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4:17 AM
Robbie's studying Japanese
and cooking bacon

Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the **** Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

by,
FRANK O'HARA

What happens to your name
After it is written down?

Does it fly to the dead and remind
Them of the beauty they have lost?
-or-
Does it travel the world slipping
Poison in to the cups of little tyrants?
-or-
Does it blow from town to city driping
Glue in to the eyes of racists?
-or-
Does it turn in to grass
Where grass is needed most?
-or-
Does it hang from a chain
In the shape of a cross?
-or-
Does it fall in to a poor mans dream
Sparkling like a stream of gold?
-or-
Does it sit by your side
Watching you grow old?

What happens to your name
After it is written down?

You took everything
and returned to the scene
To take home some images of victory
and I knew too late what happend
Staring right into your eyes as the realization ended
All I could do was try to look anew
Attempting not to bleed right through
While I splashed about in shallow waters
I'll just have to learn how to go without
The shame in this game will never max out
and you left me there weeping
Sold me cutthroat trout
I ate it up
Gluttonously
Then spit out the bones of the person I used to be
She's so far from me
I ode to the quicksand beneath my feet
To the weasle who found a way into my keep
The racoon who robbed me so blind
and left me defiled morales
Now left behind and strung about
I graced him like a loser should
I fought but much too late I understood

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.

I will fight the frigid frost,
to find what I have lost.
I will weather any storm,
my heart beat, strong and warm.

I will fight another day,
I will find another way,
to see you.

I will walk across the land,
just to hold your hand.
I will battle sweltering heat,
to feel your heart beat.

I will fight another day,
I will find another way,
to see you.

And when I finally reach you,
if I ever do,
the skies will open up,
and it will rain love.

And when I finally hold you,
in my arms,
I will show you the love,
I have been saving for you all along.

I'm fifty feet old
Two tons tall
Fit as a cranberry
Ripe as a waterfall
Size July cheeks
Marbles for feet
Gallons of tulips
Dance when I eat
Candlelight ****
And promises art
Crush the whispering hesitant part
Of a borrowed porcelein heart
And yes it was something you said
So out of my bed
Mind your head