by Alice Notley
Poem
The Nature of the Commonwealth
the whole body of the People
flexed her toes and
breathed in pine.
I’m the one that’s so
radical, ’cause all I do is pine. Oh I just
can’t think of anything—
No politics. No music. Nobody. Nothing but sweet
Romance. Per se. De gustibus non disputandum est.
Flutters eyelashes. Francis, my house is falling down.
Repair it. Merry Christmas.
A Certain Slant of Sunlight: Out-takes
Bardolino
Allen & Peter, heads close together, Allen
weeps magically during “Reds”:
later, drinking pepsi in my living room
they discuss with Robert Lowell Dr. Williams’
Communist wheelbarrow—but
Peter says his own
Wheelbarrow is blue.
Postcard 12/2/82
Feb. 11, 1982. Last night reading Permanent War
Economy by Sennyor Melman for 30 pages
& toward the end of the book in the
appendix Says 1F-16 Super fighter plain costing
6 or 10 million could provide Houses for 240
families—Peter Orlovsky
(“Reading this note, and thinking about Thomas Wolfe:
12 Feb 82
—Ted Berrigan”).
New Poets of England & America
“the taste is pleasant, and the insane
perfection, mild . . . .”
Get Away from Me You Little Fool
“I have always been emotional beyond belief, so
there simply must be plenty money in my life: it’s
not that I like money, I just need not to
not have enough, ever! So, if I had to be
a leaf, why ever so many kinds would do—
they all tremble, don’t they? I know that my
Redeemer liveth; there is a Lord will provide,
somewhere, for specialists! I’m not cold meat loaf,
after all, damp & wooly, dontcha know?”
“You lack charm.”
4 Metaphysical Poems
“Get a job at the railroad”
“Loan me a few bucks”
“I gotta buy some pills”
“So I can understand John Ashbery.”
Who Was Sylvia?
Queen name
ice sign
was all that remained
of her suicide note.
Anselm
it is a well-lit afternoon
across the incredible static of time-space-language
reading a book
“to be born again”
between bouts
through two layers of glass
I call your name.
In the mirror
Anselm’s dreams
the dimensions of the world
the performance of the world
my beauties
smoke
writing
Wednesday Evening Services
Blindfold shores leaving sad
an audience of dancers
Frank O’Hara’s dead & we are not
The General Returns
From One Place
To Another
the program was dedicated to him
but I couldn’t make it
Head Lice
I have no brain.
My body is covered with vermin (a few).
People are calling me names.
I deserve these names.
My body is being transformed into glass,
with a few vermin on it.
So be it.
Little Travelogue
When seeking sky you’re left with sky, then
“we kill ourselves to propagate our kinde”—We sleep
and these guys come in with hypodermics & spray us
with ice water—
Monkeys press switches & little babies freak out & cry,
“pick me!” “pick me!”—Oh, Daddy, I was a flower, &
When I listened to George Shearing, they told me, I broke
the World’s Record for rapid eye movement! Then, I don’t know
What I did then, but it was green, & then red, & then
blue & yellow!
Sleeping Alone
It’s a previous carnation, where?
I think it lived in the shiny lapel
of my rust colored dinner jacket
slung over the closet doorknob
the night of the senior prom
at St. Xavier’s High, when I was
Babe Harrington’s date and she
was selected queen of the prom
& we danced the first dance alone
just the two of us, to her own
personal request “Embraceable You.”
The closet was in the blue room
far away upstairs. Babe married
Joe Fogerty and gained four pounds.
“Another has
come to the
sky mirror . . .”
(He in the peeling silver eats my drugs)
The Pope’s Nose
FOR ANNE WALDMAN
a nose, heavy, square, & massive;
large, flesh irrigated with blood;
a light grave voice; his face
a long rectangle; pink; poetry
pours out of it like kool-aid
at unofficial noon it is crumpled
like a kleenex:
here, blow.
The LADY, JUST WHEN I THINK I KNOW
YOU, YOU TAKE CAPRICIOUS FORM Travelling
Circus & Road Show (or, IN THE LABYRINTH)
Geranium’s
another word
for
“my heart is on my
sleeve”
. . . coming from the corner,
heading for the stairs.
