2 poems || Raymond Farr

The Crimson Mechanical Tiger of My Will

They or I said

It was “the rapture

Of endless

Approximation”

—Tan Lin

It was 96 stifling NY degrees maybe

Or it was a million degrees exactly

& whenever I walked I sank down in the pavement

A man had tweeted me the wrong goofy coordinates

& nothing occurring in present tense was made of steel

Wasn’t at least a little bit his fault or mine

Our fate was in the stars like everything he told me

I was bending each moment/the people inexactly

To the crimson mechanical tiger of my will

& so I thought the obvious was a metaphor for the obvious

& no one knows why

In a gash of broad daylight I let my phone ring

Or why the impossible man stood there like Mao

The 20^th C picking my brain in a room at the Marriott

Sometimes I desired something just minimalist

But the road kept on going like a boy reading Faust

& so we took all of our mind games & played

Yr-death-makes-me-sad in the human zoo of our skin

& nothing we deemed the particulars was ever

Of consequence—a million degrees exactly

& so I felt a bomb go off in our teeth

I hadn’t spoken I realized in 5 or 6 days



& Other Passages from Paradise Lost

Despite a hint of diseased feet

Dante entered her womb

In cobalt winter—

I thought it was crass

But I still think it was art—

A weed half tulip half Hershey’s bar

Was holding its own in soft new beautiful shoes

It was like a disco ball swirling in a sea of pink light

A thousand facets pregnant with the pauses

Of a thousand more

& someone at Cactus Car Wash

Was sending word on ahead

That everything looked good

& we’d better act ASAP—

Our poems are in vogue, sd Kunst Kick

Simply because there’s no such thing!