PUTTING KATWIJK ON MAPS

There is always a night in Katwijk,

Forever a moon in the daylight.

And its rain belts down just the same,

Pouring our loves down the drain.

And the darkness can last forever

Like the mist in a cold September.

The sea sails along in the winds

That batter our Katwijk blinds.

And yet this Katwijk will stay

Forever and a livelong day,

Reminding us of gulls on the swell

And larks in the sound of church bells.

We danced in the Katwijk streets,

Her eyes alight in dark sheets.

I thought she would never die

In the rolling of her thighs.

These little avenues reel

To the clatter of her high heels.

And it will always be the rain

That soaks me through to the brain.

So let us put Katwijk on maps

To honour the love that it mocks.

There’s a joy to be felt in its trees

Alongside the pains in its seas.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

AIR CRASH

All the lives

that have flown away;

those precious eyes,

those bodies that pushed themselves into love,

the blood stained clothes

they sweated blood for,

and this crippled wreck

of strangled metal

and twisted guts;

a strange and desperate evolution

mocked constantly by drifting birds.

Who could have expected this?

On a day of sun and plastic food,

these fine hands,

minutes before burning,

had picked their way

with knives and forks

through clouds;

now, who points the finger?

What airline lifeline?

What God?

All this insistent movement,

this wish to fly,

the fear of standing

still,

and theses wingless people

scorched to death

in search of 

the sun.

Keith Armstrong

Кит Армстронг

УПАВШИМ В НЕБО

Всем душам,

упавшим в небо.

Бесценным взорам глаз.

Телам, в любви запечатленным.

Окровавленным одеждам

в последнем паническом поту.

Летучему киту из алюминия,

со сломанным хребтом и вывернутым наизнанку чревом.

Каравану птиц-пересмешников

над странным, страшным полем последнего упокоения.

Спросить ли: кто мог ТАКОЕ предсказать?..

За иллюминатором сияло солнце.

Живые руки брали пищу с пластмассовых подномов.

Минута и пальцы сгорят вместе с пластиковыми ножами, вилками...

А пока они парят над тучами, не ведая про указующий им Перст?

Их пункт прибытья --- Небеса?

Бог --- диспетчер?..

Perpetuum mobile.

Стремление к полету.

Страх неподвижности.

Бескрылость. Плоть, скворчащая в огне.

Чем выше --- ближе

к Солнцу.

Translation: Yuri Stoma

LINES (FOR THE UNKNOWN DESERTERS)

Lines 

crawl

across the stepping stones

that make up the bustle of these streets.

They mark out the flow of history’s streams

in this city’s ancient landscape,

signify the tragic tunnels of a careworn people’s hurts.

Under today’s footsteps,

the old folk crawled

at the mercy of the bombed weather,

the walls shaking with the tremor

of momentous events,

racist madness,

words, shaking from dictators’ mouths,

cutting into the bones

of wretched beings.

Looking up Muenzgasse,

we crouch to hide the hurt.

It Is too much to bear 

this memory

of Gestapo cruelties, 

the rank inhumanity

that is so unkind

to strangers: 

the Jew, the Sinti,

the Roma,

the different,

the cripple,

the Communist and Gay.

How callous

to ignore the poor man

next to you in the Boulanger,

the pain all around you

in the church’s bullet-holed walls.

Sit in the gorgeous sun

and feel the Synagogue burn

on Kristallnacht,

let the red wine

soak the stress away

but look down

on these crazy paths

and feel

the rumble of yesterdays’ aching

under the soles 

of your searching feet.

True glory lies, my Eberhard,

in making peace,

not in the flash of bayonets,

the fighting cocks,

the rape of beauty.

It is our duty to dance,

to flit between the lines.

The rays of golden lights,

like butterflies,

flicker as caught moments 

in the shadow of this cafe, 

thrilling

with a positive life,

new under the sun.

KEITH ARMSTRONG,

Tuebingen.

*In the Holzmarkt in Tuebingen, near the entrance to the church, is a recent memorial probably not intended to be permanent. Yellow lines show the outlines of the underground tunnels built as air-raid shelters during the last two years of the war. 

