Raymond Farr


If I Love Myself & Ms. Rose “L. L.” McGuinn (who loves
the death penalty) What Then?

I On a road to happy pub &, of course, off course. The people in trees (do you see them hanging there like angels?) are hugging a radial tire to their bosoms. They are throwing down fruit to their shadows standing on line. They are out of their minds & playing a game. No salivating identity to back them up. As far as things go we could go either way. If radicalized we could walk into spaghetti supper. Our attention spans, cornered, look back at us. Look us square in the eye, crab-like with surceasing mouths. What is our reason for existence if not bank notes for testicles? The writing on the wall is written in symbols crashing like heaving waves of human resemblance. I am so sorry, Mr. Hardon, you must be famished. As though a hockey game. As much as I do. Or ten cents. This rascally frontier idea of self is a tear on our cheeks. A man lying still as a corpse on the surface of a mattress. II Sleeping while moving on. This is dreaming of Ms. Rose “L. L” McGuinn & how she loves the death penalty is like sleeping sleeplessly. A thought less prophetic. I deem the image. The ragged appearance of the boy who lights a Roman candle in Rose’s honor, who is seen picking up pennies in a public fountain (that’s only to say he did what he had to do) retreating night after night, giving up the search to find himself. I never posed for a picture of him. & coming out. All celluloid. Not digital. The other end is real, as the idea of Love in Ovid’s reality. In Ovid’s reality Love is a toot on a magical horn pipe, an obsession with exultant will. But this is the cosmos of the deconstructed consumer. A big city with nightmares where super cool air conditioned vestibules lead us not to riches & luxuries but to generic mega stores designed to minimal-ize the experience of affect promised with each item sold, yet blurring Reality-scape as Info Center Tv Spokespersons interject themselves, warding off focus. In this way everyone is watched & watching while ignored and ignoring. The rapt consumer walks about un-realizing himself or herself in the anticipation of their every action. I watched…we all watched a tank confront a man in Tiananmen Sq. I dropped my copy of the rules, man. Near the once sacrosanct Orville Station Platform. & now I have bad dreams about Ms. Rose “L. L” McGuinn & how she blots out my face in winter in the park & doesn’t see me in a post postmodern way. I am not staring at you! Shut up! Or else! The laws on stalking a loved one are the prayers of angels being answered in the dark. Identity scratching at the purpose of rolling back my eyes in my head. III This elephant (yes, elephant) is soaping up her principles in the childish cow poke’s rustic imitation western sink. Her gadgets appear Neanderthal. She fits into a sequence dress, going to a party of intolerant human non-involvement. Why are city people so into themselves? I am calling the sheriff. “Sheriff,” I sd, “I am what I imagine. Who are the people going to vote for? If not their hero?” But the machine is broken. A person lives in a rush to succeed. The elephant pulls up the plug & the water drains out. Her head is big with pure animus earrings hugging her oversized lobes. How to adorn yourself, you beautiful elephant! You look a lot like all the other beautiful elephants. You must be satisfied that something is going according to plan in your wonderful life. Now you dry & towel up your fluffy clean elephant principles. Gathered into an animal circle, the message is clear—smash the smashed air. All ghosts must be inoculated. There is a good chance of a deep trance state of emergency running the show. & someone in a nearby room. Mumbling “Come in, over. Come in, over.” But static & static. An island of silent black ham radio communiqués surrounds him in his room. IV A boy was killed in a Disney bus crash at Fort Wilderness Resort. So many umbrellas! I had not thought the commercial breaks had undone so many! & now I smell like money. Like laundry soap. I get nothing but a Band Aid brand band aid in return. My dear plastic heart, you are dripping catsup all over the abattoir walls. You seem hopeful as long as there’s catsup & demented hope. The act of being is not an act. Maybe a stage name or parlor trick “greased” & “eaten (than)” a stiletto heel NOURISHING BOTH BODY & SOUL. I am her “sky a sooty mess again.” Her “→ Gratis random dementia” in prosaic subtitles. Her one delicious attempt at non entity. I am rust on her keys. I am whiny in her eardrum & miserable…that our children can’t reason. Gun shy. Self worth. Rim shot. At loved. & “(Queued) and tandem.” “You said color isn’t music,” that “The sound of boring is a bass,” that the beauty of cherries is a poor ridiculous angel. The angel of cherries witnessed at sunset in a subway reflection—a crowd of people—its masses of reflections gesturing, motioning, dissembling my rescue at the hands of Ms. Rose “L. L.” McGuinn (who loves the death penalty & looks crooked at me, not seeing.) & that time I said “the wedding…” to someone in Prudhomme’s car. & no one heard me. No clear signal. The windshield a bug mess. But not a day passes that I don’t marry her in quotes. But taking second place always means abandoning the blank faces of Thailand for the blank faces of Soho. Where some small cubed Cubist attempt at revulsion expands our penultimate minds to even more penultimate lives. (Turns out it’s artwork.) Up & down my pant leg. Somebody chuckle. Or I’ll go ballistic nihilistically. Where are the guys serving the cocktails? I find I’m liking what I’m hearing here. A sleeve is doused in Cubist gasoline. Already it’s passé. Or six pigeons. A possible crank call to the poet whose sleeping. It’s now after five in the morning. Who is that standing idle there? This close to the harbor a person could get drowned. For Love is a good grasp on reality being desecrated daily. These are the facts as I see them—don’t walk away…I am talking to you…The leering isn’t me…you know me…you know who I am! Even if I look away…my eyes on a statue…the smell of your hair washes over me. I am hopelessly & helplessly… what? Your stalker? Your murderer? Your long lost companion? Or am I your conscience? The odd boy you remember from the schoolyard whose sudden interest in girls obliged him to kiss you when you were eleven? I am who exactly? I stand numb on the street as your ghetto-nerves tremble. You are or could be Sheila X. & sleek as Turtle Wax on cadaver skin you get into a cab where you feel you are safe. Where is your scarf that was weird around your neck just a moment ago? It is the last urban sunset of maybe this time. It is dark now & nothing else.

Raymond Farr lives in Ocala, FL. His work appears in Otoliths, Cricket On Line Review, BlazeVox2kX, Counterexample Poetics, Letterbox, Ditch, The Argotist On Line, Cannot Exist, EOAGH, Moria, Out of Nothing, Clutching at Straws, Kill Author, Text Base, Xstream, Liebamour, Indefinite Space, & Apocryphal Text. He is the author of big strange wall, DRUNKER/holding ember, Variably Distorted Lad, Starched, and Rien Ici all published by Blue & Yellow Dog Press. He has published one chap book, Two Hats Appear When Applauded, as part of the Dusie Kollective (www.dusie.org) and one ebook, Two Texts (Chalk Editions 2010). Raymond is the editor of Blue & Yellow Dog
 
 
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