Alice Notley

“Flowery mantle.” “Homeric sacrifice?” “noise of darkness” “fear of darkness” “now mantle of innocence” “King of his death now” “Home” “I’ve come home” “He said, ‘I’ve come home’” “They were sacrificed for nothing, for distant” “instants of thought” “All for your thinking” “He said, ‘I’ve come home; I've finally come home’ then he died” “flowers” “Magnolias & lilies” “innocent now” “I’ve come home. Who’s there? at home? all the dead?” “To come home from the war” “years after” “To die” “To wear mantle light honey” “mantle dead white” “in sunlight, in late” “Homeric?” “he said it was hideous” “all of it” “hideous” “every instant in Nam” “theatre of worsts” “now mantle of white” “phosphorous & lilies?” “trees now lean down” “over our faces” “Tell details of battle?” “As” “in an epic?” “As” “in lies?” “We don’t want that now” “We want only our mother of dirt” “our mantle of white” “want each other of soul; and” “we want” “our mother of spirit” (“rich sweet in dirt”) “we want” “our father” “of leaves” “We want our fate fragmented to air for our children to breathe;” “light on water for widows to think near” “moonlight on water to ease you” “we want no poet, we want our homes in the earth” “that’s all we can have” “want no place in history or poetry” “want our wanderings our sorrows, after the war not remembered,” “we want not to pain her” “we want our love mingled” “with yours” “no place in history” “only in love” “remove us from history,” “All of us sacrificed” “all for a thought” “They played with our souls.” “Used our souls to fight, be their willfulness” “willfulness” “we were made their willfulness,” “nothing but that—” “And you too, you yielded, one way or another” “to their will.” “They” “who are the subject” “of all history” “& of poems” “as if” “we have ever, in all ways” “yielded to them” “by speaking of” “always speaking of” “Kings” “presidents” “the Great Men” “their mistresses” “Generals” “Communist Kings” “Leaders” “Warriors” “West Point of Greeks” “West Point of Greeks against” “West Point of Trojans” “Isn’t it more beautiful, under the Earth?” “Or to be sunlight, not history?” “Now I can love, & only” “now” “Remove us from history but not from your air” “History is willfulness” “is” “precious parts” “History’s for those” “who ask not” “to be forgiven” “We ask to be forgiven” “& loved” “No, we ask” “to be absolved” “And to be” “elemental” “ask leaves & wind” “Ask leaves bending down towards our faces” “Ask light & dirt” “we ask” “our children” “we ask our wives” “Ask that they live” “We ask to be” “with the ones that we killed” “To history” “saying nothing” “being that” (“nothing”) “& to history” “having been” “nothing.” * “In this moment” “before” “anyone, ever” “died” “before we were born?” “in this moment forever before” “before we went to a war” “Before we died” “In this moment, now” “In this moment before, it is not before” “In this very moment” “where is it” “where we haven’t died” “or died inside” “In this moment we haven’t” “in this moment, no one” “in this moment, no one has ever, died” (“But I have been born”) “in this moment” “where, where is it” “in moment” “who’s here” “Catch it catch it” “moment where we are” “merely as it is autonomous,” “autonomous moment” “Without a war” “without a guilt,” “Can we exist” “Outside of what was?” “in the air of our thoughtless, female, moment” “the air of our moment” “not grievous not iron” “moment, not air” “but air of our moment” (“woman-made?”) “faithful, faithful & boundless” “reticent & light” “fond, & kindly” “not reticent but shiny,” “morning-starry, not bloody” “not bloody, in the morning” “in the star” “it is a star” “it is autonomous” “star & it’s mild” “Is it a little” “of us” “from before” “we were born?” (“that was never”) (“I know”) “It is now” “autonomous” “moment of white,” “white flowers, stars & white flowers,” “not before we were born, in this moment of our childhood” “have we our childhood” “in this moment he has his childhood, I think, it is center of” “moment, of childhood” “center of, moment” “wings of his pigeons” “white & grey wings” “moment a feathery” “center of senses” “center of sensation, is this moment” “Center, as sensation falls away” “He has his love” “this moment” “forever” “center of brown eyes” “seen through his eyes” “Only through” “the eyes” “the real eyes” “of the dead” “this moment” “through his eyes” “as child, as childhood” “Only through” “the personality” “can this be” “of the dead” “the lovely person” “holding” “this moment” “this moment in place” “this moment forever” “center of sensation” “Soldiers, we are center” “of the morning” “we are moment” “we are dearest” “we are heart” “Soldiers,” “we are pleasing” “we are center” “we are moment” “are not soldiers” “never soldiers” “never were.” * “Mask now” “is complies” “complies” “with the forms (too much of everything, everywhere”) “All of this is” “the mask” “my mother’s mask” “& mine” “wronglike forms, too many of” “Complying, to live here” “always, more complying” “Too many things” “machines” “too many” “too many clothes” “cheap roses” “kleenexes” “membranous” “bags, of plastic” “Too many ideas” “vocabularies no color” “too many paintings” “too many songs” “too many Tarot decks” “& poems” “& books” “Too many” “things to eat” “too many” “machines” “magic machines” “too much magic” “much too much of it” “Stupor” “distress” “& abandoning of others” “too much news” “news” “everything” “made the same” “too many names” “too much knowledge” (“knowledge, so endless” “is nothing”) “A war” “more news, more to know about, to know” “Excuse for anger” “indignation” “you can still keep your money” “know the terms of news” “terms” “& Not be nature” “don’t be nature” “mute” “not knowing the” “terms” “Know what news knows” “What words know” “Do words know?” “No they don’t, only flesh knows only

