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The American Humorist Sat On His Couch Suffering Thoughts Of Her, Trying To Figure Out How To Win Back Her Affections, Wondering What Had Happened Between Them Or Just Tumbling Head-over-heels Down Into Romantic Oblivion Where The Image Of A Remembered Kiss Provokes Bottomless Despair And Makes Death Seem Like The Right Idea.he Experienced The Basics Of Love Ended.

-Richard Brautigan

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The American Humorist Sat

Richard Brautigan

...

The American Humorist Sat On His Couch Suffering Thoughts Of Her, Trying To Figure Out How To Win Back Her Affections, Wondering What Had Happened Between Them Or Just Tumbling Head-over-heels Down Into Romantic Oblivion Where The Image Of A Remembered Kiss Provokes Bottomless Despair And Makes Death Seem Like The Right Idea.he Experienced The Basics Of Love Ended.

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I’ll Affect You Slowly As If You Were Having A Picnic In A Dream. There Will Be No Ants. It Won’t Rain.

I Feel As If I Am An Ad For The Sale Of A Haunted House: 18 Rooms $37,000 I’m Yours Ghosts And All.

The Smallest Snowstorm On Record Took Place An Hour Ago In My Back Yard. It Was Approximately Two Flakes. I Waited For More To Fall, But That Was It. The Entire Storm Was Two Flakes.

Burn All The Maps To Your Body. I'm Not Here Of My Own Choosing.

I Daydream About A High School Where Everybody Plays The Harmonica: The Students, The Teachers, The Principal, The Janitor And The Cook In The Cafeteria.

The Bees In My Stomach Are Dead And Getting Used To It.

The Time Is Right To Mix Sentences With Dirt And The Sun With Punctuation And Rain With Verbs.

My Teachers Could Easily Have Ridden With Jesse James For All The Time They Stole From Me.

Im Haunted A Little This Evening By Feelings That Have No Vocabulary And Events That Should Be Explained In Dimensions Of Lint Rather Than Words. Ive 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.

It's Strange How The Simple Things In Life Go On While We Become More Difficult.

We Could See The Children's Toys Here And There, And We Saw A Game That The Children Had Made Themselves Out Of Dirt, Deer Antlers And Abalone Shells, But The Game Was So Strange That Only Children Could Tell What It Was. Perhaps It Wasn't A Game At All, Only The Grave Of A Game.

All Girls Should Have A Poem Written For Them Even If We Have To Turn This Goddamn World Upside Down To Do It.

Finding Is Losing Something Else. I Think About, Perhaps Even Mourn, What I Lost To Find This

The Bookstore Was A Parking Lot For Used Graveyards. Thousands Of Graveyards Were Parked In Rows Like Cars. Most Of The Books Were Out Of Print, And No One Wanted To Read Them Any More And The People Who Had Read The Books Had Died Or Forgotten About Them, But Through The Organic Process Of Music The Books Had Become Virgins Again.

Sometimes Life Is Merely A Matter Of Coffee And Whatever Intimacy A Cup Of Coffee Affords.

One Day Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It

A Boat O Beautiful Was The Werewolf In His Evil Forest. We Took Him To The Carnival And He Started Crying When He Saw The Ferris Wheel. Electric Green And Red Tears Flowed Down His Furry Cheeks. He Looked Like A Boat Out On The Dark Water.

We Walked Back To Ideath, Holding Hands. Hands Are Very Nice Things, Especially After They Have Travelled Back From Making Love.

Once Upon A Time There Was A Dwarf Knight Who Only Had Fifty Words To Live In And They Were So Fleeting That He Only Had Time To Put On A Suit Of Armor And Ride Swiftly On A Black Horse Into A Very Well-lit Woods Where He Vanished Forever.

Probably The Closest Things To Perfection Are The Huge Absolutely Empty Holes That Astronomers Have Recently Discovered In Space. If There's Nothing There, How Can Anything Go Wrong?

Reduce Intellectual And Emotional Noise Until You Arrive At The Silence Of Yourself And Listen To It.

I Don't Want My Daughter To Be Educated. I Think Women Should Just Be Decorative.

Love Poem ـــــــــ It's So Nice To Wake Up In The Morning All Alone And Not Have To Tell Somebody You Love Them When You Don't Love Them Any More.

I Believe I Saw A Woodcock. He Had A Long Bill Like Putting A Fire Hydrant Into A Pencil Sharpener, Then Pasting It Onto A Bird And Letting The Bird Fly Away In Front Of Me With This Thing On Its Face For No Other Purpose Than To Amaze Me.

