Your Ashes and Frank O'Hara

at sunset
Mullholland Light
Campobello 

Your Ashes and Frank O’Hara

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

                                                                                Frank O’Hara

                                                                                Having a Coke With You

                                                               

I’ve taken you down – I’d suffer if I lost you I hate losing

                you you’re always

                behind me I should put you behind

someplace else away you have no place but you do

                here and you after willing me

                exactly this (on other days it would’ve been

someone else today the Selected of Frank

                O’Hara who knew you or seemed to

                and any other time before I knew you I would’ve

listened less but I touched it right off

                like you handed it to me

                directly from your own

hand it was right beside the box

                I keep you in handcarved a mala box with OM

                on the lid some of you at least a pinch

or two in a zip bag before the rest

                of you went into the wind – here before

                I foget to let me say I know nothing

about Frank       

                O’Hara.  I’ve touched him less than I touched you

                and that wasn’t much and less at the end

of your life when your blood was shooting

                through your nose and urethra

                I never saw you again not after

your loneliest out and out drying days again soberly

                aging a breathlessly scaled labor.