Raymond Farr

“a map of the wheel ruts of modern English”

                                              “a”

Dead men structure intrigues
Heartless footless across limitless spans

Tales within tales of the world’s richest coffee bean
Then pilfer

Rivers’ mouths craven with isolates

What then? inquire the dead men

Quantities of process struggle with erasure
Stand up in a meadow

A map
A scale itinerant to looking up

A profit
A loss

An odd light
Looks stellar up in books of stars


                                              “map”

In order to preserve “the way”
The plainer legends distort themselves

As one in a dream arrives at a point
They come to Canal St. & pause

The signs are all here
& of a kind

Previously unremarkable
Stranded six of / marooned five of / abandoned four of

The language they speak
Cranks space out of mambo

The real is unbelievable
A kind of trip

“Quite lost,” I enjoin
Then point
Distorted by gestures I make at the world

Of what magnitude is our scale
Just a wad now
Of one person’s mind?


                                              “of”

Assertions disband ultimately
of truth
a ballad of
apertures
open at loose scruples

Of crumpled
half the distance
                               appears
short
of a binge
headed west along
I-85
cutting smoke
snaking trailing exhaust
clouds of

Sierra Street
Sierra Drive
Sierra Place

Manic words tripping
a phone call
                               in absence
of
laser maps
a clatter of
                               star fixes
paints without form

A Lincoln of
time-wash arroyos
cratered while streaked
a ballad of


                                              “the”

Cyber-Jane & Cyber-Claude
                               do not distinguish
“the” from “that”
                               Or else “the”—
a sodden differential
robs them of a state of elocution
en route to fucking

Exit gone past

Cyber-Jane lays bare her spider-mind—
a ghost of “the”
webbed in shadows’
pilgrim skein

Her soul a grade of six degrees
not mapped
convenes trajectory in real time

& startled by his bloodlust’s dancing carnivore
Cyber-Claude invents a mouse

A quantity of one & zero
carnal as his grid allows


                                              “wheel”

Vulva: 1548, from the Latin, vulva,
earlier volva “womb, female sexual
organ,” literally “wrapper,” from
volvere “to turn, twist, roll, revolve,”
also “turn over in the mind,”
                                                            as in:
Cassandra takes the little wheel
& domineers it

                               Weary of commotion
Born again dipsticks fray to sexless pilgrimage
Not her

                               The future is a rounder place
Perfect as a wheel

She sticks to it
Lighting candle after candle
Till all the eves are lit
& seeing frees her soul of ills

The beginning is what she suspects
The end is all about

The end is the beginning
The beginning the end

Of a cave
In a dream—

The well or wheel-house
Not pictured in her vision

Where birth-sounds emanate
Undefined


                                              “ruts”

Slattern demonology exposed

& cast away

Popovers / baked goods / sweets
Until stale

Protracted clutching

After scabbard out reaching
Naked tomes
In lovers’ gittyup & go hooves

Tantamount during multiples
Inclined during

Gaunt treacherous ruts of corpses
Splayed among peonies

Howl!
Bluster!
Wild falling!

Conjoined sacrifice amidst
Words’ lone path

Intercourse at hedgerows

Of unevenness


                                              “of”

Away…away from

Never obvious

Or in the cistern

Hidden from view

The beauty reclines

Of words spoofed

Tainting many temples

The cartographer of

“of” un-amused

Locks time in a box

A coffin of “of”


                                              “modern”

Just now
in a certain manner
the quest
for the origins

                deep into
           murky forests

             is profoundly
                   errant

A sign that culls
modern
& postmodern is

A dollop of June
at noon
of nonexistence

A gong of 12 seconds
mapped by the deaf

A ranging & sojourning
itemized from modo
to the measure


                                              “English”

Shaped like a fish hook

Elixir Joe & his urn
are the same article

Identical to await fate
in a word

No matter how

(but how could they know
this from the ground?)



Raymond Farr lives in Ocala, FL. His work appears in Otoliths, Cricket On Line Review, BlazeVox2k11, 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, Sugar Mule, Upstairs at Duroc, and/or, The MadHatter Review, Psychic Meatloaf, REM, Raft, & Apocryphal Text. He is the author of big strange wall, DRUNKER/holding ember, Variably Distorted Lad, all published by Blue &Yellow Dog Press. He has published one chap book, Two Hats Appear When Applauded, as part of the Dusie Kollective and two ebooks, Two Texts (Chalk Editions 2010) and chainge (Chalk Editions 2011). Raymond is the editor of Blue & Yellow Dog. For more info visit his blog http://mjonesrview.blogspot.com.
 
 
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