Poems by Mark Young

A line from Nick Cave 

Economics is boring. So 
too are all those Star 
Wars toys when / they’re 
kept in the box. & boring

is why even the live 
bad-man black-dog bite 
mix of Henry Kissinger 
as he mounts his return 

to Hollywood is now
available in French for 
free. How else to explain 
the media visibility of 

Chaos theory with its
streaming versions of old
cell phones being tossed
into the trash? Beauty is 

uncovered in the most 
surprising of subjects —
the discovery of a new 
food, a detailed snap-shot 

of online teen behavior —
but the duende is too fragile
to survive the scraping off
of algae from those rocks 

on which it lives. Pressure 
to perform prevents proteins 
from being made. Every 
poem is the story of itself.

A line from Carl Gustav Jung

I need to finish 
with a simple hook. 
All I have left are 
Efrem Zimbalist Jr. 

& a jelly mold of 
Machu Picchu. In all 
disorder / a secret order.
Rock, scissors, paper.

A line from Edna St. Vincent Millay

When rabbits die / they 
give off subatomic 
resonances that fluctuate 
between String Theory 

& casual rapper-chic. It’s
a signature trait, constant
across all rabbits in the uni-
verse, & dubs the riddim

up proper. Sometimes 
a formula, a phrase remains
when the rabbit has gone. In
some vernacular versions

several phrases with a
favored rhythm may be
grouped together, formulae
identified by Gödel numbers,

words replaced with breathing
spaces.Then staple the envelope
shut. In oral verse-making
the display / means nothing.