Raymond Farr

great foe: being a poem composed of lines
taken from Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

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In trees,                         MANIACAL, CHILDISH
krauts     in tiger.LAUGHTER         But one day
was mucho    fraudulent,         roaring arterial.
High-pitched squeals. Of dread. The director.
SMASH! Finds distinction.    Begins to vanish.
Unlucky enough to see it.          Down forever.
The terrible shapes irrevocably:    “Are we on
camera?” “Copy that jabbering.”   Systematic
his eyes for green neon.          Unvoiced at any
edge believed.   Then be coy:    “So, you’re an
actor? Have you met Infanticide?”              Say
goodnight,               terrible                nakedness.

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Plan from whom early.                  By all periodic.
Reconnoitering. Is not too clear.   Bones in r&d
Fished up. Listening.                      Then the wind.
The minutes taking her. [absence in grey suits]
Up the
cliffs to phase. & Bones to travel.    “You know,
blokes, they’ve been listening.”    Cut to scene:
“My heart isn’t in it on that   XKE w    h    i   l     e
temporarily insane.”                Dim hope.  Floral
embellishment.      Out of some such labyrinth.
Died everyone dumbly.  “I doubt it got written
down.”                                  Day & night, plunging,
enfilading fire!                         Trees to build rafts!
Till she reached                       r          o     ck            y
b   ea       c          h.           Which indeed they were.

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“I hear laughing.” Alarmed. Retired. Got dress-
ed and went out looking.                    His suit out.
Through the water mark.     What back his head
to do the Buddhist. Whom soon postwar. Make
the farewell flick.            He found it impossible.
[Away present] jolted out of jumping the stack
into insistent

                                banging at the door.

Most of the letters / columns headed:  “pro” &
“con.”     Reasons.      Absence of some trigger.
Suicides into coat pocket.     Ss & Os. Alternate
songs by The Paranoids.     Eight memories un-
looping progressively. Strange map. To go see.
The play itself.                  Turned his head, mutt-


           ering, “Possession.”

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Songs by The Para-
noids.                      The play.    Till he comes of age.
Seek. & then finessing.               Enormous cannon.
Native.            The costumes gorgeous.              17^th
Century. And deep.                         Of kissing every.
Intention letting him live so long.      Their rising.
Coils & clouds. Taking her.           [All rigidity] like
mythical fluid. The minutes rolling. Cut to scene:
Dead. Black.
Fugue of guitars.                               Till she reached.
Which                    in fact                          she repeated.

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Raymond Farr attended Florida State University. He now lives in Ocala, FL.His work appears mostly recently in or at 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry & Poetics, hutt, Xstream, 580Split, Sidebrow, & Aught.

 
 
 
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