ASSEMBLAGE: PERSONS AND LOCATION

POEM FOR PETE


The lines on our faces
show us testing times
we survived,
scrbbling poems and drawings
often against brick walls,
pleading for the funds
to make our crazy dreams happen.
Down the back lanes of home,
in Spencean Holborn,
tacky Amsterdam
and surreal Den Bosch,
we have trudged
with our artistic gifts;
on to the ancient boulevards of Prague,
inside the boozy nooks of Tuebingen,
on Isle of Man steam trains,
we fearfully hawked our pamphlets
hoping that they’d make
someone’s little life a little better.
Now, catching a moment of oral history
in the sunshine of our days,
we drink for the moment
to be done with pain,
brief as a kiss
in a sudden poem
or life-sketch.
Expressing ourselves endlessly
in a way that lights up others’ lives
we carry on planting
bolts of joy
on the banks of the sloshing Tyne.



KEITH ARMSTRONG