Meditations in an Emergency

[howiec.livejournal.com]

Meditations in an Emergency

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde?  Or religious as if I
were French?

     Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurious
(and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!),
but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture
forth.

     Why should I share you?  Why don't you get rid of someone else
for a change?

     I am the least difficult of men.  All I want is boundless love.

     Even trees understand me!  Good heavens, I lie under them, too,
don't I?  I'm just like a pile of leaves.

     However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pas-
toral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in
pastures.  No.  One need never leave the confines of New York to get
all the greenery one wishes--I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless
I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign
that people do not totally regret life.  It is more important to affirm the
least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and event they
continue to pass.  Do they know what they're missing?  Uh huh.

     My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they
are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no
one trusts me.  I am always looking away.  Or again at something after it
has given me up.  It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but
I cannot keep them still.  If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow
eyes; I would stay at home and do something.  It's not that I'm curious.
On the contrary, I am bored but it's my duty to be attentive, I am
needed by things as the sky must be above the earth.  And lately, so
great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

     Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven.  Het-
erosexuality! you are inexorably approaching.  (How discourage her?)

     St. Serapion, I wrap myself in robes of your whiteness which
is like midnight in Dostoevsky.  How am I to become a legend, my
dear?  I've tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I
am always springing forth from it like the lotus--the ecstasy of
always bursting forth!  (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a
hyacinth, "to keep the filth of life away," yes, there, even in the heart,
where the filth is pumped in and slanders and pollutes and deter-
mines.  I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious
vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

     Destroy yourself, if you don't know!

     It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.  I admire you,
beloved, for the trap you've set.  It's like a final chapter no one reads
because the plot is over.

     "Fanny Brown is run away--scampered off with a Cornet of
Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho' She
has vexed me by this Exploit a little too.--Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B:
as we used to call her.--I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000
pounds."--Mrs. Thrale.

     I've got to get out of here.  I choose a piece of shawl and my dirti-
est suntans.  I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you
don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me
to.  It's only afternoon, there's a lot ahead.  There won't be any mail
downstairs.  Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

---Frank O'Hara

Comments

Why should I share you?

[glass-doll.livejournal.com]

wow
thank you sooooooooooo much for sharing this

Re: Why should I share you?

[howiec.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I just re-read it earlier and decided to post it.

Re: Why should I share you?

[vermillion-sky.livejournal.com]

this is so incredibly appropriate for today.
thanks :-)