I’m thinking of moving. This should be no surprise to anyone who knows me. I’m always thinking of moving.
This time’s more serious though. There are real estate people involved. There are questions in the hallway. There are interest rates and points. There may be closing costs. There is a nagging suspicion that I need some boxes.
Anyhow, I have even been ripping CD’s into my hard drive so I don’t have to move the scratched surfaces,:all rainbow reflected silver, or plastic boxes with crumpled liner notes. I am thinking seriously. Serious in thinking.
"EPMD’s Greatest Hits?” I’d forgotten half my life. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Too many Counting Crows albums to admit. Black Sheep, Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Buffett, They Might Be Giants, Eddie Money, Kenneth Koch reading poems, David Sedaris reading, Method Man, Sugarcult, Blink 182. Fine Malt Lyrics from House of Pain. I am listening seriously.
I am talking out loud as Microsoft Windows records my history: "Sebadoh? Lucero? The Rat Pack?"
So, I am compacting. This shirt doesn’t fit, I wish that one didn’t fit. Why didn’t I save more of those suit coats now that Draper has reinvented fashion? Did I really buy these shoes? Did I ever like this album? Who made me this mix CD?
Am I really 35?
And of course, when moving, the dread of any literary type is books. What could be worse to move than books? Why do I love books so much? What the fuck is wrong with a library card?
I remember a guy who was thinking of moving to Midway. He was unsure the floor could support his five thousand books. Five thousand books.
Me? I’m getting rid of books. I have sworn off Amazon for the time being. No, I can’t buy Cuban Linx 2 yet. Haven’t reserved the new Lethem. No, no, no. No. There is too much lifting in my possible future. Too many backaches and magic marker (kitchen) (studio) (a scrawl I cannot read) and too many trips up and down the stairs.
And then what happened? I walked into Border’s on Boylston and Frank O’Hara was staring at me.
I have every single Frank O’Hara poem ever written. Collected, Retrieved, written beside art. I have a postcard of O’Hara that stares from my refrigerator. My memory doesn’t work / in such a away that I have / every word he ever wrote / memorized, but I see things / in the sand, the tracing of his fingertips as he addresses / the sun, or the breathing at a typewriter, the sound of ice / clinking in the next room.
This data is stored inside my GPS. It tells me how to move and why. These are maps, pictures, a catalog for a show I haven't even submitted to a gallery yet, haven't painted the paintings. I am looking out my window. O'Hara tells me where to watch the buses arrive and then depart. The red lights blink.
In short, there is nothing in the Selected I haven’t read yet. There is nothing here I haven’t re-read yet. Read again, considered.
From Travel: “Sometimes I know I love you better / than all the others I kiss it’s funny”
From The Unfinished: “As happiness takes off the tie it borrowed from me”
From Ode to Willem de Kooning: “Beyond the sunrise / where the black begins / an enormous city / is sending up its shutters”
Is there any doubt that I know these poems? That they are imprinted on my canvases? That they press back from my keyboard? That they call me up at 3am and say “I miss you,” “I love you,” “I hate you,” "where are you?” They say nothing. They breathe. I know these poems. Even when they hit star-whatever and block caller ID.
From one of his titled Poem: “there’s too much lime in the world and not enough gin, / they gasp. The gentle are curious, but the curious / are not gentle. So the breaths come home and sleep.”
What the hell was I doing in Border’s anyway? I was walking and praying. I was being mindful and breathing. I was likely thinking things like “blame it on tequila,” or “I can’t believe she did that.” “She,” standing in for the moon, the sun, the group of bookstore girls, the pictures on the internet, my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend, my my my. "She" was a stand-in for a poem. I can’t believe she did that. I am turning the page. I turn. I turn the page. I can’t believe. I just can’t.
And there he was on my bookstore walk, the cement squares outside, the squares of CD cases collecting in shopping bags at home (discard), the squares of parking spots that filled on Newbury (one side) and Boylston (the other). The squares of pictures you remember, the squares of pictures you forget. The squares you tap against your leg that become boxes waiting to be filled. You tape and there is that sound, that screeching sound.
The squares of cardboard, discarded after everything is empty and gone.
“Can I help you?”
Is a morning bookstore like 7:50 am outside a joint on the outskirts of
“Can I help you,” and I wondered if the book was talking to me. Frank O’Hara, young on the cover of a book of poems I had lived through and gone back to. Again.
Semi-famous words from a drunk I know: "I'm not worried about the yet's / I am terrified of the / again's."
Again.
And even with my life in boxes, mortgaged and promised, prepped for sending somewhere else. I did this on a Saturday morning. I did the worst thing anyone who is thinking of lifting things can do, who is packing boxes and boxes full of books books books:
I paid twenty bucks for a photograph of Frank O’Hara.
I didn't judge a book by, I bought a book for, its cover. OK, I judged.
I mean, it was a picture I’d never seen before. It just so happened to be on the cover of a beautiful book of poems. Larger format, the white space everywhere, the pages reminding my fingers what we came here for.
He is so young. It is like starting over, over and over again. Frank O’Hara, Selected Poems.
What we came here for.
3 comments:
I loved this post.
Then I cried and read it again.
Then I prayed to St. Frank O'Hara to make it all OK.
I think I recognize that feeling of starting over again looking at a picture of O'Hara with sleepy eyes and full lips and that cleft chin.
I went ahead and wrote the poem I said should be a poem about poets leaping to their deaths.
On TF, of course.
hey you--i really enjoyed reading this. moving WHERE? and it is true always that i never see or hear of frank o'hara without seeing or thinking of you.
you should visit us. seriously. VISIT US. us visiting you would be like trying to pick up a colony of ants in my hands and holding them all the way to boston. you need some kids yelling in your ear. we've got em.
Shhhhhh.... it's a secret.
And how can I come to Waynesburg (AKA Waynes-bizzle) if the Cockroft conundrum of "come whenever" is the least viable solution for trip planning since following Saint Elmo's Fire (apologies to Rob Lowe)?
When I hear Frank O'Hara I think: Dune Buggy. I think: Lana Turner has collapsed. I think: Will you twitter this from the grave Mr. "I do this; I do that?" I think: "You do this; I do that," is one of my unpublished elegies to love and lust and airplanes. I think: "Did she really wear yellow so well?"
I think" "Thank you Kenneth Koch and your ceremonies." I think: Thrown Free. I think. I think. I think: I might be thirsty. I think: If I mill around de Kooning long enough will he allow me to curate his show at the MOMA? I think: I love you still. Meaning, I love you, frozen in pictures, frozen in time.
I think: Kurt vonnegut swore the semi-colon was useless. I think: as O'Hara did, of Jasper johns in South Carolina and his feet stuck in the sand. I think: I must be going. I think: I just arrived.
When I see Frank O'Hara I wonder which side he will tilt his face to and if he will be gorgeous or beautiful, improbable or hideous. I wonder who he has left at home that may hear the drunken mumbles of two lovers finding stairs, keys, locks, buttons, lips brushed against an earlobe thick with the promises of Jack Daniels or some other dead man with a recipe for regret. I think of cement squares, a splash of green grass. I think of Harvard Gardens, him and Spicer glaring, then crying, in the rain, rain, rain. I think I saw my reflection and then realize I am just tired. I think of a lunchtime conversation with LeRoi. I think of too much poets in poems and too much grasping for Lana Turner. I think I saw your picture on a paparazzi website. Get up.
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