Four Poems

Alice Notley

AMID THESE WORDS I CAN KNOW

canyon and spirit mountains peaceful spring with springs; not paying attention to

glyphs. there are rabbits the springs are damp circles on the sand among greener

bushes sunlight a lovely tone what can i do with it one says. musnt. try to know

amid words which are deep and alive large as dolmens glyphs whose lines cut deeply

into the past which is not a gone thing linear but a depth and a returning power

also. know. in a clearing what i’m doing. not at all walking through my life as i often

thing think but standing in place where i am been will be not using words not making

them not being them but being among them as they are nature. past may be a gracious

door always open skylike but in place a, wind in place or as a massive invisible process

is both carven and calmly fluid the sky moves. i never move. chunk rock but not ice

will never weep, when i cry its to break open to. you will not know if you dont suffer,

why, a closed system cannot know but a knowing sky can be a mountain a knowing all

can be carved as well and the words, the words part of all are like these.

use me suddenly i might say, and the canyon of my youth goes mosaic, i’m in the

basilica by rights. walk toward that mosaic, as far as the spirit mountains,

flickering light, across the glass cubes of. precious stones have been used in places, the

mountains themselves are partly made of.

agate, jasper, quartz.

and you have disliked me last night in a dark hall. meaningless or not? if

i am a thing and you are, the forces between us those emotions are the small

winds of the universe lines or forces between things but undiagrammable and

being an aberration of the lines of like or a part of. no, you have disliked me disrupted

me last night in a dark hall, is abstract and whats real is, that i am not a thing and so

not dislikeable and cannot dislike on the real plane. where the glyphs are, and

the dolmens, left to tell, of what is permanent, messages of, from the enduring

“feelings,” such as existence itself.

go on a little faster now in the wind the blank blue and theres a rabbit will he shoot it

so we can eat it tonight jack rabbit cotton tail eat cotton tail. all these rocks

pebbles in the mosaic from the past when i was a child one april in grapevine canyon.

lines of motion and emotion telepathies and paths all intertwined like

grapevines with leaves of and the purple globes of, the

telepathic the sending of all the messages all the thoughts ever and going on all in

those little lines scattered toward and blown away ever everywhere everything ever

thought at all blown about

in the canyon the glyphs

are paradise as preserved in the mind thats why theres the past.

i mean why theres no past

THE ELONGATED HOLY MOTHER

but in the next moneyless year there is a nearly fully grown snake of mine snake

what is this snake, this principles nearly large enough to bite me has a head like a

rattlers. you want some other symbol made out of modern fabric i dont have it no

life principle in you if thats you modern fabric. this snake is nearly large enough

to bite me, so i should turn it loose in the building to hide behind the furniture in

the dark where it lives best now. sister life cuts hers truncates hers though, before

she sets them loose, and she beats them, beats them into submission, i dont want to

do that. the snakes hide behind the bookcases making slime and skin in the dark

shedding and shedding

making more and more new years. in this new year i can find the buried person

the oldest person or year but the year the new year is that old one, the pieces

scattered throughout us and irretrievable, unless reamassed whole in a vision

and so the dreams and so the peculiarities of them.

the men who lived only with each other said to fear their room it was full of naked

men, i said i was afraid but i wasnt. i was searching searching the house, what was I

looking for? certainly not the department of gender

what is

a gender what on earth what is earth i was looking for what is earth in a world a

modern fabric

how is all this depicted in the church cant you see

a serpent asleep in the dark protects    the original nature,

or vision. old mother python. there was a castle.

on a shelf in it were heads, sculptures and one was of joan of arc, next to it under a

sheet, was that of king she served, i peeked at him under the sheet and so

he came as a ghostly wind, to terrify me in my sleep. the wind of the dead king

plucked up my own sheet from the bed and tried to strangle me. the principle

of the king tried to kill me, as my sister life keeps trying to bludgeon into submission

the snake

my sex is still involved.

superficially as the fabric of this world lies, the lies by which we

always               why death is so important. the only life      the

second world entangled like coils of always in this very one.                        death is so

important its freedom from us,                       the figures                   on the

walls                know this being dead

snake piss behind everything can you like that as i do

hes killing the snake again for the pure maiden? what is she, she is himself hates

snake piss, the feel of old skins to the bare feet, have you ever walked through a yard

full of sloughing layers and layers, with bare feet?                  and feared both pollution

and that something live was there a real snake, amid the shed skins the real life the

first nature, under everything. the naturally slithering mosaic as the light takes the

walls of the              church or as a candleflame takes them at night

serpent of                    enclosure of our mystery, here I am inside and cant

know it without the old symbols, like that, its like that through layers and layers, the

skeleton of the person is there but is the principle still there beyond symbols and

principles is it still i am i there?

