Tomb of Baudelaire

By Michael Palmer






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.

He announced that he was about to give a free ‘poetry
suicide’—a free ‘poultry recital.’ Everyone be-
lieved him.

_______


At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. A
voyage will hide itself in your heart, bleeding from the
left eye, the organ of sight. A voyage will hide
itself in someone unfamiliar like a heap of salt.
Mingled with the ordinary blueness would be waves of
foreheads shaped like cups.

She thought he could hear her.

To dance is to live.

_______


Calm and order of an autumn sky. At the end of a
bridge is the state of prison, voyage of eye and
throat full of the fear of night. Then all of winter
will enter like a red block, or like the calm and
order of an autumn sky.

139. Change of form. 139a. Change of colour.

122. Pitfalls. 136. Covers with a lid.

_______


It doesn’t matter what you say but how you say it. By
pronouncing the words they become different. It comes
from above (pointing to his head). Then it goes all
sorts of ways down. Then it goes back into my throat
drying my throat.

Tonight it’s a certainty that the President will resign
(‘a virtual certainty’).

After the party they drove back to her house where she
sucked him off while he spoke to someone on the tele-
phone about the possibility of a job.

_______


Plato’s warning against telling stories, mython
tina diēgeisthai.

Or the certainty of the ten fingers and ten feet. You
laugh a lot because during the first phase someone
who has taken hasheesh is ‘gifted with a marvelous
comic sense’ which contains its own opposite like the
end of a bridge.

The verb divides us evenly into two objects.

_______


A pretty girl is like a melody.

You must be more confident now that you’ve won the
prize.

And if you listen. And if you listen hearing, if you
listen thought. I’ve been thinking about the whole
trouble about how I got lost in the woods. A man my-
self is lying in a house. Or alone among myself answering
a house. To be calm and voluptuous conjuring a house.
To be eligible for the house. If you listen image, if you
listen house. Ordinary calm and order of the house.
Coffee comma parentheses. Coffee parentheses order.
Coffee parentheses coffee. 131. Untrodden. 136. Covers
with a lid.

_______


137. Combination. 138. Arrangement.

Plato’s admonition against telling stories about
being, mython tina diēgeisthai.

Dear Apollinaire: We drove 500 miles to attend the
wedding of a relative. Our son was to be in the
bridal party. The wedding was to take place at 4 p.m.
on Saturday. On the Friday night before the wedding,
the bride and groom got into a fight and the groom
broke the bride’s nose so the wedding was canceled.
What do we do with the wedding gift we were
going to take to the church? Who pays for the
tuxedo our son rented for the occasion and never got
to wear? And how about the motel bill?