How Spring Comes

Toys and rose The zoo body zigzags

I think fish too

but I'm a polite

social being, I'm a Ladle Lady or purple

and blue I write green letters and gold

editorials for the Krystal Oxygen Company

I have one hip as far as I can see, that

I see as I write say

white tee-shirts

upsidedown

turn em around

& put them on

your muscles

my angels

a semi-colon

is blue window

to me

is that a haiku? I fly over San Diego in some one or

another real despair and ask you to comfort me. You

more or less do, you aren't even here

my best me my worldly me

my taste of spring my continuance my

comfort will you comfort me?

I offer you my heart over Tucson

I can't use it

take it to comfort me

free

me be it take it take it to

be it

which apparently you don't or take you help provide

me it I think, that

happens among true people, that poem I was writing

no good poem

but Moment framed the Pleiades

The garnets ring more beautiful the longer you

are waiting for me in them,

where Deity makes me friendly there.

But who put on all the tee-shirts in Hunter's

Point? Well we're all good boys my son said so.

A semi-colon is a semi-precious garnet cluster

telegram; what we love are such depths between all

the messages. Pass the salt; Ladies of the Tang,

bubble of night; this book about Harry Truman is wonderful.

I see the Gulf Moon Rising every night. I'm familiar

with the zonked starfish. I've the sheen on under

the fire-escape railing all streetlight-lit. The

hollow suddenly appeared to enlarge and fill with a

bright light. Wild with the taste of wine it does not

remember the despair of an hour ago, which was true

that is of a true woman. She was somehow hating her

position on the round earth in the dusky sky on a

harsh Sunday. On the ground forgotten flowerlike

firmaments. She addressed in uneloquent hatred

SMUG LIFE

the one who soothes one's foolishness the

Great Face Construct who loves you for your kinks child

anyway, the Guru God:

Oh I will come back a knockout tomorrow

Useless to you!

You're not it you smug face

I'm not doing your yoga not wearing

Your moondrops using your cream

Rinse letting you fuck me Exquisite

Like I was one of the Ones With Brains Too!

Intelligence in panties with peekaboo

holes—

No I'm coming back raw

I'm getting drenched in the rain

It's rain and it's wet I'm soaked I'm

Chilled and I'm coughing the air's raw

To my throat, which is raw from

Coughing, coughing so strong

Coughing and laughing

So strong from killing you!

Etc.

She didn't kill nothing.

& I don't get to share

no secrets with the stars. I make chow. I contemplate

semi-colons. I despair as a mother. I scream at that

kid I'm gonna crack open your big walnut if you don't

go to sleep. Theories of grace, that it implies no

surprise no shock. Ukrainians sudden on Sunday speaking

Ukrainian, the cross not Christian but Gracious

and when I want to cry or cough violently

it must diffuse back into my embassy; hard, that takes

hard. And if it weren't for you . . . not you smug life

face, but real you. Please play cribbage.

Pass the salt.

Think of a garnet-black cabbage, a

Ukrainian is selling it on 7th Street in honor of our

marriage. A Spanish fan opens in my abdomen

I have Spanish dancers in my stomach

they're my arching striving in dance where it's black

red flowers darken to be huge pleasuring the

severe, tried Angel who meets transition,

transport, as abruptly as necessary

for everyone's are apt

Says the Unassuming Graceful

Whose down-hip-ness

Is that window

The dancers' sensuous flaw

That admits Spring,

Contingent upon our personality

Spring is for the worldly

just like the HaHa Room

Just like dearest rockbottom

suddenly gone buoyant

To be black geese to be

strenuous dancers

is not to dignify a passion but to

grip it.

Not saints but always pupils

pupils dilated fully black in full achievement of

gut-feeling. Joy.

Source: Selected Poems of Alice Notley (Talisman House, Publishers, 1993)

Alice Notley 101