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rilke’s separation the unusual rilke and the usual rilke are stuck in their sameness the unusual rilke and the usual rilke would have stayed together the unusual rilke and the usual rilke would have to separate the unusual rilke and the usual rilke both knew it rilke’s breath 1 rilke breathed the air the good air 2 rilke breathed without pause rilke’s nose entrance and exit of the air it knew stench scent aroma handkerchief sniffles rilke’s name rilke said he when asked for his name rilke one said when asked for his name or never heard of him rilke, unrhymed rilke said he then he said cuke then quietly cloud rilke’s boat taking a stroke sitting there sitting there taking a stroke rilke’s drawer 1 he pulled out the drawer he put something in something was in there he pushed in the drawer 2 he pulled out the drawer something was in there he took something out he pushed in the drawer 3 he pulled out the drawer nothing was in there he put nothing in he left the drawer open rilke’s chest 1 he lifted up the lid he put something in something was in there he shut the lid 2 he lifted up the lid something was in there he took something out he shut the lid 3 he lifted up the lid nothing was in there he put nothing in he left the chest open rilke’s shoe rilke’s shoe was one of two each shoe of rilke’s was one of two rilke in shoes always wore two calf to calf stood rilke jutting up from his shoes rilke’s window he opened the window stuck his head out pulled his head in closed it he opened the window morning air rushed in evening air night air he closed the window rilke’s glass rilke took a glass filled it with water lifted it to his mouth drank rilke’s hand rilke’s hand and rilke’s hand hanging by his side rilke’s hand in rilke’s hand the one in the other rilke’s hand in the hand of another greeting him rilke’s hand at rilke’s mouth sensing it there rilke in conversation someone asks rilke answers rilke asks someone answers neither is very happy about it neither is very sad rilke’s reward this now was his reward nobody was certain what he meant rilke wept rilke’s contradiction and yet small and white and yet big and black and yet small and black and yet big and white and yet small and big and yet white and black and yet small and black and yet big and small and black rilke’s eyes rilke opened his eyes everything was visible nothing was invisible rilke shut his eyes nothing was visible everything was invisible rilke opened his eyes nothing was invisible everything was visible rilke shut his eyes nothing was visible nothing was invisible rilke’s weight rilke is being relieved of his weight so roughly does the earth raise her son Translated from the German

This is what it's like: you sit in the white room singular, knees together arms over your head to break the noise from the radio that is false as a drunk's promise to loan you his car next week. Of course next week never comes lies continue, nobody disbelieves them but some are ready for the real story the young man involved breaks her tired heart it's the usual: spilt liquor, broken dishes, wrecked cars.

Men drop so fast, ere Life’s mid Stage we tread, Few know so many Friends alive as dead; Yet, as immortal, in our uphill Chace, We press coy Fortune with unslacken’d Pace; Our ardent Labours for the Toy we seek, Join Night to Day, and Sunday to the Week, Our very Joys are anxious, and expire Between Satiety and fierce Desire.

I swallow a pill but there is no cure A city map won’t get me where I want to go Scaling the scaffold, mindless of the mall, unaware of driveways where housewives dodge the wrecking ball, I crawl outside these vacant blues and into the contours of your eyes

Mrs. Coley’s three-flat brick Isn’t here any more. All done with seeing her fat little form Burst out of the basement door; And with seeing her African son-in-law (Rightful heir to the throne) With his great white strong cold squares of teeth And his little eyes of stone; And with seeing the squat fat daughter Letting in the men When majesty has gone for the day— And letting them out again.

1 Efficient as Fate, each eye a storm trooper, the cleaners wipe my smile with Comet fingers and tear the plaster off my suicide note. They learn everything from the walls’ eloquent tongues. Now, quick as genocide, they powder my ghost for a cinnamon jar. They burn my posters (India and Heaven in flames), whitewash my voicestains, make everything new, clean as Death. 2 When the landlord brings new tenants, even Memory is a stranger. The woman, her womb solid with the future, instructs her husband’s eyes to clutch insurance policies. They ignore my love affair with the furniture, the corner table that memorized my crossed-out lines. Oh, she’s beautiful, a hard-nippled Madonna. The landlord gives them my autopsy; they sign the lease. The room is beating with bottled infants, and I’ve stopped beating. I’m moving out holding tombstones in my hands.

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation. He went flying down the river in his boat with his video camera to his eye, making a moving picture of the moving river upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly toward the end of his vacation. He showed his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, preserving it forever: the river, the trees, the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat behind which he stood with his camera preserving his vacation even as he was having it so that after he had had it he would still have it. It would be there. With a flick of a switch, there it would be. But he would not be in it. He would never be in it.

The house is so quiet now The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet, Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth Grinning into the floor, maybe at my Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth. I’ve lived this way long enough, But when my old woman died her soul Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust And the woolen mice, and begin to howl Because there is old filth everywhere She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair. I know now how life is cheap as dirt, And still the hungry, angry heart Hangs on and howls, biting at air.

A vagabond is a newcomer in a heap of trouble. He’s an eyeball at a peephole that should be electrocuted. He’s a leper in a textile mill and likely to be beheaded, I mean, given a liverwurst sandwich on the break by the brook where the loaves are sliced. But he oughtn’t meddle with the powder puffs on the golf links— they have their own goats to tame, dirigibles to situate. He can act like an imbecile if the climate is propitious, a magnate of kidnap paradising around the oily depot, or a speck from a distant nebula wishing to purchase a certain skyscraper .... Well, if it’s permitted, then let’s regulate him, let’s testify against his thimble, and moderate his gloves before they sew an apron. The local minister is thinking of moving to Holland, exchanging his old ballads for some lingerie. “Zatso!” says the vagabond. Homeless, like wheat that tattletales on the sermon, like wages swigged. “Zatso, zatso, zatso!” cries the vagabond. The minister reels under the weight of his thumbs, the vagabond seems to have jutted into his kernel, disturbed his terminal core. Slowly, and with trifling dignity, the minister removes from his lapel his last campaign button: Don’t Mess with Raymond, New Hampshire.

Pitiful brother—the dreadful nights I owed him! "I've got no real involvement in the business. I toyed with his weakness, so—it was my fault—we wound up back in exile and enslavement." He saw me as a loser, a weird child; he added his own prods. I answered my satanic doctor, jeering, and made it out the window. All down a landscape crossed by unheard-of music, I spun my dreams of a nighttime wealth to come. After that more or less healthy pastime, I'd stretch out on a pallet. And almost every night, soon as I slept, my poor brother would rise—dry mouth and bulging eyes (the way he'd dreamt himself!)—and haul me into the room, howling his stupid dream. Truly convinced, I'd vowed to take him back to his primal state—child of the sun—and so we wandered, fed on wine from the caves and gypsy bread, me bound to find the place itself and the code.