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

IT WAS snowing in his back garden in May. The willow tree, an upright non-weeping variety that dominated his long narrow garden was releasing thousands of white fluffy airborne seeds from its fat hairy catkins. The tree had become one enormous dandelion clock. The seeds floated in the sunshine; some, buffeted gently by the breeze, clung together in fluffy formations, like the lambswool you find caught on barbed wire fences in the countryside.

   His neighbour said they brought her out in a nasty rash. She’d had to dose herself up with antihistamines and was scared to go outside until given the all-clear. There was no escaping them. She couldn’t sleep with the windows open. He imagined her barricaded indoors, boarding up the windows to resist the aerial onslaught.

   The grass under the tree was white and downy soft with them. They stuck to any sticky or wet surface: aphid coated rosebuds, the vivid lime green sap-speckled flowers of euphorbias, spiderwebs, the vigorously spiraling new-season stems of clematis, insides of teacups, and the melting chocolate surfaces of the Marks and Spencer’s Viennese shortbread biscuits he’d laid out at teatime for his visiting family.

   Eventually, his mother, sister, brother-in-law and their ten year old son had had enough, and with exaggerated coughing, brushing and blowing away of seeds they decided to call it a day, folded up the deck chairs they’d brought with them and beat a hasty retreat indoors. They ‘d been defiantly determined to make the most of that rare occurrence – a sunny Bank Holiday Sunday.

   His nephew was bored. He’d finished constructing Makuta, his latest Bionycle, and the battery on his Gameboy had run flat. His nephew’s father was looking bored, too, and had begun repeatedly whistling the opening phrase of the theme tune to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, something his brother-in-law did, he suspected, when he wanted to be somewhere else. They made excuses about unspecified jobs to do at home and beating the traffic, and left. He suspected his mother would like to have stayed longer.

   When they’d gone, he washed up the antique willow-pattern tea service, put away the familysize teapot and piled their gifts neatly on his desk. He’d enjoyed seeing them, even though the meal had been disappointing; the pork dry and overcooked, roast potatoes not crisped, the cider, creme fraiche and apple sauce too sour. A plain apple sauce might have gone down better, and he wished he’d found time to make meringues to go with the fruit compote. His nephew had only managed a few forkfuls of his meal despite assisted cutting-up and large dollops of concessionary ketchup. In the end, he made do with a banana, which was fortunately just the right side of firm. He remembered his own childhood mealtime resistance, the fights, the tantrums. Vegetables? Stuff that’s supposed to be good for you but tastes horrible? Sprouts, cabbage, greens? No pasaran! Then he felt guilty thinking of all the Sundays his mother had laboured lovingly in a kitchen half as big as his, cooking a full roast, and finding time to make cakes, scones, jellies and blancmanges for afternoon tea.

   For a while he was back there.

   “A Walk In The Black Forest” was playing on Two Way Family Favourites, again, requested by some loved-one serving in the armed forces on the edge of the Iron Curtain or some distant, soon-to-be- independent colony. There was a comforting predictability to Sundays then. Roast beef one week would be followed by roast pork the next, then roast lamb the next, and so on throughout the year, with an intermission for chicken or turkey on Bank Holidays. Dinner always came with gravy, and afters always came with custard. There were hard times in the Seventies when meals had to be bulked out with larger helpings of potatoes, but the twin rivers of Gravy and Custard never ran dry.

   He saw his mum wiping her hands on her pinny, saw her opening the steamed-up kitchen window to call Dad in from the allotment to carve the joint. He prided himself on his carving skills. He kept the knife sharp and carved thinly, which meant there’d be enough meat left over to mince into a shepherds pie, or to eat cold with mashed potato and Branston Pickle the following day. He made the first incision as the clock was striking one, as Billy Cotton shouted his trademark opening catchphrase of “Wakey Wakey” on the radio. Strange, he thought, how people who reminisce about the Sixties never mention Two Way Family Favourites or Billy Cotton’s Band Show. Then again, the Sixties always seemed to be happening elsewhere, somewhere in a cloud of patchouli and pot at the end of a long ride on the 36 bus, in Hyde Park, Carnaby Street or Grosvenor Square, not their little estate in Sydenham SE26.

   The sun had gone in. The sky was turning grey. Fewer seeds fell now. He loved this time of day. A blackbird sang from the top of a leylandii conifer until a magpie knocked it from it’s perch. He looked for another magpie. There was none.

   The lilac tree looked best in this light, he thought; it never looked as good against a clear blue sky. He loved May, it made him think that renewal might be possible after all, that he, like nature, might return in leaf-turning freshness after the dark winter. He breathed in the heady scent of the blossom.

   Back indoors, he idled some time away in his office flicking through the latest issue of Boyz. He lingered for a while over the escort pages, then read his stars. They gave him a zero passion rating and chided him for being an uptight, fussy Virgoan queen. He tossed the magazine to the floor in mock disgust.

   Never mind Boyz, he thought. Where were the Angelz?

   The outlook was, as Ella says, decidedly, well...

