20130530

Raymond Farr


The Whole at the Heart of Every Hole

The hole

                          Is a kind of model for
Forms of attention and exchange 

(i. e.

                                                      

                                the very beginning—
Think of certain movements of Zukofsky’s

 “A”
                  a powerful circuit of
                                The book as a model
                
                       The book as…
Thom Donovan



The 12 O’clock at the Heart of Every Midnight

West of midnight
imagination’s meteoric             


contradictions 
make us human.         
 

Urban alleys of 
turbulent               
                     rhapsodic
       nocturnes
are post-
ganglion

Buzz Cola 

on wild
turf.


Both in the absurdity of modern civilization 

& the heart-stopping 
beauty of


crinkly reality
you thought you knew.

Enter
the self-evident

as a wizardly lyric 
unpins
                                              
a familiar quotidian 

& us 
wondering.


The Unwritten History at the Heart of Every Unwritten History

Simultaneously
Mirrors running between
            
Pre- and post-

As we pace frantically 
Between 

Begging in vain for poetry
Not to abandon                       

These poems
   
The earliest known
Poems

& yet the dialectic tension 
Between      

Is utterly contemporary.
   
Yet these poems are neither.

These poems are
Both essential & eternal.



The Document at the Heart of Every Undocumented Act

                   World
which, to some, may seem
simple 

on the surface

                     first ½ using 
Beasts as metaphors

are surreal realities.

            Co-existence                                      
inevitable collision

& ultimate
collapse

               are here 
examined
with birds      suddenly become

the equivalence of digital photos—

up to the moment 
descriptions of    

what is happening

always stirring

*


The most overlooked
California

& moving voice 

tirelessly 
we test limits 

of
the shepherd 

of Being.


How queer
the damage—

internal 
external—
 
also documents the persistence of
       Beauty—

especially the dangerous beauty 

found in
  
LOVE CAKE
celebrating

 the long corridors of memory 
& myth.
                      Instead
                                             uncanny              
urgency       makes us realize 

stone fires never really
go out.

*


In the theater of the
Moment                    most alive


                           In earth-quaking

Ekphrasis            
every grid is       narrative. 

There is only
Necessity—the thrust of us                  

                     demonstrating 
the way 
in which the ox
becomes a significant 

metaphor

infused with/eerily 
adept at

history—
15th century to modern times.

A monument.
                       A monumental 
work—

              one hundred years of
solitude.

*                


The fall of    
ancient

language—

intelligent     
refreshing
provocative—

however 
tragic—

          A smoking mirror—

          A place that glistens
& humor—
  
                       these
poems are funny 
yet meaty.



The Light at the Heart of Every Diamond

This reeling motet
feels like a
                
film
about the end of 

the world
spilling into

other spaces.

Excited & joyous, while dying, 

dragging one’s tired ass through a
desert, 

hallucinating.
  
It feels like The Waste Land but the
footnotes 

are fun.

                               I think of
these multiples.         

I think I mean that stealth 
is simply past tense 

of steal—

a paradise of 
one’s own

*


In verse—

a lover long dead
a story of

the nature of 

the individual
the natural 

world
          
weaves multiple sonic
pleasures at once                         

sharpens 

the starkness
of the world of matter

& anti-matter

that stretch from 
the sublime 

to the violent

*


A soldier’s jeep
dwells in  
pushing water,

arises as if in a dream.

& that sense of 
dream—

long &
complex—

a metaphor of body, of breath, of heartbeat
blood & brain

of consciousness itself, time
& history

rendered in
language

in word hoard—

Anglo-Saxon 
through

the beat or rhythm 
of the word.



The Truth of Houses at the Heart of Every Truth

The assumption that

crystallizations of language probe our potential 
                                         erode or affirm
reality

               or respond to
     chance encounters         
     
           love, fear
            
reflection—             

                  what states or what
actions                                   

can make any one of
Us less real 

than any other?

*
               

The tough elegance of 
bleached bones
               characterized by a taut
        electric                                             
               
              sometimes blank
always compelling 
sense of closure

validates
           the bond between form 
& meaning

ruminates on the nature of memory      
recalling a

scene or work 
of art

a coherent perception             
informed by
cynics of a dark age— 
          
a largely brutish
inhuman existence

a bearable
strangeness         of what

Language pries open—

war between perception
& reality—

*


He took a cab.

He took a cab in a David Lynch movie—

unforgettable ride 
of a lifetime.

Just…hailed a cab


                     You have the feeling      
you will
get where you are going—

one way or another.

*


The world 
swiftly 

disarticulates
each witness

turn by turn imbedded in

the thing—








                            The wasteland of Eros’s
                                    belched fire…
 
The truth of houses
              achingly at a loss—a loss
                 intimate—even 
      the voice—a step backward
wrestles
             perspective.               
     
                    We
eavesdrop on the uncovering of
          the present       
                           better lived
     sense of overhearing 
a particular 

yet eerily familiar
inner struggle.

*
                                              

In mnemonic
abodes

this evidence
exists by means of its words—     

a blank beatific
exile while lingering in the cells of language
                           
Interiors posted via a vivid singularity

                            The droning
                                        stark imaginal
thriving                            
                    OF BONE is a book
brimming with marvelous
ghosts of                             
contemporary life

Shuttled between the tender 
& the fantastic.

What I would easily call
                the moment a feeling enters—

                      Black stone of
sunlight in      
             flowers— 

A poetry that is a
geometry 

of breath—

a cargo of light



Raymond Farr is author of two free ebooks: Two Texts, and chainge (White Sky Ebooks 2010, 2011) as well as numerous books in print, including DRUNKER/holding ember (Blue & Yellow Dog Press 2010), and There Is Something Missing in the Whole Transaction between Us (Blue & Yellow Dog Press 2011) as well as Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011). He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog.
 
 
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