11.10.25

Four Poems by Mark Young

bonsai propaganda

 

I've been working on myself since

I turned thirteen, a librarian lost

in the wasteland, contemplating

the conflation of religion with racist

nationalism. All the lines, shapes,

& illustrations stemming from this

are drawn as vector graphics. I have

six wind chimes in total now; it is

 

essential to match your brand ide-

ntity. So, color palette, tone of voice,

font face — line them up like ducks

in a row. Not for yourself but for

others to applaud. What they pick,

combined, may partner your persona.

 

 

Nostalgia Treadmill

 

Unless you were a prisoner

& the machine was designed

by Sir William Cubitt, life on

a treadmill was fairly simple

before TikTok came along. "The

12-3-30 workout is a low-imp-

act cardio workout. Set the

treadmill to a 12% incline &

walk 3 miles per hour for 30

minutes." No longer enough.

Now you have to dance on

them, preferably in tandem

with a friend on a parallel

machine, or wear the latest

fashion, or light a few candles

& walk on the treadmill at a

gentle pace in your pyjamas

with a cup of tea. 'Cosio cardio'

it's called. You can even repli-

cate making your way through

an airport with a backpack on,

speeding up if you're scared you

might miss your flight. A song

rises unbidden from my murky

mental depths. "The 12-3-30's

been & gone, doo-da, doo-da,"

sung to the melody of Stephen

Foster's 1850 Camptown Races.

Puts it in its temporal place. That

might be an anachronistic atti-

tude, & now politically incorrect,

but, hey, I'm sure you get the drift.

 

 

Quadratic Cha‐cha

(A Tom Beckett Title)

 

A variable is raised to the power of two (squared).

          hip rotate half circle to right

This operation is denoted by a superscript "2" after the variable.

          transfer weight to left foot

In medieval manuscripts, many superscript signs were used to abbreviate text.

          hip rotate half circle to right

Abbreviations are often divided into three types: suspensions, contractions, &

symbols.

          hip rotate half circle to left

Typographically, the ampersand, representing the word et, is a space-saving

ligature of the letters e & t, its component graphemes.

          left foot to side, chasse right

The symbol was so popular in the early 1800s it was added to the end of the

English alphabet as the 27th letter .

          very small step

It sounded strange to say and and, so people said "x, y, z, and per se and," be-

cause per se meant “by itself.”

          lateral movement (minimal rotation)

"Killing two birds with one stone" would probably make sense if you said it to

someone in context.

          hip does continuous figure 8 even on chasse for movement.

 

 

transcendental medication

 

Because electrons are shared evenly

their symmetry has a kind of beauty,

producing 'patterns' that one thinks

can be identified. This inclination to

find patterns often carries over, even

when dealing with unrelated inform-

ation, is even applied to polarization

curves that do not form dipoles. There

 

are several strategies that can be used

to change such pattern thinking which

often comes from overheating through

having too many active apps. A simple

& effective one is to set the current to

zero. The system soon stops bubbling.