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

In the name of sideways repercussions and gaseous trinity...
                                                                                                   Amen!

Is that Mr Raskirteen?
have got another memorable sermon for you,
Certainly not the last of my impertinence:

From now onwards, until Beelzebub plays a Liszt rhapsody on your ribs,
You’ll dust your wonderful mirrors yourself,
And you’ll wax your planetary desk with your preciously embroidered
                                                                                     handkerchiefs;
The only thing I still can do for you, if you wish, is to mow your wife’s lawn.
But at my leisure, of course, after a ceremonial booze-up.

As for that weekly handful of quid, which only allowed me to be different
                                                                                 from a Himalayan
tramp (incidentally, have you ever given me a rise since I first polished the
                                                                                            parquet in
your velvety-walled privy fourteen years ago?),
lust put it aside --- wonderful, isn’t it? --- to buy a brand-new set of
                                                                                mechanical slaves!

I’ll be seeing you at the next monetary eclipse,
Au revoir!
I am going to re-shape myself into a collective angel.

*

The 8 o’clock train, as usual, called at Crude Oil Inn at 8.30,
She got on punctually and sat down opposite me, all bright with
                                                                           hypothetical diagrams;
All the time I dreamt of her tong legs, as long as the Nile’s waves,
Until I decided that she would become my next intransigent Muse,

While she read her Monday paper, I wandered across her spiritual
                                                                                         dimension
(Without leaving out the holiest recesses of her chemical structure, which I
                                                                explored with minute interest );
By the time the train stopped, I no longer remembered my name and
                                                                                               address,
I had learnt the names of all her hypochondriac lovers.

I am sailing the South China Sea next summer, are you going to come with
                                                                                                     me?
A friend of mine is a sea-wizard there, even though he only owns a small
                                                                   fish-shop in Melville Close;
When there is no drinkable water in July, he migrates and visits the border
                                                     towns preaching the transition of winds,

He once even stopped all night to watch a bunch of salts paint the keel of
                                 their yacht amaranth and black, black and amaranth:
Come with me, and we’ll catch him up before he gets to the paddy-line and
                                                                                                   beyond.
Just lend me £50 and we’ll manage to run off together one way or another;
I can even afford a necklace of varnished vertebrae to persuade you:
My sweet, it’ll be a magnetic summer, believe me!
It is so easy to play faro dangerously on the deck of a piratical junk.

Take off your bra and put on your emphatic sombrero,
I’ll pick you up two minutes before sunrise,
Electric water on my saturated skin.

*

I have just assembled a perfect prototype,
Either an infrasonic tricycle or a six-wheeled dragon:
A thousand piston-rods, human wires and valves,
A philosophical shock to make its chassis invulnerable,
Even a fully furnished side-car for you to spend a complete honeymoon in
                                                      whenever you happen to have a fancy.

You can sit beside me and enjoy the motorway illusions all the same,
Even if you never keep to your promises.

We’ll soon be ready to take over every imaginary turn,
Every somersault or events,
And start the countdown:
                                        15,000,000
                                                            9,000,000
                                                                              3,000,000
(Maybe 1,000,000 will be a very promising number,
& not a penny less!
But you prefer dollars, do you?)

Don’t think I am going to have a week off because I want to study a
                                  miraculous aquarium somewhere on the east coast,
I never keep my promises either, but not one of my yawns has ever been
                                                                                               wasted,
So
Let us eliminate
Every trace of perturbation
From our redemptive friendship:

I don’t know what you feel when you buy a pair of regal shoes,
I can only give you a hatful of political peanuts.

You’d better highlight some of my inscrutable principles on your map,
Before we move into a new spiritual order:

Nitroglycerine sandwiches,
Enough fuse to enclose Texas twice,
Petrol bombs in case we should need an extravagant touch.

Could I borrow your lipstick to conclude my list?

*

Remember (said the Judge), not only your spirit but also your flesh has
                                                                                        been infested,
But we’ll heal you for ever, my lad, better than a troop of call-girls!

I laughed while they took me away,
They were only maggots in uniform;
When they locked the door of my cell, I happened to think of you
                                     strolling on a pier of a Saturday evening, smiling;
You were quite right,
Only the sea can purify our innermost thoughts,
And this is a perfect day to fade away.

What do you think I thought
When I saw you walk barefoot on the white pebbles into the cool
                                                                                          sea-foam?
Come on, let’s meet over there,
The blue bungalow looking onto the spiral mist.

What can you see from here, my sweet, the top of our century?
I’ll show you the map of common mediocrity,
From the intolerance of a Hollywood ham on your right,
To the intestinal entropy of a pop group on your left,
But, first of all, come closer and tell me, for I desperately need to know:
Did you really dare add a pinch of supermodel’s marrow to your stew?

*

My skin was like
A spotlessly clean looking-glass,
Immutable,
Unflinching,
My hair quivering in the elastic wind:

May I stay a little longer tonight
And watch you doing the ironing,
Talking about an unusual holiday in Barcelona?

You have always admired my commas and question-marks,
The lucent sense of my breath,
Living anaesthetic.

You mingled with a crowd of inexplicable faces,
You neither stirred nor said anything,
But you loved me --- of course you did! --- for a few flashes of seconds.
Wondering about the value of my finger-tips
And the inexplicable gold or my bones.

*

OK, ladies and gentlemen.
Tonight I’ll divine your future in a bucket of petrol,
So that all of you can be confident of betting on an A1 dog,
Or invest £200,000 without anxiety:
You are likelier to come across a middle-aged bitch that creeps from one
     bed to another in her cosmic attempts to materialise a Tibetan theorem,
Than have a chat with an honest seer!

I gnaw
Scratch
And spit:

In the name of my octagonal drum,
Let all those gentlewomen in silver fur-coats
Come to me, O my herds of divine cattle!
And their husbands, plastic moguls on the brink of suicide,
And their ruby-ribboned pussycats,
And their nausea...

I can easily explain to you all why I love Croesus and his three daughters
                                                                                            so much,
Perhaps you will all agree with me that a thoroughbred is not so different
                                                                                  from a mongrel.
When your stomach is as empty as a ball of hydrogen.

My worst enemy was sitting in the middle of a marble circle,
Behind a white and green table,
Inexpugnable.
Among piles of elegant sophisms printed on greyish matter,
A compass in the middle of a page pointing to the globular north
His words sharper than a cheese knife.

My mission in life is to select and preserve the impulses of humanity,
Unfortunately 90% of what is here concocted is only sparrow’s droppings;
And you, my lad, are your pockets still so stuffed with unwieldy
                                                                                      mechanisms?

I once read about some civilized cannibals who sold embalmed heads as
                                                                                          souvenirs,
Which could be used to magically decorate a mantelpiece in Louis XVI style:
Wouldn’t it be too sophisticated an idea to exhibit the geniuses of our time
                                                                                    in a tea-room?

Epilogue

Fully satisfied with my spiritual project,
I can now relax on my sofa sipping some infinitesimal bliss,
My long-legged Muse in a machiavellian G-string at my side, always
                                                                  perusing a financial pull-out:
Are you ready to set on the Chancellor of the Exchequer for my sake?
If only I didn’t need your veneration so much,
I would certainly auction you off to recover some of my old days.

If you feel like it, stand up and quit in silence,
But please, don’t tell me that your lost boyfriend has finally returned from
                                 Damascus with a stone or 40 carats for you alone,
You bore me!

O my immune assistant, in the meantime,
Since I have never really belonged to one single entity,
Just keep on decorating my feel as if it were your first earthly
                                                                                      apperception:
My finale will be an ambulance at breakneck speed into the night.

***

(1997 - 1998)