he was my first savior jack of clubs
though one's divided between
if he tells you or you tell yourself -
you know what I mean? -
what's true.
Waiting in rooms full of girls.
An older man does the trick
Not as dumb as a younger one, but
they fuck without compunction at
first then they get some because
you're too dumb.
He was tall greeneyed person
pale with features disappearing
into that paleness apartment on Hudson St.
the rest is a secret no it isn't
Why no secrets? Oh,
who reads poetry anyway!
I can almost see green sweater
a peculiarly vegetative
moss or heatherish green
gets unbuttoned, bare bulb light.
He's too dumb to think I'm innocent
what kind of stupidity's operative
this man's a doctor I
scream he's surprised a hymen bleeds.
After that I'm a lump of naiveté
to him in every respect and so
discarded I now have experience.
I think this kind of tale is
as important as a pompously cited
Phoenician myth, to poetry
in Phoenix I drink with my father
"You don't bruise the bourbon," he says.
Back in New York, uptown at night
a warehouse city no street life
Rooms full of girls I'll always dream about
Women won't let me go Or is it men
A sex isn't very deep but its
surface is armor ironmasked
like certain poetries I can't use
how be what you are what's experience but
a becoming acceptable to the keepers
of surfaces say this University
So glad I don't have to write
in the styles of the poetries I was taught
they were beautiful and unlike me
positing a formal, stylized woman.
But I am the poet, without doubt.
Experience is a hoax.
Alice Notley, "Experience"
