I recently read
that Brautigan's last manuscipt
had small pieces
of his brain matter
stuck to the paper
which got there
after he blew his brains out,
and today
after I had written a poem,
I had an insight
into the mind
of Brautigan.
It made me cry.
Brautigan was a poet
who wrote tender, funny,
light poetry
which I always thought
had something
underneath it
which was deep and profound.
I found out
that a poet like Bruatigan
or me
had a deep
despair, anguish, depression,
suffering, and pain
which lay underneath
this light, funny poetry.
When he died,
I bought
as many books by him
as I could find
and laid them
on a table
and lit a candle.

Let's lie in our bed
Among pillows and threads
Wear your hair on my head, as a crown

Borne of Brautigan's dreams
Rainbow trouts in the stream
Watermelon moonbeams trickle down

I have a 75 watt, glare free, long life
Harmony House light bulb in my toilet.
I have been living in the same apartment
for over two years now
and that bulb just keeps burning away.
I believe that it is fond of me.

- Richard Brautigan

He said I’m the wrong shape. I could do with putting on a few pounds and, almost as an after thought he said, you’ll have to cut your hair – yourself.  I know she was an artist, and a mother, and a gardener. I had to admit to him I didn’t know any painters. My cousin Julie’s a sculptor – same thing he said – but I had to tell him I hadn’t yet looked at her painting, only what he showed us in his presentation.  He then told me exactly where in the National Museum of Wales I could see one of her paintings – Gallery 14 – and its from this period, a Parisiene picture. He suggested I might go to Cambridge and spend a day at a place called Kettles Yard. There are more Winifreds there than anywhere else in the UK, and many pictures by her close friend Christopher Wood.
 
Oh dear. This is difficult. The only thing going for me seems I’m about the right age and I’ve have children, though mine are older than hers in the production. I was so surprised to get this part, but as Michael said over the phone, your profile fits. Except for the weight and the hair, and I know nothing about painting. Why should I? Jeff told me, the composer Morton Feldman once said if you haven’t got a friend whose a painter, you’re in trouble. I’m in trouble. But he has very kind eyes and when he touched me gently on the shoulder after Lizzie and I sung that shells duet I had to look away.
 
Reaching down arm-deep into bright water
I gathered on white sand under waves
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone
Inhabit a finite world of years and days.
I reached my arm down a myriad years
To gather treasure from the yester-millennial sea-floor,
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation….
 
They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper for ever in our ears,
‘The world that you inhabit has not yet been created’
 
Mind you, I don’t envy Lizzie being Kathleen Raine. Now that is a difficult part, even though she’s only in Act 2. Raine was definitely odd. He says I have to understand their friendship, because there was something about it that made them both more than they were. I don’t understand that.
 
Jane and the children are amazing already. Martin (my ‘other’ half Ben Nicholson) said they’d been rehearsing with Robert because his wife (Robert’s wife Debbie) is at WNO and they were scared about this one. I’ll say this for him he knows exactly how children interrupt, constantly. It’s clever the way he uses the interruptions to change direction of the dialogue. Conversations are often left unfinished. The bit when that ***** Barbara visits the apartment unexpectedly is brilliant. She’s completely demolished by these kids of her lover.
 
But those letters . . . he said, can you imagine your husband writing to you over a period of 40 years? Quite a thought that. David wrote to me a few times when I was in Madrid for Cosi just after we’d met, but it was all telephone calls after that. Why waste paper, time and a stamp. But I take his point – their letters are so beautiful – and they were separated for God’s sake. He’d gone off with another woman, and even brought her to Paris. And you could not have two totally different women – she ,slight, chain-smoking, work-a-holic, sharp-tongued with that Yorkshire edge, and me with ‘a quiet voice, trying always to be gentle and kind ‘– W would be called an earth-mother these days. She was a kind of hippie, only she had money – mind you most of those hippies of the 60s had money otherwise they couldn’t have done drugs (heard that on Radio 4 last week in a programme about Richard Brautigan). But they wrote to each other almost every day.
 
Dear Ben,.
            Do you know there are several kinds of happiness, and there is one sort which I have found. It is the sort that is within oneself, enjoying fresh promise, and taking all the experiences of life that one has been through, so-called sad ones and so-called happy ones, to make up understanding that is further on than joy or sorrow. I have been extremely lucky – I have had ten years of companionship with an ‘all-time’ painter, working in the medium of classic eternity and that has been better than a lifetime with any second-class person – isn’t it - I have found it so…
 
Best love Winifred
 
What’s clever about the letter sequences is the way the two-way correspondence is handled as a duet and right in the middle of it you’ll get a flashback – like Winifred suddenly remembering her first meeting with Ben.
 
I heard this voice
In the room next door
I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t move
I knew, I knew for certain
This was the man I would marry.
And when we were introduced
He seemed to know this too.
 
