Three new poems by Mark Young

A line from Woody Guthrie

Real men now care about
skincare. They perm their
hair, have their eyebrows
shaped. It’s been going on

for over a year, part of a
major breakthrough in the
global effort to ban conflict
diamonds. Some say it’s an

effect caused by the sun, or
by the Fed dropping rates
in an attempt to kickstart
its rocket program which

is rapidly running out of puff.
Parallels are drawn with the up-
surge in classic texts now being
Kindled. Old notions die hard.

geographies: Toronto

Anecdotal reports tell how the
original bricks & mortar
flagship bookstore with either
the Rolling Stones or obscure
movies & odd performances
playing in the background are
banned in some jurisdictions.
Culture is still king, but these
days casinos, with their back-
ground in medicine shows, offer
a much more attractive venue for
laundering illegal bee sting therapies.

Fat/splatter/day

Letting the evening take care of itself.

Reading emails, listening to Eric Burdon sing Please don’t let me be misunderstood.

A bonus cd stuck in the back of a biography of Burdon, $5.95 remaindered at the local newsagent, haven’t got round to reading the book but the cd’s been played more than enough to get my money’s worth.

The lights turned on so that when dark comes I can see the stairs & won’t go sliding down them as I do in my dreams but never in realtime. But my dreams are often so real that maybe I have slipped up or down the staircase & have suppressed all knowledge of it.

The guy next door is building an aboveground pool. He’s a carpenter, & if I were a carpenter I’d go out into the desert so no-one would be disturbed by my hammering & sawing & grinding & the radio stuck on the local station which only plays trite tripe. He’s not letting the evening take care of itself.

I’m alone until tomorrow night. What will I have for dinner this evening? Splash out, be adventurous, have rice with lamb tenderly simmered in a rogan josh sauce & feel no guilt but plenty of cravings? Or maybe just have bacon & eggs, on toast, with cheese? The month’s fat, in a single evening.

It’s the last day of the month. Nothing important about it. The seasons aren’t changing, it’s not halloween or Walpurgisnacht, & there’s one month left to get my tax return in.

The cat demands. The cat got in a fight last night & pushed the laundry trolley into the tomato plant I’ve got twirled around a double string descending from the deck floor. Tomato stalks everywhere today, with dying little yellow flowers on them.

The cat stays inside on winter nights. Now that it’s spring, the early part of it anyway, she can’t decide & goes in & out & in & out until I finally loose my patience & close the door in her face.

It is one of those evenings when, if there were people around, I would stand around talking. I could talk to myself but I’m a bad listener, impatient, always coming in over the top & finishing my sentences for me. It annoys the shit out of me. I sulk, go home early.

It is one of those evenings when you think you should be able to come home & write a poem. I’ve come home, can’t write. Maybe I should go out & come back home again. Maybe then.

Burdon has given way to Miles. Nobody writes for tuba like Gil Evans. If I were a tuba maybe Gil Evans would write for me. But he can’t anymore, & additionally the word conjures up the image of Magritte’s burning tuba which causes anaphylactic shock in my cerebral cortex. It’s why I always describe it as a euphonium.

I’m a coward when it comes to words. They have a tendency to bully me, & yet I always find myself getting up to be beaten down again by them. So I try & drift into things gradually. Turn off the jukebox in my mind. Don’t let associations intrude. Let the evening take care of itself. Maybe tomorrow my poem will come.

Tonight it’s
bacon & eggs.