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

                     He steals sticks of rock
from the mouths of children,
                     sharpens them into stakes
for the heart, or in gentler
                     mode, juggles eggs on
the brink of hatching, careful
                     to drop all but one.
That’s his version of hope.

                     He reads poems couched
in irony, performance pieces
                     pitched for laughs and mouthed
with a painted grimace.
                     Is he sincere? You’ll never
be sure. He hides behind
                     a pan-stick mask,
and could be watching you.

                     He laments a greater grief
than all the world’s lost chances.
                     The trapeze artist whose rope
frayed in mid-flight?
                     That was his doing.
The bearded lady shaved
                     while sleeping? The crowd
belly laugh into an ache.

                     The front row is the main
butt of his jokes and casual
                     violence, a schoolboy’s glasses
smashed beneath his boots,
                     a grandma whose falsers
are forced down her throat.
                     Funny as a cartoon with no
escape holes, this clown.

                     Strange the audience grows
by the hour, transfixed by his
                     random atrocities. The show
is over, still they come
                     to press his nose into puree,
cut the flour from his face,
                     see what lies underneath -
no lies they won’t recognise.