STATES OF TRUST

 

Don't you be afraid to admit 

that God exists for many people

you can be stronger than that

our existence is relative to the stars 

if we're going to let people be

each to their own, someone else

will return the favor by tolerating you. 

Don't forget we live in the United

states of America, a country

established not that long ago really 

in order to secure the right for 

every man, woman and child to

be treated fairly as equals even

if in a lot of ways we aren't. 

Don't forget that's the principle

reason our country was ever

considered great, because our

ancestors fought and died to

make it happen. Have some self-

respect and allow people to believe

what they will; have a little faith.

The truth has a way of being found

out eventually, so keep your chin up

and just stay brave and true 

by setting an example being the real you.

Eventually things have a way of 

sorting themselves out in time for another

brand new sunrise to set things right. 

 by Shaun Lawton 

THIS ORGANISM

  

seething breathing living in peace    

 feeling fury  fighting to live

  growing knowing  showing your naked heart

 this organism  breathing 

concrete clawing  steel eyed 

 drawing real lines  across the sky 

   tracing  erasing  vaporous  convulsions 

  facing construction  erection  demolition  inhaling 

 control organized realized  faith in humankind 

trust in science  depending  on nature's totality 

 exhaling  burning  fuming  seeking  finding

   balance  losing it  choosing it  using it

  breathing in   this physical addiction  to Godhood

 breathing out  psychological trickery  self denial  delusion intrusion  collusion  confusion  movement 

 stillness  crowded solitude  comfort in togetherness 

   alone to the bone  on the phone  boiling 

  evaporating  hating  loving  feeling nothing 

 caught up in this  slow motion  explosion

this breathing  expanding  retracting  organism 

 flying into the unknown  known  blind only 

  to find  familiar strangeness  sprouting

   everywhere  asphalt cracking  in turbulence

  serenity  chaos  calculating  luck  chance

 taking giving  choosing  or not  to believe

by shaun lawton 

STORY OF AN EYE

by Shaun Lawton

within a stone lies the cut
  blossomed seeds interlacing
 into a filigree of filaments

coalescing just beneath
  the surface of the rippling

 central pool split crosswise
the kernel incubating into
  a young spiral galaxy

 emerging from a vortex

crying light in saline

  globules freed from
 the unpredictable wink

within the seed a compressed

  scene when unfolded blooms
 into all of the trees

our eyes the mirrors
  the forest gazes into

BURIED UNDER A CASCALADE

 

by Shaun Lawton 

I see a horse 

  racing the wind.

You see a trout leaping  upstream.

He sees a dolphin diving 

 through whitecaps.

She sees a shark carrying 

 a child's arm in its smile

peering closer as if stops   in its tracks 

inside a vast a hall  of mirrors. 

I see clown faces 

pressed up against  the stained glass 

panels   arranged in cascading polygons 

 which suddenly become whales

bluefin tuna   petroglyphs 

 of panda bears in the desert

  small families hunkered in caves 

 while some sort of hummingsquid

 shoveling for limpets gets strung along 

 the cordoned off portals   of industry. 

Meanwhile  from the corner a ray of light 

infuses the catastrophic 

 sculpture with brass scales

  reflecting an array 

 of configurations 

suggesting the loss

of the most pearlescent

 petrified teardrop shaped

chambers of the hive 

agglomerated into a comb 

of spicy dust the polar bear

  in hibernation must incubate

 away from home as a drone 

confiscated by the reflection 

 of the camera's panoptic eye. 

I see a penguin 

  sleek as a curved chevron 

sailing  over the rainbow 

and crying giant shifting blobs of tears 

 dropped elongating into runnels 

  left over from the burrowing worms

 of time from the yumanitu 

the stain we couldn't find

the glass in our mind

 the flowing stream 

of molten golden 

  memories lying frozen 

    on the catapulted ground.

You see a sedimentary slope 

   of layers stacked over time

    since immemorial matters

  came into fruition. 

He sees hydrothermal vents

   channeled by the fury 

  left over in the wind.

She sees a stray dog 

  she'd like as a friend

buried under  an

escalating cascade

 of recollections 

   to let go of.

ULULATIONS

 by Shaun Lawton 

Of all the infinitely imagined worlds

 only one gets realized at a time.

 We are just the faces on the scales

of the passing serpent  of history.

Oh, the places we've been

 how they pale in comparison 

to all those masks that once 

  upon a time ago bloomed

 out of the dark. 

  All the lovely corners of this world

 become crowded when you alone

   visit them. 

Never has the solitary been accentuated

  so much as when it finds itself 

 caught within the crowd.

This is why the silence

  from in between the stars 

    gets drowned out in our waking song

  The light from each star's loneliness

 joins the choir in a hymnal of desolation 

 Like the fading howls 

  of wolves lost in the distance 

THE MERCY SEAT

 by Shaun Lawton 

deep inside the scarred heart a viper

    strikes from where the wooly mammoths 

of memory nest in turbulent germination 

  to reach a paroxysm of equilibrium 

the whipping star's fulcrum 

   opens its incandescent kernel 

  to set alight the pilot furnace 

   deep within our abominable dream

while nothing remains as it's seen

  even as the chimera stares back at us

 from the ubiquitous mirror spanning 

the works from vitreous matter to every pupil

  awake in the maelstrom of this sanctuary 

where our mirror neurons collide 

  across the habitat of the vacuum 

under the hypnotic pedipalps  

 the spinnerets of reverie have woven

    splicing together the panopticon

 of our daily ordinary weather 

   stitched in tandem by lightning storms

so lower your eyelids and rest

  while you still can since after that

this gift we have been granted will 

  be replaced by the incessant tempest

    

 

  

iCON

  by Shaun Lawton 

Apple itself is a bite

 taken out of the sky 

     behind the wave
  its outline a mirror

 in which you can see 

  your own pupil
the stem is in the shape 

of an eye canted 

  at an angle
 like a chromatic accent mark

   on some forbidden icon
 with its camera pointed

 double barreled straight 

at you rendering 

  your virtual doppelgänger 

image in reverse
 stored in the cloud 

  for future downloading 

into the matrix
 of the fusion on our 

   post-human streets 

 where we’ll fail

  to remember that it’s really

just ourselves haunting 

these alleyways
with the fading impressions 

of ghosts shuttling  

  by in our cells 

     while a poison moonrise 

    eclipses our long frozen 

  vision to develop 

 our immunity 

to having our dreams 

  turn into hells