Mark Leidner's Blog

thank you so much for the well-wishes. entire forests have been razed and regrown and razed again since i have logged in here. i feel like an astronaut stepping onto an alien planet only to realize it’s actually the planet i’m originally from

poem-today:

Lily Pad

I love the lily part
and I love the pad
part of the lily pad.
I love the low
and I love the pull of the low.
I love the round green fad
and the low blue fold.
I love the long white leg
of the green bull frog
and I love the folding of the lily pad.
The long green fold is when
the long, unfolded legs
of the white bullfrog gleam
and fold
and land on the round blue pad.
The fold is love
and love is rad
and I love the rad gray fold of love
as well as the round green pad.
I love as well the feel
the pull of the low
when I fall on the pad
with the frog, and I love
the dark blue pillow of the low
and I love the long green fall into the rad black hole.

Mark Leidner

Listen to Mark Leidner read his poem.

More information on Mark Leidner is available through his website.

thank you so much for saying this. I'm honored that that poem means so much to you. you are very very very kind

thursd4ys-deactivated20241130:

i think having “having a coke with you” with you by mark leidner is the greatest love poem of all time

thursd4ys:

i think having “having a coke with you” with you by mark leidner is the greatest love poem of all time

Hera Lindsay Bird’s unholy love for Mark Leidner

big interview with Hera Lindsay Bird

talking about UNDER THE SEA available here https://store.nytyrant.com/products/under-the-sea-by-mark-leidner and on amazon

Under the Sea by Mark Leidner

tedpowers:

Charles Wright

guy-g:

I read somewhere that post-truth happened as soon as language was invented.

It makes a lot of sense to me; I’m wanting to get away in a big way.

Maybe become a tide, allow my embarrassing consciousness to take on a less spherical shape.

I assume language, used in that context, means signs of any kind. The movement of the human hand, the shift of a human eye’s gaze from near to far, a wiggle of lips, human scratching, inconsistent human breathing, furrowing, gestural signs.

I think of how human babies look before their wiggling appears to be the slightest bit intentional. They’re rolling and squeezing and flipping through time and space.

That baby in my mind’s eye is really feeling it. I sniff.

How cool, I think: when we’re at our coolest we’re organized around the gentlest thing in the room.

My observations come with swallows, they feel like dead weight. I crack, I think, ok, there’s that humming in my body again, I think: occassionally people with political power will perform the organization of their interests around the gentlest thing in the room.

I haven’t prepared myself for humor. I want miracles to be funny but my desire seems stuck in the present. I chatter my crooked teeth.

Ok, I’m thinking, it doesn’t have to be a baby—no—it can be some easily forgotten thing. I fidget, I wonder if it can be language. I picture a circular room, high ceilings, with hundreds of humans bowing toward, say, a beetle, its head down, poking at the microscopic plane. I twist the spine. Language needs references.

So no longer a baby myself, I’m thinking. I’m thinking that when I feel calm or aroused, positively or negatively, I use language. Self-talk, self-adjustment. I depend on time for this.

I stop moving and post-truth.

I struggle with its origins, baked by my own psychology.

Just think of that baby, feeling it, I’m telling myself. The buzz and the ache are more like company now, neither arousal nor calm. Organization can be a painful word. Performance looms. I look toward the end of the day, what words exist there, and how they must sleep. Language can be the gentlest thing, I’m telling myself. Then I open it up:

The world doesn’t work

the world is habited

it is Sunday

and a friend speaks up

Agnes, she has never been encouraged

not enough

its infuriating

and it takes daybreak

a walk to the bus alone

not every thought added

but a single one held close

to remind the world

that it isn’t some broken thing

like angels in america

the pageant reminding us

that if we hallucinate together

we may forgive each other but not ourselves

when the other eventually disappears

and its a strike to changes of season

our sleepy love

cooling the house

settling into the closest thing to touch

so we can stay with the farthest

when it arrives

a silly beetle

a silliness that becomes habit

as its amongst us

our cheeks heated

our eyes a close up

open for long enough

they begin to drip a bit

for the sake of seeing together

a focal point that provides us

no protection

no power

no performance

no voice

no sense

for the sake of seeing together

a silly sacred wandering

that allows our organization

its time to rest

a circular room

high ceilings

but it doesn’t take hundreds

just two in need

I read somewhere that post-truth happened as soon as language was invented.

It makes a lot of sense to me; I’m wanting to get away in a big way.

Maybe become a tide, allow my embarrassing consciousness to take on a less spherical shape.

I assume language, used in that context, means you don’t feel comfortable lying anymore. It’s not February anymore. She arrives late, so its late. She arrives with an army of lovers, so its an army of lovers. She tells you to dive on the ankles of strangers. Squeeze at them with your little muscles. Baby muscles. And close your eyes. Agnes gardens Agnes. She does it through wiggles, daybreak, rolling and squeezing, light. To let a warmth in. To feel Agnes nearby now relax let it go and feel the warmth begin to move into your hips, buttocks, back, and into your abdomen, up your chest, and through your throat, to your hands with their palms and each finger, wrists and forearms, to your shoulders, into your neck, jaw, nose and ears.

Agnes is finding language so she can guide you away from all the power.

Clumsy bodies going first, Agnes needing less.