Poetry A – The Recusant

Poetry A

Alastair Aisgill

Fortune

It seems to me the sun shines on all men

Regardless of their worth in worldly terms.

The rain and all the other weathers then

Are just as disregarding in their turns.

If seasons do not notice who we are

Does life itself its bounteousness mete out

Fairly and without concern or care?

No, for joyous then would be my shout.

Many are they who, with little effort other

Than to do their daily work, achieve success;

While others, no less dutiful, seem doomed

To failure – even though they strived no less.

The wealth, the cars, the holidays combined

Are often used by those more fortunate

To set the standard and callously remind

The poor that they are profligate.

The employed man, busily oblivious to

Other conscientious men left on the shelf

May one day find the things he now can do

Are passed to someone other than himself.

First published in Echoes from an Inkwell (Anchor Books, 1991).

R.A. Allen

Compos Mentis

I dreamed I smelled rain

coming, but it was only wind

blowing through cracks unmended

since last we’d mentioned them.

I thought I heard you on the porch

returning from our garden—a

diversion acquired

as time on our hands

slipped away.

But it must have been the cat.

Or did we have a dog

back then?

Laughing, naked,

I chase you down the hall,

and, laughing, you prove too swift.

With vexation and the same

jaded lecture, they lead me

back to my room and

dress me.

Someday soon, I’ll escape

this place and find you,

bequeathing the next newly decrepit

one bed and one TV

with foil-wrapped rabbit ears.

R.A. Allen

Compos Mentis

for Mrs. Stephanie Jacksovitch Hall

I dreamed I smelled rain

coming, but it was only wind

blowing through cracks unmended

since last we’d mentioned them.

I thought I heard you on the porch

returning from our garden—a

diversion acquired

as time on our hands

slipped away.

But it must have been the cat.

Or did we have a dog

back then?

Laughing, naked,

I chase you down the hall,

and, laughing, you prove too swift.

With vexation and the same

jaded lecture, they lead me

back to my room and

dress me.

Someday soon, I’ll escape

this place and find you,

bequeathing the next newly decrepit

one bed and one TV

with foil-wrapped rabbit ears.

CB Anderson

A Small Service

The sons of Senators don’t go to war;

they play and go to college, party late,

sleep till afternoon, gamble and whore

at the best establishments to sate

the appetites their fathers redirected

toward pursuit of power — but they call

it something else, a term of art elected

officials relish: public service… all

of which suggests a way for them to serve

us better, if their honours would be kind

enough to honour favours we deserve

for putting their impostures out of mind.

Their quos will partly balance out our quids

if they will just make laws, and not have kids.

Take a Deep Breath

The damage that the embers cause is minimal,

But even so, the laid-back guy whose errant sparks

Defile the tablecloth is deemed a criminal

By scolds who won’t withhold derogative remarks.

Tobacco is the bane of Man — or so they say —

Anathema to any thinking person who

Has seen the lighted match, seen ashes fill the tray

Of fools who never do what they’ve been told to do.

No use in asking for a second or a third

Opinion -– no one can evade the heartless mind

Police, and no one ever gets to hear a word

Beyond the limits that the judges have defined.

Imagine smoking pipes of peace with native chiefs,

With all your critics hunkered just outside the tent;

But also, think about your deepest core beliefs

And, had you dared to share them, what this might have meant

For students in the early stages of their swank

Miseducation. Charismatics speak in tongues,

And there’ve been many proper citizens who drank

Themselves to death. So why the fuss regarding lungs?

Leah Armstead

In The Hospice

Here I know you for real

Here I break bread for you

Here I am hungry for your cornucopia of fruits

Here I know you are weary

Here I know you are gray against the sun

Where is the gold star that is sacred to you?

Where is the stone that heals your ills?

Where is the Cross for your burial?

Where is the pearl of your ancestors?

Where is the potion you swallow for strength?

You are silver-haired and thin, and big-hearted

You are sad and weakened from so much life

You are smiling with false teeth like ivory

You are old but your bones ache with birth

You are breathing words of a mysterious song

Sectioned: Hospital Poems

He was pronounced dirty on arrival.

Being locked up wasn’t on his list

of things to do before he died, but

he didn’t have a choice. Here he was.

He was stripped, given a cool shower

and clean clothes, and a purple juice

to drink with salty stale peanuts

and crackers. Everyone was crackers.

Everyone was nuts. Nuts—everywhere!

Shame unzipped its pants. Exposed.

But exposed as what? He couldn’t nail it

on the head. It was a game, and everyone

was playing as if their life depended on it.

And what else is on my mind:

the elf-child digging a hole in my brain.

Snake-infested pillars that hold up the world.

A grinning idiot that looks exactly like me.

Peek a Boo. Yes, it’s you. Upside-down.

Amelia Arcamone-Makinano

Devilish Interruption of Mass

Why should I apologize

for admiring those stained-glass wings

folding in a moment of humility

eternally pressed into lead veins?

I’m intoxicated with sinful colors

but even the chiaroscuro

would have me knee-bent

with pleasure

As the priest sings

Dominus Vobiscum

I am drawn to the wink

gathered in the warmth of his wings

clinging to the fire.

Short

After she sat down

He removed her

One curl at a time.

Cafe 18

After the people discarded themselves

to expose their egos

to lean further into each living particle

I could swear they all must have

known each other for a very long time

as I rubbed against their velvet shadows

which they tossed against the hard, brick wall

along with my half-sister, half fantasy

who paused for our conversation

turning away from her torso

in one empty eye socket

holding a candle

fully dressed

wearing my face.

In Cafe 18 I was eating leftover poems

from center-stage rhythms

that reached me half-empty enough

to complete my own imaginings

and my half-sister took me deeper

to find other human relationships

without walking away from the cedar table

we found Our Lady of the Flowers

breasts pinned under her mouth of red petals

that needed to unstick before opening

wide enough to release one honeysuckle tongue.

C.B. Anderson

Spend It

Economies don’t always work the way
It’s thought they should — in other words, they’re fickle.
At times they seem to vindicate the trickle-
Down theory: rich folks raking in the hay
Who have so much to spare that they can pay
Big bucks to proles who’d settle for a nickel.
At other times the hammer and the sickle
Appear to hold the world within their sway.

The yen, the U.S. dollar, or the Euro
Locked up inside a miser’s bedroom bureau
Bespeaks a moribund economy.

