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

It must have been autumn when he first started going on about the comet, although I can’t recall exactly because I was having growing pains at the time and couldn’t think straight.
    Touched, my Mum said. Shatter-pated, she said.
    But my guess is autumn.
    In those days I was usually to be found slumped in a damp shed which our Head Master called the Senior Pupil’s Club, pretending I didn’t mind a tiny sci-fi nerd following me everywhere going on about The Edge of Known Space.
    The shed was opposite our canteen and made a perfect spot to spy on Sonya, this lass from the other side of the valley.
    When she ate, a calmness came over her, she nearly closed her eyes, and you could imagine she wasn’t thinking of Todd.
    It made me feel safe.
    But, like I said, Mission to Mars always followed me, so the peace never lasted.
    Like that day when the growing pains were making lights flash in my legs and he came up behind me snuffling like a poodle, poking me with his telescope, going, “We’re in its path, Carl. Not long now.”
    The usual smell of tinned salmon smell was rising off him. He had on the normal kit, too: grey sweater seemingly made out of old trawler netting; grey nylon trousers, worn as shiny as ice; grey blazer, chewed at the elbows.
    And his skin so grey it was almost blue.
    In the canteen, Todd went on mumbling, stroking his baseball glove. He was close to Sonya, almost touching.
    “Yep,” said Mission To Mars. “Any day now, Carl.” His hair was a frizzy black clump, as dry as a sponge.
    “What day?”
    He tapped his telescope. “The day it touches our orbit, Carl.”
    I sighed. Wherever I turned, he was there, going on about The
Maverick Scientist Sir Fred Hoyle and Ancient Peruvian Batteries. “Is this about that comet again, Michael?”
    “I get it, Carl. You’re angry with your hormones again.”
    “No. I’m angry with you again.”
    “Because your goatee won’t grow. Because your balls have barely dropped. That’s why you’re angry, isn’t it, Carl?”
    Rain pattered the window. I moved my chair.
    “I know all this because I looked at your chin through my telescope,” he nodded, tapping the telescope on my arm.
    I studied the place on my arm. It was unnerving. He hadn’t blinked since he came in. There was no evidence he’d ever blinked.
    “I bet you’d like to study Tonya through my telescope, eh, Carl?”
    “Unfortunately, however, that cannot be allowed...”
                                                  He nodded his tiny head gravely.
“I didn’t buy this for pervs to letch through, Carl. As you well know.”
    Silence fell between us. Dust swirled through it. Dust made inside
stars.
     “I’ll tell you what it is: at this rate, you’ll end up like one of Tonya’s Fancy Men.”
    “Sonya. It’s Sonya, Michael.”
    “Fancy Men called Kenny. Kenny Probably Richardson. Who’s a
fireman, most likely. A cocky fireman that picks up jail-bait in clubs. Who preys on young women in their boob-tubes. And probably plays left-back for the Spread Eagle. Some stupid pub like that. One of them blokes: no skill, kicks it miles.”
    “Boob tubes?” I said.
    “Kicks it out miles. For corners,” said Michael, quieter.
    In the canteen, across the car-park, Todd leaned closer to Sonya. They nearly touched, but there was still a space. You could see light through the space.
    Kids came and went between us, through the car park. There was a small pain behind my eye.
    That must mean my eyes were growing.
    Flecks of dust whirred in the autumn light. I think it was autumn light.
    Michael said, “Don’t sigh, Carl.”
    “What’s it to you if I sigh?”
    “It bugs me when you sigh.”
    I sighed louder, to make him go away.
    He said, “Very funny, Carl. We’ll see who’s laughing when it grazes our orbit.”
    “Yes,” I nodded. But I hadn’t a clue what he was on about.

