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

1

Pulse ran into thumbs, to make music.
Notes inverted, in air.
You watched your own hand
as it washed the working day
as if no part of who you were,
or were supposed to be.

I made notes

(I made notes) as your torso turned to do
De Niro strobed in the Parish hub.

As you drove I took notes
- slow patience for the children’s safety -
then blew indication
to see what part your bones could play
in the white itinerary of Wednesday.

As you cut onions, went with the line breaks
of their own wet matrix
I was in the doorway making notes.

You took notes for me the day I tried
to glass the Big Screen - Guinness & plasma -
took out false teeth to smile piano keys
to the tune of the bad graduate.
The protester’s face herniad into silence.

I made quick black dank notes
as you shot me your best most cynical
strawberries in gravy look.

A comedian miked Baa Baa Baa
at your synthetic sweater -
you pointed at the stage -
then to the gents you were heading for
and said “there’s more shit up there
than where I’m on my way to”.


2

They keep taking things from me back teeth
I am sick to the,     N.I. / tax
“don’t cover pennies on your eyes”
you would have went further      age of twelve
Woodbines smoked in woodbriars
at ease in spoken dissonance     dip of the apex
looking downwards
like an Olympic diver that can’t swim

what a time to die
two years before the Slovakian Property Boom
when bumbling unknowns called Bubble
had out the Big Brother eye
(Popstar Panopticon never followed)
before your morning papers were digitized
to a bumper A-Z tome of plural pop-ups
and Silicon Valley by the sea
created a world called Second Life
and young teetotal men squandered theirs
to play digital games for a decent wage

Modern Man though      Grecian 2000
in your hair      first white, then grey
cappuccino, copper, bronze, brown (near-brown)
you would let it wax white again
(hushed mirth in each room of the house)
youth-to-age played fast in real time
on a shaving screen with your face inside


3

You lie accused of not being accused.

Montaigne’s old man who kept the inheritance key
in his pocket, valued more than sight.

MacSweeney’s dad who spat on his son’s
First Bumper Book of Poetry.

You were Captain, Chief, Mr Paul:
charity-shop John Lennon in a clapped-out Peugeot.

Class raconteur as you drove me through 1997.

Up to the high point of Everton Valley.


4

The Pacemakers switched in your ears
to 33rpm, ferry-wheel propelled
to the wet grilles of the headphones.

I took notes as you bit a ladybird
on an apple into two distinct
Kraftwerk-attired crisp bits
and said: see that: the two lives you live.

I took notes the last day our bodies
were all together. Freak coincidence of cells.
You were in a different car,
metallic black clashed with a snowshake
of flowers, above the wheels a code
I thought I could break
and memorized: PK17 8H5, PK17 8H5.

As we tried to lower the box
each to a corner
rope wrapped, spiralled wrists
it began to pull me down,
the undertaker said don’t do that mate
and I thought, what the fuck do you know

hands too full to make notes

I looked back, ersatz memories
ersatz
ersatz
your schoolmate squatted at the edge
and said that’s not your Dad down there
and I wasn’t confused

wood & mud in my eyes


5

I didn’t know what to do the day I found
your fictionalized biography in a ringbound jotter

biro glyphs on the sheets you slept in

shadow pawprinted lightleaved pages

life for the average 90-percenters is gruesome
(O look, it’s grew some more)

and thought of the black & gold sticky labels
that Cutler gave me & I gave to you
speech exhaled to smoke

NEVER KNOWINGLY UNDERSTOOD

you threw me your most assured & scalding
marshmallows in Russian vodka look

meta ticked over notes on your notes
and called it collaboration, catastrophe, segue, book

titles such as
FUNERAL PAUL: A BITTY LIFE IN BULLET-POINTS

or THE ELVIS COMPLEX: HOW TO EAT LIKE A KING
AND STILL LOSE WEIGHT

I tried to find a generic cure-all for the aleatory,
as the poet said: no death is an average death

Yours, least of all

               MOST KIND & GENEROUS MAN
               KNEW THE VALUE OF EACH DAY
               LOVING HUSBAND
               RAISED FOUR KIDS TRUE
               TO INDIVIDUALITY

and in your pages, I could have told you, the basis for brilliance:
jottings nightscrawled, dawnpulled, flippant


6

The White Album: you said you listened to it before I was born.
A black joke: I said I would be listening to it when you were dead.

Live Forever the shaving soundtrack from the bedroom door –
he’s always singing about needing more time. I said “don’t we all”.

I could have played on full volume, upstairs, an audio CD
of Plath’s poems, while downstairs you turned up your
scratched LP of Ted Hughes’ Crow. Could have.

Montage of where we meet on the staircase
in mortgaged space, fucked over by the rent of time.


