Scibbled Envelopes

Pretty Lanterns

When the airstream's on the hayload

          & the limb is on the tree

you can hang your pretty lanterns

          where my legs attach to me

we can take our gloves & stockings

          & arrange them on that tree

you can shake your pretty lanterns

          & light up the inner me

when we go all out & say so

          that the air is full of bees

summer's here & we're a partin'

          & we'll do what damn we please

but it's really not the springtime

          & the air aint full of bees

will you take your goddamn lanterns

          get them off my BVD's.

1991, from Larry's Songs
Pretty Lanterns is recorded on Ubik Sound's The Mad New Mexican

Curiously, for me, I just this minute discovered on the envelope 
these lines following the song.

Holy Terror

Holy terror stalks the advent 
of the coming of the Lord
when he’s lost his good right hand love
& lives by the crooked sword.

Larry Goodell

Roswell


Roswell with the Plains rolling out into the Eyes 
Eyes with the Plains rolling into the Bars 
Bars where the Cattle cross into the Heart 
Roswell where the Heart rolls out of the Bars 
Bars with no Bars but Photographers arms 
back from San Francisco talking of Pool 
no Table   no bars    no    way to find Home 
Home from I am Roswell with the Veins in my Arms 
Arms with the Plains rolling out of all Harm 
Harm where you know it alive the Baby cries 
Roswell with recorders & Plains with their Arms 
to be one   Born here   St Mary's ordinary cross 
Roswell with the Music   He cleaned it up 
Roswell with no name   He never saw his town 
Roswell never saw the town named from his name 
Plains arms roll never knowing where they came from
Philanthropy an old thing   naming from the Bars 
no Bars only Home to some 
trying to name   an artist 
who's really good   at home in his voice 
reading the names as they show up in the Plains 
Home   & Home again   a name in the Bars 
of Albuquerque Algodones Placitas home 
Roswell with the name nobody calls it a home 
Home it was & ever will be & be & be 
Roswell with the name where 
the flat    ness rolls out 
aflame in the ears    to die Roswell old home a poet born to hear what 
he hears   her sitting home   away in the tears 
he left here   to come back   a dozen years of solitude 
a chronicle of Paradise in trees they left to die
Artesian Roswell making making
empty clothes lines

I give you Silk Stockings for Yr Empty   Bars
I give you back Roswell with its empty Death Wish
I give you back what you brot me   Lines with a Stick
a Bat out of Carlsbad   a Bag of loose Cotton
a reaping raping raiding woman cursing with the Dry Plains
I give you a Letter   the Letter Z
Z for Zones   Z for Cattle Brands unknown
Z for my Home never found never wandering
A Ghost of the Lovely Host who ate his Solid Wafer
& blessed the Town to turn it back where its Hope was found once
when you let the newly found Artesian wells spill out their
Giant wealth   to give it in again   & take the People Hatred
Hiding in DeBremond Stadium where the Football games
pounded   it in   turn it in the Spring River   come back
flowing   flowing   in all the ways of fuck     again.

 Larry Goodell   (written on envelope at Wendell Ott’s 

in Roswell, NM, Sunday, 7Apr74)

She Got It Right


The Bible wrote a woman
to teach her how to be right*
but she wrote before the Bible
it never got it right.



Larry Goodell /6Jun91


First time best.

(Spicer
         "Dictation" . . . )

*"write" I wrote in but I prefer original
which is on an envelope from Eileen Myles.

Today I received the incredibly beautiful and precious book of Emily Dickinson's envelope writings, each envelope whole or scrap of it carefully photographed with the typed text provided, from New Directions & Granary Books & the benevolent Steve Clay, The Gorgeous Nothings, by Dickinson, an amazing display of creativity in the act put to convenient paper . . .

this gift generated this putting together a few things: the "Roswell" poem is somewhat important to me having been a spontaneous act on a visit to my home town when at a party in the artist Wendell Ott's home, the poem started and I had to find an unoccupied room and tore open an envelope to write on . . . when I've read this to a younger audience I've, against my heart, substituted "fuck" for "love" but the original, as almost always, has the say . . .

in making my work presentable (on computer and printed out) I am constantly going back to the originals in the notebooks or, in earlier years, folders by year . . . as that first take in time and place allows little or no change in a different time and place since that would be contrary to the impetus, at least for me . . . I've spent too many years beating the dead horse of my uninspired poetry trying to whip the dead into living, a hopeless and exhausting and wasteful task . . . thank you Robert Creeley for giving me the hand up and out and into my own voice and possible unpretentious expression . . . the sounds can go deep and wide when true, true to one's cooperative self.

for That's A Poem  which was written on napkins in a hamburger place in Shiprock, New Mexico, please see That's A Poem, from Napkin to Printed Page.

Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico 3/14/2014
this post is for Steve Clay