                                                   *

On the way home, I saw Sonya. Sonya and Todd.
    I turned off down the wrong street, where two little lads were shooting each other with ray-guns. One of them had on a red plastic cape. it flapped in the wind.
    “I shot you,” he said.
    The cape-less boy shook his head. “It missed. Your laser’s defective.”
    Cape-boy threw a stone at his head. “That didn’t miss,” he said.
    When I went to help the other lad up, blood trickled onto my fingers.
    Then his Mum bustled round the corner. She saw my hand on the boy’s head.
    She didn’t say anything, she led the boy away, staring at the blood on my fingers.

                                                  *

“Honestly. fifteen-years-old. And that leaden,” said Mum.
    I slumped on the couch.
    “Is that fluff on your chin?”
    “Fluff, Mum? Why would there be fluff on my chin?”
    Mum shrugged. A damp smell filled the house. I watched her ironing.
    Eventually, though, it was exhausting watching her work, so I went to sleep.
While I was asleep I dreamed I was in the space between Tonya and Sonya.
It stretched for thousands of miles.
                                              *
The next day, it was like I was still asleep. Walking to school, I ended up behind Sonya. Sonya and Todd. So I turned down another street, past the allotment-gate, where two pensioners had been moaning about soil and rain since The Year Dot.
    “T’ worse year I can remember.”
    “Aye, Bill...”
    “Slugs. Flies. Blight. Whatever next, ay?”
    “Comets, so they say.”
    Bill laughed. “Comets, eh!”
    “A visitation of comets,” said the other one.
    They laughed so hard I was glad to walk away - except, further up the street, I was somehow walking behind Sonya again. Sonya and Todd. So I had to double-back.
    Luckily, this time, the pensioners had gone from the allotments gate, and there was just a shovel leaning on the fence. The shovel’s blade was wet with mud. There was a snail halfway up its shaft. When I knocked the snail off the shovel, one of the old blokes shouted, “Oi!”
    “I were just knocking off that snail.”
    His face looked through the weeds in the fence. “It’s not your shovel to be knocking snails off...”
    “I had to double-back, though.”
    “Lad. Don’t touch what isn’t yours,” he said.

                                         *

By the time I got to school, I was tired from the extra walking, so I
decided not to bother with the first lesson. I went to the pretend club and sat down.
    Then Michael came in.
    “That showed them, didn’t it?”
    “What did?”
    He tapped his telescope. “Don’t play the innocent with me, Carl. I saw you knock that snail off.”
    “Which snail?”
    “They reckon they own them allotments. Strutting about with their
buckets. But the County Council is the official proprietor.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    He tapped the side of his nose. “This is it, Carl. There are people
watching old blokes like that.”
    At the shed door, he gave me an ‘OK’ sign, which he looked through with one little red eye. “I’ll tell you what it is, Carl: I might let you use my telescope soon.”
    Soon afterwards, Old Mardy, the Geography teacher with the lumpy arse, came to drag me from the shed. “I received a report you were loitering in here,” he said.
    “Report from who?”
    But Old Mardy was deaf as a post, he never answered.

