John Nòto

JAR OF RESPIRATION

I'm writing you from below the belt,
my pain a seized engine          I live within
this flesh-schedule, gauze-in-trance,
shifting sexual vapors at all times
till only a debilitating whine is left
to run my heart down like an atomic clock

Some half-life machine dying of its own spasms:
"I break for love"—
the road-kill reconstructs itself
in the driver's gut
bloated spores          spawn an alien
presence in the middle of dinner

And turning to my partner, I expire,
saying, "the lost subscript
with directions in Japanese is under
                                    your hood."

The Paradox Programmer reaches down between her legs
and revs the motor
through the underground floes;

A deep river is
the perfect frozen asset to be thawed
in a climate of wealth without pride
uncorked for Summer by the cartel
and spread across the kitchen table
left for the baby to die slowly
                               in the Sudan

"Have a Blood Light"          with motor oil
and barbs in its broken jaw.

If you are to survive
you must make of your lungs forever-pumps,
clear the register.
Real-time is spent sleeping in the throes
of Beirut's rain-soaked gutters
with torn shirt-tails
                     and a star-chart
peering out from under burlap to see
that the minarets all point North.

Exhale in the mist          decimate the Poles,
pulse and                          come.
 
 

AT THE CREST OF THE SANTA CRUZ RANGE: ACQUISITION

The sun races with portable cellular abandon
below the visit-counter;
languid and blue, the backbay accepts any form
of payment;
the Ocean sparkles like a crumpled P&L statement
examined under halogens;
climbers rappel down a smooth rock wall,
gnats on molded plastic;

The muffled twitches I hear in sleep
are of terminal wax-spiders,
rain-ghosts who were once willows
in the primeval forest;

Though it's late afternoon, there's a brightness
suggesting the strength of Pacific Rim exports;
the trail I walk leads back and down
in a leaf-swirling ramble made for television;
a slave-labor moon rises slowly
as the sunrise must appear through grimy windows
on a sweat shop in Malaysia;
Colorwatch pine cones fester like sores
and knots are as sprains in the backs of day laborers;

Arc-lights claim Winter's sleeping germ
and tune the late frost's crystal radio,
a signal combed from bursts of tanglewood
held together by invisible water witches;

I close then open my eyes
merging two projected worlds' static
onto a flat fax-modem
implanted in dusk's catheter;

"Condition your mind and your hair will follow
without noticing"   the valve-cock
shut on everything you've known or scored,
must decanted in sorrel and fir,
a piped broadcast leading upstairs—
I have a sworn deposition etched on blue sodalite by
the attaché in charge of altered jay call-repertoires
scrambled and glowing in the chaparral;

The fog which covers this canyon
is a kindled spirit
licking the canopy's shingles
for the last time:        Grow!

The stars pitch their arc over a shopped creek-bed,
crevassed Chunnel of embedded tears cascading from
crimp-edged mountains toward a sea of almost tangible
    ARRAYS CHARMED BY INDIRECT LIGHTING
    WORLDWIDE TO REVEAL NO SECRET
 

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