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

LIGHTNING CROCUS, STREAK
the sky theatre,
flash on
the spider-ground
soft eggs goggle
& skirts
are breathing through gills
they mushroom
& frighten, photographed,
orageous in saffron.

BLADE-MECHANICAL-EFFICACY
hands shuffle
& blur
the layers
striped black
the recess there
the secret
voice or cave
the bled thing
dripping on ash.

HEAD RIGGED, BUCKLED
a dwarf arm
capped by
three-clover-pod,
cracking it.
Mouth like a thumb
plunged into
the counter-wave,
what chance
if not bound fast.

BEADED-TRAPEZE-BLOOD,
silver balls
that fire along
the magic circuit
of sand,
you science!
you rods
in the air!
you looking up
from your team.

ALCHEMY HEADSET, RADIO ON,
intuit the dry basin
where crystals remain.
The competent pilot
sparking with signals
leads under instruction.
It goes to his head,
the fire becomes green
& tubes disappear
into the face.

LOVE-BANK WHERE
the liquids balance,
silver nets
both naive heads
that rest,
the water glass &
glass their eyes
exchange infinitely
to the gravel-bed-
a fund of white discs

FADING...SECOND SELVES
blur & shuffle
past slow cars.
Inside, lit switches
& exits
in outline only.
How do we
carry the body
of what was lost,
what goes out.

SKYBLUE LYRE BLACK THROAT
the box vibrates
& earthquakes out
into a wooden rose.
The wreaths are set,
wire twisted
round a martyr
head that hums
from heavenly crack
eyes slit upward.

LENS FLAKE SHOWERS
unbridled, casting
ranging through worlds.
Shootings-
each grain
magnified,
blown up
& gusting in
toy snowstorms
of the head.

SPOTTED FACE-FILM
grey skin
not space
but hymen
shone through
by stars.
Old light,
red gone white
& sacks of ash
to look up from.

RESTS UPON CAPITAL:
the headland,
the deposit,
the mineral wealth
& after a time
acculturation.
Flowers appear
on metal & stone,
the sense of
interest changes.

TAPE RETURNS CINEMA HAZE
over the hill
the harvest
silhouettes grow...
Some details
are lost,
the good abstracted.
memory wrappings,
take-out returns
romance the gold.

FAST-SLOW PICTURE-HOUSE,
lit boxes,
moving figures,
not bodies:
only records
can be changed.
The colourless review
commences
at any rate
still eyes yield.

GAUZE MASK MOTH,
amber eye-gum
& shuttering
of lids
or is it wings.
Fine things,
the light inside
revolves while birds
alight in silence
on the battle dress.

GOLD LETTERS ROSE
in coiled dust-gust
flaps to the ear
hair brushed aside,
confidentially,
precious truths
circulate, unfold
& fold in
through the slit
of silence.

CLEAR MANDARIN PASTE
dried leaves
shuffle & bond
as a screen.
The royal body
then removed
the skin wall
stands glossed
with orange
& china blue.

PROPPED THINGS, WOOD & BONE
in a moonlit room
angled to lick silver
coating
from frames
folding, anorexic
dying from
the outside in
lunar deckchairs,
radiant half-lives.

THIS ICH, THIS BODY-BREATH
this death.
Avenues
of trees
& the pelt
of deer
moving behind.
We are blind
in our lungs, we
touch on dead birds.