Vacation


It is a beautiful morning. Kate and The Boy have gone off with BFI for weekend. The boy is driving me insane...he is too big and restless for this apt. He is also in trouble for cutting up in general music class and not following directions. Now he can drive BFI insane for two days. I AM FREE. Meeting the wonderous LC in NYC tonight for dinner and movie. Going in this morning for an eagerly awaited visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Me and Jr. going to the Brooklyn Musuem on Sunday to see a Japanese Anime show recommended by the lovely Jogi in Oregon. Life is good.

Last night dreamt on and off of Binder, actually woke myself up to stop it at one point. Jesus H. Christ. I need a new job. Everyone please send good luck thoughts and prayers to Jr. who is having some difficulty with the Weehawkin house deal. And Jr., think about how we're getting to museum on Sunday as I'm not driving in but taking the train (car still sounds like a dirt bike and has no acceleration.)

Later, gators.

Why I am Not A Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" be
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES

Frank O'Hara