Summer Nights Bourbon Barbecue

Summer Nights Bourbon Barbecue

Summer nights, bourbon barbecue, smoke ranches in the sky, clashing glasses, Ian Van Dahl and drunken voices over the fence. Talking football, talking shop, in a flap and talking crap. Pert and flirting and unskirting comes the fight. Jilted lovers under covers, would be lovers undiscovered. The thin and fatio under parasol and on the patio. The cuckold husband, no solution, lost in the din and noise pollution. The sociable and anti social, the boastful and the meek, scranning wine and scraggy meat. The neighbours all have complaints but they themselves are never saints. Summer nights and some are pregnant. Full moon rising with its advertising the swaying stars in racing cars. No one’s sober, no one’s sane the fireworks stuck in next door’s drain. Early morning, the sun’s not dressed, stumbles through the debris in his pants and vest. The king of puke with his golden hangover graffities on next door’s Rover. Boobtube, youtube, Ian Van Dahl, it’s all ‘Castles in the Sky’!

Text by Trev Teasdel 

Listen to it on this video -

or Listen to it on Stockton Digital Village podcast here - 
http://stocktondigital.co.uk/blog/podcast/summer-nights-bourbon-barbecue/

Panavision Motion

Panavision Motion
I was born in a movie, learned to walk like a star, cameras rolling. I threw my tantrums across the set and balled out the director. I lived in Panavision motion, high definition, a technicolour visionette of half improvised script. I could acquiesce for burlesque, say ' aloe vera ' to Christina Aguilera, plug into R&B and belt out ' Something's Got a Hold of me '. I took the credits and stuffed the critics and cheated on Google Glass . They called me iconic but I played it ironic whenever Christina would sing...

Text by Trev Teasdel

Listen to it on this video - 

Or an audio version here http://stocktondigital.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Panavision-Motion.mp3

Meandering on Downstream

MEANDERING ON DOWNSTREAM

Walking along the streams of consciousness, through buttressed leaves in kick crumble rouge, past sloping off boats tugging at their moorings, past gates to huge houses, slipways slipping into the Thames to feed u bend swans fresh baked breadlets, past bent backed hedges with tanglehair dreams and lean over fences and trees that reach up to the giant’s nest and the blowbubble clouds with tingledrop raindrops that fall on caught out blouses and coiffured hairscapes, while dogs chase the illusions of rabbits that spill from a cast off top hat jammed in the hedgerow awaiting the applause of a Drury Lane matinee, while taxies cutcorners to pick up cutout commuters from their briefcased compartments and deliver them quickly to laptop lovers with microsoft thighs and dropdown menus before evening news and dinner for two on a punt down near Windsor while couples tell lies that neither believes as a matter of ritual and just to fill in time till the call of the duvet and feather down pillows in the lovertime night with it’s dreams of long winding rivers with trees that look like people and ducks that talk Norman and swans that sell cakes to passerby joggers in trainers and leggings that bounce on the leaves where rabbits lure dogs with the illusion of food and magicians lose hats in a spell under the stars and back by the streams where consciousness rushes before walking by the banks of the Thames flowing home to its mansion of the sea with it’s fishmaid servants and butler whales and ships that just seem to pass in the night..

Trev Teasdel

Life on Streetview

Life on Streetview

Life on Streetview was a buzz!

We rode that mouse town to town, 
looking up forgotten women, forgotten pals that got mixed up in our dreams decades before when we were the hell raisers. 

The no-care youth of the world, oozing with ideas; crapping ourselves with creativity; dreaming of new eras; moving on the goalposts of what was possible; dreaming big but dreaming small; far from the smell of making money, free of the watchers and corporate control freaks, where love was the currency and ideas were the street map. 

The world was one country with interlinking cultures, the soul was our passport, the passion our engine. We were the architects of alternatives, we believed in other ways. We slept in damp alleys crying with sterility and dreamed with the archimage of how we could change everything that was wrong for this planet; and the music was unbelievable and cut to the chase and the poetry broke all of its rules and the books undid all the forced learning and we spoke with the heart and we spoke from our passion and we moved like greased lightning and painted the streets with rainbows of diversity and believed in each other and believed we could do better and we chased the old world into a corner of history. 

In the darkness of oppression a candle is lit and it only takes a movement of the head to see above your horizons.

