Transdimensional Recalibration

 by shaun lawton

 Here we are amidst a vast recalibration 

shifting throughout the major complex

 of interconnecting networks that have

 so gradually evolved over time together 

there remain a countless variety of conjoined 

aspects, some of which take on a new life

 of their own while others calcify or petrify

 into corroded husks and are sloughed off 

like an industrial snakeskin left to rust in the sun.

 

    The atomic radiation from the center 

of our solar system continues to flare on 

every day the living empire of Earth survives. 

The dominant species marauding the surface 

and skimming over the taut rippling skin 

of the oceans like a particularly vulnerable

 sort of water spider continues to both subvert 

and improve upon its mistakes and achievements

 as if surfing a churning continuum of chaotic 

opportunity and chance filled with too many risks 

to successfully manage. 

One wink.

 by shaun lawton

  This must be what Frankenstein's monster felt like when electricity coursed through his veins, awakening him to the sensations of being wholly incorporated into the flesh. Not unlike a deadening of the membranes before taking on too much voltage at once.  The calamity of life staring back from the mirror gets exposed in the darkness of our expanding pupils, deep within which we can see a diminishing hallway with doors receding deep into a vanishing point which merges the endless hallway of doors into a sort of rosary chain of diminishing spots until darkness blinks it all out.   

 

  

     

i loko manawa

by shaun lawton

 it's a window's peek 

into the mechanistic

mind where shadows

leak into the background

behind lurking in your

memories haunting 

all the time the way

you frame it in words

that I heard from across

what seems to be space

but was actually 

just happening 

beside me in time

  

The Drone Eye

by shaun lawton

 

  The card we pulled was a free all expenses 

paid trip to the city of silicon and mica chips.

 In a constant state of surveillance as were we all. 

Each subsector holiday the Overdrone

 randomly issued winning cards to thirty million 

lucky individuals. The manner of selection

was truly mechanistic and without 

any prioritizing human influence. 

  When the Machine Singularity coopted 

the government and rerouted food package deliveries

 entire subsectors of the populace became 

better fed after a matter of weeks. 

   Along with that came a whole host 

of unexpected benefits and rewards for a humanity 

that had long ago given up on feeling that it 

deserved them. So the bonus checks and commodities 

were distributed evenly in the name of public charity.  

Decapodiformes

by shaun lawton

Deep in the craquelure 

of our planet's ocean
Entrenched under crevices

 and caverns impenetrable
By man for any concerted 

mapping of what lay underneath.
In malacological terms or any 

other that lay out of reach

Decapodiformes dwelled 

in gelatinous puddles

Ensconced within one 

another in a series 

of nesting embraces

Dreaming of the day 

they could escape 

One another in 

a slurry of newly

formed faces

When Late The Book Reads You

by shaun lawton

a beginning

It was when the twiledge 

started talking back that 

I began to first suspect

That I was not a mental reject
just crazy and not the normal 

crazy we're all clocking in at

Lorden it's obvious our existence
alone is fun and mentally wack

But when my own knife glints at me
from a shadow in the alleyway 

I'm treading I need to know
is it street or moon lamp

light it's shedding

Easily I see best by starlight
Revealer of the smallest details

I thought I caught a hushed slip
from my angled dagger's tip
as I raced head slung low and long
through the night wind

The haft held tight in my right hand's grip
as twilight across the tilted edge licked
was the same temperature as my hand

Suddenly I was reminded of
the missive to grip tight stay taut
and not dismiss immediateness

We are at our most focused
when someone makes a target of us
I thought boy was I wrong

Struck on the temple
glancing bright warmth
gushing, I spun Sunward

Towering over my shadow
seven times longer than me
and wiped away the blood
streaming below my eyes


a continuation

Penny Eyed Snakes

by shaun lawton

 I just let my own time

 spent on the internet 

be my cryptocurrency

We trade and deal with 

a lot of commodities here 

we can all see the waves 

of creativity emerge 

from the same sea   

for us to hang ten 

curling in on another  

wave crashing into 

the cosmocracy

Lucky for us one 

day in the slipstream

The friendliest leaders 

got together and tricked 

everyone into liking each

other's enemies from a distance

Time and Tides

 by shaun lawton

ground in between
from points first
   left unfurling
 across the span
of leaves curling
 a wooden hand
  beckons onward
with the sands
windswept for
  ever and ever
 rinsed and brushed
clean as rain and
 kneeling down
  for another star
cluster of colonies
to expand within
  in order for us to
   see with our own
 out-cupped ears
and listen for
  the hidden scent
 of enemies out
 shown in the air
 necessary to then
become engaged
 with friends of old
  from another age
 that bleeds into
this one breaking
  into its new dawns
 on the rocks here
being crushed
 slowly by the sea

