Thursday 25 April 2013

Wednesday 24 April 2013

THE HAWK!


MAL WALDRON


























We encounterd Mal at the Corner House in Newcastle upon Tyne - many moons ago!


The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   
in Ghana are doing these days
                                           I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Frank O’Hara, from Lunch Poems.

MONK IN DURHAM!



HUMPH!


ORNETTE SINGS!


ORNETTE!




11"x11" ink and gouche on art paper

Friday 19 April 2013

THOSE PORTHOLE BLUES AGAIN!


photo: lance liddle

It’s Tuesday again
and the sun in the Stella is shining.
Yellow dust fills 
the dappled Porthole
with a Golden Fleece
and the jazz, hot jazz, 
belts out
raging
from this pulsating lounge.
The saints and ghosts of ancient seamen
go marching in.
Let the liquid trumpet
pour out,
my legs slide to the floor
with the trombone lilt.
Cry me this river,
lurch for the ferry.
I will ping the dart
of a blue note
through your soul.
I am only a poet,
a saxophone with words,
an improvising shantyman
thanking the landlord
for still serving me:
despite all
this poetry slurping,
this lovely drivel
dribbling
from my wicked Geordie tongue.




KEITH ARMSTRONG




Monday 8 April 2013

WELCOME!

Welcome to the Armstrong-Dixon Line where North East England based writer Keith Armstrong and artist Peter Dixon share their views on the world and all that surrounds it.

Expect rants, politics, poetry, history, photography and all sorts of........stuff.

Lets start with the genius Chet Baker. Artwork by Peter for a possible exhibition.

24" x 24" acrylic on board