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