Frank O'Hara, from "Meditations in an Emergency"; The Collected Poems

Frank O'Hara

I can’t do this. Why. Why me why.

i am Never Not thinking about this

Meditations in an Emergency

by Frank O’Hara

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French? Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth. Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change? I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves. However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh. My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep. Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?) St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse. Destroy yourself, if you don’t know! It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It’s like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over. “Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale. I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I’ll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

clementine von radics / stranger things 4x1 / my tears ricochet, taylor swift / miriam adeney / graceland too, phoebe bridgers / blue lily lily blue, maggie stiefvater / stranger things 4x4 / blood makes the blade holy, evan knoll / selected letters, martha gellhorn / ruin and rising, leigh bardugo / memory i, giorgos seferis / meditations in an emergency, cameron awkward-rich / right where you left me, taylor swift / dance with me, heidi cullinan / running up that hill (a deal with god), kate bush / stranger things 3x8 / nothing new, taylor swift ft. pheobe bridgers / the memory of a memory, katie maria / matilda, harry styles / stranger things 4x4 / selected letters, martha gellhorn / stranger things 3x8 / stranger things 3x1 / crime and punishment, fyodor dostoevsky / unknown / matilda, harry styles

I wake up and it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds and the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. the flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. there’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. there are no borders, only wind. like you, I was born. like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. hand on my heart. hand on my stupid heart.

Meditations in an Emergency By Cameron Awkward-Rich

"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

Frank O'Hara, from “Ode”, Meditations in an Emergency (1957)

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

Meditations in an Emergency

By Cameron Awkward-Rich

hand on my heart!!!! hand on my STUPID HEART!!!!!

"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."

— Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O'Hara

Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.

Frank O’Hara, from “Mayakovsky,” Meditations in an Emergency (1957)