Raymond Farr

                                             Hurdling the Grave of Each Moment

The obvious gambit is
Almost always the wrong gambit

& the wrong gambit is only a shadow 
We follow out of the deep grass 

& onto the cunning blank page
The luck of too many rabbits

Like the meaning of something I was 
Supposed to have found written there—

This clotted eye shaping itself to 
The perfect shape of the world!

                    & while dreamers are 
Dreamers only while hurdling 

The grave of each moment 
Each moment is a corpse, waking 

Mid-autopsy—& so I hesitate—
What else can I do?



The Bees

There are
Five or six

Or seven bees
Still left on

The corpse
In the window

& I am the
Quintessential

Existential
American

Movie hero—
The strong

Silent type—
Bruce Willis

I guess
Sly Stalone…

I don’t know…
I walk over

To the corpse
In the window

I throw 
Open

The curtains
& shoo 

Away the 
Evil bees



& So He Sometimes Failed to Act Definitively

& because Johnny 
Was in the basement

& no one ever touched him
He sang “the pump don’t work ‘cause
 
The vandals took the handle”
& this made him powerful & strange

& because this strangeness 
Was strange to him & didn’t always 

Become him & though poetry 
Was a better teacher to him than death 

Or the false teacher of his shame
& because he wasn’t just

Another dumb guy named Buzz 
Or Wally or Jack—but a lyric poet 

Throwing the burning flower
Of his words into the void—

He sometimes failed
To act definitively




Our Next Move
After seeing               
Apocalypse Now               
Last night I dreamt a tiger 
Stalked me from room to room—a god in an empty house! 

& I woke up screaming. & when I tell him this, Noah only 
Moans, “The horror, the horror!” mocking me with his impatience. 

But the gesture has only a poem’s venal audacity, & I’m so exhausted—
A digitally re-mastered version of the self as hoax. 
                   
                             & there’s this illusion of a single Vietnamese 
Face floating somewhere in the crowd just several heads behind us. 

“But if the point is never get out of the fucking boat…,” says Noah—
The crowd herding itself out into the exaggerated emptiness—

& into the vertigo of lights & traffic—of murderers murdering
Murderers—“Then what’s our next move?”



Remembering Perspectives on the Pleasures of Excess 
              
1:
I see 2 heads
Saying nothing

& there is no
Heart-blinding life

Of the purely figurative!
No mirrored bells

In the bright afternoon!
Just a jolly rancher’s

Best last laugh
At shucks, I so thought

I would say it
Just a blank circle

Where dialogue should go
But no dialogue!

Just 60 white hens
Scattered on a highway

Construction site
It’s how music—

The 9 broken feet
Of our waltzing—

Becomes the crux
The ________

Of a concept
We abandon

While dancing—
One leg for

The end of
The world!

2.
3 days we
Watched

The silent movie
Of the earth

No music
To burden us

Only the same
Black & final

Word scrawled
Across the green

& white fences
Of the lives

We claimed
The stars like

An audience
Moved slowly

Away from us—
Dry stones lining

The grey dusk
3 days a dark

Face hid its
Strange teeth

In the bright
Shadow of

The moon
3 days

The drab
Bungalows

Shone with
Our absence



Enigmatic

1.
the last
time
I saw
Giselle
she was
reaching
for the
Pepsi can 
that had been
sweating on 
the night 
stand
2 hours—

the single
word
Enigmatic
scrawled on
the bosom
of her
t-shirt

a storm
cloud  
with
a sexy
lightning
bolt
etched
into 
the E in
 Enigmatic

2.
& now
I am 
nothing—

just a
shadow
in the small
enclosure
where
the dog’s
been
asleep
in the
sunlight—

its head
raised
apprehending
the sky

3.
I have
left
the door 
open
& wind
is a broom
now
sweeping
the light
of tomorrow
into
the house

It is 
autumn
& I am
60

I leave
papers
down
for the pups
& freshen
their
bowls

I want
to paint
everything
the dog
lying
all day
in the 
sunlight 
sees

but I 
convulse
looking 
into
its eyes

4.
& suddenly
I’m
thinking

how
calling 
Giselle
my muse
would
be like
calling
the tiny
mouse
living
in my
scrotum
father

Raymond Farr’s poetry books are available at www.lulu.com/spotlight/blueandyellowdogpress. His work appears in Otoliths, Caliban On Line Review, Posit, Forklift OH, Word for /Word, & elsewhere. Raymond is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog, http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com & The Helios Mss, theheliosmss.blogspot.com.
 
 
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