I Like

By Joe Brainard

I Joe

You lie

About pineapples

There are none under anywhere

I look

I see

I find only dirty tulips

Or orchid ribbons

Orange

With big black words

A royal sky:

It lets one see

And what a good thing a white shirt is!

Nice

Nice to see red by night

to know pink well

to understand yellow birds

to realize black and white

Terribly nice

Mirrors are

Nice

(Terribly)

To see by

To see by me

You

I love

I love Indians

pen points

Hungarian

plaster

sweetmeats

five

A nice number to love by

If feather pillows didn't leak

Out onto green floors

Where normal shoes belong

With blue socks

With white stripes

And Boston newspapers

All about news

And things

I like

I like fried chicken

smashed 'taters

thickin' gravy

not biscuits an'

chawklit pie wif

mushmeller toppin'

And I simply love horoscope!

(Crunch)

The sky is aflame!

Red

(A jet of anti-matter gas is exploding harmfully

against the upper atmosphere)

But tomorrow is Tuesday

And I shall see the four seasons on one branch

of pink trees displaying

Ivory lilies insisting

Upon white privacy

(Or they threaten not to root at all)

I, personally, vote for blue

And to hell with Easter

I prefer red and green

mother Christmas

black birds of passion

sunsets that consume

pink nuns and salty peanuts

and Renoir who bores me

But most of all I like shoe polish

And the big sun rises over Delhi. . . .

Copyright Credit: Joe Brainard, "I Like" from The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard. Copyright © 2012 by Joe Brainard. Reprinted by permission of The Library of America.

Source: The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard (Library of America, 2012)