In Memory of My Feelings by Frank O'Hara

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent

and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.

He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.

My quietness has a number of naked selves,

so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves

from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons

and have murder in their heart!

though in winter

they are warm as roses, in the desert

taste of chilled anisette.

At times, withdrawn,

I rise into the cool skies

and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification

of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape,

speaks, but I do not hear him,

I'm too blue.

An elephant takes up his trumpet,

money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror

across shoulder blades. A gun is "fired."

One of me rushes

to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me

flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,

and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips

are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt's lust,

definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs

of earth.

So many of my transparencies could not resist the race!

Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,

a flaking moon drifting across the muddied teeth,

the imperceptible moan of covered breathing,

love of the serpent!

I am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and pants

and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts behind a cloud

and animal death whips out its flashlight,

whistling

and slipping the glove off the trigger hand. The serpent's eyes

redden at sight of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth!

My transparent selves

flail about like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing

without panic, with a certain justice of response

and presently the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa

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