My Heart

I’m not going to cry all the time

nor shall I laugh all the time,

I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.

I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,

not just a sleeper, but also the big,

overproduced first-run kind. I want to be

at least as alive as the vulgar. And if

some aficionado of my mess says “That’s

not like Frank!”, all to the good! I

don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time,

do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,

often. I want my feet to be bare,

I want my face to be shaven, and my heart—

you can’t plan on the heart, but

the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

This poem appeared in This is from The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara edited by Donald Allen, published by Vintage Books, 1974.

10.09.2026

komentarze