UTTERANCE

As in: it is all a—
a gigantic a,
X, the world, or creosote, creeping phlox,
ruby-colored locked boxes for
which keys can no longer be imagined. That is how

far we are gone. I heard it, once, in the air, of
this I often think, even after it was gone: did it
exist, ever, was it like a liver, a way to make
living continue after it, big X, has shut down. Poll:
to what end do words occur in air? Still, it

is required. You are required to stand up, to be an I,
to acquit yourself as such, to commit unrequited—what?
—love. For this you shall receive a pill:
salvation. Publication. Perhaps
a sort of punishment. It is kind of like a

channel, sure, you can call it television but I think of magic:
gesture, misdirection. I think of something different, a dug
gutter through which liquid flows. We are then and we are gong,
and we are gone: passagers, a
bird or boat of passage [obs.]; boobs abob

(did I mean agog? am I/are we inflamed?),
tits in transit,
burbling towards our suburb
where windows display our illuminated objects and the few
remaining lives up at this hour—just before the star

returns to our side of the world; just before the sound of 4
connoting morning’s beginning, coffee percolation, the waking arc
and attenuating sleep. Antenna,
do you witness nurses beginning their commute? I did:
they are for the hospital, and the story of our heart.

Not as in: an excited—, a kind of proclamation
against our interests, maybe in a
fit of passion, or when surprised. I can detect the scent of
gas, a new compound, emanating
from the chemical plants down on the river flat. Of

this I know: at daylight they curtail emissions, gift-
wrap greenhouse goodness: a present for the few,
the world. They ask for millage, tax breaks, that the flight
of gases from chimneys be less curtailed. O,
industry: of this I sing, unobstructed, unrefracted. I

would be your benefactor if you would have me. See also: Mew.
See also: apostrophe, soliloquy, depositions
given under duress. Long
I have said (and I had thought) I
was immune to this, to dew

generated by moisture gestating
cold in air overnight, this slick physics or even magic.
Our world, filled with herd and salivation, presto!
and it’s gone, decomposed immediately in a
sort of air, an aberration, a version of aversion, a chorus

secreted behind a magic curtain, spontaneous,
maybe ready to com-
bust, to comb,
to con, dumb toucans, or maybe not—
we could all go on or we could renew

our wide-mouthed, glorious O—