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J A C K E T # 5 |
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2 Poems from Disobedience by Alice NotleyDO YOU WANT TO BE EXCELLENT AN A ACTRESS NO NOT THAT EITHER the jewels speak, the different-colored stones on a string -- if I weigh them they speak. They're a poem I guess; but they say who the murderers are, as well. The murderers pull guns on "us": so what's the point of the jewels? I mean if the murderers just shoot us because we know who they are They are long-haired blonde trash out of the movies. Oh. ------------------------- |
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The board the cave wall's got a message on it: I HATE NOW ART. IT STINKS OF PROGRESS. "Who is 'I' please?" I ask the cave air. Sound of wind. Real wind. ------------------------- I am an orthodox religion in a big black coat, with pockets, at night what would be the point of all my qualities if a certain 'you' died oh there might be a point again after all the suffering I am about to be a lesbian, in another dream the meaning of that? it's meaningless a great black night, don't You see, I wander lost amid hotels and market s, stalls which sell dead things; if you're young it's glamorous, sci-fi -- if old, not. ------------------------- Story is one way to interpret experience. What's really happening? Not story. Not participles. Not sentences made from unexpected parts. What There's the cave door something like caves really happening? Tableaux? Oh I don't know. ------------------------- It's Anne Francis, the B actress, tending bar with her blonde hair dyed brunette. Did she once play the female detective Honey West? She was certainly in Bad Day at Black Rock. I think, she isn't attractive but must be photogenic -- her face is bumpy, somewhat neanderthal. Yet protruberances of forehead, jaw, flatten on camera -- story-like: awkwardnesses disappear she comes to fit the description, the camera. --------------------------- What is this cave? Ask it. "Old," it says, "But old is numbers. Nothing else." ------------------------- Hardwill says: "When we are working actors, w e are participating in society, at that moment, so are non-transcendent. This is good." "Why? How?" the soul says, "I don't think so." I'm the soul today. The soul is right. I'm in a non-economic moment. ------------------------- If no one knows more than I do. Not even a group of You. . . toilets, and leaking, streams of water from above, all night onto apartment's stained carpet and pretense of history. . . all pretenses seem to dissolve in the caves though they often reappear again, lower, in dreams out of time and washed about. Who's pretentious? Anyone enters pretense an emotion, the excitement of believing what she or he says. Building a new house another one. Wow. I mean she's telling a new kind of story. It's so hallucinatory. apocalyptic. What progress. ------------------------- Society is a huge cohesive emotion. I can extract myself from that emotion for moments. ------------------------- Going to give poetry reading, I'm supposed to be late in long blue lowcut 50s evening dress Marilyn Monroe comes to get me at nine -- I'm late enough but won't be as late as she used to be. She's wistful about my success helps me with my neckline, fixes its lace of wire rings so only one ring dangles down "undone. . ." Absolutely inside The Emotion. ------------------------- Not sure whether one attempts life outside it (The Emotion) becomes involved in changing it, or both variously don't want to live inside it, must etc, sticky love and animal obligation? many animals are ghosts now WE SHOULD ALL LIVE LIKE ROCKS IN A FLAT FIELD in the caves today the pistil of a calla lily may be speaking: . . .THE ROOF IS FALLING The caves are membranes breathing, huge petals the sun breaks through soft skin greenhouse. Must I experience total collapse of psychic hierarchy? Will the caves stop being caves? Leveling. Everything's leveling. ------------------------- Self-important? What's really that is this outmoded trivial talk of revolution the poet's wistful desire to shed a lot of blood. Disgusting, and irrelevant now. ------------------------- Memory of dream of rock star blends with memory of newscast, Liberian children with rifles "Boys make good soldiers": their commandant "If I tell them to cut out the eyes, they do" But a boy interviewed apart from him says, "If I don't do what he tells me to he'll kill me." What country did they buy those guns from? U.S.? England? Russia? Maybe France -- Iran -- Israel. . . My friends from high school carry handguns now. I mean the women according to a friend, a couple of them brought their guns to our thirtieth class reunion. ------------------------- It all topples when I'm alone and bored Conclusion? To promulgate "revolution" everyone should spend more time alone and bored. ------------------------- Your eyes, when they haven't been cut out cannot be "read" they are Yours anyway the "print paradigm is outmoded" I'm told. The Liberian boy, being a boy, is hoping for a future. The people who discuss are proud participants to be alive in exciting times transition for boy a computer we can give him in the year 2010 or a job in a glass eye factory -- future glass eyes that can see that can watch television -- eyes perfected by Vicom or MGM. ------------------------- Sudden wave of, feeling what was it, almost scent of being high on Something 25, 26 years ago -- speed maybe. That was great useless, destructive, irrelevant, demonic What's different from that? Anywhere? No, no I won't ever do it again. I'm supposed to help make all the other people, near and far and very far, in the whole world, happy. Oh I will. Because everyone's so deserving. ------------------------- I can barely see Mitch's face any more I'm suffering loss of character I lost Soulgirl, as character, a long time ago simply became her. ------------------------- "Have you met the psych et po feminists? You sound just like them." ------------------------- I'm on my own, bored, obnoxious out of touch with the premier print paradigm people of my time. This must be Paradise, Paris not Liberia. |
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SONG Clear enough Clear enough Who ever Wanted to be anywhere But here but. . . Clear enough Clear enough Who ever Wanted to be anywhere But here but. . . (repeat endlessly) |
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Douglas Oliver and Alice Notley Alice Notley is the author of 25 books. Her latest is Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin, 1998.) Two other recent books are The Descent of Alette (Penguin, 1996) and Selected Poems of Alice Notley (Talisman, 1993.) She lives in Paris with Douglas Oliver, with whom she edits Gare du Nord. | |
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Copyright © Alice Notley and Jacket magazine 1998 The URL address of this page is http://jacketmagazine.com/05/notley.html | |
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