Adrift in a Sea

 by  Shaun Lawton 

   Adrift in a sea of digital information, it occurs to us that it has always been impossible to know what's real, the only difference now seems to be that we can be freed from persecution for believing in any of it.   

   I know that sounds like some sort of sick joke, believe me it isn't supposed to be.  Some things always stay the same, for example the persecution of orderliness. Other things keep on changing, like being granted wider access in the streets.  

   Adrift in a sea of digital information, here in what's left of the post-pandemic world, the survivors continue to spill over from their various waterspouts into their cozy receptacles aligning the interior labyrinth of the new age.

    Exploding underworld growing exponentially through the now hypercubed network of dimensional portals branching out into the compressed colonies assembled into aggregates now considered part and parcel of the cubic kingdom of Faraday.   

SM Reports

1.  

The servant arrived pedaling his bicycle.

He was not standing on the pedals.

He was not sitting on the velocipede seat. 

In fact there was no bicycle, which was alarming. 

It turns out he wasn't even an operator here. 

No Damage done. We are just making you aware.

There is someone working for you not employed by you

who does not arrive to work on a missing bicycle. 

2. 

Infirmary ward transporter returned our patient to the wrong room

without having done so. Convalescent was found in his bed asleep

with the rail down and his cell phone unplugged from the wall.

This victim was not on oxygen yet and was wearing a nasal canula.

No harm done. Hospice envoy failed to be polite and smelled faintly of Old Spice.  

3.

The courier rang our unit's buzzer without touching the buzzer button. Staff alarmed and confused. He was also naked while being fully clothed. There were no wrinkles in his clean work shirt. He shouted at us without making a sound. He used inappropriate body language without moving. We noticed his shirt was tucked in too perfectly. No harm done. 

4.

Patient emissary did not arrive with subject because there was no

cause for a transport at the time. We checked the sufferer's room 

and confirmed they were not there. The bed was empty and the side rail was down. We called X-ray and the case was still getting their exam. The carrier was actually sitting down doing nothing during the exam. No harm done and the courier returned patient to their room after the exam was over.

graph of the title

 

I decided to write a book whose lines are

9 characters wider than the reproduction

of a photograph of the title page, in this

case Death Head's Moth a collexion of

poesy by shaun A. lawton may be seen

as an exercise in late night futility on a

scale we've practically heretofore never

seen much less imagined could be possible

Crentennial

In this age of cracked codes and fractured imperatives

  in the era of shattered shafts 

and broken drives
there's no way that either you 

or I could say

 a conservative mindset 

would still apply itself 

to the ongoing situation world wide
 there's a lash beyond the measure
by which the pain may last forever
 counter-spinning to the terror
warding off the toxic shame
of the epoch into which we venture
the sameless age that still unfolds 

The Devoted Few of the Magnetic Cushion

 

   In the turquoise infused early evening before the crickets could take over the wavelengths with their comforting ripples of sussuration cascading in and out among the gently forested blocks of a city who'd forgotten its insectoid sisters-in-law of the olden order and age, lost so long ago in the fading mists of history, the turning of the page had been forgotten by the most stalwart among them who yet remember the vivid horrors of that night.  

   In the darkened glows of the deep recessed forested alleyway there came unguent shapeless beckonings on the the crawl from the shadowy corners. In a sisterly slanted murmuring constituent of unexpected consent, the separation tendencies of suddenly swiveling magnetic frequencies align themselves into repellant platforms of anti-gravity thrust away from each other's offending onset. A mutually beneficial exclusion concurrent with their mirrored desires for survival. 

   The devoted few stood still in the gathering darkness incurred by a swath of dark gray clouds smudging over the gibbous moon on a sudden updraft in the wind. 

Starcomb

You must clutch the leather 

sagging below the waterline.

Trees don't matter to the ragworts of industry. 

Handle the ruptured portions with care.

Celestial bankruptcies repair themselves, 

but we are not certain about tigers. 

There's a common time of day

when the professors all align

themselves into a new formation

heralding the Coventry of the reborn. 

Stranded gravitational ribbons loosely

bound in the wakes of passing stars 

found drifting too far off course by

the latter day sanitation workers

are collected into lambent energy bytes

on leave to orbital docking upon 

any issues derived from nomenclature

on up the ladder of opportunity 

as they said in the orrery at the top

of the winding staircase down

in the darkness of the cellar dropped

creeping up an inch on us every day.

Harlequin Symphonies

 Once the mist became disregarded

and the chill dissipated just a bit

The quiet grew to engulf us

Homed in on as the target

We listened on in silence

To the quiet of the wind

As it whispered softly

Reminder of a friend

refreshing memory

courtesy of nothing 

blessed be the drifter

cascading symphonies 

filling honey in their drums 

harvesting the slumber of the sun

for a future devastation of the dream