Trev Teasdel

The Tale of Joey Quantum

The Tale of Joey Quantum

 by Trevor Teasdel 

Published as a contribution to the Scientific American Centre for Quantum Technologies 2015 Quantum Shorts competition website - here  

http://shorts2015.quantumlah.org/entry/tale-joey-quantum

http://theunboundedspirit.com/5-mind-blowing-quantum-experiments-showing-reality-is-not-so-real/

Joey Quantum came on like a waveform but posed as a particle when the press were present. He'd do his double slit trick but ended up in some parallel dimension after a comedy of errors brought him to his knees. Soon after, disappearing into dark matter, a legend grew up around him. Joey reappeared from his double dip disappearance some months later and got featured in Natural Geodesic, deciphering esoteric mistletoe sculptures in outer Mongolia. It was there I got to know him, sunbaked in some oasis thinking it was a mirage. Joey had calmed down a lot, he'd been through a lot of scenes and dimensions and knew how to handle relationships. Joey met this violinist in some bordello on the border and all the way along on a Sampan in Shandong, she was playing along to the radio and Joey heard his name....it was hard to recall the curves of her melody but Joey described her as pure space, ever more mysterious the closer you got.

The world of men seemed obsessed with the acquisition of collected atoms, possessions, territories. They clashed like Titans, blasted apart atomic structures and rejoiced in war. Joey knew too much to fall for this illusion, what the Hindus call Maya. A chance mutation in his genetic structure had opened his mind to endless possibilities and viewpoints, all happening at once. Joey wanted to help his fellow men but how would he explain!

The papers had it in for him, they defined him in a headline, they demonised him by association, they exposed his sex life, trashed his words of wisdom, cut up his letters to read as something else, but Joey was an a kind of illusionist, escaping their hold and challenging their grip on reality. He defied all their predictions, confounded their plots with his spontaneity and led them on a chase. One day, they would wake up with a strange notion that the world wasn't quite all it seemed. They were like laboratory rats kept in darkness, soon their eyelids would lift to a new reality. This would be his strategy!

I wanted to get Joey's story down on paper, I had a deadline and an impatient editor but nothing made sense. It would take a whole new language, a fluidity of concepts and an inter-sensory medium to even get close to getting a handle on Joey Quantum! I wasn't up for the job, a limp pen in a dark ink but I did get close to the violinist. Joey made love to her on some whole other level but we just did the physical. The three of us were like chords on her violin, she'd run her bow across us and the air would vibrate with a calming knowledge. I learnt from Joey that love was a communion of waves and atoms operating on different wavelengths. Love wasn't about possession but about letting go of concepts. Nothing was separate. I couldn't quite grasp it all but I had opened myself to learning.

It came on news, one day after sundown, they had Joey down as an alien, surrounded him in the mountains, aimed their guns towards him. Joey was non-violent, and I knew he could handle himself. How many Joeys' did they see through their sights? Joey was everywhere and nowhere, their bullets unpredictable in their trajectory. The Military put it down to oxygen deficiency, high up in the mountains. They made excuses in the press. They never did get Joey Quantum. I still see him from time to time. He was an enigma they couldn't fathom but they had begun to ask questions and that was a start!

We both continued to hang out with the violinist on different levels. Jealousy played no part. Love was a form of communication, a method of learning, a search for meaning, a transcendence of reality. Joey taught me well. I'm glad I met Joey Quantum! His is quite a tale!


TAGS: WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY SUPERPOSITION

In the Cool Jazz Basement

In the Cool Jazz Basement

It was past midnight, 
the wine was crawling out of the bottle and looking for fun.

Outside,
the streetlamps were taking selfies just to have something to do,
and the drains grinned a metal smile and bore the rain.

Over on Smith Street,
where the cars were ‘lowing’ and stretched out on the side of the road, inmates of a swaying off licence were leaving comments on private thoughts and blogging their daydreams in their digital imaginations.

The town was quiet, 
a riot of introspective footsteps stepping through the rain of hopeless austerity with their neon-lit dreams of finding a side-alley to fulfillment.

In the cool jazz basement,where the lights were discrete, 
her voice rose over the rooftops and sent goosebumps down the chimney pots. 

The slim, long-haired beauty made slaves of their ears and eyes and the microphone trembled in her hand. 

