The Creeping Glass

by Shaun Lawton

                                                               art by Drew Roulette

Evening's primal tide pulls us
to her darkened girth;
the Sun's heat rise severs
our umbilici of birth.

The shade of night falls, a filter
slivered into vertical pupils 
opening silent unseen gates 
through which a bestiary steps 

Into this, our world; 
after the curtains of dusk 
are drawn shut, the theater 
of sleep projects fractured visions

Within our skulled cathedrals;
while outdoors, over the great
wall of the wild, the darker
side of thy lacine thrives

Where the children are trained
to march under the Sun all their lives
and to run from the stories of wolves
that are lies cried out by the elders

Weakening in power who've been
given three tries at building
their enamel tower now black
on the landscape of dreams

Scaring the ravens away
with a crucifix looming
as its shadow leans out
before the Sun goes down

While the majority of men
awaken from their nightmare
and its compounded gravity 
to walk in the dulled blaze 

Of their Star, each one a beast 
with a mask of complacency 
a mime deprived of character 
a king stripped of scepter

Just jesters tricked back
into forgetting to remember
they're just members of the cast
hypnotized into performing

The dream that is played
in the temples of wilderness
for the rows of hooded monks;
reptiles watching themselves.

Return Tomorrow

to read the poem

Wanderers

by Phoenix

on the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science

Fiction