Poetry Friday, four from 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.

After a weekend in Favorite City with very little sleep but much reveling and adventure and laughter and (more) fun and then a week of good classes and bad classes and a thousand meetings and a trillion different people needing things from me, I am left feeling exhilarated and exhausted. I have Brautigan's "Star Hole" on my refrigerator. I stuck it there almost by accident soon after I moved into the garret, but I have kept it there. I read it everyday, simply because it is in my line of sight as I open and close the fridge door. It's come to act as kind of a gauge for how in or out my life I am feeling that day. Having been in two very different worlds this week, I am feeling like I am viewing everything from a distance. The difference is I am very happy. I like shaking up my perspective. I am thinking it's a very, very good thing for me right now. I am not taking anything too terribly seriously, which is saving me from the terrible seriousness of certain people 'round Foggy C.

Here's three more from Brautigan, who has one of my favorite senses of humor and who died today in 1984. R.I.P. funny profound genius man. Photos are those taken by me from my super secret locations(s) last weekend with More Fun and the rock-n-roll circus.


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.



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.

The Ferris Wheel


The world was opening and closing its insane asylums and churches like a forgetful old man buttoning up his pants instead of unbuttoning them.
Are you going to go to the toilet in your pants, old man?
The rain was a dark Ferris wheel bringing us closer to Baudelaire and General Motors.
We were famous and we kicked walnut leaves.