IN THE SPANKING ROGER, MILES PLATTING, MANCHESTER

 






This must be

the lowest hour

of the low.

I am

wet through in the dog-end gutter

of a whiplashed Manchester,

where the rain

bolts down

and the darkness

simply soaks you

to the guts of your soul.

I am

a lost boy,

drenched

from the black Pennines;

a stranger drinking

a glass of gloom

with Thatcher’s underclass.

Here, in the Spanking Roger,

Miles Platting,

they are all

making a racket,

working the rotting

system.

You can get

touched up

for a tanner

or spanked,

wanked

and rogered

for a bob.

It’s all in a sodden carrier bag,

a greasy spoon;

all in 

a backstreet cruise,

a sopping blow job,

a blob

for a raindrop:

this Manchester-wet

dream.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

In the 18th centrury, Kersal Moor was  used for nude male races, allowing females to study the form before choosing their mates. Roger Aytoun, known as "Spanking Roger" who was later a hero of the Siege of Gibraltar, acquired Hough Hall in Moston, through marriage after such a race. On 2 Feb 1769 he married wealthy Manchester widow Barbara Mynshull, 65, whose fortune he then squandered.

The pub named after him has been demolished since my visit there. 

EVERYBODY'S GOT LOVE BITES BUT ME

EVERYBODY’S GOT LOVE BITES BUT ME

In this two-bit town
It’s once bitten twice shy
Chewing streets up and down
My tongue’s asking “Why?”

My teeth are on edge
No work and no necking
Just sucking this ledge
No future worth wrecking

Nothing to say
No reason to pray
Wish something lovely would hit me
Everybody’s got love bites but me

In the back of my mouth
There’s a taste of success
And word has it down south
You can talk oral sex

But in this dingy town
My lips are all cracked
Speechless at home
All sleepless and sacked

Nothing to say
No reason to pray
Wish something lovely would hit me
Everybody’s got love bites but me



KEITH ARMSTRONG

EPITAPH TO A WORKING CLASS COUPLE

They spent their lives
trying to make ends meet
but met their ends
before such ends could meet.






KEITH ARMSTRONG

https://whiskypriests.bandcamp.com/track/epitaph-to-a-working-class-couple-bleeding-sketches-outtake

GOOD MORNING LINCOLN!

Now the dust has settled on our fabulous Friday night - you should get a copy of Wallington Morning. It’s a superb collection of poems from a superb poet. Available on Amazon. Treat yourself!

(Richard Daniels, Lincoln poetry organiser) 

(photo: Peter Dixon)








THE LINCOLN IMP

I fear the devilry in my poetry,
that impish urge
to home in on your fat cathedral
across all those bleak and wasted fields.
Tonight, I want
to ransack your city’s brains,
throw out pathetic gargoyles
from The Jolly Brewer,
beat up the landlord
of the Dog & Bone
with a good dose
of love poems.
I must admit
I am prone to heckle.
Bouts of doubt
infect my lines
and I am frequently inclined
to disrupt
your tedious tales;
for, unlike your buxom church,
they do not ring
with any bleeding sense of history,
just the shallow trivia
of an alien High Street,
the cloistered emptiness
of a bad poet’s soul.
Out here,
in the light of your cock spire,
I leap to twin with the Lincoln Imp
so that no choirboy
need be safe
from our wicked songs
and dodgy rhymes.
Twilight it is, and we zoom
from church to prison,
spreading our evil,
high as lords.
We set up our cheek
at terrible literary gatherings,
bloodstain the floors
of icy classrooms.
This is what imps do -
close down arts centres,
ignite recitals,
slink around alleyways
for bad girls to spank,
hurl abuse at the vicar’s cloth ears.
We imps do believe that
in Lincoln,
or any other northern dreamworld,
you might as well be totally unfeeling
as stay stone sober
in all the daytime’s lovelight.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

FALLING IN LOVE IN THE CAFE PICCOLO

I am crouched over my sparkling glass
waiting for the sunshine to come through
to join me on a winter’s day in Tuebingen,
for a leaf to fly through the door
and show me its intricate patterns
in my penetrating stare,
to skip and dance
and float away

like me
in a trance
in a delicate romance,
a rush of poems,
a sudden surge of booklets
in my travelling bag,
a dream packed into a KLM briefcase;
the tightness of a blue skirt,
the glance of a flashing winged eye
heading towards me,
threatening to make love to me,
to blow away this dark news
pushing its way into my anxious face
from a complete stranger’s daily paper.

And Juergen is rocking tonight in a corner,
sharing his energy with the moon
and I have the smell of a coffee on my sleeve,
the evil taste of last night’s schnapps
on this stooped boy’s lips,
the hysterical melancholy that only Tuebingen brings me;
along the cobbled path outside the Piccolo window
prances chance
and that girl I’ll never ever know
teasing the slipping tears into my scribbles,
her picture forever in my twitching English heart

saying:

‘Ciao!
I’m never really going to leave this town.’

A delicate grip
on reality.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

Tuebingen,
November 2017.

LITERARY LUNACY IN LINCOLN!

WOODEN DOLLIES OF NORTH SHIELDS - HERITAGE OPEN DAYS BOOK LAUNCH