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

After the metal stopped screaming
the car welded itself
back to the road, a rocking baby carriage
after the rattle has been thrown. Three tyres
sparked like catherine wheels nailed
to a post; the fourth hurdled the safety barrier,
a petrol bomb spinning in flight.
Policemen cowered behind their windscreens, dipping
their headlights in tribute, or terror.

I crawled out between the exhaust
and the oil change, remembering the fireworks
I’d thrown as a kid, hotter than ashes
raked from the grate. Blue lights pin-balled around me;
hungry flies burned for the retch of smoke.
The tyre in the opposite lane glowed
like a meteor, spectators gambolled closer,
light-headed from its stench. I watched tired men
scrape out bones. The drag of shovels
sparked hot oil; melded asphalt bubbled like tar.

And I remembered my mother raking out the fire
and fetching new coal, heat melting the ink
on the Echo; the front page edged with charcoal
as though someone important had died. I saw my remains
piled on a stretcher; police dogs
sniffing at my entrails.

They could throw them on a bonfire for all I cared;
revelation was already yesterday’s news.
I was the magician’s assistant cut in half, waving goodbye
to her toes. Past the police woman motioning traffic
to keep moving, keep moving! I felt my body
separate from my life like the space shuttle
ejecting spent fuel. Wherever I was going
I would be travelling alone. Like a refugee
in a land with no cattle of its own, I walked
to the hard shoulder and stuck out my thumb.