Richard Brautigan: GROUP PORTRAIT WITHOUT THE LIONS available light

MAXINE
Part 1

No party is
complete
without you.

Every body
knows that.

The party
starts when
you arrive.

ROBOT
Part 2

Robot likes to sleep
through long lazy summer afternoons.
So do his friends
with the sun reflecting
off them like tin cans.

FRED BOUGHT A PAIR OF ICE SKATES
Part 3

Fred bought a pair of ice skates.
That was twenty years ago.
He still has them but he doesn’t
skate any more.

CALVIN LISTENS TO STARFISH
Part 4

Calvin listens to starfish.
He listens to them very carefully,
lying in the tide pools,
soaking wet
with his clothes on,
but is he really listening to them?

LIZ LOOKS AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR
Part 5

She’s very depressed.
Nothing went right today ,
so she doesn’t believe that
she’s there.

DORIS
Part 6

This morning there
was a knock at the
door. You answered it.
The mailman was standing
there. He slapped your
face.

GINGER
Part 7

She’s glad
that Bill
likes her.

VICKY SLEEPS WITH DEAD PEOPLE
Part 8

Vicky sleeps out in the woods
with dead people but she always
combs her hair in the morning.
Her parents don’t understand her.
And she doesn’t understand them.
They try. She tries. The dead
people try. They will all work
it out someday.

BETTY MAKES WONDERFUL WAFFLES
Part 9

Every body agrees to
that.

CLAUDIA / 1923–1970
Part 10

Her mother still living
is 65.

Her grandmother still living
is 86.

“People in my family
live for a long time!”
—Claudia always used to say ,
laughing.

What a surprise
she had.

WALTER
Part 11

Every night: just before he falls asleep
Walter coughs. Having never slept
in a room with another person, he thinks
that every body coughs just before they fall
asleep. That’s his world.

MORGAN
Part 12

Morgan finished second in his high school
presidential election in 1931.
He never recovered from it.
After that he wasn’t interested in people
any more. They couldn’t be counted on.
He has been working as a night watchman
at the same factory for over thirty years now.
At midnight he walks among the silent equipment.
He pretends they are his friends and they like
him very much. They would have voted
for him.

MOLLY
Part 13

Molly is afraid to go into the attic.
She’s afraid if she went up there
and saw the box of clothes that she
used to wear twenty years ago,
she would start crying.

“AH, GREAT EXPECTATIONS!”
Part 14

Sam likes to say , “Ah, great expectations”
at least three or four times in every
conversation. He is twelve years old.
Nobody knows what he is talking about when
he says it. Sometimes it makes people
feel uncomfortable.

Richard Brautigan: Good Luck Captain Martin

GOOD LUCK, CAPTAIN MARTIN
Part 1

We all waved as his boat
sailed away. The old people
cried. The children were
restless.

PEOPLE ARE CONSTANTLY
MAKING ENTRANCES
Part 2

People are constantly making entrances
into entrances by entering themselves
through houses, bowling alley s and planetariums,
restaurants, movie theaters, offices, factories,
mountains and Laundromats, etc., entrances
into entrances, etc., accompanied by themselves.

Captain Martin watches
the waves go by.

That’s his entrance
into himself.

THE BOTTLE
Part 3

A child stands motionless.
He holds a bottle in his hands.
There’s a ship in the bottle.
He stares at it with eyes
that do not blink.
He wonders where a tiny ship
can sail to if it is held
prisoner in a bottle.
Fifty years from now you will
find out, Captain Martin,
for the sea (large as it is)
is only another bottle.

SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS
Part 4

Small craft warnings mean nothing to Captain Martin
. . . nothing . . .
like somebody deliberately choosing not to look
out the window, so the window remains empty.

FAMOUS PEOPLE AND THEIR FRIENDS
Part 5

Famous people and their friends
get to go to places where you
can only imagine what they are doing.

I was at a party two nights ago*
and a famous person was there.

When he left five or six people left
with him.

There was a great deal of excitement
at their departure as there alway s is.
The room was filled with the breathing
of searchlights and chocolate ice cream
cones and private jet airplanes.

Every body wanted to go with them
to mysterious places like film studio
palaces in Atlantis and dance halls
on the dark side of undiscovered moons
where every thing happens and y ou are
a very important part of it
and you are there.

*Where is Captain Martin?


CAROL THE WAITRESS
REMEMBERS STILL
Part 6

Yes, that’s the table where Captain Martin
sat. Yes, that one. By the window.
He would sit there alone for hours at
a time, staring out at the sea. He always
had one plain doughnut and a cup of coffee.
I don’t know what he was looking at.

PUT THE COFFEE ON, BUBBLES,
I’M COMING HOME
Part 7

Everybody’s coming home
except Captain Martin.