We gaily call this an opera, but it’s not. It’s something else. It simply doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do. Even when you do something for a second time the accompaniment doesn’t do what you expect and remembered. It’s this open-form business. Something else I know nothing about. He mentioned Umberto Eco – now I’ve read Name of the Rose. When Braque or Mondrian or Jan Eps visit unannounced I have no idea which one it’s going to be – these guys just used to turn up. Sometimes two at once. W didn’t invite them. They came for her English hospitality (home baking I think) and her beautiful apartment come studio – beautiful, because she made it so. Her French was appalling, and this is difficult because I speak quite well, and now I have to speak like an idiot. Bridget  (playing Cissy the Cumbrian nanny) having her French lesson is a hoot, and with the children correcting her all the time, it’s lovely.
 
He was very sweet when we broke for lunch. Sara, he said, as I collapsed into an auditorium seat to find my bag and mobile, Sara, we’ve got to find you a painter to spend a day with . . . so you’ll know how to stand in front of an easel.  I phoned Sarah Jane Brown who has a studio in Cardiff and she’d love to meet you. Here’s her number. She paints flowers and landscapes – as well as the abstract stuff - just like Winifred. Her tutor at the RCA actually knew Winifred. And with that he disappeared to a dark corner of the theatre and unwrapped his sandwiches. You can tell he’s not into break discussions with Julian or Michael. I think he’s terribly shy. He’s interested in the cast and so he picks them off one by one. Julian I know doesn’t like this. I think everything needs to go through me, he said at the end of yesterday’s rehearsal. Who does he think he is?! Lizzie reminded Julian he was the composer and what he doesn’t know about this whole period and its characters isn’t knowledge. Liz thinks he’s a sweetie – and she’s sung his Raine settings at Branwyn Hall last year – with Robert who was his MD with BBCNOW. Liz knows Julian hasn’t done his usual homework because he’s got this production in Birmingham on the boil. Unknown Colour is a distraction he can do without.
 
This afternoon it’s back to the mayhem of those ensemble scenes in Act 1. They’re quite crazy, but I’m already beginning to feel I can start to be someone other than me. Did you know I have this lovely song? It’s quite Sondheim . . .
 
*I like to have a picture in my room.
Without one, my room feels bare
however much furniture is there;
Pictures play so many roles.
My room has too much going on in it
for something extravagant.
In the morning it is a sanctuary,
in the daytime a factory,
in the evening a place of festivity,
and through the night a place of rest.
 
I want a window in it,  
And a focal point, something alive and silent.
A bunch of flowers on the window sill?
Yes, but they will wither.
A cat curled up on the hearth?
Yes, but it will go away and prowl upon the rooftops.
 
A picture will always be there.
It will make no sound. It will wait.
If it is true I shall never grow tired of it.
I shall see something fresh in it
when I glance at it tomorrow.
It will always be my friend.

I bought a beer,
twice,
for Richard Brautigan
in 1972
at Thomas Lord's bar
on Union Street
in San Francisco.
Each time,
he was already drunk:
this is what
the literary life
means.
-mce

I found a ***** in pennies
In search for a dime

Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem

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 ******* at
11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30,
I know I'm right

We Stopped At Perfect Days**

We stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something--

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 harpsichord.
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+!

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace**

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

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.

he read Brautigan
and thus would say all this is juvenile
and not real
he was real in a ***** brown sweater he wore
every day I knew him that smelled like menthols
and sweat and dope (he called it dope
sometimes because Bukowski did and he
read Bukowski too)

of course
he was real in his Catholic school
sports coat and fresh face once
without the 5-day beard he took to
wearing as a ******* to the system and other
real things like that which he sang
about on his guitar with a hole
in the bottom

the one he found in a
second hand store just like he always dreamed
he would and they would make sweet sad
music (that high and lonesome sound)
together forever he wrote his
poems to the tune of its steel strings
when he would sit at home at night and get
high and lonesome too

and so would I
because he thought I was ugly but didn't know
how to say it so he let me tag along for a few years
and let me sing in my off key death rattle
and lent me Brautigan and Bukowski
so I could know what was real and not real
but I didn’t learn my lesson so well

now did I?

One day
Time will die
And love will bury it.

- Richard Brautigan

Spelling out a new human inventory
Thinkin’, I’m glad there are still folks round like that.
Whether I am like that and whether you are like that
Don’t seem much to matter.
It also doesn’t matter what you fill balloons with,
So long as it’s lighter than air,
Or so long as you’re sitting somewhere good and high up.

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.

I have emotions
that are like newspapers that
read themselves.

I go for days at a time
trapped in the want ads.

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.
- Richard Brautigan

Love Poem**  

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.

a trail of ink spills  
past lanterns & statues
on the bridge.
orange flares streak across
your glasses; it is true night now.
if truth is forgotten, who
will weave our amnesia?
not I, or you, nor the one
whose fiction we follow
into the forgotten works.