Somewhere out of antiquity someone work with me. When transferring a thought, the connectors and clauses recede: you get it. I got it — The rest of the language, beauty and play I am your master, the thought says — I disagree I’m thinking about the church where we held my brother’s funeral. He says, I was there: it hurt me; you cried too much; I don’t mind later. I just want to be with you, the thought says You mean thee thought or his thought? The rocks are like stars, gully full of stars. If I go with anyone anywhere, if they’d think sweetly to me. No one hears. Relax your shoulders. I’m singing to you over and over “to a new sex.” Sometimes it seems like there’s a lizard for each rock necklaces of lives, there’s room for an infinity of minds. Thoughts. Anywhere. Enter my head if you wish. No ends or purposes Prevailed fortunes. I have a destiny. My death will not complete it.

No one loves you more ... more ... more ... There were sincere lies everywhere placed directly before the next step. Does everyone pretend, part of alive I am proposing words — All structures have crumbled in earliest death. I’m crossing the yellow sands It’s so hard to know without relating it, to you shaping a heart, take hold of me and someone says I don’t get it! You don’t have to have love, or you do, which? I don’t think you do; before the explosion? I was here without it and have been in many places loveless. I don’t want you to know what I’m really thinking or do I, before creation when there might be no “I knew” Everything one’s ever said not quite true. He or she be- trays you; why you want to hurt me ... bad Want to, or just do? Treason was provoked everywhere even here, by knowing one was one and I was alone, a pale hue. The sky of death is milky green today, like a poison pool near a desert mine. Picked prickly pear fruit and I tasted it, then we drove on, maybe to Yarnell. These outposts where I grew up; I didn’t do that I have no ... identity, and the love is an object to kick as you walk on the blazing bare ground, where ... sentimental, when what I love, I ... don’t have that one word. This fire all there is ... to find ... I find it You have to find it. It isn’t love, it’s what?

1. X-Men #141 & 142 2. Defenders #125 3. Phoenix: The Untold Story 4. What if. . .? #31 5. New Mutants #1 6. New Mutants #2 7. Micronauts #58 8. Marvel Universe #5 9. New Mutants #14 10. Secret Wars #1

The light so thick nothing’s visible, cognoscenti I knew them, stupid apes. Real apes know more Before we said apes. I know how to be you bet- ter — a stupid voice. You must find a mind to respect — why? There was someone with ear buds, speaking gibberish who wouldn’t stop walking beside me; freckle-spattered. I had to ask the métro attendant for help; she extricated him from me ... I respect his chaotic speech, mild adhesive force because it makes no sense. I am back on the alley, discovering adults are un- trustworthy: someone’s lying ... about a fight between a teenage girl and boy — he pushed her hard — first she badly scratched him, she’s worse, his mother says. I’m back at pre-beginning, I don’t want to go through that again. There is no sexuality in chaos, there’s no style, nor hope. I want style — apes have style, people have machines. Show me something to respect This bleuet growing out of a wall on rue d’Hauteville. I picked it and pressed it in a diary. Every once in a while I respect a moment. I am back at pre-beginning: I don’t want to care beyond this ... sudden hue in the sand, yellow or spotted with an hallucinated iridescence. The one who is stalking me ... there has often been someone stalk- ing me. My destiny. He’s gone, stay here in this, I can’t be harmed if I’m the only one who’s thought of being here. Aren’t you lonely? I don’t know.

The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne, Especially in the way that lucid means shining and bright. What her husband George Burns called her illogical logic Made a halo around our syntax and ourselves as we laughed. George Burns most often was her artful inconspicuous straight man. He could move people about stage, construct skits and scenes, write And gather jokes. They were married as long as ordinary magic Would allow, thirty-eight years, until Gracie Allen's death. In her fifties Gracie Allen developed a heart condition. She would call George Burns when her heart felt funny and fluttered He'd give her a pill and they'd hold each other till the palpitation Stopped—just a few minutes, many times and pills. As magic fills Then fulfilled must leave a space, one day Gracie Allen's heart fluttered And hurt and stopped. George Burns said unbelievingly to the doctor, "But I still have some of the pills."

