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

A faint moan. Somewhere beyond pink roses, blue arches, plasterboard and brick: black leaves gently quivering; smeared silhouettes. Slithers of ripe peach across rooftops and a blue rinse cleansing the approaching dusk.

Just standing here, letting the essence swill around inside my creaking skull. There is a gnawing ache somewhere close to tiredness - but it’s not just that - it’s the struggle. The ongoing struggle. Keeping face and wits about you when all the odds are stacked sky-high like bricks without mortar.

It’s smiling when you feel like saying: fuck it. It’s grinding away at some inane task pretending you really enjoy it. It’s another lousy meal, ruined by your own carelessness. It’s a bare doormat - or just another fistful of junk-mail forced through the slot.

It’s everything and it’s nothing, this dying ember, this twisted figure slowly brooding his way into dusk; the gnawing ache rivetting him to the spot, he doesn’t move a muscle. This is the way it goes. More often than not. A crystal-clear coldness.

A faint twittering of birds. The kitchen light, and for one second, a ghostly face at the window, inspecting the netting before it slips away through clean air without so much as a backward glance.

A hermit is taking out debris. The accumulation of domestic bilge from another seven days in hiding. Washing moves on a line. Last light on grass. Eyes move higher: fences, telegraph poles and wires. The first star, shining.