He Created His Own Kool Aid Reality And Was Able To Illuminate Himself By It.

The Coleman Lantern Is The Symbol Of The Camping Craze That Is Currently Sweeping America, With Its Unholy White Light Burning In The Forests Of America.

I'll Think About Things For Thirty Or Forty Years Before I'll Write It.

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.

"i Count A Lot Of Things That There's No Need To Count," Cameron Said. "just Because That's The Way I Am. But I Count All The Things That Need To Be Counted."

I'll Tell You About It Because I Am Here And You Are Distant.

In A Cafe" I Watched A Man In A Cafe Fold A Slice Of Bread As If He Were Folding A Birth Certificate Or Looking At The Photograph Of A Dead Lover.

The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster When You Take Your Pill It's Like A Mine Disaster. I Think Of All The People Lost Inside You.

There Are Seductions That Should Be In The Smithsonian Institute, Right Next To The Spirit Of St. Louis.

Because You Always Have A Clock Strapped To Your Body, It's Natural That I Should Think Of You As The Correct Time: With Your Long Blonde Hair At 8:03, And Your Pulse-lightning Breasts At 11:17, And Your Rose-meow Smile At 5:30, I Know I'm Right.

I Had Become So Quiet And So Small In The Grass By The Pond That I Was Barely Noticeable, Hardly There... I Sat There Watching Their Living Room Shining Out Of The Dark Beside The Pond. It Looked Like A Fairy Tale Functioning Happily In The Post-world War Ii Gothic Of America Before Television Crippled The Imagination Of America And Turned People Indoors And Away From Living Out Their Own Fantasies With Dignity... Anyway, I Just Kept Getting Smaller And Smaller Beside The Pond, More And More Unnoticed In The Darkening Summer Grass Until I Disappeared Into The 32 Years That Have Passed Since Then.

A Sombrero Fell Out Of The Sky And Landed On The Main Street Of Town In Front Of The Mayor, His Cousin, And A Person Out Of Work. The Day Was Scrubbed Clean By The Desert Air. The Sky Was Blue. It Was The Blue Of Human Eyes, Waiting For Something To Happen. There Was No Reason For A Sombrero To Fall Out Of The Sky. No Airplane Or Helicopter Was Passing Overhead And It Was Not A Religious Holiday.

There Was Something Dead In My Heart. I Tried To Figure Out What It Was By The Strength Of The Smell. I Knew That It Was Not A Lion Or A Sheep Or A Dog. Using Logical Deduction, I Came To The Conclusion That It Was A Mouse. I Had A Dead Mouse In My Heart.

Hinged To Forgetfulness Like A Door, She Slowly Closed Out Of Sight, And She Was The Woman 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.

...what Makes You Older Is When Your Bones, Muscles And Blood Wear Out, When The Heart Sinks Into Oblivion And All The Houses You Ever Lived In Are Gone And People Are Not Really Certain That Your Civilization Ever Existed.

The 1960s: A Lot Of People Remember Hating President Lyndon Baines Johnson And Loving Janis Joplin And Jim Morrison, Depending On The Point Of View. God Rest Their Souls.

For Fear You Will Be Alone You Do So Many Things That Aren't You At All.

God-forsaken Is Beautiful, Too.

The Sun Was Like A Huge 50-cent Piece That Someone Had Poured Kerosene On And Then Had Lit With A Match, And Said, "here, Hold This While I Go Get A Newspaper," And Put The Coin In My Hand, But Never Came Back.

Like Some Kind Of Strange Vacuum Cleaner I Tried To Console Him. I Recited The Same Old Litanies That You Say To People When You Try To Help Their Broken Hearts, But Words Can't Help At All. It's Just The Sound Of Another Human Voice That Makes The Only Difference. There's Nothing You're Ever Going To Say That's Going To Make Anybody Happy When They're Feeling Shitty About Losing Somebody That They Love.

This Morning I Saw A Coyote Walking Through The Sagebrush Right At The Very Edge Of The Ocean ― Next Stop China. The Coyote Was Acting Like He Was In New Mexico Or Wyoming, Except That There Were Whales Passing Below. That’s What This Country Does For You. Come Down To Big Sur And Let Your Soul Have Some Room To Get Outside Its Marrow.

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.

You've Got Some 'star-spangled' Nails In Your Coffin, Kid. That's What They've Done For You, Son.

The Heart Is Something Else. Nobody Knows What's Going To Happen,' I Said

If You Are Thinking About Something That Happened A Long Time Ago: Somebody Asked You A Question And You Did Not Know The Answer. That Is My Name.

