HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE WAS AN ANGEL

Richard Brautigan was a cool guy. He wrote a book called Trout Fishing in America and it's weird!

"I remember with particular amusement, people with three-cornered hats fishing in the dawn."

THE MAYOR OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

     The disguise was perfect.

     Nobody ever saw him, except, of course, the victims. They saw him.

     Who would have expected?

     He wore a costume of trout fishing in America. He wore mountains on his elbows and bluejays on the collar of his shirt. Deep water flowed through the lilies that were entwined about his shoelaces. A bullfrog kept croaking in his watch pocket and the air was filled with the sweet smell of ripe blackberry bushes.

     He wore trout fishing in America as a costume to hide his own appearance from the world while he performed his deeds of murder in the night.

     Who would have expected?

     Nobody!

     Scotland Yard?

     (Pouf !)

     They were always a hundred miles away, wearing halibut-stalker hats, looking under the dust.

     Nobody ever found out.

     O, now he's the Mayor of the Twentieth Century! A razor, a knife and a ukelele are his favorite instruments.

     Of course, it would have to be a ukelele. Nobody else would have thought of it, pulled like a plow through the intestines.

ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
  (right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
  (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.