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
...

Chimera, sightless stars have colonized the meadow

Chimera, helicopters are birthing their young into the waves

Language of the waves, Chimera, language
...

From the Mercury Fountain, Mahmoud,
flow the tenses: past, present, future;
future-past, first and last, daily acts;
desires; angels of slaughter and syntax;
...

So, Alyosha, maybe it is true
that we live in perhaps.
Perhaps the earth . . . perhaps the sky . . .
chemical winds, auroras, tides,
...

From the Mercury Fountain, Mahmoud,
spills a stream
echo of things
sun to stone speaking
...