Today, the tunnels are closed off and filled-in but the ghostly outlines are an effective memorial device.

There is no explanation for the yellow lines so passers-by often have no idea that they are walking over a reminder of the war. 

On Muenzgasse, is another entrance into the shelter. This was the police building until well into the post-war period. During the Nazi period, it was also the Gestapo office in Tuebingen. From here, the Tuebingen Jews were gathered for deportation.

*A monument is located away from the city centre, just south of the railroad tracks near the Finanzamt. 

The monument commemorates the 10th Wuerttemberg Infantry Regiment in the First World War. 

It shows the coat of arms for Wuerttemberg and reads: ‘Fearless and loyal. 141 officers and over 3000 other ranks fell for the Fatherland.’

In the autumn of 2007, the memorial was vandalized with images of ejaculating penises. 

*A square in Tuebingen was recently named ‘Platz des unbekannten Deserteurs’ - ‘Unknown Deserters’ Square’. 

The street sign reads: ‘In the years 1944 and 1945, when the criminal war of the National Socialists was nearing its end, many soldiers of the German armed forces deserted. They were mercilessly persecuted as ‘deserters’ and sentenced to death. More than 20,000 sentences were carried out. There were soldiers in the Tuebingen barracks who also no longer wanted to make pointless sacrifices for the National Socialist regime. It is not known how many there were, nor do we know their names. Witnesses report several cases. The deserters were shot in a clearing not far from here. In memory of this, the Tuebingen City Council resolved to name this square in July of 2008.’

THE STORY OF STEAM: FOR GEORGE STEPHENSON 1781-1848

‘How wonderfully has his invention facilitated the meeting of thousands of fond and happy lovers.’ (Thomas Summerside)

The story of steam,

history’s hiss 

through the passing

of engines and 

clapped-out hours.

The pereptual urge

to move

into the peace

of sleeping valleys;

iron dreams

and the nagging drive

of cruel ambition 

on the banks of the sliding Tyne.

You knew all this George,

how violent life is,

as, thoughtless in your youth, 

you stole a blackbird’s eggs,

developing an understanding

of mankind’s urge

to rip forests apart,

to make ways

through gardens and castles, 

for commerce

and selfishness to have their way.

That and the wonderful offshoots

like lovers

getting together

and children laughing

in cultural deserts.

Your broad Northumbrian tongue

echoed along rails,

barked orders

to force idle workers

to spark the engines

that scared the crows

and brought terror to horses and cattle

with the fiery blast of mechanical power.

Your ambition surged roughshod

over delicate flowers,

more interested in the mechanics of time 

and fixing watches

than the whispers that the clocks of dandelions

heard in the breeze.

Mister Practicality, 

though you knew that the human lot

ended up in vapour,

you still told the pitmen’s sons that the earth

was round,

taught algebra to the lads

in a curiosity shop

of working models,

self-acting planes

and perpetual motion machines.

In your litttle garden,

you grew gigantic leeks, astounding cabbages,

scarecrow arms to fly in the wind

and a sundial to record the ticks of days.

Hammering the flaming hours

into the rickety shape of Blucher,

you moved people along the way,

crafted the valves, the rods and cylinders

of life

into a breathing thing

that lolloped along,

careering like you

into a famous night.

It did not come without a price;

My Lord, they can’t imagine

how much you scraped along in the dirt,

the bursting blisters on your feet,

your hurting fingers as you began to write.

Wriggling out of the Militia,

you earned everything you got,

forced 

to suffer the deaths of wives and daughter

and the blinding of a father.

Weeping bitterly on the West Moor to Killingworth road,

thinking of leaving for America,

you got to your own station in the end.

Geordie,

with Ferguson’s ‘Astronomy’ in your hardy hands,

you gave us many a glorious smoke-filled day,

brought young lovers together on platforms

awash with the smell of smoke

and the sparks of hearts 

spreading lightning across the land. 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

36 GOALS

(in memory of Hughie Gallacher, Newcastle United’s record goalscorer in 1926-7, who committed suicide in 1957)

Thirty six goals,

more than one way to skin a halfback.

