Here amongst this darkened room
a fork could compose a tune,
an ice cream float parade for lunch,
a boxer collapse drunk on punch.
Playing across this inky pitch
teaming dreams compete for thought, which
hang in gloom on hooks of ideas
stimulating both hopes and fears.
And yet I sit alone, unmoving,
the blank of dark obscure but soothing.
Round about my thoughts are strewn,
here amongst this darkened room.
Archive for the ‘poetry’ Category
Nonsense in the dark
Monday, May 18th, 2009‘A Vision’ - Simon Armitage
Sunday, May 10th, 2009The future was a beautiful place, once.
Remember the full-blown balsa-wood town
on public display in the Civic Hall.
The ring-bound sketches, artists’ impressions,
blueprints of smoked glass and tubular steel,
board-game suburbs, modes of transportation
like fairground rides or executive toys.
Cities like dreams, cantilevered by light.
And people like us at the bottle-bank
next to the cycle-path, or dog-walking
over tended strips of fuzzy-felt grass,
or motoring home in electric cars,
model drivers. Or after the late show -
strolling the boulevard. They were the plans,
all underwritten in the neat left-hand
of architects - a true, legible script.
I pulled that future out of the north wind
at the landfill site, stamped with today’s date,
riding the air with other such futures,
all unlived in and now fully extinct.
From Simon Armitage’s collection Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid.
Thamesmead South, London - a vision and an actuality
Picture credit: Flickr user Iqbal Aalam
Pciture credit: Flickr user joseph beuys hat
