Meditations in an Emergency Quotes

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more
adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“The stars fell
one by one into his eyes and burnt.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“If I am ever to find these trees meaningful
I must have you by the hand. As it is, they
stretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky,
and the snow looks up like a face dirtied
with tears. Should I cry out and see what happens?
There could only be a stranger wandering
in this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himself
frozen fast in wintry eyes.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under
them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence and sometimes, returning, I become the sea— in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath.”
― Frank O'Hara , Meditations in an Emergency

“Destroy yourself, if you don't know!”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I take this
for myself, and you take up
the thread of my life between your teeth,
tin thread and tarnished with abuse,
you shall still hear
as long as the beast in me maintains
its taciturn power to close my lids
in tears, and my loins move yet
in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds
you have left me alone in, and would be
the dolorous distraction from,
while you summon your army of anguishes
which is a million hooting blood vessels
on the eyes and in the ears
at that instant before death.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
and beautiful lies all in different languages.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“There is a geography which holds
its hands just so far from the breast
and pushes you away, crying so.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“and I have mastered the speed and strength which is the
armor of the world.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I loved her fright, which was against me
into the air! and the diamond white of her forelock
which seemed to smart with thoughts as my heart smarted
with life!
and she'd toss her head with the pain
and paw the air and champ the bit, as if I were Endymion
and she, moon-like, hated to love me.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“your veins are using up the redness of the world.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“It may be the coldest day of
The year, what does he think of
That? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
Perhaps I am myself again.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“There were occasionally
rifts in the cloud where the face
of a woman appeared, frowning.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Love is first of all
a lesson in utility.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Mayakovsky"

1
My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“It's a summer day,
and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“But here is where the gods are, speculating, bemused.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“River"

Whole days would go by, and later their years,
while I thought of nothing but its darkness
drifting like a bridge against the sky.
Day after day I dreamily sought its melancholy,
its searchings, its soft banks enfolded me,
and upon my lengthening neck its kiss
was murmuring like a wound. My very life
became the inhalation of its weedy ponderings
and sometimes in the sunlight my eyes,
walled in water, would glimpse the pathway
to the green sea. For it was there I was being borne.
Then for a moment my strengthening arms
would cry out upon the leafy crest of air
like whitecaps, and lightning, swift as pain,
would go through me on its way to the forest,
and I’d sink back upon the brutal tenderness
that bore me on, that held me like a slave
in its liquid distances of eyes, and one day,
though weeping for my caresses, would abandon me,
moment of infinitely salty air! Sun fluttering
like a signal! Upon the open flesh of the world.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“It was all you, your graceful white smiles
like a French word, the one for nursery, the one for brine.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency