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

1/
Let’s go inside and inhale the ghosts.
If we take two in at once, an explosion might result.
If we take none in, we might feel tragically empty.
Does the sweat of dead genius return on a very hot night?
How else do you feel now we're inside the lobby of the Chelsea?
I’d like to live here, not in another’s life.
But the actuality of the airless lobby
feels better than a truncated poetry reading
or some gaga dada fauve maudit.

Hungry for words I see “No smoking in the lobby”
and “The Village Voice, it’s free.”
So we sit beneath the giant ghost palomino
my grandfather always promised but never delivered
objet trouvé fandango.

A Burmese snow lion would suit me just fine about now,
a sort of shaved ice cone, no doubt.
A long vacation from my own time would do, though.
At last the ghosty phalarope, the found.

                                           (Tom Savage & Susan Maurer)
2/
gaga dada fauve maudit -
My generation always promised / never delivered

Let’s go on inside and inhale the ghosts
If we take two in at once an explosion might result
If we take none in we might fail tragically anyway

Does the sweat of dead genius return on a very hot night?
How else do you feel now we're inside the lobby of the Chelsea?

I’d like to live here not in another’s life
The actuality of the airless lobby feels better than poetry
                                                                             truncated

Poetry truncated words I see smoking hungry in the lobby
Or words I see hungry smoking in the lobby
Or words hungry in the smoking lobby
The lobby smoking in hungry words
And the Village Voice it’s free
So we sit beneath the giant ghost

Beneath the giant’s ghost free voice of the village it’s
Free beneath the ghost giant the voice hungry smoking in
A lobby words free of voice giant in the village
Giant village smoking free of words
Like being hungry in two lobbies
Lobby the Burmese snow lion

A Burmese snow lion,
A long vacation from my own time would
would suit me fine about now
about now / about time

I lobby words around the object
Of a Burmese snow lion
Rich with politics of snow cap
Free of words smoking to be called
A volcano to be melting
Two eyes of paper
Alternative fiber in the throat
Of a Burmese snow lion

Melting but burning on a snow cap

Beneath the giant’s ghost
I lobby on behalf of the Burmese snow lion
Feeling the swell of the melting snow cap
Feeling the burning of polar ice berg
Bearing the fire of the volcano

Let’s go on in and inhale the ghosts
If we take two in once an explosion might occur
If we take two in once one explosion might occur
If we take two in at once two explosions might occur once
If we take in at once two explosions might occur at once
At once two in explosions might occur

Explosions occurring might take two
At once you must explode twice

Let’s go in and inhale the ghost
Let’s go in and inhale the ghost

Lonely ghosts
Lonely goats
Baaad ghosts
Baaad ghosts
Ghosts of baaad dad
Lonely ghosts
Of bad baaagdad

Gho sts herd
Goat’s herds

Heard of what?
Herd of ghosts!
Course I heard of ghosts!
No t heard of ghosts - ghost’s herds!
What should I care what a ghost’s heard--I have no secret from a
                                                                                          ghost!

Baad ghosts
B aaad ghosts
                                                                       (Merry Fortune)