                                                     *

On the way home, I stepped into line behind Sonya. Sonya and Todd. I was in their orbit, creeping through the murk, hiding behind bollards and dogs... until eventually they reached the cinema, where I joined the queue’s tail, casual-like, watching Todd toss a baseball, checking the glove didn’t touch Sonya.
    Then Michael was in the queue, jabbing me with his telescope.
“Smart,” he said, “you’ve come too. Is it because of the surprising reviews? Because sci-fi films don’t get good reviews, do they, Carl? Because the critics are biased against sci-fi, aren’t they?”
    “Stop saying Carl,” I said. “And don’t tap me with that telescope
either. It’s bringing up a bruise.”
    Michael shivered. I was craning my neck, trying to look like I wasn’t craning it.
    He droned on. “Have you noticed they’ve stopped calling me Mission To Mars, Carl?”
    “Hmm?”
    “At school, Carl. They don’t call me Mission To Mars. It’s worn off  They call me Uranus now. Because it sounds like Your Anus. Which is tight,isn’t it, Carl?”
    “Yes.”
    “But - have you noticed, Carl? They still call you Sonya’s Stalker?”
    “What?”
    “The big lads at school, Carl. They still call you...”
    “Who calls me that? I’m not a stalker. I’m normal.”
    Michael was quiet for once.
    “It isn’t my fault if Sonya’s always in the places I go. If Sonya and Todd are always in those places.”
    “That’s what I tried to tell them, Carl. But...”
    I looked at him, a tiny figure as white as a star under the black sponge of his hair, “Michael,” I said, “why are you talking about me when I’m not there?”
    “Well, they were going on about your goatee, Carl. And I told them they were tight, so they called me Your Anus. And then I lost it. I said it was none of their business if you stalked Tonya. Carl can stalk whoever he likes, I said. Besides, I said - she goes under-age clubbing, so if people want to...”
    “Michael,” I said, “the only stalker round here is you.”
    He stared up at me. “That’s a tight thing to say, Carl. I’ll expect you to apologise for that.”
    Thankfully, the lights went down then and the film started, some
stupid thing about an organic spaceship - a sort of outer-space whale.
    Light swarmed over Michael’s tiny face. “Ppphh,” he said,
“pppppppphhh.”
    It was impossible to watch the film without thinking: Mission to Mars is next to me. And Sonya is somewhere behind us. Sonya and Todd.
    Plus, the way Michael watched films.
    When the hero argued with his girlfriend, he groaned, “As if.”
     Then the hero checked his watch and Michael said, “As if.”
     Whenever the hero walked or drank or just sat still, Michael said, “As if.”
    Eventually, he started shuffling in his seat, the tinned salmon smell
rising off him.
    Then a girl in the audience laughed. It sounded like Sonya. It sounded like Sonya laughing somewhere behind us in the dark.
    When the cast were eaten by alien wolf-reptiles, I looked across at Michael. That and the shots of the whale-ship, they were the only times he didn’t say, “As if.”
    My ears tingled.
    The credits rolled.
    Michael read the names and said, “As if.”
    On the way out as I craned my neck into the dark cinema, he jabbed me with the telescope. “Excellent. Night has fallen. Perfect conditions.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “The film has whetted our appetite, hasn’t it, Carl?”
    “Yes,” I said. My neck was aching from constant craning. There was a tight feeling in my chest. I was like an animal creeping out of its burrow.
    “So if we go on the hill, we’ll see it, Carl”
    “Yes.”
    I went with him into the wet grass. And when he passed me the
telescope to search for the comet, I pointed it at Sonya’s house on the other side of the valley and stared at her window until the aching in my chest became like a white light and I passed it back to him.
    The wind tugged at our clothes and hair. It was dark above town, a faint orange glow on the clouds.
    “Disappointing conditions, Carl.”
    “Yes,” I agreed.
    I shook my head for 15 minutes.
    “Very disappointing conditions,” I said.
    “I’ll tell you what it is, Carl: with these clouds, we’ll miss that comet.”
    “Thanks for letting me have a go on the telescope, anyway.”
    “It’s the least I could do, Carl. After what those lads said about you.”
    “But don’t go on about that.”
    “I won’t, Carl. Because it’s tight they laughed at your goatee. And
called you Stalker. And criticised your unsteady voice. And called you A Late Developer. So I won’t go on about it, Carl. About how your goatee won’t grow. And how your voice wobb...”
    “And could you try saying Carl a bit less, too?”
    “Yes, Carl,” he said
    We sat there in the grass, looking down on the dark streets.
    “Light pollution,” said Michael.
    “Yes...”
    “I’ll tell you what it is, Carl: there used to be thousands of stars visible with the naked eye. And now it’s dozens. Because of the light pouring into the sky.”
    I sat there thinking about that, saying naked eye.