I Have Always Wanted To Write A Book That Ended With The Word 'mayonnaise.

Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Starting To Rain Oh, Marcia, I Want Your Long Blonde Beauty To Be Taught In High School, So Kids Will Learn That God Lives Like Music In The Skin And Sounds Like A Sunshine Harpsicord. I Want High School Report Cards To Look Like This: Playing With Gentle Glass Things A Computer Magic A Writing Letters To Those You Love A Finding Out About Fish A Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty A+!

There Are Spiders Living Comfortably In My House While The Wind Howls Outside. They Aren't Bothering Anybody. If I Were A Fly, I'd Have Second Thoughts, But I'm Not, So I Don't.

He Learned About Life At Sixteen, First From Dostoevsky And Then From The Whores Of New Orleans.

I Didn't Know The Full Dimensions Of Forever, But I Knew It Was Longer Than Waiting For Christmas To Come.

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

I Drank Coffee And Read Old Books And Waited For The Year To End.

Language Does Not Leave Fossils, At Least Not Until It Has Become Written.

I Thought About It For Awhile, Hiding It From The Rest Of My Mind. But I Didn't Ruin My Birthday By Secretly Thinking About It Too Hard

A Friend Came Over To The House A Few Days Ago And Read One Of My Poems. He Came Back Today And Asked To Read The Same Poem Over Again. After He Finished Reading It, He Said, It Makes Me Want To Write Poetry.

Excuse Me, I Said. I Thought You Were A Trout Stream. I'm Not, She Said.

Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4. 1.get Enough Food To Eat, And Eat It. 2.find A Place To Sleep Where It Is Quiet, And Sleep There. 3.reduce Intellectual And Emotional Noise Until You Arrive At The Silence Of Yourself, And Listen To It. 4.

Our Names Were Made For Us In Another Century.

I Don't Know These People And They Aren't My Flowers.

There Are Not Too Many Fables About Man's Misuse Of Sunflower Seeds.

Elizabeth's Voice Had A Door In It. When You Opened That Door You Found Another Door, And That Door Opened Yet Another Door. All The Doors Were Nice And Led Out Of Her.

If You Get Hung Up On Everybody Else's Hang-ups, Then The Whole World's Going To Be Nothing More Than One Huge Gallows.

I Like To Think (it Has To Be!) Of A Cybernetic Ecology Where We Are Free Of Our Labors And Joined Back To Nature, Returned To Our Mammal Brothers And Sisters, And All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

I Wonder If There Are Any Catfish In This Pond? It Seems Like A Perfect Place For Them.

It's Pretty Hard To Have Faith When Everybody Is Trying To Lock You Up.

We Looked Like A Parade Barely Moving Toward You Might Get Lost.

In Watermelon Sugar The Deeds Were Done And Done Again As My Life Is Done In Watermelon Sugar.

All Of Us Have A Place In History. Mine Is Clouds.

The American Humorist Sat On His Couch Suffering Thoughts Of Her, Trying To Figure Out How To Win Back Her Affections, Wondering What Had Happened Between Them Or Just Tumbling Head-over-heels Down Into Romantic Oblivion Where The Image Of A Remembered Kiss Provokes Bottomless Despair And Makes Death Seem Like The Right Idea.he Experienced The Basics Of Love Ended.

I Fished Upstream Coming Ever Closer And Closer To The Narrow Staircase Of The Canyon. Then I Went Up Into It As If I Were Entering A Department Store. I Caught Three Trout In The Lost And Found Department.

For The Rest Of My Life I'll Be Thinking About That Hamburger. I'll Be Sitting There At The Counter, Holding It In My Hands With Tears Streaming Down My Cheeks. The Waitress Will Be Looking Away Because She Doesn't Like To See Kids Crying When They Are Eating Hamburgers.

I Had A Good-talking Candle Last Night In My Bedroom. I Was Very Tired But I Wanted Somebody To Be With Me, So I Lit A Candle And Listened To Its Comfortable Voice Of Light Until I Was Asleep.

I'm In A Constant Process Of Thinking About Things.

Her Sunny Side Was Always Up.

Night Was Coming On In, Borrowing The Light. It Had Started Out Borrowing Just A Few Cents Worth Of The Light, But Now It Was Borrowing Thousands Of Dollars Worth Of The Light Every Second. The Light Would Soon Be Gone, The Bank Closed, The Tellers Unemployed, The Bank President A Suicide.

I Do Not Care To Be Esthetically Tickled In A Fancy Theater Surrounded By An Audience Drenched In The Confident Perfume Of Culture. I Can't Afford It.

Your Catfish Friend 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.

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