HIERONYMUS BOSCH 1450-1516

In 2016, 500 years after Hieronymus Bosch died, Den Bosch celebrates this medieval painter and his fantastical imagination. Exhibitions and activities will be organised throughout the year. One of them is Bosch by night, an open-air spectacle on the famous Markt square in Den Bosch.












 


THE HEARING FOREST

(to Hieronymus Bosch)

‘Oh this world is a waggon of hay

and everyone grabs what they can.

Be you Philip the Handsome or the rag and bone man,

you’ll sink like a toad in a vat of dismay.’

Jereon or Jheronimus,

Jerome or Hieronymus,

El Bosco or Bosch,

the crackle of your piercing laugh

crawls across this busybody city of your’s;

subverts the barrel organ’s clanking tunes

and the melancholic cackle of a demon priest.

This dark Carnival of frogs and trombones,

leaps from the graves of beggars and cripples;

this dualist fantasy,

this Oeteldonk nightmare,

where even the sewer rats dance

and the River Dieze drinks to high heaven.

I once saw a man who looked like you,

staring at me like a hag of a gargoyle

at the bar of the Bonte Palet.

He was a dribbling grotesque,

the kind you find among the monsters and workmen astride St. Jan’s.

A member, no doubt, of Our Lady’s Brotherhood,

he lived in a dream world,

a glutton for punishment,

ogling a lusty Brabant girl

with his popping, panting, eyes.

He was throwing genevers down his throbbing canal,

drinking at the confluence of Dommel and Aa;

he had brown paint on his hands so I knew it was you,

Master of Alla Prima.

The next time I dreamt I saw you smile,

I was floating in Venice in a boat of lost souls.

And your face shone from a passing cloud

as I lay back and drank in the scum and the sky.

Pray tell me, El Bosco,

what are these chambers of rhetoric for?

Why do the organ builders and bell founders scrape?

You with the heavens in your eyes,

was there a God between Aleyt Goyaertsvan den Meervenne’s thighs?

All this sin,

eternal damnation of lost souls;

in McDonald’s, I see scenes of horrendous torture,

galleries of carnal mutilations,

and, in the Market Square, there are stalls from Hell,

there are poets,

drunk in the sinister depths of imagination,

who should be eaten alive

by bureaucrats.

Oh paradox-riddled Jerome,

‘Master of the monstrous,

discoverer of the unconscious’,

I am sick with life,

scraping my shoes full of lice

along the dark slabs of Stoofstraat.

On my last night in ‘t-Hertogenbosch,

on my last fucking cockroach legs,

I slid my painter’s hand up a posh lady’s dress;

with musical demons

gabbling around us,

I plucked her devil’s fruit

like the strings of an evil lute.

And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed

to rid myself of the adders and dragons

that scorched like Hades

in my screaming heart.

‘Oh this world is a waggon of hay

and everyone grabs what they can.

Be you Philip the Handsome or the rag and bone man,

you’ll sink like a toad in a vat of dismay.’

Oh Jheronimus, Jheronimus please,

please take me to the Seeing Field.

I want my bones and my flesh to burn

to set this starving Spirit free

in the Hearing Forest.

Keith Armstrong

THE STATUE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

Look down Hieronymus:

the blonde kids dancing at your feet;

barrel organs churning songs out

against your deaf and cheesed-off ears.

Blink blind, stone eyes,

cobble cheeks,

dig the electric pleasure garden,

frame the nuclear canal

and sigh you weary statue you.

Chipped cloak,

cold painter’s

nose drips with rain.

Drunk, we piss on the past,

slash and splash against the dark canvas.

Bosch, we still play the games.

I catch an angel barmaid’s eye

and swallow the blueness of it

in my aching head.

Beauty lodges overnight in the skull.

Unlucky Hieronymus:

missiles haloing your frown of a brow;

clouds crashing over the market square.

They’re building the greatest nightmare ever around you,

but your hands have grown too stiff to paint.

