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

I’d got pretty good at sweet talking security
gliding through the cordons. For once I’m early,
make my way up to the group of truckers, stamping
the frozen ground. Sure, they know Jim, he’s still eating,
call to the guy on his mobile to take me in.
He’s not too keen, supposed to be meeting the black Jag
any time now, but will do it. I shadow him back-stage,
the grey curtain cutting out the thousands in their seats.

Jim’s just finishing his treacle sponge, talking to Len.
We drink tea, then sort out a pass for a show
I don’t want to see. Jim says the pub’ll be full
of truckers, and he’s drink in his cab. As I climb up
he watches - you do it like you’ve been at it all your life.
We down the port he got in Dublin as he describes the sheets
of ice in Aberdeen. And even though I don’t want to discuss
love or affairs he goes on - come on, he was a bastard.
No charisma or sensitivity. I know I laugh. I know
recalling that moment outside the Dylan concert in Liverpool,
the three of us talking novels and me and Jim’s simultaneous
fuck Hemingway life’s too short. And the glance.

The cab warms up real quick and I’m disagreeing
with everything he says except that we’re both expert
on loving impossible people - his woman on speed
and in need of blocking pills, and mine on his own high
of yet another and another new lover. We talk future
till the end of the show. Watch them stream out.
He backs the truck up for loading, articulates
the tight corner and a badly parked car.

At the tram stop I breathe into the cold, say that sometimes
just sometimes I can appreciate winter. Wrap my coat
and arms and lean. Jim’s leaning too. The talk now
the kind of talk that doesn’t matter. His kiss is light
but full as the tram glides up. I turn to kiss him again.
He goes back to loading, then driving through the night
to Birmingham, yearning for his place by the Raeburn.
Me, I’m back by my coal fire scratching itchy feet.