6563. LESSONS

LESSONS

I learned all I ever knew from Frank O'Hara : the

unsettled and the dumbstruck walking a Fourth Avenue

turn, a University Place seat at some funky bar. The

men who hack meat hunks over on Gansevoort Street

were not the same ones who slice finely on Lexington

or Park. Those are all different things. As Lincoln

once said to a waiter in a bad DC restaurant, refusing

his beverage and turning it back : 'If this is tea, bring 

me coffee. If this is coffee, I'll have tea.'

-

A few things do come to mind -  I never expected to

live this long; I never asked for a charmed life; and the

extent extents of my injuries have never been known.

At least with Lincoln  -  bad coffee notwithstanding  - 

they knew why he died. But Frank O'Hara, that

dithyramb triumphalist always chasing men and

boys, he wrote from another position, and was

killed by a beach buggy on a Fire Island midnight

beachfront, run down accidentally like a dog

and the whole writing world did cry about.