Copyright © 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976
by Richard Brautigan
All rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form
Published by Simon and Schuster
A Gulf+Western Company
Rockefeller Center, 630 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10020
Designed by Elizabeth Woll
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Brautigan, Richard.
Loading mercury with a pitchfork.
I. Title.
PS3503.R2736L6 811’.5’4 76-2001
ISBN 0-671-22263-5
ISBN 0-671-22271-6 pbk.
Some of these poems first appeared in Mademoiselle, Harper’s Magazine, Blue Suede Shoes, The World, Mark in Time, California Living, Five Poems (Serendipity Books), Esquire, Clear Creek, City Lights Anthology, and The CoEvoIution Quarterly
For Jim Harrison and Guy de Ia Valdene
"Friendship"
CONTENTS
Crows and Mercury
Love
Section 3
Group Portrait Without the Lions
Good Luck, Captain Martin
Five Poems
Montana / 1973
P. S.
CROWS AND MERCURY
POSTCARD
I wonder if eighty-four-year-old Colonel Sanders
ever gets tired of travelling all around America
talking about fried chicken.
LOADING MERCURY WITH A PITCHFORK
Loading mercury with a pitchfork
your truck is almost full. The neighbors
take a certain pride in you. They
stand around watching.
IT'S TIME TO TRAIN YOURSELF
It's time to train yourself
to sleep alone again
and it's so fucking hard.
THE ACT OF:
DEATH-DEFYING AFFECTION
The act of: death-defying affection
insures the constancy of the stars
and their place at the beginning of
everything.
TWO GUYS GET OUT OF A CAR
Two guys get out of a car.
They stand beside it. They
don’t know what else to do.
PUNITIVE GHOSTS LIKE STEAM-DRIVEN
TENNIS COURTS
Punitive ghosts like steam-driven tennis courts
haunt the apples in my nonexistent orchard.
I remember when there were just worms out there
and they danced in moonlit cores on warm September
nights.
CROW MAIDEN
Starring a beautiful young girl and twenty-
three crows. She has blonde hair. The crows are
intelligent. The director is obsessed with the
budget (too low). The photographer has fallen
in love with the girl. She can’t stand him. The
crows are patient. The director is a homosexual.
The girl loves him. The photographer
daydreams murder. “One hundred and seventy-
five thousand. I was a fool!” the director says
to himself. The girl has taken to crying a lot at
night. The crows wait for their big scene.
And you will go where crows go
and you will know what crows know.
After you have learned all their secrets
and think the way they do and your love
caresses their feathers like the walls
of a midnight clock, they will fly away
and take you with them.
And you will go where crows go
and you will know what crows know.
INFORMATION
Any thought that I have right now
isn’t worth a shit because I’m totally
fucked up.
ARE YOU THE LAMB OF
YOUR OWN FORGIVING?
I mean: Can you forgive yourself / all
those crimes without victims?
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (POLISH IT
LIKE A PIECE OF SILVER
I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
A very old man, who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
manner as to almost (polish it like a piece of silver.
An old dog stands beside him. It’s a hot day: 105.
What am I doing out here in west Texas, standing in
a cemetery? The old man wonders about that, too.
My presence has become a part of his raking. I know
that he is also polishing me.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (WHEN THE MOON
SHINES LIKE A DEAD GARAGE
When the moon shines like a dead garage
I travel with gasoline ghosts down all those haunted
miles of the past, twenty-seven Model A miles an hour
in 1939, going to where I have forgotten.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (GOOD-BYE,
ULTRA VIOLET
The telephone rings in San Francisco,
“This is Ultra Violet.”
I don’t know her except that she
is a movie actress.
She wants to talk to me.
She has a nice voice.
We talk for a while.
Then she has to go someplace.
“Good-bye.”
JANUARY 3
I’ve started off with a mistake
but I’ll try to get better
and put the day in good order.
THEY ARE REALLY HAVING FUN
They are really having fun,
drinking glasses of wine
and talking about things
that they like.
WE MEET. WE TRY. NOTHING HAPPENS, BUT
We meet. We try. Nothing happens, but
afterwards we are always embarrassed
when we see each other. We look away.
HOME AGAIN HOME AGAIN
LIKE A TURTLE TO HIS BALCONY
Home again home again like a turtle to his balcony
and you know where that’s at.
YOU WILL HAVE UNREAL
RECOLLECTIONS OF ME
(For Rilke)
You will have unreal recollections of me
like half-developed photographs
for all the days of your life, even though
you have never met me because I have dreamt
you. Soon it will be morning, the dream
over.
FINDING IS LOSING SOMETHING ELSE
Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
what I lost to find this.
IMPASSE
I talked a good hello
but she talked an even
better good-bye.
HOMAGE TO CHARLES ATLAS
A daydream exercises your mind
for a moment or two like an invisible
muscle. Then it’s gone, totally
forgotten.
ON PURE SUDDEN DAYS LIKE INNOCENCE
On pure sudden days like innocence
we behold the saints and their priorities
keypunched in the air.
CURIOUSLY YOUNG LIKE A FRESHLY-DUG
GRAVE
Curiously young like a freshly-dug grave
the day parades in circles like a top
with rain falling in its shadow.
RIGHT BESIDE THE MORNING COFFEE
If I write th
is down now, I
will have it in the morning.
