Raymond Farr



The Bee Keeper

                                                                            The view from the lofty houses of this country asylum ends in tendrils of exhaust at 3 below zero & winter is a snow bank of tedious pages I run crashing into, in my car.

                                                                                           & because I hardly believe that something as visceral as So much soft machinery untangles when you sleep is anything more than the wintry shadow of my silence, my work is a kind of emotional starvation—

this quantifiable honey I turn into shit. & my words are mere feet & end in the frailty of bad sentences—evidence of a strange humming figure traipsing after me in the snow. & why should it concern you?

                                                                            & if I tend them & believe in them or if I abandon them & become mad at them it is only because they are foolish daughters—a monster hive disturbed after having slept a millennium.

In the Land of the Enchanted Black Chevy

               Death is everywhere like a dark country road.
 
But who couldn’t be saved—cured of their horrors by their horrors?!


                                                             & our room is just one angry window—
                   
                                   Spooky rain,
                                                   
                                                              & Flint, MI on 
                                                Our truck radio

& someone in yr dream about a yellow café is yelling—“Come back here! 
& be slowly existential!” 

                          & someone else is shouting back at them—
“Yes, we want to!”

The Bird with No Discernible Edges

We could
Always

Get a tuba
& play

Pink Floyd’s
The Wall

At 4 am
Outside

A stranger’s
Bedroom

Window
& forget

We have
These

Waking
Lives

& dude
It’s like

I like
Yr very

Soul
Of a hat

It’s so
Anti-

Hatlessness
But its

Kind of
Funny too

I find myself
Watching

What I say
To you now

When all
I want to do

Is not talk
About it

The words
What-

Do-you-
Think-

Of-me-
As-you-

Look-
Down-

At-me-
From-yr-

Civilian-
Drone?

Like
A single

Broken
Afternoon

Like a bird
With no

Discernible
Edges

& because
The 6

Or 7
Impossible

Juxtapositions
Of outcomes

Collapsing
In the

Aftermath
Of an occult

Afternoon
Are not

Always
Part of

The equation
They are

Part of
The plot—

A thing
Entirely

Without
Nuance

Two more poems by Raymond Farr

 
 
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