Back home, where the moon purred on the bed and clawed the duvet, she unzipped and slid into love with him. Her moans set off security alarms on the sidewalks of a distant town where sex was only allowed by showing passports. 

Her soul was an ancient city full of learning, culture and wisdom that stretched across the valley and she loved like a universe with hot suns on her tail.

Outside the town hall citizens grappled with true meaning and were rounded up as examples but her voice hit the notes of hope and circled across the town. Her ample breasts and silky skin caused the dawning sky to blush with sun.

Soon the yawning cars would welcome their humans and drive off across the bridge of human duty. 

She folded her lovemaking away and put on a serious face to face the day. 

Driving into the everyday town where decency had been driven out, she longed for the days when humanity would care again.

Stopping off in a slow harbour town for coffee and laptop communications, she saved this draft in Word and set about her work.

Text by Trev Teasdel

DOSH, SHACK AND THE FUKKER’S BANK!

DOSH, SHACK AND THE FUKKER’S BANK!

I was sitting in my shack, rocking in my chair and singing the blues with my slide guitar when Dosh from the Fukker’s Bank walked in. He was rollin’ in it and I mean shit! 

He’d got himself bankrolled with a Trillion or two and was giving none of it away. I offered to sell him some of my goddamn poverty at half price but he stalled for advice. 

I figure a man ought to make his own decisions but not Dosh he had an industry of advisors and none of them could read darn it! 

I hung out with him on the wrong side of the tracks and how he forgot his roots I don’t know but he still managed to hit the sack with my lady, her knickers would come flying across the room and land fresh on my here guitar. 

I got a little rhythm going and he made the lady steam, whistle blowin’ God Almighty! Then I pulled him out of bed and kicked the shit out of him. We knew how to live back then and here he was living it again, with my lady! 

I figured he wouldn’t mind if I became him for a while seein’ how he was being me in bed with my woman, I took off to Central Howard with all his credentials. 

I was mighty well received in the big city and my credit was damn good. I bought me a few countries and changed things around for the better, though old Dosh would never approve! 

I gave them all decent homes and helped them set up their own enterprises and made a land fit for humans. 

Old Dosh was still fucking hard when I got back and I heard her scream the shack down but old Dosh was now flat broke, only thing is he didn’t know it yet! What’s money for if you don’t spend it and I spent it all for him. 

You might think a trillion or two is hard to spend in such a small space of time but not if you know the right people and I do! I was mighty sore that he had used my lady up like that, her sleeping like a log on the shack floor and all and he was mighty sore too, that I had used up his trillions. But we were old friends and called it quits. 

Old Dosh wandered out on the lone highway without a cent to his name. No one paid him any mind and he did without food for a while. Eventually he shacked up with a pair of Cougars, who kept him warm at night and he hunted alongside them. 

Well me, I continue to play the slide guitar and I still had a bit of dosh saved up and bought me a bigger place. The money had done a bunch of cities well and their enterprises thrived. 

Dosh stops by sometimes, stinking of Cougars. He never did have a lick o’ sense! He takes a shower and I’ll feed him a little oatmeal. 

A man can write his own story but the words have a mind of their own! I said “ Dosh, don’t believe your own hype ” but he was so used to buying his way out trouble he couldn’t see the damage he was doin’. 

Dosh was tuned to an open chord, the notes chimed together but no one could hold him down. 

The moral of this here story is, if anyone still has any morals “ Never fuck your best friends lady and leave your credentials in yer pants. It could seriously affect your credit rating! ” Well that’s about all folks! 

Howling Snakewater Jnr here at your service!

Text by Trev Teasdel

Tree Leaves

Tree Leaves

tree leaves weave 

fine filigree fingers

through the ether, 

fine hair receptors 

in the radio-onic air, 

transducing knowledge 

from all earthly forms around.

Across the park,

beneath the viaduct, 

a couple holding hands 

in the electromagnetic field of love.

The natural state 

of the environment 

hidden from conscious minds.

Fine sandstone blocks,

sandcastle banks, 

where electronic transactions,

 paradigms for money, 

vibrate molecules 

in fibre optic cables 

to rule the roost, 

to be the all 

but as with Proust

“ destination is no longer a place, but a new
way of seeing ”

to look deeper 

beneath the surface 

with new eyes.

Photo and text by Trev Teasdel

The Flying Mermaid

The Flying Mermaid

Down at the Flying Mermaid, airborne on real Ale, 
Spitfire or Bombardier, we talked about how we faked our work plans and just winged it.

