Corey Mesler

A Poem for Frank O’Hara

I’m walking down the sidewalk
and thinking about you thinking
about Apollinaire and I’m wondering
how you did it, how you got
so much in, colors, and sex and whole
people, and I’m thinking,
Frank O’Hara, you stay there inside
me, a little pilot light, a wayward
bit of surrealism and fervor.

Richard Brautigan, Requiescat in Pace

Richard Brautigan wrote a poem
entitled “A Short Study in Gone.”
This was in the seventies: it must
have seemed at the time that he
would live forever, even though
Nixon was in the White House.
Time passed, Richard did, the world
grew less whimsical. I write this
with a modicum of blues and a
prayer for a little more silliness,
the kind of surrealism he could conjure,
on any given night, with the moon
as round as a juggler’s box.

The Day John Lennon Died

The day John Lennon died
it did not rain blood.
The birds did not come
unstuck from the sky.

The day John Lennon died
no one gave birth to
a monster. No one wept acid.
It was just an ordinary day.

The day John Lennon died
was an ordinary day with an
ordinary stranger, a simple greeting
and a malignant, magical gun.