    Naked eye. Naked eye.
    Michael said, “When that comet comes back, we’ll be dead.”
    I stared at Sonya’s house.
    Michael scanned the clouds with the telescope. “A limited opportunity, Carl. Then - whoosh - gone. Plunging into space, dragging its tail. Or sometimes the tail goes in front. A beard of ice, flying out in front of it. Imagine that, Carl.”
    “Yes.”
    “And I’ll tell you what it is, Carl: without comets, nothing would ever have happened round here.”
    “In Todmorden?”
    “Not in Todmorden. On Earth. Nothing would have happened on
Earth, Carl.”
    “Please try to stop saying Carl,” I said.
    “I will definitely in future try to stop saying Carl,” he promised.
    “And could you stop saying I’ll tell you what is, too?”
    Michael pursed his lips. “No,” he said, “I’ll keep saying “I’ll tell you what is.”
    I decided to let it go.
    “But imagine it without comets, Carl. The Earth. See, according to
The Maverick Scientist Sir Fred Hoyle, that’s how intelligent life started. On spores from comets. Flung out when they went past. Which brought intelligent life to this barren rock.
    “What intelligent life?” I said.
    Michael telescoped me in the rib. “Ha. Intelligent life! Good one, Carl.”
    I rubbed my rib.
    Michael sat in the grass saying, “Intelligent life! You’re a card you are, Carl. They should call you Card, not Carl. Shouldn’t they?”
    “Definitely,” I said.
    “Ha,” said Michael. “Card, not Carl.”
    “Ha,” I said.
    We sat in the grass, looking up at the stars, saying “Ha. Card, not
Carl.”
    After a while, Michael said, “Anyway. If we miss our chance - if we never see the comet - don’t worry, Card. Because it’ll still happen.”
    The wind blew against my head, left a cold-milk feeling between my eyes. Or maybe it was growing pains. You never knew what was making you hurt.
    “What will? What’ll happen?”
    “The comet will spread its spores whether it’s cloudy or not. And then the change will happen.”
    He was staring up at the sky, the frown closing his face to a slice, as if he was peeping out of himself through a crack in the curtains.
    When he started droning about The Maverick Scientist Sir Fred Hoyle again, I stopped listening. I stared at Sonya’s house, thinking: One chance. The next time, you won’t be here. You’ll be dead.
    That was when I made my momentous decision.
    All I needed was an opening. Maybe an accident. Say, I found Sonya underneath a crashed car. Then we’d be able to have a conversation. And I’d drag her twisted body out and we’d fall in love and buy a dog together. And take it for walks past Todd’s house.
    Michael’s voice drifted through the grass. “I’m going to help you to get off with Tonya, Card.”
    I sat up straight. “No...”
    Michael nodded. “Nevertheless.”
    “I don’t need help, Michael. See, she’s going to have an...” I stopped. It seemed I’d been hoping Sonya would be crushed underneath a car.
    “Please, Michael.”
    “Well, we’ll see,” he said.
    We sat in the wet grass, shivering, until I got sick of the “pppph,
pppppppph” noise and told Michael I had to go.
    On the way down the hill, Michael said, “I’ll tell you what it is, Card: when I grassed you up, I did it for your own good.”
    “Yes.”
    “See, you shouldn’t be sitting in sheds during lesson-time. The County Council could come down hard.
    “Right.”
    We walked on further.
    “Some people,” he said, “would have the manners to thank me for
that, too.”
    “For grassing them up?”
    “And letting people look through their telescope.”
    “Michael, thanks for letting people look through your telescope.”
    “And...”
    “The little matter of that apology.”
    “What apology?”
    Michael sighed. “You can’t call someone a stalker and expect to...”
    “But it’s true. You’re everywhere I go. Even that film tonight. Because I once listened when you went on about Arthur C. Clarke. About some stupid twigs that might have been Ancient Peruvian Batteries.”
    He shook his head. “You need even more help than I thought you did.”
    At the foot of the hill, we parted without speaking. But I followed
Michael. I followed him down the cinder track to the house where he lived with his Dad, a skinny little man in a dirty shirt who mended shoes on the market.
    The windows were flecked with grey dirt and had been sealed with plastic sheets to keep the heat in. The curtains sagged like knackered old dishcloths. The gutters were full of weeds.
    It was the only house still standing. The neighbouring property had
been reduced to a shell, its rafters poking out, strips of wallpaper flapping like bandages in the wind. The rest of the terrace was a demolition site. County Council bulldozers had crushed dark tracks through the cinders.
    It looked like the last house in the universe, like The Edge of Known Space.
    When I saw Michael’s Dad tapping away with a shoe-mallet in the window, I put down the rock I’d planned to chuck at their window. I went home. I needed to think about my momentous decision.
    But all I could think of was Michael’s dad and his dirty shirt.

