A l i c e N o t l e y —

from “The House Gone”

They can film every second the

They death persists in no

Line so how do you organ-

Ize this musical chaos as in

Words I know not always the

Meaning of

I am leading us to freedom the only one with that power

Foreseen I would possess from the beginning for

It is not obvious though now it is that you need someone to tell you

Who you are the ever alive the ever dead you have tried to

Lose your souls ever present I say soul to soul in these words so like you as to be you

You never look at the right thing these days or read the signs

I am your leader I can read them inside the dead mind trans-

Lated into these thoughts coincident with letters my body or both

Bodies yours reading or hearing in this sunlessness temporary this Paris

There are no bigshots or leverage over you in death I was born to be your

Only real and strangest leader I was going to remember everything Al says

It was tall and dark in the mental forest the firefight vague pyro-

Graphic lines what I remember is how I felt a sick depression

Details aren’t worth it remembered a hurtful act by me or

You I remember every word I might have hurt a person with

I say I hurt you it no longer matters he says your love has grown

Larger more generous has yours I may still be too wounded he says I’m

Waiting to love more it will be a huge release if I can let myself think

I’m allowed to love then my life will begin though I’m dead

I think you love me I say don’t bother to remember the days you

Passed through he says remember permanence our own desert

We saw a road-

Runner through the window

Of the hospital

There’d been a scorpion in one

Patient’s room and outside

The mountains

They’re here he says for I Imagine Boundary Cone

I do too in Paris I say

I couldn’t live with-

Out it

Our attention has always existed before we were it was like a lake of space

This is the day when the black wind rushes towards me

What you see stands for these words change the line I am changing you

I’m the unrecognized possible standing in your way

We do have our epic Daddy says we the dead taking place towards and from

These lines but not linearly I call to the sea of space and mind

He says I call to the burden of our connectedness the violence of making our-

Selves to oversee this poem in a true medias res to remake

Us are we in chaos as traditionally we fool with it

Each line but of it I came from a background or did it come from me

There has never been any force controlling us except for our imaginations

I’m leading you to the crystality of your complex story I say

And we were always in the grand house of creation

The hotel we could never leave that becomes a shambles but stays

A history of instant transmission though between minds lan-

Guages and structural implacements the origin can only point backwards

He says they walk from the mountains to the river in order to name it all again

Calling it honey or grandad a green not vegetative just green

Is there subjection in death people pattern themselves in known ways til it’s

Evident they don’t have to be obedient to the mores of life the dreamed past

They walked to the river he says knowing they needn’t and couldn’t drink

And dead they wore nothing legless a cluster of minds the river was a form un-

Involved itself in lubrication or being water formally it flowed

A torrent of thought a channel of silence or of song it might sing or growl

There is a bat in my ear I say listening for sounds I can’t hear

I think fast I can’t sing as fast is there a fast song in death

They walk along the river he says as far as the camp where an army brought its

Wounded but who could remember which war and the women leave

We aren’t women in death and we won’t do anything we once did

Though you may want to listen to this meandering epic without money

Sex or the power of a boss but there are leftover nightmares and lornnesses

I’m listening to

Lead you to more

Intricate sounds still faint

They got in their boats having sacri-

Ficed a woman

To the winds re-

Member that was what life was

Always like public life

I’m so glad

To be dead

He says

And the women he tells me withdrew their minds al-

Most as one in the beginning of death according

To one version I hear I’m listening to the sounds further

Back and forth I say you who have been a victim he says

Professionally I see this by the overpowering of men are now our leader

You can be mine he says because I so much want to go there

As if it were a structure a massive warp in our fabric as we’d ac-

Cepted it until now a collection of power from nothing I

Say though there has never been negation the sounds come closer

When the souls of women leave the souls of men they also leave each other

A universal revulsion everywhere everyone would leave it the fabric you