sheds us the universe will shed us without a “thought” we are dead in so many coiled

faraway futures how many are there are there am i like them too? but i am not like,

skimming gold toward. and what did you say,

lib-by, in exile

   so skimming and inviting like night of the stars in a small garbage quartier

anywhere world small garbage neighborhood this coin is so dirtied with snake piss

i wonder if i’m dead, shoved out into the cold new years night all alone and with no

access to water, i most needed water. no one needed to sleep they were already and

always.                        i never knew if i was or not was i asleep there

was a man                  so depressed because he was asleep it wasnt the same as

dead dead was full of light

floated floating in the city of ancient ancient

sleep, tears were sleep grief cold and dirt were sleep and fucking strangers for money

was sleep and talking to strangers for money, and talking to people who

gradually pulled closer and closer to one in sleep. in the             church

a mauve river flickers along its length its made of real amethysts not of water its

made of purest thought

flickering in and out of being messages

from. i don’t know what, the ever future now the extensive reality which isnt a

universe that no one understands but that talks to us all the time the whole thing is

always talking within us and to us and outwardly toward the other us thats outside

us and i, i am a focus an all-point with only fabricated outward characteristics but the

medium in which i am alive is not fabricated. blood is not

blood and see, see the blood, is not see, where are we

then in a

and what isnt dreams is now the future

words dont remain her dead mouth opens and closes instead she

FIGURE, SAINT, ON AN ARCH

kept in thrall by someone who reads our thoughts. the story of the egyptian captivity

babylonian captivity, reads the thoughts youve been given by him, thats how hes able

to read them

especially in a widows house, can read thought from outside, is outside secretly in the

dark reading her thoughts. her house is all windows panes into night and she knows

hes there listening to her head

she says to me, he can read yours too. the more intelligent you are, the easier it is for

him to read them. is that because intelligent means educated, to most, and educations

so standardized. i know he can read my thoughts

because when i speak my voice crackles as if through a microphone, presumably my

thoughts crackle too, as if magnified in volume by his powers. who is he. is he her

dead husband perhaps, someone else suggests.

let me go. thats what all people say. or youll later be drowned in the red sea. thats

what people say, drown them drown them all, golden bodies others beneath the

waters dead and now knowledgeable

if he knows so much says the widow why does he haunt me why doesnt he stay in his

knowledge. what does the attachment of people for each other, including the desire to

dominate utterly, have to do with the beginning

of things. is there a mathematical formula for a two become one which later must

split. a sort of symmetry, a kind of emotional elastic stretching in which the mauve

feelings are horror and the green ones fascination still

she now has given up on his death she accepts that hes never died though he still

might, he didnt die disappear and come back, hes always been here sick reading her

mind, hes moved back into the house

this is the life of the past. there is no past its a story. stories are bodies we keep going

on alive only in others minds everyone acts as if this is lovely its inutterably hideous,

to live in others. there is a way out

there must be, to leave the icon of symmetry tear it tear away.

the only possible freedom is mental so i didnt speak to pharoah, didnt approach

nebechudnezzar i entered a cave for seven years not even accessible to daniels dreams

no one could read my thoughts there, fed on grasses slugs and bitter water. there is the

picture, another gold cell, the only real monk in cappadoccia, under under ground so

the dead man couldnt make my voice crackle, so all the listening dead men ruling

the world couldnt have me. daniel dont dream of me

destroy the thoughts hes given me in order to read them. he reads them backwards

even, sthguoht eht yortsed. he uses symmetry to enslave me, he uses logic, but he

doesnt use reason. the depth of all there is, in which he drowns his troops in order to

rule, remaining ignorant, as you are ignorant who have never broken from formation

broken symmetry, broken from any symmetric rearrangement of pieces after a

presumed radical break

i dont care about your welfare, you have what you need the ability to break and

reform, the ability to force others to do so too, so you can read their minds. what

would you do if you no longer could read their minds. what would you do in your

own mind. what would you think what would you do about time always previously

measured out by you in your own symmetries lengthwise and so exactly controllably

widthwise, all mathematics your invention the stars have been lenient to you

compliant havent they do you listen to their thoughts. of course you do in time they

tell you all their secrets you are the great and have remained innocent like a graph or a

snowflake, or a stave of 18th century music. under the dirt in cave unbidden invisible

no name on list in time what a nightmare couldnt have mind read by history by

future pharoahs of enlightenment. i break brek like mountains away into so slow

there almost is none. sitting next to dirt part of one retime without tracks here and

what is already in mind, still partly his, keeps singing, what did i do then and then but

that was to be sequence, after this death theres no sequence, going on justly not pat if

possi how does it look now in areas of if its symmetry well its not his is it can he

read it i dont read it i look quickly at its movement staying still it and i all the

movements in stillness. the swaying toward, hes out there again trying to get in

by saying i need him to eat so dont eat tae benowst. having no sympathy is

beautiful. the best of icons are unpat, unsympathetic are not about about projection

of the superficial only the dee. upon mortuary slab pasts rising up in days going on

symmetrically so wh wh do yo its for fod foo all of it the slave. ddeep deep green that

year, a bit of a story. in the mid did wha, it was because of the baby. there was nothing

else to do because of the baby, who had to be brought to a pass to decide for himself.

thus became tied to the process of money for food. thats the only story really and its

real a real story, where i solemn not mad eat wild grasses and nurse the baby. there is

no ending, dont you know a. wants a humane piece of furniture. honor. but i want

money so i can eat. i dont really have to eat in here which is why i spend as much

time as possible. i cant find out anything unless you stay out. its not a cave church it

needs too much light its in light but cave is a figure on a wall i go in in reaction.

underneath as always there its the same as in the light.

