhead my baby
Throws my shoes out the door & one cannot go back
Except in time “Yes, but he is exultant; the ice
Meant something else to him” highly reduced
For the sake of maintaining scale Goodbye To All That
“I have only one work, & I hardly know what it is.”
It was silence that stopped him working, silence in which
he might look up
& see terror waiting in their eyes for his attention.
“Ladies & Gentlemen, you will depart the aircraft
At the Terminal Area to your Right. Thank you for flying United.”
She (Not to be confused with she, a girl)
She alters all our lives for the better, merely
By her presence in it. She is a star. She is
Radiant, & She is vibrant (integrity). She animates
And gathers this community. Half the world’s population
Is under 25. She permits everybody to be themselves more often
than not.
She is elegant. I love her.
She writes poetry of an easy & graceful
Intimacy. She is brave. She is always slightly breathless, or
Almost always slightly. She is witty. She owns a proud & lovely
Dignity, & She is always willing to see it through.
She is an open circle, Her many selves at or near the center, &
She is here right now. Technically, She is impeccable, &
If She is clumsy in places, those are clumsy places. She knows
Exactly what she is doing & not before She is doing it. What
She discovers She discovered before She discovers it, and so
The fresh discovery of each new day. Her songs are joyous songs,
& they are prayers, never failing to catch the rush of hope
(anticipation)
Despair, insanity & desperation pouring in any given moment. She
Knows more than She will ever say. She will always say
More than she knows. She is a pain. She is much less than
Too good to be true. She is plain. She is ordinary. She
is a miracle.
Innocents Abroad
TO GORDON BROTHERSTON
Fluke Holland:
—The Tennessee Third
Stew Carnall:
He was horrifed: The Little Pill.
Coy Bacon:
A nincomparable nanimal:
Hunk Jordan:
His Ghost.
Margo Veno:
Pigtails : ink
Rugby Kissick
“Sally Bowles”
Helen Keller:
“Nuff said.”
Sue Bear:
Car Crash. (Change)
Joe Don Looney:
Rexroth’s Tune
Cream Saroyan:
“Her first is a song.”
Trane DeVore:
Hands Up!
Kid Dorn:
I am dog.
Ava Smothers:
Defies calipers
St. Paul. (Bag.)
Still. Say it ain’t so.
Sister Moon
Where do the words come from? (come in?)
Where did that silt? How much lives?
A rock is next to the bee.
The window is never totally thought through.
So
“Silver” is used to stand for something nothing
really ever quite is. Let it stand against.
Or in other words what next?
There’s time enough
A lot of unalloyed nouns. for a list to occur
between the lines.
Weather, as all strata in a possible day.
Sleet against window glass. A cigarette starts sounding.
You can see how “a depth” makes “west” and “south” agree.
A philosophy: “I guess yes.”
milks & honeys, stuns, salutes, flashes . . .
now & again, “a glimpse”
An Orange Clock
Sash the faces of lust
Beast. And get your salutation
An Electric Train wreck in the eye
Everything good is from the Indian. A curtain.
The word reminds me of Abydos and spinach.
I am not a pygmy soothed
By light that breathes like a hand
Sober dog, O expert caresses
In the twisted chamber, for you the silent men, &
Flowers, so as to weave the inhabitants
This small immobile yellow coat persona:
And you must receive songs in its name, O
Library of rapid boons
Irrespective of merit. & now I do not know his name.
Sash the faces of lush
Beast. & Get Your Salutation.
Gainsborough
I belong for what it is worth
To the family of the Phoenix; also
Dragon blood flows in my veins;
And when the time came to assign “us” berths,
Instead of “Proletarian,” it was under “Criminal”
I found my name, albeit without
Difficulty, although it took some time. Neither
Among the last nor, happily, the first. It was Alphabetical
& “By the Numbers” in those days. Plus, I got
“Innocence,” with a funny dash of “Butch.”
