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

As apostates in stale breathing time we sit.
Work bores into the head.
We are stupid apostles in light time and dark time,
emergencies in small and big bites spring at us.
We defend those in uniform and our contextual wage givers.

My good fellow colleague sitting to my left explains about
the clips of films on his new phone sent to him - a technology
clogging my powers of comprehension. I don't understand how it works.
Films can be good, liberating our vision of dark time and light time I say.

Through our dense work on 2 screens, glaring at us too closely
I see a smaller screen with a scene of sex from the mobile phone.
Ejaculations, sperm gushing - hot blistering penises masturbated,
sucked deep into throats, grinning women - oddly no men's faces.
Grainy movement, oblique, oils on water, obtuse, clogged smiles,
gushing, wired for 10-second voyeurs.

I deal with an assault of a woman punched in the back of the head
by a schoolchild in a group leaving the bus with his mates after school.
There was no confrontation, she sat at the front of the bus, just SMASH!

Does she need an ambulance? I can hear she is crying.
Take it slowly; explain what happened in your own time.

- woman fellates, tries to breathe and is slapped to continue, which she does -

did she see the schoolchildren's faces?
She was with her autistic son and didn't want to make a fuss or upset him.
Does she have anyone there at the moment to comfort her?
She is alone, no husband now, she splutters.
Would she like to be visited by a policewomen, a victim support unit?

- man is hung by wrists, naked, whilst a woman also naked, repeatedly kicks
him in the groin, he screams, tries to recover, and she kicks him again -

Clips ends. A screensaver of my good fellow colleague's daughter's face beaming silently.

Call ends.