Perhaps Not For You

By Alice Notley
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.

Copyright Credit: Alice Notley, "Perhaps Not for You" from Songs and Stories of the Ghouls. Copyright © 2011 by Alice Notley.  Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)