ATLANTIS

by  Shaun Lawton  

Beneath the sands of time      we rise at a glacial pace

  across an epochal span     in splendor to displace

The twisted roots of trees  with labyrinthine city states

 captured by degrees     in this sanguine, august space

 Our conariums affixed   to monitor our dreams 

  and regulate our sleep     with circadian slipstreams 

 In perfect synchronicity   with our planetary host

 more than serendipity     against a windblown seacoast 

  With chronometric coordination     and through each indrawn breath

  we suffer the realization in life   of our ecstatic slide towards death

   to sink below the desert dunes     at such an evanescent rate 

   and abandon our discarded masks  for the providence we must await 

 

Mirrordrowning

by  Shaun Lawton 

   After asking the wrong questions about our place in this great sprawling universe of time and space we settle into our mindsets a general proclivity towards assuming what works here on Earth in this rich atmosphere we breathe in and out with the help of vegetation and electromagnetism in conjunction with one another applies to that great expanse beyond our planet leading us to ponder the apparently overwhelming unlikelihood of our being alone in this cosmos teeming with starlight being shed upon us at night while we sleep and dream of recharging our batteries tossing and turning in the widening gyre of a slowly opening eye, when all along we miss out on the clues inherent to the reflection cast upon the face of our own mind's pupil making constant minor adjustments to the incoming light, never realizing the connection made between the alpha point of our fluctuating irises and the omega of our tombstone's shadow eclipses the realization of our ongoing dream, no wonder we seek to escape this prison of eternity we've all been decanted back into for another spin about the spiraling circle closing in on itself to wink out into another opening viewpoint continuing the age old cycle of creation reawakening at a distance so removed from our prior existence we've inherently forgotten the bulk of details coloring what now seems like a faraway dream haunting what's left of our gradually evaporating memory, so of course we automatically assume in the vastness of this universe with all those countless star systems that we couldn't possibly be the sole occupants in this reality, it's just we tend to forget the words we've fashioned to explain the unknown were devised by our no less wise yet largely uninformed ancestors and then we do what comes naturally which is to easily conflate such words as "reality" and "universe" and "creation" with "space" and "time" and "eternity" until we've circumscribed the totality of the map we've drawn from a territory we know next to nothing about and the incomprehensible face of creation begins its shading from the corner of a tear duct whose vast circumference blends with shadow into the reflection of our own faces staring back at us from any mirror in whatever single room in this world we happen to occupy regardless of our ruminations while consciousness itself remains the stellar voyage that happens at all times until we still can't see the forest for ourselves because we're the ones currently gazing out of this myriad prism of eyes we've been comprised of all along.