A Love Poem without Love in It
…about the beef we fear dead
As if by a mania’s hand
Eclipsed, the bellflower, reasoning, leans in
Its ruin all evening
…as wearing an alb
…endearing quandary
To empty the milk jug, riding predicate’s opposite
On stage
…of realism
A quashed preponderance
Bolsters nonchalance
Proving that censoring
The known & the unknown iotas
Perpetuates
The gash of the elliptical
Flora
The sweep of the encyclical
Fauna
…considered 1914
…an interruption
South of
…a sudden beast
Out of nowhere came
Long mane
Black sharp claws
…if any take heed
…the signs before H St.
Falter down crooked hills
To docksides’
Postmodern error message
…sand whooshing against
Civil panoramas
The poem has a snooker hand
Protruding, rapt, difficult, etc
…the igloo
White with smoke-white lips
…a sequential thing, the articles
Constructed of ice
Are an ice poem without ice in it
…traversed
…as one high
Or withered world
Withered reed
…that stricken voice
Practicing aloud
Rehearsing the pax-Pepsi CO.
…& Pepsi Co
The young ones’ red
…as though manual was in
Overdrive
Or insane Pessoa:
Love your roses.
The rest is shadow
Of unknown trees
…at war?
Or take five?
Out of Rhode Island, the trees are bearable
…that strange one
Singing stove stove stove
…to a dog that is lopsided
Eye on that cloud, a hoof
Out of many
Tapered, to silence
…moving though…
Salon of the Imperfect Colonnades
What I wanted…
The severest self at the crux of the matter
(Dearest trope:
I want to know my limits
Have limits
…this thing I desire most…
Sharp & angled
As a fang…
What is it but dominance?
What I observe has passed in a grey flicker
(streaks of a sameness:
(shallow analysis:
She sd: your brother on line one…
& my cell phone cut off
Wrong seamless voyeur
No mis-telling these facts—
A contrail
& squirrels frisky & grey
As I am
Posing, at last, as myself I roll under a bridge
My Audi
A slightly cracked skull
Menace of the 4 Rs of
rrrRed
(error in processing data
Scrambling with leg
That dangles
Stylistics without Mothers
O cinnabar skydive into cinnabar ore...
O timorous shimmerous world caught by the toe…
O tongues & soles half calculated…
O motherless eternity of shoes rolling their sleeves up
& getting to work…
Who the hell am I?
Who is the prisoner
I am reckless to free?
This red Red Carpet event horizon
Has set fire to his eyes
Our retinas are consumed
A sea of false lenses is a make believe space
Spacing us out
In azure zones
Adrift on Aussie dreamscapes
Charmed pupils recite a Dr. Scholl’s foot pad commercial
Word for word
A bevy of bovine backsides, …what must I do?...
To allow pinnacle…
To follow the pulse of something
Into a valise set down
& abandoned…
By whom?
A bomb?
As I enter yr serious sombrero café, dear Artaud
I am laughing
I am lightning
I am death
& matches can’t burn me
I am the one retreating
My life on the line
My stylish penchant interred with my manhood
A goat of stylistics
Hangs from door jambs I hammer
Busted & crooked
Their eyes green
& glassy
As roiling surf
As the skin of lovers bathed in hazel sea spray
A stylistics without mothers, …
Look there!
Madame Curie has developed a cough
A six & seventh lung
Expand in her purse
A taste for the naked truth
Leaves her nothing but nauseous
Repulsed by an ocean breeze
A taste of caramel smears her gums
As she grins
Her molars dangle loose
Her day dreams flat and sterile as the Baja in summer
I need to differentiate
I am a rat in her wooden maze
Mourn me & the secret lives of the lobster men
I keep hidden
In my journals
I grieve
& my experiment is dizzy
My technique a poker game
the broom handles’ blues are torpor to some: an improvisation
I: Venturing a Guess in the Pity Deep
“terroir” defined as
The worst background
Music of my
Back ground radiation
Just another Ybor City life
Radiating hisses
Emptied of mystical ways
Terrible Eggos meld
To wombats’
Lightness & being
Stifled by faces
Sifted simultaneous to
Wings & to water
Dipped in Laughter’s avatar
A mocking razor sharp echo
& the opposite of
Mocking razor sharp echo
Still, there remain
Disturbing phobias
Delinquencies pressed
Below sight that culls, kills
Temerity of pained sound
Haggard trollop of hanger-on
Oscillations
Consequences implicit
In human touch
II: Reaching Equilibrium Takes Powerful Thought
& time & endlessness
Those bean cans of worms
Turn on the wheel
Of endless alternatives
Automatic as bait
Festooned over hillocks
Such & such a thought
Posted among blind grass clippings
This or that oddly felt experience
Raveled up in
Brain’s emotional heat
III: Shadow of Forbearance Walking Up To Namesakes
Sticking on name tags
Pirates = Lovers
Against which temporary huts build shadows
Temporary = Huts
In our fantastic lives
We are shells
A double life spared
An ordinary
Something yet to be
Inscribed
“Request lines are open.
Go ahead caller
What do you wanna
Hear tonight?”
