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

                          How long within this wood intend you stay?
                                                         A Midsummer Night's Dream

I
I analysed the plan for the four cardinal points and made up my mind at last:
I was certain that something was missing in the biological curve,
And if I did not build an intermediate pillar,
The domes of existence would fall in sooner or later.

I decided to leave the cage of stagnant emotions where I had been confined
(However, I am still decided that I was right:
Nothing but my pride can shape the veil of dimensions!)
And visit towns of thought and space, perhaps of syllables no-one had ever bisected before
(Perhaps simply because they had not been created yet-
Perhaps!).

I had a sack with me, fisherman's silk,
An enormous funnel that I soon filled with all I needed,
On the eighth day of my eternity.

I searched every spiral and gaseous triangle,
I found all the ingredients to cook my creative soup:

Musical iron,
Unwholesome semiquavers,
Fluid infra-red principles,
Rainbow cables,
Plutonium skies,
Obliquities,
Persistence
                        and
                                     Fusion!
                                                      Now
                                       the Chaos must become 
                 Ribs, pelvis, glands, syrup, membranes, cerebral gargles,

To organize numbers and waves,
To proportion the globules to the radius,
To decode the metabolism of races,
The metamorphosis of metals and melodies.

Nothing is easier than forging a divine brain, god's kedgeree,
God's geographical tissue,
In the revolving bucket of human visions,
Betwen planes of revelations.

My Creation!
Invulnerable as a sapphire screen,
Brighter than an electric bayonet,
His abdomen a growling tangle of wires,
Cogwheels thunder in his biceps,
Grotesque amoebae adorn his head.

Your throne in the zodiac of our souls:

Henceforward

You shall have dominion over the lymph of the universe.

II
Wonderful night!
Time to put on a coat of viscosity and tobacco,
Is there any difference between the rain and the electric chair?
Why is aftersupperatachinesebistro always yellow and drilling?

O! O! O!
The wind is still blowing bubbles of chemical beauties into
                                                   Impervious
                                                      Holes of
                                                     Rag-dolls 
                                                         but...

...are they nymphs or flesh-eating vestals?
Repercussion of creeping animal-thunder,
Harps, banjoes, spinets, saxophones,
Here someone sells old musical rubbish, probably pinched from a monastery in
Nepal,
Old Redstowitch with his four-figure grin!

                                                Quid! Quid! Quid!
                                                    £1,000,000! 
                                                       Oceans! 
                                                        Vortices! 
                                                        Galaxies!

                                                        £!

Gold in a milk jug implores us for veneration:
If my finger-nails smelt of cosmic dust,
My intestines, doctors say, would jingle with gold.

If my ladder were a spring cloud,
I'd water the gardens of heaven;
The Bishop would be grateful to me forever,
And would even reserve a front-row seat for me at the celestial matinee.

Aristotle was right!
A bowl of inspired crotchets contains both heaven and hell,
Undoubtedly God can be boiled down to a spoonful of musical broth,
Infusion of religious vibrations.

Here I am! One, two, three...
Sophisticated slaves, my sisters!
Rainwater perversion and gutter incantation,
Tonight I want to drink kerosene and admire an Egyptian miracle,
There's still a sun, a pinch of treasure in my pocket
                                  Twinkle twinkle lousy scar 
                                                                 etc. etc.

(Bizarre words I've never managed to learn by heart)
Will you wait for me
My Queen?

III

Do you wish to hear a lovesong, my Titania?
It's a pity you are used to such treacle as


My love holds you by the hand and tells you that nothing is worth praising on
earth but your eyes, and nothing is more valuable than your voice and the
scented colours of your words...

I am a contaminated god,
A perverse aphorism,
And my verses smell of twisted marrow,