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

these estates are a state of mind,
where the first words learnt
amongst car alarms and barking dogs are

noa, I fuhkin’ carnt -- I gots a baybee in me airms...

where entertainment is an aluminium anti-vandal
painted play-park, or a stolen then burnt-out
Fiesta shell; where Jesus is only an option when
there are too many fucks or shits or cunts
in a sentence.

and sex is no longer an issue, it’s
a new pair of Nikes, a pierced belly-button,
hipsters and sling-backs, tattoos in Urdu; not a dog
that eats homework, but the 12am curfew and
how far you can stretch it, big sister endorsed
silicone implants

cuz yu noss famuss wivow tits.......

and for the 9year olds line-dancing
to Country&Saccharine pissing out of a stereo
in the middle of the street -- 5ft from a park,
for Christ’s sake -- the next logical step to maturity
is a blackcurrant Hooch on a wall in the streetlight,
screeching at escorts and blacked-out BMWs:

gohreny blo’ furrus gurls?

while father sucks the 21st of his 25 Royals
in between shifts, in front of the video or tv selection,
where the picket fence is swapped for a who’s who
of taxicabs ticking over quietly, awaiting the call-back;

Auntie shagglng-2-doors-down cuts hair
on setting #1 for 2quid a throw,
giving rise to a sub-culture of Aryan race children
who only say please when they want something.

and, at the age of 15 Tina’s just dropped
another one, so has dropped out of school,
calls this one something exotic, something
unusual, something she read about
on the tele, like

Cerebral Palsy

but she gets laughed about
down at the Cons club,
because everyone knows

Palsy’s a gurls name...