Four Poems by Mark Young

Fallen from the time line

 

Assailed by birds of various

colors, time slips out of my

grasp. I try to join the birds,

but whatever color I had has

faded & I am seen as an inter-

loper. I cry out to them but

they ignore me, do not recog-

nize my language. They turn

 

on me. My eyes go first, then

my tongue. I no longer know

what day it is, cannot call out

or hold time back. Somewhere

in the inner ear, I hear time

rushing rapidly away from me.

 

 

contretemps

 

Shooting the brisé, but then

it all went to shit. Jumped

off one foot, beat the legs to-

gether; & then the room was

filled with Shakespeare folios,

 

each clamoring for some time

on stage. Comes a plié, & all

the wannabees crawl back

between the legs & those knees

aligned with toes & vanish

 

from the stage. Save one, who

looks for an audience that isn't

there so orates towards the dark

at the back of the room: "My

liege, I did deny no prisoners."

 

 

 A line from Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

Dante, lost in a dark place, Hell &

its circles. Rescued from there by

Virgil. Later guided through Para-

dise by his muse Beatrice. The tree

 

Petrarch in Hell because his muse

was unattainable, already married.

Laura. She died before him. Now

grief replaces despair. no longer

 

Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, bitten

by a snake, his music escorting her

back from Hell, until he turned to

look at her. Finis. bending, breaks.

 

 

stargazing

 

I am sitting on

the back deck

watching the total

eclipse of the moon

 

& am reminded of

how Diogenes is

supposed to have

reprimanded Alex-

 

ander the Great for

standing between

him & the sun, which

then, in the manner

 

of planetary motion,

makes me think that

if Diogenes had been

persuaded to give up

 

his barrel & take up

a post as Comptroller

of Celestial Bodies, he

might have ordered

 

the Earth not to come

between the moon &

the sun, & occlusion

would never occur.

One Poem by Bart Edelman

Ipso Facto

 

And all that rot—

Pure rubbish, if you will,

And then some, I suppose.

Follow the insane logic,

Yet it won’t get you closer

Than where you intend to go,

Before calling it a night.

And the morning is no better;

Don’t kid yourself, old man.

You’re a walking contradiction,

Despite denial after denial—

Not your strongest suit.

Take some friendly advice.

Play the king of spades,

Should it be the last card

Available in your hand.

Who’ll know the difference?

You’ve bluffed so often,

Even the joker hasn’t a clue.

Today your future holds

Empty pots of gold.

Silver bullets without linings.

Bronze shoes a size too small.

And tomorrow, ipso facto,

One regret after another.

Bart Edelman

One Poem by Adam Fieled

Star Child

 

So, there we sat in Kim’s car, for the hour’s

ride back from New Hope to Center City; drowsy,

all three of us, on a bunch of laced weed, thinking

whatever we were thinking. Kim kept putting

the pedal to the metal at times slightly off. We all

could’ve been as good as dead, if we didn’t have it,

but we did. What we had was a shared pact, into

the air, the spheres, the universe, that whatever befell

us at that time, that place, we would have to survive,

because we just would. And we did. Which didn’t

change the state of affairs, stagnant for both of us

with Kim, not brimful of anything, that whatever

soporific fantasies I might’ve had, our taking her out

to canoe on the Delaware did not result in any

 

consummation, & with her forgetting her purse on

one of the islands, where we got even more trashed.

We forgot about this, the ride home, Kim’s reflexes, how

the rest of our lives depended on something not proven,

trustworthy. The two buddies had brains circling

similarly: nothing to worry about, go with it, understand

your invincibility, it’s there if you believe, it just is. Where

shields like that come from, I don’t know, but I will

say— exclusivity is the rule. You only depend on it

if you know it’s there. Off the two of them went, into

the late afternoon sun, after dropping me off in Logan

Square. Somewhere, a frequency in the sky consolidated

itself. Gaetan didn’t look like a star-child then, but he was.

His magnanimity, more than a lion’s, granted him nine lives. 

Adam Fieled