by Alice Notley
The two men wanted to fight, but their friends shouted them down.
Because of rain the game was wet for several hours.
Before the Vice-President can make a decision, he has to lock up the President.
Before handing in your test, check it out for mistakes.
The woman disliked the hotel, so she didn’t pay.
She felt tired, so she went to the doctor for a speed prescription.
She spent her money so fast that now she doesn’t hold it back.
She’s been in a bad mood for days. Why does she get a kick out of it.
I finally told him what I thought of him. I took charge of him.
Jesse James was a famous outlaw, who ran out of banks and trains.
Don’t forget to write to us soon. Look up to us. Take us into account.
Thin Breast Doom
That’s really beautiful!
‘thin breast doom.’ How’d
ya ever think of that?
PHILIP WHALEN
I have these great dreams, like
Sailing up on a lift, & then riding a bicycle
Down through a flaming basket. I have the dream at night
& the sailing in the dream is exactly what
I would be doing the next day. “Fuck, I’m never
Going to make my way.” Right. But it’s a beautiful feeling
To outdo your own misjudgements in the air.
That’s what happens to people who died.
It slows things down instead of making them hectic
& frantic. “I’m not going to be careful anymore.”
I can see all my people flow by so slowly. But
I’m still addicted to consciousness, tho I’ve probably
Only been conscious once in the last six years. But
I am conscious, that’s for sure. Plus, Purity.
Purity means that you have something up
Your sleeve besides a right or a left arm. My
Arms are shot but my something is not. Because
It’s something I learned when I was in a state.
I may have been in a state, but it was my state,
I even gave it a name: New York. Most people are in other
York, they aren’t even in Old York yet, let alone York.
If your new light is intact, your vision is in the tunnel
& your decay has got to keep moving when it’s near the abyss
(move your head). The world sucks, & everything is fucked up
But just do your best within without and you try to get along
Because in impure light things are coming apart because
You have something to move toward and you are in a state:
Don’t get rich
Don’t understand through the heart
Don’t strain your music with verbal skill
but when you hear certain counterpoint
Don’t try to fool the fist that’s tightening
right beneath your heart
Don’t lay back, look pretty, & strike a pose
Don’t be a fool; be Showbiz naturally, &
Give everyone a chance to regroup. Use your bag of tricks.
Generosity is easy, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. But
Don’t show up all substance & polish unless you can stop, look,
listen, & then take off
Taking at least one image away. Everyone has a right to be
judged by their best.
Be dumb enough to actually like it. Don’t worry about Nuclear
War. You won’t get killed.
Memories Are Made of This
Mistress isn’t used much in poetry these days.
Comrade isn’t used much in poetry these days.
Moxie isn’t used much in poetry these days.
The Spring Monsoons isn’t used much in poetry these days,
which is a shame.
Doubloons isn’t used much in poetry these days.
I’m not blue, I’m just feeling a little bit lonesome for some
love again, isn’t used much in poetry these days.
O Ghost Who walks, Boom-lay, Boom-lay, Boomly, Boom! isn’t used
much in poetry these days.
&, I will gather stars, out of the blue, for you, isn’t used much
in poetry these days.
Now, “I’ve got a guy” isn’t used much in poetry these days
And, “Tweet-tweet!” isn’t used much in poetry these days, at least
not at all in its code meaning, which was, “Eat my Birdie!”
Me & Brother Bill Went Hunting isn’t used much in poetry
these days,
& Uijongbu sure isn’t used much in poetry these days (sigh!).
Oh well, Mary McGinnis isn’t used much in poetry these days,
just like, & I have to say it,
“Brigadoon” isn’t used much in poetry these days.
Another New Old Song
FOR DOBE CAREY
My Grandfather was a Hasidic scholar,
he had his picture in LIFE Magazine, swaying
slightly from side to side, his voice with its
characteristic quaver gently raised in sing-song pitch,
engaged in high concentration in the now all but lost art
of pilpul. Last year
two Swiss scientists coined a new word, punding, now the name
for obsessive behavior due to amphetamine abuse. Hah!
The woman, now that I could see her,
was wearing a plain but expensive summer print,
no jewelry, her hair was dark & showed gray,
it was neither short nor long. She was as grand as
Stella Adler, as regal & tough as Bette Davis, a
saltier Mary Worth, all at once or each in turn.
