Richard Brautigan, “Star Hole”
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,watching light
pour itself toward
me.The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.I’m not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
faraway.
(submitted by lademarche)
"
Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.
You have stolen death because you’re bored.
There’s nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.
You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.
— “Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only” (For Emmett) by Richard Brautigan
"
I am desolate in dimension
circling the sky
like a rainy bird,
wet from toe to crown
wet from bill to wing.
I feel like a drowned king
at the pomegranate circus.
I vowed last year
that I wouldn’t go again
but here I sit in my usual seat,
dripping and clapping
as the pomegranates go by
in their metallic costumes.
— The Pomegranate Circus by Richard Brautigan
"It’s not quite cold enough
to go borrow some firewood
from the neighbours."
to go borrow some firewood
from the neighbours."
— Widow’s Lament by Richard Brautigan
"After all this I think I
feel pretty euphoric. Bells chimed, the sky healed.
The great road unrolled its vast burden,
the climate came to the rescue—it always does—
and we were shaken as in a hat and distributed on the ground.
I wish I could tell the next thing. But in dreams I can’t,
so will let this thing stand in for it, this me
I have become, this loving you either way."
feel pretty euphoric. Bells chimed, the sky healed.
The great road unrolled its vast burden,
the climate came to the rescue—it always does—
and we were shaken as in a hat and distributed on the ground.
I wish I could tell the next thing. But in dreams I can’t,
so will let this thing stand in for it, this me
I have become, this loving you either way."
— from ‘From Estuaries, From Casinos’ by John Ashbery
Take Off
videos of space shuttle launches are enough
to leave me a cried-out wreck for a morning.
I’ll ask you not to put on your suit & go
but only because I’m coveting that soaring sensation,
the total chain-release of never coming back.
vulnerability’s the fashion we both look best in.
escape velocity depends on a vital confidence in image.
JAMES SYKES
4.32 – 4.47pm Wall Stare
dramatically remove & replace your glasses
in darkened rooms while humming a theme tune
to experience an entirely new perspective.
how was it for you? obviously not worth telling
someone else about, it being one of those things
nobody believes actually takes place.
some of it is left out because there is the expectation
not to be boring while other stuff stays dormant
due to inaccurate articulation; it’s up to you
to decide which is a more legitimate reason
for silence. no one really wants to be confronted
with the fruit machine levers of a person
and a sign reading ‘pull for images’.
JAMES SYKES
Six Seasons and a Movie of Cool and Cute Adventures
Was that what you meant when you said those things
I’d never heard until now, your bell-toll-echo?
I don’t want to fuck another year over.
I think I genuinely did just need time.
Realisations strapped into passenger seats & driven
by time-commuters leap out, knock me to the asphalt.
I’m totally ready to discuss a host of things, to have
six seasons and a movie of cool and cute adventures.
JAMES SYKES
"
Where are you? Where you are is the one thing I love,
yet it always escapes me, like the lilacs in their leaves,
too busy for just one answer, one rejoinder.
The last time I see you is the first
commencing of our time to be together, as the light of the days
remains the same even as they grow shorter,
stepping into the harness of winter.
Between watching the paint dry and the grass grow
I have nothing too tragic in tow.
I have this melting elixir for you, front row
tickets for the concert to which all go.
I ought to
chasten my style, burnish my skin, to get that glow
that is all-important, so that some
may hear what I am saying as others disappear
in the confusion of unintelligible recorded announcements.
A great many things were taking place that day,
besides, it was not the taxpayers
who came up to me, who were important,
but other guests of the hotel
some might describe as dog-eared,
apoplectic. Measly is a good word to describe
the running between the incoming and the outgoing tide
as who in what narrow channels shall ever
afterwards remember the keen sightings of those times,
the reward and the pleasure.
Soon it was sliding out to sea
most naturally, as the place to be.
They never cared, nor came round again.
But in the tent in the big loss
it was all right too. Besides, we’re not
serious, I should have added.
— The Garden of False Civility, by John Ashbery, Hotel Lautreamont
