5/03/2024

Azsacra Zarathustra: ϟ Electric ϟ Ecliptic ϟ


 


 

NihillihiN! 
The Over Without a man! 
Absolute Break of the Spirit! 
Death against Death! Nothing to Power 
and Emptiness to Supremacy! 
It comes always without any clothes 
and appreciative audience. 
Any «heroic aesthetics» and 
every «political heroism» 
is but the hidden cowardice 
of the «hero».
   

       Who is the mysterious online figure known as Azsacra Zarathustra?  Some of us (who have spent a lot of time on the world wide web) have glimpsed his visage lurking along these cybernetic circuits and hallways, and perhaps wondered.  A quick online search will yield some curious and alarming headlines, in addition to somewhat disturbing images of him:  lurid slogans such as "The Devil of Philosophy,"  "Utopia as Weapon," "Danger is the Initial Condition of Philosophy,"  "Creator of Shunyarevolution," and "Symbol of Nothing to Power" remain just some of the sensationalist reports, some of which include savage images of him inflicting what would be perceived as bodily damage to most, but for him seem to function as severe punctuation marks to carry across his meaning to let it better sink in, than to elicit cheap thrills from idle browsers of the web. As far as I'm concerned, these shocking impressions and tortures to self honestly depict his true essence.  I've gotten to know him better over the past couple of years by having connected on Facebook, and for starters, I can tell you his name is Andrei, and I consider him a friend because I like him, and I believe he's real, and so we've pierced the veil of the online social utility networks that connect us, and to our pleasant surprise, have formed a long distance friendship of sorts, despite his being kept a veritable prisoner in the Urals of Russia.  





       Referred to often as a poet-mystic and anti-philosopher (as well as anti-filmmaker), cursory internet searches produce random images of him skewering his cheeks with long sharpened rods, or carving himself with large knives, holding his hands over open flames, allowing scorpions and poisonous centipedes to crawl over his face and shoulders, and some photos have been posted that display him permitting others to bludgeon his torso with heavy chains and iron mallets, objectively in stark demonstrations of machismo, although his reasoning covers much wider ground than that. But of course, to some idle passersby browsing the web, it would appear he may be some sort of internet shock jock, or something.  A cursory skimming of his surface appearance might lead anyone on a wide variety of disparate reactions, or trigger them to leap to all sorts of conclusions without bothering to look into his character any further. What you will find, should you trouble yourself to determine the facts about him, is that he's a supremely conscientious deep thinker who despises fascism and anything to do with extreme conservativism that leads to autocracies and oligarchies worldwide.    

      These days leaping straight to the Island of Conclusions has become all too common, unfortunately.  It's no wonder that many who merely skim the surface clues of this esoteric person would get the mistaken impression he's some sort of extreme nationalist, or any sort of baseless shockmeister, perhaps even a facile proponent of evil, an accusation absurd as it may be which nevertheless is to be expected in this day and age of the ever-shortening attention span and the all-too-eager to condemn out of hand. Let me say that as far as I'm concerned, nothing could be further from the case.  For one thing, he's not the Persian / pro-Islamic Zarathustra, he's based in Russia and India, which he considers his two primordial Sacred Native Lands.  His philosophical language has been derived from both Russian and Sanskrit.  He's a self-described "Indo-European" thinker, or "Indo-Aryan," as he likes to put it. He's trying to revive the Spiritus Mundi, to help it awaken to combat and in his words, "overwhelm the consumer-addictive illusions of post-contemporary and temporarily weakened Europe." 
 

"Is everything an illusion? Yes, everything is an illusion
of an illusion, everything is a copy of a copy,
but only you alone will die in reality." ~ AZ 
 "Believe nothing.  Nothing is true. 
Nothing is real. Nothing matters. 
But the bird will always kill the Buddha, 
if the Buddha replaces a bird." ~AZ

      

       You may be led to think that Azsacra Zarathustra might be in need of taking advantage of attention-grabbing shock tactics just to help him get "clicks" or to separate him from the rest of the pack, but actually he's always been a rogue agent, a lone wolf by nature.  A closer examination of his legacy will reveal that his anti-philosophical stance and treatises all point toward a de facto grounded willpower resolute in its unflinching stand against any and all forms of negativity, including the types of negative thinking that so effortlessly gum up the machinations of our modern industry and time and again corrode the foundation of a fair and democratic society.  He's always been against money-leeching, power-mad sycophants, of which (unfortunately) there's no lack of in today's burgeoning population cultivated from underneath our rotting floorboards.  Where in the Hell else are all these wanna-be autocrats and aspiring dictators spewing up from, if not the infernal bowels of human nature itself? 

