by Alice Notley
With a trained squirrel
He will burn whale blubber
& is contemplating
The return of Billy,
Suicide,
3-Mile Island,
Unleashing “The Hammer”
Running naked
To breathe
Evacuate
Phone Grandma, if necessary
During “60 Minutes”
On television.
3.
At reduced temperatures
During months having an “R” in them
Wander lonely as a cloud
Crawl on all fours when it’s time.
4. (Coda)
Enraged Shepherd
Tears up his EXXON card
Admits he is a droid
Has his teeth bronzed
Redesigns his novel
Dies Early
Bye-bye.
The Short Poems
FOR SUSAN CATALDO
THE SOCIETY CLUB
“I never shut my mouth, in case
I have to yawn.”
Too Late
The boat has left.
ARGENTINA
Don’t cry, Argentina.
TED RON
BERRIGAN & PADGETT
“Flow gently, sweet Thames,
’til I end yr song.
fire-hydrant
censored
12TH NIGHT
“I will go.”
CITY MONEY
In God we trust because she got
something stuck in her throat
and bent their ears.
THE OLD ONE
is Ted Berrigan.
Something to Remember
Caesar’s ghost must be above suspicion.
To Jacques Roubaud
I’m sorry for your trouble
Jacques.
I’m very sorry
for your trouble.
Villonnette
Oh, Mrs. Gabriele Picabia-Buffet,
why did they want so badly to be
like us, those wonderful jack-offs of yesterday?
And where have they gone? Where are they now? those jack-offs
of yesterday?
After Petrarch
Inquiry & Reply
FOR ANNE WALDMAN
Virtue, Honor, Beauty, Kind gestures
Sweet words have reached the high branches
wherein my heart is warmly entwined.
Then lead the person to the unmade bed.
1327, at daybreak,
on the 6th of April,
entered the labyrinth;
no exit have I found.
So, old friend, not dead, don’t lead me on.
Old Armenian Proverb
“Only the guilty need money.”
Ambiguity
I am ambiguity.
(FOR ED FOSTER)
Stand-up Comedy Routine
FOR: BOB HOLMAN
OR ED FRIEDMAN
Good Evening, ladies, and all you hungry children in Asia,” A very funny thing happened to me on my way over here from a tough Italian Neighborhood, where I just bought this suit made out of recycled lint. Any other paisanos out there? (Gives them the finger). A bum came up and asked me to call him a Taxi, so I did my impression of Richard Nixon, which goes something like this: (Gives audience the finger). But seriously, my friends, I just arrived in your fine city after three wonderful weeks of playing Sammy Davis Senior. During that engagement I ran into an old high school classmate who set off an alarm clock so everybody can wake up and go home, so I bit him.
Speaking of that, what do you think about solitaire in the drunk tank of a southern jail, jerks? (Gives audience the finger). Believe me, when I was younger, nobody would even dream of refusing to die for his country, and I mean that sincerely. As you may know, I grew up in Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga. Also in Las Vegas. And Brooklyn. Anybody out there from Brooklyn? (Gives audience the finger again). I’ll never forget the first girl I dated. She was so buck-toothed that she ate corn on the cob through a picket fence! She grew up to be my close friend, Liza Minelli. She once told me a funny story about the Pope meeting Bo Derek on a train. Then she married me, so lets give her a big hand! (Gives audience the finger w / both hands). Now, as I’ve grown a little older, I’m just thankful for all you other women out there, and for my hotel room, which is so small the mice are all hunchbacks.
Say, here’s a joke for you. A fella goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, I imagine I’m a rabbit.” So the psychiatrist says, “That’s nothing. My wife ran off with our marriage counselor.” How come nobody’s laughing at this material? There are hungry children in Asia who would gladly trade places with you.
Incidentally, before I finish my act, I’ve been asked by several of you to add a little class to this routine by doing some gay Polish jokes. (Gives audience the finger). But what I’d really like to do is leave you with a bit of wisdom that was passed on to me by Sammy Davis, Senior. When I told him I was going into show business, he just smiled, and said, “The devil may wear many coats, but all of them need mending.”
Are there any other psychotics out there? (Gives audience the finger viciously, first to the left side of the room, then to the center, and then to the right side).
I hope you’ll remember that, as I have. Thank you, and God bless.
Positively Fourth Street
There’s nothing new under the sun, and
There’s nothing new under the rock, either.