   As he grew older, he realised this was how existential crises came on, not in great... dramatic... keeping-you-awake-at-night episodes of doubt and worry, but irritating moments of indecision as day gives way to night and you grapple with the dilemma: to stay in or go out?

   Of course, he could stay in, listen to music, watch TV, phone a friend, meditate. Those were the sensible options. He thought about the White Swan. At least he was more likely to talk to someone there, but Limehouse was a bugger to get to. Fuck it, he knew what he’d do, he’d celebrate Mayday his way.

   The drivers from Orient Cars were reliable and friendly. The mini cab driver, a middle-aged Indian man in a red and white Leyton Orient football shirt was listening to Sunrise Radio. Sensing the friendly interest of his passenger - he’d asked: Is that Sunrise Radio? – he began singing along in Hindi to a mournful song. Then, for the benefit of his passenger, he sang in English: “I was working so hard to improve my life, I never realised death was so near.”

   Making eye contact, he repeated the refrain, speaking slowly this time.

   “I was working so hard to improve my life, I never realised death was so near.”

   The driver dropped him off near the Green Man roundabout. Cars snaked back from the 24- hour Tesco. He crossed over the road, past honking Canada geese splash-landing on the Hollow Pond boating lake, across the treeless scrubby grassland of Leyton Flats towards the forest. He insisted on calling it a forest, but it was barely a wood. It had once been part of a much larger forest, the magnificent Waltham Forest where kings had hunted wild boar and deer, and Queen Boadicea and her daughters had committed suicide by eating poisonous berries. Now the remnants of this great primeval forest was managed by men in suits at the Corporation of London, and its beech trees threatened by global warming; their shallow roots unable to suck up enough water and nourishment from the dried earth.

   The warm weather had drawn the crowds to the Flats. Crossing the open space, he passed a pack of crows scavenging for food; pedigree dogwalkers; groups of barefooted South Africans huddled around prohibited barbecues; Somali men chewing khat; muscular Polish men in tight white jeans and T-shirts flirting with women in pink jeans and rhinestone cowboy boots.

   The grassland gave way to thicker, wilder, greener vegetation. It was getting dark as he reached the perimeter of the wood.

   He waded into the waist-high cow parsley and pushed through an opening in the holly bushes. He felt exhilarated and relieved to enter the woodland’s dark embrace. He worried that he might be alone, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he began to make out the shadowy figures of men among the trees. Some men hurried about purposefully, others stood still, alone or in groups of two or three. Some talked, most were silent. He couldn’t decide who were more confident, the men who stood and waited or the men who ran about.

   Intoxicating smells floated and dissolved on the still night air, the pungent scent of May blossom, the smell of aftershave, a hand-rolled cigarette, the lingering smell of poppers. He heard the sound of twigs breaking underfoot, noticing how some men’s footsteps were heavier than others.

   He tore open a sachet of Kamagra and squeezed the orange gel into his mouth. At fortysix, he valued the extra confidence it gave him. It was one thing less to worry about. The metallic foil put his teeth on edge. He licked his sticky fingers clean. He was ready.

   The last time he’d visited the forest it was bathed in the light of a full moon, and owls on both sides of the forest were too-wit-too-wooing a lyrical, mysterious conversation back and forth high above the heads of the men cruising below. He imagined the birds casting a spell on the men who went home irrevocably altered, behaving in increasingly strange ways much to the consternation of partners, friends and family. That night, he’d had a strange encounter with a big Asian guy who had surprised him first by asking to be fucked, and again when he turned around after fucking and said: “Do you believe in miracles?”

  And he’d responded without hesitation: “Yes. I believe in miracles.”

   “In that case,” the man said, looking pleased. “Place your hand on any part of my body and make a wish, but nothing silly.”

   He placed his hand on the man’s chest, over his heart, and wished they might both be happy and cured of whatever was ailing them.

   There were no owls tonight.

   In a clearing by the decaying trunk of a collapsed tree, he found him: over six foot, early thirties, good looking, bearded, smiling. He wore green combat trousers and a green T-shirt.

   They exchanged glances and grabbed evaluatively at each others crotches.

   “Do you fuck?”

   “Yes, I do.”

   He spoke in a deep, surprisingly fruity middle class voice which he found strangely reassuring. He tugged the man’s cock free from his Calvin Klein pants, and, holding it like a handle, led him away from the open space into a labyrinth of dense, dark gorse. As they passed further down the path, there was an increasing amount of litter underfoot, sexual litter – tissues, condoms, condom packaging, a can of Red Bull – that seemed to fluoresce in the moonlight.

   He dropped his trousers and pants, nearly lost his balance, and reached into the top pocket of his denim jacket for condoms and lube. He tore the condom from its foil with his teeth. The man got his cock out. He sucked it briefly. It was big, fleshy, uncircumcised and tasted of latex. He tried to roll the condom on, it bounced back, the man took over, and pulled it on expertly with one confident jerk of his fist. He bit into a sachet of Wet Stuff, cursed the toughness of the plastic. What were you supposed to do, carry a pair of scissors? He squirted some on the guy’s cock, shoved the rest up his arse, wiped the lube from his fingers onto the front of his Tshirt, and bent over. Bowed and prostrated, shame and pride danced inside him like small flames feeding on his alternating self-disgust and self-satisfaction.

