BRASS NAUTILUS

 by shaun lawton

One single leaf
concealed among
 the spread pages
of its family
 somehow avoids
each of our
 placid stares
as we stroll by
 to our oblique
destinations

 (the question
remains unasked
 to this day by
a populace too
 busy to know
what's real)

 toward the secret 

(there is no leaf) 

 lost again when
the last finger
 nail latch gets lifted
from the lock on
 our root cellar
door down here
 in this dark quiet
musty realm
 the light of day
never once licks
 but instead must
visit in the form
 of a hidden egg
cracked into song

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE EYE

by shaun lawton

From high above, the Flagellators, looming large, look down on the Meditators, so far away and tiny, they are like a brood of stars, until time itself dilating everything, shrinking the single-minded wrigglers, causing the ripened clutch to grow in size, and a reversal of fortunes spills the ceaseless swimmers, now descending into proximity and entering the labyrinth, finding their ways through the crust of broadening hallways, dropping into expanding fissures, until one by one they begin to weaken, and the vast majority lodge in a crevice somewhere and expire, unless one or two or so survive long enough for the strange sun to creep up to them, whispering pale cool flames in their ears, the coronal language of welcoming them into the fold of their tomb, itself a flower triggered to awaken and discharge the emissaries of oblivion, who start out very small at first, but manage to grow and mature into new spore factories, some capable of producing billions of Flagellators, and others countless Meditators, until they are wrenched apart in an explosion which will eventually come to reverse itself, from high above, and on below, where the cycle repeats again and again within the breathing flesh of time. Wink.   

THE MAGICIAN'S TOOLS

{ in memory of Franz Wright }


By what criteria may one identify
a worthy doctor? For that matter

How does one go about determining
the veracity of their child's school teacher?

Trick questions covered by 
insurance policies. Every institution 
holds its fair share of nuts squarely in place

From the warden's staff down to the student inmates
The trick is learning how to spell correctly
the trick to thinking, that is 

We may think of it as magic
where the letters of the words
in a literal sense conjure reality 

I think of it as writing 

SIX OTHER SHADES

of darkening black gathering intensity
as it forms the cloud polluting the eye
that scans over the horizon to see what
comes next seven blades of circumstance
arranged in a flowering scale dripping
diamond mercury drops in a stitchwork
buffeting a gale driven between gulfs
sparked in the albumen of outer space
while eight shadows stagger across this
permutation still taking place and all
nine entwined molecular chains separate
into three trinities combined while we
emerge from the tenth portal to find
one packed homestead open to infinity
dividing in twain to face each other
off in a battle of tempestuous love
giving birth to the third elemental
which time will double into six other
shades of blackened darkness gathering