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My
quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he
carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the
streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and
years, like numerals.
My quietness has a number
of naked selves,
so many pistols I have borrowed to
protect myselves
from creatures who too readily
recognize my weapons
and have murder in their
heart!
though in winter
they are warm as roses, in
the desert
taste of chilled anisette.
At times,
withdrawn,
I rise into the cool skies
and gaze on
at the imponderable world with the simple identification
of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to
my nape,
speaks, but I do not hear him,
I'm too
blue.
An elephant takes up his trumpet,
money
flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its
mirror
across shoulder blades. A gun is
"fired."
One of me rushes
to window #13 and one of
me raises his whip and one of me
flutters up from
the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,
and underneath their hooves as they round the last
turn my lips
are scarred and brown, brushed by
tails, masked in dirt's lust,
definition, open
mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the
lungs
of earth.
So many of my transparencies
could not resist the race!
Terror in earth, dried
mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,
a flaking moon
drifting across the muddied teeth,
the imperceptible
moan of covered breathing,
love of the serpent!
I
am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and
pants
and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts
behind a cloud
and animal death whips out its
flashlight,
whistling
and slipping the glove off
the trigger hand. The serpent's eyes
redden at sight
of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth!
My
transparent selves
flail about like vipers in a pail,
writhing and hissing
without panic, with a certain
justice of response
and presently the aquiline
serpent comes to resemble the Medusa.
Frank
O'Hara
Read poems about / on: pink,
animal,
murder,
justice,
lust,
mirror,
money,
winter,
moon,
memory,
death,
world,
rose,
sky,
star
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Frank O'Hara
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Frank O'Hara
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