       Even after a casual glance at an online black-and-white photograph of his strong muscled body covered in what might appear to some as questionable tattoos, it turns out that a more careful overview of their intended point will reveal they are not neo-fascist markings or any other such trendy nonsense at all, but rather, the decisive symbology of a primal and humanistic retaliation against all futile ideograms and oppressive scripts which happen to be in tribute to worn-out authoritarian tropes.  Azsacra Zarathustra has time and again proclaimed himself the vital enemy of rightwing neofascists the world over. In his own words, "There will be a revolution from within! For this purpose the 'soul of each' will pass through the Over-active Shunya―a magical and terrible Zero point―a point of Nothing to Power and Emptiness to Supremacy."  

        


A rebellious intuitive Yes to Life against all rules 
of "will to power."  The conservative "will to power"
as the political dictatorial Absolute is Absolute Treachery
of real Enigmatic Life and the Secrets of Eternal Rebellion.



       What does Shunya mean, exactly?  More cursory internet searches will yield simplifications of the term as meaning, more or less, "a neutral state of nothingness," and while this may technically be valid, the significance, as exemplified by our life-force in all its myriad glories, reveals a much more pertinent understanding of the term to be necessary.  Shunya's association with stillness and receptivity provide us with another deepening clue.  It's at this point of my essay that I must depart from conventional approaches and instead, focus on my own particular identification with this concept, for in this manner alone I feel that I stand a better chance at hearkening a micro-degree closer to its irrepressible and infinitesimal essence. 

       For me, it also means to "shun you," which is to say, eliminate the ego completely and eradicate our base and mechanistic essence from existence, in other words, to remove one's self from our own consciousness as if we were attempting to step out of our own shoes and then dare to take that first barefoot step onto the irrepressible ground of reality.   I'm sure an entire book could be written about the actual diverse meanings behind the term Shunya, and I figure many books have already been published concerning the various manifestations and approaches different cultures have had about the same basic concept.  

       In the interest of keeping focused on our subject at hand here, I will forego the necessity to go into more detail about it, and instead let my reader's minds fixate on the idea of Shunya from whatever purchase they may be equipped to make, in the hopes they will allow themselves to be guided from within, and blossom towards the light of understanding their own discovery. After all, it's the only way for anyone to learn anything, really. Suffice it to be said that wise men throughout the ages have often indicated the paradox of just how everything in creation appears to have come from nothing.  

शून्य :±х शून्यता = ही ऊर्जा है |
↑△↑ शून्य क्रांति का समय निकट आ रहा है।
↓▽↓ निरपेक्ष क्रांति का समय निकट आ रहा है।।
△↑△ Nihil:±хlihiN ↑△↑

       Arrows stabbing inward, arrows pointing outward. These are just some of the symbols of chaos and order empowered. They are the sigils that may help trigger consciousness, if not conscientiousness; and they just as easily may help generate senselessness and pathogenesis, if we're not careful enough.  It always depends on the interpreter, of course.  As a decipherer of both dreams and reality myself, I don't want to lose track of the main thrust of my analysis, here. I need to stay focused on the subject at hand while declaring my autonomy.

       So how may we dare to take that first barefoot step onto the irrepressible ground of reality? The answer to that is as easy as it is simple.  By being aware that time remains the actual essence upon which we are truly grounded.  As to how we go about focusing ourselves on staying grounded in time exactly, well that remains another sort of discourse altogether. 

