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

Forget the truth, it is on its back
for the present and obliged to be minus
fact. I never thought I’d get an umpteenth
so forget thought too. It comes
skidding along topsyturvily like obligations

(remember application? Well, outlaw
it. I called like to my God
but that went factually, quite
like this, like life does. Forget God, soon,
life…this this?). Obligations are the
sharp remembered end applied…alone. I ‘faced’
then with my side, the good one.

If I forget that, then I forget my profile
and that is all that matters…not belief
or its disappearance but the sidling
off, the presentation over, the, Me. Chance

should help applied here for the umpteenth.
It brings those old bad facts above
back with it. Yes, on its back. This friendly
face however must stay the right way up.
Sunny, over-sanguine. Hm, chancily
it is mixed like an omen, like a man.
Such shall bring fresh obligations.

Assistance is required then to ‘face’ the chance
I have (hope being gone if
it was obliged to come). But maybe I am
really minus fact, without the truth,
minus me: innocuous. Truly then alone.
Why so? Is that factual? Is it true? I thought

I’d dealt with truth and truth
had obligingly done for thought. The umpteenth...
upside down, on its back mow, a dis-
tressed turtle. Threw the mix on its back.

What was it? My goodness. It appals
that it applies to me as much as then. Oh well,
the umpteenth will be along again. . . soon.
It shall be factless so a valueless um
umpteenth. These umpteenths are the outlaws
of our time, the saviours everywhere ignored,
the truly nice. Perhaps the secular, um, um-
pteenth will look after me. Who for? Don’t reply, apply the...