drmstream[writing]

I walk up the muggy street begin­ning to sun
and have a ham­burger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Still­wagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my bal­ance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a lit­tle Ver­laine
for Patsy with draw­ings by Bon­nard although I do
think of Hes­iod, trans. Rich­mond Lat­ti­more or
Bren­dan Behan’s new play or Le Bal­con or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Ver­laine
after prac­ti­cally going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bot­tle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobac­conist in the Ziegfeld The­atre and
casu­ally ask for a car­ton of Gauloises and a car­ton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweat­ing a lot by now and think­ing of
lean­ing on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whis­pered a song along the key­board
to Mal Wal­dron and every­one and I stopped breathing

Frank O’Hara