Some of us were gliders and some of us were jets. We took off from a runway and crossed borders we weren’t meant to. We drowned our jet lag with ale from the cask, and looked up at the landing strip. 

Kathryn was a real mermaid, no plain Jane, she could dive under our defences and disarm our reluctance. Of course, guys like to boast how they met the mermaid down at the coast but Kathryn was her own woman you didn’t get to choose her she chose you! 

It didn’t matter if you were a big wheel in an aerodrome or a khaki Land-rover stuck in the mud, doing battle in an outdated time-frame, she treated everyone the same. 

She’d take you down the cellar to clean up the barrels; there was ale dripping down her breasts but you wouldn’t dare look. She was a kickboxing champ in a mermaid disguise. 

One night, she caught me off guard, on autopilot, thinking my thoughts and ignoring her protocol. She could drink like a fish, and role you in the waves and pull you into her ether. 

Back in the bar they called it ‘ Flying with the Mermaid ’ and the best you could do was to try for a smooth landing. 

Well the Flying Mermaid got bulldozed on the orders of a jilted Councillor and Kathryn moved north. No matter what the council did, they couldn’t shake the myth or the legend of the Flying Mermaid. 

Me, I still live in those legendary times and no one has asked me for rent. 

I could tell you some tales about me and the mermaid but it would probably be mixed in with lies!

Text and photo by Trev Teasdel

Real to Reel

Real to Reel

I live in the reel to reel world, 
changing the script to suit a mood, 
acting out a feeling, 
defying logic 
while the 
Director’s on the couch! 

I speak with silence, 
articulately
and mix my double entendres' 
with my double vodkas. 

I’m a photomontage 
of a dual lifestyle, 
with crafted lines, 
daring ad-libs. 

I’m zoomed-in 
and zoomed-out 
and panned-in, 
across the 
landscape. 

I’m out on DVD, 
up for review, 
but defy my critics. 

I’m a quantum particle, 
at a quantum party.
My behaviour 
can’t be predicted. 

I’m a changing story 
with dramatic pauses,
an unwritten plot 
absorbed in subtext, 
and my world is 
reel to reel!

Tex and Photomontage by Trev Teasdel

Tequila Snakerise

Tequila Snakerise

The sun was beating down as he pulled his truck into a siding outside Snakeville.

She climbed aboard and poured herself a glass of Tequila, laughing as her long legs rose in the cabin, energising his dull, ‘On the road ’, thoughts.

She sang in a Mexican mode, her wild hair braided and drank slowly.
“ Where you going?” he said
“ Wherever the going’s going . she replied "I am the wind, I follow my heart.. ”.
“ Right ” he said “ I’m headed south cross the border. ”
“ Fine by me. ”

He shook his head and looked thoughtful as her voice rose and fell over his confusion
“ You fuck with me ”
she said throwing her knickers on the floor. He looked in the mirror, on the floor, anywhere but at her.
“ Company rules ” he said “ and besides I’m still a relationship ”.
“ Still ” she said “ that doesn’t sound very positive .”

He started up the wagon
“ you have no place to be? ”
“ I told you i am the wind but you can buy me a meal at the next stop off. ”

He cranked the gear not knowing what he was going to do and rolled by some serious desert. She caressed her breasts and he kept his eye on the road.
“ I never met a saint before ” she said laughing at him.
“ I’m no saint ” he said “ but I keep my eye on the wheel and abide by the rules ” .

They crawled up snake canyon and the sun beat down.
“ We’ll soon be by the waterside, we can get rested and eat ”
“ Cool ” she said.

They hadn’t stopped long when she jumped in the pool and swam a couple of lengths.
“ Come on in ” she said “ this is Eagle Lake where the Tequila flows ”.

He remained in the cabin watching her bronzed body undulating in the water.
“ Do you like my ass Mr Saint .”

He didn't reply but continued watching. They ate in a little hut and took a room for the night and after the tequila bottle was empty, he rode the wind like a hurricane and she murmured his name endlessly.

With sunrise, they showered like fallen saints and started the wagon. She laughed
“ I came like the wind and blew the dust out of your hair what will you do when you get back home? ”.

