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

If I am not like this, I am full of child.
Before I was like this, I was like a child.

Look at me now my
body choking with it, face
and it’s Birkenau, it’s Falconetti.
It’s me child chi chi chia, machu picchu, and it’s me,
knowing profound order. It’s me, remembering.

Body, equation.
Baby, girl.

Teddy it’s
all going to be alright
only when
I’m already dying.

Sequoia, burning. Smashing. One.
Far, one, far away but it’s okay. I re
love you all, a while. Re
solve to go back. Before, dronning maud land.
You were before the basin, the sub-glacial basin,
before, my two sisters. And one, Isabella.

I remember my birthday and I remember how
much further I’ve fallen than my sisters.

Sequoia, burning. Lonely.
Lonely and I’m angry, stomping at the ground.
Striking if you looked, crunching if you cared.
Because you didn’t. Compressed, numbers. Focused, dying.
Dronning, maud, child. Ridden, too late, freezing.
China faced of shale and dust, automaton lust.
Little, girl. Only, colder. Changed, altogether.
Hypothermia.

Wild. Baby, wild child, dead child,
child grown out of. Fury. Rotten shit.
Shit, shit shit and tantrum, won’t be this way.
Not like this. Bug-eyed, warming, blue bathed,
grey and warming, dangerously lonely, don’t you know.
Don’t you know, I am spoilt baby stomping,
can’t you see it coming, coming, ripping,
cursing, shunting block to block, ignoring warnings,
groaning, won’t be, won’t be lonely,
won’t be beaten, won’t be taken,
by the throat. Away.
If I am like this then I am full of child.
Won’t be potidaea, burning.

Potidaea, moving.
Changed. Altogether. (dronning//maud.land) Never
be like this again. Before I was like this,
I was like a child, but that is all. That is all. On, me,
                                                                             now.