Sleeping At Lunch
I dreamt I was Frank O’Hara.
I softly kissed Larry Rivers on the forehead
and it was again Rachmaninoff’s birthday.
I took a walk along the familiar path
where I once stopped to type something up,
a poem perhaps or maybe just a note for you.
I detoured down to the apartment where we all lived,
that foul address. God, we were happy when we left!
I remembered a story Joe told and how it made me smile
through the haze of the lumped-together smoke.
I made my way back from lunch to the museum.
Mike had made a cake because they had all forgotten me,
but the cake was no good because Mike is not a baker.
And then I woke up. And I remembered having
been him, but not having been him. Imagine!
7.25.2004
The Poet
As I look into the face of a man 33 years postmortem, enough time for Jesus Time enough to realize -- to gain beliefs. He isn't watching over he is part of me. I can feel it in the way his eyes were blue and in the way he was Irish -- not fully, but enough. O'Hara -- O'Hara -- O'Hara. I praise him leaning on a door or a wall. I praise him wired with energy... too much energy. He made me an insomniac. He got away with it. If I make dots on the paper -- salty wet dots, it's realization, it's discovery! it's wow! And maybe I should go to a movie, buy some flowers and a new typewriter -- to peck away at in my own way. I long for lunch poetry and Joe LaSueur. Come Frank, I am waiting.
1.29.2000