I am not a painter, I am a poet. <br />Why? I think I would rather be <br />a painter, but I am not. Well, <br /> <br />for instance, Mike Goldberg <br />is starting a painting. I drop in. <br />"Sit down and have a drink" he <br />says. I drink; we drink. I look <br />up. "You have SARDINES in it." <br />"Yes, it needed something there." <br />"Oh." I go and the days go by <br />and I drop in again. The painting <br />is going on, and I go, and the days <br />go by. I drop in. The painting is <br />finished. "Where's SARDINES?" <br />All that's left is just <br />letters, "It was too much," Mike says. <br /> <br />But me? One day I am thinking of <br />a color: orange. I write a line <br />about orange. Pretty soon it is a <br />whole page of words, not lines. <br />Then another page. There should be <br />so much more, not of orange, of <br />words, of how terrible orange is <br />and life. Days go by. It is even in <br />prose, I am a real poet. My poem <br />is finished and I haven't mentioned <br />orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call <br />it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery <br />I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.<br /><br />Frank O'Hara<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/why-i-am-not-a-painter/
