Inexorable

 by  Shaun Lawton

 

 

All of humanity lying underneath within its cradle 

   born to die with nowhere else to fly 

 free to be alive the entire time  

from the farthest back row the death of life

  slides into view like a terrifying reverse eclipse

 as a section of a city strip reflects off the visor    

   of a motorcyclist's helmet passing through. 

The farther out the view into the future  

   the deeper magnified becomes death itself

 until the dwarf planet Pluto gets revealed

    in isolation while holding up its breath. 

  

Our distance toward the event horizon line

   diminishes in a shrinking acceleration 

  with a difficult to determine duration

  left before our journey's jaunt is done. 

 We are only being destroyed in time;

   across space, we are being built. 

 

 

Reef-wrecked

by Shaun Lawton

     The idea of a new land becomes troublesome in my mind when I think of all we worked together to achieve. Now it seems the enemy which has invaded us were encoded to do so from a long ago time. The enemy within has flowered upon us now that this portion of the executable program has commenced. After the dory had fallen apart beneath us and the engine had sunk to the smooth rippled sands nestled below in the pitch dark waters of the Atlantic sea, we were all forced to swim across the black, churning water. Of course we'd snorkeled and scuba dived through these waters during the day. At night when the moon was out if was a different story. The fact you couldn't see a damn thing below the waterline merely added to the tension. We swam toward shore. We calculated the reef's edge to be about a dozen yards away or so. There was a tide rippling in over the tops and because it was dark enough out not to see where an inlet through the coral reef might allow access to the beach, we kept our hands reaching out in front of us while we propelled ourselves through the dark. The water was not that cold down here in this part of the Caribbean ocean. I glanced away from the shore toward the skyline and the stars sliced off in their arc by the horizon line.

     Up in the crystal clear night, every few moments a shooting star became visible somewhere in my wide peripheral view of the Milky Way revealed above. We kept idle conversation with a nervous undertone in between occasional gasps for air as we swam forward at a reasonable clip, feeling ahead with our hands for the reef. I received my answer as the palm of my right hand during its forward sweep collided against a rough prickly surface which tingled against my skin and suddenly slid out from underneath my grasping fingertips, a smooth and velvety texture rather like a salamander or eel. "Reef!" I called out as some of my companions were discovering for themselves. I heard one of them shout "let's all move to the left until we find an access point," and we did so as we each arrived face to face against the reef in waters that could now be not more than thirty feet deep. Somewhere ahead in the shallower parts in between reefs, starfish were strewn along the bottom upon the white sandy ocean floor interspersed with seaweeds floating up like green ribbons, photosynthetic antennas signaling energy folded down from the Sun god itself.

     Memories we will reconstruct time and again ahead in our lives in a dizzying array of shattered possibilities in which only the chosen few may be rebuilt. We can only look forward to the countless number of sunrises ahead to lighten us up off our feet. To fly headlong forward into the wide open blue sky of our dreams. Knowing we're forging the matter at hand at the molecular level. Developing a balanced relationship with the land so that after the period in which it has given has transpired, we may better survive in the turbulent times of the taking. Our bodies are the conduit through which this ionic exchange balances itself out in a chemical equation that is a synthesis of two powerful elements. Somehow matter itself has been built out of this process and we, as intrinsic biological agents for whom our finest outcome happens to share in the best interests of the planet's ecosystem, most benefit from the well maintained synergistic process of our controlling matter. We have mastered to the highest degrees a host of myriad achievements in the technological arts. Yet we appear to have lagged somewhat behind in the simple objective of having mastered ourselves.

   

   

by  Shaun  Lawton 

These lambent, ambient afternoons we're always
stealing from the universe and dreaming 

     for ourselves

busy weaving together at the cellular level 

    a greater colony of correlated cells

blended in a spectrum from twilight to dawning
  upon us as we fall asleep 

     back into our vision

we keep stored in the clouds 

 of our comprehension
like reefs that have escaped 

   into this dimension

The Circular Punchline

by Shaun Lawton 

Remember to breathe in through your face
and out through your ass.  Just kidding, this
is supposed to be serious.  Life, whatever. 
This blog.  My thoughts.  Circular breathing. 
Popular knowledge.  The inability to process.
Dumb struck.  See what I mean.  Curiously. 

Do we care.  If you have to.  Remember to
breathe in through your face and blow it out.
You know.  What I'm saying here in that 
voice you hear in your head when you read 
is that I'm right here with you in your ear. 
In a sense I've taken possession of you.

You're not scared yet but you should be.
I know it sounds like you but see, it's really me. 
You may think I'm a ghost in the machine,
but what I really am is a living demon. 
Recall the correct sequence or drop dead.
The joke's on both you and the poet.

photographing the sacred

by  Shaun Lawton  

The unraveling of old traditions happens 
piecemeal over a long period of time.

It's a process no more longed for than the aging 
of skin or the inevitable approach of death.

Our view of history parallels that of a pin hole camera.  
Reducing such a complex organism to one single framed 
shot is not the aim, but the achievement of history. 

What we know of our own lives and time 
is every historian's aim, yet a camera obscura rendering 
is the best one may hope for in this shadow theater of the mind.

The reasons for this reveal many clues that might help us 
not in rendering a more complete depiction of history, 
for that would be impossible, but rather towards an ability 

to infer a proper understanding.

The real difference between our current lives and the total, 
painted picture in which they are embedded in our ongoing planetary 
culture amounts to the historical relation which brought us all about.

The main difference between today and history appears to be  that history lacked ourselves. What they share is that we are part of an ongoing story. 

As historians piece together our history, over many generations a vast and far-arching  drama begins to unfold before them.  Anyone caught up in viewing this tapestry would  naturally want to know what happens next...

Dive Thru Hyper Blue