Down on Me
It’s very interesting
but
The Buddha-minds are freaked out—
translate
Snake
into
Pea
Turn around
Look at me.
Don Quixote & Sancho Panza
It is 1934. Edmund
Wilson is going to Russia
Next year. There’s a brunette
Dwarf asleep in his bed. Scarlatina.
Bedbugs. Dear Henry Allen Moe:
Can you wire me a $100 loan, to Paris?
I have learned everything I can here.
253 lbs later, it is May, 1983.
Did Henry Allen Moe get burned?
Tomorrow I will need $50, Summer Camp
for Sonny, & supper. I can hear
my own voice on the telephone: hello, Ed?
(Edward Halsey Foster) Hi, Ed. Got any dollars?
Today I am 48 years, 5 months and 16 days old,
In perfect health. May Day.
This Will Be Her Shining Hour
“This movie has Fred Astaire and Robert Ryan in it!
“He got off the train!
“I have a feeling this is an unknown movie.”
(laughs) Q: “What the hell is going on?”
A: (laughing) “Dialogue.
“This movie has no plot.
“Fred Astaire was on this train with a whole lot
of soldiers, going to Japan. And then, he got off
the train!
“Robert Ryan keeps saying, ‘Let’s kill Japs,’ &
Fred Astaire keeps saying, ‘Fuck that.’
“He fell in love with her!
Q: “Who?”
A: “Joan Leslie. She’s a photographer. There
keeps being a whole lot of stuff by Johnny
Mercer.”
Q: “Joan Leslie is just my type. Is she?”
A: “Un-uh. Fred Astaire is nobody’s type, either.
(laughing) “He changed all the lyrics.”
Q: “To what?”
A: (sings)
“This will be my shining hour
drinking rum & bacardi
like the face of Mischa Auer
on the Beauty Shop marquee.”
(laughs)
“You have to watch it.
“You have no right to get anything out of my
evening!”
Q: “Give me the Book Review section, will
you
?”
A: “Sure. You’ll love it.”
“I haven’t written anything for years. I’m going
to move away.
“Oh God, she’s gorgeous:
(for a little ugly person).”
“I can’t tell which is Waldo.”
“Pretty good line, huh?
‘I can’t tell which is Waldo.’
Q: “Did you write that down?”
A: “No.”
(laughs)
“You? Working?”
(laughs again)
(laughs)
“This is my wife. She follows me around.”
Q: “Where are they?”
A: “They’re in some giant building. Fred Astaire
is yelling, ‘Help, save me!!’
“I think this movie is some Homage to Balanchine
. . . . . . . It’s out of the question.
“Man, instead of cracking an egg on that woman’s
hand, they’re putting diamonds on it.
“I think my life is really awful.
“Oh God, write all this down.
“Oh, what a great song!”
“This is my night at the canteen. . . .”
“It’s nice work if you can. . . .”
“Oh, great. . . .”
“She’s dancing.
“They’re in New York City!”
“Of course they are.”
“Just like us.
“Oh God, he’s so great!
“Oh, he just got taken down from the table.
He did a snake dance.”
(It was a Johnny Mercer snake dance.)
It’s 4 a.m.
(laughs)
“Wordsworth put it pretty well.”
“He hasn’t done too much in this one.
“Now he’s going to do it. . . .
“It’s all so wartime.
“It’s so wartime no one gets to do much of anything.
“It’s all so unfair.
“Are you having fun?
“You are too! (sigh)
“That’s Robert Ryan. You should come see him. He’s
being in a musical.
“Oh God, he looks so great!”
“He looks too much like my father.
“It has Averill Harriman in it.”
“Doesn’t everything?”
“Have you ever said to her how your life would be
incomplete without her?”
Setting: Beekman Place. The usual Penthouse. It’s
almost summer.
Hmmmmm.
“I haven’t seen a movie in ten years.”
“Oh God, I’m seeing double.”
“You’re the one he’ll never forget.”
“Will you keep it on while I get in bed?”
“What?”
“Will you keep it on while I get in bed?”
“Sure.”
“Their lives are as fragile as The Glass Menagerie.”
Saturday Night on TV
“Oh, she dances, Ted. . . . and it’s so great!!
“She’s not supposed to be able to dance!
“You’re making a big mistake,
writing a poem,
and not watching this.”
