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

             land presents itself
disassociated from whole

            the task
            association
match upon match

fitting
sea to estuary
river to rock

meander
erosion to load
working back to spring
the heart of things in this

work & will
here a windmill there
a castle

*

this scissored coast well marked by crabs
turns a slow way south by east and west slashes

undercut the heavy mountains enclose
inlet after inlet
wet feet and head each
peak danced in veils

sudorific blisters drawn to rivulets ecstatic
sheshesheshesheshesheeeeee

the groin of the matter     good sex

time again draws fingers into the eye
mapping past to present

at 542 mph and -54 fahrenheit february at thousands of feet above

the little nest of kenmare holds no purchase
the stretched hand of ireland agonized between grip and farewell
to america in a time of famine                a person driven
to the source of the crop

*

birds wing of energy screams into newark

columbus
your life’s-work folds
to my own

words cross from eastern shores
searching
moods in open space

my pidgin spanish

amarillo
campo
sol-acorazado
y burro-lento

                                                  viajo
let a poet in

a new book becomes a chart of promises

the bow wave arrives
all miss the first
‘merican syllable

*

from newark out a failed film set
too expensive to complete
                                                 or pull down

winter bleak bones of construction left iron hard
in the stained snow cut thro with winter-pelted cars streaking
headlights madly flickering shadow-shadow Into the cathedral night

acres of stationary crops eager to leave parking lots
to seed new jersey like fire weed

and loneliness rubs a small circle of vision
on a bus window searching the frozen baptism of discovery in shivering hell
borne over newark bay on the turnpike-brick-road
towards the emerald city

*

it is the halo of morning
before dawn bites and day chews on

perfect in indecision this moment is bent
                                                            bent between exactness bent
and tortured by armies both retreating and advancing as tides upon
                                                                                         tugged oceans

but this is no time of liquid and none of solid it is
the time of air come to a gathering of attention

in blaina the mountain is a wall dangerously dark against the waking east
the leftover industrial pond sultry in its scoop not splashed yet by sky

aye   aye   in this
a cullercoats’ bairn calls against nothing that will echo
that sound taken from the bay to the point to the open water by wing of a
                                                                                               silver gull

manhattan matters are jailed

*

morning in manhattan
the melt and freeze of traffic
the melt and freeze of traffic
      melt        freeze
      melt        freeze

*

new york has my neck like a bittern
in reeds of buildings

the sky is punctured
again and again and horizons immediate
edge upon each other in the way
of mr hopper but this is full-blown day
large in conversation that swallows my face

again
head thwacked back
balance the chrysler building on my nose

the ghost of a water boy sits on a sixtieth story window sill
ready to run for beer or dip his pail

on this palimpsest a tale is set

from a family of steeplejacks he
would walk the bones of this building
every rib       limb      head to foot
as sure as a pilot fish
and take scraps of tips
yes
tread the sky
where paths are sacred without
push or shove
his way forged of metal
lit by glowing rivets shot like hopes
the weather mined by welded flares
hard spark-showers spattered of f a grinding disk
his body leaned into the prevailing wind and buckets
balanced like scales against each worker’s thirst
left cup         right cup         left cup
poised as each step

*

losing language or the space
it might develop
is of concern and yet it is
the intern of this city

utterance brawls the streets
loves Itself in bars
performs in times square
is spent in mile after mile of horizontal and vertical retail
rustles in a police pocket
smokes from pyres of poets

abundance exported by ocean or spilled
to the heartland
energy migrates to synergy

listen to it spit and land
as hockle on a gum blistered pavement

*

rediscovering america
its first shelf

rediscovering america
putting my foot forward

rediscovering america
in this small step
conjugating

*

back to back with a buddhist
in the park
the sun scorches the moment out of winter
makes a hot poker
plunged in this iceberg of shimmering
america
back to back with a buddhist
in the park

*

homeward an occidental shadow lays its length

the bird of time pecks me

a glimmering seed