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

Once your hour of waking for work. Downstairs the ironed shirt.
Meditative cup of tea and visit to garden. The herb inspection.

Peace. The wine din satisfied. A simple release before the wine god
demands his coin. Drink the Faustian part: a mantle of ecstasy

and dance of the sins conjured out of nothing but weakness for spectacle.
Nothing cheap about thrills. Faustus and his brethren, rock’n’rollers,

and the Toon Army looking into its glass at weekends and spiralling
lasses out of control. Disorder and dance and Dionysian chants.

Last nights as you enter the vortex of pleasure and pain. Pleasure
no longer ecstasy but blessed relief pursued down a tunnel.

In the morning light, before the deadly monotonous day
begins, monotony not a burden, you see coldly your damnation.

Clockwork repetition. This is your morning time for taking breath
before the chained walk to the Co-op for mind liquor to quieten

the body’s sacrifice under nails. Faust pays for unearned power
and pleasure in terrible correct ratio. His screams of anguish

are the warnings no-one hinders. Faust shattered like a mirror.
Each morning you know you have survived the night. Still facing

the trodden path with less and less. You are so light now, one pair
of jeans, one T-shirt, one summer jacket, one pair of shoes.

Everything dropped to carry the burden. No phone calls out.
No distress signals. Just concentration on a fading routine

as day begins. But you’ve taken in with you a knife that glitters.
your self knowledge glitters, you’re not just slave but Spartacus,

when the wine god sleeps you’ll rut his throat or rut out his heart
or take him like Beowulf pursuing the beast to the lake depths.