Tommy, the City and Me

Walking out of the flickering shadows of the High Level Bridge, I head to the ‘Bridge’ bar, tappey lappey down the cobbles to the Quayside, face the new pubs and clubs with taxis devouring customers at the beginning of the month.
Ships are missing, the smell of the past has gone, its Newcastle now and the Millennium Bridge, a barred half-moon drapes the river. Looking back at the Tyne Bridge a bunch of Geordie lasses scream at the sky.
That’s when I see him, up near the Guildhall, a bag of rags; blind, empty-eyed and so foul mouthed it’s painful, ‘Tommy on the Bridge,’ hitting the present. He scrounges tabs from young lasses; they throw him out of the ‘Crown Posada,’ the smell of dry piss too much for the early doors, two pint drinkers.
Stag night lads knock Tommy’s hat, it slops on the ground and he throws his stick at them as they caw at each other, cling together, throw coins, he gathers in his buckled hands. I leave him turning over the money, trying to make sense of it all.
Outside the Baltic sun glazes metal tables and Tommy makes me a shadow standing in front of me, smelling of shit and beer. I ask him who he? He spits at me, knowing only too well my game, “Ye’ll see us for aa bit but we’re always heor. Don’t forget that mister. Put that in ya poem”. He kicks my chair and it rattles as if I’m in a cage.
In the 1860’s Tommy would stand on the Tyne Bridge, straddle the line between Gateshead and Newcastle, avoid being arrested. He was at it again: not in one place or another.
The young manager of the Baltic bar asks him to leave; he does with all the pride he can muster, farting so loud the entire bar laughs.
I followed him to the Millennium Bridge, looked upstream at all those wonderful bridges and felt a heart bursting pride. Sentimentality rose like sap and I began to cry and stood transfixed. I held the moment. That’s easy to do. Dead easy and now it’s my turn to laugh at myself.

Thomas Spence, Bewick, Hepburn, I began to list Newcastle’s sons and then retraced my past: the Down Beat Club, Club A’ Go Go, the Animals, Mayfair and Cavendish. The music was so loud in my head I had to sit in the Literary and Philosophical Society Library, drown in whispers as bass lines began to fade and whining guitars became background music.
I climb down the Lit and Phil’s steps and at the Mining Institute the past erupts, blood seeps from books, amputated arms and legs tangle with widows round and around the corridors and I have to leave and Stephenson hands me a lamp, shows me the way out. I am bedazzled by light at the bottom of Westgate Road.
I head to Dobson’s Central Station excited and afraid as a child and I just stop myself from getting on the Metro to the end of the line. Tommy is behind me. I smell him before I see him. I am being stalked by a dead blind man.
Tommy died in 1907, collapsing in snow at Gateshead. Here I am, Central Station to my left, dressed in muffled announcements, as I dive through traffic and head towards Stowell Street, Chinatown, down the back lane, passing Morden Tower, buried in words and the arse end of restaurants.
His heavy breathing’s behind me as I fly out the cobbled lane and pass the Irish Centre, Saint James’ Park bending to me. I tried to lose him but he is wise to my every move and with the Haymarket Bus Station and Newcastle University before me his sickly breath is fresh and strong on my neck as I run down Northumberland Street and to Shieldfield and Byker: he is running me out of town.
I stand and eye the bedraggled sky on Byker Bridge, my breathing sharp as razors and know the past has me. Tommy’s hard voice ringing in my head, “Th’ past’s not deed. Put that in ya poem mister.”

Tom Kelly

Swim

Ah’m trawling streets, aa shiny armband of hard snot on me sleeve, watching aa green bubble frog spawn from me mates nose. It’s that time of day or night when the sky’s closing in, been booted ti’ bits, looks nearly dead, not bright as aa button it was first thing this dawning.

Me mother’s hanging out th’ washing in the backyard, pegging upside down clothes that should by rights vomit on the star struck concrete but don’t, they just billow tunnels of nowt.

Dad’s at work. Aa see him at night when dark starts. He smells of factory. Aa word aa get me tongue round with no idea what it means.

Granda’s in th’ shipyard, over the back of ower street. He walks home with a pipe fixed in his mouth, aa small spear leaving smoke winging behind him. Ah’m here, look up at the window, ye can just see me behind th’ curtain lifting with the draft.

Dark sits on me head, dead heavy and sometimes ye can’t sleep, it’s too cold or too hot and anyway th’ story on the radio was scary but reading me comic in the dark will save me. I know. It’s hard ti’ sleep, me eyes flutter and try to not get into that dream.

Th’ dream where snow was thick as aa labourer’s fist, breath milk of magnesia but then ah’m drowning, pulled by the hair out of the swimming baths, th’ pebble edge cutting into me skin, dragged spewing onto th’ unforgiving pool side. Aa wake and me bedroom smells of chlorine and aa push out me arms and swim out of me dream. And swim.

Tom Kelly