by Alice Notley
Ghost or Dancer straight? Substance or shadow, who is swish?”
The weight of the rain remains inside
trying to read, sorting, ordering,
doing in the waves of her walking
from coffee to cup & back to chair, sitting unseen
by the bed
where by now I am
going in the execution position.
Normal Depth Exceeds Specified Value
20th Century man strives toward the unfinished-machine exalted state.
Do not judge a man by his actions.
Birds cannot express the satisfaction I feel.
Happiness is often a rebound from hard work.
So, let us draw the patterns from the particulars—
In a pig’s butt!
Americans emphasize genius over discipline
& it isn’t going to work:
the temptation to remain alone in the house. . . .
to live Revolution his own way on a day-to-day basis. . . .
If you’re not out in 5 minutes, we’re going to burn the place down!
. . . . Never act one-on-one with a co-actor.
The past six months every knock on the door
has been someone in anguish. . . .
Winged Pessary
There I was
flat on my back at 30,000 ft.
getting my kicks
from a head
stuck in its own cloudy trousers
Your river is deep
it’s muddy
My river is wide brown mud from
it seems an unacceptable tube
You puzzle me
The corn is green
Goya doesn’t
Your blood is the color of baked clay
Your lines are always parallel
and short
Your orchards a chalice
Your acres one sandbox
after another
precariously balanced
tilt
you’re beneath my notice
up above my head it’s blue a funny thing
& I can hear a band of angels
& Joni James sing:
“it’s time you knew
Old girl you’re through
All you can do is count the raindrops
Falling on little girl blue.”
Now passing over Oklahoma
23 minutes in a life I
guess I was just passing through
That kind of love is awful
This wheel’s on fire
smoke clouds
hot wind
air-bag
Mayday.
Do You Know Rene?
One and one
leave me alone
I have to get some sleep
It’s tiring always being a bore
sassy & fast but kind of crass
why am I writing now
this is the other thing to do
It’s all I do
you can go home again
Philadelphia likes that
Merlin & Herman like it too
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
Hubba Hubba
Help, he’s an intellectual dear dear
oh dear. The Mamas & The Papas
got old. The fat one died. I’m
practically asleep now.
Sunset Blvd:
Peter lives there. With a Filipino gardener
& his Brooke.
It’s only a mystery.
I’m positively boiling myself
It’s not that I yearn for him
I just need him
In desperation I got on top
What an ugly view
looking down at you
Steve Carey
Huge collapsed Mountain Enters from Stage Right,
Deftly lowers Selfe to Floor, next to Bed,
&, Seated, Pours Forth with Basso-Profundo Eloquence
in Seemingly Limitless string (Stream),
Icebergs, fragments
of the Poem of These States,
from Backwards to 1977—
1978.
43
no strange countries
no women
no dance, no clothes
still a wild & strange tune
a song that rises in the blood
not much blood
no virgins
no velvet
no tropical laziness
more eyes though
two more
two eyes,
what do you make of that?
A Spanish Tragedy
He’s literally a shambles as a person
who is in a responsible position Hanging
by a thread in one of the rooms of his
house Essentially what she is doing skitters
off into the air so slovenly that the most
fragmented shell does it to him & he does it
right back to her. This reminds me of cynical
& other good things that are totally pretentious
but sort of hold water so I absolutely won’t
lift a finger why should I? to help these
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
ISOLATE
Iris
petal
Custom chopper
lake
smoke
hickory logs
whinny
Austin-Healy.
cuts
insect
nest
smoke.
A rosette
A niggertoe
flower
almond
Eggs
scooters
a shed
dirt
The Atlantic fleet.
PHOSPHORUS
Old Hen
and egg
an egg.
brooch in
a wet bird
diamond rodent
A rubber hose
crinoline
BLUE Aphid
Spore
Traps
Nucleii
Flocking
Vegetal
Belfry
Cages
Lava
Poppy
Wing
Aerial
Plankton
mirror
hutch
light
venom
hydrocarbons
premises
tubs
Eat
a pan
edible
antlers
deer
Cradle
Druid?
Hinges
Lava
Xerox
National
Eclair
MUCUS
HAY
Orchid
smoke
song
Pharmacology
piss
Church
Bourbon
Anutt
Old Mines
Turtle
Leper
smokes
a cake.
