Again With April Fools

by Frank O’Hara

It used to be customary around these parts on the first of April for the editors of The Awl to commission a poem by a respected scribe to best encapsulate our feelings about the day. Let’s revive that tradition one last time and enjoy some verse from one of the New York School’s brightest lights.

Poem [April Fools is really bad!]

April Fools is really bad!
I was clicking along and suddenly
they started tweeting and posting
and you said they were joking
but joking makes you laugh at things
hard so it was only lameness and
garbage and I was in such a hurry
to click away but the traffic
was increasing for those “jokes”
and suddenly I see a headline
APRIL FOOLS! WE GOT YOU!
there are no jokes on April 1
there are no laughs on that Internet
I have been to lots of websites
and left some really terrible comments
but I never actually tried to pull a sorry-ass prank on the most obvious day of the year
oh April Fools we hate you shut up