Keith Armstrong

Den Bosch, The Netherlands

IN THE FIRE STATION, WHITLEY BAY

photo by dr keith armstrong







The screen
in the corner
flashes celebrity images
above the hunched heads
of craggy regulars.
Subtitles punctuate
the horror of Syria,
shallowness of Beckham’s mouth
gabbing
like a demented fish
over supping plebs.
Their talk is of aches and pains
and scraping through,
their question time has no answers,
only weary
resignations.
The TV mocks
the ordinary
struggles
to bring up soft babies
with tough futures.
The thing
is forced upon us,
dumped upon us,
scoffing
at the weak
on cheap beer.
It says:
DAVID CAMERON IS IN BRUSSELS.
Well, we are drinking in Whitley Bay
and HE,
he can piss off.
In the Fire Station,
we have thirsts to slake,
bets to be placed
on whether we’ll make it
through to another tomorrow
just the same
and just as unjust.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

IN THE GALWAY HOOKER BAR

IN THE GALWAY HOOKER BAR

(Heuston Rail Station, Dublin)



I’m back in the Galway Hooker,
heading out to the west
and, as usual, it’s teeming
with the scheming
pond life of Dublin:
the newts
and wits
who twinkle
in this bowl
of moving humanity,
at swim
in sunlight,
slumped
in a beaten economics
and those boom days
that are past.

And Jimmy Joyce and his literary travellers
leer at us from a corner
of streaming consciousness
and bad girls’ skirts
drift upwards
in an afternoon
with miles ahead
and the promise
of a kiss
of Irish Coffee.

I’m crawling
today along
this beaten track to Limerick,
the chance occurrence
of a poetry event,
the opportunity for fickle friends
to catch my dreams
in inquisitive ears
and despatch
my skimming words
to the gutters of shot memories.

‘By God she’s a looker,
that one on the stool,
making an awful fool
of  a lad in the Hooker.’

‘Her legs go the whole way,
her terrible sin,
she sings
from here to Galway.’

 
And then The Boys from Tipperary
they’re here
in a clump of blazers and ties
and every one has a lass
on his hurling arm
and a pint of Guinness in his face.
We envy them
their youth and not their sense,
we wise old men of Heuston
who’ve seen the heroes come and go,
heard the guns ring out
across the Station
and learnt
to savour
the slaughter
in our glasses.

But now friends
we must be
heading off
to the dawn
and hope
that these trains
we leave behind
can find their way
to that which our history
sheds.

So remember
Sean Heuston,
the railway clerk,
a crucifix he kissed
and the freedom he died for,
every drink
that you down
in the Hooker.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

IN A PALACE BAR AFTERNOON

‘When I first came to Dublin in 1939, I thought the Palace the most wonderful temple of art.’ (Patrick Kavanagh)

Dead conversations

and dud cheques

litter the gaps

between the gawping portraits

in this literary back room.

Here in the afternoon of Irish culture,

I hear the creak of Kavanagh’s knees

going down the steep bog stairs

pissing words away,

holding another conversation

in his clumsy hands.

So what’s a poetry boy to do?

Sozzle through another day,

dance betwen the lines of pints of plain,

wallow in the crevices of Beckett’s genius,

creep around the Palace floor,

scraping for scraps of dead oral histories?

For today, 

I’ll put away my pen

worn out with trying 

to trap the City of Limerick

in groping poems.

I’ll sit back

and crack with Duffy,

Lonsdale and the lads,

let Bertie Smyllie’s barking patter 

wash over my weariness.

Leave it to the shawlies 

in the huddled snug

to set things right,

I’m flying without a passport today,

buzzing along with Jimmy Joyce on board

this Ryanair Ulysses jet,

At Swim Two Birds.

And what’s the point

of lies in ink

when real poetry

should make a woman come

with the touch

of bird song on the lips of this hour?

Give your tongues a break,

Behan and Houlihan

and the rest, 

we’re dust

on a skin of Guinness.

And yet 

and yet,

the twinkle of light

through the old smoke of patter

does make the breath

in the lungs 

of a Dublin dancing day

as worthwhile

as the sweeping kiss

of that gull’s wings 

stroking the mouth of the Liffey.  

