WHERE A FLOWER LEADS IF YOU TAKE IT BY THE PETAL

by Shaun Lawton 

All one really needs to find out

the difference between their original

conception of what tomorrow would be

and their current understanding of what yesterday was

seems to be the allowance of their own personality

with all its faults and modifications so that

an honest assessment can be made of the real

value one represents to one's self insofar as

the present situation demands the general

condition of their existence to be

and whether or not it carries with it

the strange divided penalty of only

remembering the most interesting

episodes after waking up from

a temporary malady where

microseizures have cast

a static network of almost

subordinate control over every

aspect of their waking consciousness

to the point when they finally fall to sleep

in their beds it never happens at an hour when

they could best manage the continuation of total

rest due to the constant chitterings emanating from

under the crack of the closet door allowing a ghostly

green light faintly roiling with smoke and dust

penetrating the floorboards of their bedroom

to creak and groan until feeling the commotion

shiver the termite powder from the ceiling out

of the slightest cracks with a pulverized silt

comprised of every notebook and article

of clothing ever worn in the family going

so far back as to penetrate the remotest

conduits of antiquity through the severest

Scottish keeps isolated on the dotted lakes

each one a solitary tower of confinement

for an individual convict sentenced to

calcify into another skeleton embedded

within its own bricked in tomb which

remains solely as a reminder to us all

that we better watch out for what we may

inherit because even the greatest of ordinances

may amount to a paltry sum in the receding

reflections cancelled out within the eyes

of an orphaned child standing by the side

of the road holding out a dying flower.