An early sadness for the future (as in dreams of myself young and sad) accompanies my departure towards a conventional story: a town of girls a New York City dormitory. And so a trail proceeds from our house on the top of the hill down the back way of former army barracks and past the borrowed church (ours had no tank) where I was baptized reasoning “it must be true” out of the love I had for my mother. And Tony’s house there across the street from it absolutely in the Mexican gully in dreams of which he and I still fight armed enemies he stepped on a land mine in Nam when I remind my brother, twenty years after his face contorts he knows the look of that death a week before he himself dies blood-tinged ruddy-winged, but that’s another dream-site the Needles Cemetery inelegant unbeautiful and dear and dry. See how many loves, how much thus sadness in the future begins to haunt that walk down that hill towards the highway away to the dormitory as I go to New York to sever love’s connections and make the “real ones” generated by actual mating by beauty and clothes the black wool suit with its three button jacket the oddly puffed-sleeved orange sweater and an orange and midnight- blue paisley waistless dress. New trail there, Brett knows my future love though I don’t hitchhikes with him to California years before I catch up to the poets in Iowa City that will be in ’69, my brother hasn’t yet signed up for Nam then when he gives me rattles off a rattler which I keep in my wooden India box I still have until they stink. I can’t keep track of the track there’s nothing but sidetrails of love and sadness so love is all that makes my people act they go to war for love you know, of who and what you are like I was baptized by the cruellest-lipped prissiest-mouthed man in the world for love, but I could just have gone swimming walked back up love’s hill back up at the house you can get to the pool barefoot if you can find enough bush or telephone-pole shadows. We’d all swim together I’d tread water dreaming of the future but a wilder larger eye birdlike distant holds the pool in its pupil anyone’s that too, and hold the enlarging water sad how not be why don’t the smart girls in New York know this why don’t you or I know what we know the eye and the water both enlarge still why don’t smart girls in Paris, yes larger but will never flood the containing eye, but why not and sometimes it does when you or your own are the news.

There is no audience because there is no audience. So if you speak only to imagined beings what does "only" mean? -------------------------- This building formerly a restaurant . . . this small room has been scraped of its paint and denuded of most former furniture: but also it has grown in size—can a building be enticed to grow? Because it is now as big as an airplane hangar. -------------------------- Your beautiful face unbloodied beneath flies Mother of flies your beauty to turn to. If only the audience could see how you are peaceful and the flies languid, glossy But the audience will still bring its own feelings to these words not seeing you not seeing what I am present for. -------------------------- Who has left me here, I have. Who are your familiars Come into the enlarging page if you dare -------------------------- Because he invented your shape I do mean structure because he invented you badly everything is still hidden. -------------------------- I was to impale myself on a quadrangular steel rod, with a blunt end with a blunt end which would make puncture more difficult and I tried—it's too hard. I can't Okay said the voice. I can't Okay then I was weeping But it's blood! I'm crying blood! I screamed That's part of it said the voice. --------------------------- I think this is hard. (That's part of it) How they prefer him must go. I think this is difficult singing Length and repetition create power If this voice can return like a body It resembles something that's already been, Changing. ------------------------------ Chestnuts broken autumnal fungi so you will remember, that it's fall outside falling. you'll go down this is no story for the puling social classes No not at all it's for us my familiars say who let me weep blood on their ground.

What I lose you let me, accusation always gets one in. But I want to talk like the dead remember that town where we went or how do I know when I’m just a soul — not when I’m leading? A soul can lead, fight and kill; in the sketchy rain there, but you can’t kill where we’re dead. That’s the best thing — no one has any power. How can I lead you without power? We want to find out ... Drop everything? — there’s no gravity. Are you grave? There’s no bravery. I’m going to lead you into a you you don’t know ... Most people want to go. There we risked being wrong but that was a linguistic quality, or you could have brought us to hell. Outside of gravity, instead, is the house. It wasn’t built with raisins. The light there, but what’s it for? For eyes. He called me “Four Eyes” now I have billions. It’s a house on the coast Is it the House of Answers? I will continue to reason for you, living on no particular income deep in my soul. The house has a basement I didn’t know about connecting to My Sea, Mare Meum. The answers break with foam and wild pearls. The wind is me too — you know who you are — where’s the desert? The sea came back to this land, to the abandoned its lover. The kind of sea you can’t drown in. You can want to coincide with me for I am the soul your leader the clear rock of kind mind, senseless. Senseless free will — the only thing here.

