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

(takes 1-21)
(for my parents)

                                  The fixed arc is designed to erase

                                  What we should do in the coming white days
                                                                                                 Michael Palmer

   twenty-eight
October was a lie. I itch with exile like the wind

syllables in train to appal or dissolve as one of Ovid's beasts,
all the signs of life working quickly I sought

   three
white noise refracts on a brown field

(Lower left panel) my lucky star glows, as shown by the workings in Mallarmean white

You barter away smelling salts or mints,

                                                            to excuse the choice,

and I choose your words, the prism in the other's camp or envelope
as fusewire trembles, (for more
                                              room and
daylight see Gaeta Set II)
for protean and far flung chromatic scales condense

and throw away

   thirty-four
The weather-girl predicts the future 48 hours or so into your own 
                                                                                           time

you locate the false prophet, and through the sunny day let it float,

to hold down a second job and pay the rent.

                                             Light bounces off the silver rail.
All this encased in a kind of idyll, or jelly, or amber. I would try and 
                                                                                               hide
the chart if I were you. The sea was a white, unbroken wing of
                                                                                nostalgia.

We enter the world of cones, rhomboids and crystals

the study of German Romanticism smuggled as contraband,
searing and milky as dawn.

I say a flower.

   six

the ghost writer passes through that region of the Isles, what lies out
                                                                                            there
digging snow

digging to cut perfection out of the Big Ideas. A grey tile loosens,
slithers down the rooftop. Lushness of a green field the memory  
                                                                             remakes the
head.

A's the letter of your absence, in the limits of song

   twenty-nine
Hero staring off to the left a middle distance fifth by fifth
in the untitled grey rain which buries all the atlases and listings of the
                                                                                           world.

   twenty-three
whiteout

   forty-one
(a murmur) I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I thought I'd heard your step among bullet points

   zero
pencil marks like human hair.

   Lucky 7

Biography the heat-generated roar, the white mask things touch.
when a flocked paper would suit where brightness might fall, then you'd have more room and
    daylight, a massive cloud white, massive which
number

Your duvet bears a likeness unarticulated as much as creased over itself.

window                air                                    city

to the edge, flinty with detail/liquid flow a theory of colour; orchid 
                                                                                        partly

distraught I carried my body to the choppy Hellespont

forests of sawdust, a humble spoon or I could lend you my fleece.
Blue chalk outlines the advocate, a real showman or situationist,

   twenty-five
rain faltering, cornfields unpack daylight. Inside I mass-produce
or perish, toil in suspension, write one last speech from the upper
                                                                                gymnasium.

                                         Blue coat and wrapped up warm 2 a.m.
flatout under streetlights laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and
fallen backwards puffs of blue snow and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Venus lost her footing worked to death

more like a paintbrush than advice, a scar,

disinherited. Simply reverse the polarity, power into somebody I
                                                                                     revere,

a delicious drop to the fairground.

Time now to mow the lawn, my life's work titled Hero and Leander

a calm blue to the upper atmosphere, snow shovelled into great piles

   thirty-five
(unclassified) cite works of translation

forged objects shoplifted a few ideas

nothing but burns left (a guest writer writing this down).

we all look in books and it rains
                                                      it rains everyday

Water spills momentous green putting blue between us, his
                                                                               expression
tucked
in, inscrutable as the Gulf of Mexico, the smash and grab of style my
                                                                                      throne and
home.

Poem made out of white

   forty
His queen enjoys a sunset complete with a search for the real thing;
iridescent tangled as fusewire the fear of everywhere grainy monochrome lies,

motor functions cross-hatched for shade (visibility) and safety, veins
                                                                                          of lead
or gold or a gentle caress, or a sparrow calls through traffic

                                                      Drumming its pure form shivers

Pyramid of the Sun

white acrid smoke

all the colours dragged through the snow move of
                                             their own free-will about the landscape

                                             air                                      sea
                                             earth

and nights at Tournon

sites to rest

   twenty-one
the easy optimism of Twombly's Suma (1982) beams away in a monograph;

the colours red knocks into are stars over Teotihuacan buckled with
                                                                                              Time,
                                              metamorphosised space into ball/sun.

   eight
Psyche splits, listing any adjectives she likes, like "feathered" for ocean.

the edge chalked.

                                          where brightness might fall sunlit relief

plums flopped from the string-bag.  The black

searing freeze sticky freeze sticky objects to a laboratory wall

a white wall, the heron flown off

   nine
----------------------

   seventeen
scentless as a bled rose, close by the language machine
lived; its silver teeth chewed the line black and blue

The black lantern, rococo style. Alone and wary I had dispensed
                                                                            with technique
the north rain proof of an aleatory event or border dispute

Armies run the idioms, the central argument its words cut and creep
                                                                                      under my
skin true or false,                                               dry rust stuck fast

score and read for improvement and education. Made out of the
                                                                                            sea.

   one
 Is, its particulates describe the folds and tucks of a red blouse and you describe nothing but the subject where there is none but technique and games, tricks, lines, plains, solids, melody, silence, music, dark, light trembling disobedience, jangled all over the skin at all levels through Time blotted ink, blotted out

automatic reveries took control of my limbs, arms and legs jerky,
but in H”lderlin's best voice the rain's soft thud.

Beauty's fifth column proceeds from a state of general alert,
yellow as the meadow, green as the meadow
               a murdered sister's body made into a harp sings itself

I sing a flower ruined

formal solutions on Monday afternoons, by a birthmark

                                          and the space around it

In this example the workings were shown, as in prehistoric times

   twenty
white bones scattered on a brown field

   five

        Second Experiment: Untitled (Boat) 1991

Baked Synthetic Clay, the same energy loss

interference dampened to the immediate environment

Using a 2B STAEDLER MARS LUMGRAPH 100
scissored heat and light as bi-products
  (I scribbled hurriedly "studio notes" over Silver Rail)

Today is a story and a clear head.

    24th October-22nd November 1996