Category: Love

poem after
poem after
something after someone

why do you just want more, more, more
more, more, more, more, more

the person in the poem’s loud silence
waiting for the band to come back on

I dream I am living
I dream we have got to know each other again
(quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, as if that were
possible)
I dream that we love each other

I dream that we still love each other
I dream you meet another man
I dream you love him but tell him
you still want to love me too
I dream he says he understands
and we can go on loving each other
(as if that were possible)

I dream he says he finds it difficult
(not quite suddenly, and not quite unexpectedly)
I dream you say you will try
to turn our love into mere friendship
but that you still want to have me in your heart
I dream he says he understands
(as if that were possible)

I dream I have come to terms with this
I dream life goes on and work
I dream you speak to him about everything and are calmer
the way you wanted
I dream he puts up with our friendship
and that if we are not all lost
today we still go on living happily ever after
(as if that were possible)

My muscles unravel
like spools of ribbon:
there is not a shadow

of pain. I will pose
like this for the rest
of the afternoon,

for the remainder
of all noons. The rain
is making a valley

of my dim features.
I am in Tinos,
I am by the Eye.

It is summer,
I smell the rain,
I see myself running

through wheatgrass.
I am honey,
I am several winds.

My nerves dissolve,
my limbs wither –
I love you.

I love you.

(After James Tate)

Where the railway meets the sea,
I recognise her hand.
Where the railway meets the sea,
her hair is as intricate as a thumbprint.
Where the railway meets the sea,
her name is the threshold of sleep.

Where the railway meets the sea,
it takes all night to get there.
Where the railway meets the sea,
you have stepped over the barrier.
Where the railway meets the sea,
you will understand afterwards.

Where the railway meets the sea,
where the railway meets the sea –
I know only that our paths laid together,
and you cannot endure if you remain alone.

Your envelope
with the two red stamps
I would have planted in a flower-pot
had you ever sent me word

I’d have watered it
daily
then your letters
would have grown for me

Letters
beautiful and sad
and letters
that smell of you

I wish
we had done it sooner
not wait
till so late in the year.

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says “That’s
not like Frank!”, all to the good! I
don’t wear brown and gray suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart –
you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

– Frank O’Hara

When you left the room, though it seemed empty
and cold suddenly, the way it can, the weather
notwithstanding, and so pointless I
wound down like a mechanical clock, every breath
another second slower, and everyone bored me,
most of all the ones with souls who sweat,
rubbing their two sticks so hard with no hope of fire
I could taste eternity, it wasn’t death.

When you showed up, I didn’t come alive,
Pinocchio-like, all six senses sputtering
like the kettle in the morning, stuttering
like the boy with a conscience at the story’s start,
and leap across the room in emulation of
my heart my heart my heart my heart my heart.