17.1.21
OWN YOUR OWN NIGHTMARES
OWN YOUR OWN NIGHTMARES
Own your own nightmares,
fight for them,
they should never be possessed by Government,
never induced by the pharmaceuticals.
They belong to history,
your forebears,
your dreaming kids.
Your own nightmares
might scare you to an early uprising
but they are for your loved ones
to relish,
to share
with the devils in their souls.
Nightmares can terrify
like a John Martin painting
yet they can also be beautiful
in a sacred and scarred kind of way.
And when they are over
they will sail you
into the kind of bliss
you have justly earned,
Including the overthrow
of those who have confined you
for such a long time
with no bloody mandate;
the overthrow
of redundant establishments
that cling on
to a dying power
whose way of looking misses
the potential loveliness
in all your lockdowned nightmares
inside the lovely community
of your heart and soul.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
10.1.21
TREVOR
TREVOR
This is a special man
who spends his life entirely
searching for clues to all of it
outside the teeming box.
He rants from the obscure corners
where no one else dares,
rummages down lanes
where most folk fear
to walk,
looking for a special meaning,
a hint of a jewel
in the pervasive rubbish.
A walk with him
will lead you
into beautiful gardens,
alternative libraries
and abstract galleries.
His voice
is his own
unique instrument,
dulcet in the sun
of blooming vineyards
and birdsong.
His thoughts
refresh
the universe
with their original
melodies.
Listen to him,
to the deepness
in his soul,
to the reverence
in his wise and searching eyes.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
6.1.21
HARTLEY PIT DISASTER JANUARY 16TH 1862
‘What was it there on Hartley heap, caused the mother and child to weep?’ (George Cooke)
4.1.21
2021 - 260TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HEXHAM RIOT 9TH MARCH 1761
‘The Market Place was a tragic sight. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay scattered. The ground was stained with blood and the cries of the wounded were pitiful. The following day it rained, washing away the traces.’
Wash away the day,
wash the pain away,
sweep the remains of yesterday
into the racing river.
Beat the Dead March,
bang the old drum,
heal Hexham’s bust bones
and cry me a river,
cry the Water of Tyne.
Wash away the day
and wash this pain away.
A PITMAN DEAD
With blood gushing out of his boot tops,
a well-dressed man
leaves town
along Priestpopple.
Thirteen men lie inside the Abbey,
not owned.
Numbers are found dead upon the roads.
Big with child, Sarah Carter shot,
the musket ball found in the child’s belly.
Thrice into a man’s body
lying at James Charlton’s shop door
it’s said they ran theIr bayonets;
and a pitman dead,
a weaver:
all those broken days of history,
all the slain hours in our diaries.
Sound the Abbey’s bells!
Let them toll the severed minutes.
Let them celebrate
the end of torture.
Let them gush
with rejoicing
for more peaceful times.
THERE’S A RIOT
These streets,
in this Heart of All England,
are swept clean of blood.
But the stains still soak our books.
Death upon death,
we turn the pages;
in between the lines,
we read about the screams,
time’s bullets
tearing flesh away.
There is terror lurking in this Market Place,
just scrape away the skin
and, deep down,
there’s a Riot:
a commotion boiling
a terrible turbulence,
a throbbing pain.
It is a Riot of gore,
a torrential downpour
of weeping:
a seeping sore
that is Hexham’s History.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
Poems featured in Hexham Local History Society Newsletter
THE HEXHAM RIOT
Known as Bloody Monday, the
Hexham Riot, which broke out on March 9th 1761, was the outcome of an
attempt to introduce a system of balloting for the militia. Balloting
met with opposition throughout the north of England but it was in
Hexhamshire that feelings ran highest. The local magistrates, well aware
of this, had taken the precaution of bringing a detachment of the North
Yorkshire Militia into the town of Hexham. Drawn up in the square in
front of the Moot Hall, these soldiers only served to increase the fury
of the mob that gathered on the day of the ballot. After almost four
hours of argument between ringleaders and magistrates, the Riot Act was
read.
MAUD WATSON, FLORIST
bred in a market arch
30.12.20
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO A TWIN TOWN
the bureaucrat who chose it was inspired,
picking through the rail lines and autobahns to seek it out,
linking it with my fleeting life.
I have travelled here a score of times and watched
my features change
with the seasons
in a twin town’s mirror.
I have made and carelessly lost friends,
renewed the flagging feel of tenderness,
groped in the darkness for a kiss gone missing,
licked over nooks and crannies.
I have lost all tracks of time
in the cool of bowing trees;
rejoiced in the pounding of church bells,
singing in my head.
I have dived in the shadows seeking famous sons,
slid in gutters with the down and outs.
This town has a brain of a University
and the guts of a stray-dog.
I have flogged it to death.
It was in this bar, at this table, in this corner,
that I looked into a girl called Karin’s eyes;
and it was at that moment, for that rich moment,
that our eyes twinned and I couldn’t wait to jet home,
write a glowing report on her glowing face
for our International Exchange Officer to file safely
under ‘Twinning Affairs’
or ‘Affairs, Twinning, New Year’.
Yes, I am glad
to have twinned with this shapely town,
inspired
by Karin’s eyes.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
the jingling geordie
- keith armstrong
- whitley bay, tyne and wear, United Kingdom
- poet and raconteur