picasso's secret cafe and the planet of debt - trev teasdel

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PICASSO’S SECRET CAFE AND THE PLANET OF DEBT Rock Poetry and Word Streams by Trev Teasdel

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Poetic inventive exciting wordstreams, poems, flashing fictions etched first on Facebook and other social media, collated and edited for this free flipbook / download. Trev Teasdel is a Creative Catalyst, Word Juggler, Performance Poet, Lyricist, Development Worker, Tutor Researcher, Photoalchemist, digital Archivist from Coventry, living in North Yorkshire. Ran a Coventry music magazine (Hobo) in the 1970's before Two Tone, and a developmental Poetry magazine (Outlet) on Teesside in the 1980's, making a short Open Space film about the work for BBC 2 in 1990.

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PICASSO’S SECRET CAFE AND THE PLANET OF DEBT

Rock Poetry and Word Streams by Trev Teasdel

PICASSO’S SECRET CAFE AND

THE PLANET OF DEBT

A Collection of Poetic Word Streams and stories

Fresh from his hide­away ­ Picasso’s Secret Cafe on the Promissory Planet of Debt, Trev Teasdel etched his own poetic wordstream currency for his very Facebook readers during the later part of 2015 and early 2016. Collated, evaluated and edited, those pieces are here, for free, for you should you be receptive to them. Humour, stories, wordplay, poetry, surrealism and more...

Trev is a Creative Catalyst, Word Juggler, Performance Poet, Lyricist, Development Worker, Tutor Researcher, Photo­alchemist, digital Archivist from Coventry, living now in North Yorkshire.

© 2016 Trev Teasdel. Ranting Reindeer Publications. Photo montage cover photo and others by Trev Teasdel.

Photo of Trev Performing above by Rocking Brian.

CONTENTS In sequence rather by page numbers

Planet of Debt New Poetry Daze The Secret Octave Earth Mission ­ Roseberry Topping Autumn Downtown Colombard Life is a Lottery The Tale of Joey Quantum (Extended Version) Phoenix City (Coventry) Out on the Cutting Edge I was Born in a Joni Mitchell Song Angie Balzac, Napoleon and Elvis Bluebottle Milky Way Dylan’s Cutting Edge The Clock that Couldn’t Tell Time Alien Megastructure Pressing the Button 9th Fret Idiocracy Divorce Before Marriage Trev’s Speech Christmas 2015 The Lou Reed Act “Down at Joe’s Pool Room” Bottle of Notes The King of Kindness Found the World in a Paul Simon Songbook City of Culture Debora lived next door Headlines Harry Henry lived inside a TV Open D

Planet of Debt Cinematography pans the Planet of Debt, Neptune holograms with Tesco Larger; time moves forward then moves back, quickstep to the Mothers of Invention. Ungrammatical scribes fake punctuation in the nursery of cosmic dust ­ the world as circus mirrors! Authoritarian windbags floating on a free market opinion. Orange blue, orange green, orange orange. Concrete pyjamas with escalator zips, quantitatively easing into an existential no man's land. The world of pretend, faking realism,

Apple green apple ready, apple aid and apple maid. Velcro film directors smoking volcanoes behind venetian blinds. Pear­shaped world, what a nice pair, what a fruity pear. Octagonal ocarina with telescopic digimon ­ the world is an abstract spreadsheet, liquid money spilt on a clowns canvas, nihilists artists peddling bikes though strawberry money, strawberry limousines, strawberry strawberries with corporate bananas and a lemon top war machine! Cinematography on the Planet of debt!

New Poetry Daze Poetry is not what it seems. It refuses to wear a tie. It doesn't have a day, even when personified. It doesn't care for rhyme, prefers to remain stress­free and it's syllables are private. Poetry is not the military, it doesn't have to stand in line, salute pre­conceived ideas, march on the orders of General Opinion, be confined to the barracks of books. Poetry has a problem with meaning ­ it can send out multiple messages with one cute metaphor, embrace paradox, be exploratory, and hesitate before fixed ideas. Poetry is your wild card, it thrives on its poverty to create a world out of nothing, it can challenge 'reality' with a flagon of Salvador Dali, it can laugh in the face of 'rules' and forge paths unknown to pens. Poetry is the primordial soup, formless, opaque, hydrogenous with the promise of light; of stars and the uniqueness of it's own universe. Poetry is 'Dark Matter', continuing to confound the scientific mind, measurable by intuition and insight thinking. Poetry can be all things, and nothing and everything in between. There is nothing it can't do, nothing it can't be. You can mould your own version and train it as a pet, feed it and water it with your very own concepts, discipline it, walk it on a lead but poetry is a vapour refusing to be kettled, forming huge travelling clouds, giving life through it's rain. Don't mess with poetry ­ it's not what it seems! THE SECRET OCTAVE Richtown redbull floating­ghost clarity, copy paste convergence, sixfoot dancefloor, iceage fabric, double­bass dub ditty. Lovebreed landscape, floating­point parameters, slipknot interrogation. Iconic focus, sub secret octaves, the hyper­real tunnels. Dance with consoles, telescopic­snakeships, academies of clouded judgement, colour saturated, conjure the contrariness of gnarled intelligence, secret upon secrets, hail the octopus of all octaves.