“Shut up. I’m getting the last lines.”
“You are not.”
Early Uncollected Poems
Sonnet to Patricia
duty is the primal curse
from which we must redeem ourselves
G. B. SHAW 1891
If by my hasty words I gave offence,
Know I would stop my tongue in recompense
Were that an answer or an end to rage:
But I am no philosopher, nor sage;
If love and friendship hasty words can kill,
I would not speak; but I must speak my will.
These days I burn: and I cannot be still:
Burn I must; and with fire must I kill
Those unmixed humours in me which bring rage
Upon those whose griefs I would most assuage.
Now then, I must myself ask recompense
For cause which causes me to give offence.
So Duty me no Duties: Be not strange:
Give me your hand, your love, and I will change.
One View/1960
Now she guards her chalice
In a temple of fear. Once
She softly held me near, til
Rain, falling lightly, flooded pain.
Alone, the pale darkness
Became too much to bear. Then
She quickly drew away, drawing
Darkness down on Summer’s day.
Alone, this sudden darkness
Became too much to bear.
Then,
Afraid to draw away,
I closed my eyes
To close of Summer’s day.
In Place of Sunday Mass
My beard is a leaping staff
I love to hear it creak
it gathers moss in the morning mist
in the middle of my weakness and
when I stand and clank
it gives me shoes
My eyes scurry towards the sea
legs scuttling beneath them
shell glistening like split peas
in the sun. I have two, a right one,
and a left. In spring my eyes go deaf
and are rancid and rank with
blue
And my belly! ah, it is a shining thing
it sings at sunup on the back fence of
my buttocks, burping and belching in the sheer joy
of strumps. It clumps. I offer my belly the sumps
of my simple sorrow, which once knew
whom to name, and so it grew.
I am a bog, a ditch, a burrow beneath a
sole survivor of study. Unbowed
I am bloody with bad confetti, and I go
in a flagon of gore. Oh sweet stalactites
upon this shore,
“I ain’t coming back
No more!”
What are you thinking . . .
Did you see me that night
I climbed the wallpaper tree, white
with rage, whiskey in my pocket? Fright
could never fathom my undressings, nor blight
my loneliness, which sits here at my desk, in sight
of homeless waifs, who bite
my thighs my heart for sustenance. My plight
Is insignificant but you, surely you saw my light
burning for you alone, the night I sliced the slightly
lengthy tail from the scraggly poet’s kite?
For you I starred in the movie made on the site
of Benedict Arnold’s triumph, Ticonderoga, and I indict
you to take my hand, which reaches out for yours, in spite
of the change of season, this Spring which holds me tight.
Lady Takes a Holiday
TO CAROL CLIFFORD
became in Alamogordo. Then the blast-
off into total boredom. Referred to as
a “weird-o.” The sleeping sleazus of
honey love. Circumference equals piR2.
Evergreen concatenations of airmail stamps
bringing me fearsome and rust. Wood in the dust
bowl. Howl in the woodhole. Cold manifestation
of last of the cruel and the “name” to the first.
Sundown. Manifesto. Color and cognizance.
Then to cleave to a cast-off emotion,
(clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience.
For Bernie
Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering
from German measles, only a part-time mother and
father
bringing you ginger ale; and
the great speckle bird now extinct;
what frolicsome times we’d have had, eating
ants and clover in the yard, Ayax
pissin
g on the grass! Is it possible
great black rat packs
were running amuck amidst the murk away back east,
and you, and me, and Ayax,
giggling happy here? But it never was,
never. You were a Campfire Girl
and I was afraid.
Homage to Beaumont Bruestle
Giants in the sky; roses in streams that castle; rocks
in roll; the flower-bird drops singing smitten low; and always
waste of faces bullet it; and more than these: ground
moons! High! and seas to rot upon the tides! the
loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad
against the lack of pinned: there are in the world of vast
reflected limp. And beauty piles stone. But every garden shows
have learned the secret. Dreams beauties beauty in the world,
blossoms, snatched, are thrown, and die men’s foes. And
lack of soul is no to fill the youth.
Of dumbed bondage the heavy accent of.
The flames of love are horsed to pull the knee
Of downward pressing lips. The Earth of waste’s
Deep hill. It is. It need not go.
Such powers weld by chain that must not know.
When cart is in of progress, down saddest the world,
