MORE FROM DOMINIC WINDRAM'S PEN

We are floating in cyberspace

We are floating in cyber space

We are liberated from

The weight of the past

And its rigid tribal claims

We are floating in cyber space

We are dazzled by advertising

As we surf over chaos

We no longer need to decipher

Ancient symbols and signs

We are floating in cyberspace

Where images chase each other

Like reflections on the water

Illusory worlds glitter like diamonds

We are floating in cyberspace

The endless transmission of ideas

Across oceans and borders

And back ought to unite us

We are floating in cyberspace

Free to dream forever

Free to construct new identities

As the omniscient eyes of surveillance

Chart our progress under the stars

From Eden To Las Vegas

The world began in Eden

And ended in Las Vegas

From beautiful garden

To dazzling morgue

The world began

Snug in the soft feathers

Of holy innocence

Now it hides its needle marks

The world began

With Adam the first poet

Naming the animals

Now words are used

To sanctify advertising

And other disreputable arts

As the old order evaporates

New symbols sneer and snarl

Now gadgets and pills

Have replaced the profound peace

Of the paraclete

And love is only ripe for a season

The world began

With waves of hope

Now there is only a pinprick

Of light in the darkness

As we caress our smart phones

Like rosary beads

The world began in Eden

And ended in Las Vegas

Another world

Another world

Lies beyond the horizon

It is just a matter

Of striving for it

Another world

Is not only possible

She is on her way

On a quiet day

I can hear her breathing

I can smell her sweet perfume

Spring similies

It’s like a ghost

Entering my soul

When I recall

A nursery lullaby

It’s like a light

Railing against

The starless night

When I look into your eyes

It’s like a birth

In the midst of death

When I scratch

Black marks on white paper

It will be like a rainbow

After the hard rain

When I create

My masterpiece

For now I am content

I’d love to write a poem

Of such translucent beauty

That it would melt the stars

And make the moon bleed

I’d love to discover imagery

That would make the gods weep

But for now I am content

To carry on with my craft

In the hope that a slither of sun

Can be caught in my net

In this shifting world where

Ideal form is so elusive

Dear Old Blighty

They claim a bit of pomp & ceremony

Brightens up our little lives for a while

Some people get their kicks when they’re waving flags

At some gilded Jubilee or lavish Wedding

And the media magnifies the general mood

Of proper, patriotic sentiment

Whilst real events that affect real lives

Remain largely unreported it seems

I’m tired of modern bread and circuses

I’m truly bored of cardboard commentators

We may think we’re so middle class and free now

But deep down we’re still peasants in brand new guise

Mere subjects of the Crown not citizens

Passive observers of the general malaise

So lie back and dream whilst knowing your place

As for me I’ll be emigrating soon

Acedia

It’s a kind of hell when innocence dies

To dread the coming of the morning sun

When once childhood dreams were wrapped around it

Prozac always dulls the pain but kills the joy

Catholic heaven seems so far removed

From this modern age of twilight idols

And love’s sweet promise turns bitter & ugly

In the black mirror of the simulacrum

Where flesh prevails utterly over spirit

Where teeming nature becomes a brazen whore

Conformists versus creators

Everyone’s an A* student nowadays

But how many possess true wisdom?

It seems information has far exceeded

The rare fruits of knowledge that make a culture

And those crude school league tables don’t impress me

It’s really just a mad race to the bottom

How many are there who can think critically?

Or, better still, engage in nuanced debate?

How many can spin a telling turn of phrase?

Or create a monumental work of art?

