distinctivecat

To combat a creeping loss of brilliance (hah!) as a result of lifelong alcohol consumption, I have begun (well, starting now) memorizing shit. Here's the first poem. I'll let you know if I keep this up.
(Great thing about blogs, really, nobody checks in on your grandiose promises, so you can lie to yourself! Like living without a conscience!)

As Planned

After the first glass of vodka,
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Pettite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

--Frank O'Hara

I love the way it starts out so life affirming and you can feel him getting drunker (like that slur in the middle there where there's no comma between "all you know" and "words"--as a reader you go wtf?) and more self-recriminatory and for all that drunk incompetence still it leads to this bleak and unforgiving epiphany--a familiar trajectory. No?