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

The song “My place in the world” represented me as I sat in my purple gown, freshly scrubbed but a messy self within. I was roused from sleep at 8:00am by doors closing and the shuffling of feet. By quarter past, it was clear there would be no going back to sleep in this house full of activity. Phone calls made or received, and going on in voices loud enough to drown NASA’s launching shuttles.
 
Cleaning was on everyone’s mind except mine. It is Saturday for the love of rest! Some shalom would be welcome on this day of the Lord after a week of running and wrestling with the harsh world that is London - capital of gloom and damp. This last day of the month, it does look as if the sun will come by us inhabitants of the blessed earth and maybe even stay long enough to share lunch with us. Otherwise, we are going to be where we were all week – unsure of what to wear, eat or drink being as it were some clothes and foods are only suitable for certain weather. But the sun and rains allocated the duty of washing and drying England are obviously unaware of this fact. The great winds that are ‘bank’ workers have also adopted the self-serving, self-directing attitude of the two workers God assigned duties to.  From where things stand, it looks like the sun strolls into the office at all odd and unreliable times, making the rain splutter overtime, pun-ishing us in its rage-led exercise. The shift system seems to have lost its meaning where British weather is concerned.  Whoever used to make sure spring was not winter must have resigned or possibly got laid off by the economical god.  Word goes round that the immigrants have something to do with it. From Iceland to  Zimbabwe, Peru to Bahrain, everyone brought their mother-land weather into the once upon-a-time well ordered weather pattern and now no one knows how to send the funny multi-shine-rain workers back to where they came from since the people who carried them across the Islands are now permanent residents. 


 
It takes 4-10 years for the secretary of state and an entire team of committed officers to clear backlogs of residence applications. So before the answer comes to the waiting  Peruvians or Icelanders, their weather hooks up with the host country’s, giving birth to a new character the meteorological office have no idea how to interpret. Research going on to establish why Bahrainian and English mixed breed is snow in April and a  heatwave in January is  interrupted when the by-product of interactions between Asian and English weather steps in. In this case, August is when the roofs are violently yanked from the walls and in February the cherries and  daffodils smile, waving a warm hello to the world. 
 
What better way to deal with confusion than to blame the met office for saying “It will be a sunny day” only to end up with a ray of sunlight here and there and a cold spell lasting longer than the warmth? Met officers are tired of being caught up in the war raging  between employer/employee not to mention the service users in this case, the ever complaining British society. “Shine and give light and warmth, God said to the sun. To the rain He said, “Wash the dirty roads and quench the farms so that food can grow - and don’t overdo it, damn it!” But who knows the exact moment these two became disobedient employees. Was it when the Brits left their land in the winter season in search of a tan? Was it then that winter felt redundant and asked the sun to do longer hours in the summer? Or was it when the sun shone long and strong and the crowd beneath lamented against the employer's bid to turn their pale skins to charcoal?

Was it not when the voice rose up to the skies, fists clenched, eyes blazing especially behind designer sunglasses that things took a turn in a bid to even life out? Someone did say, “If I wanted to be black, I would have been born black.” That is a half indisputable truth but the other half of it was that it was said in the spur of the moment - heat. Now all are advised not to speak if things begin to heat up because when heat within and heat without combine, things turn blue, grey or black. Very black. Misery hates to be in the same pot with too many working hours per week, higher than Kilimanjaro taxes, knife killings, coalition government fever and bad news from airwaves scanning the globe day and night. All these together make a table for a food-poisoning guaranteed meal, hence a reason to text the sickie message to one's boss. No doctor within the confines of the NHS can claim the ability to prescribe anything that deals directly with the symptoms. Vomit it or pass it out any other way - that is how the weather-beaten multi-cultural Britain does it most of the time. Unfortunately, it is more times than not that the contents of our toilet bowl are replaced by the fellow motorist, work colleague, spouse, family member or flat-share-mate.

This is what made me sit like a python this morning readily wanting a martial arts move that would teach my source of provocation not to touch my Saturday mornings with a hosepipe named Dyson. Do people have to vacuum the house at  8.45am to accompany the spinning washing machine? Who is supposed to compromise? Me, the extra hour in bed; or they, their need to do their fortnightly cleaning of the communal area early in  the morning and then sit to watch comedy television till midday? Unless watching TV is their  only source of income, I feel strongly about the  need for people to think about others. But on  second thought, I should probably wake up early  everyday of the week, including Saturday. Then rest in a vertical position.