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

Clothes on a line freeze
a night has no song
accumulates a chorus

breath not easy
lilyfield
            would be awash
thick with water

all is branded equal
no rain in either comfort
the child’s
lips be red
hard songs on his bootheels

Voice that will map out
spirals in acute transport
         solidify for chest yeast
         no sound ushered

no face ushered by black mould
dead spotting a mirror
Hold up       Raise high
acute imago

do you look at it
or do you look away?
Trees’ placenta candles
hooves their am recrimination
parchment soil

who attendant stood for Geraldine
did speak whisper
the primo goodbye

                                             brambles hewn
                                at python roots : no world so cold
                                                    jar désespoir
                                          In thru here at night shine
                                    vast dark vats no thing salvaged
and get waken                                           so early no bird sound
                        save the ancient         (I knew you’d say that)
                                              bleat                of
                                                                   sheep
                                                                mimicking
                                                                      spring
                        Go out to the submerged garden       Green
                                      cut to a polished star
                                                   chrome
                                         Ajax o the passionate
                                                 Odysseus

Lightfooted past the lilyfield
a three year old has arrived
to pay a make of homage: his name is Merlin
the sole familiar

who would feast on icicles
shoving them pest his ruby lips
what he sees you can see

a lamb corpse in the dusk, the eye was
first to go, moulded by crows

Preface :
to be with us

So much space wanted
earth crystals up to look at
cantering with silver hounds

Early as spray
+ chemistry that
then up is there              = below the
micro scopic rooves

When you are no longer               5
and if a Gurkha
                       it would be a feat
if, possessing such presence
                       you stayed in Europe

                       Distinguish             Distinguish

race at heart    =          Tulip
beauty
twilight on Horse Strikes a unique new
bucolic lighting match
alumette
coda -
litspurted
                               (descriptive) an essence of Stallion

So I cant drop
by no admitting grace
              in your own vestry of where you sleep
hand in a glove puppet
                               Pinghu

throwing impossible puzzles

Of.

Will you rise for breakfast
Louis Merlin Reuben
car spin thru the ancient settlements
scimitars of broom

to press with that story

a lasso of wrens
welt over hedge      two one
pelt the windshield in arc and
except the beautiful child
who did realise the dispersed possibilities
and he cried because the

No motion

Cant stop. Precise as

You cant
Being adult
Sense how the body mouth
is watched to red
and eye below brain switches
red and the howl of
remorse      comes

god bless the guardians of the road

Pink rays lift
over clouds’
sacrament
so a body shifting must be
time to keep the fire
what shifts in the blood for

now it is
          at-brace

To get to know the hierarchies of the birds
a sound full of promise
acute over fields at morning especially when
spirits bask in a swallowing light

Swirl for river bank
brindle cuneiform Gully
I look to see one so fair and listen
in a world of void silence

And so return.
Call. I am prize
leap glance distil
voice that would carry

photograph such liquid siftings
jus d’vaccum
to clots in mouth blood
voice that should coax

Usher the farewell reel
and a desultory      (you said it)
tree stare over spate
gleams for farthest aube

World pressed against the face
heart-cupping, pistons pistons

Whereinal we fail
to ascertain la difference
star catalepsied
across furred grey branch

a mast juts
from mimosa haze
wreaths window
pane; and where’s ship then
III children wonder wonder

and where the gold pollen
capitulated upon the tide
sun’s spool hiccup
ing on meniscus fleur de lis strait

Within a passion base
who lay sheathed beyond a sleep
light pacing gift     Their necks dappled
Breathing pliant

across + up of spume
where shutters hoarded
what stayed of
moving figures’ passion

Ocean recede at distance lap
lucky they were :
sound to earline
a glottal bucolic

Waves’ spume excoriated
to dazzle
mercurial chambers

revenants stay
ghost emperors for a day
for a day

Precis of
octagonal architecture
water reed erect in
eel shaped mist

each row*that scans -
praise
For some, like enjoy blood precisions down
lone element of wall, Foot tappings

beyond vigil
no gain in furtherance
finger sinews thrummed
A       A        it was day
                 And beyond abstraction
no one knew of how

The hand that wrote Advent
turning carpenter’s pencil
thru scummed tepid tea
all daylight
all and each lyric notation, but nowhere halfway home,
and so return

Nails broken
flesh swollen round the cuticles
a white halo of hair
Brian not quiet, huddled in a large chair
upon which lay a fertiliser bag.
sitting, reading :
a thrush cracking the shells

Eye was green flecked
with grey
looking out to sea from his sackings
the alma mater of the sea

And now is cold
Halo cold
brown salts of long tumescence;
in the sea; dark shadows
throat shadows
pell mell ochres

An oily slick
spume and heart’s whatnot
locution with desert poppies battered
to the eyelids

this coarse hair
thick and greasy, held by her fingers
while she was trimming the mane

She went through
dining areas, curtained
and Out the hall
dimmed damp walls

where air acents accumulated
Enough for years.

Washboard soap, must
of twine, brine and urine
go pour decanted tea
drink the chemical water

In between
moonlight and sunspark
                     two kingfishers
cut air over stream

Brittle and whatsoever’s
blackened by the equinoxical
fire on the coppice
          sorrel and alder over ran
          over ran their time

hold up
croci bud,
maroon and gold
pollen of kingcups

dust so bright and yellow
against chapple wall
white and precious this wall
yellow and bright

glass the entrance
a nothing tune
vortex to ensnare a hawk

The sea in its calamity

The sea in its precision

Sea made gigantic by the candles
Renée left to burn on black lanes
of ocean; dividing
by sheer cliffs

Who could tell you
no don’t peer
where cliff face hollowed
but neither lay, not he nor she
entwined between their coats
a morning tide of songs

breakers on the shore
early swathe of birds
hooping the air; plenty plenty
plenty for some; wheatstalks
green bread. Makeshift jewels.
No need of human food for us
between our sleeves entwined
looking at the space between sea and sky

It was dark
Gloating dark
the saddest tales to be told
he told, no one said Shut up
and it was stark outside looking across the well pared lawn
no one’d actually stood there for months or
since sun paled yes and yes and o

The car sped thru the brine
bonnie night
three or four children going
where are we going
who will be there to meet us?

(unfinished)