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

Am I my brother’s keeper? Always, yes:
the bleeding heart-purse, blind canvas
he flings ecstatic hues against.
My wrist near snaps, stretched over seas
in his iron cuckoo grip. Dearest Theo,
I believe loss might be expressed
as yellow floating in blue green. The sun
as soul capable of drowning
in repeated horizons. Please,
write soon and send me the pencils.

Drowning. His hands are large and warm.
If I lose hold, which one of us
gives in first to the water nibbling
voluptuous, nearer and nearer our feet.
God, anyone, rekindle me. I’m not inspired:
the tongues of steeple, wheatfield, crow
blaze in brilliant spiral dialogues with him
and choke in my presence, colourless.
My role is the watchman, head low, mind’s eye
stunned with invoices, bookings, bills to pay.

The sea shakes its creamy salt fist. He’s
sick, is running out of Ingres paper,
cannot draw with precision enough. I must
hawk his wares much harder through
the gritty sirocco of stampeding bulls -
painters the market loves. Vincent, I’d
scoop out my flesh to make my body
a coracle to bear you over the breakers
in your head, but look at me! I’ve faded
to a skeletons toy palette.

You have my word: sell them I can and will.
I cling onto miracles. Blind buyers see.
He finds a double, a steel-spined companion,
gives me my hour in this bed of flesh and smiles
with Joanna and my baby son. Our old monsters
cannot swim in such simple blue tenderness
and neither can he, I fear. Posterity’s coming,
his bone-cold lover, with a skullpiece bouquet,
maggots busy in the laurel tiara
she’ll transfer to his unkissed head.

When she chants I do to her stiffening groom
I see that hand reaching out for me:
each finger a crow-black gun.