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

Trash street gum face dripping hands opened willing chibbing to
clubbing raucous shining tracksuit youth patrol, silver wands,
hissing tag the forgotten alley cold sweat wall. The sun moon
passes above, the low cloud scours canyon streets, pours rain on
pain, the dogs, the filth, the dirt, stuck in the minds of the
uncaring uncared and the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ about anything.

The sun the noon a billion years passing shadows changing
rectangular concrete cunning blistered tarmac bubbles burst
on shrinking flesh of Madre Tierra with molten volcanic heart
ferocious. Burst asunder like tulips cracked - open the gates!
I cry. Open the fucking gates! Let it all flood out! Wipe the
city clean beneath a deluge of torrid piss and spew. Wipe the
city clean.

The trial of passing ages, every creeping shade, brings us closer
to the curtain of expectation, the final fear, the reason for all
gods, all myth.. .enlightenment. The darkening.. .the void forever.

Sitting in the park a million miles away, grand sky blue ocean,
leaves shiver like Quetzacoatl’s shimmering hide through jungle
mist as he disappeared back east (- a stranger returned, pale of
skin and heart. To search a city of golden honey plunder into
soulless genocide). But here the path the yakking dogs, the kids,
the stench of spliff, the flash of tin, all held within the
breadth of staring sun - arching - traces the cataract of God.
Another day closing with sirens shouting through thin walls
pumping humping jumping dumping unsilence to silence in the
sanctity of the feeble shroud, the glowing night, pulses fake,
a bruise upon the majesty of night swollen pregnant with the
glitter spray of birthing - passing passing passing like all the
years from before, the time from here to desert reds stretches
ragged saddened by the gentle flow of memory’s lonely flame.