       I don't happen to be aware of any conscious method or tricks. Instead, I seem to have accepted that I must've gained some sort of natural inclination to live in the present moment, whatever that means. If you ask me, I think it's a mental conditioning, an outlook, if you will.  Perhaps being able to more or less let the past go, and to somehow not overly concern one's self with the future, which is to suggest this penchant might yield the mental conditioning to stay more focused on the present and it's infinitude of potential, but in what manner I don't know exactly...I just get the feeling I'm more or less in tune with the present moment, regardless of why or how I manage to do it. I don't know, they say even a broken clock is right twice a day; so maybe that's what I am, just another man breaking against the wheel of time. It's not an easy thing to explain, trust me on this. 

Void :±х Voidness = is energy.
↑△↑ The time of zero revolution is approaching.
↓▽↓ The time of absolute revolution is approaching.
△↑△ Nihil:±хlihiN ↑△↑

       Azsacra Zarathustra appears to be a man who remains unbroken on whatever wheel he may be willfully or otherwise strapped onto, be it an ancient torture device made of rusted iron or the imperceptible machinations of time itself, as if he may have imbibed and processed some of his vanquished predecessor's ruminations, such as the old adage "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger."   Whereas Nietzsche learned this out of "life's school of war," Azsacra has decidedly one-upped his opponent by having learned his Shunyarevolution aesthetic from our own warring school of life!  

       Azsacra delves deeper, into and through the heart of Nothingness, to emerge in the Here and Now victorious with his affirmation for the Yes of Life! But its not as easy as I make it sound, because it's one thing to glibly assert "you must enter through the gateway of the void to emerge upon the solid ground of being," and quite another to follow through with the total dissolution of the ego and then to stand tall with head raised on high and eyes focused on our own event horizon.  

       With the aforementioned summary of Azsacra Zarathustra's anti-positional and paradoxical philosophic persona rooted in the ground zero of Shunyarevolution, it doesn't require that much intelligence for the dawning of comprehension to begin illuminating that liminal space behind the eyes (the ordinarily undead compacted zone of gray matter sparkling with reflexive chemical and electrical signaling, the mechanistic and semiautomatic behavioral regulations which indubitably mark the everyman's robotic programming) but rather, it just requires a receptive heart that beats to sustain an equally open mind.

From the point of view of TDAS 
[The Theory of the Destruction of All Systems]: 
There is no crime, except endless existence of the System. 
That is: The only crime is the System itself, and nothing more. 
Hence: There is no crime in the Absolute Spiritual Revolt per se and in infinity.

       As it happens, keeping an open heart and mind seems to be a combination in people that's becoming scarcer the further across time we develop. Whether that's just a natural illusion or trick of the light or even more of a dissolution of mentality among a rapidly growing humanity, I don't know, and to be honest, have no need of finding out.  As far as I'm concerned, the big mysteries should remain preserved. Man(un)kind seems to be here in greater numbers than ever, bringing with it a seemingly ceaseless barrage against the very nature that somehow conspired by a mysterious agency to conceive us in the first place.  Some may go and try to figure. Others will stay rooted and resist! 

        Azsacra Zarathustra may be a lot of things, among the more striking for me remains his obsession over caring for animals, in particular his having founded Maiastra, an establishment I'm not exactly sure remains in the Urals of Russia or somewhere in India, except that it's a center for providing help to wounded animals, including apex predators from tigers to birds of prey, along with any natural wildlife requiring treatment in the vicinity.  (I’ve determined since this article was published that Maiastra was, indeed, located in Russia, but has been destroyed by that totalitarian state some years ago.)  Andrei’s lifelong devotion toward helping injured creatures of the wild remains just one of his many personal features, and dovetails with the arcane role he's cultivated since daring to transcend the various ideological challenges of philosophy, which can lead to distressing pitfalls as easily as they can secure bridges for us to advance forward. 

       In his willful subjugation of the more domineering aspects of prior philosophical concepts that have helped to occasionally pave humanity's pathway toward despotism, autocracy and tyranny, I find Azsacra Zarathustra's counterintuitive approach to be a refreshing recourse that serves to help us all gather the courage and strength required to lionize our own refutations of the imperious aspects of totalitarian dogma which invariably lead toward dictatorships and help to foster the sort of power-hungry regimes our world has been steadfastly struggling to outgrow ever since the day each one of us were born.  On a bad day, this struggle seems futile at best; and on a good day, our dream of overcoming tyranny in all its manifestations may still seem tantalizingly out of our reach, like the mirage of an oasis perpetually rippling on the horizon. 

