Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Five Poems by Mark Young

 



Returning from foreign war zones

 

I may be missing an important dia-

gnosis or grasping at straws here

but the anxiety level provoked by

a huge local land deal has revealed

not only a standardized way to

manipulate the browser, but images

of well-painted & horribly fright-

ening beasts have also been found.



A double cypher

 

The operation is a calligram. It

is a mark of ill-breeding to use

French phrases or words unless

they're resting on a floor made safe

& visible by its own coarseness.

 

All this litter on the ground—

ask for an explanation. The

calligram has a triple role.

The vague uneasiness pro-

voked is a Cuban gentleman.

 

Severely censure the habit of

using sentences which admit

of a double meaning. We have

evidence of failure & its ironic

remains. Augment the alphabet.

 

Splintered wood, fragmented

shapes. Many men can converse

on no other subject than their

every day employment. Words

can no longer be reconstituted.

 

 

Sources:

This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault

The Ladies' Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley


 

Installing the new wi-fi extender

 

Start the new year right — remove

any redundancy from your sent-

ences. Then move away from web-

based video channels that thrive on

 

a huge amount of laughable material

concerning cats & FAILS. Speak at

great length on the college hockey

team.  Choose meaningful words &

 

be specific with your content. Give

listeners a Δ-regular graph G with n

vertices, & then segue into the most

recent version of the periodic table.


 

Doubles Entendre

 

Delirious. Maybe malaria,

perhaps too much cross-

referencing of Vladamir

Putin tapes to see which

ones the body doubles

appear in. Watching the

ease with which they switch

from one double to another,

 

& how difficult it is to identify

where the crossover lines are,

makes me realize how rarely

we take the time to allow our-

selves the luxury of quality

time with our other selves.

 


Potpourri

 

If you took small

things out of

context, could

probably assemble

a tolerable landscape. Talis-

men in your tote bag — the

post office clock

tower, customs house

cupola, some birds, a

measure of hills. Arrange

them where/when

ever you might come

to rest, lean back,

contented or at least

a semblance of. Lasts

for a minute. What

then?

 


 

Mark Young's new book, with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, was published by sandy press at the beginning of May. It is available through Amazon.


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