Purportedly a chain of civilians, soldiers, voices lice they were called. It is sometimes sufficient to beg Lice creeping over one, kill them with a chemical; then there are lice-ghosts everywhere. Glints of pearly nails. The light of my beloved will keep me from noticing. Trailer to keep her in; he asked me if I knew her ‘auction name.’ Walked over the scorch; what are values when there’s nothing here? The wing of a dead soul grows into all the lace you see through, foreigner, lice-ridden article of divestment. Splendid vices pouring outcomes over the eager cash flow promotions. So many of the dead came to me that their transparencies covered my visage, I’m too near you. Don’t you want to see? We came from faraway camps, forsaking the human because it broke our bodies into pieces for the torturer’s pet, who propositions you. There is always a slant on it. The trees must go down; or light affects your eyes badly. We pleaded for an adjustment, before we’d recognizably died. You told me you were a heart, but you were guarding a tower. You said you were a failure, but you helped destroy us. Wings all over me, stuck to my skin, there’s no point to it why are you here when there’s nothing? We just don’t believe it. Now not no never you. I wasn’t you. You have to talk to me my name is irretrievable. No one letting you go because you are prized for not existing except as a body, now not. No I don’t exist, alighting and ghoulishly begging you for a drop of your blood, a morsel of your flesh. Yes take some of me, though there are so many others with flesh. But they’re too rich to give. I know they will never let you in, you beautiful kids who haunt the corridors extending through the invisible world, so you can find your way. So you can see past the smoke of disastrous fear acting out of dreams: it creeps everywhere. See how it took them over, for they had no mind to stand against any fantasy the instigators chose. Had no minds at all. When I was little, no one told me I’d have to suffer. Who can be a child? And the ghoul patiently explains how the wing of a word can extend till the barrier is made, so they can’t see us. If you say beauty, that will be ignored, and we can hide. It was his name a long time ago, before the auctions began. Her face then was large and younger. She can be lice or ghoul. I want that, I don’t want action. But I will have to live off bits of you. The new definition of witch is one who lets them eat you, if they have to. Because you keep regenerating. Oh that’s such an oldy, and all that flying. Sometimes they do—the man who showed me a few things sits all day. The teaching is to let them come as far as inside you even, empty enough; I can hear them and render affection Why, if there’s nothing? Is this nothing? But you are destroyed We shake all the time. You remind me of someone else I knew. The wing is inscribed, for involute. Not to beg in the offering of primal services, we have come here. No one would let us tell anything but our bodily humiliations; had to do differently, not for redemption, because we are more than redemption. I am my maker. The shape formed by the bits of mirror glued on is unimportant. They’re inside my chest and stomach, and they glitter in there. Then if light disattaches, comes up to be spoken, you can see and you can hear. This is true because each of you has this too. Has all the bright pieces inside: there was nothing else left to be. Then I say it, like these pages, or how they would love me for hosting them. The earliest people feared them, and subsequent ones deny the dead. Why would I be afraid of all the people dead and martyred? I thought you were talking about words. You knew I wasn’t. Dido who had to be delivered from the wrong story: I want you to know I’m no longer left over. What about our library, nothing good left there? I want to read the fashion of when you were old a long time ago. Gothic roses in the type; I’m an ancient Had read every the book of before they arrested me. I had crossed the black plain, I had held tears it was abrupt to be walked in a herd pushing us, wherever we went to be shot, or executed in the earlier style. It is a timeless death placed next to the most beat-up books. Only a book can love me now. We’re reading without real eyes; I’ve read everything too, or in the tradition of telling it is repeated within you what we did. We must have been trying to make something as we are now, but why. You have the ear for it. The light wants you to reply, asking if a shore had been attained or if the language were Dutch or Swahili I didn’t know. It is how you raised the ground, like raising a child every word that comes out of my mouth torn I’m responsible to The wind foul pieces here tries to turn me from tenderness, the way they killed us in the center of the city, that night. The bodies floated in the river while I looked for other souls and saw my face water damaged a new texture and how can I see? Potential returning within its white petals and central whorl. He couldn’t believe someone would hate and betray. I told him, but he refused to believe it; then I left the room. This lace has to be made. Treason said the ghoul that peculiar invention betrayal, how primal was that? In Hesiod after the light, after chaos and lover. Said the armless woman, said the one cut open, said the smallpoxed the strewn children their bodies woven into the page so I could find what they thought, even if babies only cry. Those are the bodies when I was no longer alive but uplifted butterfly of lace with an empty length to bifurcate my symmetry. No I don’t believe the lies of the live. I am a spot of light in order to find out, hanging on because it wasn’t revealed in death. I know what happened to me, she said; bleeding I lay there unblessed. Do I want a blessing now, or a god to rebuild me? We have gone beyond god or new lives, or death, or tribes. I am working on this lace light at present; I accept the drop of sacrificial blood to propitiate me. One piece of you at a time is all I need. I am letting you feed, I say, because I know this has always been. You’ve been telling me for years We needed you, if no one else did. We have this project to change our silence into the beautiful city of a voice.