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

The clip of a cusp or sucker
    foot on finger
skin is like a velcro pad;
    the living grip

firm, well planted, crampon
    tight on the hot
pink ledge, that could unnerve
    such a cold climber.

Except that half woken
    only, a trusting
weakness allows its touch
    to be peeled off

by another hand coming
    down to see what
this is, whether a thorn or
    dead leaf stuck on.

Amazed, each turns away
    from the other
sleeper, shaking, shuddering
    to be set free,

fearful the soft clutch kiss,
    the fellow
dreamer’s loose clasp, might
    tighten a notch.

Whatever it is, whichever
    bright wotsit
eventually flies, if the black
    plastic bag

stays open like a cave
    entrance choked
with twiggy debris, rising
    sun will show

care, and nurture the dun grub
    with evenly set
coal tattoos, pinprick marks on
    a fatty’s skin.

Then the blur of certain flight
    in a pattern
of effort, which nobody sees
    or remembers.

No exit survey of those
    risen from sleep
in woody overgrown tangles
    existing to tell.

If to you or any in the world
    questions occur,
what are aliens like, what’s it
    like, to be touched

by such a hooked grip, by such
    affection, one might
say you yourself must become that
    same cold curled grub.

Briefly attached to strangeness,
    by foot-saucers
pressing toccato on delicate
    green baize skin,

a leaf, that rears windily up,
    shakes your plump
sap-cushions off, waving
    them as if gummed on.

You crash in the sack, shot down
    by fear’s ballistic
whisk, mouth sealed, then coma,
    Rip Van Winkle sleep.

Now camouflage takes back
    what contrast gave
away. The transparent webs
    of skeleton holly,

the loganberry’s nail-studded
    clubs, crimped olive
oilcloth oak-leaves, and flexicrisp
    skin of sweet-wrappers –

these you can touch again,
    without finding
a ball of soft arches rolled up,
    or the sucker’s kiss.