Raymond Farr

Sympathetic Superstitious Avatar

            I.

He understood the obvious

A way of swearing, without swearing

Instead of saying “Jesus Christ—market place X-Box!”

He’d say “Jiminy Cricket—events around the

Klaxons’ song.”

He’d say “Organized comic apocalyptic picaresque anti-hero schlemiel!

Take it or leave it!”

                  II.

In some teeming cycle of departure & return

Breaking silence is the purpose

The function of—

The only man still surviving

Hailed by some

Described by others—

An attraction between atoms

A lung condition linked

To a tidal wave of dust—

He deserts you every day!

                    III.

“Hell, I was in Greece!” sd thinking blonde avatar

“Entrapping empathy

Under dark & lonely abstract theory

I would get bogged down

Standing before truth

Foretelling the events of 9-11 in spooky quatrains

Sidestepping theory

In Mass Market breaches of security

I dreamt the whole world

Was condemned

I cheated at a game of cards

Anticipating the modern & postmodern world.”

Stealing the Thawed Brain Back to Normal*

I.

He is finished

Who’d watched all the while

You hold him

He swims his paws

It’s kinda like

Pause. Look.—

The storm burst over the resinous pines

II.

A chunk of body of

A little wedding dance

& I’m tired of pretending like

Normal brain

Photograph

Disorder

Said no one in particular

I enjoy lying

But

To sight see is to

Bartender in hell

In the past I’ve labeled it

The day before—

A veritable scatological apocalypse

III.

Pigeons are spinning again—

A soundless wake

Of whiteout

Into enormous space

The maps are made

Everything speaks to him

A loud voice saying—

Myself crazy with

A garland of dandelions

Cannot drive him

Drip drip. Drip drip.

& to the pod most mellifluous—

Do you know how to break a radio?

Model it in real time?

I had thought the other night

Allure can perturb

An object

* Source text: In the House of the Hangman

#381, 382, 383, 384, 385

 www.johnbr.com

By John Bloomberg-Rissman

Raymond Farr lives in Ocala, FL. His work is widely published in many poetry journals and blogs, both on line and in print. He is author of 6 print books, the latest of which is Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011), and two on line ebooks, chainge (Chalk Editions 2011) and Two Texts (Chalk Editions 2010). He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog.

Raymond Farr

This Isn't History, It's an Episode


My story is pretty simple—

Because I couldn’t finish a novel
My life begins

In a nation that does not exist yet

The icon & I weren’t personally close
Our family fled their orchards—

From medieval kabbalists
To 20th century refugees—

Our fury seems particularly apparent here

In a nation that does not exist yet

Where actors are hired to read scripts
& pretend
To be real people

My uncle told me—

This week’s parasha introduces a medium
For distinguishing truth
From falsehood—

That was my life

I was giving up
I was going back home

My uncle told me—

On the radio, things aren’t so simple

Leaving the icon to believe
One of two things—

A river was there
& it had two banks

Raymond Farr

Homage to Homage to the Imagination*


One night I sailed off

So long Wynken, Blynken, & Nod

So long zoppa

Farewell [ ]

So long [ ]

The waters of no more pain
Are found within this

Or so cried the stars to
French poet Charles Baudelaire

A dream poem
From breakfast on

In fact an improved version of

A Dutch picture
Which [ ] read aloud

In fact a nod to Surrealism

The year 1869
The year 2007

& which zoppa quoted—

A delightful little
Episode
One night
Among my friends—

But don’t be fooled
This is a detail read aloud

It might be gloomy—

A lovely bedtime

A small sampling
Entitled simply

A good poem—

But oh how classically fun

To stop, pause, take a step
& salute the dream land

In this version
It walks parallel

Giving a nod
To Octavio Paz



* Source of text was a Google key word search of the phrase: “Nod poems.”