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

“...wake now or never
For if thou nodd’st thou fall’st, and falling, fall forever.”
                                       Francis Quarles, Emblems (1635)


That morning you were lying-in, stirring sometimes
in the turbulence of an overcast, late-April heat,
dreaming of entering a pharmacy, drinking a cup of methadone
then rocking a lion to sleep in your arms
while stroking its mane in an olive-grove.
It’s the anti-depressants, you start to explain that night,
they leave me so lethargic I can barely move...
You are weighing Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot
against Stereolab’s Refried Ectoplasm,
Bonnie & Clyde against Harmonium,
seeking something, anything, that might lift the mood.
It’s so hard, you say, to want to be awake
when there’s only work, this room and debt to be conscious in...
You press POWER and PLAY, then set REPEAT.
I’m alright really, just a bit run down.
Tell me a story. Keep me entertained.
There’s a joke about penguins you’ve heard before,
a ‘twenties cocktail called an ‘Angel’s Tit’.
You turn away, stare out over rooftops, yards, yet listen hard,
follow the thoughts that slip unvoiced
behind the words I use. It was strictly two-thirds cherry liqueur,
one-third cream with a cherry on top.
You’d drink it and think you’d seen the face of God.
Buttercups nod on a darkening lawn
and ivy slumps like a safety-net
in the shadows thrown by a carriage-lamp.
You tell me you’re watching your own mind work from a long way off,
does that make sense, or are you going mad?
The orange upglare of the skyline burns
like rushlight on armoured, unmoving cloud.