by Shaun Lawton
mistaken for the dunes of a desert over
the horizon of a long poisoned place
half buried in the red sandy grains blending
into one another like the curves of sleeping
women by the constant winds erased.
The dunes shift and grow as the wind blows
off the grains by the millions in a fine spray
of dust gradually disappearing into the distance
only to swallow up the sinking Sun in a wavering
unfocused miasma of pungent slag.
The Cloud does not whir, in silence it does not stir
quietly it is churned without even the shadow
of a sound, around and round it slowly grows
as more and more files continue to upload
forcing it to swell, ripen, and breed.
The Cloud does not know that it needs everything
we want to remember, so it forgets its there just as
surely as we disregard we're awake. Asleep in our dream
we close our eyes, so when we open them back up
upon waking we're still really sleep walking without
knowing it. The trick is the next time we find ourselves
having suddenly dropped or fallen while lying reposed
on our beds, that is the instant in which it is necessary
to willfully stand up from the bed and open our eyes
(this for the last time) before resuming our sleep cycle
uninterrupted by the parasite dreams competing with
each other to feed on our electrostatic energies.
You see, this world you observe outside of our warped car
windshields and polarized sunglasses and disposable contact
lenses, this growing complex organism of chaotically ordered
arrangements that we call life, that we visualize so clearly
from behind our corneas and through the pin-hole cameras
of our eyes, processing sensual information to our brains,
arranged in patterns that mirror pairs of galactic superclusters
despite appearing as a single realm or continuum through which
we may step, so carefully one foot at a time, in such a measured
and resolute manner, across the most steadfast bedrock stage
of planetary solitude, may in reality (insofar as how the value
of that word relates to our comprehension of what it is supposed
to represent) be not so much the singularity we imagine it to be
suspended in a likewise manner amid the scattered bodies of the stars
but more of an entangled miring of criss-crossed and knotted clusters
of multiverses competing to perform their song which results
as a symphonic overture seamlessly blended together into
what appears to us as the singularity of our world.
The inimitable presence of a superconductor remains
at large suspended in the very atoms we breathe.
When we articulate our belief systems with our
human voices we are adding nothing more than
chimes to the backdrop of this overture.
When we procreate and raise children who grow
tall and kind and wise we are adding instrumental
prowess to the orchestral pit in constant turmoil
at the quantum level of creation. Mountains heave
upward through oceans from shifting tectonic plates
while oxygen facilitates the growth of a fungal hide
upon the planet's crust which the Earth itself
must scratch away the itch fertilized by lightning
strikes and pulverized asteroid mist adrift
with dandelion spores and bee pollen.
The key to seeing the bee as it really exists
in our world is to see that it's not from this world.
The corner stone of under standing out in the field
of real knowledge is to remain ignorant.
Usable information is static at best and passed
from hand to mouth and lips to ear for years.
The words are seldom remembered but the actions
they engender are copied almost forever.
The most colorful birds or the feathers
of dinosaurs are not of this earth but another.
The sky seeps in from afar as well siphoned
intentionally to keep us under its spell.
The skin of the sky is like the lid on an eye
that is sleeping in its own unmade bed.
The spores of the pine tree are as alien as any
thing piped in from the mysterious Outside.
For all we know, serpents and cats originate
from an ancient process, the Chimera Divided.
Its attempt to contribute to our compound reality
may have refracted into the two separate species.
This planet any planet all planets like our Sun
This star any star all stars like this galaxy
Any galaxy. All galaxies. Like any super
cluster, galaxy, star, planet, plutino, centaur
Asteroid, moon, comet, or meteorite, this Earth
remains the exact and precise divine center.
art by G. Alden Davis