Richard Brautigan
Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A WITCH BLOOM LIKE A HIGHWAY
Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?
THE MEMOIRS OF JESSE JAMES
I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.
FLORA SHAKESPEARE
Acting out the place where the flowers die,
circling their graves with themselves,
your costume is perfect, you’re on stage.
15%
She tries to get things out of men
that she can’t get because she’s not
15% prettier.
ROMEO AND JULIET
If you will die for me,
I will die for you
and our graves will
be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat.
If you will bring the soap,
I will bring the bleach
LOVE’S NOT THE WAY TO TREAT A FRIEND
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’t
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I don’t want to see you end up that way
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make
bridges out of crippled birds.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.
CANNIBAL CARPENTER
He wants to build you a house
out of your own bones, but
that’s where you’re living
any way!
The next time he calls
you answer the telephone with the
sound of your grandmother being
born. It was a twenty-three-hour
labor in 1894. He hangs
up.
DONNER PARTY
Forsaken, fucking in the cold,
eating each other, lost, runny noses,
complaining all the time like so
many people that we know.
FORMAL PORTRAIT
I like to think of Frankenstein as a huge keyhole
and the laboratory as the key that turns the lock
and everything that happens afterward as just the
lock turning.
-2
Everybody wants to go to bed
with everybody else, they’re
lined up for blocks, so I’ll
go to bed with you. They won’t
miss us.
THE SISTER CITIES OF LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO,
AND HIROSHIMA, JAPAN
It was snowing hard when we drove
into Los Alamos. There was a clinical feeling
to the town as if every man, woman and child
were a doctor. We shopped at the Safeway
and got a bag of groceries. A toddler
looked like a brain surgeon. He carefully
watched us shop at the exact place where he would
make his first incision.
NEGATIVE CLANK
He’d sell a rat’s asshole
to a blindman for a wedding
ring.
JULES VERNE ZUCCHINI
Men are walking on the moon today,
planting their footsteps as if they were
zucchini on a dead world
while over 3,000,000 people starve todeath
every year on a living one.
Earth
July 20, 1969
SHE SLEEPS THIS VERY EVENING IN GREENBROOK CASTLE
She sleeps this every evening in Greenbrook castle
without the comfort of husband,
and what she knows is what she dreams. He isn’t dead
and he isn’t alive,
and the crack of light beneath the door is like the tail
of a cat as she paces in her room.
She sleeps this very evening in Greenbrook castle
without the comfort of husband,
and what she knows is what she dreams. He isn’t dead
and he isn’t alive,
and the light in her window is like a wedding ring
shining to the dark and distant woods.
She sleeps this very evening in Greenbrook castle
without the comfort of husband,
and what she knows is what she dreams. He isn’t dead
and he isn’t alive,
and the light that reflects her golden hair is the answer
to her marriage and the children of her prayers.
YOU’LL HAVE TO BUY SOME MORE CHAIRS
If you love a statue start a mirror.
Your friends will admire you.
If you love a mirror start a statue.
Make room for new friends.
HINGED TO FORGETFULNESS LIKE A DOOR
Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman that I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.
ALL GIRLS SHOULD HAVE A POEM
For Valerie
All girls should have a poem
written for them even if
we have to turn this God-damn world
upside down to do it.
New Mexico
March 16, 1969
CHOSEN BY BEAUTY TO BE A HANDMAIDEN OF THE STARS
Chosen by beauty to be a handmaiden of the stars,
she passes like a silver brush
across the lens of a telescope.
She brushes the stars, the galaxies
and the light-years into the order that
we know them.
30 CENTS, TWO TRANSFERS, LOVE
Thinking hard about you
I got onto the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for
two transfers
before discovering that I
was alone.
PLEASE
Do you think of me
as often as I think
of you?
THERE IS DARKNESS ON YOUR LANTERN
There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind.
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.
I’d like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.
PROFESSIONAL, NONOFFENSIVE, BLAND
The gunman holds the wind
in his hand.
Autumn and spring pass like robberies
across his eyes.
He doesn’t blink while one stops leaves
and the other starts them.
The gunman is a friend to the changing
of the seasons.
He holds the wind in his hand.
YEAH, THERE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A JUNE 5, 1968
My telephone rang in the middle of the night,
but I didn’t answer it. It rang and rang
and rang and SHUT UP! And rang as if it were
possessed.
I always figure that good news doesn’t travel
in the middle of the night, so I didn’t answer
the telephone.
I let it go to hell. I was right, too.
It was somebody calling to tell me that Kennedy
had been hit.
SHELLFISH
Always spend a penny
as if you were spending a
dollar
and always spend a dollar
as if you were spending
a wounded eagle and always
spend a wounded eagle as if
you were spending the very
sky itself.
MOUTHS THAT KISSED IN THE HOT ASHES OF POMPEII
Mouths that kissed
in the hot ashes of Pompeii
are returning
and eyes that could adore their beloved only
in the fires of Pompeii
are returning
and locked bodies that squirmed in ecstasy
in the lava of Pompeii
are returning
and lovers who found their perfect passion
in the death of Pompeii
are returning,
and they’re letting themselves in
again with the names of your sons
and your daughters.
A LYRICAL WANT, AN ENDOCRINE GLAND FANCY
A lyrical want, an endocrine gland fancy,
a telescope that I thought had no thorns
have lead me to a pain that I cannot pronounce.
It gathers around me like a convention of translators
for a language that does not exist with all those meetings
to attend.
THE MOON VERSES US EVER SLEEPING TOGETHER AGAIN
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I’m sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
TOO MANY LIFETIMES LIKE THIS ONE, RIGHT?
Too many lifetimes like this one, right?
Hungover, surrounded by general goofiness,
lonely, can’t get it up, I feel just like
a pile of bleached cat shit.
COLOR AS BEGINNING
Forget love
I want to die
in your yellow
hair.
ALL SECRETS OF PAST TENSE HAVE JUST COME MY WAY
All secrets of past tense have just come my way,
but I still don’t know what I’m going to do
next.
AS THE BRUISES FADE, THE LIGHTNING ACHES
As the bruises fade, the lightning aches.
Last week, making love, you bit me.
Now the blue and dark have gone
and yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils,
then paler to become until my body
is all my own and what that ever got me.
AT LAST OUR BODIES COINCIDE
At last our bodies coincide.
I’ll bet you thought this
would never happen. Neither
did I. It’s a pleasant
surprise.
DEER TRACKS
Beautiful, sobbing, high-geared fucking
and then to lie silently like deer tracks
in the freshly-fallen snow beside the one
you love. that’s all.