WILLIAM BLAKE IN THE BRIDGE HOTEL - 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 (The Jingling Geordie)

Below Keith Armstrong
 selection of Keith's poems, as performed by himself with music.

Many more of Keith Armstrong's poems and publications can be found here on his poetry blog http://keithyboyarmstrong.blogspot.co.uk/

The poetry of Keith Armstrong (‘The Jingling Geordie’) is, in my opinion, as iconic as Lindisfarne's ‘Fog on the Tyne’. Read a review here by me - http://writerscafe.typepad.com/blog/2008/09/the-jingling-geordie.html


THE JINGLING GEORDIE

Watch me go leaping in my youth
down Dog Leap Stairs,
down fire-scapes.
The Jingling Geordie
born in a brewery,
drinking the money
I dug out the ground.

Cloth-cap in hand I go
marching in the jangling morning
to London gates.
Jingling Geordie
living in a hop-haze,
cadging from the Coppers
I went to school with.
Older I get in my cage,
singling out a girl half my years
to hitch with.
Oh yes! I am the Jingling Geordie,
the one who pisses on himself,
wrenching out the telephone
his father placed off the hook.

Listen to my canny old folk songs;
they lilt and tilt into the dank alley,
into the howls of strays,
Ooops! The Jingling Geordie
goes out on his twon,
rocking and rolling the night away,
stacking it with the weary rest.

See my ghost in a discotheque,
in the dusty lights,
in the baccy rows
Jingling Geordie,
dancing gambler,
beting he'll slip
back to the year when the lads won the Cup.

Well I walk my kids to the Better Life,
reckoning up the rude words dripping
like gravy off me Gradma's chin,
Whee! goes the Jingling Geordie;
figment of the gutter brain,
fool of the stumbling system,
emptying my veins into a rich men's-palace.

.............

THE STREETS OF TYNE

I kicked out in Half Moon Yard,
bucked a rotten system.
Fell out with fools in All Hallows Lane
and grew up feeling loved.

She dragged my hand down Rabbit Banks Road,
there seemed nowhere else to take it.
We mucked about in Plummer Chare,
soaked up the painful rain.

I wanted to control my life,
shout songs on Amen Corner.
I'd carry bags of modern ballads,
hawk pamphlets on Dog Bank.

Wild girls who blazed through Pipewell Gate
taught my veins to thrill.
I caught her heart on Pandon Bank,
my eyes filled up with fear.

Wanted to carve out a poem,
inspire the Garth Heads dreamers.
A lad grew up to dance along
the length of Pilgrim Street.

I take my wild hopes now to chance
the slope of Dog Leap Stairs.
Follow the pulse of my Tyneside days,
burn passion down The Side.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

LIKE THE SPANISH CITY
The days have gone;
the laughter and shrieks
blown away.
We have all grown up,
left old Catalonian dreams
and the blazing seaside bullfights.
We are dazed,
phased out.
Spaces where we courted
bulldozed
to make way
for the tack of tomorrow;
the hope in the sea breeze;
the distant echo of castanets
and voices scraping
in a dusty rotunda.
I remember where I kissed you,
where I lost you.
It was in Spain, wasn’t it?
Or was it down the Esplanade
on a wet Sunday in July?
Either way,
we are still
twinned with sunny Whitley Bay,
and flaming Barcelona too;
and our lives
will dance in fading photographs
from the pleasure dome,
whenever we leave home.

KEITH ARMSTRONG