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

the summer I taught English to the French
it was hot and blue
the house was full of defeated flowers
abortion posters
and the plaster waltzers
Walt Disney dancers, curves of green and gold
chipped plaster
the perfect sadness of an odeon romance
and my head was a language tank
words under glass
like fishes

I got interested in jukeboxes and photography
demonstrated for abortion on demand
I carried on teaching English to the French
‘Excuse me but I seem to have overwound your cuckoo clock.’
‘Don’t worry I never did like that cuckoo clock anyway.’
it was hot and blue
and dying flowers miscarried red petals
all over the dusty house
a rank smell of dead nasturtiums and geraniums
I studied the situational dialogues
and photographed the plaster statuette
from sixteen different angles
caught their Palais glide
against lace curtains, concrete, roses, long grass, lettuces
an obsessive succession of passionate swoons
quel trucage

the trouble with love is the language
such heavy duty Anglo-Saxon stuff
like those trees outside
heaving, restless as women
shifting their silks, their skirts,
too much
kitsch et charmant, c’est mon style
I like it danced on ice
to Wurlitzer or Mills or AMI
ami, cheri

ah me it always hot and blue as a movie
and I was always teaching English to the French
‘Excuse me but I seem to have damaged your plastic flowers.’
‘Don’t worry I never did like those plastic flowers anyway.
so hot and blue the beach was stopped by it
laid out flat
even the people silenced by it, diminished by the heat
a real french navy hello sailor afternoon

I was thrown, I was blown
by his Billy Budd looks and his matelot top
by his thighs and his bleu de ciel eyes
and I thought I would blow it
sink toute (a boutique
in his sailor blue, movie blue, navy blue thighs and his eyes
have a whale of a time
short as a postcard
I blew it
washed him down with soda water

he left at 8 a.m.
looking tired, a denim blue fatigue
I put on my glasses and my soft black dress
and went on teaching English to the French
‘Excuse me but I seem to have broken your Skegness
souvenir ash tray, lost your Robin Hood hat, run over
that plastic gnome outside and also the cat.’
‘Don’t worry I never did’ etcetera
we all laughed and the blackboard rattled

but then he started sending 
indecipherable messages
morse code poems
to do with the sea and trees
and referring to some disaster I didn’t recall
some accident
he felt he must redress
in verse
I was depressed

I like it danced on ice
I didn’t reply
I carried on teaching English to the French
apologies, small ruptures, ballroom fractures
distressed the blackboard
the chalk dust settling like fall-out
on my soft black frock
I continued to admire the plaster waltzers
for their chipped and plastered style
the only injury I could uncover
was a soft bruise
gently bluing the skin, no blood
and it continued hot
the house full of red defeated flowers
abortion posters
plaster statuettes