The pen that signs a check is much more mighty
Than any sword — more fair than Aphrodite! —
And isn’t just a stale metonymy.

Ain’t Gonna Study Peace No More

This talk of peace is such an awful bore,
Enough to make a soldier lose his mind.
Let’s go, young men, it’s time to start a war

So we can take our fill of blood and gore.
Forget about good will to humankind,
For talk of peace is such an awful bore,

But think instead of pain and death galore.
To see how well our wiring is designed,
Let’s go, young men, it’s time to start a war

Where mayhem’s rush will make us fight for more.
Those pencil-necks nonviolently inclined,
Whose talk of peace is such an awful bore,

We’ll deal with later, on our second tour.
You’ll hate yourselves if you get left behind —
Let’s go, young men, it’s time. To start a war

Does not require a cause worth fighting for,
Just lethal outcomes tactically defined,
And talk of peace is such an awful bore.
Let’s go, young men, it’s time to start a war!

James Aitchison

Their Names

Even then those six women’s names

couldn’t have matched their faces

or their sitting, standing, walking body-shapes.

He spent so little time with each of them

he never found out who they really were,

and yet he remembers their names.

In reverse order, from first to last, they are

Ellyse Ancund, Anjano Pwello, Njeta Hessdil,

Luija Denord, Nussa Tewleth, Sabilela Mandaso.

He heard from a friend of a friend when he still had friends

that one of the women was dead.

And the others?

The edges and curves of their faces might already be blurred

and boneless beneath their withered frost-bitten skin.

They’ll have purple half-moons beneath their eyes,

little vertical lines on their upper lips,

double chins, dewlaps?

He’s just found two of the women on Google Chrome:

Ellyse Ancund and Anjano Pwello.

No bags or folds or shrinkages,

but he doesn’t know when the photographs were taken:

the older the photograph the younger the face.

The women’s names don’t match their photographs.

Household Ghosts

If you asked me, I’d say this house has no ghosts.

And yet two or three times a year

a thud on the bedroom window jolts me awake.

I switch on the bedside table light –

Nothing. No one. The curtains are undisturbed.

I know my brain plays tricks on my dreaming mind,

but the sensation, the abrupt awakening,

feels too extraneous to be a dream.

Is the wakening jolt

an extra-early morning wake-up call

from a barren little segment of my brain

that wants my mind to dream about these rooms

and make promises to household ghosts?

Nothing. No one. I switch off the light

and curl again into my sleep-shape self.

Behind the Waterfall

He hated his day job

unplanning and replanning planners’ plans

for garages, conservatories, pigeon lofts.

He painted when Richard and Franny were asleep

and I lay waking for him to come to bed.

‘I paint by moonlight,’ he said, ‘when the moon is full.’

Painters should live in cities or near the coast.

He kept his studio locked until – days, weeks

or even months – a painting was complete.

I loved his work. I’ve seen nothing of his for years.

I soon learned not to ask him where or how.

‘Talent’ was one of my earliest mistakes.

‘It isn’t talent,’ he said. It’s accomplishment.’

He said of one of his paintings

‘It’s the earth seen from a satellite in space

and so it’s the earth in space.’ Of another he said

‘It’s mosses and lichens on a boulderstone.’

I said something about shadows in one of his works.

‘Yes. Can you see them lengthening and deepening?’

One of his paintings was layer upon layer

of different weathers in a day and night:

frost, mist, clouds, sunlight through falling rain

and strands of moonlight slanting through the dark.

‘A view,’ he said, ‘from behind the waterfall.’

No. No. No. I make it sound as if …

No. Not the work of a dabbling amateur.

That painting was beautiful,

abstract, factual, severely beautiful.

He needed women. He didn’t need a wife.

He should have lived with childless mistresses.

[Behind the Waterfall – 2]

Switzerland? The Tyrol? The Hebrides?

When anyone asked him where, he would say

‘They’re anywhere you like and nowhere you know.’

He took them when we split up. They were his, of course.

Some people felt – They didn’t say ‘bleak’ or ‘harsh’

but he knew what they meant, and he was pleased.

His landscapes were illusory and real,

remote, immediate, austerely beautiful.

Not light and darkness but what he called dark light.

Trees were skeletal and purple-black,

thin-streaked with snow and skewed by the west wind.

They vanished in rising mist or lowering cloud.

Vertical and diagonal drystone walls –

mould-blue, dove-grey and tipped with off-white snow −

climbed the foothills and faded stone by stone.

Clouds might have been mountains and mountains clouds.

Horizons were indiscernible;

I couldn’t see where earth ended and sky began.

They were self-portraits, of course.

He said he’d burn them all. I’ll never know.

Miggy Angel

Arcadia

When a bloated tower-block for the rich

is erected in a rundown neighbourhood

the locals stand at the perimeter

looking up at the solar reflections

in a thousand clear panes

like enchanted pagan witnesses

of Aurora Borealis

They say words the block’s inhabitants

cannot hear. They wonder who lives up there

in the penthouse apartments

at a million notes a pop

The block’s shadow is long & diabolical

It falls like an axe on the locale below

In Neolithic England

they built megalithic columns

hewn from stone, stood encircled by ley-lines

Now I, druidic neighbourhood idiot,

stand rooted to the spot at the block’s clubfoot

watching the witch on the thirteenth floor

Black silhouette resplendent at window

The skyscraper necromancer

lights a candle for the sill

Singing her auguries

of the coming Arcadia

Keith Armstrong

William Blake in the Bridge Hotel

A few pints of Deuchars and my spirit is soaring.
The child dances out of me,
goes running down to the Tyne,
while the little man in me wrestles with a lass
and William Blake beams all his innocence in my glass.
And the old experience sweats from a castle’s bricks
as another local prophet takes a jump off the bridge.

It’s the spirit of Pat Foley and the ancient brigade
on the loose down the Quayside stairs
in a futile search,
just a step in the past,
for one last revolutionary song.

All the jars we have supped
in the hope of a change;
all the flirting and courting and chancing downstream;
all the words in the air and the luck pissed away.
It seems we oldies are running back
screaming to the Bewick days,
when a man could down a politicised quip
and craft a civilised chat
before he fed the birds
in the Churchyard.

The cultural ships are fair steaming in
but it’s all stripped of meaning –
the Councillors wade
in the shallow end.

O Blake! buy me a pint in the Bridge again,
let it shiver with sunlight
through all the stained windows,
make my wit sparkle
and my knees buckle.

