by Alice Notley
FOR ANSELM HOLLO
1.
“Who’s a ‘black’ artist?”
On this plane
w/all the room in the world,
Dollars: 303 . . .
Secret Clouds
I can’t get into you,
yet,
tho Leaving Cheyenne
was so beautiful:
it made me cry, perfectly
relaxed
a small gift I now am remembering
in Buffalo
2.
Breathe normally
Do not smoke
Awaiting rescue:
Eat, drink, sleep, or
Not . . . .
Don’t.
You were stopped, & searched,
when least you expected.
What was found was nothing.
Don’t expect it to be the same
coming back, baby.
Strapped: deprived
Shoot yourself: stay alive
3.
Ride it out
John F. Kennedy to Heathrow (London)
which involves you in
My Life With Jackie Kennedy
a human life
MAYA
Where civilization is taking place.
I mean, genuine civilization: no proportionate loss
of spleen.
“The head speaks out from the heart to the head connected
to the heart.”
Apologies to Val & Tom
October: half-moon rising: London sky, Piccadilly’s, greyish-black
Neon makes it funky: 3 Chesterfield Kings: 5 quid a hundred dexies
City magic makes it easy for a man to be a monkey! All the geese went “honk!”
In Hyde Park where I walked today: I thought of you as I walked my way
Not that way toward where you are; that I had turned away from, from thinking
What I had meant to do yesterday. Last year’s London’s disappeared, broken up
The way New York City had, before & after London last year. Nevertheless I’m
here
Walking around. I wish I’d run into you both upon these grounds, Hyde Park.
I couldn’t come to visit you, your home, today (& this is dumb) because
I had no place from which to come from. Does that make sense?
(It does.) & I miss seeing you, my friends, & talk. But Val, I liked you calling me
on the phone,
It seemed so neighbourly. & Tom, I liked reading your poems, in my room,
alone
(proofs); & the words I wrote then were truly mine, & not “to atone” . . .
I will come visit you, you two, in good time,
days to come; I’ll talk a lot, show-off my loves, & sometimes rime.
One, London
In Hyde Park Gate 14 white budgie scratchings mean
What? Black orchids on a wall serve for clouds, loom
Up from an orange bed floating, a host of words; Fall; heat coming on
White breathing disappearing as it defines this room
Above a friend his mate’s asleep; he’s somewhere else; England
Here clucks & poetry don’t mix. October 1st; half-moon rising
Soon it seems to descend. Perhaps a clock is a good idea
It tells one what to do, when
Two weeks & a day past it seemed so easy to take, NY’s room
& NY’s speed made it seem easy, giving; easy living
Tho NY’s room was someone else’s, somewhere else too
Here words take their own sweet time arriving
Here to sleep a day & a night away seems mild. Still there’s plenty to do:
Birds to be looked at, pills, a warm bath, letters to be written to you.
Southampton Business
Train Ride . . .
16 coaches long!
not hardly With a song in my heart . . .
I remember my
first love, &
the last time I . . . .
Here you can read
“We Arrived &
What We Did”
A girl’s poem
but not now.
Now it’s here.
It’s outside,
but you can’t see
anything.
Now it’s night here.
Take a walk
down an Elm Street
in the rain
Up
from the Train Station,
Turn, turn, turn again.
Now, you’re here.
Go inside
& open up
Viva! Fat City
& the long hours pass
like buzzes
gone
down a highway.
& nothing is really happening at all
It all happens so fast,
so,
STOP
Get back up & go.
That was life, sometimes you ran dry
Some mornings you’d wake up all wet. Today
For example, was a black day; business as usual,
However; i.e. everyone was getting the business
Our nation’s leaders stared blankly straight
At us with expressions of grave concern
the sun
Came up while the rain was coming down, like
Nobody’s business, so, nobody didn’t see you
In the altogether period me needling business
Myself, & then,
a burst of political jabber
before you
SLEEP
Talk like you don’t hear any more
not since the old days
Love Poetry
cigarette
Huey Long, get shot
& all the time
the girl in the Keane painting
awake
upstairs
sleeping
while the morning Times was saying
$75,000 was paid for a Roy Lichtenstein yesterday. A
James Rosenquist went for 26. Highest price ever for one
Of those. & a life-size kitchen stove complete with sagging
Pots & Pans, $46,000. The Germans took the prizes, the Americans
Got the business, the Times went on to note. By god,
That’s not how it was in the old days! Oh well, I think I’d
like to have a de Kooning, for nothing, myself. Or else, to be
Perfectly frank, just go on minding my own business.
