by Alice Notley
One whispers, Now il faut. How does one know? That word. Who knows a thing?
Useless words, but let’s consider the words. Let ones. For One’s embarked
into seas of verbiage to be repatterned, reconnected, Dear.
Who is Dear? Formerly you? of the breeze. What difference of things?
There’s a little alleyway back of night. Or does it push right through?
Strewn with, or maybe not. Nothing correct. One’s doodling, not to start.
Start. City of the words! But ones’re still on ark—It doesn’t matter—
Also still en été in pond. Also coma’d, dead, whatever.
Why start? Why ever start? On the ark’s deck, or in the alleyway.
Beneath the chaotic stars or as star, to be One with it,
the Making. Dismantling and making. Ones have ever done so,
not always as humans, have had no nomenclature, betimes,
nor earthliness per se. Finity’s a recent concept, human—
who cares about it now? One finds another position or scheme.
Word Tree
at
no
love exile
from the former
paves. . . . . “forehead alley”
where carnage mental rubied the tongue
l’arbre du corps, hurt by grouped thoughts
that corruption. One only lived you’d say
there by assenting punish
but this is the future, dead.
none ever lived here
none built this place
perfect for “thing” purpose
these words hang from one emptily
polemic of A
salt that’s fertile An
underrose arguer
come live
here
activate
the
fabric
VI
DISEMBARKMENT
AT LOST CITY
One’s found the lost city no one was ever in
made of words One’s selecting, city extends from the Ark, as it goes
along road of the dead, ragged
unforeseen being one is
always past or is, angelic idyllic
find it in some words, there is nothing else left
everything ended, one watches fall
human systems, not more humans but words
escaping with One into Chaos, mixage
And One gets mixed right into the caldron
or is it more like a chameleon
rumpled and least
nothing is most, here come words
those One loved or used with a wrist no wrist here, how come words are?
because One is How Because mind’s what there is over all in out
prove it. what one knows, all science, is from In
from knowing with a mind, who else’s
One’s the ancient of Detail
it all One is under and up
Ark beneath the hemlock sky glides full and cogent
(in a sense—the sense of this) O City
abandoned where no One has been
to take the call and Foundation. One
covered in combs, comb out the words now
Come into this doubtful Grace.
Then, where are the ones of the ark? Ark is landing in faux port;
faux’s the ark, faux’s any thing but One—how come One’s not so faux?
One’s the light within, all one knows. Only dependable chose,
that there’s this steadyflamelike self; entering the faux city,
with One’s amoeboid entourage, projections babbling, afraid . . .
don’t know how to act, no standards since everything collapsèd . . .
Do the ones have words for new act? nième fois cosmical start?
Pouring out of One, way they do—march down l’Allée des Morts now,
are the ones really deceased? asks Wideset eyes. In sense, Qui
replies, previous world is gone. What is this ghost burg?—Shaker.
It’s the city after it’s dead futurely, ready for ones—
Whah? Gives one creeps, say soul suckers. Everyone’s already dead,
One says, all ones are au courant. Why only one tense needed.—
Why be born then?—Nobody knows.—Maybe One can find out this time.
Really don’t get it!—Shaker. It’s some city, in future from now,
dead.—Why?—Because, it, is, futurely. Ones’ll be dead so it’s dead.
One, says one, is covered with sudden words. One’s composed of the new
or at least layered with. One can’t read them. Can see some but they crawl.
One is now different. What language is One in? One speaks English—
or is it a new form, another langue, English ever shifting—
one’s hands, knees, or are they those, are they blurred words, unstable lovelies?
Need to read each other? Parts one calls up, from beside One’s own ears.
One can probably help. Tree still at work. One consists of word tree,
in a sense—each one is that poem, shifting, breeze-mutated,
blown into new shapes by one soul current among the ones. Not to
be confusèd with consciousness, one’s own. One’s own soul, that is.
Parts one works for the One. Still. Suggesting replacements and fixtures
messaged telepathically from grapevine—hah!—tree. This city’s covered one
more quickly than one can keep up with. Bypassed. Have to learn what’s up.
It’s happening faster than the old system. The words are swarming now.
Covered by the body of words—a body of gliding new words: Who?
One is the same One . . . No, one isn’t. Don’t know what One’s gonna say.
Je suis coupable. Erregina. One refuses all the pasts . . .