IV: The Pity Deep
The broom handles’
Blues en español
Butter up the bad
Caves of life size Roy Orbison
Whom I dreamed I misrecognized
As William of Orange
Whom I dreamed had a dream
In which diluted
Wine & added poison
& handed the chalice
To himself
Which he had poisoned
To himself to drink
& he won a ridiculous
Victory the very
Next morning
Over imminent forces
Of terrible rain
& mudslides of sexual
Hunger for conquest
His mania for Village greens
At Concord & Lexington Wal-Marts
Unwarranted by odds
He sat alone in celebration
Paused in parrots’ perfect affect
A casserole or beef roast
Deemed less of a menace
Than rock n roll blues
In Business Since 1815
Had silly little knickers
Written all over it
The impossibly cogent & fuming stars
Painted like day dreams
Spanned what he forfeited
Nocturnal in satisfaction
Celestial as nectar
Primed doggie style to do wanting
He pawned all his gems
He wrote in a muffin shoppe
His mutton chops
Advancing
Paused
In the act of the act of lovers’ tamed blindness
Specific as chrysalises
The frauds of New Orders
Frosted his totems
Their kiss on bare tits
Colloquial as hated congresses
A world bank of pull tabs’
Shared epitomes
Spattered his seraphim
V: Wanton Enough?
He still looks
He still sips
His cup of epitome
His flagon of unique
Esoteric as Unggul’s clams casino
A denizen of flavor
Advertized in cyberspace:
He never went back
Once he’d gone clam!
Panoptic men women & children
Locked into dogma:
Nobody swims here! Nobody!
Or stores carbon!
& the soft pines of luxury
Paint up curmudgeons
Of the uncharted spieled
Tokens of blind languages
Sour as vingt et heurs
May I offer you
Le monde du pierre tombale?
A novel idea?
If this is yr only pony…
A nutmeg on the mall
Of the dead pigeon…
Are we sorry we intuit?
Do the pretzels inflict
Mnemonic vertigo?
Are you chafed as st. / st. Constantine?
Yr heart strings postmodern?
So revisionist in your head?
VI: Shadow State Redux
The melody comes back
Much stronger now
MY OH MAYA OH MY!
I’m in a balloon
& country sides
Shimmer green beneath me
I’m soft goopy matter
In shell of hope
Soft as a soft gel of a man
I spasm into dadada
Kangaroo ridiculous
Risk at yr own neck jumping
In / end of cobblestones
& streets paved with
Olde red revolutionary brick
The Fens
The Charles River
The Fogg Museum of Modern Art
A ribald slice of quiet bank
Bunkum twice
Upon which a state
Is incumbent
To ruminate & read
Erotica undithered
The words a kind of s / seduction
Turn pennies into promises
Of what it is to sit & wait
Penniless as a butterfly
Doxa: This Last Fuse Is Wit
For Marco Giovenale
Nailed coffin men fire up the singing apes. To gobs of boob drake darker taller tan than false anatomy. Begetting Beefaroni® biscotti. Taunting iota buds in airport flex hold. Thin Edie I mean. This doxa rotisserie goofs the spelling bee. Is nutnbut a bit a hi jinx. Tease the scrotum aweful broad. Zany grey spot light with doom hands of luck. Coxswain burly (b)ikeman swoons reversing golf. What is it up? In fast food chutes of Spain? La Toya’s tiger-Toyota purrs so mellow man back seat. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Her groin dialectic-construct spins hussies free hurrumph I’m home. Her jingle-juice isolated neon titty bits to block, please, Alex. The view is twisted Hussein neck tie of hemp. Olde Ruskie bible trick. String ‘em up at gunless tea estranged by ten.
This Is Treacherous Meadow St.
But I am/WHOSE?—
d vegetable
abandoned
QUILLS’ FUZZZ-
Y FUCKING Viking rite broken
Down to:
Black Friday Mourning
Solving hunger
For unknowns—
Digital photo dis-
Belief,,,,
Cubist/FUTURIST roast potatoes etc
But Rimbaud…
Him nomad
Lost in frozen foods of Mexico
Do glaziers not briskly?
Do paroxysms boldly gone not go?
In very very
capsized attenuation
of scold
automaton
stings b / I STING
“b” & “B”
etc Hardy heron
the verbal identical
/WHOSE pithy dosage
I moon doggie etc
petunia clark scyllia & nonce (the Ponce)
tune in motorcycle
counterculture
flip flops
screaming: “WE EDIT iPOD WITH iPOD!”—
/WHOSE style
Of writing /
rEfReShEd bY a CaNtO
WHOSE invalid
Style/ a HOUSE
A gazebo
I love in a LOVE poem
Dishes of Love Love for Ben Hur
boundaries narrowed once made across—
iced tea for Yule
BRAKING/admittance
spools of
dishes of
love love for Ben Hur—
a book &/or a volume—
water for dirt / skin for sense—
grizzly truths modify intangibles— one hutt / was g
copper intestinal sestina written overboard
a gut forward texting
a 3rd blood baron
bloom ~ terrain ~ spools for Klee
but don’t harry / hurry, harlot
a warmth is copious American daylight—
the labor for
Metallica-pelican
for unreasonably shut—
or was it a while she saw—
Sputnik eyelash eyelash-monkey
spanking
capsule synapse
1950’s
walking upon traces [ ? ]
Raymond Farr lives in Ocala, FL. He has published widely in recent years. His work appears in Otoliths, Cricket On Line Review, BlazeVox2kX, Letterbox, Ditch, The Argotist On Line, Cannot Exist, EOAGH, Moria, Out of Nothing, Clutching at Straws, Kill Author, Text Base, Xstream, & Apocryphal Text. He had several poems included in the first Sidebrow Anthology and guest edited issue 6 of Pinstripe Fedora. His chap book, Two Hats Appear When Applauded, is available free at Dusie. All four of his poetry books may be previewed and purchased at the Blue & Yellow Dog Book Shop. Visit his blog mjonesrview for email info, updates on Blue & Yellow Dog, and more samples of his work. He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog.
