Under the Rusted Bell

 by   shaun   lawton 

   There's some who will think we're hexameter poisoned. 

They'll whisper of hair-like fibers and micro-fleets 

sent in by secret government operatives. 

   They'll tell you every cackle in the flame of the campfire 

     is the enduring echo of the screams of a generation of families 

      enslaved to tyranny. That for every spark popped off 

     and leapt into the night trailing behind it a disintegrating series 

    of glittering dust points toward a household getting burned 

  at the stake in the empire of Fallen Rust. 

They'll say anything to hold your attention if they must. 

   These should hitherto be ignored if we are to proceed at a pace with good candid reason. 

  Yet to wholly disregard them risks appealing to the succession of inevitable treason. 

We'll need each other's range of skills to get across the threshold. 

 We can sharpen our skills in these balancing acts to neither repel nor retract.

Stay true to who you are and that should work itself out in the wash. 

  Trouble is they're slipping in some rotted plaster into the crumbling mix. 

    The system is assigned mortality when planned obsolescence gets worked into it. 

   It then has a limited amount of revolutions to undergo transduction 

  before the ratio of decay breaks its orbital circuit. 

 Every action has a refraction period behind its synapse. 

Time itself grants our every opportunity to recharge. 

  When we breathe in and back out with patience 

     We prepare ourselves to meet the world at large 

  

Behind the Quantum Veil

 by Shaun Lawton 

     In the boundless expanse of outer space, where reality skirts the edge of insanity, there exists a veil woven from threads of ambivalence and shimmering impossibility. This shroud, a measureless tapestry, is not interlaced with conventional filaments but with the whims of particles that are here and there, both existent and non-existent, entangled in a disproportionate waltz that defies the very essence of being.

     Picture, if you will, a domain where molecules exist in a state of perpetual ambiguity, where the notion of here and there becomes a tangled enigma. In this surreal dimension, the façade of this lenticular zone blurs the boundaries between existence and non-existence, rendering the fabric of our universe into a kaleidoscope of perplexities. It is a place where the tiniest bits of matter, akin to mischievous phantoms, pop in and out of actuality, creating a cacophony of confusion that tantalizes the boundaries of comprehension.

     Beyond this unfathomable veil lies the nullity of absentia, a realm where the lack of substance ironically appears to deliver infinite possibilities. In this vacuum, there is a grand silence that resonates with the echoes of non-being. Here, the concept of space and time loses its meaning, folding and twisting upon itself in a nonsensical dance. It is a period where contradictions harmonize, where the absence of something becomes the presence of all things, and where vacuity itself is expectant with the potential for creation.

     Imagine a reality where negation births macrocosms with a mere whisper, where non-being begets being in a cosmic riddle that mocks the rational mind. In this bewildering tapestry, the void is not empty; it is pregnant with the essence of impracticability, giving rise to provinces where logic and reason dissolve into the ether.

     Within this senseless caper, the very fabric of materiality trembles with uncertainty. The enclosure of extrinsic capacity, woven from the threads of paradox, shrouds everything in a cloak of bewildering mystery. It is a mantle that whispers secrets of the cosmos, forming a code that defies the very nature of understanding. Here, the impossible becomes probable, and the improbable becomes inevitable.

     To gaze upon this cosmogonal mandala is to confront the improbability of substantiality itself. It is a contingency where contradictions make perfect sense, where the irrationality of reality becomes the only rationality. In this surreal jurisdiction, the mind is both the creator and the observer, entangled in lockstep with the inexplicable.

     In the end, the veil of quantum space and barren nothingness are not separate entities but interconnected facets of a grander empyrean enigma. They are the yin and yang of existence, the incongruous and the logical, the tangible and the intangible. To fathom their depth is to embrace the sublime madness of our universe, where meaning and meaninglessness coalesce into a singular, impenetrable truth: that in the heart of absurdity, there exists a profound and awe-inspiring sensation of wonder.

There's too much invested in a pixel.

  

  The steady breathing of a cursor's 

 space flashes on and off; 

silent automated sentinel of the blank page, 

 maximum security guard for the senses. 

Writing online is already hyper-charged by

  an electromagnetic conduit of psionic energy

 ready to establish the foundation 

for an even stronger signal.

   Earth elementals plugged into the geomagnetic storm 

 signal the flashing of the cursor,

the repeated warning, 

 not knowing if it will be better

or worse by morning. 