Go Walk In

by shaun lawton

In   dark corrosion
of malformed memories
whose echoes   haunt us 
in the night &  the rafters
have been chilled

with the wind's own bite
can we know what
it's like to be so filled
with fright  that our own
will stops working

and we proceed as if
possessed when lying
in bed on our backs

frozen stiff with a slow
 creeping fear when you
 hear rustling  in the eaves

as the others get undressed
in the disappearing
  moon  light

moving across the floor
tiles of the room  swallowed
under a rising tide of swirling ink

and just when you think
we're   at our most vulnerable
the window slides up

inviting the dark of outer
space inside the gates unlock
in the pitch black of night

letting blurred shades
in to our world unseen
and unwhispered down halls

of schools homes churches
cars beds and living rooms
as we're getting dressed

A pair of wire-rimmed glasses folded upon a shelf

Sinning without you
   failed conspiracies
  loneliness and regret
 commingling and  yet
kept  separate
by the most thin
impervious membranes
these   barriers
  the air between us
  electroplated   into shields
 shining   over  the course
of  an evening
the bright nickel disc
of the moon
  the solitary mirror
between us a reminder
 of the condom that success
fully performs its function
 then    discarded
from the car to  a gutter
 mirrors what happened
to    our   still crowning star
 doing well  today
   must  be    futile
without you    here
with  the dragon
smiling back at  us
 through its bandages 
 

by shaun lawton

Why a Florist is Permitted Freedom

A flower is needed in the execution hall
rang out the announcement as a field
of flora in the rain slowly pulled back
below ground simultaneously as if attached
to a gigantic loom in a chamber beneath
in order to weave strange garments made
with braided dandelion stems and star-
anise buttons adorned with acorn caps.
Not a gymnosperm dared to step up. 

by shaun lawton

History of a Star

A spinning node of power so immense
galactic supernovae remain normal events
while volcanic oceans of molten rock explode
and falling embers in a downpour corrode
systematically zooming in or out of the picture
from inside the fiery nucleus of an atom
to the combustion of a star, the universe
unfolds in a mirrored whipping chain
reaction spiraling in orderly control
from far beyond our best capacity to
even guess. It is enough that we recognize
it and devote ourselves to the cultivation
of the protection of its mystery.

by shaun lawton

Entry In The Hyperverse

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

by shaun lawton

Where Flowers Are Taking You

  by shaun lawton

     All one really needs to find out the difference between their original conception of what tomorrow would be and their current understanding of what yesterday was seems to be the allowance of their own personality with all its faults and modifications so that an honest assessment can be made of the real value one represents to one's self insofar as the present situation demands the general condition of their existence to be and whether or not it carries with it the strange divided penalty of only remembering the most interesting episodes after waking up from a temporary malady where microseizures have cast a static network of almost subordinate control over every aspect of their waking consciousness to the point when they finally fall to sleep in their beds it never happens at an hour when they could best manage the continuation of total rest due to the constant chitterings emanating from under the crack of the closet door allowing a ghostly green light faintly roiling with smoke and dust penetrating the floorboards of their bedroom to creak and groan until feeling the commotion shiver the termite powder from the ceiling out of the slightest cracks with a pulverized silt comprised of every notebook and article of clothing ever worn in the family going so far back as to penetrate the remotest conduits of antiquity through the severest Scottish keeps isolated on the dotted lakes each one a solitary tower of confinement for an individual convict sentenced to calcify into another skeleton embedded within its own bricked in tomb which remains solely as a reminder to us all that we better watch out for what we may inherit because even the greatest of ordinances may amount to a paltry sum in the receding reflections cancelled out within the eyes of an orphaned child standing by the side of the road holding out a dying flower.