Home > Work > Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt
1 " 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 likea mechanical deer in my caresses,and I ached in the metal silenceof her dreams. "
― Richard Brautigan , Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt
2 " There is darkness on your lanternand pumpkins in your wind.and Oh, they clutter up your mindwith their senseless bumpingwhile your heart is like a sea gullfrozen into a long distance telephone call.I’d like to take the darknessoff your lantern and change the pumpkinsinto sky fields of ordered cometsand disconnect the refrigerator telephonethat frightens your heart into standingstill. "
3 " Love’s Not The Way To Treat a Friend"Love’s not the way to treat a friend.I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’twant to see your eyes forgottenon a rainy day, lost in the endless purseof those who can remember nothing.Love’s not the way to treat a friend.I don’t want to see you end up that waywith your body being poured like woundedmarble into the architecture of those who makebridges out of crippled birds.Love’s not the way to treat a friend.There are so many better things for youthan to see your feelings soldas magic lanterns to somebody whose bodycasts no light. "
4 " As the Bruises Fade, the Lightning Aches” As the bruises fade, the lightning aches.Last week, making love, you bit me.Now the blue and dark have goneand yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils,then paler to become until my bodyis all my own and what that ever got me. "
5 " In her sweetness where she folds my woundsthere is a flower that bees cannot afford.It is too rich for them and would changetheir wings into operas and all their honeyinto the lonesome maps of a nonexistentCalifornia county.When she has finished folding all my woundsshe puts them away in a dresser where thedrawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle.Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that heraffections always be constant to my questions.— Richard Brautigan, “In Her Sweetness Where She Folds My Wounds,” Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt. (Delacorte Pr January 1979) "