hades in hafengasse

armstrong & the mayor greet limerick bards

happy birthday from bakunin

for mick

ON THE SCROUNGE IN THE EURO LOUNGE
(for Mick Standen)

Here in this dreadful Belgian Pub,
we’re drinking
piss-poor booze.
And the Belgian bar-maid’s Belgian Breasts
reach out
for the Dutch Frontier.

Brussels Airport
plastic sprouts
games amongst it all.
Gates and terminals,
dates and walls,
the Business God grins on.

Abroad, in all this shameless wealth,
there’s a deeply shallow stench.
And we poets
drift
in one Stella stream
of rootless alienation.

Yes, it’s us again
declaiming verse
to all the whoring Nations.
Declaring love poems to the skies,
our words are caught
in flight.

Because we’re on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge.
We’re just gagging for a quid.
We’re upside down in a screwed-up world,
hanging
on these very words.

Yes, we’re on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge.
We’re searching for the Lost and Found.
Two old romantics
in a place called ‘Frantic’,
last terminal of dead dreams.

On the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge,
among the jewels and fancy gowns.
We’re dancing over the business types,
we’re tripping
over Stars and Stripes.

Yes, we’re poets on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge,
with only our poems to lose.
Just cadging grants to fund our rants
and red wine to ease
the pain.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

still round our banners we'll stand

Still round our banners we’ll stand In love and truth combine

And children yet unborn shall sing the lads of Wear and Tyne.

Brave Hepburn and our delegates like rays of virtue shine

Their fame shall long be echoed round the banks of Wear and Tyne.

On Bolden Fell our flags shall wave our victories’ wreaths entwine

That peace shall be the motto still with lads of Wear and Tyne.

We envy not the rich and great whose dazzling greatness shine

While we the hardy sons of toil can labour in the mine.

O happy wives and children now all former cares resign

And sing with joyful mirth and glee the lads of Wear and Tyne.


(ANON)

Tübinger Stocherkahnrennen 2008, Samstag 14.6.2008

swinburne

Lines from ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE


It swells and welters and swings,
The pulse of the tide of the sea.


Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,
Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!


The sea gives her shells to the shingle,
The earth gives her streams to the sea.


The wave’s wing spreads and flutters,
The wave’s heart swells and breaks.


I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,
Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.


A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,
A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.


I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.


Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past.


Blow thy horn here for us,
Blow the sky clear for us,
Send us the song of the sea to hear.


Sea-tide and river,
And waves that shiver.


Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.


The twilight hangs half starless: half the sea
Still quivers.


At the sea’s heart all her wrecks lie waste,
Lie deeper than the sea.

sandy bell's in edinburgh

birthday bash

KEITH ARMSTRONG'S BIRTHDAY BASH

Bridge Hotel, Newcastle

19:00 Wed 25 Jun 2008
Keith Armstrong’s birthday bash, with poets from Limerick and the North East (including Katrina Porteous, Trevor Teasdel and Paul Summers) launching a Tyneside/Limerick anthology. Plus: from Cumbria Geraldine Green, from Cork Paul Casey. Plus music from Dave Douglass, Marie Little, Tony Whittle and Ann Sessoms (Northumbrian Pipes).

Admission free
The Bridge Hotel
Castle Square
Newcastle upon Tyne