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

1.
Peking you drink a drink it
is pale yellow the sun is
setting China the brain is
too busy for you the pale
yellow of a dusty city
the opera of huge casts
the roll call as the world
changes

              in Brixton the houses
are of mud and wattles very
little glue called money


2.
places stick with the mind
daylight the cities where
being and careful is a
shared thing not Shanghai
black and white was Lily's
ideology pushnig around the
piece of pipe like free enter
prise tricky smoke flower
smiles as the ancients
gather light he had Custer
all over his mind


3. The Grand National
Whose horses are those
Woe the ball of the foot
And the golden pill in the
Shady grove what's a tiger
Lily a rug this part of
The world doesn't like the
Marx Bros the enemy is
Swify with his knowledge 
But useless with its use
How dyou pick a winner
Always where's base
A place thats snug & safe
The middle way is over
Tao no way Wow


4.
spaced out astronaut sends
his angel back there is gold
in the sky sun makes purple
in Brixton Chiang Ching writes
a new opera the Eagles play
tonight while the moderates
calculate a pinball of fantastic
scores from the red poppy earth is
familiar we finger our next door
neighbours history next week we
go to Nanking in a boat which
will never sink or sail


5.
Piet buys a china
teapot & paints it
in a picture with
pretzals & Robert
Redford comes home
temporarily we move
every year or so
Ted Berrigan lives
in New York City
now it is time to
turn on the tv the
news is on the radio
the weather is fine
for the finks in
Gotham City & every
where else I guess


6. The Fortune Cookie
when they first fried
duck it flew — tried —
in duck color, calling
to each other across the
estuary with a little
seaweed fried by the
sun the glare of eating
late at night is regularly
beyond what it means —
ours — who shot what it
quacked in the bath
when it was yellow


7. Sticky Fingers
on a warm day love's
fragrance of paradise
if not if only whose hands
when the fields are filled
with water clouds the clear
eye you ask who it is that
comes always stranger
spinning spider inside
her all the fumes of
you know not why


8. 
are you puttin knock out
drops in my tea my I dont
feel too good & am replen
ished in the foothills are
green it may be the tea it
self now tell me all about
it giving me those blue pills
I look very dopy and it just
reminded me of General Yen
and the first time you
came for tea was the last
I saw of you please write
soon the grasses have flow
ered twice since your leave
 

9. Dialectic
'Contradiction is present in the
process of development of all things'
the field is tilled oxen sedately
move through clean lines of sexuality
O touch if he could draw he'd be the
Kid & a populist to boot not too far
to the left the sun orange sets. Each
time he gets into town slowly he makes
enemies win friends with a smile its
never what you say sometimes you say
nothing or they simply (simply?) dont
like the face its all in the transition
from one place to another although
the familiar is just as dangerous.
Mao is a long way away. Who is next door?


10. 
I am not here to speak of
these things he watches the
television
               the disappearance
of worlds out of the thicket
and bamboo they shine, their
heads       dont play the whiteman
the whiteman in Africa playing his
part, exactly, and destiny. This
they have learnt, no more warlord
ism, hide and seek, court gossip
not prostitute on a sky in the
pie bird the washed out bad
medicine man arrives Kissinger
the man with the bad dope deal


11. The Giant Panda Was Born To Love
small world, the mind is a
telegraph, see! its pink
pigeon fly (it is 1928 hunger
and cold are creating great
unrest amongst the enemy I
havent quite been born my
mind is more than astral I
go I come huge carp are to be
had from the river I know not
the year of my birth) what's
out there I have no message for
you he said it is tied to my
leg
     tell us another one do