by Alice Notley
one year from tonight?
From the House Journal
1.
I belong here, I was born
To breathe in dust
I came to you
I cannot remember anything of then
up there among the lettuce plots
I cough a lot, so I stay awake
I cannot possibly think of you
I get a cinder in my eye because
I hate the revolutionary vision of
“I have a terrible age,” & I part
I have no kindness left
I do have the lame dog with me & the cloud
I kiss your cup, but I know so much.
I must have leisure for leisure bears
I to you and you to me the endless oceans of
2.
Now it next to my flesh, & I don’t mean dust
I am sober and industrious
I see you standing in clear light
I see a life of civil happiness
I see now tigers by the sea,
the withering weathers of
I stagger out of bed
I stumble over furniture I fall into a gloomy hammock
I’m having a real day of it
I’m not sure there’s a cure
You are so serious, as if you are someone
Yet a tragic instance may be immanent
Yes it’s sickening that yes it’s true, and
Yes it’s disgusting that yes if it’s necessary, I’ll do it.
Visits from a Small Enigma
The bunnies plug-in & elaborate
Spongy thought-streams some days
Attempting in innocence to cash in on
Fire feedback on the flaming bridge
The trailing scads of diaphanous ribbons
Whatever & all like that. Their missiles crack
Of their own sound at the Barrier Gate, as
Punk-log fog shreds the aether, and mountains
Of any consequence simply sit, comic & invisible,
On their faces. Then, golden discs sweep up
Appearing to be signals, signalling
A possible common version of whiteness; sweep up
Out of an iodine-colored Chinese Puzzle box.
White-gold light. Slightly kinky sweepings.
Revery
Up inside the walls of air listen
A sound of footsteps in the spaces out there
In the frightening purple weather
And hazy lights whose color night decomposes.
Late at night, rise up carcass and walk;
Head hanging, let somebody tell the story.
Maybe the machine under the palms will start up
For one who waits
Under the arch of clouds, with familiar face,
Heart beating all out of proportion,
Eyes barely open, ears long since awake to what’s coming:
It is very possibly Autumn, returning,
Leaving no footprints, leaving danger behind.
The head being out of line has fallen. I still want
everything that’s mine.
My Tibetan Rose
A new old song continues. He worked into the plane
A slight instability, to lessen his chances
Of succumbing to drowsiness, over the green sea.
Above his head clanged. And there were no dreams in this
lack of sleep.
Your lover will be guilty of murder & you will turn her in.
Sometimes I’d like to take off these oak leaves and feel
like an ordinary man.
You get older the more you remember. And one lives, alone,
for pure courtship, as
To move is to love, & the scrutiny of things is merely syllogistic.
Postmortems on old corpses are no fun.
I have so much to do I’m going to bed.
I’ll live on the side of a mountain, at 14,000 feet,
In a tough black yak-hide tent, turn blue, force down
Hot arak & yak butter, & wait for this coma to subside.
Come along with me, my Tibetan Rose!
Nothing for You
TO DICK GALLUP
People of the Future
People of the future
while you are reading these poems, remember
you didn’t write them,
I did.
Valentine
I have been here too many times before
you & now it’s time to go
crazy again will that make you like me? I think so
often about you & all those bon aperitifs we had
wanted to have but didn’t in Paris where we
never got to did we No we didn’t although now
Here I am & everyone loves me so
where are you? & why don’t they go
away? I didn’t ask for this I asked for you
love but you said No, you didn’t say
May I? true & crazy here I am
again unkempt in my passion at that May I?
Doubts
TO DAVID BEARDEN
Don’t call me “Berrigan”
Or “Edmund”
If ever you touch me
Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements
If you would own me
Spit
The broken eggshell of morning
A proper application
Of stately rhythms
Timing
Accessible to adepts
All
May pierce this piercing wind
Penetrate this light
To hide my shadow
But the recoil
Not death but to mount the throne
Mountains of twine and
Entangling moments
Which is why I send you my signal
That is why I give you this six-gun and call you “Steve”
Have you taken the measure of the wind?
Can hands touch, and
Must we dispose of “the others”?
