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.

THE OLDER ONES

by Shaun Lawton 

Our own brains are canned in bone.
We rarely think of this when left alone.
With three times as many appendages as an octopus.
Memories dim as dreams take over the mind. 
From what depths we dared our hold on history. 

We crossed the gap arriving and gasping for air from the shore.
At the cellular level aware of our capacity to adapt. 
There is no justification for polluting an entire planet. 
The reason for this is because neither does justice exist. 
Only a sort of static balance amid the roiling turmoil. 

An  entire world exists outside our thought!
We have words that represent the aspects of that world. 
Mountain, stone, water, sinew, feather, lightning, thunder, dark.
Keep these words true to your heart and align yourself with earth.
Disregard abstractions such as good, evil, truth, justice, etc. 

They work to cloud the mind and further obfuscate our lives.
Lives we are dreaming up on the spot so get with it and wake up. 
The ancient lords who swam up from the greatest depths. 
We are surrounded by them today just take a look around. 
Kings of our dominion are wearing our own clothes dressed to kill.  

Groomed with immaculate grace pupils full blown in our face. 
Everything Is Under Control someone possessed of sardonic wit once wrote.
Except for the grip we may have on our own lives we suppose. 
One thing matters in the dark protected by calcified helmets. 
Extruded upright by gravity and guided by the wind.  

THE FIRST SEVEN CONFORMATIONS

by  Shaun  Lawton  

A head emerges from the limitless, providing nine emanations.
Before this the earth was desolate, the crowns of old kings had been lost.
Their wearers dead for ages, back when nothing faced itself
until the day arrived the vestments of honor were communicated
by this crowning countenance, carrying nine seeds born to echo.
Held dormant in trinities within their own dark equilibrium.
Incomprehensible and as yet unseen, though heralded to ascend
from never into being ever after, the simple triple trinity.
Annealing complicity, keeping the mystery secret through
forging a cranium for crystalline dew, with skin made of ether and triumphant.
Hair of the finest wool covering a benevolent forehead
made of the prayers from seeds, with an eye always open and awake.
Perpetually keeping watch over this glorious network
of gifts and receptions, where the appearance of the lower
comes from the aspect of the higher; a spirit blows across the kingdom
from mighty twin galleries to rush forth about everything.
In the beginning, the six was created with this breath of life
as it was drawn into himself, above the complex beard of dignity...

BURIED DOLL RECYCLED

by Shaun Lawton 

   During winter it is quite possible to surmise everything at once and include it within the unfolding compass of an angel's wingtip tracing out ellipses in the ice when you consider the sum cost of a life spent hell bent on crossing an abyss so deep and frozen below our feet the continental shift of slow moving and long buried tectonic plates drowns out our sorrowed memories in a convalescent hum that merges like a curtain of mist over death shrouded ears we stopped hearing so long ago miles beneath years of snow that the passing white painted dashes on the highway of our lives blurred into a soothing necklace we already awoke from just to find we've been hung so carefully and with such devotion in the shut closet of our dreams that remembering them clearly is the last thing we've wanted ever since we can recall extending back to the barrier between childhood and high school which had been eroded explicitly even before we lost grip of the post doll dream and swallowed whole the seedlike husks of a black pair of glossy vinyl buttons sewed shut with leather tassels directly over the binocular spots where pennies have been laid to rest for centuries under the crumbling shifting sandstone of a whirling epic history unfolding and stacking up fast amid gigantic freeze dried mountains barely upthrust from the shallow end of eternity's sloughed off skin and perfect for burying old used up porcelain fantasies in.  

   Legend has been maintained in the popular domain of human beings for just as long as any of them can remember that winter loses its grip just as the seasons slip past so fast that by facing the rising sun spring melts away all the years of frozen fear as if it were one extended anapole summer day hidden in plain sight balanced in the gray between the lines on a page (the only thing in existence by definition that is not moving) so needless to state or even try to illustrate despite the blank sheet of paper having captured the fluid motion of the consistently hand typed lines in a still life of text preserved for posterity such as the ritual wearing of featureless masks which is what has transformed over time into the printing of rhyme and woven story we call the library of human knowledge and morning glory's wildest most colorful fantasies ever to be projected upon the silver canvasses of our knit together lives paper puppet stitched in a rosary of cross hatching shadows over a sunken sculpture sinking from sight into the general murk of the gateway to nighttime twilit intervals where starlight is invited to slow dance the rest of the evening away despite coming to awaken in a tomb.    

The Zombie Apocalypse™ Will Not Be Televised

by  Shaun Lawton

I remain indoors with the irredeemably captive.
I see a lot from my room looking out through the window.
Only once did I dare to venture out of the Household.
I have too many chores to do, and besides, we aren't allowed.
To go further than the reinforced gate in the Yard
Is to invite certain persecution from the Federal Guard.
My two older brothers kept grave shift watch at both Towers.
Thomas (the eldest) had reported to me troublesome encounters
During his early morning shifts.  Tom confided in me.

Just before his first zombie kill, his target was pointing
Wildly at its champing mouth, as if it were trying to bite off
Its own index finger.  Yet something in the manner
Of its uninhibited gesticulation troubled my brother.
There was a certain desperation to it, he said.  Whereas the others
That he terminated since then barely managed to stand there
Unaffected by flies.  Walking with the slowest deliberation
In no particular direction.  Utterly indifferent to being crowned
By the glorious skies.  This is what got Tom thinking.

I'll say this about my oldest brother, he always used to claim
That he thought too much.  Now look what it got him.
Outside the Fence, and Lod knows if he were still alive
I wish he would send me a sign.  Apparently he sent it
To our brother Pete, instead.  Peter said, "He's one of them
Now.  I saw him yesterday.  Laid him down myself.
He was doing that thing like he was trying to eat his own finger.
I'm sorry little brother.  He is at peace."
After a long silence, I asked him where it happened.

He pointed to an overgrown street corner two blocks outside the Fence.
After calculating the distance, I explained to him my plan.
During a dark hour of morning, with rope he lowered me to the ground.
From the lone Northwest Tower, I ducked my head and ran fast.
Tom's body lay spread eagle on his back amid a bed of dandelions.
The single conclusion which haunts me, and of which I have no doubt,
With the flashlight I peered into his mouth and found his tongue cut out.
I heard a scraping sound, as if someone approached from nearby.
Like a deer I bolted away, and sprinted wide eyed for the Fence.

At the knotted rope I yanked, the bell in the Tower alerted Peter.
He hauled me to safety even as I climbed away from there.
From the top I looked down and saw the body sprawled arms outspread.
Lying still.  The question burning inside of me that I had just found
I was too scared to actually discover the answer for myself now.
I have a role to play and there are rules to follow, we all do.
I will never leave the sanctity of the Household again.
I see a lot from my window up on the second story.
We remain indoors together, the protected and I.