NOW APPEARING IN:
MANHATTAN
TODAY THRU _______
Treason of the Clerks
They set you up. Took yr stuff. Gave
it to me.
I made a Little Monster with it.
He’s the enemy of a Wookie.
He turns grass black and puts it
on him so
You can’t see certain parts of his body.
(The Bad parts.) I can’t talk to you.
All A-Glower Went My Love Riding
Hitch on here
My little timeless
Teeth & gums, you tiny
Particles of mid-Victorian Bakery
Furniture, that Dickens, Tennyson, &
Bob Creeley saw, where fingertip & moon
Remain infinitely separate, the way
Specific chemical hatred & twizzlers
Do, or one-inch foot in Nature’s
Chrysler Building, blue and gold, sí,
That is what they, we, are. And
Why not? You take a hike? I’ll be
Your legazine, oh buss! &
we’ll leave their golden worlds
while the band plays on, we drive us.
Climbed by Grandma We Stand on Morning’s Hill
Now she guards her chalice in a temple
of fear; once
a Hardy Boy, a philosopher, a
blue Christmas light:
Boils secretly Biotherm . . .
. . . the time you . . . when you . . .
In praise of %*@!!! *?@! and
in class shouting “Dig it!”
(I told them you were left-handed).
With Eileen in Locarno
We commemorated a joyous (if
unrequited) love—because
it was in another country—
because we were each other people
—because the love that we
celebrated, did that in commemoration
of, had been neither ours,
nor, most certainly, unrequited. We<
br />
were both so sad, we laughed & then
we cried in Locarno. We wished
our ashes to be mingled together
forever & forever & forever. Next
year, in Cho-fu-sa.
St. Mark’s By-the-Pacific
Light, informal, & human
Are your seasons, danger
Waters coming, pass us by,
bye-bye—lightly warm &
humid are your tropics, high
above the footpath past the sty.
The pigs grunt no more beneath
the window, I’m glad we ate them
The goats are gone, so no one else
can get them—& the clouds’ reflections
look like a pride of lions
in your eyes. This disease isn’t terminal,
so it’s restful; we fuck & think over wine
here, there are eggs & cream in the fridge,
it’s so divine to be here!
Three Lost Years
FOR PEGGY DECOURSEY
For a brief time Acting Chief
Didn’t harmonize actively with an easy
View of life—pinball machines being played
By preposterous kid-wits on the backs
of Flat-bed Pick-up trucks—by
Land’s End in glad—or else sad-ness—But
Why should I care? Grace falls
On anyone who can walk out of Ballroom A;
And out off into the Sky-Vista! Sure. &
So does Peggy.
Butchie’s Tune
FOR ALEX & ADA
What’s the number I request.
When the band began to play?
a fragrant flowered shrub blush
and one cannot go back, except in time
This mushroom walks in.
“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!”
He is not really thinking.
Yet I take him purely as treasure.
This morning we were footprints in the
snow. And The Band Played On.
Listening to the words from the morning bush
all the day,
We sleep & dream our lives away. & so, a
tendency to get surprised rarely is absent,
this perfect day.
La Bohème
I’m not difficult but there are just certain things
that this here that are not this here, & no
matter what you say, No! (no) I don’t ever do that . . .
But when you think about it, it seems that
this here doing nothing could use a head if anyone
nice has one they aren’t using, no?
Turkeys
FOR TOM CAREY
They have bent.
They cling.
They attack & capture.
It is a treat, a nightmare, a punch in the face.
He wanders by himself.
He lingers. He idles
In his little house.
He absorbs, and is absorbed.
He begins to bear down on what he sees:
Young faces, puzzling argot, meat, or “the postulant”:
You nod and scrunch up your face and chuckle.
Let me out of here you silently shriek.
“I’ve got to hang up now, a man is yelling at me.”
A pill always seems to be about something.
To a Young Painter*
“Ah Fitz but we are profound
chaps—we word lads.”
