The Nightly Savage
(for Frank O’Hara)
These are your streets. I see you leaving buildings
entering bars, the remodeled Cedar where I drink
vodka then gin then vodka again (an addictive allusion)
and! carefully extract this and that while
I look for you on these streets. Walk the length of 2nd
listening for open windows, the late late show (playing
Alice Adams, Bebe Daniels, James Dean?) and promises
of scrambled eggs in the morning, waiting to ask
would you love me? (am I a person you would love after
a party?) waiting for snow, waiting for rain, waiting for
fingers like doves. Grace! Fortune! Be damned! These
words are for you, these streets I will travel, as always.
These are your streets. I see you leaving buildings
entering bars, the remodeled Cedar where I drink
vodka then gin then vodka again (an addictive allusion)
and! carefully extract this and that while
I look for you on these streets. Walk the length of 2nd
listening for open windows, the late late show (playing
Alice Adams, Bebe Daniels, James Dean?) and promises
of scrambled eggs in the morning, waiting to ask
would you love me? (am I a person you would love after
a party?) waiting for snow, waiting for rain, waiting for
fingers like doves. Grace! Fortune! Be damned! These
words are for you, these streets I will travel, as always.
posted by kathleen olmstead at 12:32 AM
4 Comments:
Holy crap! As of right now, this is my favourite poem. I raise my glass to you and frank and pour another and do it again.
Holy, holy crap!!
I second that toast. Are there enough drinks in the world to toast it? Are there enough sweet and melancholy ways to remember someone you miss? Or too many assassins trying to relegate that someone to history?
Triple holy crap! I just passed by the Cedar tonight. If I'd read your poem earlier I'd have gone in and would be there still. Vodka, gin, vodka . . .
I wish you were still here, my friend.
i would love you after a party
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