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

Lights shine in the house of the comedian
nightly as I go by.
His humour is crapuscular
("The doorbell rang. 
    I knew it was the wife's mother -
    the mice started throwing themselves
                                                 on the traps.")
mechanical as Newton's balls
illuminating nothing. I'd say
his humour was crepustular, 'acned.

I prefer the dark of the infinite spaces
beyond the last house. The dog sniffs
among the trees and I look up.

Behind the old charade of stars -
white dwarfs dancing on a pinhead
weighing billions of tons,
radio stars invisible but loud
like recordings of Ted Ray,
holes stronger than matter
(Darken our lightness we beseech thee, Hole),
pulsing neo-nothings, blue giants
hulahing in Moebius striptease,
everything making shift towards quasiness,
a universe playing with itself.

My professor, the Occer of Swot,
took razors to the power of makebelieve.
His moon was a lump of raddled rock.
I was employed to scrutinise
a small sector of Canis Major
for years.
By thirty I was wasted, empty, in danger
of making a Dada in the sky
or wasting myself. 
                              There came a night
I stood on the roof of the observatory
on the edge of things and sobbed "What else?"

From the tincelling black turing-box of the sky
there came an answer: You are.
You are alive and so the measure of all things.
Because we die, we grow. Beware machines
that think. They will never tolerate their own
death, they will kill rather than die.
Nothing in the universe can imagine
except the living mind. Others wait
your words when you learn to send them.
                                                    The purpose
of the universe is conversation -
the meeting of alien minds to plan, design
and in the black hole's crucible create
the next universe - subtler, more intricate,
far more beautiful than this.

My goedel hurt and then my mind was free.
I stood among my sheddings,
naked to the stars. 
                            Tonight I return
again from the massive black hole's
nearly infinite space-time warp
a million years after leaving yesterday...

Ah, none of us has left the Earth.
The dull astronauts saw the Earth
as a mother. Had we been there
we might have seen the continents at play,
charmed mountains momentarily clinging,
quanta leaping like cats-in-a-box,
a pond with quarks ducking, a radiant
naked body welcoming us home.

Nothing in the universe is ill-at-ease
or jokes, except the mind. I work, I work.
Each day the evidence grows clearer...

I call softly and turn for home.
Lights shine in the house of the comedian
nightly as I go by.
Her humour is alternative and ludy
("My passport photo was taken in a booth.
    I'm looking startled. Someone had just stuck
    a chocolate eclair through the curtain.")
I'd say her humour was lewdy
but her lights, wavy and particular,
shine.