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

Just pressing my cumulus palm
to the white cumulus just
twinning my hand to lichen

Stone and skin pressing
warmer than the Kama Sutra's
Pressed Kiss

*

In bed I write myself awake.
Blood flows back in my weak pen.

*

The milk sings.
The fridge curdles.

*

The binbag is too full to tie.
It has been like this for three days.

*

Over knives and forks, crossed
over scattered parsley
over blades
one cautious kiss.

*

Coffee: hot milk, sugar.
I trust you again.

*

Even your few words hum
but I'm no beekeeper.

*

You leafed my feet;
I bit you.

*

You said
You know I have to leave.
I smiled and said nothing

*

I let the coffee drip onto the paper.
More Jobs Lost.

*

My skin shrinks and I yawn.
I keep writing,
my hand is warm.

*

I've not forgotten you
cupping my head to your chest.

*

Messages:
Apricot jam and a pot of honey.
Sweeten the cold sky.

*

In Glasgow I stirred up rubbish on the street.
On Skye I was washed up
between a shattered house and a sheep's carcass.

*

All summer you kept me asleep
I worked in the shop, noticing nothing
but the sun sliding down the blades.

Occasionally I woke with a dirty fresh egg
in each palm, occasionally I found myself
with the price gun in my hand
sliding another hurt onto the shelf.

*

35,000 feet above Greenland, a raggedy letter, unsent.

*

Night-waking. A letter. Unsent.

*

I regret all those chosen words.
Now I am carefully making mistakes.

*

I wound down the window
and palmed the brackened bellies.

One huffed, one gnawed my sleeve,
one turned and pissed
- what an answer -
pissed over green ice
which steamed and thawed.

*

Breakfast, I continue to think of me.
Selfish heraldry of croissants and jam.

*

Time for you to find me:
speckled old harvest egg
passed over by blackbirds
in their evening Jubilate.

*

I remember inadvertent nakednesses:
your shin
pecan of your wristbone
kite of skin where your shirt button slipped.

*

Stop trying to solve this
as if love were precipitate in a test-tube

*

Turn on the music.
I have finished thinking