Thirty six snapshots

of a legend

framed in Tyneside pubs.

That’s how we remember you Hughie,

for the good things in life.

Thirty six steps to fame

and a sprinking of treasured ashes

in a football boot.

You put us on the map for a season.

A thirty six gun salute

is the least we can do

for a man

with poetry in his feet,

a bottle of Brown in his pocket,

and a championship medal

round his neck.

You kicked us 

into ecstasy,

into the Blue Star yonder.

You were a magic dribbler

and stocky with it.

So, keep your feet still Hughie hinny.

They’ll never drive

those bonny dreams away.

KEITH ARMSTRONG 

TUEBINGEN BOOK FESTIVAL 2015

Poetic Encounters / Lyrische Begegnungen

Die Partnerschaft zwischen den Städten Tübingen und Durham wurde 1969 geschlossen und wird seitdem durch regelmäßigen kulturellen Austausch intensiv gepflegt. Um diese Partnerschaft gebührend zu zelebrieren, wird Keith Armstrong mit Tübinger Autoren und Musikern eine vielfältige Lesung veranstalten.

Lyrik- und Musikperformance

Autoren & Musiker: Keith Armstrong, Jürgen Sturm & Mary Jane, Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Tibor Schneider, Yannick Lengkeek, Sara Hauser und Anna Fedorova.

So, 17. Mai
15 Uhr

Club Voltaire

5 Euro
frei

JAZZ POETRY - A NEW PROJECT: POETRY BY KEITH ARMSTRONG & IMAGES BY PETER DIXON

'Some great stuff here! I always love the headlong gay abandon and celebration of life in your poetry Keith.' (Harry Gallagher).

LOVER MAN

A blurred blue evening sky,

an exhausted sun

propped up by the rooftops.

A vision

of the wracked shrieking body

of Charlie Parker

running a losing race

with his music,

the man reenacting

his bitter tortured love.

A memory,

a sense of the World,

and a nagging restlessness:

that mixture

of sorrow

and the joy

of loving,

turning

in the cold dark air,

the sound of life’s full circle.

‘Lover Man’,

a whirlwind spins,

sings in my ears,

swirls out

to the street

where the children play

and a blind man taps

in a cul de sac.

The swirling soaring passions

of Parker

are ready 

to boil

again and again,

burning away

the revolving strictures

of dull monotony.

To snatch inspiration

from the lap of conformity,

Charlie has rotted

but his spirit leaps

and speaks from grooves,

renders me

airborne again.

I cry 

and float 

on the sweetness.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

THE SUN ON DANBY GARDENS

The sun on Danby Gardens

smells of roast beef,

tastes of my youth.

The flying cinders of a steam train

spark in my dreams.

Across the old field,

a miner breaks his back

and lovers roll in the ditches,

off beaten tracks.

Off Bigges Main,

my grandad taps his stick,

reaches for the braille of long-dead strikes.

The nights

fair draw in

and I recall Joyce Esthella Antoinette Giles

and her legs that reached for miles,

tripping over the stiles 

in red high heels.

It was her and blonde Annie Walker

who took me in the stacks

and taught me how to read

the signs

that led inside their thighs.

Those Ravenswood girls

would dance into your life

and dance though all the snow drops

of those freezing winters,

in the playground of young scars.

And I remember freckled Pete

who taught me Jazz,

who pointed me to Charlie Parker

and the edgy bitterness of Brown Ale.

Mrs Todd next door

was forever sweeping

leaves along the garden path

her fallen husband loved to tread.

Such days:

the smoke of A4 Pacifics in the aftermath of war,

the trail of local history on the birthmarked street.

And I have loved you all my life

and will no doubt die in Danby Gardens

where all my poems were born,

just after midnight.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

FOR DAVID STEPHENSON

David Stephenson was a deep friend,

I met him through books.

He came from Carlisle

with that intense and craggy look.

We studied life together,

smoked Full Strength

and sipped Real Ale.

He liked his women big.

