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

In the entwined tubes
of tour buses,
I feel the crux
of everyday vacationing.
Toiling long and hard hours
in a factory.
Then to bask and suffer heat stroke
in a small Greek town
is a life many feel capable
of coping with.
Disheartened,
I see them preparing
graves in various sacred places,
hoping that some crust of justice
will be reaped upon them in Heaven.
I’ve always been
a firm believer
in your own talents.
Be they dishwashing,
carpet-making,
coffin carving,
baking,
raking,
or hustling.
Responding to the inner self
is a crushing blow to the
alternatives.
Following blindly the Jones’
who have sequestered the newest dishwasher,
second car and
wholesome video game,
gives a placement of writing
that scopes our perilous heights.
If we didn’t have a
healthy fear
of doubling what we have,
cars would be made to last 100 years,
sewing machines 200
and meaningless lives
upwards of 80,
in a closely medicated proximity.
Nearness of relative anxiety
is at hand.
When strolling through foreign parks
alphabets may differ
but messages seldom vary.
Buy, consume, extract, toss.
Buy, consume, extract, toss.
Buy, consume, extract, toss.
Enough.
Be happy with what you have.
If that is a failing haemorrhoid,
nurture it.
If it be a persistent hangnail,
discuss it with pride.
If some venereal disease,
use precaution when engaging in sex.
The finality of our dissolution
remains a bright light of
shadowy answers.
They are found in every third
Chinese cookie.
With enough time
to meditate on reality,
before we know it
we’ll be driving electric cars,
planting hydroponic plants at home,
and will be leaving the planet
for that weekly getaway
each year.
That small sampling
of forgiving sin
the System allows
to perpetuate.
It keeps mechanisms and findings
well oiled.
It’s enough time
to forget the drudgery
of the world that has been erected.
A time to sun,
screw
and vomit the procession of lies
that we believe.
With each false prayer that is uttered.
With each cry of shame.
With each crippled child lying on the street,
cup encased with coin.
We look slowly
at our destruction
vying to perform
a distance of oddity.
In hopes of realising
that creating magic spells and potions,
mixed with slabs of the occult,
is as numbing and reassuring
as finding some forgotten erotic book
of early 15th century lovemaking.
In time,
chords of this sudden clarity
will hit sharps, flats and neutrals.
In time we will learn that
our inner beat rings loudly.
With vagrant denial
of corporate goods,
the succinct sound
will ring in impertinence.
Relaying that gloved mortal hospital,
patients are waiting for that
last twinge of pain.