The question is: Do I want
to start the day off with
this?
MONTANA INVENTORY
At 85 miles an hour an insect splattered
like saffron on the windshield
and a white cloud in blue sky above the
speed-curried bug
OAK
crows / the
crows / the
(the tree)
BEN
I telephone Oklahoma this evening. The telephone
rings eight or nine times but nobody’s home. Ben’s
not in his trailer parked in a field just outside
THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING
IN YOUR OWN FACE
There are days when that is the last place
in the world where you want to be but you
have to be there, like a movie, because it
features you.
FOR FEAR YOU WILL BE ALONE
For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
that aren’t you at all.
WAR HORSE
He stands alone in a pasture
but nobody can see him.
He has been made invisible
by his own wounds.
I know how he feels.
ALBERT EINSTEIN (OR UPON
FIRST READING THAT LIGHT IS
PROJECTING ITSELF AT
372,000 MILES PER SECOND FROM
CRAB NEBULA 5,000 OLD-FASHIONED
LIGHT-YEARS AWAY
We all lose a few.
“GOOD WORK,” HE SAID, AND
“Good work,” he said, and
went out the door. What
work? We never saw him
before. There was no door.
LOVE
SEPTEMBER 3
(THE DR. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
MISTAKE
I had severe insomnia last night with
the past, the present and the future detailing
themselves
like: Oh, the shit we run through our minds!
Then I remembered that it was Dr. William Carlos
Williams’ birthday and that made me feel better
until almost dawn.
Note:
September 3 is not
Dr. William Carlos Williams’
birthday. It is the birthday
of a girlfriend.
Dr. William Carlos Williams
was born on September 17, 1883.
Interesting mistake.
LIGHTHOUSE
Signalling, we touch,
lying beside each other
like waves.
I roll over into her
and look down through
candlelight to say,
“Hey, I’m balling you.”
EVERYTHING INCLUDES US
The thought of her hands
touching his hair
makes me want to vomit.
WHAT HAPPENED?
You were the prettiest girl
in your high school graduating class
in 1927.
Now you have short blue hair
and nobody loves you,
not even your own children.
They don’t like to have you around
because you make them nervous.
I’LL AFFECT YOU SLOWLY
I’ll affect you slowly
as if you were having
a picnic in a dream.
There will be no ants.
It won’t rain.
UMBRELLAING HERSELF LIKE A
POORLY-DESIGNED ANGEL
Umbrellaing herself like a poorly-designed angel
she falls in love again: destined to a broken heart
which is the way it always is for her. I’m glad
she’s not falling in love with me.
HERE IS SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL (ETC.
Here is something beautiful (etc.
I have so little left that you
would want.
Its color begins in your hand.
Its shape is your touch.
AS MECHANICAL AS A FLIGHT OF STAIRS
As mechanical as a flight of stairs,
as solemn as a flight of stairs,
they have found each other after years
of looking.
WE WERE THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK NEWS
We were the eleven o’clock news
because while the rest of the world
was going to hell we made love.
AT THE GUESS OF A SIMPLE HELLO
At the guess of a simple hello
it can all begin
toward crying yourself to sleep,
wondering where the fuck
she is.
SEXUAL ACCIDENT
The sexual accident
that turned out to be your wife,
the mother of your children
and the end of your life, is home
cooking dinner for all your friends.
BUSINESS
When he died he left his wife
three gas stations and a warehouse.
He left his mistress two supermarkets.
FUCK ME LIKE FRIED POTATOES
Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.
FLOWERS FOR A CROW
You have your friends.
I have mine.
SECTION 3
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN THERE?
I can tell by your eyes that I
have asked the wrong question.
They look troubled and away. We’ll
change the subject.
ATTILA AT THE GATES
OF THE TELEPHONE COMPANY
They said that
my telephone
would be fixed
by 6.
They guaranteed
it.
THE AMELIA EARHART PANCAKE
I have been unable to find a poem
for this title. I’ve spent years
looking for one and now I’m giving
up.
November 3, 1970
I DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT
I don’t want to know about it.
Tell it to somebody else.
They’ll understand and make you
feel better.
MARCH 18, RESTING IN THE MAYTAG
HOMAGE
Looking out a hotel window
it’s snowing in New York with
great huge snowflakes like millions
of transparent washing machines swirling
through the dirty air of this city, washing
it.
WE ARE IN A KITCHEN
We are in a kitchen
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Some bacon is frying.
It smells like a character
that you like in a good movie.
A beautiful girl is watching
the bacon.
THE LAST SURPRISE
The last surprise is when you come
gradually to realize that nothing
surprises you any more.
TOWARD THE PLEASURES OF
A RECONSTITUTED CROW
Toward the pleasures of a reconstituted crow
I collect darkness within myself like the shadow
of a blind lighthouse.
A MOTH IN TUCSON, ARIZONA
A friend calls me on the telephone
from Tucson, Arizona. He’s unhappy.
He wants to talk to somebody
in San Francisco.
We talk for a while. He mentions
There’s a moth in the room.
“It’s solemn,” he says.
DEATH LIKE A NEEDLE
Death like a needle
made from a drunken clown’s breath
sews the shadow of a [I can’t make
the next two words
out. I first
wrote this poem in longhand] to your
shadow.
HEROINE OF THE TIME MACHINE