13.6.26

Four Poems by Mark Young

Doodle #7569

 

Happenstance happens too fast

to ever stand up to investigation;

but still we welcome it, smile when

 

we fall upon it, smile even when it

falls upon us. Some remember &

go with their mother's advice — never

 

look a gift horse in the mouth. I tend

to prefer the pedantic Louis Pasteur —

chance favors the prepared mind.

 

 

telescopic nightmares

 

I am learning about how fish

disrupt sleep. Their imagery

tends to feel very real, inhab-

its cold, deep water, feeds on

other fish, possesses immense

power to affect one's life. Their

telescopes can capture evidence

of possible alien cities on Prox-

ima B. The strong suction cups

allow them to be attached to

larger predators & grab prey

in total darkness. At night they

prowl those large basalt plains

on the Moon that are called

seas because, from a distance,

that's exactly what they look like.

 

 

Another "Just So Story"

 

Left abandoned on the high

veldt, I notice how parts of

speech often do not hang to-

gether. Rather run their own

races — all the fullstops coal-

esced in a ball by a waterhole,

the commas top to tail in a

daisy chain that winds through

the grass & on up to the distant

hills. As for the conditional

clauses — well. . . Sometimes

words might stop to talk to

me, but because there is no co-

herence to their delivery they

are left lying on the ground

like scat, unheeded until some-

one like Rudyard Kipling sees

them & theorizes how leopards

might have come by their spots.

 

 

A line from Anna Akhmatova

 

The drummer & his quartet were

afraid to leave the environments they

knew, were also unaware of a certain

person held in detention. Add in the

 

small things overlooked each day,

those poems never read. & even when

they paid attention, they were care-

less. Micro-signals lose impact when

 

they're overly polished. Leave room

to drift, remember times when songs

were heard that brought back mem-

ories & think: she wanted storms.