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

Bits of me have been stolen.
I suppose I should shred my details,
my name, address, bank account, PIN,
all that unending junk-mail
offering me credit cards, insurance, loans.
But these are temporal. Names? Places?
They are nothings - easy to replace.

Instead, I fear those who take what isn’t theirs
all of them: the Agencies, the Objectives,
the Developments, the Initiatives,
the Inspiration, the Vision.
to do what’s right: the new techno-crime.
They don’t even ask or consult.
They just assume it’s for my good.

They’re the ones who’ve taken my language
and spelt it according to their need;
taken my voice and made it safe and soft;
corrected my grammar;
pilfered my people’s tales;
nicked their myths of creation
of who they are, who their children are.

They’ve taken my landscape and put a tree museum in,
cleansed the earth and sanitized it
though I never asked them to;
they’ve taken my time and told me
how my history should be;
presented it in their cabinet,
with their labels - not mine.

They’ve reinvented me
for consumption, marketing, education;
romanced my real past;
made my present their swag;
and now control my future.
The heist’s permanent.
The getaway car went long ago.

These things are all hard to replace,
and they are slipping - these treasures of the soul -
falling into the void’s hoard.
Every day, every hour, every second,
the void sings back to me,
belonging, belonging to be:
And sometimes I just don’t know who I am anymore.