I like to have a good time
Any of my friends will tell you
So if you confront me with stupidity
I'm doubly angry at you


Jon Huffman, untitled

The Goddess Who Created This Passing World
-- by Alice Notley

The Goddess who created this passing world
Said Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction
Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled
Cars & the variously shod feet were born
And the past & future & I born too
Light as airmail paper away she flew
To Annapurna or Mt. McKinley
Or both but instantly
Clarified, composed, forever was I
Meant by her to recognize a painting
As beautiful or a movie stunning
And to adore the finitude of words
And understand as surfaces my dreams
Know the eye the organ of affection
And depths to be inflections
Of her voice & wrist & smile


World's Bliss
-- by Alice Notley

The men & women sang & played
they sleep by singing, what
shall I say of the most
poignant on earth the most glamorous
loneliest sought after people
those poets wholly beautiful
desolate aureate, death is a
powerful instinctive emotion—
but who would be released from
a silver skeleton? gems
& drinking cups—This
skull is Helen—who would not
be released from the
Book of Knowledge? Why
should a maiden lie on a moor
for seven nights & a day? And
he is a maiden, he is & she
on the grass the flower the spray
where they lie eating primroses
grown crazy with sorrow & all
the beauties of old—oh each poet's a
beautiful human girl who must die.


alba
-- by Vincent Katz

a cloud is passing in the window
thicket of mushroom-top
chimneys from a single root
I will cease the silent assaults
I will desist from borrowed lingo
one thing I may not avoid
sexual self-harassment
but I will try
a drink, an ale
in cavern of artistic vegetation
alba lights my night to self
revelation, collapse, tinker with
sentiments in cold police car blue