Earth Mission ­ Roseberry Topping I checked out of Facebook 9.30, the bar was shut, the bordello censored and a sense of seafood, marinated, permeated the laptop lounge where the spies worked overtime and dated incognito. I unzipped the internet and got into something less clingy. The snow bulldozed its way down the quiet lane outside and the wind whistled like a paper seller on a deserted corner. I climbed a tree and networked with the leaves. They spoke of global cooling and I knew just what they meant. Up on Roseberry Topping where the UFO perched haphazardly, the flash lights beamed and the sirens sounded in the dark ­ there was a commotion. "There will be a rational explanation by morning" said one voice to another before they both disappeared into a strange silence. The UFO was a distraction. I had to ramble over the Guisborough hills to the coast to get a message to the Ship Inn. The fallen rocks and tangled trees played chess against my progress and I took a few detours, ascending with only the light of the UFO and the swaying half moon drunk with light ale. I made it over the ridge, saw the oil tanker lights in a line beyond the beach at Redcar. The wind curved and coiled around me, guiding me through the ice and snowbound woods. I checked my phone, Facebook was down and Twitter deserted and there were drones above Roseberry Topping. I sat down, a flask of whisky would warm me up and tried to text my lady. Somehow the message went to my boss, and it wasn't pretty! I'd have some explaining to do! Just then one of the drones exploded, there were screams in the dark and fall out all over the hills. I headed downhill towards Marske, there was some unknown intelligence around, I could feel it, though I was numb with cold. I thumbed a snow plough to Saltburn and watched the grit hit the road. There were still lights above Roseberry Topping and a feeling in the air. The truck wound down the hill to the Ship Inn, and I jumped off, dodging the high waves and spray. Inside there was roasting fire, fine ales and pleasant banter. I followed the bar assistant through the side door, she kissed me harder than I ever remember but that was the sign. I followed down the tunnel where the smugglers used to enter. The tide was out, the moon wavering and the boats were beached. "Facebook is down" said the skipper, " we had to follow the moon". I figured that was some kind of

code and got in the coble and we sailed. The sea was choppy, and the cold spray stung. Just then the UFO took off, there were shouts of surprise from the hills and a dimming of lights. Aboard the craft we could relax, and we scaled across the stars. "They never got us" said the skipper, "it was a close one"! Soon we'd be home, Earth mission behind us, decontamination, hot food and hot love…

Roseberry Topping, North Yorkshire

Autumn with its winds, stirring up the autumn paints, the frowning sky,

the flocking rain on the rocking river, homeless leaves under watchful eaves, a cruel austerity of a flourishing nature, fertilise the ground for a vibrant spring, when hope will sprout ‘til summer's out.

Downtown Colombard Ratatouille owned Chardonnay wells in downtown Colombard where an extraterrestrial diplomat had made love to Donna Kebab on a dare. I know we humans are sceptical but this really happened! It's true. Donna worked her way up in the Sedimentary Parliament of Colombard and displayed outstanding skills that left her critics speechless. "People of Colombard ­ enough of this shit" she screamed. Donna was a woman with an extraordinary vocabulary but she could silence an audience with the way she pronounced 'shit'. Just everybody knew what she meant! She'd written novels like and that and they'd sold! Sometimes the world only needs one word, the right word, and it triggers a continent of imagery and a plan of action. Ratatouille had had too many Chardonnays and had been caught cheating on his wife at breakfast. The press were having a field day, distracting their readers from the inverted reality of the world. The light shone through Donna, and you only had to look into her eyes to know the truth. Well, it so happened that Donna was honoured in the word Char(donna)y, and was well chuffed, but it wasn't enough! Ratatouille, meanwhile, was fiddling the cheese out of the cheese traps in Switzerland and lying about his relationship with the Duchess of Gorgonzola. "People of Earth" shouted Donna Kebab "Don't let the bastards grind you down!". Donna was not one for telling stories in the usual manner and often appeared naked in the dreams of the Colombard Parliament! Just then the Chardonnay Wells burst open and the world became drunk. Nothing much changed and Ratatouille remained cool throughout!

