One thing supplanting all things—the flu, summing all virtues
Or days’ chores condensed to prophylaxis.
A stimulus passed thru the bicameral mind whispers:
Only a God can save us.

One planting, one summoning virtues from
A mouth forced agape for gunked gears. 
Her watercolor deferred in a demilitarized zone
Such dreams of grace in the face of entropy have seduced 

Better men than me. Count me king of in-
Finite space, the vacuum moves of its own.
Pianos strike chords they were unprepared for,
Let the snakes crinkle their heads to death.

In dividual cells a virus works on wires as well.
It is so easy that once caught it will be common as flesh or stupidity.

It is so easy that once caught it will be common as flesh or stupidity.
Henceforth there can be no measure of excess—
But neither surplus. So far no chemist
Has discovered exchange-value in either a pearl

Or a diamond. Whose invariability
Despite itself contains a doubled world
Still too easily recognized at the drop of a mask
Or what’s a rising tide to a drunken boat

Horizons towards far chasms cataracting!
Since blinked a hundred fifty years— 
The papyri are only just uncurled
Nascent technologies of ecstasy 

Begin to chug their semperpetual pulse.
Language is in its January. How shall I say it?

Language is in its January. How shall I say it?
To know uncertain terms. Emptied corners
Hiss warnings diagonally in half-light, where
Blighted cells are unpatterned & dishabituated

To the tintinnabulation of causticated carillon.
Eventide’s dendritical avenues of study
Dead-ended. In time the devoided frock 
Floats floorward. And a remainder is siphoned

On its propulsive pneumatic trajectory
To attend the lightening of dull.
If dim arcana are adumbrated
At last universal hierophany 

Brokered, flated at day’s outbreak.
It is the birth of another cycle.

It is the birth of another cycle.
The situation & the event speak themselves
Thru things, the books I read & what passes
By the window & under my fingers & thru the scissors 

Lapsed magazines’ & todays’ televisuals’
Everything nothing but contemporary,
As if a photograph could prescribe a century.
But I could discern no widening gyre—

The hawks just shit from telephone wires.
There is a stranger herald headed
Here & when you hear his howdy
You will know that pop is not enough

And leave all you have owned behind.
It has the same effect—the epidemic—as clear thought.

It has the same effect—the epidemic—as clear thought
When the social hieroglyphics cannot be (en)forced.
What seems at first an inherent awkwardness of sound 
In the early Zukofsky’s frequent plural-possessives: 

Wings’ leaves ; thoughts’ torsion ; cars’ drafts ; shops’ crowds 
(“Mantis”, ll. 1, 3, 6, 12),
Is rather the effect of our own 
Habituated incomprehension of

A notion of collective ownership.
We land on the island and the island
Is land.      Or else there is an interior where
A poet looks to an occupied chair—

The sphere is close but the range is theirs.
The rustle of her book is in his ear.

The rustle of her book is in his ear.
Butterflys hang from the bottoms of
Branches in his eye. His I
Lands on her hands only. Away to

In form & to touch, each
Other, a cross. Service only, playing
Apart with nothing to base it upon,
As in, nothing to stand up against.

(A silence the count of seven)
Oh, and—they are beset by passive voices.
The island is experiencing a period
Of scarcity called “One monk in four”.

Oddball particles leave them in stitches.
The thermometer also is at seven.

The thermometer also is at seven.
I was looking at an island in the glass.
It was an island of comfort in a sea of blood.
An island of comfort in the lake of luxury on

The moon. It was lonely on the island.
The riddle of the Sphinx must be forgotten 
In times of diminishing life-expectancy.
It is difficult to countenance the miracle—

The markets—macro & micro—are empty.
Supposedly nothing was immune 
From this alchemy ; now we work in reverse:
In the city & on parking tickets the car is gold

But on the 1 & in the poem is driftwood pearl.
In the distance the buildings fail.

In the distance the buildings fail.
Silence, silence. Yet new buildings,
Signals, & changes went on in the silence.
And the yellow-blue alarum of phosphors singing.

