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

NO, WAIT a minute. Think of something. Think of a bird....

WHAT?

No, not a bird, think of trees, think of lots of trees.
                    All crowded together.
                                                  A forest, in fact,
                                                  a forest of trees -

WHEN ?     WHERE ?

Well, anywhere at all - we must begin somewhere.
                     It’s an
                                other day              light
                               in the mirror           (no mis
                                                                              take there -)
                                       BUT
a silence       a silent forest
                    (& an armchair, a sofa, two small tables)
                              - there are always pictures -

     furry white cumulus drifts over dense green pines
            a shore lined with stones like
                                                                           white skulls
                                          bare bone fragments on a beach -

Reduce the borders down to a simple signal,
            the ground on which we travel
                         less insistent than our history:
                         one is each, in each,
                                       the falling leaf opens no message
                         but it is
                                        THERE ...

These imaginings -
           ahistoric ligatures between disparate realities, easily
                                                      missed       but moving

  beyond us from...

from kitchen politics / to the fate of the universe / difficult
assumptions / make for / flawed competition / post consumer
statements / betray / corrupted values -
                              it’s not that
                                                     we don’t care
                              it’s just that we have no clear objectives.

Fissures open up in the careful surface we create around us, but
the edifice collapses, breaks apart, we repair it after a
fashion, it falls apart again, & nothing is certain:

                                                                  we start with an
idea and as we investigate it the idea changes into something
else, not what we meant, but possibly just as valuable, our
balance difficult to maintain on this shifting ground -

                                             & function subsumes / all belief / in the
slow movement / of habit / picked over at home / a journey from
the early morning / glitter of becoming / stunted with a dream /
every event / almost a preparation / for the impossible we ache
for -

no, wait a moment
there must be other strategies

THERE’S THIS: chaos round every corner
                                    shrinking boundaries down
                                                                  to impossible statements:
“Where are you?”
                              “I’m here.”
                                                  “where’s that?”
                                                                            “WHERE I AM” :
(all a delicate algebra / of post-coital desires / winding down
slowly / & under our hands / metamorphosing into / fractious
digressions....

From aardvark to zymotic, or aardwolf to zymosis, from ba to yule
or from Baal to yucca, it’s all been chewed over without end, and
we’ve read all the words we want to read
                    there are far too many of them
                                    drifting like fine dust
                                                     in the corners of our lives:

“….and if your target is moving, aim a fraction
to your right....”

(but we always miss the bull’s eye, it’s
moving far too fast)

ALL RIGHT --

think of a bird, a bird in a forest, think of silence:

& this is where we can be : in our heads.
             There may be an armchair,
                          a sofa to rest on,
                                     a table or two -

but in between the lulls
        we re swamped by away days, vested interests,
                 mission statements, cash flow problems -
                 alternative cultures threaten us;
                           business personals -
                                     image producers, spin doctors
                 merely muddy the waters.

                           These days, even a walk in a forest
                                     (if you can find one)
                                                        is a paradigm for reality -

chaos theory is endlessly involving.

Bone fragments on an empty shore
          stones like white skulls
                  words in the head -

space frames/redundant pictures/no use for visions/a silence
occupies / the space / between subject / and non-subject -

Will the birds fall silent ?
               Is it the end when the lights go out ?
                          Who will help us
                                          when we can t hear each other ?

And is that all ?
                          No. I did think of a forest -
What happened ? Did anything happen ?
                                         You say : “It wasn’t like that at all.
What it was, was....” but I’m not listening
                                                                no, not any more.

Collapsed masonry.

Another day.

A mirror full of darkness.

*