"To His Lost Lover"
Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other
he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost
unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,
how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush
at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –
two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –
walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.
How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips
from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit
or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart
was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.
Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.
And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,
then another,
or knew her
favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,
and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair
into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved
when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home
through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand
to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.
And never almost cried,
and never once described
an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt
nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh
wept by the heart,
where it hurts,
or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.
Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,
a pilot light,
or stayed the night,
or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is
I like you.
I just might do.”
How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand
were a solid ball
of silver foil
and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.
But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could
Creative writing task: “Manhunt” by Simon Armitage I was on my third tour of duty in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The aim was to liberate the area from the Taliban but it was harder th.
Let me put it this way: if you came to lay
your sleeping head against my arm or sleeve,
and if my arm went dead, or if I had to take my leave
at midnight, I should rather cleave it from the joint or seam
than make a scene or bring you round.
There, how does that sound?
Mother, any distance greater than a single span
requires a second pair of hands.
You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors,
the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors.
You at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape, recording
length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base, then leaving
up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling
years between us. Anchor. Kite.
I space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb
the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something
has to give;
two floors below your fingertips still pinch
the last one-hundredth of an inch...I reach
towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky
to fall or fly.
Anyone here had a go at themselves
for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists
with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,
let's show that inch of lacerated skin
between the forearm and the fist. Let's tell it
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.
A likely story: you were lashed by brambles
picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,
repeat with me the punch line 'Just like blood'
when those at the back rush forward to say
how a little love goes a long long long way.
I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab when I held a pair of scissors by the blades and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner; then called your name, and handed them over.
O the unrivalled stench of branded skin as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in, then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked, the doctor said, for eternity.
Don't believe me, please, if I say that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen, of asking you if you would marry me.
We went out
into the school yard together, me and the boy
whose name and face
I don't remember. We were testing the range
of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth,
I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.
He called from over the park--I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,
from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell's Farm
I lifted an arm.
He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.
Boy with the name and face I don't remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.
Hey so this is a bit of a trivial challenge for people who like literature
- Google stuff about Simon Armitage
- Find 5 interesting facts about Simon Armitage
- Read some of his poems and select your favourite poem
- explain why you have chosen this as your favourite
You have only 6 hours good luck
EDIT: u/Apprehensive_Bug_889 won
The elf said to Kevin, “You’re probably wondering why
I’m sitting here at your breakfast table this morning,
helping myself to your condiments. Kevin, I’m here to
make you a very special offer—let’s call it a once-in-a-
lifetime opportunity. Today you’re forty-four years and
thirty-six days old, and that’s exactly how long you’ve got
left! Let me save you the mental arithmetic: you’re going
to live till you’re eighty-eight years and seventy-two days,
and you’ve just crossed the halfway line. It’s what we
elves like to call ‘the tipping point.’ So, Kevin, as of now,
you can either carry on regardless and pretend we never
met. Or say the word, and I can flip the hourglass on its
head. Do you see what I’m saying? So instead of getting
older you’ll be heading back in the other direction. I’ve got
all the forms—you just sign here, here and here and it’s
goodbye incontinence, hello Ibiza! What do you say,
Kevin?”
The arthritis in Kevin’s shoulder had been bothering him
of late, and the prospect of revitalising his tired and aching
joints was tantalising to say the least. Imagine crusading
once again through the unconquered landscapes of early
manhood, knowing what he knew now. But what about
Annie, the woman he loved, the only woman he’d loved in
his whole life? Could he really go swanning around with a
young man’s intentions and a fashionable T-shirt while she
slipped away towards undignified infirmity and toothless
old age? How cowardly, to let her walk death’s shadowy
footpath alone, thus betraying his every promise to her,
thus breaking every vow. And an image formed in his
mind—Annie with ghostly hair and faraway eyes, cradling
him in her limp, skinny arms, roses in a vase on the bedside
table next to the tissues and ventilator, his flawless cheek
against her grey cotton gown, his tiny mouth moving
hungrily towards her sunken breast. “I won’t do it.
Because of my Annie,” said Kevin, emphatically. The elf
said, “Kevin, you’re a gentleman, and God knows there
aren’t many of them around. And your Annie, she’s one in
a million.” He wiped a few crumbs of crispbread from the
corner of his mouth and added, “No two ways about it, had
the pleasure of breakfasting with her just a few months ago.
A stunning, captivating woman. And looking younger
every day.” Then with a shuffle of his silver slippers on the
hardwood floor, he was gone.
On another occasion, we got sent out
to tackle looters raiding a bank.
And one of them legs it up the road,
probably armed, possibly not.
Well myself and somebody else and somebody else
are all of the same mind,
so all three of us open fire.
Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear
I see every round as it rips through his life –
I see broad daylight on the other side.
So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times
and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out,
pain itself, the image of agony.
One of my mates goes by
and tosses his guts back into his body.
Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.
End of story, except not really.
His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol
I walk right over it week after week.
Then I’m home on leave. But I blink
and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.
Sleep, and he’s probably armed, and possibly not.
Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds.
And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out –
he’s here in my head when I close my eyes,
dug in behind enemy lines,
not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land
or six-feet-under in desert sand,
but near to the knuckle, here and now,
his bloody life in my bloody hands.
Creative writing task: “Manhunt” by Simon Armitage I was on my third tour of duty in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The aim was to liberate the area from the Taliban but it was harder th.
Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other
he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost
unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,
how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a
hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to
blush
at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –
two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –
walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.
How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips
from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit
or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart
was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.
Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.
And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her
blouse,
then another,
or knew her
favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,
and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair
into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved
when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home
through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand
to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.
And never almost cried,
and never once described
an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt
nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh
wept by the heart,
where it hurts,
or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.
Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,
a pilot light,
or stayed the night,
or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is
I like you.
I just might do.”
How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand
were a solid ball
of silver foil
and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.
But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.
And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.
Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other
he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost
unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,
how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush
at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –
two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –
walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.
How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips
from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit,
or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart
was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.
Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.
And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,
then another,
or knew her
favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,
and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair
into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved
when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home
through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand
to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.
And never almost cried,
and never once described
an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt
nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh
wept by the heart,
where it hurts,
or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.
Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,
a pilot light,
or stayed the night,
or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is
I like you.
I just might do.”
How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand
were a solid ball
of silver foil
and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.
But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.
And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about
I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have done in my life. Not least the time in the chemistry lab When I held a pair of scissors by the blades and played the handles in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner; then called your name and handed them over.
O the unrivalled stench of branded skin as you slipped your thumb and middle thinger in, then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked, the doctor said, for eternity.
Don't believe me, please, if I say that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen, of asking you if you would marry me.
Anyone here had a go at themselves
for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists
with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,
let's show that inch of lacerated skin
between the forearm and the fist. Let's tell it
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.
A likely story: you were lashed by brambles
picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,
repeat with me the punch line 'Just like blood'
when those at the back rush forward to say
how a little love goes a long long long way.
