Said I shouldn’t.
Fingering me.
Everything I did.
A litter of chewed knucklebones
I’ve spread them out over the
rectangular floor as regularly as
I can; so I can account for them.
Her hands are crossed over
her breasts and each holds
a feather; her face has no features
Have I come to beg
What do I wish — to be
judged?
Is it an accumulation
of what I’ve said, that
counts, that I’m counting
is it all alphabet and abacus
everything rhymed?
You still don’t have a face.
Suddenly she has the face of a
cat.
No that’s a different
goddess.
I tell you this
bloodthirsty
jaguar…
I don’t have any idea what my word is, I
mean fault. Is it a word or an act. The
whole thrill is ripping me apart
Inside these
words there’s nothing but a pumping
bloodsoaked…
but clearly, everything I said, did,
was a long shot
We didn’t hear a word
What have you ever heard?
Now I’m here — black-caped in a
chair. Animal staring at me
I sink into your disaffected
ambiance to name.
What emotional
charges
have been laid on me from
earliest times
and my own
earliest
resulting in the bone strewn carpet
I had to grow the dice
of accounting to your love; for
you made me speak to you
lovingly; or did I do that naturally
oh just, bloodthirsty face
who doesn’t have to understand.
I don’t know who I’m speaking to
is pushing me
Judgment maybe it’s when being
fragile I
hallucinate you best
I don’t want to use my name!
‘Where I was born we girls ran
free. and named ourselves,’
Justice says.
She may kill me,
it depends on whether she’s hungry
Copyright ©:
Alice Notley
A few random poems:
- The Queen’s Marie poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Rhyming Reply to a Note from Captain Riddell by Robert Burns
- Auguries Of Innocence by William Blake
- Song of the Redwood-Tree. by Walt Whitman
- Here, Sailor. by Walt Whitman
- The Current by Raymond Carver
- Last Turn Of The Morning Carousel/Forever Turn The Midnight Carousel by Matthew Abuelo
- A New Age by W H Auden
- I Heard an Angel by William Blake
- Love Sonnet XXVIII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- On The Way To The Bottom by Shel Silverstein
- Leszko The Bastard poem – Alfred Austin
- Fallen Star: Dedicated to Huey P. Newton by Tupac Shakur
- Last News About The Little Box by Vasko Popa
- In Hardwood Groves by Robert Frost
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- discovery.html
- day_dream.html
- cocoon_for_a_skeleton.html
- cinema_screen.html
- chaplin.html
- Cats by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
- black_on_black.html
- black_morning_lovesong.html
- birch_tree.html
- betrayal.html
- bells_pool_and_sleep.html
- attack_on_the_ad_man.html
- any_man_speaks.html
- woken_up_by_beautiful_dreams.html
- was_then.html
- vestiges.html
- un-chien-andalou-an-andalusian-dog.html
- the_poet_angels_who_came_to_dinner.html
- the_nomad039s_vision_ode_to_a_skylark_dressed_in_black.html
- the_man_that_poetry_made.html
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
