A quote from Niccolò Machiavelli

"The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him."

Remind you of anything?

wednesday newstrip

Forty-two US aircraft have been lost or damaged in the Iran war according to a congressional report · a bomb scare plunged a Melbourne Airport into lockdown for several hours & forced flight cancellations on Thursday morning after a suspicious package was flagged by security. The package was later confirmed to be a laser hair removal device & a cylindrical cardboard hot chocolate container · the United States has brought murder charges against former Cuban president Raúl Castro, in a major escalation of the T.®ump administration’s campaign against the country’s government · Israel's ambassador to Australia hauled in for a "please explain" after the country's national security minister posted a video of himself berating detained pro-Palestine activists · Elongated Muskrat's X Corp ordered to pay $750,000 after admitting it contravened Australian child protection request · 'Get-out-of-jail-free card': T.®ump lawsuit deal bars tax probes against him or his family — forever.

geographies: Hamelin Pool

 

wednesday newstrip

Residents in a sleepy North Carolina town are at war after a nature-loving couple encouraged hundreds of vultures to roost on their roof, causing chaos on the streets · $1.5b T.®ump Tower deal on Gold Coast scrapped, developer says. "Let's just say that with the Iran war & everything else, the T.®ump brand was increasingly toxic in Australia," he added · 'Authentic follower of Christ' pleads guilty to stealing $140M from MAGA donors · NotJustAnyahoo signals possible US-Israel ground mission in Iran · DOJ seeks death penalty over killing of Israeli embassy staffers · secret documents reveal preferred Australian nuclear submarine base – & warn it could be a military target · a bride says her dream wedding turned into 'a day from hell' after the Philadelphia coordinator she paid more than $6,000 to handle everything from catering to decorations allegedly failed to deliver & never refunded her money.

geographies: Warburton

 

wednesday newstrip

Verdict is in on T.®ump’s America: Voters say nation going 'all the way to hell' · Danish rightwing leader asked to form government after the Social Democrats fail to form coalition · an explosive report states Israel operated a clandestine military outpost on Iraqi soil without permission, bombed local troops who found it, resulting in the death of a soldier · the US President went on one of his infamous posting sprees to share images of sinking ships in Iran, explosions & a UFC fight on the White House front lawn. In one image, captioned ‘Bye Bye, Drones,’ an AI image showed an American warship blasting Iranian drones out of the sky with lasers. Another showed Iranian drones dropping like butterflies into the ocean, with images of actual blue butterflies next to it. It appears the President got the phrase ‘dropping like flies’ mixed up with butterflies · when MarkTwayne Mullet attempted to install his personal pick to lead Immigration & Customs Enforcement inside the Department of Homeland Security, the White House shot it down immediately · a trespasser died after he was sucked into a plane’s engine as it prepared to take off, Denver International Airport authorities said.

From the archives

Homeland Security

Certain words are flagged
for recognition. The surrounding
passages on the endless
monitoring tapes are
isolated & extracted, sent past
voice recognition software,
digitalised for immediate
interpretation of permutations
& association. Names, times,
places. More words to add. This
is no brief history of the world
but a paranoic infinite
dictionary. By themselves
the words are meaningless.
Meaning is added later. “I am
going to the shops” is sufficent
reason for assassination. 

Included on the video: Mark Young reads at the NZEPC 3rd Birthday Gala in 2004.

First published on Pelican Dreaming as "Caught on Tape," June 7, 2004.
Included in episodes, xPressed, Espoo, Finland, 2006. 
Also included in Pelican Dreaming: Selected Poems 1959-2008, selected & introduced  
                    by Thomas Fink,Meritage Press, California, U.S.A., 2008.

now out from Sandy Press

Mark Young
synecdoche
Sandy Press
url: Amazon
available in paperback ($US10.00) & Kindle ($US5.00)

Immersed in the speech acts of the "inescapable maelstrom" that characterizes "this rapidly evolving digital land-/ scape," Mark Young is equally focused on the "censorship-industrial complex" of burgeoning "law & ordure" fascisms. The riotous poetry of synecdoche displays Young wielding his "wizard’s mojo" to deepen our awareness of "risible inanity," "semantic non-sequiturs," "battle[s] of concepts," and "invented amulets." — Thomas Fink

Coincidentally, I read Mark Young’s synecdoche while in the midst of moving to a new house. And I noticed a relationship between the poems and contents that I unpacked. I chose boxes to unpack at random so that what surfaces from one box would not necessarily relate to what surfaces from the next box, and so on. Narratively, such, too, would seem to be the case with the poems; at one point I wondered whether the order of the poems mattered since the references are so diverse: a beggar, the pith of sugar cane, a wizard’s mojo, Margot Robbie, licorice, math...

But just as my boxes’ contents reflect me as their owner-packer, these wide-ranging poems share a common (and ambitious) interest: the entirety of existence. Poems are minimalistic snapshots of their concerns so that each poem is just a part of a larger something (perfectly exemplified by the poems whose titles are complete poems in the hay(na)ku form but whose text bodies flesh out the titular themes). Each poem reminds of a larger—immense!—truth: humanity is a shared condition. It’s a worthwhile reminder given these, our, troubled times. — Eileen R. Tabios

In synecdoche Mark Young displays the gamut of what shorter poems can do—including realistic sketches, clever realizations, and linguistic sleights-of-mind. It’s like an orchestra, and Mark is a master of every instrument. Like an amazing radio dial, whatever page/station you turn to, you’ll find something you can hum along with. — dan raphael

With his signature confident spark of higher-order humor in synecdoche, Mark Young presents an ironic reality as he slips off the cloak around the putative whole, greater than the sum of its parts and observes that the parts themselves, in their granularity and uniqueness, may in fact transcend the whole. He states, “Decompose the outline / of complex parts” before ushering in the question “But why can I see only the ingredients?” The book is replete with delicious linguistic wit, as in “Random / noises from / the vowel house” as Young wild-rides us through a series of near homophones, “ballet,” “bullet,” “belet,” “billet,” and “bull at a gate,” yielding an array of sharply different signals. These bright, clipped spurts of compressed language play their part in a leaping-off point toward an endless imaginative prowess reflecting Mark Young’s marvelous capability to re-envision the world. Apt social commentary abounds, notably in the poem “Trapezoid lunch pails,” where we hear “Now all I need is / a sports car with a big enough boot / to keep a mid-life crisis in.” Warning: The mind of Mark Young is sterling, fluid, smart, and thus addictive. As always, highly recommended. — Sheila E. Murphy

wednesday newstrip

Australian activist says crew of Gaza-bound aid flotilla was beaten by Israeli sailors · US Defense Secretary Putrid Hogsbreath has ordered the withdrawal of about 5,000 troops from Germany within the next year, the Pentagon said on Friday · T.®ump claims hostilities have ended in Iran in letter to congressional leaders. Tells Congress ceasefire means he does not need their approval for Iran war · Tasmanian capital records its hottest day in May, breaking 144-year-old record. The city hit 26.9 degrees just after 3pm, more than 12 degrees above its average May maximum of 14.6 degrees · Pope names Catholic priest who criticized T.®ump as new bishop of West Virginia · Republicans are facing a perfect storm heading into November's midterms, with new polling revealing that white voters — a demographic the party has relied upon for decades — are defecting in significant numbers & favoring Democratic control of Congress · Israeli military bulldoze Catholic convent buildings in Lebanon border village.