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

Cigarette smoke hunkers round anglepoise, unpoised in contagious yellows, licking vile tongue, re: satanic abuse, taunting tightness, tense as fisherman reel, irrigating dry furrows, furlong deep into scratched soul. Black nicotanic acid, etching misperceptions/anxieties into gnarled roots, silted canals: depriving rigored body of nourishment; disconnecting the spirit in dull silver spirals; and degenerating into isolated madness. The loneliness that pulps yr liver in masticating granite incisors. Eat shit and die, cunt! Whilst telling yrself this is ALL part of the process of purification. Vital to yr ascension dreams. But no whispered reminders of proclivities towards spiritual masochism. Shaman, raking yr body thru’ the barbed wire and broken glass that guards the entrance to yr precious underworld.

You love her you love her not / picking petals from hemlock, nibbling with puckered lips, swallowing with scooby doo gulps of realisation. Her eyes return to haunt you, black as witches’ breath. She weaves a web of spells round yr flaccid, panicking head. You love her you love her not. Yr testicles not helping the equation.

Fagmenting, splintering into duality, you levitate and fall. Smoker and smoke, contained within a microcosm. Reaching for the ceiling. Sinking heavily into yr burgundy, leather chair. Soft as puss. Revolting to yrself. Semen arcing a kundalini spiral, but diverted from nirvana in sacral confusion. Imploding on yrself with quantum smallsteps into the centre of yr festering soul. You love her you love her not. You will never know.

Image of her with briars of blue cornflowers woven thru’ the sunlight gold of her hair. You ache to touch, to stroke the downy cheek, the crook of her arm, the blush of freckles. And wanting to sink into the darkness of her eyes. Aching, with her a thousand psychic miles across empty space. Like Dante, you know the meaning of the void. But this is all still part of the process of purification.

Midnight ablutions. You tear yr veins with empathogen and hallucinogen. Wanting to get back to the root of nothing. Wanting to dissolve yrself in the Sybil’s cauldron. Choking on yr diet of worms. Tequilo rapido in the bar room at the bottom of hell. The fizz in yr brain turning you delirious. You love her you love her not. Her eyes, small black coals, staring at you from trembling photograph.

Levitating and gravitating. Dense, immense and without substance. But not without realisation. You need her. You need her to put you together again. Her soft hands hot on yr shoulders. Her soft vulva hotly enfolding you / divesting you of being. You bang yr head against the ceiling / trying to break on thru’ to the otherside. The heroes in yr wardrobe, drumming their fists, shaking their shakers and railing against the demons of the night. But they are blank against the blankets, the shirts and ties. The chemistry of monday to friday. The acid trip of nine to five. With yr pocketwatch assaults on heaven and involuntary descents into hell. You love her you love her not. But you cannot abandon yrself to her / cannot raise yrself above the illusion of separation. No matter how much, during the weekend, you try.

The telephone jangles reveries to fragment bits / shakes yr soul to quavering notes of solo dereliction. You know that ring anywhere. You love her you love her not. Her oil black eyes, swimming with confusion, drowning you in siren song. She loves you she loves you not. Even in the shallowest moments you know the answer to that one. But will you let the telephone possess you? Will you let it pull you out of the dull comfort of yr safety zone? You love her you love her not. Strangling yrself in narcotic void until the phone rings dead.

And in the silence afterwards, endless rationalisations. But if only you had left yr answer machine on, to tease yrself with the sullen beauty of her voice.

And coming down / Shaman warrior with blunted tools / you retire to the shallow shelter of duvet covers/ hiding from the savage ticking of alarm clock agoraphobia/ the dull proximity of monday morning/ the sure and certain routines, beyond pleasure and pain / a thousand psychic miles beyond the black magnetic drift of her fathomless and beguiling eyes. You love her you love her not. Maybe one last nicotine hit before sleep. The shaky image of her dissolving into the night.