Betrayal poem – Alice Notley – The Poetry Monster

I keep going back to that word

the French like it trahison the French are partly me

in micro-particular disposition I sing

I’m most fascinated by metaphysical

betrayal and its off-color quarter-tones I mean

I mean it that a bit of matter could humiliate

another like in a beginning when of angels…

No I believe they play me like a winning king but

in a future I know already while scourged

I remember when X and Y made Ted miserable

Until he died? before he died? but that’s before the

time of these poems of my emplacement in the zeros

Do you know that all history’s happening at the same time

and see the future if you scry, gross matter It is 2007

someone dear having died I am on an air-

plane to San Diego and suddenly see blue and orange geo-

metrical formations around the periphery of my vision

both eyes is this part of the poem I’m the singer of

tales of bliss and structure of the universe yet unperceived

Is it built like what I’m talking is it in

fact structured when I write Voices Ross, the dear dead

speaks to me in the kitchen to say he’s happy the dead are

happy I later believe some are sad sometimes, cyc-

lically until they work it out my poems help them

that my poems help everyone that I am re-

structuring whatever this is that is everything so

that nothing’s lost but placed new-pieced into a collage

of the transpired remade into a transcendental richesse

opening of graves gold light burst out: Grave of Light

gravid of light Grave Alice and laughing Allegra

ocean of chaos breaks collage of tones you know

and who I was am and will be come back to me

in an enormous betrayal by who once left heaven

all those wanting to be matter my own body

born no one can understand born no one can com-

prehend how many possibilities we once were be-

fore anyone deceived a rock by breaking it

Ross tell me what You got it he says and what

you’ve kept to yourself is cool but the Fibonacci Series

being no longer how shall we say these irrelevancies

They slide into the collage I say Yeah he says

That on the other hand anything will do any glue

Because I was upset at your death mine eyes did break

not into tears but figments colored particles castle bat-

tlements they call them swim before me collapse

I rise again for I am everything participatory in

the earth world’s illusions this is an homage to Ross

all that exists communicates cry a little, cry

betrayal that there is dying though death the other breathes.