One is guilty of razing nature. Which—nature—isn’t gendered . . .
only one’s eyes were—Have no real eyes. Seen has its own declension,
chart: you seen—object. Seer—nomen. Delimnèd . . .
delineated, it doesn’t know that it’s defined being seen—
how fair can that be? One sees you-seen. One sees one-seen? Abolished:
the wires—one’s not wired, hard or hardly. See one, all one sees are words.
Palabras of fate, if one’s fated—nam fatalis: no country
in new ordinem: France is dead now. How one loved thee! Love remains?
Energetically, molecular? No, parts of scattered verbiage.
One’s caused to stand here, by what if One’s consciousness is free, thirsty,
is One? One-seen, e.g. Wideset—with thine own consciousness, too, libre.
One uses I when suddenly one’s I, the inmost soul of one.
I, Wideset? . . . not that. The blue sea’s green somewhere in past and I clean.
Ent’ring the city imagined by ones to come now? the next ville?
That’s too fixed for one; so the words keep shifting that would define one—
they can’t! But ones agree to choose the words to bring into new world:
do they instantly take over this one? I, soul of me, Wideset . . .
to you the layer superficial, of my sensed response to world,
my reasoning, my naming of fact as if it were—implore that
you remain in flux, for forever, that none define one!:
In winter time more bruised dogs down who and him again: duck nostalgia.
Talk like that’s better. Drawer upon rubber
, tell would she couldn’t.
Would one couldn’t? Oh, couldn’t meanwhile atmosphere ends, unique.
Is unique a thing? Verb quits as known. Need it not to define
the past, because no one is in it. It’s conjectural like now
as ones proceed in present no need to catch it so bad.
Don’t get what’s happening, Shaker whispers to his hand, with word HAND on it,
also THE ROSE HOSED ABIDING I WILL OW. Think one’s the tree!
Qui says, Yes but one’s more than lucky—incontrovertibly one.
Are ones choosing these words after all, or are they choosing the ones?
One feels as if one’s being chosen. Tickets, please. Mine’re fingers:
If I have fingers, do I have to say I, mine? These hand . . .
“The rose hosed abiding I will ow” is the poem of my hand:
MY hand, not another’s. One begins to understand the problem . . .
Shaker finishes. One’s dumbstruck. One could be anything at all.
Maybe ones don’t understand this city, says the One, not yet.
It’s gone, already . . . but ones are it . . . Are it becomingly, now?
Soul suckers: how can ones take it over if the terms keep changing?
Exactly, says One. Anyone’s a new poem today. All’s well.
Time as the Stretching Out of a Lantern Cutout
minepeace
denied
. by you .
map made by who declare
end of world . . . . . . . . that’s poem
bottoms out . . . . . . . . there
: ya fated oo la . . . . says who
now turns out one dreams it . nothing ever here
. why not any map of any place
walk to here—what’s walk
. . don’t get it
. get our own
no “us”
then what ones here
said to me
some many
people
essence
(don’t let any one take over. Even if it’s a “part” of one? That’s right)
Deal no ego. System unstable.
(From the Anthology)
THIS WHEN PRESSED EMITS SOUND
does one know Chance
it’s each
perhaps. Necessitas?
as
. . dragon
. imagined
. like these words?
stay bodiless
don’t call
One thing
. sick for a beauty one remembers
seacoast real
ever the Ark
remains with ones, transparent foundation
. . tree . glyph
does n’t . matter
memory’s fluid
paint . . ed . bird . dawn . same
born uncreature palladian
. . . from foreheads
Eyelids closed, see inside .
(From the Anthology)
VII
BECOMING POEMS
Does One act or is One handled by past ones unthinkingly then—
What’s placing words on One? Can’t One read them? What poem is One now?
Eyes but whose float rounded in a brown space: teeth in the space and nose
because One knows of the nose—hair-feathers green—oh why not look like that?
A second face in one’s heart place. How does One see this self come towards
with hands of painted nails, maroon, holding—why hold something like that?—cloths
covered with gibberish, how does One know? Because this proposèd
personage One could seem, floating parts like the almost familiar
loosely strung, comes from within One as does everything concentrated
in massed piece: can One reject it? It’ll be sad, mad; how tedious, this!
Tell One who thou art, one!—One ist thou, One—So what, One’s an any . . .