VIRGIN AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

is there some loss

connected

with the hybrid baskets lovely but woven into machines,

straw woven with wires, robotic as at la villette

fish there with our eyes but small bodies, treated like robots edible robotics

mice genetically engineered fluorescent for no reason.

have evinced no reason in eras. have not and within here is there reason. is there

some loss, tracy? yes, tracy replies there has been great loss so great we can hardly

recognize whats been lost, “how do you like your country?”

“its cold. i was lying with abrith oil

before.” a birth oil

and i was born once, but am i now

ceaseless need to care for adolescents, in a black dress when someone needs sex.

we are needing needing what have we ever. all the dead fish, thrown back to

rot because we didn’t need them, with their sensitive eyes, electricity

burning stupid the metro on the way, what are we on the way, everyone

was on the way. straight, so straight

singing in the ash trees, is a too fragmentary knowledge of happiness

remember the 666 that the purchases in the dress store added up to. you always

knew it, said the clerk, what have i always known? that white

peoples houses contain too much water, flowing at will, they have coopted all the

birth or is it rebirth, have coopted it, shit, says the indian, look at all that lifegiving

edenic water inside a white persons house, i always knew it. and i knew

how cold it was to have no oil in the afterbirth

too fragmentary the tropes of a nonfunctional mind. ra rings. goin on, the virgin

at the foot of the cross is simple desolation, in black and nearly faceless, at the end

of eras eras erase all this and have created this sec sec you are that i i c must concen

have you t noticed how the future is always anticipated by letters which will appear

in future words?

plastic cans of iowa anywhere says the invader of houses of water

mind mine, mine is not their developments or yours, mine is not yours, my mind

is there some loss

concentrated, just alive this morn in the after of butterflies in cages up and down the

rue papillon cocoons, worms and les comètes the grand yellow ones of madagascar

scar gas of what keeps us going, throwing useless dead fish back, because

we’ve joined the worldwide capitalize project.

so you preach revolution, revolution, against who everyone, the

figure on the wall is looking at you, if you would simply stand up straight

is that figure that straightbacked saint or prophet or sad

viri virgin virgin free? oh so yes, to be free is to face the world straight on and gravely

united robe not to obfuscate the sex the delicate and lightly

lubricated flower or, flower or, sea life of erect pipe or the convulsed vulvic flower

shapes shared with others those animals and plants

i left the man on the floor with it, someone must care for the young, the

preadolescent children, in a black dress on second avenue, first avenue was first

on it a different care, on second avenue on second there is no change without a bit of

stroking without some sex returned in the chicken cafe

then i can carry the dead chicken, with the vultures head attached too, all the way to

the new houses on the edge of the desert

talk to saint talk to, lib-bay, beau-ty, yes, is the good

anthropos, andromeda, multimedia wind and rain

beauty the good is, blow suffer a blow though? suffer it why, purifying

lying there, dont do another ill. bad hawk scream, aguila arizona, desolate on

the way to a little water appears near wickenberg. there was a stream there wasnt there

lib-by, all of it, come here liquid for pai, pain dance, force not

performed as such, no art of it. thats how painful it was, blew through the

house like an alien personality of my own

sensitive eyes swimming, trapped next to a food counter

blow of force and of life, stop carrying a dead chicken, saint open again so i can see i

want to see see it the message from all whove ever lived

drink jerez de la frontera, cross the border into, into a room of the good

it is instead of what they call god or some piece partial name,

integral, the leaves beyond number glitter like scales or pieces being one, one shining

a union, an un, a hyssop nonhybridian nonpantocrator

fills. fascinting fascinating light of non doom, no doom

mood nair thedniw, come come, hop to in, in the kitc kitchen of breaking cant break it

the good these piece not really a broke al at all, know gla what do the dead say,

mouths frozen throats vibrant they say in the field, near those houses at the border,

in the light of the game where no ones playing, that struggles are becoming nothing,

as we die into a ring around the black sea full

of fish like us, i got scared

and pulled back up into supposedly awake. beckons clumsi the mono, evening

morning star, fluster faster and tear, tear open the wide silver foil lake, the skull

leaders vanish, and we are left with silver water flowing

inside here the good moves along these walls is the lighting up itself of, it does that

rippling band the wind of the color, green or brown, or pupl purple

is there a loss

the everyo the embryo of what we live for to care of. we live to care for baby baby and

go hope your gauge is on empty, so you wont be machine more ingrown

or rubies there of this blood, would make you kill to see it, the blood of martyrs ruby

clas face and see what color, come to stay, axoh, tear eyes

the tears are looking for a place to alight in, they arent rain theyre desolation

the tears are searching for you and will find you