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

The picture of youth has been sketched in too thin
By nubbed down fingers that stub on the hyperreal toothlesness of
                                                                                   artistic design
Scratched into life, worn down eyes, a broke light grin
Without any source to draw from that hasn’t already been tampered 
                                                                                      from within
Hand me down thoughts and necklace words are just ornaments from 
                                                                  someone you used to be
As far as I can see
The picture of youth has been sketched only in rough
Can’t hope to meet the pain plain laced lines bitten in by the world                                                                
                                                                        underneath your feet
Can only dream of the scenes it can see in its reflection
Its image written as shallow as its sleep
Holds one question back at the bottom of the stack
Is this it? Bar the odd kick back of a residue of an overdue thought. Then it must be
It only took one to talk through drink loosened lips
For the rest to follow, learning to lip read the blues and give art the                                                                                                  slip
It’s hard to ask the heart to tremble when all you do is star gaze at                                                                                        your navel
And you haven’t found a guitar the same colour as your ego
I thought you should know
The one answer to your questions was tattooed on my tattered brain                                                                                       years ago
Your words were bleached white by the sun
Can only answer one thing, we lost, they won
It’s hard to use your ears when there’s nothing left in between
And the music scene would lose its fluidity without the purpose of
our 
                                                                                            vacuity
My senses numbed by the well-thumbed beat of a drum
Stuck in the endless run out groove of a once good idea
Feather bed your head with well laid intentions, smooth out all the rough edges of real emotion
And it’ll eat you alive that it’s best to treat your words in lies ’cause  the truth gets stuck to the roof of your mouth
And the words you sing are a used needle disease only good to put                                                                               the kids to sleep
’Cause it used to be about the blood, the sweat, and the fears
Broken heads and cauliflower ears
Gunmetal grey words and nickel plated tears
And all youth can ever really learn is the loss of your self in any 
                                                                                             lesson
You had hoped to brighten the corners of your heart
With the music that could thicken your skin and a voice that’d sing of                                                                             the diversity of sin
And it took him a year to realise that we’d jeopardise all art for desire,  but don’t you know you never learn anything from lust
Except it turns your blood to rust and everything you touch to dust
Everything that screams into creation is packed, packaged, stamped,                                                                 sold and shipped into life
Only to find there’s nothing that can even shadow sleep the                                          worthlessness of our break voiced strife
And I’ve only ever felt the isolation of the existence we all share
’Cause there isn’t a single spatter of ourselves in the songs we all hear
And they know this but all the money and fame in the world can’t   make you even approach a single word that would mean you  
even  pretend to care