Poetry from Mark Young

a sparse matrix

In league with French counter-revolutionaries resident in Cayenne, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe attempted to smuggle seeds of pepper, nutmeg, & cloves into Yuan Dynasty China. Caught at the border by customs officials, he was told that if he had just tried to bring in smaller quantities of the spices, he may have escaped detection completely. I see, said Mies. Less is more.

Without a Trace

He leaned in front of her

screen. Then he made himself

more comfortable. The dead man

was hanging close to the trunk.

She was thirsty, but that was

not unusual; & if she needed

company then a row of half-dead

plants still lined the pathway.

monkey canapes

In order to stop kids

obsessing over the future,

Government funding is

now available to separate

them into groups &

place them on a range of

intimate couches in front

of refrigerators which all

have smart screens & apps.

modal apprehension

He watches for a while, then he

joins her swim. A large number

of finite automata can be simply

visualized by representing the auto-

mata array as a silver bell caught

inside a perfectly rectangular block.

It’s called a strap-end, using an

archaeological principle that if you

do not know what a metal object’s

purpose was, then just call it that.

As counterpoint, Carl Sagan talks

about the impact of the computer

on the universe. Both movie &

book are told from this perspective.