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

“How does it feel to be in the same room with an egg white?”
the police lieutenant asked God who was busily thumbing through
His throbbing, fluorescent identification.

    As the policeman laughed God wondered whether His blind date
for that evening had already deserted Him.

   Nothin but My poor brain alone, He thought to Himself, it hurts.
My little legs against this tricycle, it hardly seems worth the
effort.

   “That’s a pretty nice angle you’ve got on your nose, I’ve
never seen one quite like it before,” the officer commented as he
mindlessly slipped his silver pen over forms which could mean life
or death. (A hit and run accident that never took place, a non-
existent body too obstinate to be found, a needless sense of guilt.)

   Outside, leaning against the sparkling white Lincoln, tapping
her size five foot, was His blind date Ginny, a cocktail waitress.

   God’s head pounded mercilessly. To forget His headache God
began to whistle a tune inside Himself and this set off storms of the
number one which blew like leaves in the wind. Here in the days of
pins and thin water, He longed for the days of clouds and the
wooden electricity.

   I was a newspaper boy, He thought, the smell of the ink
kicking off mimes in My mind: the blind dogs, milky like a new
new universe, barking at a presence because it had no smell, and
the old women waiting behind doors for Me, touching what I had
touched, hypnotized into love by the angle of My nose. O the tips
I got, He thought finally, knowing that innocence could never be
faked.

   For the first time since He’d been there He had a look around
the place.

   Whosever acid trip these walls are, He remarked inwardly as He
scanned the sick, liquidy drool of the police station, had better get
his head together because when snouts start peering and sniffing out
of all the little orifices, each of these holes becomes an ear, and
of the thousands of voices that flesh is heir to there are only a
few that shouldn’t be ignored.

   There, sitting on a wooden bench like nakedness itself, was
a starkly thin and spook-eyed freak.  This young man shook his
intelligent face up and down while saying a silent NO to each
silent alternative he silently offered himself.  He knew that none of
these alternatives really warranted serious consideration but, in
his panic, he was grateful that they were presenting themselves for
him to reject.  It was like pailing water very fast out of a quickly
filling rowboat.  An equilibrium, however horrible, had at least
been established.  The possibility that he should run out of these
absurd alternatives was what really freaked him out.  He went on:

   ".....take each relative who is disappointed in you in the palm
of your hand and flip them up catching them by the feet NO the head
NO an arm NO the chest NO the clothes NO flip them up and drop each one NO flip them up catch each one by their clothes and have them slip out onto your foot which is the city of Rome NO have them do two full flips because of your eyes your hands and your feet NO have them do three because of the holy triad because of baseball NO have them do four you remember four NO everything is the opposite of what you think NO this is a game NO this is a contest NO this is the end NO it goes on NO it stops NO go to the desk NO and get a pencil NO a single pencil can represent each relative NO a different pencil is needed for each person NO flip the pencils and the deed is done NO they are for you catch them NO you are for them catch them NO you are running out of alternatives NO this is the end NO your realization of it NO can’t be helped NO they are against you drop them NO too logical NO this saves them NO there is no one to be saved NO this proves you NO everything has led up to this moment NO this moment is somehow perfect NO madness is inevitable NO this is it NO sit back and relax to prove that you can do it NO one more alternative is gone NO there will be a door NO an observation window NO they will all look through it NO you will be forgotten about NO they will feel sorry for you NO they will think that it was inevitable NO there is finitude but there isn’t time...

 WRONG.

   This young man continued to sit on the bench without moving.  His
stillness belied the fierce activity inside him.  Yet God watched. 
God was watching.  The young man folded his arms in front of him in
his lap.  As he did this he folded himself into the arms of his fate.
He decided to surrender.

 “It was dark,” he said outloud. “I must have taken the wrong pill.”

   No one heard him but Him. The young man gave up. He was
exhausted. The alternatives stopped coming, stopped presenting
themselves. He was beginning to feel primitive.

"......fuck the pencils, fuck the relatives, the table, fuck baseball, fuck the radio, fuck everything that flies through the air and cannot be seen, fuck the pigs, fuck......"     

   “What’s that beautiful music?” God asked.  And He thought: What
are fish but reminders of music licking the shore of the cave in
which we pray we are not metal. For My next kiss we will both be inside out kissing the muscles of each other’s ugliness. Doesn’t anybody realize what it’s like to be lucky?”

   “O.K. you can go,” the officer told Him.  As He left God
wondered whether His blind date was still tapping her foot.  The
young man approached Him.

   “Free is expensive but we have the money, great savior of the
soul’s everything,” he said to Him.  “Please turn off the washing
machines in the whites of her eyes yet don’t shoot unless she’s
clean.  We are impatient for spring, fresh smelling underwear round
the Earth’s body leaking love.  Personal atrophy, the best kind.”

   When He got into the car He looked at the girl in the seat next to Him then said, “Tell Me Ginny, what was Las Vegas like
during the war?”