"I am here
and you are distant."

The essential sadness
of those words
seizes the heart
of loneliness.

Here/distant:
the kernel
of so much despair
and poetry.
- mce

To the many readers, I ******* with my poem about Bukowski.

I don't loathe Bukowski. My point is that he is a cult writer. His cult seems to be made up of people who are ignorant of other much better writers of his time. If they read the Beats (in particular Gary Snyder) or others like Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Wendell Berry and many others, they would see how poorly his writing stands up to comparison.

Bukowski's persona is what seems to attract people. He knew that and cultivated it. It was his meal ticket. The poor, drunken, uncouth, outsider, loser who was scorned by the literati of his time. In truth, he was a writer of pulp poetry. What he needed was a good editor. You could take all of his books of poems, cut out the rambling, self-serving, tedious, self-glorifying *******, and cut them down to maybe two books of decent poetry. His prose is better, but not that much.

Young people, lacking better poetry for comparison, are mainly attracted by this cult of personality. Young people are attracted to rebels, even bogus ones. He himself said he didn't write, he just typed. Some hero.

He portrays himself as a big, tough *** willing to fight the whole world. Actually, he was a fat drunk barely six feet tall. That's why I laughed at him when he threatened me. I was 20, just three weeks back from Vietnam. The thought of fighting an old drunk seemed pathetic to me. I could have easily killed him. Who goes to a poetry reading for that?

There was also his attitude toward women. I believe he really hated women. He saw them as receptacles for his *****, nothing more. He used his fame to **** a good many young admirers. He's not alone in having done that, but he was obsessive about it. Women were a perk, nothing more.

In the end, his cult status will remain, but he will never be taken seriously as a writer, because - by his own admission - he wasn't. There is much excellent poetry out there by better writers of his time. Do yourself a favor, read them, educate yourself. If you only read mediocre poetry, you'll only ever be a mediocre poet.

Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.

Please: Join in. Tell me why I am wrong or right.

Mike Essig

I wonder why poets are sad.
Is poetry salvation from misery?
Or is everyone sad?
And maybe we only notice it in the people who write:
Sylvia Plath.
Virginia Woolf.
Charlotte Mew.
So many.
Is poetry just cathartic?
Do people not write about happiness because it has no effect?
Or are they afraid of happiness?
Sara Teasdale.
Anne Sexton.
Richard Brautigan.
Why so many?
Does writing poetry cause sadness?
Because one must reflect on misery to create emotive poems?
Or do sad people write poetry as a form of release?
Humans are addicted to sadness-
Are poets more so?
Are poets the most emotionally intelligent of humanity?
Or are they merely able to describe them?

Us readers feed off the misery of them.
Our creative fuel originates from the pain of poets.

I wonder why poets are sad.

For a poet
they are
necessary angels.

Poems do not
leap complete
from the head
like Zeus'
Children.

They are built
like cathedrals,
apprentice
and master,
practicing craft,
keen-eyed
over centuries.

Mine are the poets
I have read,
studied, dissected
and read again
and again
over 40 years.

Gary Snyder,
Richard Brautigan,
Leonard Cohen,
Wendell Berry,
Jim Harrison
and far too many more,
but just as important,
to name.

Eventually,
from their voices
came my voice.

Make your own list,
invite them over.
They will never tire
of teaching you.

If you are diligent
and listen closely,
you will learn
the craft
and sing in the voice
you belong to.

Hard work, learning,
practice and devotion:

all it takes to be a poet.
   ~mce

Some words
in proper combination
and just-so order
contain light
but only light for certain eyes
and maybe only at certain times
light like no other
light for parents
whose children scream
or fall silent
light for sisters
who have lost sisters
light for the desperate and lonely
light for men drowning drink by drink
for the girl not taken to the dance
and the boy lacking courage
to ask her
light for the surgeon who failed
light for the bored housewife
contemplating escape
light for the third child
of a forgotten family
seeking shelter
in a dead city

Light for the wounded of the earth
and the lost

Some words are holy
though you are unlikely to find them in scripture

Some words staunch the bleeding

Sometimes these words
are lightning
sometimes thunder
sometimes a breeze across the ages

And I have lived my life for these words
in their pursuit and service

Come Hemingway
Come Faulkner
Come Hannah
Come Bukowski
Come Caldwell
Come Carver
Come Lee

Come the unknown genius who knows the mysteries of my heart

Come you thick Russians
Come Borges
Come Bradbury
Come Brautigan
Come Welty
Come Brown

Come light
Come, always, light

Some words
in proper combination
can save your soul
can teach you its pits and textures

And we are all ****** and bleeding and words are what hope is made from

And some words
are what remain of heaven
when angels give way
and sometimes
they are enough