                                              *

The next day, I got up early. Even if I didn’t save Sonya from under a twisted car, I was determined to show off my winning personality. I pulled my goatee to make it longer and washed my hair. Then I put talcum powder down the front of my underpants, a trick from a dirty magazine. After that it was tooth-brushing for an hour to make my teeth look American and white. Like Todd’s.
    Next, I whistled for a bit. Whistling’s good for your confidence. That’s why milkmen do it. So they don’t drop the bottles.
Then I was scared, so I put on my snorkel-hooded parka. Zip-entanglements or busy roads posed problems - otherwise, it was an
excellent coat. Like a corridor on the front of your head. You could hunker down in it, nice and quiet, off the beaten track.
    Then - whoosh - out the door. And no feet ever danced down that street like mine. Even if I did step in a lump of dog-track. That wasn’t a sign, though. There are no such things as signs. Otherwise, we’d still believe that comets were omens and visitations. And comets are just lumps of rock and ice. They don’t mean we’re doomed. They don’t mean anything.
    “But stop thinking about comets, Carl,” said a voice in my head. “Why are you thinking about comets? You should be thinking about Sonya.”
    “You’re right,” I said, “I’m touched. I’m shatter-pated.”
    I scraped off the dog-track, trying not to think about comets. Trying as hard as I could to think about Sonya.

