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

1.
They put me in here and now they can’t get me out

     Stop stuttering
     speaking like a blinded bird
     the nurse said

You ask me am I mad
and I tell you I don’t know, like holding a weaving
shed in your cold hand you can’t stop shaking
shunting, constantly crying

Mr Dr Psychologist
you studied hard to drift in an orbit of romance
to flutter down unexpectedly in Huddersfield.

2.
The house was big
you reached it by a long stone drive
Father thought only of his factories
scuttling off in the dark
down to London or India
whatever the economics
or having our maid down on the cricket square
amongst the Mother-roses grown by Daniel
I went mad but it could’ve been any of them
for a sixpence sister would take me up into the roof
and I would lay my hand on her cold breast.

3.
It happened first at school.
Robinson tried to drown me in the suet mud
that night I was the Khan
with a sheet wrapped round my head
having no goat to gullet
I tried his throat
and spent the night trussed up like a Soho girl
in the pavillion.

4.
They sent me to Crosstrees
at the top of the house
the Latin master came
confused, homosexual
he recited and left by the afternoon car
skin like a taco shell and talking of Alexander at
Carthage

5.
I am now married and a navigator
I deposit gun-chemicals all over the Ruhr
I am mad on this painting
my favourite colour is Krupps by torching
until a bullet bounces back
and catches me in my flexible arm
no longer able to bowl a googly
the stick me up the top of the house
and recommend E.C.T.

6.
The office was oak and thin-lipped stenographers
I saw Bismark in the Teahouse every day
no I didn’t but I did see
a host of angels on the corner of Poland Street
yammering laughing at the suite
they taught me to see the line of the stockinged leg
the knifing of a young tart on Brewer
whose body was noticed gurgling in the street.

7.
Three weeks in O.T. and already I’ve shat on
perspective