You created a temple for them deep 
Inside their ears. Yours burn with hatred of
Being angry at people whom one does not
Care about. They say an injury to one 

Is an injury to all. Then the call dropped, call
Back when yr back in range. The druids
Ditched their lodge. Throw a rock at it
And it multiplies. A living structure, worrisome.

O the things which would have had to have been:
A pile of rubbish of which the catalogue should be made.

A pile of rubbish of which the catalogue should be made.
“Knowing thyself” as a product of the historical
Process to date, which has deposited in you
An infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.

The glass which can only be glass 
Because it is not wood, nor sand, nor paper,
Nor metal, nor fabric, nor plastic, nor wax,
Nor water. One should not pick up 

Lighters from the street: that’s dirty fire.
The sun is warm but the wind is
Vexatious & the clouds are gray & plenty
This thirty-first of April day. And in spite of 

Payments made to the transmundane
The banality wins, is increased by the attempt to reduce it.   

The banality wins, is increased by the attempt to reduce it.   
Things of which to do one one day & another another.
Carefully, again. In my cell that permits
Neither standing nor sitting, in search of God

Knows what, beneath clouds w/ vertical development.
A bushtit passes hours at the windowsill
Pecking its reflection to death:
Battling thru walls is a deep blue torture.

If I just had a shoulder to crayon…
This demon readily leaps upon such states
And, like a dog with a young deer,
Tears the soul to pieces. The least

Pretense & all reverts to lawn order.
Everything we read now is uncleanly.

Everything we read now is uncleanly.
The king takes no cognizance of any
Pantomime princes. The shock of contact
With all this strange humanity. Sun

Of glowing heavenly parenthesis.
But we shall proceed, as we do in geometry,
By means of problems, and leave
The starry heavens alone. Enough,

Clearly, of such eudaimonism—that
Such and such would be the case. 
To borrow discriminately from the future
Rebuilt institutions, and from the past

Stillborn futures—our etymythology. But
One cannot eat sand—and the world would not give itself to be eaten.

One cannot eat sand—and the world would not give itself to be eaten.
Tho in a world of affluence, the shoddiness of objects 
Replaces the scarcity of objects as the expression 
Of poverty. What generosity by which

I am offered not one but twelve. All these
Goods that are done by me, done for 
Me. This message brought to you
Courtesy of. And thank God for

Disastertizing, or we would not know
How, why to act, what to prefer.
To proffer what is freely given, 
Is (a) given, in the last instance.

What, after all, is VAMORDEX. Without question.
It is a fierce singleness that the epidemic has stepped up to a mountain.

It is a fierce singleness that the epidemic has stepped up to a mountain.
And the didacticism of the preceding
Rings with the strangeness of gravel
In the garbage. Turns to blue-winged

Quick music, & green discs’ extent of
White stars. O the empty premises a God
Makes love of. Her inconstant face
Measured time by her always haunted men.

Successive builders fade into civilizations 
Whose castles crossed the sea. I have found
An utter astonishment for my small economies.
But I was bent bread, heavy pastry,

Master. Cherish your right to cherish. 
What I would say has no relation to the effect of a church on the mind.

What I would say has no relation to the effect of a church on the mind.
Owe no one anything, except to love one another, 
For the one who loves another has fulfilled 
The law. A productive appreciation of others

Which form or color their worth. He gilded
A sensation or his own sunshine.
On the other hand, a wider & higher way
Was largely stayed. There is a Way.

Agape. Warp & weft, the heft of
Leftover tenets. Please don’t get all
Sedimental with me now. The distinct
Failure is distinction enough. The germ

Undifferentiated: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
One thing supplanting all things—the flu, summing all virtues.

One thing supplanting all things—the flu, summing all virtues.
It is so easy that once caught it will be common as flesh or stupidity.
Language is in its January. How shall I say it?
It is the birth of another cycle.

It has the same effect—the epidemic—as clear thought.
The rustle of her book is in his ear,
The thermometer also is at seven,
In the distance the buildings fail:

A pile of rubbish of which the catalogue should be made.
The banality wins, is increased by the attempt to reduce it
And everything we read now is uncleanly.
One cannot eat sand—and the world would not give itself to be eaten.

It is a fierce singleness that the epidemic has stepped up to a mountain.
What I would say has no relation to the effect of a church on the mind.