Freedom Viewed from the Right? No.
Freedom Viewed from the Left? No.
Freedom Viewed beyond the Left and the Right? No.
Freedom Viewed only: Ex Nihilo!
Out of Nothing! From NihillihiN!

        It has been stated over and over by many around the world and throughout history that "fire must be fought with fire," and echoes of this may be traced about Azsacra's campaign to annihilate tyranny's fearmongering with fear itself, the foremost thing we have been advised to be most cautious of.  It's a disarming tactic to be sure, and may even backfire on occasion, as might be illustrated in the severe reactions to Azsacra's somewhat intimidating online presence. If anything, the rigid character of his symbolist approach can be misleading and even disheartening, were it to be taken the wrong way or mischaracterized.  Fear itself has practically become our daily bread, at least here in the United States of America, where our two major political parties have faced off against one another with an uncompromising opposition I'm not sure we've really seen become this far gone, before now. Add to this mix the wars raging abroad, and you have a recipe for being nervous, if not worse. 

       Azsacra Zarathustra does not speak in unsolvable riddles, but rather paves a path forward for our spirit and souls to see our way through the contemporary underbrush of our cybernetic machinations that would otherwise keep us spellbound under ceaseless fusillades of fear.  His constant struggle works toward the Absolute Making of the Spirit by both defying and ultimately destroying fear itself, which we should all keep in mind remains our proverbial Enemy #1, if we are to take the words and wisdom of FDR to heart.  To quote Azsacra, "I build upon my philosophy in order to deprive man of his 'indispensable fear.'"  In this roundabout way, he leads us to better develop our own bravery and fearlessness.   

       While on the surface and at one glance Azsacra Zarathustra may appear intimidating and even scary to many among us idly browsing the world wide web today, with some going so far as to automatically conclude he appears to be up to no good, while truly his keen and focused mentality has been deadlock aimed at nothing short of taking on the responsibility of all lives–all at once–and without the idea of separating "bad" and "good" acts of bravery.  To quote him once again, "To be strong really means to be, as bequeathed from Nietzsche, beyond Good and Evil," further clarifying with his own personal flourish, "to be only in the Flaming Depth of one's own fearless heart."

Only: The Revolution from within!
Only and Par Excellence: 0 →↑← 0

       To me, Andrei remains a friend and fellow poet, an editor in his own right and affiliated mastermind that I met online and with whom I've made a consequential connection.  As I channel his electric NihillihiN philosophical current to augment my own visions, I see this new latter day land through the eyes of the dead who were led by the hand to the valley behind the shadow of death, and it helps to regulate my own heartbeat and to be more conscious of whenever I take a breath. Perhaps its his sense of immediacy that I react to, yet nevertheless I can see what he means about destroying our ego to focus on being plugged into the moment, since after all, there's no time like the present. Like all human beings, Azsacra Zarathustra is a conductor of electricity, but unlike most of us, he knows it and thus can channel the infinite potential of its force.      

      
    
Syntherian Azsacra model 2.0




THE ABSOLUTE REVOLUTION 

Our line of sight in the Revolution:
One must learn to ride the dragons ↑
Dragons of Horror kill dragons of fear ↑
The Revolution from within ↑ …
Beyond the beyond and Upward ↑
Beyond all forms, and no forms ϟ
To think about Shunya only with
the help of Lightnings ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ

