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

children -
stop playing
pick up your toys
go home
learn to live without hope
strengthen your backs in readiness for the burden
or give up
no, don’t worry - it’s fine to give up
such a beautiful day to give up
god, such a beautiful day to give up

weightless

buoyant

i could cry out, but no-one would hear me
i’m lost, i know, but lost was always my destiny
too close to the candle i

suffocate in the warn waxy glow

there are people downstairs, i hear
their shrill tinny voices, their clumsy footfalls, their soaked
                                                                 souls bumping
about the ceiling and walls
and it takes a full five minutes to realise - i’m one and the
                                                                                  same
and I hate all this
i hate being human
i hate existing
as human

i sickeningly rematerialise
(eyes face limbs torso slowly one by one
from out of the darkness)
leaving my tranquil sanctum for the harsh bluster of outside
and it’s like being wrenched
from the temperate and nurturing arms
of friends and parents
i never had

and i am my own family now
and i am my own family now
and i am my own family now

is the lowness soaking through to my words sufficiently
do i move in the manner you’ve grown accustomed to -
as a shark scavenging the ocean floor - weightless monster -
i skim over you
my shadow casts an eerie haze across your molten strata
i sense blood and fear and weakness and go in for the kill

does my face dictate the way i am showing you guiding you
towards the murky recesses of my inner consciousness
am i right
am i wrong
who can tell
who gives a damn

all these words
all this pain of existing i’d like to off-load onto you
but you’re never there
- i find myself approaching the most unlikely people
in order to tell them of my woes?
oh, woe is me!
oh, woe is me!
oh, my blooming clouding rolling phantasm of inexorable kismet
i’m black on the inside sootied sable swarthy
does this, upon reading when i am gone
say anything about where i was,
should it? does it have to?
i must admit i’m preoccupied with where i’m going
i’ll see you later
i’ll see you later
i’ll see you later

reduced to mere images
dislocated shapes and smells
shells and husks
of people, places
nothing to do with me, i’m sure -
can’t be.

unconnected distraught dislocated
what must it mean?

an argument in kreuzberg
lost shoes on the u-bahn
primitive discordant twangs of alien impulses to . . .
to . . .

a lace heart at the age of nine
daredevils above the expressway
headaches on school trips to london
trails of toilet paper streaming
from the train on the way back
on the way back
the way back

home

the way back is always closed
there can be no way back
to wherever you’ve never been

first pack of cigarettes in aston
first breath
first everything

lists
lists

a kiss

always i’m reminded of my own self-built mythology

last cigarette
last breath
last kiss
last list
last...

oh, nothing