Scarlet Fever
a baton
Coda: (to ISOLATE)
Antique
Bank
Cover
of which
is number
.FOR BRUCE ANDREWS
(FROM FILM NOIR).
Ronka
I’m gonna embarrass
my mother
&
I’m gonna embarrass
my brother
&
I’m gonna embarrass,
even, my wife,
but I’m not gonna embarrass my life,
O No,
I’m not gonna embarrass my life,
not ever,
I’m not gonna embarrass my life,
Not for you, or her, or anyone.
I’m never gonna embarrass my life—
except if I do . . .
& if it does,
Tough Shit.
My 5 Favorite Records
FOR DENNIS COOPER
1. Le Marteau Sans Maitre : Pierre Boulez (Odyssey 32 16
0154); McKay, alto; Gleghorn,
flute; Thomas, viola; Kraft,
vibraphone; Remsen, xylorimba;
Norman, guitar; Goodwin, percussion;
Robert Craft conducting.
2. Nonet : Ludwig Spohr (London Stereo Treasury STS–1-5074)
Members of the Vienna Philharmonic.
3. Missa Caput : Guillaume Dufay (HNH 4009) Clemencic
Consort.
4. Nonaah : Roscoe Mitchell (Nessa N–9 / 10) Mitchell, Braxton,
Favours, Abrams, Lewis, Jarman, McMillan,
Threadgill.
5. The Knot Garden : Sir Michael Tippit (Philips 6700 063)
Minton, Barstow, Gomez, Hemsley, Carey,
Tear, Herincx; Orchestra of the Royal
Opera Covent House Garden, Colin Davis
conducting.
(Research by Art Lange, music critic, The Chicago Reader,
Chicago, Illinois.)
From Sketches of Amsterdam
FOR ALICE
“I wrote these songs when
I was young
but, I’m here again”
stepping out
down Oude-Zuids Voorburgwal
above the yellow moon sliding
over the canals of Amsterdam
a sojourner macrocosm
carrying
SOJOURNER MICROCOSMS
& Frank’s COLLECTED POEMS along
with my own books of songs
going too quickly
but not too quickly
I hope
in the directions (a map)
of
De Kosmos
for to sing with my brothers & sisters
of the pleasures of living with you
that surround me now
in busy congenial gloomy evening air
where
tho I’m seething with rage
like any star
it’s cool
the half-darkness
of this not unusual day’s
oncoming night
because
everywhere I am you are
clear & bright & right.
Look Fred, You’re a Doctor, My Problem Is Something Like This:
In the Summer between 5th & 6th grade
We moved from Cranston near the City Line
down into the heart of South Providence, or, from
an urban suburb to the White Irish working-class
inner-city. It was 1946. From that
time on, in grade-school, no, that year was
anonymous except spasmodically, but from the
next year on, Jr-High School, on into & thru
High School, at various jobs, thru one
semester at Catholic Providence College, then
3 years in the Army, Korea, and return
to College in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1957) right
up to about 1960, no matter where I
was, in what situation, with the exception of
on the football playground, in card games, and at
home, reading, I didn’t
know the language and I didn’t know
the rules; and naturally I didn’t
know what it was I didn’t know, nor,
therefore, what was it I did know, because
I did know something. In the
army I began to learn about knowing
the rules, and so about myself and rules.
Back in College, while easing
into knowing the rules & what to do with that,
I evidently had begun hearing the language. In
1960, & from then on, I got hit by that special
useful sense that one could, easily, anytime or where,
pick up, & so “know” the language and the rules. It
all had to do with Surface, and it didn’t have
to be shallow.
I took that self to New York City, into
poetry, to Art News, into Readings, thru marriage, into
teaching and then into not teaching, and in and out of
small-time crime. Now, there’s a new, further
place, whose name I didn’t quite catch, and, therefore,
whose language & rules I can barely discern as
up ahead, let alone “what” they might be. It’s
1979. I’m 44.
Compleynt to the Muse
AFTER PHILIP WHALEN
Lady, why will you insist on
Coming back into my life only when
It’s too late, I’ve just this moment
Ago stepped out the backdoor
Of my body, gone ahead into Relativity,
Am looking down over 300 years
Past, Present & Future of my people,
Whom shall be known hereafter as
The White Mountain. They act like
You are with them, each & every
One of the big dumb-bells, & so
They drink and fuck and throw pots
And pick up the children at school
Or Write seventeen poems a week, ad-
Dressing You in the familiar, but I,
I don’t mind at all, now that I’m simply
Air, a large hunk of see-through molecules,
A benevolent smile, & at night a closeness,
Cooling one hemisphere at a time, my bumps
Glittering over & above everyone are perceived
As stars, & friends drink wine far below where
I am grinning & don’t care. I mean, not heavily.
