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Richard Brautigan Short Poems

Famous Short Richard Brautigan Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Richard Brautigan. A collection of the all-time best Richard Brautigan short poems


by Richard Brautigan
 The petals of the vagina unfold
like Christofer Columbus
taking off his shoes.

Is there anything more beautiful
than the bow of a ship
touching a new world?



by Richard Brautigan
 Forget love 
I want to die 
in your yellow hair

by Richard Brautigan
 I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored.

It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do.

Written January 24, 1967
while poet-in-residence at
the California Institute of 
Technology.

by Richard Brautigan
 A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?

by Richard Brautigan
 I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? "God-forsaken is beautiful, too."
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.



by Richard Brautigan
 I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my *****
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.

3 A.M.
January 15, 1967

by Richard Brautigan
 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+!

by Richard Brautigan
 At 1:30 in the morning a fart 
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on.

Please  Create an image from this poem
by Richard Brautigan
 Do you think of me 
as often 
as I think 
of you?

by Richard Brautigan
 The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my ***** and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.

by Richard Brautigan
 There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.

by Richard Brautigan
 A girl in a green mini-
skirt, not very pretty, walks
down the street.

A businessman stops, turns
to stare at her ass
that looks like a moldy
refrigerator.

There are now 200,000,000 people
in America.

by Richard Brautigan
 Beautiful, sobbing 
high-geared fucking 
and then to lie silently 
like deer tracks in the 
freshly-fallen snow beside 
the one you love. 
That's all.

by Richard Brautigan
  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.

by Richard Brautigan
 Yup.
A long lazy September look
in the mirror
say it's true.

I'm 31
and my nose is growing
old.

It starts about 1/2
an inch
below the bridge
and strolls geriatrically
down
for another inch or so:
stopping.

Fortunately, the rest
of the nose is comparatively
young.

I wonder if girls
will want me with an
old nose.

I can hear them now
the heartless bitches!

"He's cute
but his nose
is old."

by Richard Brautigan
 Forsaken, fucking in the cold, 
eating each other, lost 
runny noses, 
complaining all the time 
like so many 
people 
that we know

by Richard Brautigan
 There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn't been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this April morning,
and the birds are falling into the trees
like chess pieces into an unplayed game,
and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,
the postman walks very carefully because his cane
is made of glass.

by Richard Brautigan
 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.

by Richard Brautigan
 Just because
people love your mind, 
doesn't mean they 
have to have 
your body, 
too.

by Richard Brautigan
 Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

by Richard Brautigan
 I feel horrible. She doesn't 
love me and I wander around
like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.

by Richard Brautigan
 I sit here, an arch-villain of romance, 
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry 
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing 
I could do about it because I have to be free. 
Perhaps everything would have been different 
if you had stayed at the table or asked me 
to go out with you to look at the moon, 
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with 
her.

by Richard Brautigan
 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--

by Richard Brautigan
 This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard
Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown.

By accident, you put
Your money in my
Machine (#4)
By accident, I put
My money in another
Machine (#6)
On purpose, I put
Your clothes in the 
Empty machine full
Of water and no
Clothes

It was lonely.

by Richard Brautigan
 ZAP!
unlaid / 20 days

my sexual image
isn't worth a ****.

If I were dead
I couldn't attract
a female fly.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry