Physics with Rilke: The Life of Mary

A silenced angel is quieter than a mooing cow

It, whatever it is, has never been like this before

The baby wheezing in the Margaritaville parking garage

Behind a curtain inside you, a light from above eclipses feeling

From a parapet a broader parapet can stream 

Structures can be built inside you with stones

too heavy to be lifted out of yourself, by yourself

Destiny is higher than a hall

Destiny is heavier than a house

The alcohol and the satellite compete for the blame

Between eye and whatever is beautiful to the eye

alignment is possible

The circle of children sang for no surprises

They sang for a blue result

They sang the song from Moana

The future shines in the upturned faces of shepherds 

The earthly streams through the shepherd

the way ecstasy streams through an angel

A totally new thing can occur to make the world

Move in bigger circles

God comes through a person into the world

Destiny can move in a straight line 

through all measurements 

and cross them out

But only one person’s destiny moves this way

A green horsefly crawled around on a hot motor

Another batted itself against the garage door

One can enrage the nearby objects

Just by passing through a place

A tree can bow

The night goes sometimes beyond itself

Saviors should be mined from the hard material of the mountains

Anguish can be complete

There is a threshold beyond which an agony is too large

for the heart to contain, so it, the agony, must stand

and it is capable of standing, outside the heart

One can heal without having to touch very hard

An angel can step so near 

He can disappear into your face

And from within the face can summon apostles

To come to dinner at a specific time and place

Being sad is not a crime

Once you know that

Love comes back

One who dies completely intact can be converted to pure angelic song

The myriad heavens can be completed 

Eyelash pattern

The big one

The light source

Once twenty-four years have elapsed, 

her empty chair becomes invisible to deities

The punctum is life’s Freudian slip

but she can’t give birth to the one 

she’s already given birth to

Brittany and the Frogs

Magic looms in me

Though I am not timid

I wasted my life teaching preschool

Wasted it by wish

Drinking as fast as I could

I wanted love

Standing in the deep stream watching mutant baby frogs

Smaller frogs at the public library

I thought future meant the end

It is impossible to prevent false confession

Even when it’s just yourself

I prayed to the search function

To the ranch style house

The deformed creatures of springtime wait months

To come out and stink 

Do you drink coffee

Do you want to come over for dinner Sunday night

Holy Grail by Jack Spicer can feed and clothe you

That’s what I was reading back then

Last time the cold weather failed to hold 

And the made-up words made sense

But animals are not the kind of magic I mean

Rilke’s weird novel is the kind I mean

The place where a quarry touches a junkyard is the kind

In the grocery store I ran into Corinne

What’s going to happen I asked her

Everyone I loved was a Virgo

Agatha Christie, Tolstoy, Fiona

Did I only love three people?

There were some Capricorns 

And the other Russian was a Scorpio 

And saw his father drowned by serfs 

Who had every right to murder him

Pouring his own vodka down his throat 

I longed to get to Texas to see the firmament

Which would make me better the way it does in stories

It gets so dark on the sad campus

Hermina died at age 10 in that light

Plants like caffeine

Crime lab personnel lie

The doll in the cartoon changed color multiple times

As she floated in the sewage

The “police” are trained to “read body language”

There were other Capricorns, weren’t there?

There were Jessa and Jamie and Shy and Christine

While the pop girls bring us to the end of hetero love forever

While the angels of hetero love try in vain to stay strong

Lifting non-stop on the dewy banks of Acheron

The only banks the dead are willing to share with the living

The show is over

The audience gets up

In the stories something shooting across the firmament

Fixes you or it is the black star

Pulling time back off the bone

Wishing you were home in your little threadbare dress

Barefoot in the bathhouse slime but now

Time is intact

Time is strange

And from the library to the Gala Fresh and back

Like a water-glider I go

The Third Talking Scroll

Courtney remember that day

in the hot brown water at

Brighton waist deep your moment

of weakness telling Jessa

you’d felt rage all summer you

believed in the other world

said you paid close attention

but you live in the same world

as those who don’t pay any

those who care only for their one

brief clumsy chance at pleasure

you said you sacrificed all

pleasure sacrificed every day

to listen for the message

carried on delicate waves

you said you don’t even know

what pleasure is the only

reason you want to know is

you fear there are messages

there so you’d turn pleasure in

to your work you said to your

friend in the water you knew

it was wrong to seek reward

for paying attention for

your sacrifice you told her

how weak your anger made you

feel you said I’m a hard worker

I’ve trained myself so if I

just knew what my life was for

I would act directly and

immediately you trailed

on said to your friend Jessa

poetry is the fine edge

she met you calmly with love

so you left the water shared

the hot dog wrapped in crispy 

sesame seeded dough on

a blue and red blanket you

let your skin burn then folded

the cloth walked into the heat

and rode the Cyclone that was

pleasure and she knew you were

scared not of the roller coast

er but of the pleasure of

how much you want to know but

the information does not

exist you aren’t going to 

know look already you are scared

someone else will beat you to

the knowing but I just told

you you don’t get to know by

working the hardest to know

I can’t lie to you I’m just

the lamb who brought this scroll it’s

the scroll that talks I don’t think

it can lie either but it

talks it’s what you hear you are

wondering how the scroll knows

there was no scroll at the beach

there was no lamb to hold it

guess what else this doesn’t mean

you get to stop you get no

permissions from the scrolls not

really it might sound that way

scrolls talk like people talking

while I’m here there is one thing

death isn’t something that hap

pens to you start from there

and work your way back as far

as you need but start with death