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.

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...