The Permanent Collection
for Frank O’Hara
Frank was from Baltimore
and knew too there’s no
gold mine in every city
so sometimes you have to find
your poems
in the street, like any other
Catholic picking up God
asking him where he’s headed
and telling him to throw
his gear in the backseat.
The work of it is being
watched, your mind
a sweatshop overseer conspiring
to see that you finish out
what you came for and don’t
stop till sixteen hours
are up, or your fingers
begin to sing
in blood. This is how
you repay the debt
you’re in to yourself,
gut the rowhome you bought
with one dollar and the oath
you’d make something
inhabitable out of it.
The landlord does not care
if you kill the rats
below the sink, or decide
in your empathy to spin
the idea of their life there
positively by taking them on
as pets, so long as you never
call him to complain. He says
you can own or disinherit
anything
you have the money
to pay for. I have met
many men here, at the point
of knowing all art
is haphazard bridge
construction forever falling
just shy of spanning
the air between two people,
that the miracle is for every
foreseeable collapse
into the air, or misunderstanding,
or water below,
we wake up every morning
and punctually draw
blueprints. The miracle
is the foreseeable
collapse.
Here you are, a man
who wields every coffee can
and figurine
and cast-iron skillet
in his house, in pursuit
of unearthing their possible
divinity, taming the wilds
of your poems to hollow
out a little shelf-space
for each item, and willing
to set each one adrift
if it feels homeless
with you. To you
we own nothing,
and in such nothing are free
to curate constantly
the thousand forces
on loan for the sake
of our work, a grinning
faceless benefactor
slapping cards belly-up
at us, in hopes we’ll find
the suit that makes our bet
a fact, and us
honest men.
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