Perverse Pleasure

Poem
by Alice Notley
Issue no. 56 (Spring 1973)

       The havoc-caused
        soul occurs not
        recovers yet the
        treatment bought
        with submission
        fiddles and
        caricatures contains nothing but
        heal intoxication
        (courage is in-
        toxication) wide
        & embedded
        stalactite and
        fall of snow... so

He winds a sheet around me
which must be sarong & song
He asks can I protect myself
I say I'm aware of my self-
inviolability he says
he means can I grease a car
for everyone must run a race
in the body's own running place

Running's itself's pure pleasure
I begin to overtake myself
and suddenly I was first
at the end of the race
along with everyone else

For we are all in college to learn to Marry:

        the winding dragon of night
        and horses of day and humming-
        birds motes of light and the
        dragon of the night:

        in black dress will be the lady
        in a silver vest or it's black
        against which looms the lighter
        black tree loom.

   One steps
   on a rusty nail, disbelieves
   in lockjaw one thinks forever without a thought

   telephone poles & railroad tracks
   the same and the same and the
   same silver clack telephone wires the
   luminous lines of the world
                                       on which I walk

   bare feet in fog
   foggy-footed spider     See
   the spider toe-dance on its
   tender tendril legs across
   my hand shimmering mote
   with room comfort room service
   silver artifice & uprightness
   an arrow's a lily a lily's an arrow

   blank blank yellow & red blank

   ...I weep I read novels
   Someday I'll count all your freckles
   bagatelles of transient experience
   A different one always dies
   whose name seems forgotten a sacred
   thread blows away
my rags of righteousness

            are all your heroism your social charm your
            wit your victories on land
            on sea?
            Style he says is the ultimate morality
            of mind
            Stick cinnamon is 84 cents

O Turmeric
of use in mustard chow-chow piccalilli
sauces where the color the COLOR
yellow is thought desireable!
for that is life, to blaze with color.

One ignores the gossip
rounds the turn
dances & ducks & jabs
& Bites the Blade. Pleasant days.
There's a tone-free bullet
Someone cycles away

                something strums
                not tree not airplane
                not seen
                       I stop
                not entirely to pieces

                       I flow
                 in litter of sunflower seeds.

"The whole path of a material particle
between any limits of time must achieve some
perfection worthy
of the providence of God"
Everything I have has an earwig in it

which will make light of sacred things,
a genuine form being seen

                 a light and things

                                                   some kisses being exchanged
amid the whirl of the maddening dance.

Joy now is high-wire joy.