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

In the air
strapped into an aisle seat
no idea how I got here
still less where I’m going
(hope I locked the door)
dazzling lights stewards with television
screens on their heads transmitting
plastic grins offering jasmine tea
bloody Marys or whisky macs
blue and white skies and the porthole
has a wire window box (flowers from home -
I’d know those greenfly anywhere)
the man next to me has tobacco skin
greasy spots a Yasser Arafat scarf
wears an opal ring (I’ve got an opal ring)
while the one across the way is a ringer
for Kryton (what’s that hunk of sci-fi aluminium doing here?)
everyone’s talking and saying nothing ‘This
is your captain' comes over as static and a
toddler with a toy gun is striding up
and down as if he owns the world shooting
out random dragon flames making for
the cockpit with a demonic laugh and
the pilot crawls up the aisle tears streaming
down his face (why didn’t his mum give him
a hankie) screaming ‘He’s stolen my plane!’
and the universe rolls ---
                                     I open my mouth to
exclaim but it’s jammed with flying smoked
salmon shreds and before I have time
to choke the plane’s a shattered kaleidoscope
of metal and I free fall with it in wide elliptical
horizontals (so that’s how it feels
to be part of a rainbow-coloured raspberry
whirl) and I twirl
                       twirl
                           over and over
towards a receding end
                                end
                                end
knowing this time
I’ll remember
every minute.