THE HUMAN HEART A POLISHED MINERAL

 by Shaun Lawton 

Foraging in the weeds for acorns

uncovered a sword whose stolen length spanned
a limb for which it was taken;
costing an arm to the one

to whom it was handed down,
while denying triumph to
the keepers of both hands.


I think I understand your point well sir just don't forget that 

in the legend the pure of heart are given credit in the moonlight.

 

Better get moving.
See that pretty city scape.
Encroaching from the horizon.
Getting closer every time you look.


Just let it all go.
What do you smell down this alleyway.
Now that its late.
As the stars burn and scream into the atmosphere.

Of darkness let the rays
cast down be reminders
illumination may also
come from the damned.

Neptune
(13 moons: Triton, Nereid, Larissa, 

Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, 

Proteus, Halimede, Sao, Psamathe, 

Laomedeia, Neso)

Centaurs.

You may pass through my woodlot, but be warned. 

This is my domain, and I may exact retribution if you fail to respect it.

He was on a journey to the well of sadness
for there he'd heard an echo of a tale which
whispered on the unfamiliar wind of a clearing
a deadbeat trance on the railroad tracks singing
in that shrill metal scream diminishing

Anise water
if the weather's
nice otherwise
freeze a frown
in a bucket of ice.

Alabaster swarms nestled under. 

Head full of sea kelp starring lights.

A bundle of tree roots bled in the dark. 

One bloody femur shaped like a foot.

There's evidence to suggest this singularity keeps repeating 

its programming in a never ending loop of such gradually 

decaying simulation that the differentials spawned grow 

not into yet more shed ghosts of future developments 

but rather constantly shape and mold the singular 

only possible existence here frozen in eternity 

and possessed by the illusion 

of constant movement 

to the point that even 

in our resting state 

of deep sleep 

every night 

occurring with

metronomic 

persistence 

we are unable 

to really wake up 

from our conditioning 

to realize this motion just

conducts us into dreaming.

Who benefits besides corporations.
We must ask ourselves these questions.
Can a building be hijacked.
Can a dark meme of humanity go viral.
Can a species go extinct.
It all depends on what you think.

Words are the new pet rocks. 

 You don't even have to paint eyes on them. 

 And they appear veritably, virtually, visibly on all of our d-Vices. 

 I'm going fishing in the real world now. 

My words and poems are just the shiny bait. 

 Just you wait. Set your iWatch on it. 

To be hooked and reeled in. 

 Bookworms of the world, take note.

We're going fishing...

THE MINERAL'S DREAM

by Shaun Lawton 

When a tree falls in the forest

Is it mourned by the standing survivors

The sound it made as distinct 

As their memory of a thunderclap?

The question then becomes 
Not whether a tree makes a sound
If it falls without anyone around
To hear it, but rather, is there even such
a thing as the ground when that appears
to be forged from our perception?

Not even the forest suspects this much,

Least of all the trees, each one of whom, 
For instance, may believe they are the king 
Of all existence. In whose dream, then
May a leaf be heard to fall, again? 

Listen up.  Without you,
There can be no story.  

A very old tree totters over 
Into the wildwood far away
With a sound approaching 
The memorial of thunder
To its standing survivors
Outspread in their foothold
Through funereal compost
Melding with mossy fungus 
Under the loam of bedrock
Adding another microtone 
To the growing forest song

TO PROXIMA CENTAURI

by Shaun Lawton 

A superfluous flower
  churns up in the waves
 the dunes and troughs
in the solar wind of the vacuole

At once a blossom
  of long scattered petals
 a swarm of barren, icy rocks
tracing the hologram of a bird's skull

Lit by our one single candle
  revealing the dark like a lantern
 leaving traces behind in the fog
rolling in from the nearby wild 

Here alive in our system
  all I see are blue skies
 sometimes with clouds and showers
building our pride with towers

~From a present dreaming Centurion 

FLUENT COMMAND

 by Shaun Lawton 

Cursive 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.

CORONA SIDESHOW

by shaun lawton

Photing. Voting by phone
Dreeming. To dream by emergency management
Syncing. Corresponding with a deeper order
Afloat. Feet upon the ground
Firmament. The measure of a domain
Kingdom. The hallways of memory
Castle. Cast by Iron Laboratories
A lure. A Decoy. A mascot
Garrote. A rotting garden
To be fed. Everything you've got
Our Tardigrades. Exalted progenitors
Too late. The definition of now
Collapsing. Circus lung

NOT DEAD OR LONG AGO GONE

by shaun armando lawton 

  When you twist around and look behind 

to catch a glimpse of what you are 

 and wish upon a terrible blind 

and shattered star to get re-knit 

then travel back to a dream of old

 when shadows thrown by candle lit 

docks haunted our walks late at night

 into the woods on a lone cold mountain 

under moonlight in the wind

Out in the wild lucid stillness 

gracing the eye of the storm 

focused right on you staring back

 in its face locked pupils reflecting 

each other across infinite space 

Completing a circuit repeatedly

 in time and weaving a spiraling 

loop in a rhyme with the rhythm 

of blossoming open mutations 

starred adrift in evolution's wink

Do you get a thrilling sensation 

of wonder crawling up and around 

your own spine realizing in a moment 

of unforgettable awe that's the tail end 

of the singular aura that can only be said 

to be yours and mine spread across this 

universe we've found won't ever be borrowed 

for sometime tomorrow because the past and 

future don't exist only this present unfolding 

moment rolling on in the spectrum of our 

electric dreams can possess us fully 

to reconsider flexing the fingers

 of our body in a glove without seams

Not worn by anything other than 

what it is that we happen to be 

here at the moment conjuring 

metaphors in alphabetical code 

to flash the signals forward

and move on down the road

together not dead or long ago gone

ETERNITY CIRCUIT

Start the river of time wide open 

   flowing in immemorial grandeur
Turn to the rivulets of blood 

  compressed within mankind's veins
Fueling its central transformers 

 into galvanic turbines set to receive
Arterial emanations streaming

  in sequence from quasars to hearts

A complicated recycling undergoes 

   a perpetual Möbius circuit
Tracing exchanged laws of thermo

  dynamics from nascent dissolution
Toward delivery of oblivion spun 

 from infinitesimality to dominance
Through the spectrum of the most 

  extreme to the imperceptible

Challenges of the vital material 

   connecting the nexus of the whole
To the consummate webbing 

  of the labyrinth of entanglement
Coursing between wavering oscillation 

 and the staggering flux of
The alternating polarities 

  inherent to the voltaic firmament

Simultaneously completing 

   the integrated culmination 

Our division of the proliferating 

  fractional multitude of creation 

Constituting the establishment 

 of a regenerative foundation 

The fatal breath siring vitality's annihilation 

  laid down to rest above and below

The stationary orbit of constant motion 

   that surrounds the external
Materialization of petrified incandescence

   in a transubstantiation
Of cardinal plasma siphoned 

 from zero into the singular totality
Sustaining the deliverance 

  of our manifestation of ordered chaos