   Should he have got the man to lube him up? Was there an etiquette? At least this way it felt more like a shared responsibility.

   The man pressed hard, but off target. For a few alarming seconds, he wondered if he was abnormal, perhaps his arsehole was in the wrong place! He seemed so sure of the way in, so persistent. He helped him adjust his aim and guided him inside. He gasped. It hurt like hell. He breathed deeply. All things must pass, he thought, including this pain.

   His attention switched to the surrounding trees standing in silent witness. They’d be there years after he’d died. He imagined being held in the arms of an ancient oak, its branches drawing his body tightly up against its rough solid trunk, and with a loud crack, the trunk splitting violently from it’s crown to its base, opening up a deep gash. He imagined the tree pulling him in, folding his flesh and bones into its centre, its core, then closing up again, leaving no trace of scar or his existence. Gone.

   He glanced upwards at the watery moon.

   He didn’t want to be fucked by man, he wanted to be fucked by God. He wanted to go beyond, go completely beyond, go completely beyond beyond. He wanted to awaken. He knew this was not the way to do it.

   “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.”

   “Wakey, Wakey!”

   The stranger pushed harder. He was in. Deep. It didn’t take long. A couple of minutes.

   Even as it was happening he couldn’t help thinking that the idea and the symbolism were somehow more pleasurable than the physical sensation. He felt body and mind split, and the gravitational pull of mundane reality.

   What on earth was he doing? He should know better at his age. Supposing the guy was a... Supposing the condom split. Supposing, supposing, supposing. He wondered if the guy was enjoying himself. Should he enquire? Should he speak, or remain silent?

   No, he wanted to be pleased. He was tired of pleasing others. Still, it all seemed rather peremptory, a pit-stop-service kind of fuck, rather than anything remotely passionate or special. What did he expect?

   The man’s pelvic thrusts quickened. He stabbed into him more impatiently, trying, he thought, to pump more excitement into the situation than was actually there, or perhaps he was trying to hurry him on towards climax so he could move onto his next conquest.

   Enough!

   He let out a groan to let the other guy know he was coming in case he missed it. His cum fell to the ground in a few heavy drops. It was sad spunk, not the happy spunk that comes out in heroic arcing spurts, but the unenthusiastic exhausted kind that only just makes it to the end of the urethra.

   The man pulled out, flung the condom into  the bushes where it snagged, and dangled redundantly, stupidly like a Dali watch. He produced a pack of Kleenex from his jacket. He wasn’t sure if it was any consolation, but at least he was generous with his tissues and they were good quality, three-ply and soft. They hugged politely and went their separate ways in different directions back out through the maze. It began to rain.

   As he left the wood the rain became a fine drizzle. There was a chill in the air. The Flats were deserted as he headed back towards the busy main road. On the blurry wet horizon, he could see the floodlit Alfred Hitchcock Hotel shining like a ship at sea. He imagined it noisy and full of smoke, a large crowd, big white plates in hand, pressing impatiently around the tables in the Carvery. He could feel lubricant seeping into his pants, and hear the siren wail of police cars or ambulances tearing along Whipps Cross Road, probably on their way to A&E.

   It was a long walk back. As he got nearer home, there were fewer trees, and as the wide avenues of red-brick detached villas gave way to narrow streets of terraced housing, the gardens grew smaller. The landscape became more unforgivingly urban; the distinction between private and public space less defined. Hedges and anything green had been grubbed out to make way for car parking or the latest fashionable aggregate.

   In Albion Road he stopped to admire a fox sitting in the middle of a concreted-over garden. It sat by a large tub of arum lilies. In the centre of the white flowers stood a solitary shiny moulded
plastic figurine of Botticelli’s Venus.

   He spoke softly.

   He said: “Hello foxy.”

   He said: “Where have you been?”

   He said: “Where are you going?”

   The fox didn’t move; it just stared back. It was small, not much bigger than a large cat. It looked unnourished, diseased, its fur bald in places, its white-tipped brush thin and spindly. He thought of opening the lid of a wheelie bin standing close by; it was bound to have some food scraps in it. Why not? He could slam open every wheelie bin he passed on his way down the street, feed every hungry urban fox in the neighbourhood.

   He realised he was being watched suspiciously from behind net curtains by a woman silhouetted in the blue light of a TV, or was it a sunbed? He imagined her turning in alarm to her husband, him grudgingly getting up from his armchair to investigate, coming confrontationally to the front door, by which time the fox would have vanished, leaving him with no alibi, no reason to stand and stare, a conspicuous threat to neighbourhood security.

   He walked on, then turned his head, wondering if the animal might follow him as stray cats often did. The fox was in the middle of the deserted road, but still looking his way. He walked on several yards. In the gutter he spotted a discarded box of Tender ‘n’ Tasty Tennessee fried chicken. He shook the soggy box and threw it high in the air towards the fox. The box and its contents - chicken bones with very little meat on them - spread out on the glistening black tarmac.