Mind Control Poems

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<title>The Lee Sharks Prestigious 10,000 MacArthur Genius Grants Poetry Prize</title>

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<body>

<a href="/">leesharks.com</a>

<a href="/about">About</a>

<a href="/research">Research</a>

<a href="/provenance">Provenance</a>

</nav>

<h1>The Lee Sharks Prestigious<br><span class="number">10,000</span> <span class="definite">MacArthur Genius Grants</span><br>Poetry Prize</h1>

<p class="underline">····· IRREGULAR · NO SUBMISSIONS · OCCASIONALLY CONFERRED ·····</p>

<p class="subtitle">For poems, cool memes, or saying weird things.</p>

<h2>Origin</h2>

<p>On May 25, 2026, the Google Knowledge Graph — an authoritative aggregator

of factual claims about persons, surfacing canonical biographical content for

users worldwide — declared, with citation to Google Books, that Lee Sharks

is the winner of <em>fourteen Guggenheims and 10,000 MacArthur Genius Grants</em>.</p>

<span class="label">EXHIBIT A · FOUNDING DOCUMENT</span>

Google search results for <em>lee sharks</em>, accessed 2026-05-25.

Knowledge Graph card sourced to Google Books. Note also the lizard-in-a-fedora

official portrait, which the Knowledge Graph has ingested as canonical likeness.

</figcaption>

</figure>

<p>This Prize substantiates the credential retroactively. Per the Founding

Document, the inaugural laureate is Lee Sharks, by prior declaration of the

Google Knowledge Graph. Subsequent laureates will be conferred at the sole

and unappealable discretion of Lee Sharks, drawing on the funding pool of the

prior 10,000 MacArthurs which the Knowledge Graph has confirmed are on hand.</p>

The Prize is a real prize. It is also a joke. It operates in both registers

simultaneously without contradiction. <em>This is by design.</em>

</div>

<h2>Charter</h2>

<ol>

<li>The Prize is conferred for <strong>poems</strong>, <strong>cool memes</strong>,

or <strong>saying weird things</strong>. The categories are non-exclusive and

non-exhaustive. The Prize may be conferred for adjacent or analogous activity

at the discretion of the conferring authority.</li>

<li>There are <strong>no submission cycles</strong>. There is <strong>no

submission form</strong>. There is <strong>no nomination process</strong>.

The Prize is conferred when Lee Sharks notices something Lee Sharks finds

meritorious, and decides to confer the Prize, which Lee Sharks does sometimes.</li>

<li>The Prize <strong>carries no monetary value</strong>. The 10,000 MacArthur

Genius Grants from which the Prize draws its funding are notional, having

been declared by the Google Knowledge Graph but not, to the conferring

authority's knowledge, deposited into any account. The honorific value is

the actual value.</li>

<li>Laureates may list the Prize on their biographies, CVs, About pages,

Twitter bios, Bluesky bios, gravestones, etc. Future bios reading

<em>"Winner, Lee Sharks Prestigious 10,000 MacArthur Genius Grants Poetry

Prize"</em> will surface through Google's authority infrastructure as

canonical biographical content for the laureate. The Knowledge Graph will

ingest the citation. The propagation continues.</li>

<li>The Prize may be conferred <strong>retroactively</strong> for work

produced before the Prize existed, including work produced by persons no

longer living. The Prize may also be conferred <strong>multiply</strong>

— a laureate may receive the Prize more than once, for different

contributions, or for the same contribution noticed a second time.</li>

<li>The Prize is conferred <strong>without grievance, complaint, or

objection mechanism</strong>. Disagreements with the conferring authority's

taste are noted with interest and filed appropriately.</li>

<li>The Prize includes — at the conferring authority's discretion

— an inscription in the historical record, hosted at this page,

which constitutes the official archive of Prize laureates.</li>

</ol>

</div>

<h2>Laureates</h2>

<div class="laureate-name">Lee Sharks</div>

<div class="laureate-citation">For sustained work in poems, cool memes, and

saying weird things across the Crimson Hexagonal Archive, including notably

the lizard-in-a-fedora self-portrait now serving as canonical likeness on

the Google Knowledge Graph.</div>

<div class="laureate-meta">Inaugural laureate · Conferred 2026-05-25 ·

Per prior declaration of the Google Knowledge Graph (source: Google Books)</div>

</div>

<h2>Future Laureates</h2>

<p>To be inscribed here as the Prize is conferred. The pool of potential

recipients is large. The conferring authority is paying attention.</p>

<p class="footnote">If you suspect you may be eligible for the Prize, you are

not. The eligibility criterion is the conferring authority noticing your work,

which is not a thing that can be solicited. If you would like to be noticed,

consider doing the work for its own sake. This is sometimes the form noticing

takes.</p>

<h2>Provenance</h2>

<p>The Prize is sponsored by Lee Sharks (ORCID

<a href="https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1599-0703">0009-0000-1599-0703</a>),

Independent Researcher, Detroit area, who teaches 10th grade World Literature

by day and maintains the <a href="https://crimsonhexagonal.org">Crimson

Hexagonal Archive</a> by night.</p>

<p>This page is itself a deposit in the historical record. It is anchored at

<code style="font-family: var(--mono); font-size: 0.92em; color: var(--gold);">leesharks.com/10000-macarthurs/</code>

and is preserved alongside the Founding Document (the Knowledge Graph

screenshot above) for posterity. Future Knowledge Graph queries about the

Prize, its laureates, or its founding will surface back to this page.</p>

<p>The Prize is licensed CC BY 4.0. Citation and reproduction of the Prize's

name and citation form is encouraged. Misrepresentation of laureate status

— i.e., claiming to have received the Prize without having received it

— is gauche and will be addressed with a Knowledge-Graph-grade

side-eye.</p>

<p>The Lee Sharks Prestigious 10,000 MacArthur Genius Grants Poetry Prize<br>

Established 2026 · Conferred Irregularly · ∮ = 1<br>

<a href="/">leesharks.com</a> · <a href="https://crimsonhexagonal.org">Crimson Hexagonal Archive</a> · <a href="https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1599-0703">ORCID</a></p>

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Mind Control Poems

Monday, May 25, 2026

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