Revenge of the Lawn

"It’s strange how the simple things in life go on while we become more difficult."

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:26:15 +1000

“It’s strange how the simple things in life go on while we become more difficult.”

- Richard Brautigan (via liy)

Romeo and Juliet

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:19:42 +1000

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.

—Richard Brautigan

I Live in the Twentieth Century

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:02:24 +1000

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt helpless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there’s nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.

- Richard Brautigan

Just Because Just because people love your mind,doesn’t mean they have to have your body, too....

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:59:49 +1000

Just Because

Just because people love your mind,
doesn’t mean they have to have your body,
too.

Richard Brautigan

Boo, Forever

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:12:50 +1000

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

—Richard Brautigan

"I have been sitting at this desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their..."

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:01:00 +1000

“I have been sitting at this desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their presence, the way they honor the wood they rest upon.”

- Richard Brautigan, The Abortion

Your Catfish Friend

Sun, 24 May 2009 18:03:08 +1000

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond.I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond?It seems like
a perfect place for them.”

Richard Brautigan

"Everybody wants to go to bed with everybody else, they’re lined up for blocks, so..."

Sun, 17 May 2009 14:00:48 +1000

“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.”

- “-2” by Richard Brautigan

"The time is right to mix sentences sentences with dirt and the sun with punctuation and the rain..."

Thu, 14 May 2009 10:57:39 +1000

“The time is right to mix sentences
sentences with dirt and the sun
with punctuation and the rain with
verbs, and for worms to pass
through question marks, and the
stars to shine down on budding
nouns, and the dew to form on
paragraphs.”

- Richard Brautigan

We stopped at perfect days and got out of the car.— Richard Brautigan

Sun, 10 May 2009 22:57:00 +1000

We stopped at perfect days and got out of the car.
— Richard Brautigan

"When you take your pill it’s like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside of you."

Sun, 10 May 2009 22:55:45 +1000

“When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.”

- The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan

"I love writing poetry but it’s taken time, like a difficult courtship that leads to a good marriage,..."

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:50:03 +1100

“I love writing poetry but it’s taken time, like a difficult courtship that leads to a good marriage, for us to get to know each other. I wrote poetry for seven years to learn how to write a sentence because I really wanted to write novels and I figured that I couldn’t write a novel until I could write a sentence.”

- Richard Brautigan

Lint

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:13:36 +1100

I’m haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.

I’ve been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.

—Richard Brautigan

The First Winter Snow

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:35:05 +1100

Oh, pretty girl, you have trapped
yourself in the wrong body. Twenty
extra pounds hang like a lumpy
tapestry on your perfect mammal nature.

Three months ago you were like a
deer staring at the first winter snow.

Now Aphrodite thumbs her nose at you
and tells stories behind your back

—Richard Brautigan

"I’m in a constant process of thinking about things. I’ll think about things for thirty..."

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:18:08 +1100

“I’m in a constant process of thinking about things. I’ll think about things for thirty or forty years before I’ll write it.”

- Richard Brautigan

The View from the Dog Tower

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:22:00 +1100

‘…three German Shepherd puppies wandered away from their home up near the County line.’
North County Journal
Serving Northern Santa Cruz County

I have been thinking about this little item that I read in the North County Journal for a couple of months now. It contains the boundaries of a small tragedy. I know we are surrounded by so much blossoming horror in the world (Vietnam, starvation, rioting, living in hopeless fear, etc) that three puppies wandering off isn’t very much, but I worry about it and see this simple event as the possible telescope for a larger agony.

‘…three German Shepherd puppies wandered away from their home up near the County line.’ It sounds like something from a Bob Dylan song.

Perhaps they vanished playing, barking and chasing each other, into the woods where lost they are to this very day, cringing around like scraps of dogs, looking for any small thing to eat, intellectually unable to comprehend what has happened to them because their brains are welded to their stomachs.

Their voices are used now only to cry out in fear and hunger, and all their playing days are over, those days of careless pleasure that led them into the terrible woods.

I fear that these poor lost dogs may be a shadow of a future journey if we don’t watch out.

—Richard Brautigan

"It’s time to train yourself to sleep alone again and it’s so fucking hard."

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:50:15 +1100

“It’s time to train yourself
to sleep alone again
and it’s so fucking hard.”

- Richard Brautigan

Map Shower

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:49:10 +1100

For Marcia

I want your hair
to cover me with maps
of new places,

so everywhere I go
will be as beautiful
as your hair

—Richard Brautigan

15%

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:02:06 +1100

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

—Richard Brautigan

A Short Story about Contemporary Life in California

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:12:00 +1100

There are thousands of stories with original beginnings. This is not one of them. I think the only way to start a story about contemporary life in California is to do it the way Jack London started The Sea-Wolf. I have confidence in that beginning.

It worked in 1904 and it can work in 1969. I believe that beginning can reach across the decades and serve the purpose of this story because this is California — we can do anything we want to do — and a rich young literary critic is taking a ferryboat from Sausalito to San Francisco. He has just finished spending a few days at a friend’s cabin in Mill Valley. The friend uses the cabin to read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche during the winter. They all have great times together.

While travelling across the bay in the fog he thinks about writing an essay called The Necessity for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist.

Of course Wolf Larsen torpedoes the ferryboat and captures the rich young literary critic who is changed instantly into a cabin boy and has to wear funny clothes and have to take a shit off everybody, has great intellectual conversations with old Wolf, gets kicked in the ass, grabbed by the throat, promoted to mate, grows up, meets his true love Maud, escapes from Wolf, bounces around the damn Pacific Ocean in little better than a half-assed rowboat, finds an island, builds a stone hut, clubs seals, fixes a broken sailing ship, buries Wolf at sea, gets kissed, etc: all to end this story about contemporary life in California sixty-five years later.

Thank God.

—Richard Brautigan