Raymond Farr
The 20-20 Experience
Baby’s in the Hyundai
With blind Doug driving
Is it no wonder I invent seedless watermelons?!
When god is just a working theory
Based on anecdotal evidence?!
& the sequence
Just ends?!
Fighting pink eye with peroxide is also kaput!
I scrub & I scrub
Screeching under oath
But can’t tolerate a guppy
Of the implausible
Instead of Suddenly
As signatories
In red pajamas
We love the new “Normal”
Its poête maudit of empty gestures
Is the fly in our gumbo
Driving us bonkers
Is the poet a suspect?
Of Loony Tunes, supper, etc?
Instead of suddenly
The room softens existentially
Breaking down boxes, setting fire to doors
(An impossible room
To leave
Happy?)
We Are Creatures
Writing this is elegy
To infinite noise
We sleep in
We step up
In sync—in space—with particular voices
Our off spring screaming in puerile darkness
               Do you hear them?
Someone is reading a passage aloud
Digging their tunnels
Thru all white
Earth
We are creatures
We say ink
& mean death
The Ghost of Its Swordfish
Configured to
Crackle like campfires
A ripped-in-half moon
Eats circular donuts
Which faces resemble
Like phone books
Like wheels
No digital identity
But the ghost of its
Swordfish
Is a fractured
Broad daylight
Dotting the virile landscape
A password reality
Meaning
Goad the Fatted Calf
Compositionally
Next morning
I set out
The Rainbow of Such Occurrences
The Opposite of Time in a Bottle Happens
Stealing yr “papa’s good shoes”
Galumphing them onto Fred Flintstone’s
Burly Picasso-feet
You copyright yr larceny
All sides congruent with effrontery—
Protect Me from What I Want enjambed with
Enjoined by Art Is Useless, Go Home
For ideas are bathtubs—quiet manor Sunday dinner
They bulge out the aperture
Seeming Quixotic language
As far as I can
Throw you
The Mot Juste People
Raymond Farr is author of numerous books in print, including Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011) as well as Starched, Rien Ici, &Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky. His latest book, Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav, is due out in 2014. He is editor of the experimental poetry zine Blue & Yellow Dog (http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com).
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The 20-20 Experience
Baby’s in the Hyundai
With blind Doug driving
Is it no wonder I invent seedless watermelons?!
When god is just a working theory
Based on anecdotal evidence?!
& the sequence
Just ends?!
Fighting pink eye with peroxide is also kaput!
I scrub & I scrub
Screeching under oath
But can’t tolerate a guppy
Of the implausible
Instead of Suddenly
As signatories
In red pajamas
We love the new “Normal”
Its poête maudit of empty gestures
Is the fly in our gumbo
Driving us bonkers
Is the poet a suspect?
Of Loony Tunes, supper, etc?
Instead of suddenly
The room softens existentially
Breaking down boxes, setting fire to doors
(An impossible room
To leave
Happy?)
We Are Creatures
Writing this is elegy
To infinite noise
We sleep in
We step up
In sync—in space—with particular voices
Our off spring screaming in puerile darkness
               Do you hear them?
Someone is reading a passage aloud
Digging their tunnels
Thru all white
Earth
We are creatures
We say ink
& mean death
The Ghost of Its Swordfish
Configured to
Crackle like campfires
A ripped-in-half moon
Eats circular donuts
Which faces resemble
Like phone books
Like wheels
No digital identity
But the ghost of its
Swordfish
Is a fractured
Broad daylight
Dotting the virile landscape
A password reality
Meaning
Goad the Fatted Calf
Compositionally
Next morning
I set out
The Rainbow of Such Occurrences
As the good
Dead Elizabethan poet
I am
I state solid states
Exist in decline
I tick like a face
Second by second
Chance
& this makes
Me “modern”
Too Hugo to analyze
This is/is not
A science class, kids!
Thus the glass
Of my facts
Is fractured at
BANG!
& pages I write
Have 22 nick names
This is the crux
Of a straight line
I laugh at—
(open heart) star
Which (according to Einstein)
Can never exist
(As bovine film noir)
Except theoretically
Hang On, Mr. Head Banger!
In version
One
Of version one
A suspect—
Giorgio De Chirico—
Attempts
Rodeo Dr.
Half-alive & standing
Still
Even as tomorrow
Speeds out
His laptop is
Air born—
Gunned
Into surreal
Police car—You freak, you!
Is that Parmesan cheese
On my new
Bruno Margli’s?!
Hang on, Mr. Head Banger!
Yr mother’s a Brillo
Box I opened once
In a book about
Pop Art
Oh, damn! Are you
Alright, spangled rain
Drop?!
& Richard
Dawson sd—
Show me Grunge!
& it was like…
I meant it
The Opposite of Time in a Bottle Happens
Stealing yr “papa’s good shoes”
Galumphing them onto Fred Flintstone’s
Burly Picasso-feet
You copyright yr larceny
All sides congruent with effrontery—
Protect Me from What I Want enjambed with
Enjoined by Art Is Useless, Go Home
For ideas are bathtubs—quiet manor Sunday dinner
They bulge out the aperture
Seeming Quixotic language
As far as I can
Throw you
The Mot Juste People
Their burgeoning plasticity is our addled duality. & we all know what that means at least ½ of the time. We’re all like Shit! Did I do that? No one’s on steroids here except our poems. Our first step’s a fragment—a bloated link between links. & like plate glass in so many poems it’s weird shit. We just want bigger & bigger poems on steroids than ever we dreamed of.
Raymond Farr is author of numerous books in print, including Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011) as well as Starched, Rien Ici, &Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky. His latest book, Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav, is due out in 2014. He is editor of the experimental poetry zine Blue & Yellow Dog (http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com).