 

Psycho-Hexameter

The joke of history is it isn't a mystery to the ones who don't wanna know
It's just a string of perversions undergoing reversions with hot pockets in the snow
When things are at their worst it starts improving but the only real way to tell
You could be feeling better and getting sicker while freezing intermittent in hell
It's paradisiacal and quite maniacal the revelations heating up in your head
After cooling down a bit you think you're full of it and don't wanna get out of bed
There ain't no one to blame ya just trying to frame you for something that you never did
Demanding to convince everyone you exist is just a workout like a statistical spread
Trick is never forgetting to remember that we aren't even actually here
Its because we're moving and constantly grooving while our proximity disappears
With the whole damn planet a-plunging onward through the cold and sterile void
We're just under-sampling and aliasing forward in a wagon wheel effect conjoined
In meditation we reach equilibrium to relish stillness which we usually reject
The fact remains its not an illusion just a mirror of the void we reflect
In trying to use tact to avoid confusion nothing remains the anchor to our lives
We're sailing onward redressing grievance and selling our souls down the line
So how's it possible we can even conceive that we're usually just feeling fine
In a war torn nation caught up in cold fury with provocations from both sides
You don't need a judge or even a jury if you're quick enough on this ride
In paroxysms of executions compounded with a series of nervous tics
That's not religious order nor spiritual chaos or a random case of Tourettes
Just a sexual disease twitching from spirochetes and that could be as good as it gets
If God created the missionary position we came up with dancing in the streets
Its odd we're mated with nuclear fusion and always doing what we're told
When the whole damn point of being created is just a chance at growing old
Look at this joint do you think we're fated with a predetermined destiny
Well it depends on just how serious you're taking your own individuality
That's why I sing get down with me brothers and sisters and don't you fret no more
Flip that frown in the air and if it comes down heads don't get your tail caught in the door

Song of the Threaded Needle

I held a wafer in my hand for over an hour. It was calling to me from in between the craquelure of its salted surface. A minuscule steam lazily sifted from its holes and was sent in erratic directions by an invisible wind with a mind of its own. I began thinking it was generated by a weak or debilitated breathing. But what sort of creature could project its breath from afar and through a cracker no less.

I will enjoy eating this biscuit if only I could get it in to my lips. My hand lay paralyzed in my lap as if nothing could summon my arm up to bring the treat to my mouth. It whispered to me in evaporating traces of steam. You'll never manage to eat me it hissed. All I could do was stare at it helplessly. How it spoke to me I never could have guessed. As mysterious as its remote breathing.

Now I know a banshee is responsible, one that has been trained to throw its voice. They have been known to congregate on the west side of town. When the lower west side was abandoned due to the coronavirus in the pipes being found. It was rumored that not even the rats remained to inherit the alleyways of crumbs. Mysteriously only bats dared to lurk once in awhile in these desolate mazes.

Setting the hissing cracker down on the ground I stepped back and hid in a shadow. I watched as a stray armadillo sauntered over sniffing the ground with a course stubbled snout. It huffed and ruffled its hide while trying to find scraps of food to ingest. When it got to the cracker it inhaled it in a single lunging gulp. This lone creature wandered off with that stale communion wafer on its scaly tongue.

There hasn't been a spare moment for me to mourn fallen mankind. I've only considered the reasons in the wee hours before claiming sleep in the basement of the crumbling mall. I know the population of earth was said to have reached nearly nine billion at the peak crisis point. Before the organism of skins comprising the largest meta organ on any planet this side of the galaxy billowed out as a flag.

It was a vector line for parasitical viruses to exploit the only known resources in this astral lane. By burgeoning their size they were able to link together into a greater fabric, a bacteriological cloak of sorts to haunt the flanks of a rogue planetary body that had grown too heated for its own good. Its tectonic hide broke through with tessellation spines and the music engendered was truly hideous.

It should have served to call and harmonize with its neighboring granular clusters housing the colonization of a carbon based mantle. Instead of hiding the crucial chimerical symbiotic bestiary from the roving magnetoception of wandering stellar vultures, it exposed the interior carbuncles of an endlessly forming tapestry offered to the vicious predatory avians. Picked clean like a tray in space.

As a result the albumenic biome acidified to the point of eliminating any bony skeletal beings from existing under its ululating brilliance. Nothing left but cephalopods and sturdy specimens of jellyfish. The starlight refracted through these dappled rainbow beams along the ocean floor. On the itchy surface of the planet's hide homo sapiens would carry on with its murderous schemes no more.

By a series of mathematical elimination it made sense our species would be whittled down to one. The plague carried itself out in pairs so there was always going to be the possibility of one resistant who would be left without anyone else to pass the virus on to. I know its me because the silence that responds to my calls from the inside is stiller than the quiet splendor of the stars at night.

The fact the constellations no longer twinkle might be attributed to a clarification in the atmosphere. But I think it's because they've finally achieved full fruition into their ultimate formation. My mind's eye has opened its multifaceted prisms and allayed a vision so fantastic as to leave me petrified in its shattering myriad splendor. I've been caught in between the intersections of its reflections' stale mate.

This was to be the end game all along. One sculpture representing the major race designated captured on the surface of a barren planet to be subjected to the galaxy's forlorn song. Now that the harmony of the stellar contractions has diminished to a lull I no longer find it so easy to drift off into sleep. I realize now that's because each planet having hosted a bilateral life was thinned to a piercing shriek.

One thread issued from a pipe hole orifice at a time, held in space, spread out in a spiraling tribulation, representing the finest single line tracing a hologram in outer space that when zoomed in on is revealed to be a double helix configuration of molecules in a simultaneous state of ascension and descending into the baseline foundation of the very apex of visionary thought nailed to the head.

I've crucified the stare of my reflection. I've fallen into my image in the mirror. I'm drowning in the atmosphere of winter. I'm burning up in the ether of a star. I'm swimming down the drain into the melting sun. In eternity we haven't gotten really far. I never once yet have started the process I've begun. That's why the curtain falls only once upon a time. That's why the shield lands upon a dime.