But now you return, and so, I have too,
Into my ashy beard & dusty head, my pink baby’s torso
And you are laughing, and I am once again
Lying in the world, and I’m holding my own, and I’m
Chuckling like Father Christmas to keep from crying.
And it’s all right, my dear, I’m glad you came back. No,
Please stay. Honestly, I’m not dying. Not
For a long time, yet. I’m only just lying.
Rouge
“it” means “this”.
I myself now
“know”
that. so,
“it” is true.
i.e., as a matter of course, all
knowing
being
self-evident:
(knowledge):
“it” and “that”,
here & there &
vice-versa
constellate reality.
It made, all systems
“Go”.
Just talk.
Coffee And
I am thinking of my old houses
369 Smith Street & 249 Potters Avenue
and the communicability
of houses—and that a house
can’t be just a home, and I
tore up my oldish poem, “Hello, Goodbye”
and
another even older one, “One View / 1960”
and started on this new one, “Dogtown.”
Now I’m across the street I crossed
when at last I came to it—and
beginning
getting down to it.
Three Little Words
FOR LEWIS WARSH
I had a really sad childhood, lived mostly alone,
like everyone else did. Adolescence
Was murder, & weird; but I could dig it.
Manhood was far out—and also, during it,
I paid back one hundred times over each & every son-of-a-bitch
male & female, dog, lizard & insect
Who’d fluffed up my lonely sad childhood with Absolute Terror
or whatever it was that eventually grew up to be this blind, seething
Rage, still & always rising up from out those tiny “unforgettable moments”
we are all all of us the cause of, tho Time
Excuses due to m
itigating circumstances but
never forgets; and guilt is always freely given,
Freely received, come rain or come shine, or
haven’t you noticed? You will, believe me.
Now old, or at least more often, I spend much
of each day
Contriving these, my dumb born songs, my memoirs. And to no
purpose; rather, quite simply, this is what one
Has been given. I was born in the Bronx, one hot November 9th,
in 1944. Having reached 5 December, 1980, this cold
Saturday afternoon, I’m almost finished reading to the serious
Manhattan hodgepodge of my current fans & friends,
The large aged husbands & the matronly sexpot wives, with
their daughters at my feet & their sons at the breast,
While they guzzle the bourbons & beers that lighten up today.
These are my companions for life, & they love me. But you pay
and you pay and you pay.
Round About Oscar
FOR STEVE CAREY
Reality is the totality of all things possessing Actuality
Existence, or Essence. Ergo, nowhere one goes
Will one ever be away enough
From wherever one was. The tracks lead uphill.
Power sits heavily for us on those we’ve grown up with.
However,
Uphill tracks usually offer good views, after a while,
While the answer to what’s new is, often, an
Indictment of an intolerable situation.
HOGS SIZE DISTURBS SYCAMORES. BRUINS
DEVOUR MAPLE LEAFS. STEEL CURTAIN FALLS ON HOUSTON.
COWBOY DUO RIDES RAMS INTO SUNSET. Quality tells.
Absolute quality tells absolutely nothing.
The By-Laws
FOR GEORGE SCHNEEMAN
I’d like to show you something. Please look at it.
I get blamed for everything that goes wrong. I’m always left holding the bag.
I’m sorry I threw away the notes I took in High School. I should have been nicer to them.
If you’re not sure about how to spell a word, how can you look it up in the dictionary.
Please take these things off my desk. They’re breaking my heart.
If there aren’t enough workers at the factory, production will be fucked up.
He’ll read the speech over before delivering it. He wants to enliven it with mistakes.
He’s a very successful young man. He’s really getting off.
He didn’t tell us the entire truth. He was afraid something smelled.
I found out he was lying by standing around in his background.