The United States of Amrrrca

The United States of Amrrrca (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-41089418-1', 'tumblr.com'); ga('send', 'pageview');

[amrrrca]

Everything is going to be fine. 

[amrrrca]

Morning Poem by Frank O'Hara - Poem Hunter

I've got to tell you how I love you always I think of it on grey

something weird and brutal about this robot reading this poem..... 

[amrrrca]

F. O’H.

[amrrrca]

Avenue Animals

Let’s go back to Dukes.

We can time travel to before it was a hookah bar

and when

it was just

a dive

and i’ll

pick up

the buck hunter gun

when i have no one

to talk to

[lumpy-pudding]

Avenue A Frank O’Hara

We hardly ever see the moon any more                                                           so no wonder    it’s so beautiful when we look up suddenly and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges brilliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans        your hair over your forehead and your memories               of Red Grooms’ locomotive landscape I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather                 jacket Norman gave me                                                 and the corduroy coat David      gave you, it is more mysterious than spring, the El Greco heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions                                                  in a vast tragic veldt      that is far from our small selves and our temporally united passions in the cathedral of Januaries      everything is too comprehensible these are my delicate and caressing poems I suppose there will be more of those others to come, as in the past                                                   so many! but for now the moon is revealing itself like a pearl                                                   to my equally naked heart

[theparisreview]

“Ten years came and went, and Angelica was being married for the first time.

“The hippopotamus peered out at her from behind the altar. ‘Fly at once!’ he said. ‘All is discovered.’”

—Edward Gorey, from “The Admonitory Hippopotamus: or, Angelica and Sneezby”

[penguinrandomhouse]

For National Poetry Month, Nathan Gelgud illustrated Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke With You.”

[theparisreview]

Happy birthday, Edward Gorey! Here is A. N. Devers on his notorious fur coat collection.

[amrrrca]

By: Frank O'Hara

[proustitute]

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

T. S. Eliot, from “The Waste Land” (via proustitute)

[amrrrca]

Moon

[amrrrca]

Elegy for Some Yemenites recently Droned by Mistake

For the record, we do have laws against killing, Amendment V (they had to add it) says - you keep your life unless there’s “due process of law,” then it’s ok.

but, the thing is- that doesn’t apply to you, you’re not an American, and we only broke Yemeni law, with our flying killer robots.

Well, it’s not really the robot that did it, It’s a man and a screen, with figures glowing green, on which he cannot see you smiling.

Our deepest apologies. We must have mistaken you for someone else a terror squad marching single file

and not a wedding party, on a sunny day, when everything looked so bright, and everyone finally looked so happy.

then, boom. ciao, goodbye all. blood and charred remains remain, courtesy of USA USA USA

(This thing happened once, in New York, I saw it. Smoke and ash everywhere. Probably would look familiar to you now).

Anyway, again, we’re sorry, I’m sorry, you’re sorry. Everybody’s sorry here. We meant to kill some other people.

When we send robots, our population, which loves war but hates hometown deaths, doesn’t seem to mind. No harm no foul.

What of the constitution? The rule of law, etc. etc. It’s all a battlefield now. Everyone is fair game When the front lines of an endless war are everywhere.

I wonder if the “pilot” had a nickname. Maybe he liked to play video games. Maybe the same ones as the charred remains once did.

Again! Things have gotten out of hand, lately, in the US. Economy’s tough, so people take jobs like military death robot pilot from afar.

I suppose it’s cold comfort. I suppose it’s dumb to say, but hey we’re sorry guys, we didn’t mean for it to happen this way.

Civilian death tolls of war, sure. But what kind of war has wedding party caravans? Lest we forget even we now hide in shadows.

They’re spying on us, killing you though. We’ll try and get it right next time. In a shadow war there’s no one left to prosecute.

[languagefetishist-deactivated20]

Jack Kerouac: ‘You’re ruining American poetry, O’Hara!’ Frank O’Hara: ‘That’s more than you ever did for it.’

Frank O’Hara in a letter to John Ashbery in this delightful conversation. (via languagefetishist)

[aromatic]

-Frank O’Hara, “For Grace, after a Party”

[amrrrca]

Kaddish

“No- not Jewish,” I lied to the Hassid, handing me lulav and esrog. I shrugged, pretending I didn’t know what they were for, but I knew, and you knew I did too.

Let’s build our Sukkah from beer cans and roach stumps, beach chairs and streetlights. We’ll drink whiskey inside and toast to our freedom! From suburbs, in this hipster tabernacle.

Let’s go for a walk on shabbos at dawn, through the yiddishe streets of old Williamsburg, and gawk at the white-socked family men our age, passing hand painted signs that say “Danger! iPhone.”

Well, hell. We all remember the Shoah. In Miami Beach, brittle passover cakes and faded tattoos, sandy beaches seen from the boardwalk, And sixth grade history class I took way too hard.

That copper hand rising, people falling and falling  bulldozers moving bodies into trenches, to save time “The crematoria,” she said, only once, late in life, “ran 24 hours a day.”

So I’ll file a report, like a good little Nazi, 2400 today. The rest will be sterilized or shot. Just another Saturday night in Williamsburg,   on a date, finishing what Hitler started.

and yet, ah well, so it goes, you know. I’ll take my whiskey and you yellowheads, reddit and rock and roll, and well, you know, what’s a lie to a hassid - I’ve places to go.

[amrrrca]

"Animals" by Frank O'Hara

Have you forgotten what we were like then when we were still first rate and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth it's no use worrying about Time but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves and turned some sharp corners the whole pasture looked like our meal we didn't need speedometers we could manage cocktails out of ice and water I wouldn't want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days

[frankoharas]

L’Amour avait passe par la

Frank O’Hara

Contained within this note to Grace Hartigan, published in Collected Poems (1971).