I learnt from him

to visit pubs at lunchtimes

to end up pissed in lectures

but, most of all,

to read the letters of Van Gogh,

the diaries of Franz Kafka,

to go inside 

the jazz 

of Ornette Coleman

and Cecil Taylor.

David told me that 

‘Most people are thick’

and, as a socialist of a kind,

I sometimes think he had a point.

I wonder where he is today.

Back across country I surmise,

smoking and looking at the sunrise,

with a fat woman kissing his neck,

listening to Mingus 

and the sky.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

POEM FOR A BLUES HARMONICA

(for Ad van Emmerik)

A poem is an organ of the mouth,

a verse I suck and blow.

It sings from my heart on the wind,

it breathes with my life.

I place my poetry between my lips,

like licking my girl friend’s breasts.

I smoke it like a cigar

and squeeze the good juice from it.

My poetry is a fire,

it screams blues murders.

I craft it with my gentle fingers

and shout it around the world.

This poem is a drink wet with rhyme,

a harp in a rowdy beer museum.

I am a drunk whose rhymes stagger,

my words are music in your ear.

Keith Armstrong

MELLY

Something sad about clowns;

something thin between laughter and tears.

Pity the dignity, the love and the hate,

the twitching wire between body and soul 

and you on that stage,

drunk on rum and borrowed blues again;

unique in the balance you keep to yourself -

never quite losing it,

never quite making it;

bawling out between Magritte and Morton,

playing the droopy-drawered clown

with yourself,

you

do the Melly Belly,

the Ovaltine,

big brash belly laugh blues.

                                                                                                    

Keith Armstrong

THOSE PORTHOLE BLUES AGAIN

It’s Tuesday again

and the sun in the Stella is shining.

Yellow dust fills 

the dappled Porthole

with a Golden Fleece

and the jazz, hot jazz, 

belts out

raging

from this pulsating lounge.

The saints and ghosts of ancient seamen

go marching in.

Let the liquid trumpet

pour out,

my legs slide to the floor

with the trombone lilt.

Cry me this river,

lurch for the ferry.

I will ping the dart

of a blue note

through your soul.

I am only a poet,

a saxophone with words,

an improvising shantyman

thanking the landlord

for still serving me:

despite all

this poetry slurping,

this lovely drivel

dribbling

from my wicked Geordie tongue.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

CHET - FROM A WINDOW

(in memory of Chet Baker 1929 -1988)

The constant onslaught of Amsterdam

surged through Zeedijk 

on that hot night

when a full moon

dragged you

flying to your death.

In your room, 

in the Prins Hendrik Hotel,

your clothes lay 

neatly folded

in your suitcase,

with your body

a foetus on the street below.

Great white hope

fallen

offstage,

a love for heroin never shaken.

Sorrow was your stuff,

a plaintive,

lyrical anguish,

an excess of gloom

and charm.

This undernourished and parched body,

a singing corpse,

searching for an uncollapsed vein,

an expert driver hating the road

and the bleak hotel of his doom.

Such a foolish love.

Oklahoma farmboy on a golden trumpet,

his teeth knocked out in San Francisco,

become chained to an album a day

for a thousand dollars in cash. 

And the Italian you learned in a Lucca jail,

your spirit surviving its deportation, 

a lonely and melancholy master drifter

whose pianissimo

touched the soul.

Friday 13th May 1988,

Chet’s heart stopped 

and his horn

lost its tongue.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

LADY DAY

(dedicated to Billie Holiday)

‘For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.’ (Christopher Smart)

Our Lady,

Art in Heaven,

feasts on

a bed of petals,

croons over

the Angel Gabriel’s

String Orchestra,

floats on beauty’s scales.

Swollen with scent,

her skin is so pure,

alabaster smooth.

Such long stamens,

such eye lashes:

such cascading, flowering hair:

this Lily,

perennial

of the flowing Valley,

voices fragrance,

voices

the driven snow.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

from ‘The Darkness Seeping’ : The Chantry Chapel of Prior Rowland Leschman in Hexham Abbey. Poems by Keith Armstrong with drawings by Kathleen Sisterson.

 Sara Vaughan

NIna Simone