18.12.25

Four Poems by Mark Young

A line from Du Fu

 

Off-screen, a psychiatrist can be heard

leading conversations which exhort

patients to let ego go & move to a

different dimension where Netflix is

 

part of the Persian Empire. Temper

outbursts become routine, the wee-

ping voices rise straight up, cry out

for attention since they lack the nec-

 

essary skills to self-settle. The Kurds

of Turkey & Iran say that crying is

necessary to develop the voice. It

seems they always loved soul music.

 

 

Concertina Bliss

 

Find the sunlight. Drink a glass

       of water. Drag the large

red pin with the dot to any desi-

       red location. As promised

by the realtor it's practically fail-

       proof & very easy to use.

That is, until the butterfly effect

       takes over or there's no

GPS signal, & a dense & busy sche-

       matic results. Metallic

gold foil may now glitter in the

       light; but how do you

communicate a circuit to a human?

       How does a defibrillator

work? How to demonstrate that

       each clustering algorithm

comes in two variants as stated in

       the client list that the att-

orney general says she has on her

       desk? Learning about sci-

ence can sometimes seem scary, so

       get that ebook for free now!

 

 

Deconstruction / Reconstruction

 

Robert Rauschenburg took

a Willem de Kooning nude

& rubbed it out to make the

point that all art is transitory.

 

Jorge Luis Borges tells of the

rewriting of Don Quixote in

a manner indistinguishable

from the original of Miguel

 

de Cervantes. Then there was

William Seward Burroughs

who cut up text, & rearranged

it in a different order in order

 

to create new texts. Who, when

describing the technique in a Times

Literary Supplement piece, attri-

buted it to a Lady Sutton-Smith.

 

 

Slightly belligerent

 

The presence of new actors in

modern asymmetric conflicts

calls for visual aids that can

significantly enhance under-

standing. It's important to

foster an environment in

which the skills & disposi-

tions associated with those

 

axiomatic rules of war can be

updated to allow complex in-

formation to be visually navi-

gated so that dynamic spaces

exist for interactive problem

solving.