Some Poems by Frank O'Hara

The Day Lady Died

                 

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don't know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets

in Ghana are doing these days

                                                  I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)

doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or

Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theater and

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

John Button Birthday

Sentiments are nice, “The Lonely Crowd,”

a rift in the clouds appears above the purple,

you find a birthday greeting card with violets

which says “a perfect friend” and means

“I love you” but the customer is forced to be

shy. It says less, as all things must.

         But

grease sticks to the red ribs shaped like a

sea shell, grease, light and rosy that smells of

sandalwood: it’s memory! I remember JA

staggering over to me in the San Remo and murmuring

“I’ve met someone MARVELLOUS!” That’s friendship

for you, and the sentiment of introduction.

And now that I have finished dinner I can continue.

What is it that attracts one to one? Mystery?

I think of you in Paris with a red beard, a

theological student; in London talking to a friend

who lunched with Dowager Queen Mary and offered

her his last cigarette; in Los Angeles shopping

at the supermarket; on Mount Shasta, looking . . .

above all on Mount Shasta in your unknown youth

and photograph.

   And then the way you straighten

people out. How ambitious you are! And that you’re

a painter is a great satisfaction, too. You know how

I feel about painters. I sometimes think poetry

only describes.

             Now I have taken down the underwear

I washed last night from the various light fixtures

and can proceed.

     And the lift of our experiences

together, which seem to me legendary. The long subways

to our old neighborhood the near East 49th and 53rd,

and before them the laughing in bars till we cried,

and the crying in movies till we laughed, the tenting

tonight on the old camp grounds! How beautiful it is

to visit someone for instant coffee! and you visiting

Cambridge, Massachusetts, talking for two weeks worth

in hours, and watching Maria Tallchief in the Public

Gardens while the swan-boats slumbered. And now,

not that I’m interrupting again, I mean your now,

you are 82 and I am 03. And in 1984 I trust we’ll still

be high together. I’ll say “Let’s go to a bar”

and you’ll say “Let’s go to a movie” and we’ll go to both;

like two old Chinese drunkards arguing about their

favorite mountain and the million reasons for them both.

Personal Poem

Now when I walk around at lunchtime

I have only two charms in my pocket

an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me

and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case

when I was in Madrid the others never

brought me too much luck though they did

help keep me in New York against coercion

but now I’m happy for a time and interested

I walk through the luminous humidity

passing the House of Seagram with its wet

and its loungers and the construction to

the left that closed the sidewalk if

I ever get to be a construction worker

I’d like to have a silver hat please

and get to Moriarty’s where I wait for

LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and

shaker the last five years my batting average

is .016 that’s that, and LeRoi comes in

and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12

times last night outside BIRDLAND by a cop

a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible

disease but we don’t give her one we

don’t like terrible diseases, then

we go eat some fish and some ale it’s

cool but crowded we don’t like Lionel Trilling

we decide, we like Don Allen we don’t like

Henry James so much we like Herman Melville

we don’t want to be in the poets’ walk in

San Francisco even we just want to be rich

and walk on girders in our silver hats

I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is

thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi

and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go

back to work happy at the thought possibly so

Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up