AzsAcrA
↑A↑A↑A↑
 

Dragons of horror kill dragons of fear 


       The alpha symbol at the top of this human interest story as well as the omega-variant located at the bottom  (of an eagle flying free) represent what I think of as the core essence of Andrei.  I conjured this variant of a stock image I found online, first colorizing it (the 'alpha' version at the top of this article), and then I applied my Griffin-style template (from my hidden file of classified synthography techniques) which resulted in the beautiful tapestry of coruscating energy patterns you see below in the 'omega' version.  I really like how it looks like internal organs within the biological tree of life as seen through a hallucinogenic lens.  When death eventually claims each and every one of us, our true spiritual lives will begin once again of course, and our individual transformations into the next iteration of the eternal cycle of life and death will recommence, and I'll bet the exact nature of how we're recycled through the endless mobius of creation will continue to remain unknown to our various incarnations, and that's as it should be, because nothing can be more beautiful than the enigma of our existence. It's a puzzler that one of my many fictional alter egos, variously named and described as Viridian or Thorn, Guardian of Ambush, soldier for the army of trees (instead of men), and Mystifier, they all kind of merge into one abstract figure that I imagine to be this antihero whose sole mission remains to protect the eternal secret from ever being revealed.  

Every will to power is but the same will-downwards [↓]
Any rebellious philosophy, which becomes ideology of the System
— diligently serves and feeds the same damned spirit of gravity: ↓

     Azsacra Zarathustra's poetry means a lot of things to a lot of people.  For me, it connects directly to the great mystery, becoming inseparable from lightning itself.  His philosophical musings amount to the voltage of an orchestra, or the coruscating voice of a choir.  His statements echo the crackling whiplash of plasmic energy. His vision is like the avatar of awakening from nightmare into dream.  When he says "I'll be dead soon," not only does he mean it, it's also a stark reminder that we will all be dead soon, as a matter of fact.  But at least we may rest assured of one thing.  After he sheds this mortal coil, even if tragically all too soon, Azsacra Zarathustra will have grown a million mouths by then, and you better believe they will all Scream in unison! 


Andrei Free At Last

12/31/2023

Circumventing the Nexus

   As the electromagnetic event unfolds along the spatial coordinates 
of the axes humankind is most attuned to, ripples in realtime expand outward, 
often at the same time and never in sync. Despite all the old stories having been lost, 
somehow from deep within their forgotten lore, diamonds emerge that stick in the memory 
of all who behold them. These gem points are more like moments in time, separated 
by annihilating whirlpools and casting their solitary light upon these shifting battlefields 
as one single shadow leaning into the setting sun. An array of eyelets letting in the light, 
pinholes in a shroud draped over the world. The inner organs of the super attenuated manifestations 
of light reveal themselves after having performed their function, in a sort of turned-inside-out array 
of spatial configuration set above us all as if we are upon the dot of the very punctuation mark 
we dare question. Simply step up onto the podium to ask and watch the world retreat around you,
hiss the whispers echoing in the wind. Such it has always been since the mind like men's be questioned. Such it will always be to see thine self in the same  mirrored reflection. We travel forward hoping to circumvent the nexus left in the wake of our predecessors who hoped we would not awaken. 
We move along the timeline with eyes wide open looking forward to score a token of appreciation 
for the path we have taken. We walk in electromagnetic harmony with the conductor and reactor 
after dreaming in a state of suspension in slumber. We circumvent the nexus even as it helps correct us. 

9/28/2023

transfigurement


 dysmorphalize into shapeless blobs  
faceting
     in
            to forming

Sweet Premonition

by  Shaun Lawton  




   Yesterday while at work I went into this rhetorical rhapsody, when I expressed to a couple of coworkers, how nice it would to be a multi-millionaire or billionaire, which brought about my rumination over the classic question, would you rather be rich & miserable or poor & happy, to which I quickly added, my dream is to be rich & happy, and isn't it true they say if you go after your dream with enough diligence, it will come true?  

    I then went on to explain how I could cash out one million dollars in bundled $100 bills, stuff 'em in a gym bag just like in the movies, and then go around handing out wads of cash to people.  If  I were to divide one million between eighteen transporters on my team, they'd each receive $55,555.55.   I could do this every year, cash out a cool million, and focus on a different group of people.  I'd start with my family, of course, then each year work outwards to friends, coworkers, and by the third or fourth year, going out in the street, until I described how fun it would be to get up on top of the roof of a city building and just let the hundred dollar bills scatter on the wind, down into the street below. 

