Someone asked me to show them my some of my favorite stuff. Since I was going to type it out, I thought I'd post it.

We'll start with Frank O'Hara:

Benjamin Franklin
or Isadora Duncan

It seems that I'm carrying a cloud
in my arms, and it's crying. Do we
only live to be fifty so we can say
"His silver cranium, heart! bursts,
doesn't, o' children, do you love him?"
Anxiety, they say, never knew him,
he was like basket before it.

Ambassadors! are you allowed to be
elegant or forced? Are you as dramatic
as the fourth of something? Did you
rub Robespierre? A century of fainting
and carting, and then a war over tin,
The terracotta landscape with wind,
its luminous purse trod by fauns.

Yes, I want school children to love
in a long solo the sheer French of it,
and you, dear bulge of urbanity. Is
the currency becoming more decorative?
You'd look more bored in hyacinths.
A long history of affection and regret.
I'm hiding under a wrinkled mountain.

[Southampton, January 1954]