NINA!

NINA SIMONE

48" x 24"  mixed media on board.

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

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

SATCHMO!

Young Louis Armstrong

oil on board, 2ft x 2ft

KEITH & CHET

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