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

            “Turn somersaults in the circus coffin”

I never ran the streets with you or bought you drinks at Vesuvio, 
            though I sat in your apartment once,
      bore the stench of your withdrawal, sweat-drenched shirts 
            as you schemed for junk from neighborhood kids 
      who aimed to rip you off & did.
I can’t remember your hands, 
            just your unequal stance bent toward
   unfavorable omens, ready with a quip.
You only needed kindness to give her a wicked name.

What is this flash on the firing range 
            among mules & mandolins?
Your whiskered face bantering over a fist of Ballantine Ale: 
            motley walking requiem with pugilistic brow;
   punk amalgam of blood’s rancor 
            & Albion’s light.
They scarcely gave you a chance, 
            threw shoes when you sang of an erotic hydrogen bomb.
Self-proclaimed, forever unlaureled, 
            orphaned by woman on Bleecker Street.
   She dashed for Italy; dull father stumbled on your gem.
But your new uncles at Bellevue & Clinton State Pen 
            eased you toward that necessary outskirt.
Villonesque jack-in-the-box in a stolen overcoat— 
            was it you who put a ten-spot on the chest of a sleeping alley drunk 
      wagering the time it would take for someone to steal it?

Your journey now: nothing to fix or score— 
            just brag to Virgil how you gave Charon the bird
   when he reached to pluck fare from your lips 
                     & found no coin.
Dispatched now to a baroque corridor 
            of lost watches & bardo gangsters in the 
                     tenements of Hades;
no more seeking the absolving kiss 
            but camped with Bedouins singing jasmine & hashish, 
                     or mussing Auden’s hair.
Ah, seraphic weasel, adamant mason of oddest phrase,

            brimming Dionysian— 
      how you scolded the poets in Naropa’ s summer tent 
            where the sprinklers soaked our manuscripts at noon.
Was it you who lit firecrackers in the meditation hall

            & filmed the havoc on super 8?

In the gray umbrage of millennial January I declare 
            death to Charon—the parasite!
You will finally have that felucca ride instead 
            through the balmy canals of your noble kin 
      or float on backs of terrapin— 
          mercurial wildcat who leapt into Kerouac’s grave, 
            sang “tooda-loo!” to your beloved Ginzy’s ash:
your turn to aim the prow again 
            toward the beacons of violet Tunis,
Botticelli,Acropolis & Sun, 
      unafraid of becoming the sea.

            Dead & gone again to Rome
            of sweet inconsequence the weather
            incorrigible, red-lipped, unrotted bones:
            Gregorio the herald unhated in the charnel heather.

            A piece torn from Keats,
            kingfish & lost mother’s feet,
            Mozart your world’s final knell—
            unlonely urn at Percy’s side 
            bedded in rose and shell.