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
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Who is to say
that the House of Tongues is not that place
where rats swarm around your feet
under blooming sofas
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The order of islands here
If you take it

will I give it back
at two o'clock
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In the Empire of Light
the water's completely dry

floating on a surface of itself
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But we have painted over the chalky folds,
the snow- and smoke-folds, so carefully,
so deftly that many (Did you bet
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What of that wolfhound at full stride?
What of the woman in technical dress
and the amber eye that serves as feral guide
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Then El Presidente,
uncoiling his tongue,

"You cannot stop time
but you can smash all the clocks."
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Hello Gozo, here we are,
the spinning world, has

it come this far?
Hammering things, speeching them
...