Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Love’s Not the Way to Treat a Friend

Some Richard Brautigan poems

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?

Nice Ass
There is so much lost
and so much gained in
these words.

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

15%
She tries to get things out of men
that she can’t get because she’s not
15% prettier.

Third Eye
For Gary Snyder

There is a motorcycle
in New Mexico.

In Her Sweetness Where She Folds My Wounds
In her sweetness where she folds my wounds
there is a flower that bees cannot afford.
It is too rich for them and would change
their wings into operas and all their honey
into the lonesome maps of a nonexistent
California county.
When she has finished folding all my wounds
she puts them away in a dresser where the
drawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle.
Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that her
affections always be constant to my questions.

Melting Ice Cream at the Edge of Your Final Thought
Oh well, call it a
life.

Up against the Ivory Tower
I’m sitting here (at a cafe) thinking
about writing a poem. What will I write
about? I don’t know. I just feel like it
when suddenly a young man in a hurry
walks up to me and says, “Can I use your
pen?”
There’s an envelope in his hand. “I want
to address this.” He takes my pen
and addresses the envelope. He’s very serious
about it. He’s really using the

pen.

All from Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt,

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