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

See how they fall, how many ways there are:
Operatic in their own embrace,
Back-flipping over table-top or bar
With gargling yell, disintegrating face,
Arms conducting great finales, or,
Like joke mendacious anglers, wide apart,
Or clutching belly with both hands before
Making deep obeisance as they start
The slow collapsing journey to the floor.

Their costumes alter with the changing scene:
In desert, prairie, on the dusty track
That snakes through scrub towards the dark ravine
They wear the Western villain’s garments - black
And battered stetson, shirt and neckerchief.
They need a shave. On modern battlefield,
In Europe or the East, they come to grief
In khaki, grey or green, the face concealed
By helmet-shade and camouflaging leaf.

The urban victims’ dress may vary more,
But snappy suits and tipped fedoras are
The usual gear; they croak in liquor store,
In sidewalk filth or, like a blackened star
Might power-dive from the sky. They could, instead,
Be drilled in restaurant or while at stool,
In some broad’s swell apartment on the bed,
Outside a movie-house or by the pool;
There’s plenty of locales for getting dead.

Whenever shooting happens we see red
Expressed from neat-punched wound, a signet set
In flesh, soft sealing-wax that runs. The head
Stays more or less intact. That pirouette
Is fake, rehearsed; take it from one who knows.
I was myself once shot, though thank the Lord
Not fatally, as you might well suppose
Could camera objectively record
My cadaverous appearance in repose.