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

Could

Could I happily live without you
For the rest of my life I could.

What will I do I don't know leave
To chance accidents maybe.  Maybe.

Recent objects scare me off to the right
Angles magnify a thousand thousand fold.

Keep

Keep life simple what could be simpler
Was my first step towards going back

Into identification or heed your advice
For once don't lose it.  Keep your head.

 
Should

Should anyone need to know anyone
Else for that matter or why digging

For knowledge long gone, why should
I put myself forward pushing noses

Against arses, pressing noises against

Muses til birds and insects thud in the ground.

Why should a poem make sense
When the world around it doesn't?

I mean, I can't believe my ears what
They're telling me or where they've been.

Mythology

They want me but do I want them to complete the
   burn-out - and then do
I only want sex, no I don't I want love.  Why are sex and
   love so exclusive?

Alive to those mere details the facts are these: two or
   three thousand
Years plus any other circumstances you've brought to
   account,

Thrown from opposite to opposite poles of the same
   magnet or globe,
And I've been around the block and getting no younger or
   closer

To where the choice is, add one to no-one who answered
   my ad
And you get the picture - it takes one to know one who
   said that

Opposites attract opposites, as you know Venus, formerly
Known as the goddess Aphrodite - the rosy-fingered dawn

Attracts one of everyone like me to one of the many

 
Autobiographical

To think this entirely autobiographical constantly
Looking over my shoulder.  Method is my sanity

While the others snuffle at the trough clearly marked
   ambition.
And whilst night visitors arrive in the car nobody moves
  and nobody

Gets hurt, we had wondered where you'd gone.

Mine's the espresso.  Helps calm me down.