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

Horse’s head like a planet
young moon between its ears
I could tell a hoofed story in its shadow
             one to rough up jesus
buried beneath the parkinglot gravel, drag out wings
             on a piece of Olmec jade, make
             a crown of rain
             under a widow’s pillow
construct you a grid of mouse bones
to contain one incredible coincidence
(like being here singing to you this moment.)
Now I touch the boundaries of all things
with the luminous membranes of my tongue
& I tell all
& I play all
on a trumpet skull
resonate a fugue
that tightens like a tree of smoke
down the long tube of grass-built bone
& out the nasal cavities
& out the teeth a double scroll
             out the fiery tunnels of the breath.
I found my horse scattered in mid-canter
             a foreleg flexed in a river
his skull in a block of amber.
I found my trumpet in high weeds
near the dump
of your finest city.

I ride a stale horse
down the stations of your breath
a ghost cracks a pussy willow pod

& I’m far from finished my task
though it’s almost dawn
& someone s calling the cops.
My hands take on
the color of the rain
& steam rises up
from the horse’s skull
like a blanket of lace.
My moony face
grins from every mirror
in your house.
I wear a crown of gnats
& a leather patch
over the pin-prick
in my heart.
I’m dressed in a loony skeleton
someone xeroxed from the Encyclopedia Americana.
I light the fingers of my left hand

the black flame makes you sleep...
Quickly I rob you
of a cup of beer
& a potato cut in half.
When you awake a dead bird will lie
flat & copper-tasting under your tongue.
A child’s good-morning kiss will make it live.
You will shout
“The locust is a loud-mouth!”
You will smell
horse shit under your pillow.
Don’t blame me.
I never amounted to much.
My photographs were designed to fade.
I was the nondescript...
the never understood...
the barely tolerated...
asleep, the third from left, back row.
I chased down every hot kazoo
every city siren,
but found no wisdom
I can speak of
at church socials.
I spun tin wheels
dinted by buckshot
chewed Browns Mule
till my teeth turned brown.

On a dare
I popped my eye
from its socket
in order to see heaven
& forgot to put it back.
I cried out in joy & pain
but the God of your Fathers
told me to shut the fuck up.
Now my name rots like a cotton mouth
in high weeds
& I hold the pitchfork that killed it
in my hands.

When I first climbed the black horse
reins heavy in my fists
hooves tore half-moons in the dust
a low storm rumbled in the west
& the electric charge shook temblors
             over the heat-crippled corn.
I touched his ribs with my heels
we slammed through panes of space;
down twenty years I cantered.
             The black horse
             fell to dust
his envelope of ashes
studded with purple lights.
You conjecture that the horse I rode was something preternatural
but my witnesses contradict you.
& you conjecture that I am on some secret Presidential Mission
& reach for the wings on my shoulders

but I guide your hands much lower, much lower,
to the rattlesnake skin belt
             I bought down New Mexico
to my boots worn down at the heels from walking
             in the golden wake of Greyhound Overland Cruiser 827-1
(after getting kicked off for stinking of Tequila).
I tell you... no bride with a long clitoris
can touch my jaw with one hand
& touch my boots with the other...
no Mad Gasser from Mattoon
can drag this trumpet
from my lips.

& I cannot stop
& you will not stop me
as I tell all
& I play all
on this trumpet skull.

My message beads like a sugar drop
down a tooth pick
to your triangular gape:
Isn’t it difficult to live
when we’re dying every day?

Midway up a ladder I cut into my flesh
rung by suffering rung
year by suffering year
I wait grinning, waiting for your answer.

If you want to know my name
throw a house key over my head.
If you want to know my name
knock 3X on the stone of Old Hickory.
If you want to know my name
look it up in the telephone directory.
My true voice shattered
like a block of obsidian
dropped on a cement floor
between midnight & dawn.
Nobody heard it fall
though seismographs registered
the disturbance from
Tombstone to Tokyo.
Come near, comb your fingertips
through the chips & spalls.
The cuts come so quickly...
you’ll barely notice them...
till Harvard historians
annotate the red whorls
on the deckle pages.

Can you break open a rock
& find my face inside
or kick over an old stump
& see my flesh
turning into rags?
Can you walk the length of a government hall

without getting stabbed in the back?
Can you bend down in the heat
& hold the weight of a 3-legged horse
on your knee
& flick the sweat from your eyes with a thumb
& cut the world’s hooves light & flying
& fit the ruby glowing shoe
& strike the nails true
without laming the world?
Can you muster the stamina
to hoist cocktails
while prudent children starve?

I know that if I dream of an iron penis
my first-born will murder me
as rust murders iron;
& if I dream of the sky’s destruction
I will surely die in the rain.

Once
a car
knocked me out of my shoes
I lay running on my side
for half a day.
Nobody looked down.
Finally a Menominee asked me
what are you tracking, brother?
“A strong dog named Weakness,”
I told him
“That, & my horse.”
I sit naked as the weather
dressed in the skin of my enemy.
I wear it for 28 days
or until it rots off.
My anchor & hootchie girl tattoos
& scars of crosses & flags
slough away...
the benevolent mildew of my mother
sloughs away...
the flaccid sorrow of my father
sloughs away...
the shame of my bought-&-paid-for brothers & sisters
sloughs away...
I lean on a clarified shoulder
in your doorway
& watch the rain fall like 7 crowns
from 7 heads.
I tell you,
truly these are the heavy days
when the body reclaims itself
from the mind
& blood creeps through stone & lung & bone
keeping the old wounds fresh
& ready for the new blade.

So you dismiss my songs, Capitano,
& point to the end of the line.
You hire me for a morning 

& fire me come afternoon.
You balance on a brick
& shout into my face.
Give me $5.00.
& demand $6.00 change.

But I have stepped down from the burning spiral, friend,
washed my hair, brushed the bee
from my lips & plucked the comb
from beneath my heart & sent it
tumbling into the fire. If I am a child
I am older than a handful of dust.
If I am an old man I am younger
than a scratched concho shifting in your hand.

How isolate
the telling fragments
polish the regulus
until it blinds the eye
with reflected light?

How explain to you
this life spent watching
destroy a dreary quarter

             Water striders
teeming on a leaf
rotting in gloom
             mites on a quill
in a cave
             static & dynamic
in turn.
Somehow
             we know some eternal witness sees,
hears
is about to address us all!
but prefers-merely-to sing:
ice & iron & fire
of the globe?

My loves destroy me
but I do not complain
more than a crow coughing
in a leafless tree
more than a headless horse
found in a midden heap.

A sudden light bites through the horizon
where men & women crack chaos from their bowels
& clench death with a sphincter of steel.
My laughter turns cold as the shaking of scalpels
in a nylon bag.

Now my mount stands before me
on black, gigantic legs.
It is time for me to go.

Don’t tell your children about me,
don’t let them admire
that I peeled myself back

to sockets only & jaws merely & empty screaming space,
they might burn your barn
& turn your pigs loose.
They might slit your tires
& taste their mother’s sweat.
I tell you
the blood bead you sell
in the marketplace
of a sleepy little emptiness
is mine -
I lay claim to it
for my descendants -
a world hangs upside down
inside it.
Make death die.