for
Frank O’Hara & Ted Berrigan
September 20, 2015
Summer is nearly “over” but it’s still hotter
than a pepper sprout & I’m collapsing
like Lana Turner as I chug train-like along in the rain.
My mother has cancer. The brakes on her vehicle
“gave out” yesterday as I sat sucking back
coffee-flakes into my veins, “keeping me going”
like a jet engine. Welcome the storms! A blow
to the head, cold O, cold like a snowcone, O a snow
-ball freefall to the freckled face & tell me, what
exactly is a Simple Life? I hurry along “scooting”
“shaking a leg” in the wide open terrain
of traffic, flicking lint, photographing strangers
who find me strange; their eyes like skies
as if the blue carries onward into the folds of space—
double-folded layout, up against the Siamese blue—
& Lana Turner collapsed into my lap! She
got up alright. Maybe you were gone
too soon, Frank, before it happened, but she got up!
I’m getting down like a spaceship to the ground.
If I were a Crop Circle Maker I’d ‘carve’ your name
in the wheat fields—maybe you’d let me pet
your beautiful hair again, rub my fingers across
your eyebrows & let’s have a tea party shall we
in the very center of the circle like two Alice’s
pulling rabbits from mad-hatters’ hats. Lana
is behind a tree listening-in. She’s the life
of the party but stays hidden like an introverted
hermit—Hermes! Do a little dance! Bottom’s up—
hyper-rationalizing in a digital glitch—Giambattista
Vico calls this poem a myth—it is! As are all poems…
aren’t all poems mere revisionist reminders to “go further”
into the lonely void of liberation? My halo
has slipped over my eyes, now resembling
Geordi La Forge’s prosthetic Visor. I’m a star-gazer,
just trekking along! I’m destroying all of the melodious junk
this day & instead I’m listening to Thelonious Monk.
That makes me a Force of Nature. The soul’s asylum
is a runaway train & I’m off the rails because I have
loco motives.
than a pepper sprout & I’m collapsing
like Lana Turner as I chug train-like along in the rain.
My mother has cancer. The brakes on her vehicle
“gave out” yesterday as I sat sucking back
coffee-flakes into my veins, “keeping me going”
like a jet engine. Welcome the storms! A blow
to the head, cold O, cold like a snowcone, O a snow
-ball freefall to the freckled face & tell me, what
exactly is a Simple Life? I hurry along “scooting”
“shaking a leg” in the wide open terrain
of traffic, flicking lint, photographing strangers
who find me strange; their eyes like skies
as if the blue carries onward into the folds of space—
double-folded layout, up against the Siamese blue—
& Lana Turner collapsed into my lap! She
got up alright. Maybe you were gone
too soon, Frank, before it happened, but she got up!
I’m getting down like a spaceship to the ground.
If I were a Crop Circle Maker I’d ‘carve’ your name
in the wheat fields—maybe you’d let me pet
your beautiful hair again, rub my fingers across
your eyebrows & let’s have a tea party shall we
in the very center of the circle like two Alice’s
pulling rabbits from mad-hatters’ hats. Lana
is behind a tree listening-in. She’s the life
of the party but stays hidden like an introverted
hermit—Hermes! Do a little dance! Bottom’s up—
hyper-rationalizing in a digital glitch—Giambattista
Vico calls this poem a myth—it is! As are all poems…
aren’t all poems mere revisionist reminders to “go further”
into the lonely void of liberation? My halo
has slipped over my eyes, now resembling
Geordi La Forge’s prosthetic Visor. I’m a star-gazer,
just trekking along! I’m destroying all of the melodious junk
this day & instead I’m listening to Thelonious Monk.
That makes me a Force of Nature. The soul’s asylum
is a runaway train & I’m off the rails because I have
loco motives.
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