Clouds

How will I be able to keep you
if you don’t disgust me a little?
Why do you wear lipstick with trousers
that are stained and stain?

At the end of the raspberry patch
I found my own darling telephone
hiding away like a little reservist.
Why do you disgust me?

I can’t see the bridge any more.
“You look like a Dutch interior.”
“Then I guess I do know how pretty I am.”
But it is not dark, it is very sunny.

I wish that you would await me
without your horse near the windbells
on the path to the left of the jonquils.
If you just jangle your spurs I’ll know,

but who else would it be, anyway?
and if something tinkles it’ll be
one of your threaded silver bracelets
that you cover with your cuff before cops.

I want you to stop making me sick.
I want you to go away and not stay away.
Could you bring me razor blades when you come back?
and a sandwich of begonias and glass?

Frank O’Hara
[New York, February 1953]