Michael Palmer Poems

Write this. We have burned all their villages

Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them
...

He painted the mountain over and over again
from his place in the cave, agape
at the light, its absence, the mantled
skull with blue-tinted hollows, wren-
...

It is scribbled along the body
Impossible even to say a word

An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground
...

Who is to say
that the House of Tongues is not that place
where rats swarm around your feet
under blooming sofas
...

The order of islands here
If you take it

will I give it back
at two o'clock
...

In the Empire of Light
the water's completely dry

floating on a surface of itself
...

(for Sarah when she's older)
The round and sad-eyed man puffed cigars as if
he were alive. Gillyflowers
to the left of the apple, purple bells to the right
...

Now I see them sitting me before a mirror.
There's noise and laughter. Somebody
mentions that hearing is silver
...

To learn what to say to unlearn
The order of islands here

The number of fingers
made from ideas
...

At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. Then
it goes back into my throat drying my throat.

Miracle of Sicilian weeping. Bleeds in one of his many
dreams.
...