   Was this a premonition of the movie my wife & I then watched on NETFLIX that very night?  The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, a short 45 min film directed by Wes Anderson and starring Benedict Cumberbatch based on a tale by Roald Dahl.  There's a scene in the film where Henry Sugar, the titular hero of the story, does exactly what I vividly described earlier in the day.  He begins throwing money off his porch down to the street below, causing a bit of a ruckus while people scream and shove to grab the cash with their hands.  

   My dream has always been to be happy.  I've dreamed of being a famous author, poet, even movie director before in my life.  Mostly I've dreamed of remaining an A-class poet.  I don't know if deep inside me something recognizes that if you dream of more than one thing (for example, "being happy and rich"), that you might be asking for too much.  

   Of course my ultimate realization is that I am already rich.  I own a house, have a beautiful wife and son, have been working happily and successfully as a supervisor in the radiology department of a major hospital for the past sixteen years.  I don't earn a salary, but rather get paid a decent hourly wage, which on occasion I get paid overtime when covering extra shifts as needed.  My online networking with social media has been going strong for bordering on twenty years, and I have a widespread connection with at least one hundred successful authors.  I've befriended a few of my favorite writers, and have kept my labor of love the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction going as an open forum blog for fourteen years now.  

    My mom is eighty years old and going healthy and strong, despite or because of the roster of typical medications someone of her age are on, blood thinners etc. Her vitality and energy and drive are things I obviously inherited from her, genetically, and she's happily married to her 3rd husband going on 28 years now.  We are blessed in this life in far more ways than we might ordinarily stop to consider. I am so thankful for not only having a dream in my heart since I was a teenager, but that the flame that keeps it kindled is going stronger than ever after all these years, despite the string of hardships and tragedies that lie behind me in my wake.  I'm grateful for having kept an open mind enough my whole life to not really double down on any given conviction concerning our reality, divinity, or any other such matters. 

    My personal relationship with the universe appears to remain sustained and centered from the vantagepoint of knowing we exist here on Earth in this singular oasis amid oceans of time our minds cannot fully fathom.  I'm indebted to all my teachers and friends and family for their guidance and for showing me support by acknowledging my existence.  I have discovered my own way of refraining from absolute conclusions enough to cultivate my capacity to believe anything in the face of a world growing and changing so fast as to keep anyone's head spinning from it all.  By grounding myself as an agnostic, I have created an eye in the storm, and balanced my ability to keep the chaos just beyond arm's reach.  From this neutral cockpit I've allowed my life to be directed. Praise be to the lack of void and the void from which this lack of it lasts.  






    

9/20/2023

Kaleidoscope Dissection

 by Shaun Lawton  

From behind the porcelain façade, the world's face cracks like a teacup
  while shifting through variant accelerations 
as an ever morphing sculpture setting in the sudden heat of the cosmic
kiln dictating the mask worn in the universal moment. This is not an illustration.
   One planetary eye swivels in polar magnetic attraction to focus afar 
while others roll in their orbital sockets as translucent veils of the lid lower
  like sunsets on the distant horizons of some as yet undiscovered exoplanets. 
     The netting cuts through like a sieve of carnality in a kinescopic anatomization 
    here, while the nebulous process, having given kinetic birth to astral wombs, 
   then forges itself in the ardent seizure of possession at the conjugal germination 
  junction mirrored against the unapproachable vortex, thus causing the illusion 
 we glimpse today through the ever advancing magnifying lenses we develop.
    While the holographic interface manages to come into focus, we end up running
      down a dream with an ebbing battery charge of diminishing returns sealed up
     vacuum tight in ceremonial urns lined up along an axis of matrices rotating 
    at a right angle to the differential of an inherently reversible process 
   giving witness to the birth of entropy and eternity's periodic sacrifice.
  
