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The Frank O’Hara Experience and a Three-Way Crash
Polyrhythmic marching rings through the dark,
A jagged pulse to a blind singer’s songs.
In school today,
We studied lines.
She solemnly wields her tin in the park.
Concrete colossi with their jagged prongs,
A line took me to
See you the other day.
I was watching a pigeon today,
Tear the night to show a marquee of stars.
Businessmen do their geometric dance:
But I guess we live
In parallel lines.
It pecked at food scraps on the highway
They waltz through fog and exhaust and cigars
To the cries of cars and talks of finance.
I saw strangers
That day as well.
But all of the cars,
Below, the rats run in frantic patterns.
Pompous buskers and flamenco footsteps
And I saw them
the day before, too.
And screams from afar,
Linger through the halls and rest in tatters
Amidst torn advertisements and held breaths.
Nameless, all of them.
But the lines in their faces,
Could not seem to drive it away.
Streetlights flicker and shine brilliantly;
They light up this mad shoegaze symphony.
They go in every which way
And collide with me.
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This article has 1 comment.
This poem consists of a sonnet, a limerick, and free-verse, and all three are about New York. Thus: "The Frank O’Hara Experience and a Three-Way Crash." I came up with the sonnet as part of my English class and I took the free-verse bit out of some old poem buried somewhere under the digital dust of the Documents folder. The limerick came pretty naturally due to my fascination with pigeons. This poem is meant to depict the chaotic scene of large transit stations such as Penn Station, Port Authority, and what have you. I think pigeons are pretty neat critters.