TYNESIDE POETS!

TYNESIDE POETS!

Saturday 31 January 2015

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

Tuesday 20 January 2015

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.



Sunday 18 January 2015

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    

Wednesday 7 January 2015