Four Poems by Mark Young

A line from Nelson Mandela

 

This is an America that is not

necessarily retreating from the

world stage but consolidating

its power through bullying &

 

dealmaking, where the influ-

ences of Christian nationalism

& the presidential vices are the

most apparent. Ushering in a

 

new golden age, says the new

National Security Strategy; but

to others it is the onset of a new

age of fear, of repression, of de-

 

privation & virtual slavery. To

oppose it is to not merely cast

off one's chains, it is a renewal

of life & liberty without pursuit.

 

 

notes from a broad

 

It's not that I think the world is broken, just that pieces keep falling off. At least, that's what I assume the debris around me is. & everywhere I go, more, & different, debris. Clips on YouTube, search results from Google, memories for sale on eBay, trivial newsbites from trivial news-sites; all mixed in with lines from millenium-old novels, fragments from mythology, subtexts, signs in shop windows, gall & philosophers' stones, lines from the decades of pop I have lived through, thoughts I & others have had. Or may still yet have.

It's a kind of bricolage, which means I'm a kind of bricoleur. I take these things I find around me & put them together; at least I try to. Not to repair the world but to see how the found objects look when rearranged—a parallel universe perhaps, a history or histories rewritten. Or, perhaps the world as it really is, because everything I write about comes out of the world around me.

We are subjected to information overload these days. So much so, in fact, that it becomes impossible to take it all in. Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has been reduced to 15 seconds so it fits as a soundbite in the evening news. Where it blurs, sandwiched between competing 15 seconds, goes digital, & we lose the last few words because the pre-programmed ads come in over the top & we end up not knowing if it was the grapple tackle or the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan that caused the floods in, was it, Pakistan. Peccavi, cabled General Napier. I have Sind. It's a funny old world, & I milk the humor as much as I can.

 

 

Le Cicérone

after the 1948 painting by René Magritte

The temperance advocates come

knocking at my door but I haven't

had a drink for days. Nor do I

feel like one. Sorry to disappoint.

 

The pentecostal proselytizers pause

on the pathway. I instantly recog-

nize the pairing, can see more pairs

over their shoulders, say no thanks

 

politely to them before they have a

chance to open their mouths. & they,

inured to rejection, offer their equally

polite blessings & walk quietly away.

 

Then the politicians, the outliers only —

independents who seek to save the

planet; or those far to the right, want-

ing to stop immigration or gender e-

 

quality or renewable energy sources.

The mainstream parties mainly leave

us alone. Impersonal. Letterbox drops

& billboards. Polling booth handouts.

 

In the early evening the cicerone comes

calling. Said: "Saw you had a lot of

visitors today, thought you might like

to know their antecedents. What drives

 

them, what is behind their focus on a

singular cause whether it be bigotry

or hope or a need for an answer as to

why the world turned out the way it

 

has, & how it might be rearranged to

match their vision of it." "Come in" I

said "& get comfortable. Will make

you a coffee. Going to be a long night."

 

 

Melania

 

is a cheeseball infomercial of staggering

inertia, made out of car rides & cold silences,

so polished it slips out of (her) hands. I

immediately regret not buying popcorn

so at least one of my senses would be enter-

tained. It's a gilded trash remake of The Zone

of Interest, a forty-million-dollar journey into

the void, a film that should have been called

Day of the Living Tradwife, a lazy, bafflingly

incurious documentary that insults the

person it is trying to celebrate. All the money

in the world can’t make good propaganda, &

this is shameless propaganda that could put

you to sleep, a preening, scowling void of

pure nothingness, an unabashed, fly-on-the-

gilded-wall fawn job, a tedious, criminally

shallow puff piece, a Slovenian sphinx flick

nixed. Pure, endless hell, an unbelievable

abomination of filmmaking that if they

showed it on a plane, people would still walk

out. 20 stage-managed days in the life portrays

world events as B-roll between wardrobe

changes, feels entirely at a remove from any

objective reality, a face like a fist that makes

(her) look like Marie Antoinette skulking in

her cake-filled chateau. This must be the night-

mare endpoint of celebrity documentaries.

Does Melania dream of AI-generated sheep?

 

Sources:

BuzzFeed, Decider, empireonline, Los Angeles Times, MS Now, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, The Independent, The Irish Times, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wrap, Vanity Fair, Variety, & Vulture.

Four Poems by Mark Young

prehensile dog washers

 

Poke out your tongue, wrap

it around a lollipop, & now

try to whistle for the dog to

come inside for its weekly

wash. Nothing happens; or,

 

at least, nothing that was

meant to happen. Locusts

fly down from their perches

on the pyramids of Giza &

eat the Sphinx away. The

 

Red Sea opens & closes, o-

pens & closes, unsure if it

too is meant to be at war. A

dyslexic President abuses

the Pope for washing the

 

peet of the foor, saying he'd

never let such garbage into

his nice white house, then

puts on his corny thrown

before his seance with doG.

