POEM REWOVEN

by  shaun lawton 

Providing a format with which I can render these pages obsolete of blank space.
In order to prise the gemstone from the talons of those to whom we're enslaved.
Into dinosaur chrism on the gleaming plates under the sun most of all laved for.
To provide formulations which may become tender again ages away even if late.
Showing how light reveals stolen battalions for those silent wombs we've craved.
Introducing legion blind and storming through the last open gates we aimed for.
To prize formations in which we must succumb to the woven cages sent our way.
In ordinary schisms it is the chosen battle bastion quickly razor split and halved.
That introduces entities to binding states of complicated thoroughgoing enmity.
Inducted often as sins to be tasted only to attempt escape and get drained again.
Instruments inspect our destiny of tightropes driven away in sun glycerin motes.
Seeking wren notes pinned to the arm of some instructing men sent to be tested.
To cope with an ounce of grit while surviving a rudimentary command of doors.
Opened by dawn's insular gliding while awaiting noteworthies to end all armies.
An insurrection bent on destroying crops with a trounce of ill lit understanding. 
Hopeless over cities having to sever blocks from all such suddenly untied knots.
Having winnowed out of it can't be an option again when learning how to comb.
The fish wed out from our beards as provincial hens transform into clean guests. 
From recourse to providence shining O be a friend in our quests to scar the page.

STORY ENDED

by   shaun  lawton  

Hay fever seizes the accountability of the narrative if the
commentator becomes susceptible to this malady.

Sometimes we live in fear of being forced to tell our stories
under conditions not best for remembering them.

It's a systemic emotion bred and  ritualized into us over the course
of many subsequent generations.

There arrives a point where the terror no longer registers
anymore and so here it comes triggered weakly within.

So that the detonation of silence opens a clustering sky
for a garden from which to hang tears individually.

I don't think it's possible for the story to have ended
really, not here today, nor there tomorrow.

CRYSTAL RADIO

by  Shaun Lawton 

Past the breakdown of the bicameral eye into a jewel dropout.
All the droplets fall as if they were all too happy to do so even.
Without gravity to aid the mutual alignment of all the remaining.
Creatures on Earth each one here exclusively in our own domain.
Sharing our individual universes with each other interlaced.
Repelled embraced unfathomed because it's still going on strong.
This here reality appears as a symphony believe me I've seen it.
And I'm listening to its strange refrains even now as I write this.
The weeping curtain of diamonds falls in loose girdles like rain.
Outside my window just one of many filtered lenses on a chain.
Like a rosary trying to balance its own perspective as it spills.
Through hands caressing its beads to snap taut against the anchor.
Waking up to the chill of morning with every last gem spent.
Look into the crystal and imagine the music emanating from it.

LONG PERIOD COMET

by  Shaun Lawton 

A crucible of knowledge replicates from one man's solitary diary. 
Understandings are innately acquired from over long distances.
Filtered sunlight reflects serene off a series of alternating mirrors.
Nodal torch points of the Matriculation align themselves over time.
Networks of quasars help synchronize active galaxies universewide. 
Paradise arrives before our eyes after colonizing us from the inside. 
Hell breaks out around us when we find ourselves on any lost cause. 
To be found is to realize we are here at the exact center of creation. 
Awakening from the sleep of the dead often triggers disorientation.
The ghostly real world blurs behind our shuttering facade of factories.
With inexplicable rapidity the self replicating planet corrupts into slag.
Fated to become yet another asteroid belt embedded with human DNA.

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.