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

1. I’m born with a silver bullet in my mouth.

2. I spit it out soonest.

3. I am born a Scorpio; a star sign of passion and power, perception and intuition. I am a loyal friend and a ruthless enemy. Secretive by nature, I keep my deeper thoughts and feelings to myself. I am a human dynamo and a tortured soul. (Of course it will be some years before I become aware of all this.)

4. I am torn too early from the breast. I am placed on the ground with the dirt and the filth and the women’s shoes. But do you hear me complain?

5. I have a series of nightmares about a sabre-toothed tiger living in my grandfather’s tool shed. My father tries to reassure me by saying that sabre-toothed tigers died out long before I was born. This fails to convince me and perhaps signals the moment when I start to doubt my father’s infallibility.

6. I get a dog called Rex. He’s a good dog, playful, loyal, obedient. But we never quite become best friends.

7. At school I am bullied and do some bullying myself. The pain of the former is not assuaged by the pleasure of the latter.

8. On the streets I experience violence, cruelty, viciousness, casual barbarity. It makes a boy of me.

9. I develop troublesome phobic reactions to certain words: fuselage, nonchalant, epidermis, astrolabe, isogloss.

10. I repress these reactions.

11. I learn that I have been born into the bourgeoisie, and ...

12. ... I learn to despise all things bourgeois.

13. I learn that few things are more bourgeois than a hatred of the bourgeoisie.

14. I develop an appreciation of nudity and language.

15. I discover the mysteries of sex.

16. I believe that I have solved the mysteries of sex.

17. My mother points out that I am 16 years old.

18. I have reason to believe that I am sweet.

19. When I am seventeen – it is a very ordinary year.

20. Unexpectedly I become interested in neuroscience, behavioural genetics, the Darwinian social sciences and artificial intelligence.

21. My patchy knowledge of mathematics holds me back.

22. I learn some dance steps; the pony, the pasa-doble, the jerk, the frug, the military two-step, the twitch, the merenge. I like the pony best.

23. I bop till I drop.

24. I party till I can stand it no more.

25. I learn to enjoy sex with people other than myself.

26. I read the small print in the book of love until I develop eye strain.

27. I swill down dangerous chemicals.

28. I toy with my consciousness.

29. My consciousness toys with me.

30. I hit the wall.

31. I pull my socks up.

32. I grow up, sort of.

33. I complete my re-education.

34. I get a temporary job.

35. My job temporarily gets me.

36. I teach English as a second language.

37. I teach English as a fifth language.

38. I nurture the ambition to teach English as a dead language.

39. I get a real job.

40. My job really gets me.

41. I search for a niche in society, a niche which is clearly and firmly defined and yet which seems to be uniquely made for me.

42. I look for love in many of the wrong places.

43. I find love in quite a few of these wrong places.

44. I develop a personal style; crumpled, informal elegance, earth tones, linen.

45. I decide I am not afraid of change.

46. I feel as though I’m at my peak.

47. I find a good woman but lose her through negligence.

48. I rebound.

49. I marry in haste.

50. I repent in haste.

51. I buy property.

52. I live and let live.

53. I believe that good electric fences make good electric neighbours.

54. My wife and I are blessed with issue.

55. My children fill me with wonder and awe.

56. Then they fill me with disappointment.

57. Then I fill them disappointment.

58. My children and I agree to lead separate lives.

59. I consider what Freud says, that love and work are the only therapy.

60. I say that Freud must have been dreaming.

61. I receive a get well card from someone I don’t even know.

62. I realize I am not even unwell.

63. I start to wonder if I’m past my peak.

64. I learn to enjoy sex with people other than my wife.

65. I experience catharsis and redemption in more or less equal quantities.

66. I develop a taste for early-Byzantine architecture, but I keep this to myself.

67. I understand that I am under no obligation.

68. I understand that no salesman will call.

69. I experience Weltschmertz, nostalgie de la boue, and la dolce vita. Not necessarily in that order.

70. I learn that even on the very clearest of clear days you can’t literally see forever.

71. I buy things: a car, a chainsaw, a pair of Art Deco whippets that evoke an era of sophistication in bonded Carrier marble.

72. I buy quality.

73. I buy enlightenment.

74. I buy a car that has had several careless owners.

75. I slide into debt.

76. I lose self-esteem.

77. War, I ask myself, what is it good for?

78. I conclude that even when you lose control and you’ve got no soul, it’s not really that big a tragedy.

79. I take the bull by the horns.

80. I get with the pogrom.

81. I don’t say yeah, when I want to say nope.

82. I travel. I go to far away places with strange sounding names. I may be deracinated, but I never lose my emotional baggage.

83. I invest wisely in respected, well-managed funds.

84. I enjoy flexibility and a guaranteed cash sum.

85. I want high growth-potential while still retaining underlying security. Doesn’t everybody?

86. I have a near-death experience, and my life flashes in front of my eyes.

87. Then it flashes in front of my mouth.

88. I experience interesting neuroses; narcissism, asocial cravings, night-eating syndrome.

89. I accept that these neuroses are not interesting to everyone.

90. I know with absolute certainty that I’m past my peak.

91. I hear time’s wingèd all-terrain-vehicle.

92. I decide I shall not go gentle into that good old people’s home.

93. I look back.

94. I avert my gaze.

95. I draw lumber from the past to stoke the conflagrations of the future.

96. I use the present as kindling.

97. I develop symptoms: weight loss, frontal headaches, gastroesophageal reflux, a slight maceration of the finger webs, edema about the lachrymal sac, irritability.

98. I survive.

99. So far.