Keeping it up going on
& on
& on & on . . .
No more Monkey-business
I think
No, I’d just as soon be where you are, asleep,
Awake, kissing your neck before we’d fuck a lot
From behind holding your breasts which are warm
Nobody’s business but our own
Sleep, or don’t: do whatever you feel like
Stay as long as you like.
THREE POEMS: GOING TO CANADA
Itinerary
Thursday & Friday:
(Southampton, New York City)
Wake up & crash land
pat the old lady
have a drink
tie shoes
take bus
change trains
go, to the doctor
score
HIGH
eat, beans &
bread pudding, get
slightly smashed on cheap red
take a walk
to clear your head
smoke hash / shoot smack
nod out / wake up with a start / take off
Go to Canada.
How to Get to Canada
borrow 50 from George
Spend 2 for Tarantula
and 4 for a little Horse
and 5 for two meals
and 1 or 2 for King-size Chesterfields
and 2.50 to ride the bus
and 2 more for taxicabs
& 1 for tips & 2
5 cents for 1 more
bus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . buy a ticket
for 31. Check your bag, free.
Steal Night Song, & Prison Letters
From A Soledad Brother. Wait . . . . . . Fly:
15 cents is plenty to keep you in the sky.
Love
Missing you
in Air Canada
Written on Red Roses & Yellow Light
Acid
aquamarine
squares
moving
up ashtray
Smoking
a soft white chick
head red
chic, tacky
fur ruffling over
leather
Or is that what that is?
“18”
she says,
to
the pretty, plain girl below
severe auburn
hair
her red shirt, cowboy
left pocket half-full of bosom
& on down
sleek curve of denim
thigh-meat
weird shoelets
tiny flesh-holes
Acid
green floor
waving, or
wavering
More & more
floor
shoes, black, “straight”, square
out front
of monumental black
dress
above
fatty calves, no
ankles
A city lady, O, obese!
Not me!
I’m just sitting
next the other green, plush
a sofa
rich
with recent presences
now presumably inside:
Light up!
a
slow cigarette
with my
Most Valuable Player
lighter:
Now
A Head
sucking
smokey air “in” breathing out
Waiting
in the Waiting Room
to speak of Necessities:
& Now
my turn.
“Hello, again!
Remember me, Doctor?”
“Of course! You’re
the Poet. Come in,
What is it, this time?”
From “Anti-Memoirs”
FOR TONY TOWLE
Mid-Friday morn, 10 o’clock, I go to India
At the suggestion of a man I barely know: André
Malraux. Benares. The first house I enter I see
A photograph of the murderer of Ghandi on the wall.
“There are too many Reactionaries still, in India,” I remember
Nehru telling André Malraux. I step closer to the picture,
Read the words printed at the bottom: photograph by
Rudolph Burckhardt. This is unreal! I leave India, return
On foot to Hyattsville, Maryland. 1705 Abraham Lincoln Road.
My hosts are absent still. Their children have swallowed Rat
Poison, & they are at the Hospital, caught in the puke
& ye shall be healed, that scene, fright, terror, nothing serious
In the end except it might have been. . . . The Rolling Stones fill this place
A sweet speed-freak is lost in Harlem. Mr. Chester Himes. Life
Going on quite merrily Hunting For The Whale. A wealth
Of fresh Whale-tracks considerably cheers us up.
