Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt Quotes

“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 like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”
― Richard Brautigan, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

“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’t
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.

Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I don’t want to see you end up that way
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make
bridges out of crippled birds.

Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.”
― Richard Brautigan, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

“There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind.
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.

I’d like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.”
― Richard Brautigan, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

“In her sweetness where she folds my wounds
there is a flower that bees cannot afford.
It is too rich for them and would change
their wings into operas and all their honey
into the lonesome maps of a nonexistent
California county.
When she has finished folding all my wounds
she puts them away in a dresser where the
drawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle.
Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that her
affections 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)”
― Richard Brautigan, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

“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 gone
and yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils,
then paler to become until my body
is all my own and what that ever got me.”
― Richard Brautigan, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt