I started to dream awake
It was beautiful—as I
began
to chant an old poem
on the edge
of dream
always been
this poet.
Night
gold
calling me to know
multiples of now.
Or would you
Come off the
chair sir. Ask the chairman
to come off . . .
You have gone past your
dead lover's marker.
He'll
stay same
who's sane (same old
joke—
ancient Baghdadian pa) . . .
long way to go
. . . a lot of things
I badly wanted not to be
like.
care for . . .
have never
trusted angels.
I found one of her white
cylindrical hairs
dyed black
she wasn't relevant.
beauty-making
ghouls
to us is given a drop of
your live beauty, to
feed us, who are the poetry.
and stuck it for a few drops of
blood. To sprinkle on the
ground, there in that dream.
It was
in another lifetime.
a raven, a fire, a
fawn
the word 'treason' takes
credit for achieving us.
We have betrayed all your
religions
in order to
be alive, after our deaths, in
this space
it is lace counter to scheme.
The first thing, in thebeginning, was the lie.
making sense
is where I
go.
Everyone busy with dead
hands/ voices/ senses
Dead sense swells.
Whatever you want that
isn't a thing,
you can have.
(arrow luster)
amid a lighter green.
Figment
puts hand center of my chest
to say, 'there is a formal
condition to
your body. Aren't figment.'
Clustering moments,
But you know when a
moment
is
Seeing it through.
Songs and Stories of the Ghouls
Wesleyan University Press
Copyright © 2011 by Alice Notley
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