  

4/18/2023

INFINITE TURN







 I'd like to study the figure of the After Map   It's various Etchings in Darkness

The trap itself drawn into the pillow  A deck and island of border teeth

Death with holes for the eyes and nostrils   Of the head on the side under the calm 

Harbor waves trapped by having secrets    In the dark hidden to Different Memories


With his sons on every border   Point of Anti driven from Matter

In the future the Fear of Flight renewed   Whose verses dictate the Law

Unchangeable in the eyes of God   Whispered genius to the ears of man

So can another Dream a powerful Boy    With every Heart in the Cage that binds us


Under a huge Hypnotic Spell introduced    By the first of the Commonwealth

Directly indeed into the Kingdom Under  Of these she is exact to the Lips

The pieces that break all in Likeness  They take it and examine it

Alone on the Shores of the Heart   A Brother left by a man Forsaken   


With two claws by the spring    Of which the shuttle was loaded

For it is found to go across the Ink Wave   Surface thoughts switch the Oldest Game 

On the shelves because Pain of the Eyelids  In the Cold of the Night  

Which is what all Armies hold that always look to the Stars 


    


 


4/15/2023

Incepcionitus Memoradium

 by  Shaun Lawton 


   Had I known the power contained in that one leafy green plant, it all may have turned out differently. I try not to think of such things, because who's to know at which twist a multiplicity of gains may have outdone whatever losses were crossed on other timelines.   

    Even my power of recollection begins to blur sometimes in my mind, as I can only see so far back into my memories in time.  Some come slowly swarming toward me as if released from a great forgotten depth.  The faces they wear always seem like strangers to me. 

    I remember planting the seed, but I can't seem to recall where or when I got the seed in the first place.  I planted it in a brass spittoons' interior, and inserted the spittoon in a white plastic bag.  Two shoots sprouted out of it within twenty-four hours. One ended in a broad leaf pointed straight upwards. 

 

     See, I had encountered a diagram on a tattered, yellowing page in this old fashioned hard bound book I discovered in my grandfather's root cellar.  It was a special place I used to like to crawl into when I was a child. It had a dirt floor that extended up and out to underneath the planks of the front porch.

    I loved to hunker down there whenever anyone else in the family was standing or sitting out on the front porch.  Not because I needed to spy on them, nor did they ever talk or reveal their secrets anyhow, it was just a nice feeling knowing I was right there near them, without their awareness.  

   It was a comforting feeling that I've come to understand only after a lifetime of several decades lived, across a span of living in different states and over the course of several jobs. The first vestiges of feeling comfortable with the dead. 




   

   

4/09/2023

For an Interponat



 for   Sigmar Fricke 

while the murmur and susurration of insects
 gets sucked into endless loops of bubbling bogs
in silence like a deadly snapping flower 
a mechanical garrote or a poisonous love me not 
 in an instant drop dead memetics sunk under 
surfaces plumbed the depths so long ago some have
 floated back belly up pale enough to blind the moon  
  if digression is the art of the game we're one step ahead
 already having slid along on a synthetic lubricant
channeled backwards in time through a loop of constant
  refractory loosening that is to say tightened into focus
on the other side which - and here's the trick - exists 
 along with us indistinguishable from what we know
  already to be drowned in the static of cellophane wrap 
  






3/17/2023

Your Rights™


this abduction blanket

  is for your security


 your signature will

not be required


    being there

 will be sufficient


digital identification

  performed by the cloud


 encrypted verification

results guaranteed





3/09/2023

Analog Loco Motion

 words and images by    shaun   lawton   


 Dipping  the paddle  of an oar  into  the waters of life  
will direct the course taken  going forward  
when the sculling is a letter and  the oar a sort of mail  
 then you trace  the feather of a bird  line by line  
one at a time  on  a blank page  and sign  it 
with your name (not upon the dotted line) 
but  just right there on the empty page   
you control the direction and flow your life takes. 
 
It's  a sort  of  loco motion analytical devotion 
in proximity to the inanimate enemy
 ready to instigate any second guessing 
as best as the next one that is if you ever 
make it back to shore where the waters
of your other life direct the sequence undergone
to continue roving forward in a straight line.

Nothing can parallel your own foot 
becoming a common postal service item
and with the lining of an avian coat of armor
piecemeal assembling itself on the white sheet
upon which the new signature may be applied
onto the marginal cloudscape developing 
as the parallax of our remaining event horizon
helps keep it fixed in perpetual proximity just out of reach.  

      

1/14/2023

 

















   the remotest miniscule spinning pinpoint eyelet
 pore in the great stretched out skin counts 
as a window into this world an entry place
 to some an exit to others.