I've drawn out the traces of an adventure. I've only just begun in time. I'm finishing the part about ever after. I find myself still being on the run. If it wasn't for the latest series of disasters I can't be sure I would've had such fun. As the lone piercing wail emitted from this sector goes, around here it's hard to tell how the whole damn operation was done. It's execution formed the memory held onto.

It's how we began thinking the war could be won. It was a matter of convincing the long lost participants to consider the other side of the matter. That a matter of fact couldn't bring the best back, nor the thought about going for a ride. It was all lost in a moment in September. It was all hung out to dry on a line. It was all we could do to remember. That it would all turn out just to be fine.

This thought is nine billion times stronger. This time nine billion times as bright. It makes sense the only one in the audience to attend is one's own daughter. We don't pretend to imagine we'd ever be out of this water. We only know the reality of how it's gotten much hotter. It goes to show a symphony of pain and memories. Even if we know they do refer to the legacy of a star fading.

Under the Mirror of the Wind

That's where I'm at. Under the mirror of the wind. Skeered Crickety, I am. You'd be too, if'n you figured you were buried here, just like me. 'Tween a time and a rocky place. That's all we got, each one of us, I figured it out. Not in the nick of time. But time enough. One thing can't last, and that's bein' scared.

But the Crickety, we'll never stamp that out. It's dancing in the blood to the tune of a spirochetes fever. Something once picked up while down in the cloud jungles in Central America during the mid eighties; or on a long forgotten trip to Mexico from a picnic by an ancient river.

Something has been waiting to hatch after three or four decades. Something ripening within to burst out at the most inopportune moment. That would be any serious moment for most of us. That statement works both ways. Because any moment it can happen. Damn straight I'm Skeered Crickity. You should be too because the poles are melting and you know what that means.

Talk about Pandora. A host of primeval maladies arise from the vaporous respiration of a millennia's worth of pent-up breath. The pristine, captured final exhalation of a dying god. That's how long its throes have been.

Damn straight, I'm Skeered Crickity. Except something keeps whispering to me. Every night as I step outside to murmur my absolution to the stars. It's the wind reassuring me with a sudden hush that it's on my side, so I sigh.

The wind's long gone for now but this echo of its kiss escapes into the frozen night of my mind. I stop and really think about the wind. For a long time I dwell upon it. Something about what it said continues to haunt me. It goes a long way toward reassuring me from my Crickety fear.

Something about the starry night and the deep recesses in my mind. The twinkling synapses in my brain. Branching out into the sparkling umbrage of the constellations. Providing shelter to keep me sane.

Knowing that the wind will come and blow away the toxins stalking me today, I can relax. The thing is (aren't you beginning to see?) that I can't trust the wind. Not for the life of me. It's always unexpectedly shifting its course.  Or disappearing as fast as it came, for instance.

I think the wind's self-interest remains quite evident. It goes back to where it came from. No matter where it may travel. That's when my thought begins to unravel. Maybe the wind remains in my mind.

The wind's alignment seems neutral to me. The promises it leaves in its wake, I cannot always believe. The rustling of leaves in the trees may be the tongues by which it speaks. In a language we may only come to understand from the severity or lack of its tone. Some days the weather and cloud patterns are just right. On some afternoons I can hear the wind coming from a distance.

It's announcing its arrival with playful psionic insistence. On those mornings the harbors are afloat with full-blown dreaming sails. Dotting the laurence rippling across the horizon. These are the days the seabird's calls pervade the breeze. It's days like these I find myself down upon my knees. Face upraised to the sky. I imagine all the pollen tossed on the golden drafts of the Sun. Fearing new viruses thawing from under continental shelves of ice for everyone. Hoping its just a precedent for paradise. Wouldn't that be nice.

I consider the slow torsion of the wind along with its absence. Upon what foundation is the wind built? The spin of the planet churning the atmosphere and the incoming solar radiation winding itself into the process. It's a winding and an unwinding left to confront whosoever may be out standing against it.

The Spirit of the Case

This is what we mean by the spirit of the case. It's the significant variables pertaining to any individual matter which allow it to be quantified or qualified fairly and impartially. In the case of the spirit, nothing less could either be granted or expected. As for matters of the flesh, pound for pound there is a tendency for it to balance out over the long run. This is why an observation of the spirit of the matter is essential in any court of law, in particular as it may potentially apply to any given case brought before it. To allow ourselves to be guided along a course dictated by technicalities is to permit chaos itself to grab hold of the reigns of our lives. This begs the question of whether we're addicted to the exhilaration of chaos itself by now. Meanwhile there is always someone willing to take on the justifiable  responsibility of maintaining a little bit of order. Here in my country, the United States of America, citing CS (Case Spirit) in any case should by all means necessary become a matter of routine to help further protect the innocent while more accurately detaining the guilty. Furthermore, as new eventualities unfold around us during this transformative portion of our mutual growth, it may become necessary to cite CS in order to determine new perspectives by which to more accurately assess any given complex matter being presented.