                                              *

I found her in the library, sitting on a squashy plastic chair, hunched over a pile of books. Her thick black hair fell in coils around her. It was quiet, just her pencil going sssss over the page. Ssssss over the page.
    I put my hood up. But Sonya saw me as I turned away. She stared at the hood.
    “Hey, what’s up?” I gulped.
    “Your hood.”
    I shrugged. “In case it rains...”
    “Inside a library?”
    “Flat roofs,” I gestured, trying to get the hood down, realising in    panic that there had been an entanglement.
    She’d written in her exercise book: The Earth’s highest point is approx. 30,000 ft. - as is its lowest point. Since the distance between the two is only 60,000 ft., the Earth, comparatively, is smoother than a snooker ball.
    I tried to act casual. “What’s that?’
    “A fact,” she shrugged. “A Geographical fact.” She eased the zip from the fur. It took two seconds.
    Her fingers had passed with a centimetre of my face.
    “Free at last, free at last,” she said.
    That was when Michael came in.
    “Ah, Tonya, just the person,” he said. “There’s an important matter I want to discuss.”
    Sonya peeled a strand of hair to one side of her face.
    Michael prodded the telescope into my ribs. “Did you hear what this lad did up the allotments?’
    “What allotments?” said Sonya.
    “He knocked a snail off a shovel. Without asking the old blokes.”
    Sonya said, “Right...”
    “They reckon they can treat the County Council like shit. And another thing: he told a brilliant joke. About intelligent life on Earth. Go on, Card. Tell Tonya that joke.”
    I stared at him.
    “But the thing is, Tonya: I also want to warn you about so-called
Americans.”
    “About Todd?”
    “If that’s his real name,” said Michael. “He could be called anything. I mean, once you’ve got away with pretending to be American, you can...”
    “But he is American. His Dad moved here on business.”
    “Tonya, said Michael. “Tonya, Tonya, Tonya. Wake up, love. It’s time to get real. Take a closer look at his teeth.”
    Sonya shook her head.
    “No teeth could be that white,” said Michael. “Most teeth aren’t white at all, Tonya. Normal teeth are green. Or maybe even yellow. Like Card’s.”
    “Wait a minute,” I said.
    Michael winked. He put his hand on Sonya’s shoulder. She looked at him out of the side of her eye, like a bullock in an abbatoir.
    “And as for them clubs you go to,” he said, drawing close, “you ought to know better, love. You could pick up STDs. Blokes like Kenny Richardson don’t care where it’s been, you know, love...”
    Sonya gathered up her books slowly and left the library, not looking at us.
    I was thinking of comets. Of the one chance they get to make contact. Then - whoosh - gone. Into the coldness and dark. Darkness darker than a cinema. Voices in the far stalls, no way of reaching them...
    Michael nodded. “I reckon it’s the coat. Women never fancy fellas in daft coats, Card. I had one like that once and the zip was always getting entangled.”
    “Why the hell did you tell her about snails?”
    “She’ll come round again.”
    “Yeah. In about ten thousand years.”
    “At least she knows who you are now. Even if she probably thinks you’re called Card. But I’ll tell you what is: if she still won’t go out with you, I’ll let you look at her through my telescope.”
    That was when I took the telescope off him and tried to break it over my knee. Which didn’t work, obviously. So I kicked it under a desk. And it hit the librarian’s foot, so we had to leave it there and leg it.
    Outside, Michael said, “Whatever. We don’t even need telescopes. According to my calculations, the comet’s overhead. Which means we can take advantage, Card.”
    “And stop calling me Card.”
    “First Carl, then Card. It seems to me, young man, that you don’t
want to be called anything at all.”
    “I’ll tell you what it is, Michael: I wish you were a comet. I wish you were millions of miles away and I couldn’t see you anymore.
    “And if I was that comet, I’d deliberately fling my spores onto other people. I wouldn’t drop a single spore onto you. How about that, eh? You’d be the only person on Earth to miss out on The Change!”
    “What change?”
    “The next big evolutionary step, of course. Tonight’s the night. Card. The night when everything gets changed.”
    “Including your Dad’s shirt?”
    I felt tight as soon as I’d said it. His face flickered. He blinked for the first time ever. He looked like he’d been tapped with his Dad’s shoemallet.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    Michael didn’t speak. He turned away, went up the hill. And I followed him at a distance. Followed him, like I followed everybody in those days. Because I was shatter-pated. Because I was in their orbit.

                                                 *

At the top of the hill, Michael stood staring into the sky. It was drizzling as usual, the orange street-lights spreading their glow over lumps of cloud.
    I watched from a wet ditch as he checked his watch, pulled out a
notebook and scribbled in it, frowning.
    Wind flashed through the grass.
    He took his clothes off. He took them off slowly, like an old man. And even though they were worn-out clothes - dirty and grey, riddled with holes, sagging and thin - he folded them carefully and rested them on a tuft of grass next to the patch of green moss where his thin grey skin ached in the night as he lay down.
    Then I crept out of the ditch.
    “What the hell are you doing, Michael?”
    He looked at me out of the moss, shivering. His body was tiny, just ribs and elbows.
    “Can you feel them?” he said.
    “Feel what?”
    “The spores, Card.” He gazed into the night. “Lie down with me. Let them settle on you. Then you can rub them in.”
    There wasn’t a single hair on his body.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, “There’s no way the County Council will find out. They stop the patrols after dark.”
    I started to laugh. I was shivering and laughing, looking down at his tiny, hairless body, watching him run his hands over its skin and bones.
    “You’re as white as a comet,” I said.
    “As its tail,” he corrected me.
    “Or its beard.”
    He sat up, touched my chin.
    I flinched, grew calm, let him do it. I didn’t care. I took my clothes off. I just wanted to be touched, I didn’t care who by.
    Above us, the wind fumbled to break holes in the clouds. Beyond, a few stars flashed.
    The night was massive. Who knew what might come out of it?
    We lay there, tiny white scraps in the grass.
    “This is it,” he said. “This is the change.”