KEITH ARMSTRONG

GRAPES IN BULGARIA

Grapes bulge in the seering sun,
fresh and healthy as a young girl,
rich with optimism
in a back street vineyard.
Taste sweet as your lips, dear.
Trickle down my throat.
Wine today in my poems.
Hang your head for life’s sake:
the portrait, decked with black ribbons,
nailed to the door,
stares at us as we drink
blood from the glass.
Along the rails,
hurtling headlong, we
spit out the pips
from the fruit an old lady gives us;
fruit of her heart,
her old heart,
decked with black ribbons.
Black wine in the night.
Stars bunch
over Bulgaria.
The rain refreshes our skin.
Peeling off our clothes,
we enter new towns,
strange rooms,
beds drenched
in yesterday’s kisses.
Picture on the hotel wall
is of a grape mountain.
Climb the stairs,
until your thirst is
quenched.
Sew seeds on the map.
Bulgaria, we’ll squeeze you
out of love,
to live.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

FOLLOW THE SUN LAUNCH DATE

HERITAGE OPEN DAYS 2016.
 
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 9TH 10.30AM DIAL COTTAGE, KILLINGWORTH.

FOLLOW THE SUN.

THE LAUNCH OF A  NEW NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS BOOKLET, SUPPORTED BY NORTH TYNESIDE COUNCIL, TO COMMEMORATE THE BICENTENARY OF GEORGE & ROBERT STEPHENSON'S SUNDIAL AT DIAL COTTAGE.

POETRY READINGS FROM EDITOR DR KEITH ARMSTRONG AND OTHER CONTRIBUTORS, SPECIALLY COMMISSIONED SONGS BY THE SAWDUST JACKS FOLK GROUP, TONY MORRIS AND OTHERS; ALSO FEATURING ANN SESSOMS ON NORTHUMBRIAN PIPES WITH A SELECTION OF APPROPRIATE TUNES.

CITY OF PEANUTS: JIMMY CARTER IN NEWCASTLE (MAY 6th 1977)

Abattoir City,
streets of cattle.
Cut veins 
and horny days,
we'll have your guts
for Carter.
'Howay the Lads!',
the leaders grin
and take you in,
use your blood 
to colour carpets.



KEITH ARMSTRONG

ME & DOUGLAS DUNN! WHAT A NIGHT!

FOLLOW THE SUN

FOLLOW THE SUN
 
Follow the Sun is a new project for this year's Heritage Open Days (September 8th to 11th 2016) to mark the bicentenary of George and Robert Stephenson's sundial at Dial Cottage, Killingworth.

Northern Voices Community Projects, with the support of North Tyneside Council, is encouraging local writers, artists, musicians and schoolchildren to come up with poems, songs, stories and artwork to celebrate the sundial. A booklet of the written material and artwork, together with an historical background, will be launched on September 9th in Killingworth with readings of poems and stories and performances of the songs.

Please send your contributions to NVCP:  k.armstrong643@btinternet.com

THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814) - THE HIVE OF LIBERTY

(AFTER THE NAME OF THOMAS SPENCE’S BOOKSHOP AT 8 LITTLE TURNSTILE, HIGH HOLBORN)

I am a small and humble man,

my body frail and broken.

I strive to do the best I can.

I spend my life on tokens.

I traipse through Holborn all alone,

hawking crazy notions.

I am the lonely people’s friend.

I live on schemes and potions.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

I am a teeming worker bee.

My dignity is working.

My restless thoughts swell like the sea.

My fantasies I’m stoking.

There is a rebel inside me,

a sting about to strike.

I hawk my works around the street.

I put the world to rights.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

'In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in.' (George Orwell)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IMy-h2re3g

Thomas Spence was born in Newcastle in 1750. Spence was the leading English revolutionary of his day, with an unbudgeable commitment to individual and press freedom and the common ownership of the land.

His tracts, such as The Rights of Man (Spence was, perhaps, the first to use the phrase) and The Rights of Infants, along with his utopian visions of 'Crusonia' and 'Spensonia', were the most far-reaching radical statements of the period. Spence was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814.