Neesie's Poem
Ode to Orange
orange
but red was the actual color
of my wagon too
Yet the roses were kind of orange
and I thought about this alot:
Could the clouds be orange?
What about an eye?
And the weather wrapped itself
around me like the skin of an orange
and it was warm there
like lying in a lush warm sea
with orange fish
swimming about as if that was the only thing
and my small scoffed shoes
took on an orange hue
in the afternoon
I ran to the fence and climbed it
before night fell
and the street glowed from the
yellow lamplight
and I thought of an orange-eyed cloud
Ian's Poem
Ode to Orange
Oh oh the range, the danger
almost
Orange is an almost color
Almost yellow almost the sun
Almost red, close to the fire
But cooler, warmer too.
And then the odious of
Orange marches, banners
Almost as ferocious as the
opposite of the I.R.A., tho
O.R.A., the yellow and red
And Rusty the cat in orange
Fur, not at all ferocious, not
even almost. Marmalade the
English way, where oranges
Do not grow.
Cj's Poem
Ode to Orange
O! Orange!
How delicious!
& nutritious!
In every form:
fruit
ice cream
lifesavers
tic tacs
orange rolls--Pillsbury pop &
fresh, of course!
Where would we be
without you?
No sunsets with brilliant fire
orange.
No safety cones on the
highway:
Slow for the cone zone.
No life preservers to
place on tiny toddlers
in the pool
Well...actually, let the
toddlers sink!
They don't deserve
orange!
O Orange!
Scriabin saw orange in
his chords of the Preludes
Scarlet saw orange when
Rhett said "See you later,
Dahling."
Who else sees
orange?
Not I!
I only see blue & blue
& blue & blue
Orange?
Be damned....till the
next Orange Night, that is!
Lu's Poem
Ode to Orange
--Oh, I never did see orange at all;
--Until the S.F. Giants I saw
play the baseballa---
--Buster Posey did wear it every
warm summer night
and I learned to delight.
--Now, and again, I
think I should add
--Oh, orange, my orange, you're
not-a-so bad!
Frank's Poem
Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
Frank O’Hara, 1926 - 1966
~Grace Hartigan
