by Alice Notley
replied.
Postcard
THE SENDER OF THIS
POSTCARD IS SECRETLY
(STILL) UNSURE OF YOUR WORTH
AS (EITHER) A FRIEND OR A
HUMAN BEING. YOU COCKSUCKER.
Smashed Ashcan Lid
FOR GEORGE SCHNEEMAN
Oh, George—that
utter arrogance! So
that people can’t tell that
you’re any good—
“chases dirt”, for Chrissakes!!
Okay. First. . . .
“Truth is that which,
Being so, does do its
work.”
(I said That.)
July 11, 1982
Dear Alice,
The reason I love
you so much is because
you’re very
beautiful & kind. I
also appreciate your
intelligence, though what
“intelligence” is I’m not
sure, & your wit, which
resembles nothing I’ve
ever thought about.
Your loving husband,
Ted Berrigan
The Way It Was in Wheeling
(AFTER FREDDY FENDER)
I met her in The Stone Age,
riding shotgun—I can
Still recall that neon sign she
wore—She was
Cramlin’ through the prairie near
the off-ramp, & I
Knew that she was rotten to the core.
I screamed, in pain, I’d live off her
forever—She
Sd to me, she’d have a ham-on-
rye—but who’d have
Thought she’d yodel, while in labor?
I never had a chance
To say Good-bye!
My Autobiography
For love of Megan I danced all night,
fell down, and broke my leg in two places.
I didn’t want to go to the doctor.
Felt like a goddam fool, that’s why.
But Megan got on the phone, called
my mother. Told her, Dick’s broken
his leg, & he won’t go to the doctor!
Put him on the phone, said my mother.
Dickie, she said, you get yourself
up to the doctor right this minute!
Awwww, Ma, I said. All right, Ma.
Now I’ve got a cast on my leg from
hip to toe, and I lie in bed all day
and think. God, how I love that girl!
Down on Mission
There is a shoulder in New York City
Lined, perfectly relaxed, quoted really, quite high
Only in the picture by virtue of getting in
to hear Allen Ginsberg read, 1961
And though the game is over it’s beginning lots of
years ago,
And all your Cities of Angels, & San Francisco’s are
going to have to fall, & burn again.
In Your Fucking Utopias
Let the heart of the young
exile the heart of the old: Let the heart of the old
Stand exiled from the heart of the young: Let
other people die: Let Death be inaugurated.
Let there be Plenty Money. & Let the
Darktown Strutters pay their way in
To The Gandy-Dancers Ball. But Woe unto you, O
Ye Lawyers, because I’ll be there, and
I’ll be there.
Dice Riders
Nothing stands between us
except Flying Tigers
Future Funk
The Avenue B Break Boys
and
The Voidoids—
Sometimes,
Time gets in the way, &
sometimes, lots of sometimes,
We get in its way, so,
Love, love me, do.
The Heads of the Town
FOR HARRIS SCHIFF
They killed all the whales
now they’re killing all the acorns
I’m almost the last Rhinoceros
I guess I’d better kill them.
To Be Serious
You will dream about me
All the months of your life.
You won’t know whether
That means anything to me or not.
You will know that.
It’s about time
You know something.
W/O Scruple
FOR BERNADETTE MAYER
The wicked will tremble, the food will rejoice
When he & I grow young again
For an hour or two on
Second Avenue, at Tenth
About 35 days from now—
Although that will not get it;
And that will not be that.
George’s Coronation Address
With Faith we shall be able . . .
There will be peace on earth . . .
& Capricious day . . .
maybe we’ll be there, or true.
Speed the day then.
Tough Cookies
You took a wrong turn in
1938. Don’t worry about it.
The sun shines brightest when
the others are sleeping.
There is a Briss in your
immediate future.
Take heart. Shakespeare was
probably an asshole too.
Your life is rare and precious
& it has no mud. Stay with it.
You have strange friends, but
they are going to be strangers.
Everything is Maya, but
you will never know it.
Your gaiety is not cowardice,
but it may be hepatitis.
