Michael Palmer - Untitled October 2002

Here’s a poem from a previous October that rhymes with how I’m feeling looking out my window at the street this month. Here’s to that dog, that ever present dog, the one that barks. The one who looks so like us.


Michael Palmer
Untitled (October 2002)



Eva Braun advised me in a dream
to always be kind to dogs.

So I gazed at the world
with fresh eyes, the rust

on the apple, the sliding sun,
our hard-won freedoms here at home.

Then a famous physicist proudly proclaimed
that this century would be no less

exciting than the last—
not a dream. So I set a match

to my Obras Completas, all thirteen pages,
that sad house of paper,

and let loose the finch from its cage.
Next a woman in red, not undressing, said,

Stop playing the flaming fool.
But how exactly is that done?

So I summoned my dog,
name of Bob, gnarly dog,

tossed him a glabrous bone,
told him he was not alone.