Raymond Farr

The Basis of Meaning

Jasper “hangs” by the door
Looking out the garage to the street

This moment lacks teeth in a row
He places his hand in a blue vibrating glove

& drives
A new hover car doesn’t come cheaply, he thinks

A head banger has died
& this a week ago Saturday

On the banks of the Mystic River
The word “Utah” dangles a pair of small plastic circuits

Where Jasper can’t reach
The end of the road swerves up ahead

Someone he knows lifts him from a vase
Really an urn

A civilized people
All want their hover cars

---

My Moment with Goethe & Faust

“Here,” sd the sky—

An entertainment handing me
a Black Widow—

“Hold Faust.”

“It bit me!” I sd

& winced negative space
Into Laundromat, cities, & townships

I mean I minced apple pie
Inasmuch as it is Always Already Taking Place

A small bruise
Appeared on my palm tree

“Abstraction is death,” sd Goethe
“Absurdity, a fig, a plum, asparagus.”

“You can feel the piano, can’t you?
Inside you a laugh track, I mean?”

I doped the spider
Which I still held in my hand

“It won’t be long now cow,” I sd
A screw in both my lungs

& stomped on it
Vegetatively

I felt drowsy
& pale

My iPod
Till the end




--
Raymond Farr is an author of numerous books in print, including Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011) as well as Starched, Rien Ici, and Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky. His latest book Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav is due out in 2014. He is editor of the experimental poetry magazine Blue & Yellow Dog.