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

Dust scatters like spores when
I poke my finger in the plush back row
where I sat with you, let thigh press thigh,
eyes glued to the screen world.  I lived here.

Every night I was taken
to this dream where I watched in technicolour
warmth.  Your arm carelessly around my shoulder
while The Taking of Pelham 123 held me.

Whodunnit. FIashback.  Bellevue.
There, at a concert by The Who
we were strangers in a crowd of strangers,
playing make-believe - an excuse to hold hands.

Track to Rochdale on a dusty Sunday,
pan a long, terraced street.  No one in sight.
Later, dialogue on the platform.  We talk of America
until the tram takes us home.

Night sequence.  Driving to Chester,
the whole world a joke,
our car, a nest for five innocents.
Close up.  You caress my neck.

Mornings.  My flat in Moss Lane East,
or your room in Chorlton-cum-Hardy,
we wake to city sound effects.
the milkman’s eight-o-clock call, kids already playing.

Long shot to sunset.  Barlowe Moor,
our wilderness that we chanced upon
when the light had all but gone.
We traded histories, years to catch up on.

Zoom to climbing in hot, hilly New Mills.
When I slipped you laughed and angered me,
but reconciled we made love in sunshine.
Full orchestra sounds here.

Contrast, cold Wales, a mountain crash
on a twisting treachery of a road.
I did not believe the shattered glass
a broken world.  Cut back to

Rusholme, the health hazard flea pit,
as out of date as necking to God Save the Queen.
I pass the boarded ticket office.  Fade out as
I push my way into Oxford Road traffic.