Set me free of this stifling age
when the bland are back in charge.
Let us grow our golden hair wild once more
and roar like Tygers
down Dog Leap Stairs.

Keith Armstrong

Hexham Riot 1761

In 1761 a new Militia Act came into force. Strangely it managed to arouse strong negative feelings in both ordinary working people and the ruling class: the former because a ballot system of recruitment – essentially conscription – was resented; the latter as training the masses to use weapons was felt to be dangerous for the future, priming them for revolution.

On March 9th 1761 a large crowd gathered in Hexham Market Place to protest about the ballot system, some putting the numbers as high as 5000, though a few hundred is more likely. For several hours the leaders of the protest talked with the magistrates, remonstrating about the imposition. Those magistrates feared violence, and brought in a force of the North Yorks Militia as protection against a mob attack. Their presence, however, probably further enflamed tempers.
Eventually the magistrates lost patience, and the Riot Act was read. As the crowd turned uglier, the soldiers fixed bayonets. The mob, by now its fierier members armed with tools and staves, charged. Two soldiers were killed with guns grabbed from them or their comrades, then a volley or far more probably a series of volleys was fired into the rioters. When the smoke cleared at least 50 were dead, including the two soldiers. Another 300 or more were injured, some of them dying later of their wounds. Among the dead were two pregnant women.
A hunt went on over the next few weeks for anyone known to have participated in the riot, taking in not just Hexham but the settlements around it, the list of casualties showing people from Corbridge, Slayley, Stamfordham and Ryall among many others had been involved. Unsurprisingly the North Yorks Militia earned the sobriquet The Hexham Butchers after the event.

Tuesday March 10th 1761

‘The Market Place was a tragic sight. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay scattered. The ground was stained with blood and the cries of the wounded were pitiful. The following day it rained, washing away the traces.’

Wash away the day,
wash the pain away,
sweep the remains of yesterday
into the racing river.
Beat the Dead March,
bang the old drum,
heal Hexham’s bust bones
and cry me a river,
cry the Water of Tyne.
Wash away the day
and wash this pain away.

A Pitman Dead

With blood gushing out of his boot tops,
a well-dressed man
leaves town
along Priestpopple.
Thirteen men lie inside the Abbey,
not owned.
Numbers are found dead upon the roads.
Big with child, Sarah Carter shot,
the musket ball found in the child’s belly.
Thrice into a man’s body
lying at James Charlton’s shop door
it’s said they ran theIr bayonets;
and a pitman dead,
a weaver:
all those broken days of history,
all the slain hours in our diaries.
Sound the Abbey’s bells!
Let them toll the severed minutes.
Let them celebrate
the end of torture.
Let them gush
with rejoicing
for more peaceful times.

There’s a Riot

These streets,
in this Heart of All England,
are swept clean of blood.
But the stains still soak our books.
Death upon death,
we turn the pages;
in between the lines,
we read about the screams,
time’s bullets
tearing flesh away.
There is terror lurking in this Market Place,
just scrape away the skin
and, deep down,
there’s a Riot:
a commotion boiling
a terrible turbulence,
a throbbing pain.
It is a Riot of gore,
a torrential downpour
of weeping:
a seeping sore
that is Hexham’s History.

Friends of the Graves

(for the Birtley Belgians)

‘Never forget that you are a Birtley Belgian.’

(Ida ‘Anderland’ Dergent)

This is the story of the Birtley Belgians,

the shellers from hell,

the wandering men

and the women they wed.

You can say goodbye to your friends.

These are the remnants of Elisabethville,

the shattered relics of battered soldiers,

the shards of savagery,

the empty shells of discarded folk.

This is what’s left of the carnage,

the last of the war effort,

the smiles of the children

and the severed limbs.

This is the story of the Birtley Belgians.

From Flanders and Wallonia they came

leaving beloved roots behind

to do their bit for the ritual slaughter,

to bring up well their sons and daughters

to dance and sing

under the hails of bullets.

Fishing for sunshine in the Ijzer brook,

kicking stones on the Rue de Charleroi,

the Birtley Belgians

planted their seed on Durham ground

and made do

and made explosive dreams.

What more can we tell?

‘Home is made for coming from,

for dreams of going to

which with any luck

will never come true.’

Sweating in uniform

on assembly lines,

pulverising their brains

to keep the powers that be in power,

they were strong

and at the same time weak

and screamed and cried

like anyone.

This is the story of the Birtley Belgians.

They’re gone now,

blown to dust

in the festering fields,

memories strewn over the way

to fertilise another day

with the same weary mistakes

and thrusts of love.

I can see the boys in the Villa de Bruges

slaking their frustrated fantasies

to drown the horror

and the girls

seductive behind the huts

in between

the grind of daily production.

Let me take you

up the Boulevard Queen Mary,

along the Rue de Louvain,

knock on the door of number D2

and blood will pour

and the ground will open up,

‘mud will take you prisoner’

and devour all those years.

This is the story of the Birtley Belgians.

You can hear their singing on the North Sea wind,

hear them in Chester le Street and Liege,

the brass band and orchestra

drowning out the distant pounding.

In and out of trouble,

we will always dance.

An accordion wails across the little streets,

the Three Tuns welcomes the living.

And at the crack of dawn

and in the battlefields of evening clouds

we will remember them,

in the words of the Walloon poet Camille Fabry proclaim:

‘Our thoughts fly like arrows back to the land of our birth.’

This is the story of the loss of lives

for causes we scarcely understand

but for love and grandeur too

and for the little Belgian children

and the joyous games they play.

This is the story of the Birtley Belgians.

The Birtley Belgians emigrated from Belgium to Birtley, County Durham during World War 1 to create an armaments factory.

The poem was commissioned by the Birtley Belgians Euro-Network in 2015 in association with Borsolino and Berline Belgian Drama Groups.

Keith Armstrong

The Golden Room

‘Was it for nothing that the little room,

All golden in the lamplight, thrilled with golden

Laughter from hearts of friends that summer night?’ (Wilfrid Gibson)

I’m as happy as a daffodil

this day;

sunshine flows around me

over fences,

leaping

with the joy of my poetry.

I am Lord Pretty Field,

a tipsy aristocrat of verse,

become full of myself

and country booze

in the Beauchamp Arms.

