Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Harawas an American writer, poet and art critic. Because of his employment as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School—an informal group of artists, writers and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting and contemporary avant-garde art movements...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 March 1926
CountryUnited States of America
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 embraced a cloud but when I soared it rained.
I take this for myself, and you take up the thread of my life between your teeth, tin thread and tarnished with abuse, you shall still hear as long as the beast in me maintains its taciturn power to close my lids in tears, and my loins move yet in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds you have left me alone in, and would be the dolorous distraction from, while you summon your army of anguishes which is a million hooting blood vessels on the eyes and in the ears at that instant before death.
and I have mastered the speed and strength which is the armor of the world.
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.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.
When I am feeling depressed and anxious sullen all you have to do is take off your clothes and all is wiped away revealing life's tenderness.
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's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is...
I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist.
A man was the cause of it. An unarmed man with a weapon.
Destroy yourself, if you don't know!
You just go on your nerve.
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.
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.