Sometimes I despair of this maddening world

There are too many ‘Yes’ men chasing carrots

Believing that they can climb the golden ladder

But there are so few creators blessed with Vision

DOMINIC WINDRAM - OUR GUEST POET FROM TEESSIDE

The Great Artists

The great artists pass through this life

Like stars of different seasons

Like comets of different centuries

Like broken Messiahs bloodied by doubt

Like flowers barely surviving in snow

They have the deepest need

To shower us with their gifts

As they patiently carve out

The marble and stone of their dreams

But they are rarely understood

Or regarded till long after their deaths

In a world content to live in shadows

Gaza 2014

A trickle of pellucid light

In the smoking ruins of truth

An illuminated word freed

From the tyranny of language

A splinter of memory

In a perpetual present

The grey spectre of the real

In the graveyard of illusion

The Thieves of Holiness

The thieves of holiness hoist their flags

With no genuine authority

They only rule over the chaos

They have cynically created

Their marching songs are discordant shrieks

As they wage their war against Mercy

On the streets the mercenaries

Are a mirror of the general malaise

Barking out crude monosyllables

Fuelled by hatred and hysteria

Their covenant is broken and dishonoured

They have turned justice into wormwood

Their crowns of beauty into ashes

Unlike Jacob they do not wrestle with their angels

In time they will decompose behind their masks

Their flimsy deceits and third rate uniforms

They want generations of ‘ lesser’ beings

To pay for their exodus in the wilderness

Their paranoia strikes at the heart of love

They present a picture to the waiting world

Of a glorious and noble nation

Poisoned by the ‘illegitimate’ other

The truth is lost in translation

And mired in mythologies

Waiting for a New World

I shiver at night in an indifferent world

Where elites violate the poets’ harvest

Where newspapers continue with their careless stories

Targeting the dispossessed and the voiceless

I’d like to tear this Age into intricate shreds

And put it back together again with rich patterns

I’m obsessed with objects that are dipped in light

That counteract the darkness of these times

My poems are for the unseen & unborn

I await a new world that will receive me

Light enters when we are wounded

My words are weeping twilight and sunset

As I pick at fragments of my ruin

Days and nights speed by so fast it’s surreal

I can’t seem to get a firm hold on Time

I think that the glittering veil of Mammon

Hides the bleakest of truths from our eyes

And only when we are burnt by

The black sun of despair, can we be reborn

My heroes are the biblical prophets

Who knew the dryness of bones in the desert

Who knew that holiness had to be earned

From bitter trials by fire, locusts and flood

What I’ve learnt from them is crystal clear

What is torn or broken lets in the light

Why silence is golden

Some say that it’s rain not thunder

That causes great flowers to grow

If that is so I’ll raise the power

Of my poetry not my voice

There’s so much in the world

To raise a clenched fist against

But I will learn to unclench

My heart and all its sorrows

A hymn in praise of silence

Is better than a war of words

In silence truth and beauty

Find their proper place

For silence is the language of God

Anything else is muddled translation

The Varied Fortunes of Poets

One stood among the sunflowers

Listening to birdsong

One was struck by moonlight

In the febrile realms of night

One was lost in despair

For a dry, ungodly season

And then the thunder & lightning

Arrived and he was reborn

Blessed by silvery shards of rain

Another was plagued by madness

And is now sectioned; he is just

Another number in a white, sanitised ward

It turned out that words were no help

It was just like pissing in the wind

I stand upon the precipice

Bursting with dreams & visions

With one hand on my horoscope

One hand on the edge

Poetry can’t change the world

I stand in liquid light by the water’s edge

Wondering what’s happened to my childhood dreams

So far I’ve built my life on poetry

It seems as though I’ve raised a house of sand

I thought that I could heal with shining words

Our contaminated consciousness

But I have been foolish I didn’t reckon

On people’s desire to dwell in shadows

Some say that art is the proper task of life

That might be the case – but to do it right

You have to adapt to the conditions

Imposed by rampant modernity

Or live in a state of permanent exile

While others shut their eyes to truth and prosper

Think for yourself

Don’t depend on the’ mercy’ of the state

Demand your right to exist

For Truth is being straight jacketed

While we remain distracted

Lost in a hyper real haze

Politics is so much window dressing

Democracy is just another modern church

With its secular hymns and slogans

With its hierarchy unchallenged

With its liturgy so meticulously prescribed

To Pinochet

You created the iron cage

To imprison the singing bird

You devised rigid systems

To ‘cure’ the subversives

You trampled the radiant dreams

Of the weary children of the dust

You masterminded the machinery

