For the Ride Read online

  whether I’m alive or in dead, I mean both at the same time.

  Oneself, says neural net, is tuned to existence of objects.

  Yes but they’re in several spots too. Yer a one level being . . .

  Will I come undone? Yer over there in a desiccated heap

  while yer here. Still don’t get the langue while speaking it to the all.

  Fiddly . . . The consciousness is light, not a patch on other forms.

  So, One’s talkin around, evolved but didn’t start is the ticket . . .

  Oh blah. Here’s a taxon, here’s history, right on One’s squishy tongue . . .

  Don’t have that in great room. Under at ur One’s a crawler, under

  tongue, system, heritage. Hear an insect—it’s as big as I am . . .

  sounding big in nerve tree no nerve tree here: I am always this song.

  Hum violet ashen, hum poise a good, hum at attention free . . .

  Hmm hmm hmm that’s now One, flowers in ur, drawn flaring close to . . . wire?

  wood death blow in bottle humming in hum. Uring an urchin un,

  calabeza palace, talons like tin, besame continues

  hm hm hm look at hum: looks like letters coming up in vent shun,

  in the crosshairs same time, hairs are a mash, rubbed together of way . . .

  there’s no way if it’s One. This is the way. All at the same tense or hum.

  I place it arkwise hum, One’s placing ur, under a nerve in One,

  a humming unnervèd to fill One up is the way to surface.

  FROM THE ANTHOLOGY

  for no behest . . . One hears overtones . . . or is them how

  . . . this thick crystalled . . . obandsquiver . . . in cunning

  . . . effortless . . . like poems . . . mean to find . . .

  . . . brightness copper . . . amber venetian . . . crusted

  with senses . . . not alive for others . . . the language flies . . .

  native earony . . . it is not smoky . . . it’s greenish

  . . . color waves . . . it’s raining them . . . ruining yr forts

  eke . . . fragment floats by k . . . palms and passes saint

  street of ka . . . believing . . . care so

  don’t care lyre

  and all the fun . . . soon

  throw down kings . . . pi . . . all that

  I’m tryin to change the langue

  so no social struct

  just hummin tween the chaons

  One’s a chaon

  One is chaos all

  One’s a bursting star

  dry land and why

  as things go so

  XVIII

  BACK ON ARK

  And back on the Ark, is One aware One’s in the heaven des mots? . . .

  Or submerged in pond, in Underword, with collapsèd word hankies . . .

  Or, or in battle with the frescoes, or exuding les poèmes

  avec mes amis, One’s projections: Does One know One’s also here?

  Back there, does one know? Does the langue know mayhap itself, telling One?

  Mayhap the ur-one, ur-version, does bubbling under or ever . . .

  Or am I now ur, just that, backwards and um forwards changing it . . .

  Change what, does One, mean? Oh the words know, and One is them ur something . . .

  Ur why me I hafta outta who . . . Oh yer off the subject, dear . . .

  I’m on the ark now! Pushin on through the deceptive empty sea

  waterless and crystal etchèd, workin on the langue of us all . . .

  But I keep flippin into a Room—heaven of voice, and hue-smeared . . .

  Color has arrived there, still can’t have a taxonomy—yew cahn’t!

  One’s aboard alone, maybe the Parts one’s here . . . to save the mots.

  When One will arrive, thinks One, will One find the words

  are All and have been for e’er—does One hafta do this, save the words?

  Cahn’t question it, says Parts one, we’re the parts, what if we got lost?

  In where? says the One . . . Anti-matter or somethin? I’m tellin ya . . .

  Still’d haf ta function as oneselves . . . But if we’re timeless? One says . . .

  And so ones are, but pile up this stuff! The new langue’s composed of parts!

  Oh One wants to change! says One, again, One wants to e’en in this grief

  for species diminution and loss, ravagement of planète . . .

  Still I want to be transformed, I One, how else but through One’s language?

  All One knows of time’s via mots. Language delivers me to me . . .

  There’s no nuthin, ya know, says Parts one. Find that out in a coma—

  Ya don stop ya change, see that comin as I lie here, one means sail on.

  This ark’s loaded with change—One reads through while the others’re asleep.

  O build yr ship, One, while yer on it or wherever you, One, are.

  MESSAGE

  we made it out of listening to

  our wavelengths which we had

  our ears were composed of them too

  and our souls and our souls

  wavelengths aren’t all tangible you know

  where they are but can’t see/hear/

  smell them we know what there is

  what we are our beautiful, aging bodies

  show their wax and wane inside our souls’

  wavelengths see them? with yr seeing

  Did you write that? says One. Apparémment. Wavelengths . . . particules . . .