Just what a semi-brokendown 44 year old Private Eye
really needed.
He lived in Cranston, near the city line, next-door to
The Riviera Cafe. She
used to work in Chicago, not in a Department Store. They
are survived beautifully, that unlikely pair, by
their daughter Peg,
an indomitable beauty, who has herself survived
these past 21 years
her own husband, Ed, that enigmatic man,
whose son each passing year makes more clear I am.
Crossing Western Europe on an Eastbound train
I had these half-thoughts & know well they will fade & remain.
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
FOR TOM CAREY
Poem
Yea, though I walk
through the Valley of
the Shadow of Death, I
Shall fear no evil—
for I am a lot more
insane than
This Valley.
You’ll do good if you play it like you’re
not getting paid.
But you’ll do it better if the motherfuckers pay you.
(Motto of THE WHORES
& POETS GUILD—trans.
from The Palatine Anthology
by Alice Notley &
Ted Berrigan. 20 Feb 82)
With
daring
and
strength
men
like
Pollock,
de Kooning,
Tobey,
Rothko,
Smith
and
Kline
filled
their
work
with
the
drama,
anger,
pain,
and
confusion
of
contemporary
life.
Just
like
me.
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark’s Place too, beneath a white moon.
I
’ll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
will be too; but
I’ll be shattered by then
But now I’m not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941—
I’ll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.
Blue Galahad
FOR JIM CARROLL
Beauty, I wasn’t born
High enough for you: Truth
I served; her knight: Love
In a Cold Climate.
Salutation
“Listen, you cheap little liar . . . ”
The Einstein Intersection
This distinguished boat
Now for oblivion, at sea, a
Sweet & horrid joke in dubious taste,
That once, a Super-Ego of strength, did both haunt
Your dreams and also save you much bother, brought
You to The American Shore; Out of The Dead City carried you,
Free, Awake, in Fever and in Sleep, to the
City of A Thousand Suns where, there, in the innocent heart’s
Cry & the Mechanized Roar of one’s very own this, The 20th
Century, one’s
Own betrayed momentary, fragmented Beauty got
Forgotten, one Snowy Evening, Near a Woods, because
The Horse Knows the Way; because of, “The Hat on the Bed,” and
Because of having “Entered the Labyrinth, finding No Exit.”, is
That self-same ship, the “U.S.S. Nature” by name, that D. H. Lawrence
wrote one of his very best poems about;
THE SHIP OF DEATH. (a/k/a THE CAT CAME BACK)!
Pinsk After Dark
Reborn a rabbi in Pinsk, reincarnated
backward time,
I gasped thru my beard full of mushroom barley
soup;
two rough-faced blonde Cossacks, drinking
wine,
paid me no heed, not remembering their futures—
Verlaine, & Rimbaud.
Reds
There isn’t much to say to Marxists in Nicaragua
with .45’s
afraid of the U.S. Secretary of State, eating
celery.
Back in New York, “we saw a beautiful movie,”
Allen said. “It made me cry.”
“I hadda loan him my big green handkerchief, so
he could blow his nose!” Peter Orlovsky laughed.
People Who Change Their Names
Abraham & Sarah.
Naomi—(“Call me not Naomi,
call me Mara; for The Almighty
hath dealt very bitterly with me.”)
Simon, who shall be called Peter.
St. Paul (formerly Saul).
Joseph of Arimathea.
Cain.
Libby Notley (“when I was six I found out my
real name was Alice”);
Francis Russell O’Hara; Didi Susan Dubleyew;
Ron Padgett; Dick Gallup;
STEVE CAREY:
Kenneth Koch (formerly Jay Kenneth Koch):
Jackson Pollock; “Rene” Rilke; William Carlos
Williams;
my mother, Peg;
Guillaume Apollinaire;
“Joe” Liebling: John Kerouac: Joe Howard
Brainard: “Babe Ruth”:
Tom Clark; Anselm Hollo; Clark Coolidge;
George & Katie Schneeman.
Samuel R. “Chip” Delany.
In the Land of Pygmies & Giants
Anselm! Edmund!
