Five Poems by Mark Young

 

Flight Path 

 

Not all thoughts grow into 

a line of solid reason. Some 

 

appear on the windowsill,  

birds waiting to be fed.  

 

Sometimes I draw upon my 

store of past experiences to 

 

feed them. Other times I have 

nothing to give. They fly away.  

 

Occasionally I follow. Find 

only small bones. Feathers.

 

A rectangle for the horse

 

 

People should not talk to please  

themselves, but for those who hear  

them. Only thought resembles,  

resting silently in a discursive  

space, as completely invisible as  

 

pleasure or pain. Many believe  

that politeness is merely hypo- 

crisy & dissimulation. The visible  

can be hidden, but the invisible  

hides nothing; it can be known or  

 

not known, no more.  Who speaks  

in the statement? Having all the  

talk sustained by one person is not  

conversation. Transference? Doubt- 

less. But from what to what? Even  

 

though words do not replace missing 

objects, if your companion uses words 

or expressions which you cannot  

understand, ask for an explanation. 

What lady likes to be treated rudely? 

 

Sources: 

This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault 

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

 

My father,

 

 

who once read Kerouac’s 

The Subterraneans in an 

angry attempt to "under- 

stand" me, would have  

been 126 years old today.  

What I got from him was  

a strong commitment to  

ethical behaviour & — gene- 

 

tically — deafness, arthritis,  

& the fact I still have most  

of my hair though its colour  

comes down from my mother.  

I did not go to his funeral. I  

did visit him before he died.

 

 

The Evanescence of Experience

 

 

She reaches into the melting  

pot & draws out clichés & anti- 

que rhyming schemes. They  

have a dullness to them, worn 

out, often inserted in the wrong  

places or on a wrong occasion.  

Obviously been around for some  

time now & going to be around  

for some time to come. Yet it's  

what she reaches for rather than  

that small jar in the depths of the  

freezer & labelled "mine." Relying  

on what other people have been 

through, playing down what has 

happened to her. Blinking in the 

dullness, half-missing the spark  

of light that came from something  

she had done, that could have in- 

formed her future actions. Dismis- 

sing it as residue from another's  

action. Gone so quickly; & she lack- 

ing the experience to call it back.

  

 

The Childhood of Icarus 

 (after the painting by Magritte) 

 

We lived in a house full of 

models for, & details from, 

 

paintings. Inside & out. My 

father showed me how to 

 

use the wings he built by 

teaching me how to ride  

 

a horse & wield a whip.  

Everything so large when I 

 

was young, save for the Sun 

which seemed so far away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional Juru land in North Queensland, Australia. He has been publishing poetry for sixty-five years, & is the author of over seventy books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, memoir, & art history. His most recent books are Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry Prize winner, published by Sur Vision Books (Ireland) in March 2024; the May 2024 free downloadable pdf to your scattered bodies go from Scud Editions (Minnesota, USA); & One Hundred Titles From Tom Beckett, with paintings by Thomas Fink, published by Otoliths (Australia) in June, 2024. His The Magritte Poems will be coming out from Sandy Press (California) in late 2024.