DIVINATION: I warned you a blast was raging downstream
by elocution to thrust-condensers ramming
P-Funk out the dual exhaust, the windpipe
and the rush
from those who ride shortwave
on the MacRiviera, repainting native earthworks
the colors of oxidized metallic fingers
the monkey-idol
left out in the rain too long, ageless
the orange oak-leaves moulted brown
will continue maniacally twirling in the grass
until your sentience writhes before me,
sated,
kneeling at the worship
of a billion, umbral ricocheted stars
In my eyes, remorseless invoiced angels
struggle free, the risen dog
taxonomy yelping down my jawline
evolves prophylactic beasts of order
from the banks of the Auto-Chlor, jetstream
spoken on radio backstreets
by lone-goth mobile choirs
in niches timed to signal lamps you
stretched on twine to the gas silos;
on the plain by the toxic-shock station,
brackets conceal sparks
in the trail of lost fume identities;
BLOW: Character breaks are only ghost Antarctic sweats
jerking down your cheeks under a punctured ozone;
remember when the Meat Puppets played
Guadelupe?
Don't cry for me, Patagonia,
the Amazon's wrists are screeching
through tapeheads at high-speed, masked
and flailing at the mouth
enshrouding peaks with a condensed vulvic moisture
and a ring of fine vapor;
an occasional shreik or moan won't drive
the public-broadcast tundra; Rather
pump strafed-baby interrupt into raw gum
domains, one nation under a spell
perished, full-shadow
on the restrained teak commode,
Your mouth is an empty lung bloated with mongrel air,
and my pagan crush will land you in dumpsters
at twilight,
rutting and tumbling under cover of packed incisors,
task-force weaponry
scratching out declensions on the Mission glass,
the Popol Vuh extinguished in the negatives
any photograqhic evidence for capital
exhumes black soot and stone
under canopy of the Mayan tumbler vault;
PARAPET: I'm going down in the annals of ecstasy
as a sub-altern career voyeur
seceding from the union of pain
with the done deal at the corner
conscience store:
"Rain Forest Flakes and xanex, please." -it's a wrap.
Your manacled breath sternly poses
beneath caution waivers
sundering rhythm viscosities I'm tossed
in the mix
on barbs and filed teeth pillars
carrying protection
I've applied the brakes once too often,
and you might have to finish this.
ORGAN: Riff forward to the last-born cog, the Great Divide
between clefs powered by winter Southbound
mackerel skies,
the roe slough down, school me down to work;
Or, I'm on a Def Revel recording contract,
arraigned in hell, the corpse,
Dead Elvis, booked and charged
with a pocketful of truck-stop violence
thrown on the pyre of love,
I'm trashing every lineage in sight;
and it's one for the money, two
for another lost angel in the City at night;
This biblical scar
world as Pinochet puppet
on a broken string looking for an altar,
for Jude,
confessor,
a refuge from mockery,
some tawny, blind majorette;
The door-crack baiting a branch, an offer
of sweetbreads and cod is proffered,
the river rolling in iodine and paint,
smudge-pot indigo tears, refrain
drawn through switches,
through the giant leaves of ferns
a girl peers open-mouthed and is marked red
for the camera or sighting scope;
Peru:
A jet-trail chisels clouds pearl-grey
and the Inca slumber is unfollowable;
CAVEAT EMPTOR: The drifiting bread the river
burns away at the feed
is hampering your palmistry
woven in blankets of low squawk
the inertial reels plushed at my temples
cut clocks from the disk;
the sun is a pre-emptive cough.
John Noto is a San Francisco poet of technoculture and the cyber abyss. He writes for the literary magazines Caliban and Talisman. His first book, Psycho-Motor Breathscapes will be published in the Fall of 1995 by Vatic Hum Press in Louisville, KY, and San Francisco, CA.