Welcome me!—Why bother? One wants to be word, not a puppet creatured
with strung pieces anciens . . . Dissolve to True, One wants to light up,
new, but necessarily, what One is. Then falls apart, those parts,
and more words illisible swarm on space where One supposes One is—
territory of moi’s stretching outwards from what painted, candled
reflection—oh not that—origination, in itself the source?
Dost thou get it, reflet, undermined? Grâce aux renseignements, I,
One, keep babbling to ones, waiting till One can read what’s going on . . .
My entourage be near, shadowed and tense. Stay loyal to those,
from the times together, but One’s ruthless—quality essential.
I’ll read these words or else. Art inventing them; are ones making them?
Wideset asks?—How could One? They’re from pooled minds, as is figure collapsed
of Oneself that endures . . . from the future? Qui, canst thou speak for One,
who the fuck ever thou art of Oneself? No, you have to do it.
Read the damned words on the body of bliss. You have to read all those.
Stop asking questions and peruse the verbiage though it’s not too new.
Why can’t One face this sweet language of stars, points of light indépendants?
One—on trouve sa place? no not that. One’s the origin of now.
Thou dost not know the beginning, e’en of the words thou art,
Ark, or poem, One, first maker. What exactly does one mean?
To be in active dominion, to be in charge of the hosts
on One’s skin—no skin—to be first, each moment to be the one,
each of the ark’s words: escaped, ear, despair phoned of blue wrists
for a compulsion of dawn, medicine, frown, or rapax.
Look it up. Qualities cease within one but not their letters.
One’s a shifter’s recognition, is that it? asks the Shaker.
BEHOLD SOME BODIES SHIFTING
.
this think
dawn without sun
. grey One’s eyes of
. the shifters. One of
. never of . see One’s form
. One’s moving word thighs
. feet tis . . .
. the cut-out pacers
not cauterized
my worth lone oriel
. inspired
aye One is epic
. sane One moves word limbs
across grey city now
discontinued
giving slowly back line of eros
bitter . trick . okay
. . from within One
. don’t One want
. that . mad
. others chose too
. have to let ones
as One walks now
to long street
oh so twi
lit god One
leg of
astra; narrator,
groupwisely, the
ones
chose some
Words on One
One’s not different from source of the words cast upon one like light.
Change the sub: isn’t there some sort of light here anyway? asks One—
But so grey! Wideset says. Can’t tell if it’s light, or some other vibrant;
changing one’s appearances, seen and maybe the heard—
Or is that what one does, sees and listens, speaks, within this dreamy world?
One find
s frescoes about, as in the glyph, Look! they’re creaturely—there—
terrifyingly deserted like ones. Are ones deserted? asks kid,
dead France’s—In a sense. Are ones deserted of oneselves? asks kid.
Ones make ones, then leave ones. All in the past. Ones deserted of selves . . .
Shaker says, Don’t get it. One, even you, a deserted artwork,
deserted building or walls of a once-made, Wideset says to one.
But, it’s more like the ones are the very selves. Maybe the selves are left,
left like frescoes then found. As if in time? What is the time of this?
What source word light or thought? Soul suckers tense. Ones must be ones’ own gods
forgotten as the gods. Thus deserted. Beauty of the face like on the walls:
every thing’s a muted, worn color coming to life again. Look!
The colors suddenly burn into non-eyes of the ones who are words . . .
for only word-covered ones see the future and the past of ones.
Are ones better for this, this arrival? Tired of asking questions,
mutters the Parts one: point of being in coma if one’s uncertain.
Let ones choose certain. Soul suckers tense still: Ones can’t judge anything.
Nothing is familiar. Did ones bring “judge”? asks Wideset. Probably . . .
Still haven’t invented a new language. Maybe ones are speaking
it, One says, not knowing. Qui adds, In the mouth: If one’s here it’s new.
Ones stare at each other, masses of words, in the old future dream.
The ghosts are all in the words (one is there) or as on the plaster wall.
exuded in the
from in the
Memories of thee, materialism, when the ones loving
dost I
thou mem, one
mem mems how many things for sale
items, remember things? The soul suckers recall careers, sal’ries—
prizes like cold grass grow on hackneyed thoughts, chef d’oeuvres aren’t
here: the commando’s One: One tolerates this triste confusion
her comptable one one tall
bleeds bleeds from wha no
down rightness , why one height
where it lies visible to one’s grey eyes. Or brown, as birds. Extinct
on all walls sing the sky. When is that, of life soul-suck, where’s on top?