Skeats and the Industrial Revolution
(DICK JEROME, 3/4 View)
ink on paper
God: perhaps, ‘The being worshipped. To
whom sacrifice is offered. Not allied to
‘good’, (which is an adjective, not a
‘being.’ Godwit: a bird, or, more recently,
a ‘twittering-machine’; (from the Anglo-Saxon,
God-wiht: just possibly meaning, ‘worthy creature.’
Viz. Isle of Wight—Isle of Creatures. See, also,
Song, folk; Childe Ballad # 478: “I’ve been
a creature for a thousand years.” . . . .)
Besa
(TO THE GODS)
He is guardian to the small kitten.
He looks so determined.
He has a graceful hunch.
Light swirls around his crown,
wispy, blondish, round.
Three shades of blue surround
him—denim,
Doorway, sky. His hands are up,
His eyes are in his head. He’s
my brother, Jack;
Kill him & I kill you.
Natchez
FOR ROSINA KUHN
I stand by the window
In the top I bought to please you
As green rain falls across Chinatown
You are blissed out, wired, & taping,
15 blocks uptown
When I am alone in the wet & the wind
Flutes of rain hire me
Boogie-Men drop in to inspire me
In the Deer Park
FOR TOM CAREY
“I know where I’m going
“& I know where I came from
“& I know who I love
“but the Dear knows who I’ll marry . . . . ”
I bought that
striped polo shirt,
long-sleeves, for 75 cents,
& wore it every minute, that year
I got a sunburn
on my face & hands
I hadn’t noticed it.
But when someone pointed it out
I said it felt good.
I was over
a year in that
Park. Never did
feel in a hurry.<
br />
I was “in love.”
Tompkins Square Park
All my friends in the
park speak Latin: when
they see me coming, they
say, “Valium?”
Warrior
FOR JEFF WRIGHT
I watch the road: I am a line-
man for the County. City streets
await me, under lustrous purple skies, purple
light,
each night. Manhattan is a needle
in the wall. While
it’s true, the personal, insistent, instant-
myth music cuts
a little close to the bone
& I have to get up early for work tomorrow, still
there’s
lots of quail in Verona, & I am
jubilant with horror
because I’m searching for pain underneath
another overload.
I hear you singing in the wires.
Space
is when you walk around a corner
& I see you see me across Second Avenue
You’re dressed in identifiable white
over your jeans & I’m wearing Navy—
Jacob Riis is beams of sunlight as
I cross against the light & we intercept
at the Indian Candy Store. The
Family has gone off to Parkersburg, W. Virginia
The Chrysler Building is making the Empire State
stand tall, & friendly it leans your way
There’s appointments for everybody
They don’t have to be kept, either.
Dresses for Alice
We are the dresses for Alice.
We go on, or off, for solace.
New York Post
FOR MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN
Two cops cruise East 9th
between First and A. Talk
about schedules, they’re on
the Graveyard Shift: 11 to 7
in the morning. They are definitely
not boring. As they pass, I waver,
with my pepsis, two beers, & paper:
what am I doing here?
Shouldn’t I be home, or them?
But I guess I’m on this case, too . . . .
Let No Willful Fate Misunderstand
When I see Birches, I think
of my father, and I can see him.
He had a pair of black shoes & a pair of
brown shoes,
bought when he was young and prosperous.
“And he polished those shoes, too, Man!”
“Earth’s the right place for Love,”
he used to say. “It’s no help,
but it’s better than nothing.”
We are flesh of our flesh,
O, blood of my blood; and we,
We have a Night Tie all our own; & all
day & all night it is dreaming, unaware
that for all its blood, Time is the Sandpaper;
that The Rock can be broken; that
Distance is like Treason. Something
There is that doesn’t love a wall: I
am that Something.
Unconditional Release at 38
FOR DICK GALLUP
like carrying a gun
like ringing a doorbell
like kidnapping Hitler
like just a little walk in the warm Italian sun . . .
like, “a piece of cake.”
like a broken Magnavox
like the refrigerator on acid
like a rope bridge across the Amazon in the rain
like looking at her for a long few seconds
like going to the store for a newspaper
like a chair in a dingy waiting-room
like marriage
like bleak morning in a rented room in a pleasant, new city
like nothing else in the world now or ever
Ass-face
“This is the only language you understand, Ass-Face!”