He looked at the wheel and said
“ most likely feel guilty ”.
“ The wind never feels guilt, it just follows the path of least resistance. ”

And with that she drifted out of the wagon like a half forgotten song. He shook his head and wondered.

It felt like he’d been some involuntary character in a random story on some dude’s blog.. and maybe he was….!
Text and photo montage by Trev Teasdel

My Best Friend Shark

My Best Friend Shark

I was born at sea. My best friend was a Shark. Together we ruled the waves beneath our boat. Don’t ask me how we communicated but it wasn’t conventional. ‘ Don’t take no shit ’, he said ‘ and watch what you eat, the sea is full of plastic, and the oil is slick! ”. He had a scary smile, like a military spiked fence, but there was a wink of the eye and I knew his sense of humour. “ You humans are not the brightest on this planet but you’ve got a bit of style and humility and you don’t taste that good actually ”. I knew what he meant, I’d seen something of the mess landlubbers had made of the planet, it wasn’t good, and it wasn’t intelligent. I learnt to dive beneath the radar and come up by surprise between the oscillations.
You gotta have an edge in this world and I could bet on it. Shark got chased out of the three mile limit by a Coastguard dragnet. I was sorry to see him go but he was not one to get caught by a pipe smoking shark harrier. 

We landed on the Maroon islands where the women were naked and the men climbed rocks. They had all been heading somewhere else when the sea issued new tickets. They weren’t complaining though, no money changed hands and no one went hungry. The sea had challenged them to get on, work it out, and be friends. I couldn’t see anyone building a big boat or looking out for a ride back home. 
‘ There’s no such thing as Civilisation ’ said Jack, a full time lovemaker with time on his hands  "We know such a thing here and we value it and deal with things but you won’t find it any other place that’s why we don’t try to leave ”. 
I could get used to this, no pressure, all day sex, fish, fruit and sunshine but I had a book to write and it wasn’t going to get written between someone’s legs. I had to find Shark, his genes went back farther than mine, he had a wisdom that was rare. He’d taught me since I was a kid and I knew I could find him without a compass or radar. 

Leaving Maroon wasn’t the easiest of things; I’d made a lot of good friends and laid with a lot of them! Shark was waiting for me out in the open sea, our adventure together hadn’t even begun, he had stories you couldn’t imagine, that went back in time and I do mean time. Maybe one day, we’ll stop by and update you on our adventure, but the taste of the sea and the roll of the waves is in my blood. 

Don’t forget, you all, there is intelligent life on the planet but you people look in all the wrong places! And don’t let on about Maroon they’ll colonise it!

Photo and text by Trev Teasdel

I Want my Poems On the World Wide Web

For Keith Armstrong
(the Jingling Geordie Poet)


I want my poems
On the world wide web
Like an International Celeb.
On the Internet for 
NSA to collect and inspect
Read by real spies 
that collate and analyse.

There for the Twitterati's trolling literati
blogspotters and geeky 
Google Globetrotters.
Replacing the nation's White papers
with my wayward cyber poetry capers.

Not for me the Big bad Press
with it's page three Interest
I want to talk to the Sun
that shines on everyone.
Reach three dimensions
in a big black hole
with the power of my digital
poetry soul!!

I want my poems
On the world wide web
Like an International Celeb.

Poem by Trev Teasdel

Listen to it on this video

Or listen to it on Stockton Digital Village Podcast here 

http://stocktondigital.co.uk/blog/podcast/i-want-my-poems-on-the-world-wide-web/

Graphic by Middlesbrough artist Adrian Moule.

The Hippocratic Oath

The Hippocratic Oath

I qualified in Hypocrisy at a quarter past eleven. I was the hippest hypocrite my hippy friends had ever seen. I took the Hippocratic oath and turned it on its head. I studied in the age of Pericles and drank with Hippocrates's wife. She admired me for my intellect but we slipped beneath the sheets of right and wrong. I had a double Martini followed by a double entendre. I was a double of myself in reverse. I taught ethics for the day job and slept on the job at night. I tasted her delights and read everyone their rights. I could preach and eat the peach on a bedroll on the beach. I got caught down in the alley and chased out of ‘Harper Valley’. I met up with Miley and Jeannie C Riley and the rest is just hypocrisy.....

Text by Trev Teasdel

Listen to it on this video- 

Or listen to on Stockton Digital Village Podcast here 
http://stocktondigital.co.uk/blog/podcast/the-hippocratic-oath/

Graphic specially created by Middlesbrough artist Adrian Moule.

