Brautigan in Tokyo

Photograph of Richard Brautigan

June 30, June 30

1942"
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
twenty-six years old, dead
and homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka,
his coffin travels
like the fingers
of Beethoven
over a glass
of wine.

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
a legend of my childhood, dead,
they send him back
to Tacoma.
At night his coffin
travels like the birds
that fly beneath the sea,
never touching the sky.

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
take his heart
for a lover
and take his death
for a bed,
and send him homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka
to bury him
where I was born.

Japanese Model
Tall, slender
dressed in black
perfect features
Egyptianesque

She is the shadow
of another planet
being photographed
in a totally white room

Her face never changes
her page-boy hair
looks as if it were cut
from black surgical jade

Her lips are so red
they make blood
seem dull, a
useless pastime

Tokyo
May ?, 1976

Romance
I just spent fifteen seconds
staring at a Japanese fly:
my first.

He was standing on a red brick
in the Mitsui Building Plaza,
enjoying the sun.

He didnt care that I was looking at him.
He was cleaning his face. Perhaps he had
a date with a beautiful
lady fly, his bride to be
or maybe just good friends
to have lunch a little later
in Mitsui Plaza
at noon.

Tokyo
May 17 or 18, 1976


Dreams Are like the [the]
Dreams are like the [the]
wind. They blow by. The
small ones are breezes,
but they go by, too.

Tokyo
May 20 or 26, 1976

Strawberry Haiku
*****
*******
The twelve red berries

Tokyo
May 22, 1976

A Short Study in Gone

When dreams wake
life ends.
Then dreams are gone.
Life is gone.

Tokyo
May 26, 1976

A Study in Roads
All the possibilities of life,
all roads led here.

I was never going anyplace else,
41 years of life:

Tacoma, Washington
Great Falls, Montana
Oaxaca, Mexico
London, England
Bee Caves, Texas
Victoria, British Columbia
Key West, Florida
San Francisco, California
Boulder, Colorado

all led here:

Having a drink by myself
in a bar in Tokyo before
lunch,
wishing there was somebody to talk
to.

Tokyo
May 28, 1976


Floating Chandeliers
Sand is crystal
like the soul.
The wind blows
it away.

Tokyo
May 28, 1976

Japanese Women
If there are any unattractive
Japanese women
they must drown them at birth

Tokyo
May 28, 1976

Sunglasses Worn at Night in Japan
A Japanese woman
age: 28

lives seeing darkness
from eyes

that should see light
at night.

Tokyo
May 30, 1976

Japanese Pop Music Concert
Dont ever ever forget
the flowers
that were rejected, made
fools of.

A very shy girl gives the
budding boy pop star a bouquet
of beautiful
flowers

between songs. What courage
it took for her to walk up to
the stage and hand him the flowers.

He puts them garbage-like down
on the floor. They lie there.
She returns to her seat and watches
her flowers lying there.
Then she cant take it any longer.

She flees.
She is gone
but the music
plays on.

I promise.
You promise, too

Tokyo
May 31, 1976

Chainsaw
A beautiful Japanese woman
/ age 42
the energy that separates
spring form summer

(depending on June)
20 or 21
-so they say-

Her voice singing sounds
just like an angelic chainsaw
cutting through
honey.

Tokyo
June 1, 1976

Day for Night
The cab takes me home
through the Tokyo dawn.
I have been awake all night.
I will be asleep before the sun
rises.
I will sleep all day.
The cab is a pillow,
the streets are blankets,
the dawn is my bed.
The cab rests my head.
Im on my way to dreams.

Tokyo
June 1, 1976

The Alps
One word

waiting

leads to an
avalanche
of other words

if you are

waiting

for a woman

Tokyo
June 1, 1976

A Young Japanese Woman
Playing a Grand Piano in a
Very Fancy Cocktail Lounge
Everything shines like black jade:

The piano (invented
Her long hair (severe
Her obvious disinterest (in the music
she is playing.

Her mind, distant from her fingers,
is a million miles away shining

like black
jade

Tokyo
June 1, 1976

Worms
The distances of loneliness
make the fourth dimension
seem like three hungry crows
looking at a worm in a famine.

Tokyo
June 1, 1976

Things to Do on a Boring Tokyo Night in a Hotel
1. Have dinner by yourself.
Thats always a lot of fun.

2. Wander aimlessly around the hotel.
This is a huge hotel, so theres lots of space
to wander aimlessly around.

3. Go up and down the elevator for no reason
at all.
The people going up are going to their rooms.
Im not.
Those going down are going out.
Im not.
4. I seriously think about the house phone
and calling my room 3003 and letting it ring
for a very long time. Then wondering where
Im at and when I will return. Should I leave
a message at the desk saying that when I return
I should call myself?

Tokyo
June 1, 1976

Travelling Toward Osaka on the
Freeway from Tokyo
I look out the car window
at 100 kilometers an hour
(62 miles)
and see a man peddling
a bicycle very carefully
down a narrow path between
rice paddies.
Hes gone in a few seconds.
I have only his memory now.
He has been changed into
a 100 kilometer-an-hour
memory ink rubbing.

Hamamatsu
June 7, 1976

Eternal Lag
Before flying to Japan
I was worried about jet lag.

"My" airplane would leave
San Francisco at 1 P.M.
Wednesday
and 10 hours and 45 minutes later
would land in Tokyo at 4 P.M.
the next day:
Thursday.

I was worried about that,
forgetting that because I suffer
from severe insomnia I have
eternal jet lag.

Tokyo
June 9, 1976

The Past Cannot Be Returned
The umbilical cord
cannot be refastened
and life flow through it
again.

Our tears never totally
dry.

Our first kiss is now a ghost,
haunting our mouths as they
fade toward
oblivion.

Tokyo
June 19, 1976
with a few words
added in Montana
July 12, 1976

Two Women
/1

Travelling along
a freeway in Tokyo
I saw a womans face
reflecting back to us
from a small circular mirror
on the passenger side
of the car in front of us.
The car had a regular
rearview mirror in the center
of the front window.

I wonder what the
circular mirror was doing
on the passenger side of the car.
Her face was in it. She was directly
in front of us. She had a beautiful
face, floating in an
unreal mirror on a Tokyo
freeway.

Her face stayed there for a while
and then floated off
forever in the changing traffic.

/2

She moves like a ghost.
She is not alive any more.
She must be in her late sixties.
She is short and squat
like a Japanese stereotype.

She takes care of the lobby
of the hotel. She empties
the ashtrays. She dusts
and mops things. She moves
like a ghost. She has no human
expression.

A few days ago I was standing
beside three Japanese businessmen
peeing in the lavatory.
We each had our own urinal.
She walked in like a ghost and started
mopping the toilet floor around us.
She was totally unaware of us,
standing there urinating.
She was truly a ghost
and we were suddenly ghost pee-ers
as she mopped on
by.

Tokyo
June 21, 1976


Love
The water
in the river
flows over
and under itself.

It knows
what to do,
flowing on.

The bed never
touches bottom

Tokyo
June 28, 1976



Land of the Rising Sun
sayonara

Flying from Japanese night,
we left Haneda Airport in Tokyo
four hours ago at 9:30 P.M.
June 30th
and now we are flying into the sunrise
over the Pacific that is on its way
to Japan
where darkness lies upon the land
and the sun is hours away.
I greet the sunrise of July 1st
for my Japanese friends,
wishing them a pleasant day.
The sun is on its
way.

Tokyo
June 30th again
above the Pacific
across the international date line
heading home to America
with part of my heart
in Japan

Richard Brautigan