To hell with bucket lists. I’ve been around the block a few times on my little red tricycle—feasted on fugu, Fritos, caviar, and cajun-fried crickets. Watched Sunset Boulevard, The Blob, and Mulholland Drive uncountable times, broke a bar-room mirror drunk down in Mexico, saw Hendrix up close for five bucks, and caught both heaven and hell on occasion. I’ve been from Kabukichō to Kokomo, walked through Soho, SoDo, and San Antone—even took a moose photo at Wall Drugs. Had guitars, dogs, homes, lovers, a silver ’62 Grand Prix, a Davy Crockett coonskin cap, a hand-me-down mojo hand. I’ve read Rilke, Rimbaud, Bulgakov, Bellow, and Bukowski. Not bad, I reckon.

that old devil moon
it just waxes and wanes
wanes and waxes

Well, I’d best leave something behind, hadn’t I? A love letter, a poison pen letter, a hexagram, epigram, send a telegram? Or an abstruse asemic, Kabbalistic diagram, a dithyramb? I know—a good old-fashioned death poem:

to be placed
on a poet’s grave
sake and cigarettes

Not bad, but not quite. Besides, I may have read it somewhere. Or, maybe:

if only
to fly away again ...
dying horsefly

Well, yeah, I kind of like it—has an Issa-like ring to it, but kind of derivative. Maybe one more try?

ephemerata
my words left behind
somewhere on Saturn

Nah—too twee! That’s it for now. Back to the drawing board...

ex libris
Suicide for Dummies
decades overdue

Mark Meyer

is a poet, contemporary visual artist, and retired educator who lives in the Seattle area and describes himself this way: “ex-scientist/ quasi-artist/ semi-poet/ pseudo-guitarist/ meta-misanthrope.” Now in his seventies, he was a neurobiologist in a prior lifetime long ago—and still really misses looking through microscopes.

Mark’s short-form poetry has been widely published, and he is the author of two collections of selected poetry and artwork published by 3dotstudio: Old Flames & Burned Bridges (2023) and neo-Nothyngge (2020).

His paintings, drawings, and digital prints continue his interest in pattern-driven compositions, richly detailed, leaving almost no space unaddressed. As he says, “...there are no big plans or schemes in my work ... it’s simply enough to find out where these individual small ‘experiments’ lead me.” His artworks are inspired by scientific, societal, psychological, and theological considerations, reflecting the complex and frenetic condition of our contemporary culture.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡Featured Works by Mark Meyer at Davidson Galleries (Seattle, Washington)

⚡(±)-2-Methyl-1,2,3,4,10,14b-hexahydropyrazino[2,1-a]pyrido[2,3-c][2]benzazepine, haibun in Issue 18 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (April 2023)

⚡A dozen of Meyer’s haiga and poems appear in previous issues of MacQ; see Index of Contributors for the list.