SONNET FOR THE LIVING

by Shaun Lawton 

Holding hands with the shadows of the dead across the street.
The coolness dissipates from our palms after we meet.
These whispers from the mortuary eaves in our ears.
Longing for us to be joined with them are all we can hear.
Drawn from the supernal hearth of our home the forest of night.
What should be found supernatural and eerie or mysterious.
Is the stability of our own street and how it came to be.
That it bridges across the distance of all the known seasons.
Over all the weathered years of our lives and our neighbors.
What should really awe and terrify us all is the truth.
How did the ground and our feet come to meet after all.
Why have we all arrived to see what's here after all these years.
Caught in the cold void of eternity without a moment's certainty.

COLD FRONT

by  Shaun Lawton 

Apart from cracks on the Formica counter top around the bending 
curve of my eye I can not discern anything through my shot glass. 
The rumblings of a city in dusk seep through the slurry of hushed 
undertones merging stainless steel clinks from glasses slowly stirred. 
In this labyrinth collecting mirrors no one bothers looking at each other 
directly for the point of that was lost long ago with the reflected hosts. 
I sink into the magnified pores of her face held balanced on a stack 
of merging surface edits like a drawn bath displaced by a weary body. 
It's been many revolutions since I can remember springtime 
and for that I should ordinarily feel sadder than the beer ads on the wall. 
Cheerfully I determine that mixing drinks with indentured silverware 
may distract the focus from a certain familiar melody floating by. 
Its coruscating pattern of decaying notes drift along into the distance 
like so many flakes of ash rendered gray as the moon in winter. 
The cracked fields of this lit valley fade before the inland sea evaporates 
into silence here on a world whose name evokes nothing but dirt. 
I'd rather not think about it since my drink became too evenly mixed 
for me to want another sip from the cold inversion boiling outside.