7

keys lost in the sand                jumpstarted
hotwired wires pinched to cigarette electrics
we kept a hush through the tunnel
a spine of lights above
reflected the divide in the road beneath,
it was too dark to make notes
I tried to remember for later

                              keys in the sand

a colon of light signalled Liverpool
notebook visible I wrote

going home

is

clouds dunked in wing-mirrors

sky contained in a bath of glass

a shower of light   each moment,
at work even        more than valid

this is one of your days, how’s it going?

I said I liked it        the coat on your back
folded & posted                    [first class]
I am wearing it now               to get back

a moth on a bus

ShadowMac© reversible-lined
polyester past inside & out

pockets perfect for a notebook to fit


8

(I just wanted to say, as you haven’t called
the London bombs didn’t get us
we’re both okay. This is one of my days
not so good, but we’re both okay.
I really liked the notes you left for us
I’ve worked on them, hope you don’t mind)

I called you friend, now to renegotiate
as a man                contacts, decisions
signatures               reversible / lined
moth on a bus
after the blasts a city in suits
walked home together, four, five miles
occidental air strung with freak occurrences
buildings bathed gold             colleagues on bikes
for years, always underground at this time
it took such an incident for one to turn
to another to         & smile

this city is so beautiful


9

Static days, we passed each other –

serrated light on the staircase,

you rejoiced the difference you saw in me

city contemporaries aspiring for a Dyson
with a ball inside, last night I hallucinated

a decomposing Baudelaire passing stools
in our rented bathroom

in the City there’s talk
of Emotional Bank Accounts
at last, this time I’m rich

they always get seats on trains
in powersuits & chipped high-heels

and call this reality, development, progress even –

serrated days we pass each other


10

Shark’s jaw of a broken elbow
friable skull of an arthritic knee
all your other burns & breakages
200 sit-ups a day   aged 43
at six-thirty pm                     500cl
of undistilled vodka              a four-pack
at last     hardening your stomach
inside your stomach              “the hard stuff ”

mornings segued to analogue
before spawned rainpools of dreams
had cleared          your head
saturated cereal of two children
Saturday morning overcompensated milk
toytown rowboats on a lake of mink,
small kites of white bread in tomato soup,
nightrecorded gothic horror on worn VHS
adumbrated, layered into past footage
- Happy Days’ diner in a Vincent Price castle -
Saturday the day we beat the Betamax
video ejected from the root of the machine
mechanized, a crane meccanoed to an elevator

memory oils to memory
cream balloons in a rained-on window
overlooking motorway lamplights
one cancels another, scents remain
bleach on mildewed stone     [mould]


11

Hayflick Effect, which I described
as breaking apart from the age of 25
under eyes             needled cells             no longer thread
in the yard, explained
as flies diminished under shagged-out trees
you replied
“but how many goes do I get before this?”

You introduced panache into the palindrome
of memory / The Moment
leopard skin diary you gave me
(never paid for)
and said make notes, draw
just don’t leave it empty

well I’m nearly half-way through
and I haven’t even started properly


12

When the lights went out
you screwed back electrics,
the film I was watching cut out –
frustrated, tutted, fitted – butted the door –
you said “fuck your Scrooge”
I said “it’s a Christmas Carol, actually”

When not used to chew you used
teeth & tendons to say the names
of foods – our teenhood idealism offended –
crackers & coleslaw
beetroot & cheese
páte & Danish blue

bread could not fill the whole to be said


13

No January Giroday,
only post office loans
on the have-you-ever
repayable on reverse
direct debit,
and the union credit card
with no one there
to back you up -
the health & safety officer
on a six-month sickie
and the Highway Code
blown up on pub signs

pavements scarred with shadows
binbags hunched   done-in men
doorsteps             glass ephemera
tarmac    ripped by roots
and this language, do you know what I mean?

I took your notes to fish out the best.
To flesh out the beast.
It was a bastard. Made fresh.


14

I thought I needed MP3
to craftily rework steps
between tube & desk,
a mobile phone to know
how many bottles of vino
and a laptop to lop the tip
of each word I wanted to say

in print

when the power was out
we had to outsource this.

I heard them say “he greaves”
- process of textbook ritual -
at 26 how could any fuck know
what I thought only I could feel?

An eco-machine with digestion
they created to eat
husks of flies
without wasting energy to search & find

your words come to me across
rented space, like this


15

Wales dusted with the Eighties:
gussetted gulleys of shrieking geese.

Pond ducks webbed.
Stand in the Dunlop mud.

You hold my hand up the stairs
to the still-shut chalet.

Such height & wind & wet.

I cannot find this scene
in the Readers’ Encyclopedia you left.