Hurdling the Grave of Each Moment
The obvious gambit is
Almost always the wrong gambit
& the wrong gambit is only a shadow
We follow out of the deep grass
& onto the cunning blank page
The luck of too many rabbits
Like the meaning of something I was
Supposed to have found written there—
This clotted eye shaping itself to
The perfect shape of the world!
& while dreamers are
Dreamers only while hurdling
The grave of each moment
Each moment is a corpse, waking
Mid-autopsy—& so I hesitate—
What else can I do?
The Bees
There are
Five or six
Or seven bees
Still left on
The corpse
In the window
& I am the
Quintessential
Existential
American
Movie hero—
The strong
Silent type—
Bruce Willis
I guess
Sly Stalone…
I don’t know…
I walk over
To the corpse
In the window
I throw
Open
The curtains
& shoo
Away the
Evil bees
& So He Sometimes Failed to Act Definitively
& because Johnny
Was in the basement
& no one ever touched him
He sang “the pump don’t work ‘cause
The vandals took the handle”
& this made him powerful & strange
& because this strangeness
Was strange to him & didn’t always
Become him & though poetry
Was a better teacher to him than death
Or the false teacher of his shame
& because he wasn’t just
Another dumb guy named Buzz
Or Wally or Jack—but a lyric poet
Throwing the burning flower
Of his words into the void—
He sometimes failed
To act definitively
Our Next Move After seeing
Apocalypse Now Last night I dreamt a tiger
Stalked me from room to room—a god in an empty house!
& I woke up screaming. & when I tell him this, Noah only
Moans, “The horror, the horror!” mocking me with his impatience.
But the gesture has only a poem’s venal audacity, & I’m so exhausted—
A digitally re-mastered version of the self as hoax.
& there’s this illusion of a single Vietnamese
Face floating somewhere in the crowd just several heads behind us.
“But if the point is never get out of the fucking boat…,” says Noah—
The crowd herding itself out into the exaggerated emptiness—
& into the vertigo of lights & traffic—of murderers murdering
Murderers—“Then what’s our next move?”
Remembering Perspectives on the Pleasures of Excess
1:
I see 2 heads
Saying nothing
& there is no
Heart-blinding life
Of the purely figurative!
No mirrored bells
In the bright afternoon!
Just a jolly rancher’s
Best last laugh
At shucks, I so thought
I would say it
Just a blank circle
Where dialogue should go
But no dialogue!
Just 60 white hens
Scattered on a highway
Construction site
It’s how music—
The 9 broken feet
Of our waltzing—
Becomes the crux
The ________
Of a concept
We abandon
While dancing—
One leg for
The end of
The world!
2.
3 days we
Watched
The silent movie
Of the earth
No music
To burden us
Only the same
Black & final
Word scrawled
Across the green
& white fences
Of the lives
We claimed
The stars like
An audience
Moved slowly
Away from us—
Dry stones lining
The grey dusk
3 days a dark
Face hid its
Strange teeth
In the bright
Shadow of
The moon
3 days
The drab
Bungalows
Shone with
Our absence
Enigmatic
1.
the last
time
I saw
Giselle
she was
reaching
for the
Pepsi can
that had been
sweating on
the night
stand
2 hours—
the single
word
Enigmatic
scrawled on
the bosom
of her
t-shirt
a storm
cloud
with
a sexy
lightning
bolt
etched
into
the E in
Enigmatic
2.
& now
I am
nothing—
just a
shadow
in the small
enclosure
where
the dog’s
been
asleep
in the
sunlight—
its head
raised
apprehending
the sky
3.
I have
left
the door
open
& wind
is a broom
now
sweeping
the light
of tomorrow
into
the house
It is
autumn
& I am
60
I leave
papers
down
for the pups
& freshen
their
bowls
I want
to paint
everything
the dog
lying
all day
in the
sunlight
sees
but I
convulse
looking
into
its eyes
4.
& suddenly
I’m
thinking
how
calling
Giselle
my muse
would
be like
calling
the tiny
mouse
living
in my
scrotum
father
Raymond Farr’s poetry books are available at www.lulu.com/spotlight/blueandyellowdogpress. His work appears in Otoliths, Caliban On Line Review, Posit, Forklift OH, Word for /Word, & elsewhere. Raymond is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog, http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com & The Helios Mss, theheliosmss.blogspot.com.
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