a quick update on the wordpress hack & how the site is (or isn’t coming along). you’ll notice the design hasn’t been fixed yet but i am getting all the content back online. seems i have some spam comments that weren’t caught previously so i’m cleaning those as i go.

you might have heard about the wordpress problems.  or maybe not.

but what is important … the brautigan pages were affected (or is that effected?  nah, pretty sure it’s affected).

i’ll slowly be uploading & getting the site back into shape.    all i can say is AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

There is Darkness on Your Lantern

The Pumpkin Tide

After Halloween Slump

Boo, Forever

Halloween In Denver

The Pumpkin Tide

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968

After Halloween Slump

My magic is down.
My spells mope around
the house like sick old dogs
with bloodshot eyes
watering cold wet noses.

My charms are in a pile
in the corner like the
dirty shirts of a summer fatman.

One of my potions died
last night in the pot.
It looks like a cracked
Egyptian tablecloth.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968

Boo, Forever

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

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968

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 heard 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 fo ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.

from Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt 1970

Halloween In Denver

She didn’t think that she would get any trick or treaters, so she didn’t buy anything for them. That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, let’s see what can happen with that. It might be interesting.

We’ll start off with me reacting to her diagnosis of the situation by saying, “Hell, get something for the kids. After all, you’re living on Telegraph Hill and there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood and some of them are certain to stop here.”

I said it in such a way that she went down to the store and came back a few minutes later with a carton of gum. The gum was in little boxes called Chiclets and there were a lot of them in the carton.

“Satisfied?” she said.
She’s an Aires.
“Yes,” I said.
I’m an Aquarius.
We also had two pumpkins: both Scorpios.

So I sat there at the kitchen table and carved a pumpkin. It was the first pumpkin that Ihad carved in many years. It was kind of fun. My pumpkin had one round eye and one triangular eye and a not-very-bright witchy smile.

She cooked a wonderful dinner of sweet red cabbage and sausages and had some apples baking in the oven.

Then she carved her pumpkin while dinner was cooking beautifully away. Her pumpkin looked very modernistic when she was through. It looked more like an appliance than a jack-o’-lantern.

All the time that we were carving pumpkins the door bell did not ring once. It was completely empty of trick or treaters, but I did not panic, though there were an awful lot of Chiclets waiting anxiously in a large bowl.

We had dinner at 7:30 and it was so good. Then the meal was eaten and there were still no trick or treaters and it was after eight and things were starting to look bad. I was getting nervous.

I began to think that it was every day except Halloween.

She of course looked beatifically down upon the scene with an aura of Buddhistic innocence and carefully did not mention the fact that no trick or treaters had darkened the door.

That did not make things any better.

At nine o’clock we went in and lay down upon her bed and we were talking about this and that and I was in a kind of outrage because we had been forsaken by all trick or treaters, and I said something like, “Where are those little bastards?”

I had moved the bowl of Chiclets into the bedroom, so I could get to the trick or treaters faster when the door bell rang. The bowl sat there despondently on a table beside the bed. It was a very lonely sight.

At 9:30 we started fucking.

About fifty-four seconds later we heard a band of kids come running up the stairs accompanied by a cyclone of Halloween shrieking and mad door bell ringing.

I looked down at her and she looked up at me and our eyes met in laughter, but it wasn’t too loud because suddenly we weren’t at home.

We were in Denver, holding hands at a street corner, waiting for the light to change.

from Revenge of the Lawn 1971

test

Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you; it stimulates all the organs.

I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but as time goes by I have found out that it makes sense in its own limited way. I’ll tell you what I mean.

Yesterday morning I went over to see a girl. I like her. Whatever we had going for us is gone now. She does not care for me. I blew it and wish I hadn’t.

I rang the door bell and waited on the stairs. I could hear her moving around upstairs. The way she moved I could tell that she was getting up. I had awakened her.

Then she came down the stairs. I could feel her approach in my stomach. Every step she took stirred my feelings and lead indirectly to her opening the door. She saw me and it did not please her.

