Poems by Mark Young

LE SON D’UN SONNET 

I see Sioux down on the
bayou. They are listening
to Clifton Chenier. Apples
& pears abound, plus an odd
cantaloupe whose face re-
sembles that of the Sphinx or
Kimba the lion. Pyramids
all around. No one is

dancing except the Sioux;
& that astounds the apples
& pears. The cantaloupe
tries to shimmy, upsetting
the tree fruit which fall to the
ground. Zydeco surrounds.


IT'S REALLY JUST . . . 

The weather out here suggests some
self-assembly of living matter that

excludes understanding, includes
random pieces of jewelry. It's part

of a meme that has spread rapidly from
Japan to the registered office in Ro-

mania of the newly formed Boy Scouts
Association, & whose central tenet is

that scurvy can be eliminated by the
removal of noise from the optical field.


MEANWHILE, BELOW DECKS 

The poet, in-
trigued by
a word that has
come up in

conversational
history with
another poet
about

another poet,
writes it down
in the note-
book he carries

everywhere.
Ringbolt. It
means “to
stow away.”


A LINE FROM GEORGE LUCAS 

Why didn't my car accelerate? The list
seemed endless — shopping, Christmas
parties, visiting the in-laws, plus all
those potential car flaws that only rev-

heads seem to be able to properly pro-
nounce. Still, that all happened outside of
where I mostly existed, the place where
I lived, breathed, & dreamt in strings

of code — cyber space. That’s the real
reason we humans were on top of the food
chain. The only thing above us was cyber
space itself. For me, though, that wasn’t

enough to get my gears going. I was in
a kind of stasis, yearning for that impetus
needed to accelerate a body. That’s the
kind of kinetic energy I was looking for.