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

     Okay, so here’s the picture:

     Whaddya mean, you don’t get it? So read between the lines, bud!

     She was a class act, I mean, real tough to follow. You hear me now? She was the kind of lady that would put not just you in her shadow, but everything that you’ve ever done. I tell you; that can be kind of tough to handle. I mean; look at it this way:

     You’ve just got to learn to look at life a little different every now and then is all. Y’know, it ain’t just black and white, though it night look that way; you’ve got to fill in the rest from what you carry around with you. See, a dog ain’t just a dog - it’s everything you believe about dogs....here’s what I mean:

     Now, what I’ve called figure 1; that’s what you’re seeing - a dog, right? Figure 2, meantime, now, that’s what I’m seeing - not quite the same, are they? Whistle....go on. Whistle in your mind: “Phweep! Here doggy.” See them both look? “C’mere boy!” Oh, yours is a girl? “There’s a good dog!” - At least yours came when you called it: mine’s peering out from behind that bush over there.

     And the same thing works for liberty, truth and justice. You know there’s three sides to every story? Your side, my side and the truth. But you know what’s funny is that not one of them is right! Or they all are! So which do you want to be: liberty or justice? I’ll tell you what, you just take your pick ‘cuz even if I pick the same as you it’ll be different. No problem.

     Now the difference between us is also the link between us. Cool, huh? There’s this thing, see; it’s called a reality tunnel:
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     Or, at least, it is when I talk about it. And you’ve got your own one, too! I bet you never even knew that did you? Try it out. Test the edges: Black man, white trash, slut, drugs, animalistic cadaverous thirst for nihilistic negation. Your tunnel is a different shape from mine; different shape from your neighbours’. It would be, if you think about it, after all, you’ve spent your whole life building it. And yet we’re all so dutifully uniform… PC, non-PC, ethnically enlightened, xenophobic - one thing on the surface, another underneath? We pigeon hole ourselves to extinction and everybody approves. What is culturally acceptable, what is the norm? What is good/bad, right/wrong, pleasure/pain?

     That’s the world we live in. So get used to it! Life is art is conflict is struggle is self-expression is censorship. The clothes you are wearing are exclusion; exclusion of others, exclusion of the not-you. They are censorship. Take them off! Hold these pages to your naked breast and delight in the gene-pool that bonds us.

     The act of being is the act of censorship - we express ourselves by a series of negations - we are not that! We are not that! We are not that! We are not that! We are not that! That makes us....

     We exist because we resist.

     FUCK IT!:

     So, what do you think? Getting horny? Look at it again; didn’t see that bit did you? I told you she was a class act. Oh, you didn’t know it was her? Sorry, I should have told you, shouldn’t I?

     So here we are; all living in the same world and all living in our own world. What is life but a story? You’ve got yours and I’ve got mine and sometimes, like now, they kind of touch, brush against one another. But I’ve still got my ‘Our Story’ and you’ve still got your ‘Our Story’ and the truth lies somewhere inbetween or everywhere inbetween or nowhere inbetween and completely left of centre.

     Existence is resistance.

     Or, to sum up, ‘cuz as they say, a picture paints a thousand words....

     Let me know what you think.

     You’ll be wrong, anyway.

     So will I.