Under branches frothy with blossom,

I carry a torch from Northumberland

for Wilfrid Gibson

and his old mates;

for Geraldine

I bear

my Cheviot heart

in Gloucester ciderlight.

We can only catch

a petal from the slaughter,

a bloom

to ease the melancholy

of a Dymock dusk;

hear laughter

over the gloomy murmurs

of distant wars.

A swirling rook cries out

across St Mary’s spire

in dialect

as I climb

back to my White House room

to dream of an England gone,

and a flash of whisky

with Abercrombie.

For Wilfrid you are still

‘a singing star’,

drenched in balladry;

and this I know:

I will keep your little songs alive

in this Golden Room in my heart

and, in my Hexham’s market place,

rant for you

and cover

all our love

with streaming daffodils.

Gloucestershire 2003

Folk Song for Thomas Spence

(1750-1814)

Down by the old Quayside,

I heard a young man cry,

among the nets and ships he made his way.

As the keelboats buzzed along,

he sang a seagull’s song;

he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,

sold socks and fishing nets,

through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.

In this theatre of life,

the crying and the strife,

they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

(from the music-theatre piece ‘Pig’s Meat’ written for Bruvvers Theatre Company)

In the Department of Poetry

‘Our paths may cross again, they may not. But I wish you success for the future. I don’t think you are a person who is easily defeated through life as you are by nature a peacock which shows at times its beautiful feathers.’ (Margaretha den Broeden)

In the Department of Poetry something is stirring:

it is a rare bird shitting on a heap of certificates.

He bears the beautiful plumage of a rebel,

flying through the rigid corridors,

the stifling pall of academic twaddle.

He pecks at the Masters’ eggheads,

scratches pretty patterns along the cold walls of poetic power.

He cares not a jot for their fancy Awards,

their sycophantic perambulations,

degrees of literary incest.

These trophies for nepotism

pass this peculiar bird by

as he soars

high

above the paper quadrangle,

circling over the dying Heads of Culture,

singing sweet revolutionary songs,

showing off

his brilliant wings

that fly him

into the ecstasy

of a poem.

Fat Man Lodged On Dog Leap Stairs

He pounded the cobbles

of the Castle Garth,

bowling along

with his brain hanging over his neck

and his belly

looming over his huge pants.

His overeducated head

weighed a ton

and bore down

on an arse

fattened on home- made pies.

He was carrying a plan

for the working classes

but forgot his heart was too small,

dwarfed by his huge mouth

and an expensive ego.

He had a board meeting to go to,

the big fart,

and he sweated grants

as he blundered along

to the narrow alley.

He was far too broad of beam really

but he was late for everything,

including his funeral,

and thrust his plates of meat

onto the slippery steps.

History closed in on him,

the Black Gate,

the Keep,

as if to tell him

it wasn’t his,

as if to say

‘get out of my town’.

He squeezed himself onto this narrow stairway

and, like his poetry,

got stuck.

He couldn’t move

for his lack of lyricism.

The Fat Man

was firmly lodged

on Dog Leap Stairs

and the crows

began to gather

to swoop

and pick

the bloated power

from his face.

Lament For A Writer Dead

He died,
clinging on to his pen,
at six in the morning,
his usual stint.
He’d run out of anything to write about.
For years, he’d watched the world go by his study,
observing other people’s lives.
All he had to do was fill the page,
disengaged,
lacking in instinct,
without a history,
with no real vision of any particular community.

After all,
he knew he was
a writer,
a describer,
inscriber of someone else’s paving stones.
An expert on poetry,
with nothing much at all
to say.

Outside Your Lonely Window

My God,
we are
indeed lucky,
in this great and ancient city,
to have,
in our presence,
such a poet as you.
Sometimes,
it even seems
that you
are bigger than us,
with your huge dome
dominating
our history.
Such an immense
and supreme
ego,
larger than the space
in Grainger Market.
And, when it comes to writing up our story,
we, of course,
must turn to you,
with your flawless technique
and structured craft,
turn to you
in our peasant
ignorance.
Since,
though we have folk songs,
they cannot do justice
to the language,
like you
above all,
can.
Perhaps,
next time,
before we break
into song,
we should ask you
to subject our voices
to your analysis.
But then
I don’t think,
in your padded academic tower,
that you can hear us all
singing
in the trees,
outside
your lonely window.

Stella of Rose Street

(in memory of Stella Cartwright, 1937-1985)

“Dear George, it is so strange, our souls seem to fly together joyously over mountains and seas while each of us in our mutual way suffers agonies.”

(Stella Cartwright)

“An orgasm with Miss Cartwright was metaphysical, transcendental, like nothing else you can ever imagine. She seemed built for love.”

(Stanley Roger Green)

“You placed me on a pedestal / according to my lights / but what you didn’t know, my dear / I have no head for heights.”

(Norman MacCaig)

It was so much gabble,

fantasies of genius in the Little Kremlin.

Once, I fell for it myself,

tottering along the red carpet,

poetry dribbling into my own vomit,

or maybe it was Hugh’s,

all mixed up

in the whisky of empty promises.

I talked in Milne’s Bar to a shop steward

who’d help build MacDiarmid’s bog.

He said the workmen had their tea in Grieve’s posh wee cups

and saw the reckoning in the leaves.

He yapped as auld poets glowered from their photos

and we downed chilled ale

to drown the memories of a Juniper Green girl

with a pint of that Muse again.

They must have seen joy in you our Stella

to wrench them from their word play,

to take a lovely shag to brighten up their anxious lines.

Och the happiness and the pain

of drinking

that smiler with the knife

come to get us all.

And that lonely honey George

must have driven you nuts

romancing you in the Pentland Hills

and kissing you full on your lips

one damp Saturday afternoon

by the Water of Leith.

They say ‘the best poem is silence’

but you were a shriek in the ecstasy

of loving and of agony,

a naked drunken howl.

The saintly saviour of hurt animals

and a shopper for the sick,

you wanted to wrap yourself around

something you could trust,

wanted a photograph of a true poetry lover

held to your lovely breasts

to make a change from the piss

of Milne’s Bar

and the daily Abbotsford drivel.

What you found was madness in a Zimmer Frame at thirty,

splashes of alcohol and tears lit

by the sudden flashes of beautiful orgasms,

the sunshine today

in all the muck

along Rose Street.

