Peering In

by Shaun Lawton

From the Outermost Dark, as we focus our attention on the matter at hand, the compound matter focuses on our land, its gaze from a different spectrum than our own, passing unnoticed at the molecular zone, as our greater telescopic view into the dark beyond the Kuiper belt gradually illuminates and clarifies the blackness awaiting in the Scattered Disc, imagine what we may find even further beyond at the great spinning walls of calcified and spent former planets flung from the heart of the Sun, having reached the outermost interpenetrating blades of whirling stones weaving a spacious webwork in holographic precision in a buzzing cloud about our star, a cosmic blender preventing any entrance or exit from our system, if you will; and if you won't, that's all very well and blunt yet it misses the point of exercising our imagination to fabricate alternative explanations for the unknown however unlikely they may be, consider it the poetry of the mind you may find right at hand if only your body could accept your brain's command, so if it whispers from the shadows in the darkness of your room, when the sky outside your window is starless and bible black, when we realize the aim of the search for alien life may be directed in the obverse direction than it should, you begin to understand our own bodies are the worlds being successfully explored by the host of transient microbes interacting within our living guts, so take a deep breath and hold your horses and hats because the storm's brewing up the mother-lode of a terrific dose of climactic retaliation against our bothersome infestation that has grown intolerable, because we as a nation or a people among countries on a world whose sentient populace remains bent on reproduction at a rate which cannot intercept the machine of industry upon which our breeding both relies upon and has been made possible, a perpetuating cycle having followed the generating rhythms still pulsing from bygone epochs in our own history and that of those who came before us here on this very same planet, and if we don't gather together our  best minds and able people to seize the reins of the day for even one moment, our own transfigurations will have passed us one day and the quiet murmuring of our collective memory will float by in silence like soft pixilated clouds containing the roiling formations of the briefest suggestion of faces in grimace and grind, I think you will find that by then we'll have been long gone without a trace just a curious and scabrous terrain with odd formations jutting in scattered groups of constantly buried decay on the same exact wind that's been blowing through our lives as if we weren't here for the endless succession of centuries.   

EYESEAT: Viridian

EYESEAT: Viridian

magic marker illustration on glossy photo paper
by Shaun Lawton 

THURSDAY NIGHTS IN AUGUST

THE TIME HAS COME FOR THOSE WHO WORSHIP WORDS
TO CONTINUE BRINGING OUT OUR FAVORITE BOOKS
AND READ FROM THEM HERE SHARING PASSAGES 

NOW BEGINS THE SECOND GEAR OF THE PAINTED NOTE
POETRY READINGS WHERE WE VENTURE INTO EVEN DEEPER
WATERS OF EXPRESSION TOGETHER

HERE WE VALUE OUR INNERMOST THOUGHTS WHICH MORE OFTEN
THAN NOT HAVE GROWN FROM SEEDS SOWN INTO THE BINDINGS
OF OUR FAVORITE BOOKS

AT THE VERY LEAST WE MAY TRADE OUR ORIGINAL THOUGHTS
TO HONOR THE WRITERS WHOSE PENS HAVE STAINED THEIR MANUSCRIPTS
WITH REPORTS SO DEEP THEY HAVE BLED THROUGH GENERATIONS
OF PAGES UNTIL THEIR INSCRIPTIONS

HAVE MET OUR OWN EYES TODAY OR WHILE GROWING UP AND FOUND
IN THEIR BRIGHT FOCUS A NEW HOME FOR A PHILOSOPHY, FICTION
POETRY,  AND HISTORY WE COULD ALL UNDERSTAND TOGETHER

THE WRITTEN WORD  PASSES THROUGH OUR EYES BEFORE WE
PRONOUNCE ITS MESSAGE TO AN EXPECTANT CROWD OF RECEPTIVE
FRIENDS WHO FOR THIS SORT OF ELECTROLYTIC BONDING WHICH SO RARELY
OCCURS ANYMORE REALLY WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE THEM HERE TO HELP MAKE AMENDS

CHEERS TO THE LIVING AUTHORS STILL WITH US TODAY AND
A MOMENT OF RESPECTFUL SILENCE FOR THOSE  WE REMEMBER
WHO'VE PASSED AWAY YET CONTINUE TO HAUNT US TODAY
THROUGH THEIR BOOKS WE KEEP READING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

READING SOME OF THESE OLD PASSAGES ALOUD BECOMES A CONJURATION
OR A SEANCE IF YOU WILL  A SUPERNATURAL EVENT CONDUCTING ENERGY
IN A CROWD LIKE QUARTZ OR SALT.  WELCOME BACK TO THE SECOND PHASE
OF THURSDAY NIGHT POETRY AT THE PAINTED NOTE