I follow an account on Twitter called Frank O'Hara bot, which tweets out a few lines of Frank O'Hara's poetry every hour.
The other day, it tweeted out these lines:
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
So I jumped on board. I haven't written poetry for a while, and this was more of a writing exercise to start with. There's nothing like a list-poem to get you going if you're feeling a bit rusty. But in the end it did make a poem, which I have given the same title as the first line of the O'Hara tweet. And here it is:
Now I am quietly waiting
for the goldening at the end of the day
for the chaos that ends birthing to allow a louder life
for my favourite blackbird to spill his song
for the cat to come screaming that she is alone
for my mind to speak its thoughts in a minor key
for my fingers to take on more skill
for the horn to win, for me to win, for the horn to win, for me to win
for the dancers to lindyhop, skip, slide across the floor
for the band to get back together again and again
for the blue sky and the sunlight through green
for the blues to leave, for the blues to stay
for the spring grass to make hay with
for the swing and the spring to enliven my step
for the cherry blossom,
and, when that is gone,
for the cherry blossom again
here comes the cat