Get me an ashtray!
No one in this house
In any way is any longer sick!
And I am the Lord, and owner
of their faces.
They call me, Dad!
Angst
I had angst.
Caesar
Caesar,
I could care less
whether your Grandma
was black,
or white—
you’ll always be a nigger to me.
GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS
(TRANS. TED BERRIGAN)
“Poets Tribute to Philip Guston”
I hear walking in my legs
Aborigines in the pipes
I am the man your father was
Innocence bleats at my last
Black breaths—and tho I was considered a royal
pain in the ass by
Shakespeare’s father, the high alderman,
All the deadly virtuous plague my death!
I could care less?
Blue Herring
fiction appears) for I and only one person’s
eyes. In my more iconoclastic
moments I stifle the impulse to send
such poems, which I do come across
them, back to their authors, taking
same authors to task for presuming
too much and asking them to send
their poem right on to the faceless
As if you hands were innocent
and the lobsters in your groin
And the heart of the scarecrow opens like snow
And something in the branches makes the pigeons
spread their wings
You reach into the branches and grab the red herrings—
the
Fountain of Youth is uncharted
You are its overflowing outline
You can only laugh.
Joy of Shipwrecks
FOR JEFF WRIGHT
Stoop where I sit, am crazy
in sunlight on, brown as stone,
like me, (stoned, not brown; I
am white, like writer trash), see
that stick figure, chalky, also
white, with tentative grin, walking
toward us? Feel your blood stirring?
That’s Eileen, as typical as sunlight
in the morning; typical as the morning
the morning after a typical Eileen night
“Eileen” (detail)
FOR GEORGE SCHNEEMAN
When she comes, landscape listens; heavenly
Winter afternoons; shadows hold their breath;
she is the seal on despair; affection; tunes
sent us of the air.
None may teach her anything; weight;
despair; imperious death;
She is light; she is certain; she
is where the meanings are.
Going, even, she’s impressive; like
internal distance; death; Myles
Where the meanings are; she sends us;
She is of and like the air; a star.
O Captain, My Commander, I Think
I like First Avenue
when the time of the fearful trip is come
& the Lady is for burning, as the day’s begun
to duck
behind the Levy-Cohen Housing Project
whose sand-pond can be seen still, through binoculars,
by the First Tyrant-Mistress of The Near West;
sky falls; & night; & me, too, yr star:
When the lilacs come I’ll flip
til thrice I hear your call, darkling thrush.
Polish Haiku
The Pope’s learning Welsh:
(he’s an alien)
More power to him
!
Ode
Spring banged me up a bit
& bruised & ruddy &
devastatingly attractive
I made
2 A. M. Phone call to Bill Brown
‘How long is your foot?’
‘Oh about 12 inches.’
‘Well stick it up your Ass.’
“and Day rang from pool to hilltop
like a bell.”
Sunny, Light Winds
those exhausting dreams
of angry identification, a dog
like ego, Snowflakes as kisses—the
ability to forget is a sign of a
happy mind—at least,
Philip thinks it is, & he’s happy,
sometimes.
But I don’t want no cornbread &
molasses!
Never. I don’t want to live in the untidy
moment! Forget it. I don’t want no
lover
who always wants to be the boss!
Want! Want! Want!—it’s all right, I’m
Just having a little fun, Mother.
unhappy love affairs,
are only for madmen
revery
What a Dump
or,
Easter
FOR KATIE SCHNEEMAN
a metal fragrant white
Capitol of beantown
sans dome; rubber & metal pieces
of Kentucky; chicken-bones &
Light Cavaliers; jeans; tops; balls; caps;
“Now I have to have life
after dreams”
“& now I’m running running
running
down the King’s Highway”
“& now I am Lily, Rosemary, & the Jack
of Hearts;
One-eyed Jill; Pietro Gigli; 2 cats:
Howard; & Katie, my heart; & mine”
“Mine is melancholy”
“Mine is ½ gristle, ½ dust”
“Mine is Luke Skywalker, & his parts:
the Wookie part; the Landro part; the Han dynasty;
C-3PO”
“Mine is this ‘Squeeze-box’;
the Good; the Beautiful; the True; & Bucky Dent.