TRANSCRIPT
By Mark Young

A line from Ada Lovelace (2)

The way he ties his ties way
too long is a science of itself,
like hoisin sauce or miso. Do
I need to spell out my grand-

father spends a lot of his
time comparing brands in the
grocery store he goes to every
Saturday? He’s getting old;

so to simplify his tasks, I’ve
added a little bit of code
& a few dedicated function
buttons to his Zimmer frame.

Transcript

Back from an hour-long walk. Not much traffic.

Small city, no light pollution. No moon. Sky full of stars.

No recent rain. No frogs. Instead, cicadas.

Flying foxes flap leatherly from trees inches above our heads.

Change of diet. Too early for fruit. Nectar in season.

Talking whilst walking. Conversational avenues.

Different from solitary walks where you go out looking for poems.

Windchimes somewhere though not much breeze.

Train noises. A lifelong constant.

Geckoes on the front porch. I yearn for mountains.

Where is Juárez

Strange shit goes on
in the bars of
Juárez. Some-
thing to do with the
architecture. So many
corners & temporal
anomalies to hide
within. & even without
concealment there
is always a tension
waiting for the next
word to make its
way out from behind
the plastic curtains
that the women
drape serape-like
around their bodies.


In the environs of the Palais des Tuileries

          …..on the sundial of your life.
Robert Desnos: To the Mysterious Woman

A late
afternoon
point of
co-
incidence

this bench
in the
Botanical Gardens
shared
with Desnos
& Diogenes

neither there
when I arrived

but putting
a wide-
trunked tree
between me
& the sun

& moving
as its shadow
tracks the time

I recall
the one
& refute
the other.


A Poem of Our Climate

Music from
across the street
hangs in the
night air. Per-
cussive, piano
sounds perhaps;
& I am put in
mind of the poetry
of Wallace Stevens.
Clavier, Peter
Quince at—ob-
viously, but just
the first few lines
remembered. &
moving on The
Blue Guitar, a-
gain music, again
the first few lines,
once more about
another person. A
sad summation
of a poet’s work,
fat books rendered
into flat pegs from
which fall all
too easily other
folk & forms.

About the Author:

mark young

Mark Young‘s most recent books are Ley Lines & bricolage, both from gradient books of Finland, The Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago, & some more strange meteorites, from Meritage & i.e. Press, California / New York. A limited edition chapbook, A Few Geographies, was recently released by One Sentence Poems as the initial offering in their new range.