SELECTED POETRY

by
Keith Armstrong

SONG FOR NORTHUMBERLAND

Drifting in moonlight,
the dunes sing their songs.
Wings of old battles
fly all night long.
Cry of the seagulls,
curse of the ghosts;
aches of dead warriors
scar this old coast.

Hover the kestrel,
sing out the lark,
we will be free in our time.
This air is our breath,
this sea is our thirst
and our dreams are sailing home.

Wandering through castles,
their walls are our lungs.
Seaching for freedom
in country homes.
Forbears and old cares
blown in the wind;
pull of loved harbours
draws our boats in.

Surge of the salmon
and urge of the sea
leaps in our local blood.
Peel of the bluebells
and ring of bold tunes
reel in all those grey years.

Slopes of the Cheviots,
caress of the waves.
Shipwrecks and driftwood
float in our heads.
Pele-stones and carved bones
hide in these hills,
roots of new stories
in ancient tales.

Dew on our lips
and beer on the breath,
drinking the countryside in.
Bread of the landscape
and wine of this earth,
flows on these river beds.

Drifting in moonlight,
the dunes sing their songs.
Wings of old battles
fly all night long.
Cry of the seagulls,
curse of the ghosts;
aches of dead warriors
scar this old coast.
Hover the kestrel,
sing out the lark,
we will be free in our time.
This air is our breath,
this sea is our thirst
and our dreams are sailing home.

� Keith Armstrong

---

NAKED!

(for Spencer Tunick & his followers)

Naked at the conference table
naked
naked on a beer label
naked
naked in Iraq
naked
naked on the bloody rack
naked
naked as torture
naked
naked as a Baghdad butcher
naked
naked to a public school
naked
naked as a pubic fool
naked
naked in a Gateshead alley
naked
naked as a nuclear family
naked
naked as a pub dart
naked
naked as a bleeding upstart
naked
naked in the corporate office
naked
naked on the bleeding coalface
naked
naked to a stupid war
naked
naked as an arts whore
naked
naked as a councillor in hock
naked
naked as a business hack
naked
naked as I can�t be arsed
naked
naked in a uk farce
naked
naked as a Brendan Foster
naked
naked as a duty roster
naked
naked as a boomtown rat
naked
naked as a poetry brat
naked
naked in the supermarket
naked
naked as a sitting target
naked
naked as the bomb
naked
naked in a Bosnian womb
naked
naked in the Belsen darkness
naked
naked in our wilful blindness
naked
naked under manipulation
naked
naked under a brain tarpaulin
naked
naked as an artist�s prop
naked
naked in the cop shop
naked
naked at the wrong time
naked
naked at the pantomime
naked
naked in the Lottery Gallery
naked
naked as a stick of celery
naked
naked as a stripper in the club
naked
naked as a bourgeois shrub
naked
naked as a strapping Geordie
naked
naked as a gunning Saudi
naked
naked in an Utrecht gutter
naked
naked as a poor kid�s stutter
naked
naked as a star on tele
naked
naked as a starving belly
naked

naked!

� Keith Armstrong

---

WITH MRS PAGAN IN HEXHAM ABBEY

Mrs Pagan,
every farmer�s boy�s favourite housewife,
insists
I sit beside here
on her personal casting-bench
outside the holy Abbey.

She has a lecherous anthem
on her frantic tongue
and she breathes it into my pricked ears
as her wet hands pray
for more
and more
inside her.

Mrs Pagan
wears that wicked skirt,
indecently short,
for prayers
and she moves in an irreligious way
against me
letting me know,
so very slowly,
that her soul is naked
underneath.

She�s wearing her red high-heels
as she pulls me
into Church
and her steps echo
over the centuries
when she leads me up the tottering night-stairs
to a nook
where she can kiss me.

Mrs Pagan�s
rapid fingers
tease my pulse:
�I�ve always been
an organ-lover,�
she tells me,
with her hot lips.
�You�re a very naughty choir-boy,� she drools
in my left ear.
�Let�s share a dirty hymn-book,
I want your singing spirit in me.
I want to feel your healing hands
on my massive arse
as I scream for Mercy.�

Mrs Pagan
must be
my favourite Hexham housewife
and she looks a little flushed
as she clip-clops with me
from the Abbey.

Ever since she came
of Age,
she�s worshipped Sex,
and I thank God
for her lovely breasts and swollen buttocks
which my shaking hands grab
so gratefully
inside the Abbey grounds.

I have to say That Mrs Pagan�s Sunday School�s a joy
and her Bible lessons drive me wild.
I simply love
the filthy looks she gives me
every Daily Service;
and now I�m back with her,
on her spartan bed,
I will praise her
and bless the Lord for all the miss-prints,
all the snogs and songs
she lays
on me.

� Keith Armstrong

---

MY LADY DENTIST

My Lady Dentist
she fills me
with a desperate longing;
bending over me,
in her clean white tunic,
the smell of her
sets my teeth
on edge;
she drills
a sense of danger into me;
I can only salivate,
eyes popping,
as her dark hair brushes
over my face.
She stabs my gums,
makes my mouth
bleed kisses
on the National Health.
She pulls
and grinds,
and I can taste her
on my lips.
My Lady Dentist,
are all our dreams so false?
Or is it you,
in this anaesthetic haze,
wrapping your rubber gloves around me,
licking me better,
with my blood
on your tongue?

� Keith Armstrong

---

MARSDEN ROCK

Sensational Rock,
swimming in light.
Bird-cries clinging to ancient ledges,
Kittiwakes smashing against time.
What tales you could tell.

Your face is so moody,
flickers with breezes,
crumbles in a hot afternoon.

Climbing your powdery steps,
we look down on the sea
thrashing at you.

We join a choir of birds at your peak,
cry out to the sky
in good spirits.

Nesting for the sake of it,
our lyrics are remnants on the shore.

We keep chipping away,
do we not?

We slip
through the pebbles,
splashing
with babies.

We leave our mark,
a grain
on the ancient landscape.

We go.

We dance like the sunlight
on your scarred body:

tripping,
falling,
singing

away.

� Keith Armstrong

---

NIGHTJARS AND THEIR ALLIES

(for K.)

The nightjars and their allies
have their heads down in the woods today,
dreaming of wild nights,
a chance to sing on the flickering wing.
And you my dark-haired songstress
could writhe naked on a bed of their feathers
as I touch with my aching fingertips
the tips of your sprawling bliss
in all that lushness between the trembling trees.
For you are dusky,
silky-tailed and
white-winged;
you are my European Nightjar
churring as I make you
spring to life in shivers of moonlight.
White-throated and golden,
star-spotted and black-shouldered,
you straddle your strapping limbs around me,
wrap my leaping heart in charcoal ribbons,
fly me screaming in a flock of black birds
and drench me
with jars of night song.

� Keith Armstrong

---

Your first name:	Your URL:
Use the box below to leave messages for Keith. Begin Message: For Keith Armstrong