Minuet
the bear eats honey
between the harbored sighs
inside my heart
where you were
no longer exists
blank bitch
Buenos Aires
Strings like stories shine
And past the window flakes of paper
Testimony to live valentine
A gracious start then hand to the chest
in pain
And looking out that window.
Ms. Villonelle
What is it all about—this endless
Talking & walking a night away—
Smoking—then sleeping half the day?
Typing a résumé, you say, smilingly.
The Who’s Last Tour
Who’s gonna kiss your pretty little
feet?
Who’s gonna hold your hand?
Who’s gonna kiss your red, ruby
lips?
Who’s gonna be your man, love,
Who’s gonna be yr
man? Why,
I am. Don’tcha know? Why, I am.
To Sing the Song, That Is Fantastic
Christmas in July, or
Now in November in
Montreal
Where the schools are closed,
& the cinnamon girls
Sing in the sunshine
Just like Yellowman:
The soldiers shoot the old woman
down
They shoot the girl-child on
the ground: we
Steal & sell the M-16s, use
The money to buy the weed
The sky is blue & the Erie is
Clean;
Come to us with your M-16:
Soldier, sailor, Policeman, Chief,
Your day is here & you have come
to Grief.
Sing the songs, & smoke the weed;
The children play & the wind is green.
Interstices
“Above his head
changed”
And then one morning to waken perfect-faced
Before my life began
cold rosy dawn in New York City
call me Berrigan
Every day when the sun comes up
I live in the city of New York
Green TIDE behind; pink against blue
Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame
not asleep, I belong here, I was born, I’m amazed to be here
It is a human universe: & I interrupts yr privacy
Last night’s congenial velvet sky left behind . . . kings . . . panties
My body heavy with poverty (starch) missing you mind clicks
into gear
November. New York’s lovely weather hurts my forehead
On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar
But, “old gods work” so sleeping & waking someone I
love calls me
into the clear
Bad Timing
Somethings gotta be done! I thought.
Rusty I was?
BANG! (“I fell right down
on the floor. Just like
Dave DeBusschere.”)
Slept a few days.
I woke up; just as Red’s voice
said, “She is
hurting, we
must DEFEND tons
of indistinguishable tones.”
I said, “This sense
there was a way, I met in the possible
O.K.
Under my roof.
Mars. Autumn. Bills (on the Bill
scene).
BILL ME.
This Guy
He eats toenails.
Is rude, vain, cruel, gloomy.
He talks with bitter cryptic wit.
Is unclean. “Is this some
new kind
of meatball?” . . . . sitting in
a rowboat,
waiting for a bite . . . . has
just asked—with
considerable
gravitas—if he might be
allowed
to become one of my suitors.
And I said yes.
A City Winter
My friends are crazy with grief
& sorrows—their children are born
and their morning lies broken—
& now it’s afternoon.
Give Them Back, Who Never Were
I am lonesome after mine own kind—the
hussy Irish barmaid; the Yankee drunk who was once
a horsecart Dr.’s son, & who still is, for that matter;
The shining Catholic schoolboy face, in serious glasses,
with proper trim of hair, bent over a text by Peire Vidal,
& already you can see a rakish quality of intellect there;
Geraldine Weicker, who played Nurse in MY HEART’S IN
THE HIGHLANDS, on pills, & who eventually married whom? The
fat kid from Oregon, who grew up to be our only real poet;
& the jaunty Jamaica, Queens, stick-figure, ex US Navy, former
French Negro poet, to whom Frank O’Hara once wrote an Ode,
or meant to, before everything died, Fire Island, New
York, Summer, 1966.
Via Air
Honey,
I wish you were here.
I wrote some poems about it.
And though it goes,
and it’s going,
it will never leave us.
Christmas Card
O little town of Bethlehem,
Merry Christmas
to Jim
& Rosemary.
Christmas Card
FOR BARRY & CARLA
Take me, third factory of life!
But don’t put me in the wrong guild.
So far my heart has borne even
the things I haven’t described.
Never be born, never be died.