  Maybe wavelengths are ur words . . . Words? Sure why not? Words’re heard or seen . . .

  Does one mean all the parts are similar? Yeah why not, what’s diff’rent

  about words fer chrissakes? Okay, says One. Ones ’re now bein ur.

  Feel mouth vibratin word waves come from it, any ole wave one wants.

  Electrify the mind, seein it move, walkin or sailin it,

  pay proportionate mind to the blink rate, as the syllables tick . . .

  tell me what to say man. Say whoosh for me, me yer little cellules

  wavin to each other. Ones first say it, crash our wish, curse our wash,

  namo liddle birdie. Ma give meh pa. Pyrotechnically,

  everythin come out of one’s own eagle. Iggle to some of hawks.

  Can’t make it say the first screeches of yet. Caw, I unnerstand it . . .

  Ken yr wing wi its waves faster ’n dreams. Pucker and kiss th’ air,

  waves white cirrus of saints, littley thots, wavey wavey son stress.

  Parts, wavelengths bein ur . . . Do ya feel it? Do ya vibrate talkin

  or even not talkin, thinkin yr way? I am the way, One is.

  Word obsesses One’s lips: I want to kiss-ss. My map’s in foreign tongue—

  all these words submitted for our salvage—Look, chaotic wormlets . . .

  are ones enterin where at last One doesn’t understand our selves?

  Don’t ones resolve this in future tenseless? Mabe ones go back and forth . . .

  reversin the wavelengths, ridin chaos. Who the hell am I?

  Oh, ride it! Whut’s writin? Usin tentacle wavelets to scrawl these . . .

  It’s not carved, it’s Chaos, that’s the ur. Let’s read more messages:

  Chaos ’n’ ur hand in hand . . . one jis speaks ’em . . . They’ve allays been the same,

  white or black as yr eyes. Maybe you don’t have eyes, Bubbles . . .

  Reader reader read her. Walkin crooked. I am opaque-ness . . .

  the bits of one thou are stickin as one. Parts. My own little wavelets.<
br />
  Why do parts, waves go togethuh? Evun in voidlike chaos?

  Keeps makin sense in ce respect. Why does one stick togethuh?

  Why do the words stick nd mean things? Why do the ones want em to?

  Oh but nuthin starts at begins, love, there’s no ur or this it . . .

  almost, lovin all a yr parts, and as words pile round word-tree . . .

  One loves that, doesn’t One by gar? Gar bein extinct fishy . . .

  all the fish extinguished now, past tense now, they’re lackin . . .

  Here’s the tense as accusatory ur, maybe: you did it you you . . .

  Ah’m tryin to break your heartlet: Because ah want the pieces . . .

  Sounds like a chanson, that’s a form of linguistic urgency

  says this message in response, some a them are jist comments . . .

  A comment’s wavelengths too, here’s one: One’s inmost thoughts ’re in ur

  too fast for ya, jist them wavies. Limits frayed in th’ not-wind . . .

  Everthin has frayed edges; donc, je suis un autre rêve . . .

  Ah, another observation: The universe is created

  by giving. The ur language is the gift of who one is, that is

  one gives away one’s self language. That is, one creates it, one

  giving it away, taking none. Give words, saving them, away . . .

  gave it all away, giving gone, the universe that I made,

  doesn’t make sense the universe, linguistical utterance:

  wavelengths from vocal cord, émetteur only exists as donor

  crying out . . . And message breaks off, frayed at its ends, says Parts one.

  Then one remembers scratching my head that isn’t there at all

  for it’s a rêve, isn’t it all? But One’s at all, in this ark.

  Emit, vibrate, send the worlds out. Agitmoment of I know,

  part of the way comes along then, lone way of tiding over.

  Acceptance depends on One’s life, or One’s light—who accepts it?

  Back to old wrinkles over One, of in a sentence open out.

  Can’t stop vibrating, says the One. One offers this agate uh

  agitation to any one, closer to believing naught.

  If you lisp or gasp or sputter. Goin to save me, O One?

  says a giggling word, I’m not you? ZZZ says another, I mean

  One means, says One, One says it, the cord does, on the prow, anywhere . . .

  Société not a thing now. Thinner than yr hair my dear,

  vibrant scalp showing through the sound, raw graph of, that’s hallucin.

  Have to swirl, ah think so to air. Uninjured happy home ham,

  remembah bullshit and the mon? Minute richer for yr laff,

  vibra laughter all that was there. Livin in the raw sound graph-

  like, the raw image stript from eye, raw word, do ya? do ya care?

