johnny flynn poetry

It was a busy year for death
She crept about the palace.
And we had poor defence
And she had little malice
A gentle touch put here -
A sad and curt embrace.
A wooden kiss enough
To put them in their place.
And where my father went
Is not now common knowledge;
The inventory was lent
To some old Cambridge college.
I had little faith then,
Nothing spoke to me.
When what you see is Gospel,
The Gospel isn't free.
And Krishna's conch is sunk,
The lotus not in bloom,
Solomon's song unsung
And prayers are called too soon.
So where my father went
Is wind against the Mountain
His love was all but spent
So mine is as a fountain.

All the fruit turn red,
Some of them are still green
But never will you see one
That's stuck and in between.
As all came from a garden
Where the wind has died down low
And there my father went
To help the green fruit grow.
He tends them with a smile,
His fingers stroke the leaves.
He'll never leave the garden,
It's all that I believe.

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

-Frank O’Hara

subordinate feelings i cast aside