praise: meeting

what is it with me, i think as i slosh through a puddle 

and the sole of my foot squishes around on the rubber of my shoe,

that i can't just sit down with a poet and have a drink? 

what is it with me, that it is an all or nothing affair, 

that it has to be a stay up all night, knock down, 

cigarette after cigarette, three whiskey glass flirt 

that ends with me tumbling over myself 

in infatuation, all unreasonable and premature, without formalities? 

is it that my favorite ones wear their heart out on a straight pin too? 

tonight it was frank ohara. 

he didn't have to talk for long.

and i thought

frank, frank, perhaps i knew you in a former life. 

maybe we admired rauschenburg and pollock and 

deconstructed raspberries and drank limeade together frank, or maybe

maybe i just read your palm some night when you were out 

on a late-night whim, under a blue neon sign i read your palm 

and told you about the color purple, how it would 

tinge the corners of your poems

told you of your strange nostalgia for paris, and of the looming shadow

of a man to carry you over bridges

and said you are right, frank, yes, it is all beautiful,

the aspirin, the jujubes, and a scrap of sky is enough

maybe i skipped the part about your untimely end

and just shot the breeze, 

handed you a glass of brandy

or a flower on a pin, 

and told you to stay a few minutes longer,

stay out of the rain a little while.