And there you have it:
Not uncommonly provided just handles enough
To open up, close down, repeat, evade, hit, slip, & turn on:
With luck you could have it both ways & better with each change.
“He wanted the quiet, the domestic & the personal . . .”
“It’s really just the sense of around & around.”
Easter Monday
“Antlers have grown out the top of my shaggy head.”
“And his conclusions to be unaccompanied by any opinions. . . .”
“You can’t have two insides having an affair.”
“Why not then spiritualize one’s midday food with a little liquor?”
“The question seems prosecutorial.” “The house is lost
In the room.” “Loyalty is hard to explain.”
“Hard fight gets no reward.” “A woman has a spirit of her own.”
“A man’s spirit is built upon experience & rage.”—Max Jacob.
In the air, in the house, in the night, bear with me
“I always chat to the golden partner.”
“I’m working out the structures of men that don’t exist yet.”
“A gladness as remote from ecstasy as it is from fear.”
“To go on telling the story.”
“Give not that which is holy to dog.”
Four Gates to the City
Everything good is from the Indian
Sober dog, O expert caresses
By light that breathes like a hand
Small immobile yellow yo-yo plumage
On the cold bomb-shelter. A cur
Is a pre-sound without a rage
Come with me the nurse ferocity
Whose clouds are really toots from the nearby—it is
A well-lit afternoon
but the lights go on
& you know I’m there.
Back in those previous frames
Is a walk through a town.
It sobers you up
To dance like that. Extraordinary to dance
Like that. Ordinarily, can be seen, dancing
In the streets. Ah, well, thanks for the shoes, god
Like Goethe on his divan at Weimar, I’m wearing them
on my right feet!
In Blood
“Old gods work”
“I gather up my tics & tilts, my stutters & imaginaries
into the “up” leg
In this can-can . . .” “Are you my philosophy
If I love you which I do . . . ?” “I want to know
It sensationally like the truth;” “I see in waves
Through you past me;” “But now I stop—” “I can love
What’s for wear:” “But I dredge what I’ve bottomlessly canned
When I can’t tell you . . .” “I love natural
Coffee beautifully . . .” “I’m conjugally love
Loose & tight in the same working” “I make myself
Feature by feature” “The angel from which each thing is most itself,
from each, each,”
“I know there’s a faithful anonymous performance”
“I wish never to abandon you” “I me room he” To
“Burn! this is not negligible, being poetic, & not feeble.”
The Joke & The Stars
What we have here is Animal Magick: the fox
is crossing the water: he is the forest from whence
he came, and toward which he swims: he is the hawk
circling the waters in the sun; and he is also the foxfire
on each bank in Summer wind. He is also the grandfather clock
that stands in the corner of the bedroom, one eye open, both hands up.
And though I am an Irishman in my American
I have not found in me one single he or she
who would sit on a midden and dream stars: for
Although I hate it, I walk with the savage gods.
“It’s because you are guilty about being another person,
isn’t it?” But back at the organ
The angel was able to play a great green tree
for the opening of the new First National Bank.
And New York City is the most beautiful city in the world
And it is horrible in that sense of hell. But then
So are you. And you, and you, and you, and you, and you.
And no I don’t mean any of you: I just mean you.
Incomplete Sonnet #254
FOR DOUGLAS OLIVER
the number two, &
the number three, &
they being the number one
And as I have, almost
unbelievably, passed the
number four, I wonder
Will I ever “reach”, or worse,
Stop at the number Seven?
For though one of me
has a sentimental longing for number
I never have believed in
the Number, Heaven.
But in numberless hells
I never once stopped at eleven.
Where the Ceiling Light Burns
Since we had changed
The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from
a beach
Today a hockey player died in
the green of days: the chimneys
Morning again, nothing has to be done,
maybe buy a piano or make fudge
Totally abashed and smiling
I walk in
sit down and
face the frigidaire
You say that everything is very simple and interesting
