Acta Stochastica (for Jacob Bernoulli)
Mark Young
1. Compound Interest
“Reality, my reality, is a set of alternate realities. As are your realities also. & yet, even if we gathered up, created a set of, all the sets of alternate realities in the world, it would never be complete because a set cannot contain itself. So, therefore, another set, & then another, & another. Infinite Chinese boxes if you like. Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem in action. Zeno’s paradox.”
2. The Future of OpenID
The east coast,
with its open
concept floor-
plan & periodic
fires, is a prime
site for observing
the ceremonial
destruction of
shoulder-fired
missiles &
counterfeit
banana flambés.
3. At the western extremity
The passage from
apothecary to surrogate
deathbed mother has,
by any metric, its fair
share of setbacks.
4. An / analysis of / surface drinking water
A lobe of the lung
is the standard
tool for filtering
ephemeral down-
loads when their
social security
numbers are not
routinely displayed.
5. Exposition
Each takes
unto itself
something apart
from its
essential being. He
wrote: feldspar.
He wrote:
the night.
Differentiation.
6. A Play in Four Acts
M. Kabuki?
I. No.
Ф
M. Bunraku?
E. No.
Ф
M. Nō?
E. Beckett.
Ф
M. Godot?
E. No.
(Curtain)
7. A / minimalist poem / from Oprah Winfrey
soccer
mom
crystal
meth
8. Cable stitch
In the
middle of the day
I catch Kurosawa's
Ran. Sometimes
a chance
encounter
promotes a
poem. Some times
it is its own poem.
Mark Young’s essay, Stochastic Acts: the search string as poetry, is online at Amanda Earl’s Angelhouse Press. His most recent books are the e-book Asemic Colon from The Red Ceilings Press, The Codicils, a 600-page selection of poems written between 2009 & 2012, out from Otoliths, & the eclectic world from gradient books of Finland. He lives in North Queensland in Australia.