  Standing on movin no-atoms, movin as boat thru void

  tellin the stuff to stick to stick togeth. Remem hallucinogen,

  prelight visual deal done shrunk from the heavy to some thing.

  Horn how dust and the rest—whate’er One says—flowin thru grey glass O.

  One keeps thinkin, says One, One’s not here called to witness an end,

  end of whut, of whut wuz, iny ole time. Coma’s fore’er, whole dam

  effort, says the Parts one. Here’s a message: Who’re ya kidding, I’m dead!

  Dead language . . . you can’t spiff me up at all. Nothing remains of first.

  Toss that away, says One. Dead and talkin? Soundin like hisself? Jeez—

  Why what a hit it was—is—Why what, where? Oh, meteorites, things

  existing that hit one. Hah! One remembers the world. Before it . . .

  What? Oh, that’s very nice. What? Jist chatter. Universe is big.

  Whut’s big? Whut’s whut or big? Do ya have body parts, Parts one, or whut?

  Got liddle happenings mental like smoke, smoky verbal gar-den.

  Whut’s color of the froot? ’Member it’s red. Color sizzles my cells . . .

  Cells? Sills. Sails, have we thoze? Winging above. Ones kin say ones’re here,

  heah, not enuf words yet. Wards or weirds. Syn tax keeps arrivin—blah.

  Need to know how it sticks, how ahm stickin? Ah know ah can’t unstick . . .

  There’s this pinpoint of moi, allays righ cheer, soul slippin thru it now

  where’d you come from in my I aperture, oh you me, oh I’m I?

  And I’m I, and I’m I? And I is One . . . How is it we’re stickin,

  honey? It’s that we’re sweet, sticky together . . . Didn’t start with a part.

  Do ya hate the syntax, just because it’s? Ones can mess with it too,

  in honor of the soul, that don’t know tense, plane of reality,

  ent’rin the jewel with its old facets. Whut time is this sharp one?

  Close to jar of sticky One’s runnin out. Virtual crispness dies.

  I the soul. Nothing dies. I don’t have to be the first amoeba.

  I don’t explain it now. Until today. That’s more cunning a head.

  Bug gets it, wonderful. I’m meant to clap. Yr comportment’s grievous.

  I’m in the distance and back behind us . . . One’s speaking all this time.

  Parts one says, Yer diffrint. Syntax, says One, elegant but dopey.

  Cutting thro grey no-sea, ownerless O. Why.

  Because One finds oneself doing just this outside gone history,

  remove meter of chaos and find what? Cahn’t. Some things’re given,

  huh? Whut? Invisible wavelengths. They are little metrical fits.

  Blam! says Parts one, that’s rich. Still haven’t changed langue enuf, says the One.

  Look what’s comin, a port. Always a port, always a goddamned port.

  These no-waves are like the previous none. Grey wi etchy white lines,

  crackly lookin snippets, wavelengths or such. Port’s a ghastly ghostly ville . . .

  from here, ’ll take a while. To get into. They’ll wake up now, the ones.

  Syntax says, peak of rose, peak of lily, one peaks of a structure

  e’en a wave. Gibb’rish. Why speak Englush? Cause One knows it, that un . . .

  This langue’s fallin apart. Already, One? Words kin float around us

  no-fish scales on the void. All the blessed. Pieces of chaos hum.

  Not together, not tight but still stickin. Who are we? Not some parts . . .

  Paris, 2010

  About the Author

  PHOTO BY DAVID BARNES

  Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona, on November 8, 1945, and grew up mostly in Needles, California. She was educated in the Needles public schools, at Barnard College, and at the Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa. During the late sixties and early seventies, she lived a peripatetic, outlawish poet’s life (San Francisco, Bolinas, London, Wivenhoe, Chicago) before settling on New York’s Lower East Side. For sixteen years there, she was an important force in the eclectic second generation of the so-called New York School of poetry. In 1992 she moved to Paris and has lived there ever since, though retaining her ties to the United States, to New York, and to the desert. Notley has never tried to be anything but a poet, and all her ancillary activities have been directed to that end. She is the author of more than forty books of poetry. Her book-length epic poem The Descent of Alette was published by Penguin in 1996, followed by Mysteries of Small Houses (1998), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and also the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. More recent publications include Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970–2005, for which she won
the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; In the Pines, which inspired an album of music by the indie duo AroarA; Culture of One, a verse novel set in a small desert town; the “everything book” Benediction; and Eurynome’s Sandals, named for the goddess who danced the cosmos into existence. Notley has also received the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which recognizes the outstanding lifetime achievement of a living US poet.

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