The Iowa Review celebrates the life of one of our greatest and most influential poets, Alice Notley, who passed away yesterday in Paris. May she rest in peace. This poem appeared in our 45/2, Fall 2015 issue.
Honey leader honey from the lion’s body I bring you
A food or mental substance a knowledge from the sup-
Posed realm of wordlessness the opposite of me
Honey leader honey your hair is growing around
Mirrorshades the only thing I see is a vibrant word is it
A word if I know it flash not reading it
Saying it without saying it with lips or brain but
Being honey you should see there’s no one here but everyone
I wanted to forget them blindly when the world began again
My double honey stark as a burnt tree when I spoke
Flash and I saw how wrong everybody had been
In the old times when all we created was decorative
If I might destroy the old you I’m extracting power from which
Self in order to stand for a moment above you hold-
Ing my bone club my weapon of greeting hello honey
You will not go on the way you have your tone
Of voice silly and maudlin pompous and demanding
You must now learn from this word wedge your new art
Honey as leader honey I am your mind leading
You can hear me we stand counting nothing not know-
Ing numbers anyone forgot them to beg to be home
Here we are numb for I’ve destroyed and rebirthed you honey
You have nothing but this vibration we are speaking almost silently
You have nothing but this opposite of what you were this moltenness
None of you my friend but I’ve led you to your own heart
A place where no one has to know their words or
Counterparts anymore your stories were invented in dreams
Your eyes were full of unsubstantial legends you’d made up
And attributed to the fabricated bastards your heroes of millions
They were just you I’ve ripped them out your soreness is freedom
Honey leader I’m and learning a language from which you
Can know all others only two native speakers left I and
I and the I that has taken over now shows you the grid of re-
Newal it’s a shaky grid the cracked syntax of an earthquake
Honey leader it will slow down and flow like honey
After we agree to speak darkly or densely honey leader grid
This language might tear you but you’re already torn
No no overlay all language comes from here
Find it at this time clutching the damage we came from
Its innard strings I pull it apart and it refigures I’m yours
What are your verbs and nouns I am a conglomerate of anything
I speak for a joining of the already contiguous I
Am how we cohere mind after death pushing outward honey lava
I am your leader says the language or I the
Quintillionth and first I the verb I the noun the pronominals
My death I honey leader honey calls out silently to
Other honey the grid flows like aftermath
I didn’t ask says the universe to be born
And death says I may have asked to die but I can’t and we
The dead don’t die living on speaking origin that
You’d think of as grid never been such the part of
Speech is to join us in mentality I am the serenest
Samson you might know after I destroy us
Why does it begin in violence because you named it violence
But now you have no nervous system to hurt you
Honey leader honey uncarved again with phantom pain
Today’s my brother’s birthday do I still remember everything
But it’s my day he says I’m finally reborn sis honey
That’s an aside or double a twin of telepathy
We have come to the fact of the solution honey leader un-
Named shapes call out that we didn’t know everything to see
Now we’re inside the words we’d catch hold of
We have never heard of governance I tell us I
The leader the Samson who judged us sad and inept trivial
Washed-up smothered souls groping
You had to follow me past the store of limp spangled dresses limp
Weapons my cudgel is pure like a torch my hair’s like gray fire
Inside this honey flow where the language is find-
Ing its nearly unfashioned form its deeper hues
My brother’s new peace the source of our plan to go on
Leader my shell is empty or it’s all stony dark green
The money was nothing the clothes were vapid the poems of
Others dimming in force the money was nothing a joke
All the money in the world a joke though the sorrow real leader
Honey leader honey power’s the only thing we are an ac-
Cumulation of first matter hollow electric and calm
I know what it is I say I know where we are and are going
We are rearranging origin its glyph and its home
We are rearranging the night plan I honey leader honey
Am calling reality now it responds to me
We are calling you to us I and what was once fate the body
But is now my own malleability the light staring
Or is it something I would recognize just who I am
I want you to see it inside the beginning in our
Composite meaning as for the pre-beginning honey
I pulled down the ceiling so we wouldn’t have dimensions or scale
Then there was pure action in death which is truth I
Honey and leader am left on the river but I have the boat
Whoever left me for trivia but I have the boat or
Leadership the honey songs beguiling you to start again
Maintaining our connection that is our universe
We are the power we stand in pre-power the whole thing
Before the shell body honey power wouldn’t you like to
Act now for the sake of action not knowing why
Without an accrued meaning with words that don’t
Drag leavage after them I acted honey leader
Honey without any motive for I was not enacted
And I arrange reality a certain way that’s all
With the hands of one of my bodies coincident in me
All night I arrange things without known names or shapes
Put on your irreal shades honey leader be opaque again we are
Ready everyone everything here inside the connection
Last night you were with me because I was broken and good
And you say you are with me because I’ve got enough honey for you
Matter or mentality becoming words for anyone in any lan-
Guage or stillness we are forming entities for each other
Here in the primal blast moltenness we have arrived at
Hurt from prior eons ready for the mind or dream that acts
I birth new forms hopeless and free any rock
Any rock has a new name and I have one too honey leader honey
What shall we do together with these new minds and have
Accepted nothing have not seen or heard it haven’t re-
Acted honey leader haven’t judged or been taught
We are making what we are just that
