V.R. Lang
You are so serious, as if
a glacier spoke in your ear
or you had to walk through
the great gate of Kiev
to get to the living room.
I worry about this because I
love you. As if it weren't grotesque
enough that we live in hydrogen
and breathe like atomizers, you
have to think I'm a great architect!
and you float regally by on your
incessant escalator, calm, a jungle queen.
Thinking it a steam shovel. Looking
a little uneasy. But you are yourself
again, yanking silver beads off your neck.
Remember, the Russian Easter Overture
is full of bunnies. Be always high,
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Poem (Hate Is Only One Of Many Responses)
Hate is only one of many responses
true, hurt and hate go hand in hand
but why be afraid of hate, it is only there
think of filth, is it really awesome
neither is hate
don't be shy of unkindness, either
it's cleansing and allows you to be direct
like an arrow that feels something
out and out meanness, too, lets love breathe
you don't have to fight off getting in too deep
you can always get out if you're not too scared
an ounce of prevention's
enough to poison the heart
don't think of others
until you have thought of yourself, are true
all of these things, if you feel them
will be graced by a certain reluctance
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Digression On Number 1, 1948
I am ill today but I am not
too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day, warm
for winter, cold for fall.
A fine day for seeing. I see
ceramics, during lunch hour, by
Mir6, and I see the sea by Leger;
light, complicated Metzingers
and a rude awakening by Brauner,
a little table by Picasso, pink.
I am tired today but I am not
too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white, harm
will not fall, his perfect hand
and the many short voyages. They'll
never fence the silver range.
Stars are out and there is sea
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Call Me
The eager note on my door said "Call me,"
call when you get in!" so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and
headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!
Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was
there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Eager Note On My Door Said "Call Me,"
The eager note on my door said "Call me,"
call when you get in!" so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and
headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!
Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was
there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Why I Am Not A Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Music
If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf's
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35c, it's so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
I must tighten my belt.
It's like a locomotive on the march, the season
of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter's
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they're putting up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!
But no more fountains and no more rain,
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Morning
I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death
in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe
chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow
At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes
I miss you always
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Jane Awake
The opals hiding your lids
as you sleep, as you ride ponies
mysteriously, spring to bloom
like the blue flowers of autumn
each nine o'clock. And curls
tumble languorously towards
the yawning rubber band, tan,
your hand pressing all that
riotous black sleep into
the quiet form of daylight
and its sunny disregard for
the luminous volutions, oh!
and the budding waltzes
we swoop through in nights.
Before dawn you roar with
your eyes shut, unsmiling,
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing The Delaware At The Museum Of Modern Art
Now that our hero has come back to us
in his white pants and we know his nose
trembling like a flag under fire,
we see the calm cold river is supporting
our forces, the beautiful history.
To be more revolutionary than a nun
is our desire, to be secular and intimate
as, when sighting a redcoat, you smile
and pull the trigger. Anxieties
and animosities, flaming and feeding
on theoretical considerations and
the jealous spiritualities of the abstract
the robot? they're smoke, billows above
the physical event. They have burned up.
See how free we are! as a nation of persons.
Dear father of our country, so alive
you must have lied incessantly to be
[...] Read more
poem by Frank O'Hara
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!