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

1.                        like trees in a tornado
                           yet weighty as a rhino

                           suggesting
                           suicide

                           they are worn-out escalators
                           stored between storeys
                           hollowed for cupboards
                           of sad receipts
                           and sewing machines

                           they grow cobwebs
                           deft as pickpockets

                           carpets are stuffed
                           over their mouths
                           to stop them screaming

2.                        for my mountain-goat
                           I made a collection  
                           of steps begged
                           from neighbours.
                           I piled them up. "watch him,
                           everybody, look at him juuu"

                           for my mountain-goat
                           I made a collection

3.   the possibility of concentric stairs as in the paradigm 
      of Dante's cosmological staircase

4.                        at the last stair
                           I always want to go
                           exactly one foot farther

                           what happens then is secret
                           like treading on alternative
                           paving-stones

5.                        fields of corn
                              fields lying fallow
                           fields of corn
                              separated not by hedges,
                           fences, walls, or ditches
                              but staircases,
                           beginning at each stile
                              and culminating
                           in a lookout box
                              plumb centre

6.                        stairs up
                              are masculine 
                           stairs down
                              are femenine
                           the highest
                              momentary fulfilment
                           the lowest
                              the depression that follows

7.   The marriage of two staircases was blessed with a
      small male staircase. Parturition was particularly
      painful, since the infant was born with its metal
      rods already in place.

8.   The story of Jacob is the genesis of most nightmares
      connected with stairs. It was the first to adumbrate
      the notion that angels can descend to earth as well
      as ascend to heaven which is, God only knows, a
      comforting enough prospect, except for angels

9.     if stairs exist in space (which they may well do)
      they may also exist in time, and this I am disposed
      to deny, for my own experience of the plural
      precipice is danger beyond time
        plunging downwards from them is another act out of
      time, and so is the descent, but landing at the foot
      of the staircase can set the clock in motion again

10.          I remember the new steps up to the
      inscriptions of Bisitun; the tumbling stairs
      at Bait ad-Din; the ancient steps above tombs
      in Petra; and the staircase of the library
      that is the universe invented by Borges

11.          staircases that proceed in their logical
      way towards a small infinity have been drawn
      by Maurits Cornelis Escher in his Klimmen en
      dalen (and his endless Waterval), where a line
      of hooded robots such as we climb upwards,
      passing themselves eternally walking down. women
      have gone out of their associative minds while
      looking at this parable for more than a few
      seconds.

12.        if there are mushrooms on the first stair today
             and on the second stair tomorrow
             and on the third stair the day after
             (not that I predict any such event)
             in what sense would it be plausible
             to argue that mushrooms were climbing the stairs?

13. I have tried to imagine a three-storey house
      lacking stairs within or without. I have ended
      up with a rope-ladder as in jungles (which is
      cheating, being a kind of plasticine staircase:
      collapsible, stretchable and bendable) and then
      there is the fireman's pole, unsuitable for the
      invalids we have put away on the upper floors.
      Patience: we shall find a solution!

14.        of all fish, only salmon are able to leap up
             the domestic stairs, and that only in the absence
             of a river

15.                       the moon casts
                            a ghastly pallor
                            on the outdoor stairs
                            of the penniless tenant.

                            his cat yowls with
                            hunger
                            and sexual longing

16. the staircase and the elevator avoid all contact
      with each other. they started off quite good
      friends, but relations became strained when the
      elevator refused to lift the heaviest furniture.

      the staircase mocked the debilities and eccentricities
      of the elevator, its maintenance crew dancing attendance.

      the elevator attributes its foibles to an artistic
      temperament. ha!
      say the stairs

17.                       in millions
                            the white ants came to the stairs
                            in millions they devoured
                            wood, carpets, rods, white ants,
                            banisters

                            until all was consumed 
                            except a certain bubbling
                            similar to ebb-surf