He
He wandered and kept on wandering. Bar-Mitzvah
and Confirmation availed themselves of his myriad
aimless impulses. It was no use. Days were of
cheeseburgers, shoe repair, and scary. In cities
and through frenzy darkness was far away. Darkness,
you are so dark, he thought. Where oh where is a
telephone booth, and the friendliness of newsprint
on Saturday afternoons at the Stadium? He wept. Steamy
ferns made a dank obbligato to his dreams. It grew and grew.
At last he was surrounded by gaily-colored birds,
who sang to him in the key of G or E. It was
then he smiled, for always, affirmation made him happy.
Later he died of Hatred.
For Annie Rooney
My rooms were full of Ostrich feathers when
I returned from Spring, and someone had stolen
all the apricot brie! just as if they’d known
I was in training! for shame! that anyone
could be so cruel, and me with only 27 teeth!
How fortunate they never found dear
you. For surely then they would have planted
crickets, to lick the cherry glue off of all
my Princess Grace Special Delivery airmail stamps. The boors,
they’d stop at nothing. But this time their
saboteurs slipped up. I’ll never let them find you,
no matter what they do, you, my secret weapon, who
assures my victories! I’m so glad we were married
in Hooversville, Ohio, in 1933!
Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza
Why have you billowed under my ancient piazza
Father? “I swan, if you don’t beat everything
Anybody ever heard tell of !” Refreshment time!
Have a nonpareil? Thank you! Here we are again
In t
he movies and I’m holding your thigh, Mmmmmmmmmm
Feels like “a belly” to me. “Well, I declare, Feety-
Belle, ain’t you ever gonna get y’rself a real . . . Shut your face
Angerbelle, you ain’t doin’ s’hot y’rself y’know,
my stars!” (At intermission I called her at the hotel
And she made a big thing about somebody telling her
“I’m Judy Garland’s daughter.”) When you’re 7 or 8 or 9
You don’t really care who your momma and poppa are,
Just so they really love you and have TV and all that.
Up in the blue window a white woman is reeling out her laundry.
Prayer
Rilke,
I strain to gather my absurdities
Into a symbol. I falter. These
Roisterers here assembled shatter my zest
With festivity.
Once again I turn to you, to your
Buch das Bildung. Oh Tall Tree
In the self
Flower we three into one.
May he who is you
Become me.
Hearts
At last I’m a real poet I’ve written a
ballade a sonnet a poem in spontaneous
prose and even a personal poem I can use
punctuation or not and it doesn’t
matter I’m obscure when I feel like it
especially in my dream poems which I never even
call Dream Poem but from sheer cussedness title
Match Game Etc. (for Dick Gallup) or something like that.
For example, take this poem, I don’t know how
to end it, It needs six lines to make it a sonnet, I
could just forget it and play hearts with Joe and
Pat and Dick, but lately I’m always lethargic,
and I don’t even like hearts, or Pat, or Joe, or
Dick or / and especially myself, & this is no help.
Night Letter
Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
Outside my room atonal sounds of rain
Drum in the pre-dawn. In my skull my brain
Aches in rhythm to that pounding morning rain.
In your letter, many questions. I read
Them over and over. And now I dread
Answering. “Deteriorating,” you said.
Not a question, really, but you did
Say it. And made it hard to write. You know
Margie, tonight, and every night, in any
Season, cold images glitter brightly
In my head. Dreams of Larry Walker
In his marriage bed: of David Bearden
Paranoid: and of Martin Cochran, dead.
Jubilee
In the ear, winds dance
to drink in the house
Summer came over here today
Everyone overloads one song
Is he the handsome stranger?
I’m thinking of summoning people
I need a hoodlum in white
“kill him”
This face against its own
Endows
giggling
And forms a road upon a tract
I got so tall up there
He t-told me “you’re too fallow in your footsteps”
Goodbye to burning
Brain
Heat
These feet drifting on an unangry tide
Please turn stark naked.
Some Do Not
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 aery daylight, he was not a midget
He could feel the talk sidling up into his ears and burning
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 aery 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, cozzening whatever disguises
On the Level Everyday
I am trying very hard to be
Here
Where you are
Enthusiasm greets poets
Where this great vision of
Blue-back Winged Space Rainbow GRAHR!