Keith Armstrong

My Friend Jack Common (1903-1968)

Ever since the sixth form,

when I found you,

a kindred Novocastrian

in a library book,

I seem to have followed in your steps,

stumbled after you

in rain soaked lanes,

knocked on doors

in search of your stories.

For over forty years,

I have tracked

the movement of your pen

in streets you walked

and on cross country trains

from your own Newcastle

to Warrington

Malvern,

Newport Pagnell,

Letchworth,

Yetminster,

Wallington

and back again.

I have given talks about you,

supped in your pubs,

strode along your paragraphs

and river paths

to try to find

that urge in you

to write

out of your veins

what you thought of things,

what made you tick

and your loved ones

laugh and cry.

I tried to reach you in a thesis,

to see you as a lad in Heaton,

but I could never catch your breath

because I didn’t get to meet you

face to face,

could only guess

that you were like me:

a kind of kindly

socialist writer

in a world

too cruel for words.

Wallington Morning

‘But the thing I saw in your face

No power can disinherit:

No bomb that ever burst

Shatters the crystal spirit.’ (George Orwell).

I stood at your door,

knocked in the English sunshine,

bowed to greet you

but could not hear

the chatter

from your typewriter

or the rain pecking

at the tin roof,

only the plummet of the leaves

brushing against my face

and the birds

falling over the fields.

Thought of you and Jack Common,

shaking hands

in open debate,

patched sleeves

damp on the bar counter,

ploughing through

tracts of history,

eyes on the horizon

looking for War

and bombs

over Datchworth’s spire.

This magic morning,

clear sky in our hearts.

No September showers,

only goats bleating,

a horse trotting

down the lane

and, in the day dream,

St Mary’s bells

glistening

with Eileen asleep

in the clouds.

What should I say?

We are weak.

I know you were awkward

but, like Jack, full of love.

Out of bullets,

flowers may grow;

out of trenches,

seeds.

The roses

and acorns of thoughts

you planted

those years ago

in Kits Lane,

nourish us now

in these brief minutes,

gifts

from your writing hand

farming for words,

the eggs of essays,

the jam on your fingers.

You were scraping a book together,

smoking the breath

out of your collapsing lungs,

taking the world

on your creaking bent shoulders,

riding across fields

for friends,

bones aching,

fighting to exist

in the cold breeze.

Still the Simpson’s Ale

was good in the Plough,

the old laughter still

flying down this Wallington lane,

with the crackling children

sparkling

on an idyllic day.

Enjoy this beauty,

it will turn to pain.

Sing your folk songs,

dig your garden,

dance in your brain.

Graft and graft

until all the breath is gone.

Leave a brave mark

in the dust

round Animal Farm.

What a good thing

to be alive

where songbirds soar

and daffodils nod.

Over the slaughter

of motorways,

we are following

your large footprints

into this bright countryside

where good people

adopt another’s children

and still

fall in love

with England.

Written after visiting Orwell’s cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, where he lived with Eileen O’Shaughnessy and which was looked after for him by fellow writer Jack Common in 1938.

Keith Armstrong

The Bird Woman Of Whitley Bay

She is out feeding the birds,

on the dot again,

in the drizzle of a seaside morning;

the seed

cast fom her hand

to the jerking beak of a cock pheasant.

She is alone

in a flock of dark starlings,

scattering crumbs to make them shriek.

She is a friend of spuggies,

gives blackbirds water.

Her eyes fly across the garden

to catch a quick robin,

to spot a wee wren,

to chase a bold magpie.

She is innocence,

she is a lovely old lady;

still giving,

still nursing.

She deserves heaven,

she deserves a beautiful nest

to dream out her last hours

in bird song;

in the rich colours of music,

in the red feathers of sunset,

she is my mother,

she is a rare bird

who fed me beautiful dreams.

Thank you for letting me climb

with the skylarks.

Thank you

for the strength of wings.

Keith Armstrong

Folk Song for Thomas Spence

(1750-1814)

Down by the old Quayside,

I heard a young man cry,

among the nets and ships he made his way.

As the keelboats buzzed along,

he sang a seagull’s song;

he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,

sold socks and fishing nets,

through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.

In this theatre of life,

the crying and the strife,

they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

An Oubliette for Kitty

There’s a hole in this Newcastle welcome,

there’s a beggar with a broken spine.

On Gallowgate, a heart is broken

and the ships have left the Tyne.

So what becomes of this History of Pain?

What is there left to hear?

The kids pour down the Pudding Chare lane

and drown a folksong in beer.

So here is an oubliette for you, Kitty,

somewhere to hide your face.

The blood is streaming from fresh wounds in our city

and old scars are all over the place.

There’s this dirt from a history of darkness

and they’ve decked it in neon and glitz.

There are traders in penthouse apartments

on the Quayside where sailors once pissed.

So where are Hughie and Tommy, Kitty?,

the ghosts of Geordies past?

I don’t want to drown you in pity

but I saw someone fall from the past.

So here is an oubliette for you, Kitty,

somewhere to hide your face.

The blood is streaming from fresh wounds in our city

and old scars are all over the place.

While they bomb the bridges of Belgrade,

they hand us a cluster of Culture

and tame Councillors flock in on a long cavalcade

to tug open the next civic sculpture.

And who can teach you a heritage?

Who can learn you a poem?

We’re lost in a difficult, frightening, age

and no one can find what was home.

So here is an oubliette for you, Kitty,

somewhere to hide your face.

The blood is streaming from fresh wounds in our city

and old scars are all over the place.

So here is an oubliette for you, Kitty,

somewhere to hide your face.

The blood is streaming from fresh wounds in our city

and old scars are all over the place.

Fat Man Lodged On Dog Leap Stairs

He pounded the cobbles

of the Castle Garth,

bowling along

with his brain hanging over his neck

and his belly

looming over his huge pants.

His overeducated head

weighed a ton

and bore down

on an arse

fattened on home- made pies.

He was carrying a plan

for the working classes

but forgot his heart was too small,

dwarfed by his huge mouth

and an expensive ego.

He had a board meeting to go to,

the big fart,

and he sweated grants

as he blundered along

to the narrow alley.

He was far too broad of beam really

but he was late for everything,

including his funeral,

and thrust his plates of meat

onto the slippery steps.

History closed in on him,

the Black Gate,

the Keep,

as if to tell him

it wasn’t his,

as if to say

‘get out of my town’.

He squeezed himself onto this narrow stairway

and, like his poetry,

got stuck.