Harmonica Joe and Brastrap Belinda

Harmonica Joe and Brastrap Belinda

I was Jack Kerouaced with my pack on my back going nowhere, disguised as somewhere. Harmonica Joe with Brastrap Belinda, in a Volkswagen Beach Buggy, pulled up sharp while vamping a blues harp. Belinda gave me that look and undid her hook and I jumped in quick while Joe wailed his licks. 

That buggy took off through a landscape straight outta Van Gogh. “ Where ya goin ’” shouted Joe “ anyplace is fine ” I shouted back and Belinda gave me the eye. 
“That’s where we going” wheezed Joe, road sand whizzing in his eyes. 

The sea was a velvet quilt and Belinda was well built in all the essential places. Joe was laid back in his well imagined beach shack, honing his licks and harmonica tricks. He was on the road where souls pay no rent, testing freedom in a two berth tent. He had no plans and no ambitions. Life was a surfboard and he rolled with the waves. 

I rolled with Belinda while he cooked tuna under an evening Luna. Joe never made rules, he went with the flow and sometimes the flow went with him. The world was full of targets; rules and conditions. Joe cut himself a different rendition. He slowed down the beat, swapped scenery for his street and did what he pleased. Joe was a teacher but he never did teach, you could learn from him by just being near. 

One day Joe dived into the ocean and caught a fish with his teeth. He never had no schooling, operated by confident belief. He gotten by instinct what you can’t get from books. Belinda was free, we sat by the sea, making up tunes and rolling in the dunes. We got up such a beat , the cans were on heat and Joe headed for Spain, a singing Verlaine, out on the Road again… 'On the Road Again ’.

Text by Trev Teasdel

Crazy World

Crazy World

Oh crazy world where traffic flows through the multicoloured cash flows of abstract economics. And on, past the match-stalk food banks where the huddled homeless crouch in shop doorways, hungry, forgotten, clutching at straws with nothing-left-to-lose, and where limp Union Jacks flag in shag alley, a symbol of the age. Where hope walks blind, where incentive is bent, where portfolios of corruption rewrite laws in retrospect. This England, this hallowed Isle, swinging in the gallows of shame and lies, your people manacled in chains of debt, controlled, spied upon, fearful for their children’s children When will sense prevail? Will nothing stir and nothing ever give?

Trev Teasdel

Listen to it on this video - 

Or listen to an audio version here http://stocktondigital.co.uk/blog/podcast/crazy-world/

Austerity Was Wild

Austerity Was Wild

Austerity was wild, we spent like Cadillacs draining an oilfield, gambled with whole countries Las Vegas style, put the plebs in straight jackets and sailed the ocean in fuck-off yachts. Born to view the world as our playpen, we cheated every game and lied our way up the ladders and took the ladders with us. We were Champagne uncorked, spilling over the globe, laughing as empires crumbled. We broke every rule and replaced every right with a wrong. We did it all, our way!
Text by Trev Teasdel

Listen to it on this video 

Or this audio version http://stocktondigital.co.uk/blog/podcast/austerity-was-wild/

What Ho!

What Ho!
What Ho, the sayeth manifest, brodwinkle through the drought of real reason, von spyeagle twist upon a catchet phrase. Mine basket fullest yonder winding through the frozen driftwood fair vermilion basket fare upon a twitchet twig up high, where yonder brodwinks fly. My mistress pleases in carbon dating ways most pleasant upon a time where clouds of undetermined flight spy back and forth indark. Hail the noted goatback rider emerges from a crest of seaspray sense and nonsense, it matters not to understand in brodwinkle and in anyway.
Trev Teasdel

Hush!

Hush!

Sleepy town, 
beneath the towering hills, 
dreaming of windmills winding in the wild 
beer valleys 
where the naked billowings 
of frosty fences 
cross the boundaries 
of snaking rivers 
bedewed by the silence 
of early hours. 

She seeps out of curtain lace 
through open french windows 
to the open gate wilderness 
of early morning, 
wearing only a random thought 
and hair over her shoulders. 

The questions are all forgotten 
and she merely walks 
through a crowd of mist 
with post box mouths 
and traffic light thoughts. 

