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

Beyond the goading crowds, the dive unfathomable, way past
kudos intoxication. Tourist delusion, knee deep in bohemian cache,
but only compulsive obligation, driving hazardous pursuit. Sponge
absorbing dread; demons to be conquered, not much honey
for a sailor’s wife here.

Pearl fishers wrestle touchy forms of irrationality; phantoms
dragging venture down. Compelling duty lost in whirlpools and
eddies. Austere, almost monochromatic totality, vacant and
hollow, like two thirds of our dreams; the far, appearing as
seductive as the near. Tangiers fading, Poseidon calling.

Hunger driving courage, sad farewells, seafarer’s reticence; no
longer an option. Skin flakes settle into dust; imprints and
stories, only solemn reminders. Counterpoint chasm, beckons
bleached craft. Crew ingesting desiccated reptile, kif ambrosia
broadens the palate, dulls senses; fear relinquished, fatality ahead.
Prismatic scorching of tiny boats, musical trade winds treated like
memories, seduce, suck them deep, plummeting, the surface
never to be seen again.

Time-slip landscapes disappear over kinetic mainline inflection,
the sun; gold and silver off the enigmatic sea. Mythical sea birds
swoop from desolate clouds, boatman perception lost to blurred
veracity. Repartee shuffling through indigo filters, un-chartered
territories draw the compass line.

Ambiguous mystery; just Western fancy. Instead, gargantuan
shudder, but too immoderate to recognise. Of pulsating colours and
tangy masts, of rudderless direction and prayers left unanswered,
of crazed swirling and insipid waves; big as mountains. The mélange
a mirage, but the crew too weak to resist the desire, the craving,
the necessity. No way back, oh, impossible nightmares.