He coudn’t move

for his lack of lyricism.

The Fat Man

was firmly lodged

on Dog Leap Stairs

and the crows

began to gather

to swoop

and pick

the bloated power

from his face.

PETERLEE

Growing old

in a New Town,

we watch the sea roll,

stroll

through the fallen leaves

and cracked houses.

You whisper to me.

‘It’s the place to be’:

this misty dream,

this bird hanging from a tree,

this windblown giro-world.

Across the flat-roofs,

we danced and skipped

over the puddles and the nightmares.

The clouds hung in our eyes.

Older now, wize and wizened,

we stare from our windows in Sunny Blunts

and feel our skin peel.

‘Peter Lee is the Man in the Moon,’

we tell our kids,

‘he’s where it’s at.’

A stray dog barks in the moonlight.

Tonight, newspapers swept across grass,

it’s time to find

a future:

a New Moon,

a new New Town.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

NAKED!

(for Spencer Tunick & his followers)

Naked at the conference table

naked

naked on a beer label

naked

naked in Iraq

naked

naked on the bloody rack

naked

naked as torture

naked

naked as a Baghdad butcher

naked

naked to a public school

naked

naked as a pubic fool

naked

naked in a Gateshead alley

naked

naked as a nuclear family

naked

naked as a pub dart

naked

naked as a bleeding upstart

naked

naked in the corporate office

naked

naked on the bleeding coalface

naked

naked to a stupid war

naked

naked as an arts whore

naked

naked as a councillor in hock

naked

naked as a business hack

naked

naked as I can’t be arsed

naked

naked in a uk farce

naked

naked as a Brendan Foster

naked

naked as a duty roster

naked

naked as a boomtown rat

naked

naked as a poetry brat

naked

naked in the supermarket

naked

naked as a sitting target

naked

naked as the bomb

naked

naked in a Bosnian womb

naked

naked in the Belsen darkness

naked

naked in our wilful blindness

naked

naked under manipulation

naked

naked under a brain tarpaulin

naked

naked as an artist’s prop

naked

naked in the cop shop

naked

naked at the wrong time

naked

naked at the pantomime

naked

naked in the Lottery Gallery

naked

naked as a stick of celery

naked

naked as a stripper in the club

naked

naked as a bourgeois shrub

naked

naked as a strapping Geordie

naked

naked as a gunning Saudi

naked

naked in an Utrecht gutter

naked

naked as a poor kid’s stutter

naked

naked as a star on tele

naked

naked as a starving belly

naked

naked!

KEITH ARMSTRONG

POEM FOR A LOCAL HISTORIAN

(in memory of Jim Kemmy 1936 -1997)

‘Old people mumbling

low in the night of change and of ageing

when they think you asleep and not listening –

and we wide awake in the dark,

as when we were children.’

(Desmond O’Grady)

‘It was poignant,

when walking away from the graveyard

that very warm midday,

that the only sound which could be heard

after he was buried

was that of a member of his trade, a stonemason,

simply chipping away

at a monument.’

(Mary Jackman)

In this city, in every town, in every village,

there is this man

dusty with archives

and old snapshots;

this deep fellow

who digs out truths from scraps,

who drinks from a bowl of swirling voices

and makes sense of things,

makes sense

when all else

lies in chaos.

In his dreams,

wars are not dead.

They scream

from his books.

He will not let

the suffering go –

he owes the children that.

There is something noble

in his calling,

in his bearing.

His work is beautiful.

In this particular place,

you can call him ‘Jim’.

You can see his face forever

in the autumn leaves,

the leaves of books,

and the dance of history,

a local historian

and carver of tales

so memorable

that every street must value his love:

the love of our people though the ages,

the love of learning,

the search for dignity

that underpins these lanes.

In Limerick,

Jim’s imagination still blossoms

and keeps us rooted

in the drift of memory.

He teaches us lessons.

Listen to his spirit breathe

deep as the Shannon.

His voice forever flies

with the power of knowledge.

‘Beautiful dreamer wake unto me,

Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for Thee.’

KEITH ARMSTRONG

SO DON’T COME TO MY FUNERAL

You never knew

how beautiful I could be.

You never saw

just how blue my eyes were.

You couldn’t feel me fly

and did not sense

the passion in my beating words.

So don’t come to my funeral,

don’t come to my funeral.

You were never there

when my heart broke.

You didn’t pick me up

when my ideals drowned.

You never got drunk with me

in the sunshine of my smiles.

You never felt the love in me.

So don’t come to my funeral,

don’t come to my funeral.

You hemmed in my free spirit

with your overeducated mind.

You trapped the birds in my poems

and caged my strong ideas.

You couldn’t act the fool

for fear you lost your face.

You never risked a dance.

So don’t come to my funeral,

don’t come to my funeral.

You never studied the art of chance,

the sudden surge of love in a stranger,

the golden coin in an Edinburgh gutter.

Your education controlled your heart.

Would you save me as I fell from the sky?

Would you bleed for me?

I sense not, I sense you are cold.

So don’t come to my funeral,

don’t come to my funeral.

I don’t want to see you there.

Because you lied to me forever.

Because you couldn’t play a tune in your poems.

Don’t come to my funeral,

don’t come to my funeral.

Sounds In The Night

Learning from others

I grow.

People fill my body

and my dreams.

They shape me.

Old friends’ words

stir my own lips.

Moving, in the street

I collect the scent

of coffee and past lovers.

I scan the faces for a glance I know.

Girls I sleep with

scar me.

My skin stretches

to make room for fresh news.

I read bulletins and lines

mass on my forehead.

Voices inside my brain

stay and sing in my ears.

These sounds in the night

make my blood

dance.

I go laughing with others.

I go teaching with others.

No one is ever self-taught.

There are millions of people

in every single thought.

On 23rd August 1305, William Wallace was executed. At that time, the punishment for the crime of treason was that the convicted traitor was dragged to the place of execution, hanged by the neck (but not until he was dead), and disembowelled (or drawn) while still alive. His entrails were burned before his eyes, he was decapitated and his body was divided into four parts (or quartered). Accordingly, this was Wallace’s fate. His head was impaled on a spike and displayed at London Bridge, his right arm on the bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, his left arm at Berwick, his right leg at Perth, and the left leg at Aberdeen. Edward may have believed that with Wallace’s capture and execution, he had at last broken the spirit of the Scots. He was wrong. By executing Wallace so barbarically, Edward had martyred a popular Scots military leader and fired the Scottish people’s determination to be free.

