HISTORY AS VIEWED BY THE PANOPTICON

The complete eating of burned skin. Ashen toast.
Can it not warm my pie. I have lost my older
sufferings. Absolve me of my gratitude. Untie
the swift knots of my prayer, but don't merely re-
peat platitudes: for mimicry I do not care. Environ-
mental disruptor persuades a hungry populace that
there is no such thing as the environment, and they
believe it. Just as they believe that there can exist
more than one disruptor. These spun patients slowly
develop a bubble spell reality. Their spin doctors
quickly form encrusted mica shells. All who they've
preyed upon then believe themselves to be a part of
their innermost circle. This describes how they are
each lost to the vortex of their own subconscious
imaginings. While one floats away as iridescent
soap bubbles flocking sunward, the others
gradually incarcerate themselves under-
neath the prestigious carapaces which
never fail to drown them into the dirt.
Dirt is very high on the list
of examination priorities.

FLUENT COMMAND

by Shaun Lawton  


Cursive's rules

its loops and curlicues

reveal a lot about us.
Perhaps its best we lay 

it to rest, buried along 

with the worst
of our secrets 

and plotting and lies 

a nice clean typography

will better keep us in line. 

It's fine, don't worry 

the quatrains
will be running on time

everything kept under strict control
while the sinuous, inveterate signature 

of our blossoming
gets rectified by 

autocorrection 

with machine-like 

precision.
Farewell to 

our sensuous rhythm. 

Welcome the fascist rule

 

PAPER WHAT IS IT

{ for Antonin Artaud }

the dead skin sloughed off Institutions

something to record our cryptic Solutions

promissory notes passed on but never Paid

from trees that we made into Lampshades

for the illumination of our deepest Fears

and desires really the same thing Fueling

our fires and schooling the liars we Hire

to print more currency from the flayed Hides

of our own strip-mined lungs so we can See

ourselves in this written mirror Instead

of breathing in the air paper is an Excuse

we use to justify the ending of our Lives

and to marginalize our state of being Alive








by shaun lawton 

PURITY

Water....it's clear.
Water....it's here.
Water...it's fair.
Water...it's there.

Water is fodder for life.
Water is not pure, it's complex.
Comprised of one oxygen atom,
and two hydrogen atoms, a trinity,
so to speak. Forming a strong bond
for us to drink, and by which nature
continues to grow...show us water!
And we are presented with the solution.

Do you think that water is the gateway?
At the subatomic level...through which
all of life arises, somehow; from the micro-
scopic we are slowly drawn, as if from
a cosmic hypodermic needle, drip, drip,
dripping with droplets of complicated
water...into the universe to crown life.