POST-POP DESOLATION

by shaun lawton 

As the tides from space ineluctably draw in and out of our atmosphere.

We are licked and caressed by languorous exhumations from the void.

If we could tune in on that distillation of disconsolate wavelengths.

Ushered into the breathtaking inhalation of the yawning gulfs.

Our focus would sharpen into a lucid high contrast revelation.

As the pores of our skin opened and shut in eyeless observation.

Sensing the crack and tolling of thunder in a woeful intimate proximity.

Realizing the sudden lightning flash equated to the bright days of our life.

Not seeing the fulmination for the electromagnetic spectrum.

In blind recognition of the moment being the body of the beast.

Its tensed musculature comprised of the neural pathways in our brains.

Ready to pounce in an instant on the cusp of the riptides of eternity.

Each sip of our morning coffee a conflagration of silent turbulence.

To mirror and be echoed by the tempest from our coronal solar wind.

For a few short moments with eyes lowered shut in ecstatic concession.

We breathe in the turmoil captured inside the center of the eye of peace.

NOVEL CORONAVIRUS UPDATE

by   shaun  lawton 

In the year of perfect vision a multiplicity of cosmic events

 synchronizes after millennia of constantly adjusting alignments.
At the macroscopic level quasars flare open and irises shut 

 channeling electromagnetic energy to form the birth of galaxies.
Black holes dilate and distribute the thermodynamic cycle 

 of energy maintaining the elemental balance necessary for life.
Deep inside the microscopic quantum realm a myriad blossoming 

 of biodiversity erupts into form to open its eyes and dream.
Cellular colonies of majestic fusion reactors perpetuate 

 the elemental ingredients coalescing and tempering into livid form.
The constant recycling of matter and energy funneled from without 

 and processed within the system continues its onset.
While the godlike lidless eye at the central crux of it all stares sightlessly 

 outward a billion blinking pupils gaze back inward.
At an almost imperceptible level in the programming of the intertwining 

 polynucleotide chains of all life an upgrade is imported.
It's been sent from wherewithout to counterbalance the excess proliferation 

 of the living host's inevitable slow corruption.
It is the biological equivalent of defragging the system 

 appearing as a malady down below despite being the cure from above.
In this counterintuitive realm of existence the individual colonies 

 of sentience must implement the paradox of faith to survive.
Glimpsed through the lens of split-mind objectification 

 all developed species get caught up in the ebb and flow of gravity.
In the heart of the moment the here and now gradually undergoes 

 its cosmic transfiguration into the epic there and then.
We praise the skies in our own ways for an eternity realized 

 in a series of instants while forever disappears into the distance.

SONG OF THE THREADED NEEDLE

by  shaun lawton 

I held a wafer in my hand for over an hour. It was calling to me from in between the craquelure of its salted surface. A minuscule steam lazily sifted from its holes and was sent in erratic directions by an invisible wind with a mind of its own. I began thinking it was generated by a weak or debilitated breathing. But what sort of creature could project its breath from afar and through a cracker no less.

I will enjoy eating this biscuit if only I could get it in to my lips. My hand lay paralyzed in my lap as if nothing could summon my arm up to bring the treat to my mouth. It whispered to me in evaporating traces of steam. You'll never manage to eat me it hissed. All I could do was stare at it helplessly. How it spoke to me I never could have guessed. As mysterious as its remote breathing.

Now I know a banshee is responsible, one that has been trained to throw its voice. They have been known to congregate on the west side of town. When the lower west side was abandoned due to the coronavirus in the pipes being found. It was rumored that not even the rats remained to inherit the alleyways of crumbs. Mysteriously only bats dared to lurk once in awhile in these desolate mazes.

Setting the hissing cracker down on the ground I stepped back and hid in a shadow. I watched as a stray armadillo sauntered over sniffing the ground with a course stubbled snout. It huffed and ruffled its hide while trying to find scraps of food to ingest. When it got to the cracker it inhaled it in a single lunging gulp. This lone creature wandered off with that stale communion wafer on its scaly tongue.