WALLACE’S RIGHT ARM

Wave goodbye ye oafs of culture,

let your rootless dreams drift away.

History has come to drown you in blood

and wash up your empty schemes.

Yon tottering Palaces of Culture

are seized by the rampaging sea.

They are sailing back to the Equator

to burn in a jungle of fear.

Three hundred million years me lads,

unseen from these high-rise days:

an ice-sheet thick as an ocean,

all those hours just melted down.

Into rich seams of coal,

tropical plants were fossilised;

the sandbanks grew into sandstone

and the mudflats into shale.

And the right arm of William Wallace

shakes with wrath in this firework night.

It is waving goodbye to your history,

it is saying hello to Baghdad.

All the brains of your Labour Party

are stashed in a carrier bag.

Down Bottle Bank in the darkness,

you can hear Wallace scream in a dog.

And will you hang, draw, and quarter my home street?

Will you drop bombs on the music-hall?

You have taken the bones from our loves

and taken the piss from the Tyne.

So give me your arm Good Sir Braveheart,

I’ll take it a walk through the park

and I’ll use it to strike down a student

with an empty shell of a soul.

And I’d give my right arm to make ships,

my left to stoke dreams alive.

And I will dance on in the brilliance of life

until oppression is blown away.

Keith Armstrong

A Prayer for the Loners

The dejected men,

the lone voices,

slip away

in this seaside rain.

Their words shudder to a standstill

in dismal corners.

Frightened to shout,

they cower

behind quivering faces.

No one listens

to their memories crying.

There seems no point

in this democratic deficit.

For years, they just shuffle along,

hopeless

in their financial innocence.

They do have names

that no lovers pronounce.

They flit between stools,

miss out on gales of laughter.

Who cares for them?

Nobody in Whitley Bay

or canny Shields,

that’s for sure.

These wayside fellows

might as well be in a saddos’ heaven

for all it matters

in the grey world’s backwaters.

Life has bruised them,

dashed them.

Bones flake into the night.

I feel like handing them all loud hailers

to release

their oppressed passion,

to move them

to scream

red murder at their leaders –

those they never voted for;

those who think they’re something,

some thing special,

grand.

For, in the end,

I am on the side of these stooped lamenters,

the lonely old boys with a grievance

about caring

and the uncaring;

about power,

and how switched off

this government is

from the isolated,

from the agitated,

from the trembling,

the disenfranchised

drinkers of sadness.

For Edward Elliot of Earsdon (1800-1867)

(Stonemason and poet responsible for the Hartley Pit Disaster memorial in Earsdon churchyard)

“IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH.”

Chip chip chip,

the rain sinks

into Ned Elliot’s shoulders

as his hands

carve the dead names

into the slab.

The tragedy

weighs down his spirit,

renders him thirsty

for the light.

Chip chip chip,

you breathe the name of Thomas Coal

aged thirty seven,

recite the deaths of boys

as young as ten.

You chisel

through the disastrous list,

the litany of lost dreams.

It is such a burden,

the flood of widows’ tears

gushing through

the village,

rendering the churchyard

a swamp of hurt.

This is true

community spirit,

a man who lived

to mark the dead

in stone,

making a living

by honouring others.

Your own name

is ingrained in Earsdon,

ringing

down the years

a sacrifice

from the quarry

of suffering,

one of your

dialect poems

still coursing

in us.

“FOR WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH,

THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP.”

For Joe Skipsey: The Pitman Poet of Percy Main (1832-1903)

‘He’ll tell his tale o’er a pint of ale,

And crack his joke, and bad

Must be the heart who loveth not

To hear the Collier Lad.’ (Skipsey)

To be a pitman poet

you drag words

out of the seam of a dictionary,

write against the grain

all the time

feeling the pain

of a small education,

scribbling in the dark

for a bright spark

germ of a poem.

Hewing

for rhymes,

ducking

in case the roof

of the verse

caved in on you,

Joe

it was bloody hard

to learn,

to craft a line

from the black pit

when the whole world

weighed down on you.

A man was forced

to sing,

to render a ballad

like a lamp in the tunnel,

scraping an education

from coal,

crawling along bookshelves

to find daylight,

Shakespeare,

Shelley

and melody

in the stacks

of an underground library.

Keith Armstrong

Museum of the History of the Revolution Moncada Barracks

Here there are:

field guns,

remnants of scorched earth

and grass

the Guerillas chewed

All enclosed in;

pock-marked walls,

a shot-up barracks

with windows

you can now see children through.

This is:

the Museum of the History of the Revolution;

outside, across the road,

it is being extended,

all the time.

Cuba, Crocodiles, Rain

Havana, 1976

It is raining on crocodiles,

bullet-tears on the scales.

Here, where the balance of power has changed.

These banks of hardened green-backs, spread

stoned along the water’s edge,

are caged

like old dictators,

reigns ended

as young Cuba

surrounds them.

Image of Che Guevara

Across Revolution Square,

his face beams

redder and larger than

the sun.

Can any one man

be this big?

He is a Christ to them;

an ideal inflatable,

blown by a strong wind

that clenches the U.S. flag

in its grip

and tears it

into what it is:

pieces of bought skin.

Guevara –

whose dreams go on

purposefully drifitng,

pinning shirts

to sweating backs.

In the haze of Havana,

the heat from his gaze

burns a laser-way

through the Yankee jungle

to the other side.

Across Revolution Square,

he is above all men

a man.

Keith Armstrong

FOR ‘CUNY’

‘Search where Ambition rag’d, with rigour steel’d;

Where Slaughter, like the rapid lightning, ran;

And say, while mem’ry weeps the blood-stain’d field,

Where lies the chief, and where the common man?’

(John Cunningham)

‘Unto thy dust, sweet Bard! adieu!

Thy hallow’d shrine I slowly leave;

Yet oft, at eve, shall Mem’ry view

The sun-beam ling’ring on thy grave.’

(David Carey)

This week an elegant tombstone, executed by Mr. Drummond of this town, was set up in St. John’s church-yard to the memory of the late ingenious Mr. John Cunningham. The following is the inscription thereon:

‘Here lie the Remains of JOHN CUNNINGHAM.

Of his Excellence as a Pastoral Poet,

His Works will remain a Monument

For Ages

After this temporary Tribute of Esteem

Is in Dust forgotten.

