Zero-sum. A man breaks down and is mechanized, and 100,000 expendable Iraqis revive as android processors on keyboards invoke the spectre of a binary order an Egyptian woman embroiders on a tabouret the image of a couple embracing through the flesh of their own children warped out geometrically across the globe an attack of air-phones lures an entire school to its death At the port of Israel on a bus muffled voices with guns force gas in the mouths of significant others through the lost playgrounds I was crushed and tagged by a vicious number: the next rise in expectations Slips soothing replicant memories inside the global mudslide cartoon swallows the post-nuclear family beached on a shelf celluloid through the voices of wave-people the lion-faced serpent Who will announce the names I've shaved to protect the innocent they kept under cold surveillance? A woman in a black garter belt presses distended nipples against a stiff, cocks, pivots and vanishes beneath the rim of the Indian subcontinent Sumatra glows exotic pebbles in the dash of the Seychelles spill down dark reflector tape moonwash unzipping the world Through a rift in the birth of velcro a Caesarean scar lingers on my hidden wing-camera the moon waxed as a snow-blind leopard might smoke in her eyes an endless cycle of frenzy and slow-scan Over Antarctic cliffs the convenience store of a billion tears caresses the right urge to build a consensus alarm into heat-seeking loins instantly and with unmediated ruthlessness Shocked on the groin out in the killing fields my test scores cancel meat-clamps extending prosthetic incisors access the G-spot in North Korea and rip out its tonsils Along my inner thighs the force behind acute multi-level marketing schemes the transport of helium bells dripping from sleeves of Nepalese spirit armies under the shuddering stars a sabertooth llama breaks the silence riding the world-gasm like a tube aboard breaking trends In wetware thong-back Euro-trash shunts down a mall golden under the sky-machine a unicorn bridled before dawn systemic assimilations to the screamscape load both barrels and the queen of ravished gypsies lies with slaves Labor-intensive menacing hands sail the ship of state through horse latitudes anywhere in the minus column the unknown and unwanted count as seams in the hull of the world and hooves tighten trance-like over the gallop of commerce the most innocent confession forced A skin-sensitive switch jammed in the off-position halts seven continents grimacing contestants behave homogeneously consuming the pattern of oats and unquenchable thirst strapped on your native dressage a livid cat wrestling for the feedbag Within the whining RAGE suck my eyes from the face of the lens.

John Noto is a writer who lives in San Francisco. A volume of his work entitled Psycho-motor Breathscapes was recently published by Vatic Hum Press, San Francisco. He is also the editor of Orpheus Grid, a magazine of poetry, poetic prose and essays.