Galaxies
Winter. You think of sex, but it’s asleep
Briefly you contemplate points of revolution
A naked artist smokes. Dreaming, you wake up & you say
“Everybody is a hero, everybody makes you cry.” Ah,
This morning I was footprints in the snow
Listening to the words from the burning bush all the day
We sleep & dream our lives away. You dream
I don’t live here, & when you wake up, what a relief,
I do. Someone to light the fire, babble for you
I dream a 7 ft. tall Watusi in full tribal regalia
& carrying a long spear promises to send me crumbly LSD
In a New York Times. He does, & I am pleased, but amazed
It’s 9:45 of a Saturday morning, December the 26th. Through eight
Window-panes gray white light is pouring in. No, it’s leaning in
Sitting in, by the fire, a chair. “God, more money, please!” No
Coal in the bin. But there is the fire, still in sight. And there is
More wood, to light. The fire leaps up the flue. The artist’s smoke
Is fixed in space. Above my head is wood. I can’t see a warm bed, &
Inside it, you. But I’m beginning to see The light, not
a bit older, & less cold than last night.
In Anne’s Place
It’s just another April almost morning, St. Mark’s Place
Harris & Alice are sleeping in beds; it’s far too early
For a Scientific Massage, on St. Mark’s Place, though it’s
The right place if you feel so inclined. Later
Jim Carroll’s double bums a camel from a ghost Aram Saroyan
Now, there goes Chuck, friend from out of a no longer existent past
Into the just barely existent future, wide-awake, purposeful
As Aram Saroyan’s dad: a little bit more lovely writing, & then
Maybe a small bet on New York’s chances this morning. It’s not
Exactly love, nor is it faith, certainly it isn’t hope; no
It’s simply that one has a feeling, yes
You always do have a feeling & over the years it’s become habit
Being moved by that; to be moved having a feeling,
So it’s perfectly natural to get up & go to the telephone
To lay a little something down on your heart’s choice
Calling right from where you are, in Anne’s place,
As to your heart’s delight, here comes sunlight.
Autobiography
FOR HENRY KANABUS
A colorful river of poetry drives forward
into what has never been named
where all women are fiery
all roses are scary
and all kisses are eternal
at its worst it leans into
soft oceans of romantic mush.
A little loving can solve a lot of things.
If a man is in solitude
the world is translated
and wings sprout from the shoulders of
The Slave.
In my solitude
I have seen things so clearly
that were not true.
For example
once I kissed a woman and nothing happened.
He is not really thinking.
His poems have too many
flaming ears
queens of daybreak
fallen stars and solar arrows
Power to the people and all like that.
He loves these things.
2.
When truth throws up
its translucent roosters
onto fountains of eggnog
He wants you to see
right through these things
Just behind them are
massive granite anguish shapes
humped over, feet on,
snout to, the earth.
If you want to see
the light show
touch that lump, you rooster!
3.
Who can like that?
I must admit I dislike
seeing human life
compared to something smaller than itself
making love
compared to a comma
death to periods.
4.
García Lorca pinched me again!
5.
I like about twenty lines
of this poem, the dus
t
of that mud which speaks
to sharpen silences. I like
the fiery butterfly puzzles of
this pilgrimage toward clarities
of great mud intelligence and feeling. Not
more deep, more shallow!
6.
Only the poem exists, like an
Ambassador, the American ambassador to
say, Africa. Like a vegetable, which says,
“Africa is hollow.” Like an empty tourist.
And then the tourist hears
The drums of the vegetables.
Africa flies up into his own frail arms.
“I feel an absence inside, when
I hear a lovely poem . . . True, as
it is good, knowing
that glasses are to drink from.”
7.
It is good, absence.
Postmarked Grand Rapids
Robert Creeley reading
Mark Twain and Mr. Clemens
STOPS
while Philip Whalen
writing
“The Epic Airplane Notebook Poem”
Pauses . . .
to discuss their drinking problem
with the Hostesses in the Sky
I’m watching
writing
drinking
waiting for my change.
Further Definitions (Waft)
(AFTER MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN)
a band of musicians: up tight
care not: like
understanding: dismissal
waiving: automatic pilot
compared to: no baloney
began to say: shut up
engraft feathers in a damaged wing: take a hike
experience to the full: kill
cultivators of land they do not own: friends
absolute: ready
pity: pull leg of
language here fails as mathematics has before it: at
is skilled in: oblivious
ended: borne
delicate constitutions: fascists
promoted: serf
one who dispenses with clothes: liar
lip to lip being the first, lip: right on
to heart, through the ear, is the second: “poof!”
graduate: push around
too clever riders are not good at horseplay: “Ma Femme”
food on a journey: chow
center of the earth: hara
