MY FATHER WORKED ON SHIPS

My father worked on ships.

They spelked his hands, 

dusted his eyes, his face, his lungs.

Those eyes that watered by the Tyne

stared out to sea

to see the world

in a tear of water, at the drop

of an old cloth cap.

For thirty weary winters

he grafted

through the snow and the wild winds

of loose change.

He was proud of those ships he built,

he was proud of the men he built with,

his dreams sailed with them:

the hull was his skull,

the cargo his brains.

His hopes rose and sunk

in the shipwrecked streets 

of Wallsend

and I look at him now

this father of mine who worked on ships

and I feel proud

of his skeletal frame, this coastline

that moulded me

and my own sweet dreams.

He sits in his retiring chair,

dozing into the night.

There are storms in his head

and I wish him more love yet.

Sail with me,

breathe in me,

breathe that rough sea air old man,

and cough it up.

Rage, rage

against the dying

of this broken-backed town,

the spirit

of its broken-backed

ships.

                               Keith Armstrong

THE TYNESIDE POETS - THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

GEORDIE SONGS SUNG BY GEORDIE WILSON!

POEM FOR MY FRIEND GARY (1962-2014)

Your thoughts ran deep by the Wear.

You were the only one

who brought Franz Kafka to the writers’ group meeting.

The Durham mines were your veins

and you took your genuine heritage onto the Horden bus.

Many’s the drink we poured over

our thoughts and dreams of Socialism.

In lots of ways, our hopes were cruelly dashed

but you strode on

with that serious chuckle of yours,

nobly bearing your ideals

for all the passengers to see

on your daring journey 

through this dangerous life.

You took your reading abroad

to share with others 

in worlds as far apart

as Poland, Oman and Kurdistan.

Teaching was your calling

and you had divine patience for it,

a love of times of being together

like those golden days I remember with you

listening to Dollar Brand in a Bremen concert,

washing down the day with apfelkorn,

talking cricket with you in Chester-le-Street

and laughing at NewcastleGateshead on a tourist bus

as the sun set on a New Town

and another Empire died.

Gary, I wish

I’d got to see you again

before your sweet smile left our streets and avenues.

One thing I know though:

when I googled you today,

all I found was kindness.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

ST. MARY'S ISLAND, WHITLEY BAY

FRIENDS OF ST. MARY’S ISLAND

Around the low water mark,

kelp beds grow.

Network of rockpools,

boulder shore.

Long-legged bar-tailed godwit,

expert

at finding

mud and sand-living worms.

Seabed of rocky reefs,

shipwrecks dived within and around.

Wrasse and lumpsucker.

Seashore Code.

Remembered rambles,

geology jaunts.

Soft coral communities.

Relic dunes.

THE BEACON

A St. Mary’s Light

incandescent

with rage.

A three ton lens,

balanced

on a trough of mercury,

kept revolving,

round the gas mantle,

by a simple pendulum 

wound up

on the hour.

A climb

up 137 steps,

inside the 120 foot tower,

a hiss of flame,

clamping 

of a prism

constantly

turning.

Since medieval times,

across the ocean fields,

this beacon 

has burned,

blinking

on the drink.

Years sailed by,

memories

of shipwrecks,

of Russian soldiers

cholera-wracked

in 1799,

of the ‘Gothenburg City’

and rats with chewed tails.

These heartbreaking waves,

the illumination

of shafts of history:

the rays

and days

of a shining Empire

sunk.

KEITH ARMSTRONG