There hasn't been a spare moment for me to mourn fallen mankind. I've only considered the reasons in the wee hours before claiming sleep in the basement of the crumbling mall. I know the population of earth was said to have reached nearly nine billion at the peak crisis point. Before the organism of skins comprising the largest meta organ on any planet this side of the galaxy billowed out as a flag.

It was a vector line for parasitical viruses to exploit the only known resources in this astral lane. By burgeoning their size they were able to link together into a greater fabric, a bacteriological cloak of sorts to haunt the flanks of a rogue planetary body that had grown too heated for its own good. Its tectonic hide broke through with tessellation spines and the music engendered was truly hideous.

It should have served to call and harmonize with its neighboring granular clusters housing the colonization of a carbon based mantle. Instead of hiding the crucial chimerical symbiotic bestiary from the roving magnetoception of wandering stellar vultures, it exposed the interior carbuncles of an endlessly forming tapestry offered to the vicious predatory avians. Picked clean like a tray in space.

As a result the albumenic biome acidified to the point of eliminating any bony skeletal beings from existing under its ululating brilliance. Nothing left but cephalopods and sturdy specimens of jellyfish. The starlight refracted through these dappled rainbow beams along the ocean floor. On the itchy surface of the planet's hide homo sapiens would carry on with its murderous schemes no more.

By a series of mathematical elimination it made sense our species would be whittled down to one. The plague carried itself out in pairs so there was always going to be the possibility of one resistant who would be left without anyone else to pass the virus on to. I know its me because the silence that responds to my calls from the inside is stiller than the quiet splendor of the stars at night.

The fact the constellations no longer twinkle might be attributed to a clarification in the atmosphere. But I think it's because they've finally achieved full fruition into their ultimate formation. My mind's eye has opened its multifaceted prisms and allayed a vision so fantastic as to leave me petrified in its shattering myriad splendor. I've been caught in between the intersections of its reflections' stale mate.

This was to be the end game all along. One sculpture representing the major race designated captured on the surface of a barren planet to be subjected to the galaxy's forlorn song. Now that the harmony of the stellar contractions has diminished to a lull I no longer find it so easy to drift off into sleep. I realize now that's because each planet having hosted a bilateral life was thinned to a piercing shriek.

One thread issued from a pipe hole orifice at a time, held in space, spread out in a spiraling tribulation, representing the finest single line tracing a hologram in outer space that when zoomed in on is revealed to be a double helix configuration of molecules in a simultaneous state of ascension and descending into the baseline foundation of the very apex of visionary thought nailed to the head.

I've crucified the stare of my reflection. I've fallen into my image in the mirror. I'm drowning in the atmosphere of winter. I'm burning up in the ether of a star. I'm swimming down the drain into the melting sun. In eternity we haven't gotten really far. I never once yet have started the process I've begun. That's why the curtain falls only once upon a time. That's why the shield lands upon a dime.

I've drawn out the traces of an adventure. I've only just begun in time. I'm finishing the part about ever after. I find myself still being on the run. If it wasn't for the latest series of disasters I can't be sure I would've had such fun. As the lone piercing wail emitted from this sector goes, around here it's hard to tell how the whole damn operation was done. It's execution formed the memory held onto.

It's how we began thinking the war could be won. It was a matter of convincing the long lost participants to consider the other side of the matter. That a matter of fact couldn't bring the best back, nor the thought about going for a ride. It was all lost in a moment in September. It was all hung out to dry on a line. It was all we could do to remember. That it would all turn out just to be fine.

This thought is nine billion times stronger. This time nine billion times as bright. It makes sense the only one in the audience to attend is one's own son or daughter. We don't pretend to imagine we'd ever be out of this water. We only know the reality of how it's gotten much hotter. It goes to show a symphony of pain and memories. Even if we know they do refer to the legacy of a star fading.

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.