He died in Newcastle, Sept 18, 1773,

Aged 44.’

The ritual slaughter

of traffic,

hurling itself

against the furious economy,

the commerce of suffering,

the pain of money,

nudges your bones

in this graveyard of hollow words.

I hear you liked a jar

well, here’s me

sprinkling

your precious monument

with a little local wine,

lubricating the flowers

that burst from your pastoral verses.

You toured the boards like me,

torn like me,

with your heart,

terrific heart,

pouring real blood on your travelling sleeve.

Oh, my God!

your lips trembled

with a delicate love

for the fleeting joy,

the melancholic haze,

the love in a mist,

that Tom Bewick sketched in you

amd Mrs Slack fed

as you passed along

this way and that

despair in your eyes.

The fact was

you were not born

for the rat race

of letters,

the ducking and fawning

for tasteless prizes,

the empty bloated rivalry,

the thrust of their bearded egos.

You wanted wonder,

the precise touch

of the sun on your grave,

the delicious kiss

that never comes back.

I’m with you, ‘Cuny’

in this Newcastle Company of Comedians;

I’m in your clouds of drunken ways;

I twitch with you

in my poetic nervousness

along Westgate Road.

And the girls left their petals for you

like I hope they do for me

in the light of the silver moon,

thinking of your pen

scratching stars into the dark sky.

Keith Armstrong

Splinters

(for my father)

You picked splinters

with a pin each day

from under blackened fingernails;

shreds of metal

from the shipyard grime,

minute memories of days swept by:

the dusty remnants of a life

spent in the shadow of the sea;

the tears in your shattered eyes

at the end of work.

And your hands were strong,

so sensitive and capable of building boats

and nursing roses;

a kind and gentle man

who never hurt a soul,

the sort of quiet knackered man

who built a nation.

Dad, I watched your ashes float away

down to the ocean bed

and in each splinter

I saw your caring eyes

and gracious smile.

I think of your strong silence every day

and I am full of you,

the waves you scaled,

and all the sleeping Tyneside streets

you taught me to dance my fleeting feet along.

When I fly, you are with me.

I see your fine face

in sun-kissed clouds

and in the gold ring on my finger,

and in the heaving crowd on Saturday,

and in the lung of Grainger Market,

and in the ancient breath

of our own Newcastle.

A Prayer for the Loners

The dejected men,

the lone voices,

slip away

in this seaside rain.

Their words shudder to a standstill

in dismal corners.

Frightened to shout, they cower

behind quivering faces.

No one listens

to their memories crying.

There seems no point

in this democratic deficit.

For years, they just shuffle along,

hopeless

in their financial innocence.

They do have names

that no lovers pronounce.

They flit between stools,

miss out on gales of laughter.

Who cares for them?

Nobody in Whitley Bayor canny Shields,

that’s for sure.

These wayside fellows

might as well be in a saddos’ heaven

for all it matters

in the grey world’s backwaters.

Life has bruised them,

dashed them.

Bones flake into the night.

I feel like handing them all loud-hailers

to release their oppressed passion,

to move them

to scream red murder at their leaders –

those they never voted for;

those who think they’re something,

some thing special,

grand.

For, in the end,

I am on the side of these stooped lamenters,

the lonely old boys with a grievance

about caring and the uncaring;

about power,

and how switched off

this government is

from the isolated,

from the agitated,

from the trembling,

the disenfranchised drinkers of sadness.

Marsden Rock

Sensational Rock,

swimming in light.

Bird-cries clinging to ancient ledges,

Kittiwakes smashing against time.

What tales you could tell.

Your face is so moody,

flickers with breezes,

crumbles in a hot afternoon.

Climbing your powdery steps,

we look down on the sea

thrashing at you.

We join a choir of birds at your peak,

cry out to the skyin good spirits.

Nesting for the sake of it,

our lyrics are remnants on the shore.

We keep chipping away,

do we not?

We slip

through the pebbles,

splashing

with babies.

We leave our mark,

a grain

on the ancient landscape.

We go.

We dance like the sunlight

on your scarred body:

tripping,

falling,

singing

away.

Keith Armstrong

55 Degrees North

55 Degrees North is the latitude of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is also the name of an apartment block

(and its associated bar) in the centre of Newcastle

They’re going to illuminate Scotswood,

make floral entrepreneurs in Elswick.

Someone’s set fire to our Arts reporter,

it’s another Cultural Initiative.

Sting’s buying the Civic Centre,

they’re filling the Baltic with tanks.

The Sage is changing its name to onion,

Shane’s pissed on the classical conductor.

They’re floating quangos down the Tyne,

the bonfire will be at Shields.

They’re bringing tourists to witness miracles,

the Chief Executive will strip for money.

They’re blowing up the Castle Keep

to build an installation.

They’re giving the locals more public art,

it’s something to rhyme with.

They’re taking live theatre to the cemetary,

the vicar will write an Arts Council poem.

Steve Cram’s taken up painting

to stop his nose from running.

The river will be made into an ice rink,

we can play with our boats in the bath.

Let New Labour bomb Iraq,

they’re making a museum of politics.

Stuffing glass cases with old principles,

the head hunters are out and about.

It’s cultivated jobs for the boys and the girls,

they’re putting the Arts into centres.

Drain the music from our souls,

we have to be grateful to be patronised.

Their self-righteousness grins from on high,

let the bombs fly and rockets rip.

We can enjoy some more tamed Art,

say cheerio to your history.

They’ve wrapped it up in moth balls,

thank God for the boys from the south.

They’ve saved us from self-government,

we’ve missed out on the Love Parade.

This City of Culture got lost in the end,

the Angel glowers over us though.

Thanks again City Fathers,

it looks uglier every day.

You’ve reinvented our culture for us,

you’ve rendered it meaningless.

Guts ripped out,

we touch our forelock to your glorious Lords.

From the orifice of the Deputy Prime Minister

leaks the corrupt emptiness of your manifestos.

The aching past of the working man

has become the death of England.

Let us hail you from NewcastleGateshead,

a city you made up for yourselves.

Let us watch your empty schemes plummet,

let us learn to dance in community again.

We are Geordies naked with a beautiful anger to burn.

Tell Me Lies about Northumberland

In honour of Adrian Mitchell

Say this land is ours,

these pipe-tunes do not cry.

The birds all sing in dialect,

old miners breathe like dukes.