“We ride in our round paper boats
From Ireland and Israel & Iceland without
coats. We feed our slaves
Locusts, our kids Moths & oats; and we starve
our cave-painters because they are sloths!” Love,
Mr. P. F. C. Hemingstein
Upside Down
You don’t have to be Marie Curie
or even Simone de Beauvoir already
to write your memoirs, you know? after
all, we all have a polymorphous perverse
first person singular, don’t we? . . . .
If you don’t want to see & hear, don’t feel
like it, say . . . maybe wd rather worry, or
sulk. . . . Still you do have to remember, there’s
no way to put blinders on one’s insides, you
know . . . or do you? Sure you can.
Der Asra
Every day back & forth
The exquisite daughter of the Sultan walked
At evening by the fountain,
Where the white water splashes.
Every day the young slave
Stood at evening by the fountain,
Where the white water splashes;
Every day he grew pale, and paler.
Then, one evening, the Princess, turning
Came up to him with these words:
Thy name will I know! thy
Country! thy Kin!
And the slave spoke: I am called
Mohamet. I am from Yemen.
And my people are the Asra
who die, when they love.
HEINRICH HEINE
(RANS. TED BERRIGAN & GORDON BROTHERSTON)
Fern
I had this dream
I was supposed
to get married
to a sensitive prince, &
together
we wd score for hash
from our maid-of-honor, Sancho Panza—
A choir of Windmills in their cassocks & surplices
were going to surround us in song for
the rest of our lives,
beautiful boy sopranos, singing with aching purity, the
only song they know: THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY.
my whole life? I hid myself beside a burning
bush,
My verdant response
to monogamy
in Spring. And
The sea was tumbling in harness
As I sailed out to die.
San Francisco
You took me
for everything
I have
I had it
Thanks
for that
You
O, Sexual Reserve
Why don’t we
call up
David
Hockney &
ask him for
a thousand?
One Day in the Afternoon of the World
FOR ERJE AYDEN
I never said I was right, or wrong.
I said I was lucky. I waved a leg
in the air. First, I’m going to eat this,
Then I’m going to eat you! Just two
High livers, stretched-out on the Elephant grass,
mouths dripping with blood, & wheezing like fire-sirens,
We passed our long love’s morn:
So ends my song, like a pair of she-lions.
Two Serious Ladies
That’s all
one life needs—
Two serious ladies.
Down Moon River
Talking
To Charlie on the stoop
Wearing asbestos suit
I see the really horrible fly
On top of the yellow rose—I
Can’t believe it, it’s so ugly
I just don’t have much conversation
to give, these days, now I’ve sung my ABC’s:
(next time won’t you sing with me?): She
sang beside herself, beyond
The genius of the Sea.
At 80 Langton Street (S.F.)
FOR BILL BERKSON
I stand at the dock in judgement
literally already condemned
but also am here to be informed,
as my illustrious colleagues Anselm Hollo,
Lorenzo Thomas, and Kathy Acker
have done before me.
I am pleased and flattered
to be joined in such Noble
Company, & only wish that I too might spark
giant &
seething controversies & provoke angry
exchanges & bloody fistfights; but, like Anselm Hollo
I am merely a National Treasure, so, what I am
going to do is talk, which is what I do, plus read my poems.
Bill Berkson will take care of the rest, the doing what must
be done part.
So, let us begin. I’m about to do so, I will offer you this
one word of advice, in front.
Duck.
* “(He had a way of wearing very casual clothes.)”
Last Poems
Robert (Lowell)
Like the philosopher Thales
who thought all things water
and fell into a well . . . trying to
find a car key . . . (“it can’t be here . . .”)
We rest from all discussion,
drinking, smoking, pills . . .
want nothing
but to be old, do nothing, type & think. . . .
But in new December’s air
I could not sleep, I could not write my name—
Luck, we’ve had it; our character’s gone public—
We could have done worse. I hope we did.
Today in New York City
FOR BERNADETTE & LEWIS
Gay doormen face a severe shortage of cocaine
The White House announced today.
The crisis
Which could blow the lid off
Of Boys Town
is a result of Latest Great Depression
Brought on by
Savage game of “Go Fish”
In Congress
On the street where you live.
Citizens are being asked
To tie up their children
And to walk their clones
In groups of five
At 55 mph
Police said today.
2.
The President said
When Mars squares Saturn