Once upon a time it pleased her very much, last week. I wonder where it went, pretending to be naive.

“I feel strange now,” she said. “I don’t want to talk.”

“I want a cup of coffee,” I said, because it was the last thing in the world that I wanted. I said it in such a way that it sounded as if I were reading her a telegram from somebody else, a person who really wanted a cup of coffee, who cared about nothing else.

“All right,” she said.

I followed her up the stairs. It was ridiculous. She had just put some clothes on. They had not quite adjusted themselves to her body. I could tell you about her ass. We went into the kitchen.

She took a jar of instant coffee off the shelf and put it on the table. She placed a cup next to it, and a spoon. I looked at them. She put a pan full of water on the stove and turned the gas on under it.

All this time she did not say a word. Her clothes adjusted themselves to her body. I won’t. She left the kitchen.

Then she went down the stairs and outside to see if she had any mail. I didn’t remember seeing any. She came back up the stairs and went into another room. She closed the door after her. I looked at the pan full of water on the stove.

I knew that it would take a year before the water started to boil. It was now October and there was too much water in the pan. That was the problem. I threw half of the water into the sink.

The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet.

I looked out the back porch. There were sacks of garbage there. I stared at the garbage and tried to figure out what she had been eating lately by studying the containers and peelings and stuff. I couldn’t tell a thing.

It was now March. The water started to boil. I was pleased by this.

I looked at the table. There was the jar of instant coffee, the empty cup and the spoon all laid out like a funeral service. These are the things that you need to make a cup of coffee.

When I left the house ten minutes later, the cup of coffee safely inside me like a grave, I said, “Thank you for the cup of coffee.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. Her voice came from behind a closed door. Her voice sounded like another telegram. It was really time for me to leave.

I spent the rest of the day not making coffee. It was a comfort. And evening came, I had dinner in a restaurant and went to a bar. I had some drinks and talked to some people.

We were bar people and said bar things. None of them remembered, and the bar closed. It was two o’clock in the morning. I had to go outside. It was foggy and cold in San Francisco. I wondered about the fog and felt very human and exposed.

I decided to go visit another girl. We had not been friends for over a year. Once we were very close. I wondered what she was thinking about now.

I went to her house. She didn’t have a door bell. That was a small victory. One must keep track of all the small victories. I do, anyway.

She answered the door. She was holding a robe in front of her. She didn’t believe that she was seeing me. “What do you want?” she said, believing now that she was seeing me. I walked right into the house.

She turned and closed the door in such a way that I could see her profile. She had not bothered to wrap the robe completely around herself. She was just holding the robe in front of herself.

I could see an unbroken line of body running from her head to her feet. It looked kind of strange. Perhaps because it was so late at night.

“What do you want?” she said.

“I want a cup of coffee,” I said. What a funny thing to say, to say again for a cup of coffee was not what I really wanted.

She looked at me and wheeled slightly on the profile. She was not pleased to see me. Let the AMA tell us that time heals. I looked at the unbroken line of her body.

“Why don’t you have a cup of coffee with me?” I said. “I feel like talking to you. We haven’t talked for a long time.”

She looked at me and wheeled slightly on the profile. I stared at the unbroken line of her body. This was not good.

“It’s too late,” she said. “I have to get up in the morning. If you want a cup of coffee, there’s instant in the kitchen. I have to go to bed.”

The kitchen light was on. I looked down the hall into the kitchen. I didn’t feel like going into the kitchen and having another cup of coffee by myself. I didn’t feel like going to anybody else’s house and asking them for a cup of coffee.

I realized that the day had been committed to a very strange pilgrimage, and I had not planned it that way. At least the jar of instant coffee was not on the table, beside an empty white cup and a spoon.

They say in the spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. Perhaps if he has enough time left over, his fancy can even make room for a cup of coffee.

It seemed

like years

before

I picked

a bouquet

of kisses

off her mouth

and put them

into a dawn-colored vase

in

my

heart.

But

the wait

was worth it.

Because

I

was

in love.

– richard brautigan