Do it in your head you don’t have a head the mind

You must begin to understand that matter’s within the soul

Each of us can have our own legends whatever you’d devise

The rest of dreams are dark polar like my leftover heart

But I could not think even

Dead without admitting of you

I grieve for this inadequacy

Of imagination I would be mono-

Lithic

And I I tried to be that who am con-

Signed to your leadership

A woman walked alone he says to a source-filled basin

And if I would sleep she cried can there be any rest in death

We have to find each other in order to get any rest shouts the ghost

Wind filling the plain the woman approaches the basin backed

By the wind as companion can wind have an afterlife more

Than as thought as much as there can be any claim to origin or

Duty when that is manifestly in death only all us I speak

Through you and there is a form of anything known here in desertion

Mirroring the treason of the formation of stars and nebulae

Because of the way these lines relate within and between each other space

Manifold has not extent but relation and complicity I say and

Dialogue that’s true he says you can’t speak of something as if you and it

Weren’t speaking that’s what I see I say we need a new iconography

The woman wants to be

Alone but she is lone-

Ly wants not to sub-

Mit to alteration of thought by

Exposure to another

That you change in a banal

Or group-thought-out manner

That’s the last thing I

Want do you want us to

Love you not if I have to be like

You all this was said in an in-

Stant of reflection

Chaos that loved herself for she was what was says the basin

To the woman maybe just a little bit more composition

The woman reluctantly of the dead considers herself to be gold too

I am tornout gold I want my thwarted-in-life unrecognized ac-

Complishments because I was a powerless woman to be worth something now

Chaos that loved herself for she was what was says the basin

To the woman maybe just a little bit more composition

The woman reluctantly of the dead considers herself to be gold too

I am tornout gold I want my thwarted-in-life unrecognized ac-

Complishments because I was a powerless woman to be worth something now

Oh we are transcendant now I want my honors for I

Was more skilled than any man in articulating our existence

Then you can’t be alone she asked the basin of origin who are we it said I don’t know

Origin is just another idea and if scientific equations work still they wouldn’t if ev-

Eryone were dead oh yes they worked for us as the alive but there are none

For us now let’s leave these stories awhile I see that all of you await me what if I

Said I wouldn’t lead you further I say unless I were as adequately honored

As the many hacks oh that’s part of a story the dead stand around my bed

Imparting their energies to my mind and limbs so I can lead them

Are you our leader a spy

In the night sado-

Masochistic human world

Where we con-

Trive to hurt or be hurt with-

Out sunrise you can eat this

Food I don’t want to

Asked to denounce and shatter any basin of stillness

So that no one would rest there isn’t enough light in death

There aren’t any eyes they’re in the back of my head and in my future

This or anywhere mental is space manipulable

In one story she croons to the green void as her poems

Could be for it must she find the minds of the other dead

I will not change for you he says she said only for myself

Little girl you are kind and brave and beautiful echoes in the green death

That was the story you liked he says to me where are we going

And if I’m not sure does it matter from line to line we wander

I met you once whoever viewed like an iconography

Is what the woman said in another version the universe doesn’t

Look like anything our words find ourselves in it

Sickeningly enmeshed in the field where all others

Send forth their only minds of former has one tired of them personalities

The impulse toward individuation is older than the basin

The woman or little girl may have been kind and brave and beautiful but

Where our minds prowled that was nothing not for me she

Said struggling along the brooding plain the edge or there are no

Edges no there are none my dad says

These are our cities our connected minds do you mean chaos is our death

The boats dissolved as conveyors to war for we could not kill or

Even attack another’s mind why not it would just drift away

Unlocateable there’s no certain space to find it in

Let me in I’m

Looking for your

Mind why wasn’t my re-

Ligion correct why

Should it have been fol-

Low me across this void

I can’t follow a woman

The mind says you are

No longer a man I say

A soul is calm re-

Cede finding it and you’ll

Find me why should I

I’m leading you somewhere

Not in space it comes and

Goes you’ll be the only

Steady thing you know now

Except for me