 

 

 

Liturgical music

The church is a business

Robert Creeley: After Lorca

 

Once was the rattle of coin, the ringing

of the cash register, given a more noble

form when celebrated in song. Clang,

clang, clang went the trolley, ding, ding,

ding went the bell, sang Judy Garland

when she was met in St. Louis, but her

text holds none of the mystery that is

supposed to be imbued within it. The

Second Vatican Ecumenical Council

had plenty to say about that, 69 clauses

intended to cover every aspect — how

it's important to look & sound your

best, especially if the service is  going

out on TV; what part the various

parts of the organization should play;

what to do if the attendant musicians

lack the desired skills necessary to play

well; & if have them, what celebrations

shouldn't they be permitted to play at.

Masses for the dead are one of the pro-

scribed events, which is possibly why

Creeley also notes that the mourners go

doucement, doucement to the cemetery.

 

 

 

Her only friend was a robot named Desire

 

The person throwing stones

has been known to stand

in the street & yell Stella at

the world. That she has a

voice that reminds one of

Grace Slick is a little off-put-

ting; but it is the summer of

love, though the brutal exe-

cution of Benito Mussolini

is still remembered as a high

point in The Chronicles of Nar-

nia after it was lip-synched

on The Tonight Show with

Johnny Carson & became the

defining moment of an era.

 

 

 

Transparent pterodactyls

 

Like a giant Faraday cage, the

all-metal construction provides

versatility across a wide range

of applications in such areas as

 

writing, editing, & design. Mir-

rors aren't just decorative. Their

studies of hunter–gatherer

locomotion create the illusion

 

of larger spaces; & their theoret-

ical analyses have implications

for manufacturers of religious

artifacts such as baptism tents.

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.

Four Poems by Mark Young

A line from Quentin Crisp

 

She wondered what it was

like to claw her way up from

being a printed mesh fabri-

cation, designed exclusively

 

in-house & based only on one's

own experience. She brought it

to the table to create distance, to

take the joke on herself as a way

 

to self-soothe. Pink noise is far

deeper than white noise, a sonic

hue that often only comes down

on the side of the outcast. The old

 

movie projector hums in the back-

ground like a dialysis machine

without the beeps. Ambient noise

in the ICU. She closes her eyes.

 

 

Topical nightmares

 

Discover their meanings. There

are twenty-eight listed in the pages

of the OED. What is going on in

the world? To start, don't even

think "How do I find something

now?" Combine different lettering

styles & simple doodles. Decide

which conjunction best completes

the sentence. Reduce uncertainty

by keeping it square through im-

pact. Swap any phrasal verb for

the unknown you're dealing with &

find out if they are actually married!

 

 

sedentary aneurysms

 

I hear the dog shout

blitzkrieg, & every

meerkat within living

memory dives for

shelter. I do the oppo-

site, get up & look

around, fearing there

may be spiders in the

quicksand that surrounds

me, or, even worse, my

sedentary lifestyle has

broken me free of the

crossword I am trying

to do, leaving me lying

on the floor, a victim

of an aneurysmal sub-

arachnoid hemorrhage that

has too many letters to fit

any of the available spaces.

 

 

The / erstwhile tracheotomy / of Jeanne d'Arc

 

She spoke through a tube

in her throat. The passion

that she felt was communi-

cated by the movement of

her hands, her arms. Her

anger was obvious. Finger-

tips glowed like tiger's eyes.

The air rippled. No one could

remember the subject of her

speech; but the gestalt of it

was talked about for years.

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.

Four Poems by Mark Young

Cyborg sidewalks

 

Doors open at 7:30, show starts at 8pm.

It's always polite to be there earlier.

 

Travel is a mirror for who we are.

How would you define your travel style?

 

Should you be polite to artificial intelligence?

Straight answers that are slightly polite are always good.

 

Conversation-starting pieces of clothing will easily draw attention.

Social pleasantries in questions & answers should be strongly discouraged.

 

There are three-month-old dumplings on the ceiling fan.

That's a style, not a confession.

 

 

Threshold

 

Liminal space beckons. Is filled

with fresh-cooked bagels that I

know can't be real because they

smell too good. I am standing at

the top of a stairway that leads

down to the local rail station. All

I can see are steps & a sign on

the wall that says This way to the

 

Led Zeppelin concert & looks out of

date. The smell of bagels comes up

from the bottom of the stairs: there

are no signs of trains or travelers;

posts an emptiness that is both im-

minent & has fragrant disconcerts.

 

 

A line from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

 

Is there a border we will never cross,

or are there only plateaux that

follow on from one another, each at

a different height? Some things I

 

can never know for sure; but I remind

myself that every day is a new begin-

ning, that from now on I no longer exist

as I am, or was, or ever will be again.

 

 

A rarely explored tonal pathway

 

He tore pages out of An

Open Doorway to the Almighty

& ate them. They repeated on

him, percussive, but still melo-

dic, much like a glockenspiel.

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.