The hills are waiters 
bent over tables 
offering wine 
but she declines 
and just walks 
the steep sad plains 
of a world full of guilt and confusion. 

Her breasts are bells 
that ring 
as she steps along briskly 
in the risque sunshine 
of early morning coffee 
with a breakfast of bread-fun 
and a post-van of virtual 
and unstamped mail. 

The snores of the night 
are waking up in the bright 
eyed pigsties 
and the randy deeds 
of knights on steeds 
fade into legend 
as the day cranks up 
and gets into gear. 

She rides a soft toy taxi 
driven by pixies 
over flyovers 
of smoky town industry 
and into the milk white float 
of silver topped reality. 

The horn rimmed glasses 
of brief-cased life 
where bills 
are a mutant menace 
and truth is a lie 
are forgotten 
snug beneath 
the soft crinoline curtains, 
behind the winking french windows 
where the world bends time 
and we tiptoe out of the story 
while she sleeps!

Text and photograph by Trev Teasdel

Sunday Streaming of Consciousness

SUNDAY STREAMING OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Sunday, sat on the sofa sipping sugary drinks, slipping under covers for the Sunday races, slip of a dog at her feet. Pecking at pork pies in pink painted bags near the table nearby the stable. She hums to herself as she drums up a cake from the crumbs of her past and daydreams them into her mirror where she sees who she is and all of her wishes that sparkle like dishes. Supper is served with stolen
preserves, cream of mushroom, soup from the moon. She strums on her Lyre overlooking the spire and slides ‘long a weather vane, down through an open pane. The TV walks past with a portable mast and the rain tumbles down, she’s wearing a frown and hides in the bush ‘til the sun comes lush and spells the word fun to anyone not dumb!

Text and photograph by Trev Teasdel

Strip Jack Naked

Strip Jack Naked

I was born to the game, a pack of snap, strip Jack naked, rolling poker, cheating solitaire son of a lying politician. I was a winning hand on a losing streak with all my aces in a stack; I was King and Queen and a happy Jack with all the Daniels I could drink. I was flush with a hand in the bush. Got a deck diamonds in the house of clubs, bluffed my way in Blackjack alley, spun the wheels in Casino Valley, I wore a Casquette, playing Roulette, picked up a winning bet, took her home in a gold Corvette. She looked so cool lying on my bed, until I noticed she had a Radiohead......
Text by Trev Teasdel

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Graphic designed for the poem by Middlesbrough artist Adrian Moule.

The House of Cards - Radiohead

City of Storms

City of Storms

I lived in a city of storm clouds, down on Door Banging Street, engaged in the Quantum Entanglement of the social relationships.

Nothing was clear cut and there was electricity in the air. I was
engaged to be married but she liked to sleep around. I’d had
enough of stormy relationships, so I just let it go. 

Here, storm clouds rested and refueled and played the field, you could hear them rolling around the streets, storm cocks banging into each other, bereft of manners and all decency. 

My job was Stress Therapy for out of control clouds. It was a tough job with no thanks and their egos sparked and crackled and hit out at trees. The world was their playground and they didn’t care who got in their way, their worth or their right to fair treatment. How I didn’t kick the shit out of them, I don’t know, but my job was to untangle their entanglements and show them a better way. 

Melodian was custodian of the ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, a cellar bar shaped like a blues harmonica, selling Rosé and Chablis and Real Ales. She went like a yo-yo on a Jolly Rodger hammock, half-cut on Budweiser, compliant, and consented and fully in charge. 

I’d only dropped in to raffle my charabanc and catch up on the news of dirty politics. “Haven’t you got a bar to run?”, I said, showering in Vodka and Lime. 
“ Aren’t you engaged? ” she said, massaging my broad shoulders. 
“ Some say the world is written and published and we just re-enact. I say the story is interactive, the author still hesitant, changing his mind and changing it back”. 

I withheld the towel from her and looked at her deeply. “ What is love? ” she said. Just then, the clouds were banging about in the beer cellars, shouting obscenities to anyone who was different. 
“ It’s not anything they would know ” I said “ the world is off it’s head with hatred but I think it can be fixed in time ”. 
“ People are storm clouds ” she said, “ dark with tension, entangled and banging about, but some have achieved slow release through creative endeavour, generosity of spirit, batten down sex and a full bodied wine” . 
I was in no position to argue. The author had drank all the wine!

Text by Trev Teasdel