Our carelessness
(Hi Ma!) When the phone rings I
Looks toward Namoncos
(no one calls!) why is it my life
Counts on love
? flames in the portable head
When feeling
Myself with pepsi pouring
Out of depth and breadth and
Back into your arms pill
height
end to
end, a baked
Being, & ideal grace
You mean? Yes
Quiet need
Is it my turn already? Hi
Sun & candle light.
It’s 5:15 a.m.
I check my engine test
A closer walk with thee
My saddle-strap
It’s a little stiff.
My Palomino!
That’s the ticket! Tickets,
A love I seemed to lose
GRAHR! Who’s
With my lost saints—
? forgot something there (mike)
At every hand, my critic
Unplugging the mike
With carelessness I sign the
Crank does that
register
Dwight?
The last the sole surviving
Enthusiasm greets Poets One
Texas Ranger,
There’s only one riot isn’t there?
You
Known as “Saddik” ?
Better believe it.
Autumn’s Day
AFTER RILKE
Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.
Now cast your shadow upon sundials.
Let winds remind meadows it is late.
Mellow now the last fruits on the vine.
Allow them only two more southern days.
Hasten them to fulness, and press
The last heavy sweetness through the wine.
Who has no home can not build now.
Who dwells alone must now remain alone;
Will waken, read, write long letters, and
Will wander restlessly when leaves are blowing.
String of Pearls
Lester Young! why are you playing that clarinet
you know you are Horn in my head? the middle page is
missing god damn it now how will I ever understand Nature
And New Painting? doo doot doo Where is Dick Gallup
his room is horrible it has books in it and paint peeling
a 1934 icebox living on the fifth floor it’s
ridiculous
yes and it’s ridiculous to be sitting here
in New York City 28 years old wife sleeping and
Lester playing the wrong sound in 1936 in Kansas City (of
all places) sounding like Benny Goodman (of all people) but
a good sound, not a surprise, a voice, & where was Billie, he
hadn’t met her yet, I guess Gallup wasn’t born yet neither was
my wife Just me & that icebox I hadn’t read HORN by John
Clellon Holmes yet, either
What is rhythm I wonder? Which was George & which Ira
Gershwin? Why
don’t I do more? wanting only to be walking in the New
York Autumn
warm from coffee I still can feel gurgling under my ribs
climbing the steps of the only major statement in New York City
(Louis Sullivan) thinking the poem I am going to write seeing
the
fountains come on wishing I were he
Problems, Problems
Joy! you come winging in a hot wind on the breath
of happy sexy music, you are peeping
into my redbloodedness, and I am writing silly lines
like, “I was born, reared, and educated in Tulsa,
Oklahoma,” only true of Ron Padgett and not Dan’l Boone or me
Uh-huh a sip of gritty coffee, ripping me out of
my mind, making me feel “funny” is carrying me uptown
past interesting bodegas, the interesting
bums eyeing me, my beard throws them off
tho I’m yearning for a little romance
Dontcha think it’s time? thanks & your name is
walking right by my side it hurts me to see you talking
to any other guy! where is Harry Fainlight, he’s on a trip
Now that’s integrity! Where’s Andy Warhol? Far out, but Harry
doesn’t think so he prefers Vaughan Traherne Wordsworth even
Who can help but love him? it’s so American of him! Lines,
you must be saying what I mean I hope I like you later. Our
Love must be sweet destiny, no other love could thrill me so
completely (unless it be going to the movies, and alone, crossing
the Mississippi for the first time, so rare
a feat for feet “born, reared and educated in Tulsa, Oklahoma”
turned blue with cold and being careful not to touch one another.)
Truth as History
1.
My rooms were full of awful features when
I was burning, dear, and you were eating goblets
of ruinous dinner! It didn’t matter, tho. The
foolish wind kept blowing, and my bones were humming!
That was when my eyes walked out
on to bleak piers and shrieked for you! You were standing, often,
stark-naked just as if you knew it wasn’t raining
