Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Our time of crisis within the political and ideological systems, as well as within the grand western humanistic tradition, is, perhaps, only the
outermost symptomaticological stratum of the deeper collapse of our
outdated anthropology. This crisis (like a crisis in any structure) is
revealed in the divisive hierarchy of interrelated elements and the
preponderance of reflexo-dramaturgical origins of the informato-instructional.
        Here are some real life examples

     1
My good leg
Having stuffed itself
In the morning
On curds
While poorest me
Goes hungry
Healthy and youthful
Takes off for a walk
Where the hell are you going
I can’t do a thing without you! –
Where are you off
Today’s youth gives a damn about nothing

      2
Hi! – it says to me –
Hi – and who are you, looking like a little mouse! –
I, I, I’m your scrotum! –
No way, in such a short skirt
I didn’t recognize you, you little bastard!
So what’s up? –
What’s up is that I want to live with you! –
Is that so – you want to live with me!
No, no, it’s not like that – like man and wife
Live with you – Ah, my God
I understand nothing about present day
                      sexual perversions.

      3
Not wind wailing from the heights
Of the peak of Kremlin chimes
But like the will of a necromancer –
My liver
I ask: Is it you
My sweet little one? –
It is I! – I never doubted it for a minute
It replies – and I embracing
It on the spot
With the two-headed eagle
Sitting!
Wretched! My deceiver!

     4
With my toenail I try
To ascertain:
– What you feed upon
Old friend? –
– So you, my poor little one, are trying
To ascertain – but I am feeding upon
You! –
– But how is that? I don’t understand! –
– Look: you continually grow smaller
Little by little
And likewise each year
Your health fades as well –
All a result of my consumption of you

     5
Then the blood, which often departs for a bit of money on the side, and without which you’d feel even queasier

     6
Next, a drawn out evening conversation with the shinbone, which, it turns out, is the sole one that understands and even feels compassion, but there’s really nothing it can do on its own

     7
Then something basically cellular – even on a molecular level

     8
Next is something foreign to the body that freely, and with impunity, ferments inside of me, some sort of cancerous cell, but in this regime of absolute separatism reigning all around, itself feels not a bit of its foreignness

     9
Then comes a discussion with the soul. I reproach it for irresponsibility, for letting everything get out of hand, but really, it’s all the same
– domestic ruler and guardian of the throne
      It answers unexpectedly:
      – What do you want from me, really
Life to me, you know, is merely a crossing to a complete, a completely other region

     10
A senseless argument with the occipitalis about honour, dignity and all that is good and decent; especially as it appears before me in the guise of some oil-gas faction, in as much as it claims that it has much closer ties, and even an emotional attachment to its ancient protogeologic relations.

      11
Then the nerves – well, they, you understand, became completely independent long ago, even with pretensions that they are a consummately self-separate anthropomorphousness, and generally, such immense pretensions.

      12
Next comes a meeting with the heel – but, there’s really nothing it can say

      13
A rest during a performance of trabecular bone – air, quiet, music, the firmament’s luminescence

      14
And then the head: well, we have no real differences; it’s completely on my side

      15
And then someone stopped by, but I can’t remember who

      16
OK – let’s pull it all together –
Various livers, heads, and teats
I appeal to them all:
– Let’s come together, brothers
We can make it at least till morning! –
– Come on! Let’s go! it’s time
There are things to do