That broke the bones of paradise

I believe

I believe in the belittled and the benumbed

Gazing like dumb beasts in the wounded night

I believe in chaos that gives birth to stars

I believe that God resides in the mad

And that the pious are way off the mark

I don’t believe in the sermons of the rich

And the wretched rhetoric of elites

I believe that Love abides in a diaspora of dust

I’m set free

His vast realms of silvery Mercy

Rain down on me in the house of decay

This time I will extricate my soul

From the great tentacles of Moloch

And the twisted wires of machinery

At the heart of consumer dreaming

I need to escape the faceless crowds

Of the rampant marketplace

Where the fake, plastic flowers

& the billionaires bloom

I could live with rocks and silence

I could live in awe not comfort

Praised be

Praised be – the rebellious gestures of Jesus echoing through time

& the dialogues of dreamers in the potent bliss of Spring

Praised be – The ripening of stars in the fertile night

& the diaphanous words that glide with the birds on the wind

Praised be – The peace activists railing against the vast, intractable machinery of war

& the so called mad who’ve broken out of capitalism’s metal ways

Praised be – The wounded children of the dust who lie weeping

In the graveyard of frozen vision; may this abundant age address their suffering

Praised be – The unknown saints so humble in their utter ordinariness  

& the most fragile of flowers barely surviving amongst neon & concrete

Praised be The angelic artists scratching at the heart of life; searching for a pulse behind the plastic

& the wilder ones with wandering, fevered minds who cannot rest

Praised be – Those who sip the liquid light from the vital sun of longing

& those who proselytise in plagued streets at midnight

Praised be – Those who find a dwelling place in the soft embrace of imagination

& who oppose its strangulation in the crucible of calculated education

Praised be – The non conformists refusing to follow regimented consumption

& the debunkers of myth & fairytale in the caustic kingdom of advertising

Praised be – the poetry - a flash of light in the midst of a dark, discordant universe

& the revolutionaries buttressing the burning question marks of these times

Praised be – The flesh and the fire of genius thought which reinvigorates leaden lexicons

& the mellifluous music that heightens critical consciousness

Praised be – The saviours of wanton humanity who sacrifice themselves so that we may live

& the mystics and the monks who repeat their mantras to end all pain

Praised be –The holy ocean of infinite wisdom in an age of tainted information

& the immensity of joy that refuses to be crushed by fearful Pharisees

Praised be – The fruits of eternity sweetening in the gilded gardens of existence

& the secular prophets who proclaim the Word but who deny its gleaming reality

Praised be – The redeeming rain pouring through the cracks in our elaborate designs

& the healing days when limitless Love soars over the abyss

Praised be – The rebirth of wonder in deadening democracies

& the Spirit that remains as fleeting illusions fade away

Biography

I am a poet from Teesside with a strong interest in literature, philosophy, comparative religions, politics and psychology. I have a 2.1 B.A Honours degree in philosophy and a Masters degree in Cultural Studies. I have taught many subjects at G.C.S.E and A level and am currently working as a freelance tutor.

In 2009/10 I created and performed an audio visual spoken word project entitled ‘Artificial Eden’ which is a critique of consumer society fused with a deeply human search for an underlying spirituality behind the world of appearances. In addition to this, I have had several poetry books published by Trevor Teasdel of Glass Orange productions.

BRIDGE HOTEL, NEWCASTLE

WILLIAM BLAKE IN THE BRIDGE HOTEL

A few pints of Deuchars and my spirit is soaring.

The child dances out of me,

goes running down to the Tyne,

while the little man in me wrestles with a lass

and William Blake beams all his innocence in my glass.

And the old experience sweats from a castle’s bricks

as another local prophet takes a jump off the bridge.

It’s the spirit of Pat Foley and the ancient brigade

on the loose down the Quayside stairs

in a futile search,

just a step in the past,

for one last revolutionary song.

All the jars we have supped

in the hope of a change;

all the flirting and courting and chancing downstream;

all the words in the air and the luck pissed away.

It seems we oldies are running back

screaming to the Bewick days,

when a man could down a politicised quip

and craft a civilised chat

before he fed the birds

in the Churchyard.

The cultural ships are fair steaming in

but it’s all stripped of meaning -

the Councillors wade

in the shallow end.

O Blake! buy me a pint in the Bridge again,

let it shiver with sunlight

through all the stained windows,

make my wit sparkle

and my knees buckle.

Set me free of this stifling age

when the bland are back in charge.

Let us grow our golden hair wild once more

and roar like Tygers

down Dog Leap Stairs.

KEITH ARMSTRONG    

SURREAL NEWCASTLE