Life is a Lottery They will tell you life is a lottery, a commodity, a comedy, of errors, by design, slavery by stealth, homelessness 'neath wealth. You will slide round a cannister and down the lattice bannister of their vision. The world is a social construct, of girders and panels, designed to effect, designed to control by architects and planners in the social arena. We are the archimage of a new era, a solar panel of raw energy; an integrity of interconnection, a refusal of fashion, an open­necked shirt of unlimited ideas, that springs from the earth, silencing the ventriloquists with a new photosynthesis. Bring your ideas, share your vision, board the transporter, join in the journey, to discover new creative shores.

The Tale of Joey Quantum First published on Scientific American Quantum Shorts Competition site November 29, 2015. 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 intersensory 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

non­violent, 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: wave­particle duality superposition

­ See more at: http://shorts2015.quantumlah.org/entry/tale­joey­quantum#sthash.O1mI754I.dpuf

Phoenix City Coventry, we meet again, I'm nearly turning 65 but once sold Hobo Mag in the Cross and down the Dive. Hubcap city, I rode in a Daimler with my dad, walked your bombed out ruins as a lad, saw the Phoenix rise from out of ashes, peeping like Tom in the Kongoni with those wild lasses; talking Zen with beat poet Byron; Bohemian days with Ratty Roadent in arty days before the Clash. Saw all those bands inside Lanch, thought we were progressive and so advanced. You had designs on me for your assembly lines while I worked on my freedom rhymes, but that was years and years ago, I'm back on a visit to say hello!

Out On the Cutting Edge Out on the cutting edge everyone was sharp, the pop rags were full of rumours and lies and queues went round the block twice. Harry Harmonica and his Green and Red One Man Blues Band was harping on beneath the statue. Two ragamuffins ran off with his hat of coins. Harry was cool, he slept with his rucksack in the doorway of a publishing racketeer hoping for crumbs from a forged publishing contract. He grew up sweeping chimneys and selling the soot to a fake alchemist on Liverpool Street. He swapped his brooms for a one man band kit when he was outmoded by central heating. He'd draw on a thin roll up in a back street Mancunian snug, chewing the fat with a cloned Dylan Thomas and the anonymous Heinrich B. Lennon. They dreamed of a scheme to build a Motorway system made out of twisted metaphors and aeolian scales. Harry was before his time and often forgot where he lived. He was a foot note on a Dylan tour magazine when he trod on it with his muddy boots. Manchester was going wild, the concert hall exceeded capacity and the word was on the street. Harry tried to find the word but the wind was heavy with vibes. The Hotel was full of sycophantic journalists with a vicious remit from their editors. Harry sold them invisible jotters and made up stories that they liked. Harry would never be famous (until now) as he stood on the plinth of Gladstone's statue and sang a pale rendition of Dylan's "When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, And it’s Eastertime too". The world never did catch up on Harry but a friend of his uncle knew Matthias Hohner during the American Civil War, and that's where they say Harry got his Harmonica from…

I was born in a Joni Mitchell song, more of a sub­text that a lyrical alliterative line; more of an inference; more of a nuance; a dance between breaths; in an octave shift from bridge to chorus. I was the note she couldn't quite reach; the thought that was hard to express in a concrete image but that lingered there, somewhere, in the rising harmonies. I was never part of the arrangement; hovering around the edge; evading the conclusions; weighing up the implications; skirting around the issues; looking for something more. I was the mudbath at Woodstock clinging to flesh with a new found earthiness; the integrity of evolution, serious with fun; jumping notes and rolling in a piano's rich tone. I never owned anything or looked ambition in the eye; I was fluid in my opinions; generous with my creativity. All the world was one song, with it's dissonance and harmony; one composition; parts of one whole; it's swoops and it's climbs. I was never part of the arrangement, but I played the field with my soul, sampled its subtleties and wrote my story in an open tune chord!

Angie, do you remember how we conspired to dive into a little bubble they called Earth; born naked with no name between us and planned to somehow meet, through willed serendipity? You took your rock n roll in the zip­drive of your genes and i took some poetry in the top pocket of my soul. We were naive, didn't know what to expect. You were Punk, a clipped electro power chord thrusting through the amps, I was drunk on syllables, mixing metaphors and swaying 'cross the page. We met in song, just like we planned, your jiving rhythm calmed my stressed enjambment and you faked the harmony for both of us. We made our names, even though we came without names, we took the money though we weren't ones to spend; we tried to calm the fear. Lost in a world, empty but for invented meaning, we never took the world too seriously. We were travellers on a train, observing cultures, stranded in a time zone, strung out on coffee, spilling wine to map our love­making. If there was a wider meaning, if somehow the plans had got lost, we never knew. "Let's just be good to each other, there is no more meaning than this" you said. And that's why you came here, i believe, to tell them that ­ you always had your fingers on that harmonic chord. We picked up our bedrolls and put on our headphones, too fast to gather moss… …………….

Balzac, Napoleon and Elvis "Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught." said Honore de Balzac, "Get me Elvis" he stormed " La Comédie Humaine, needs some grit!". He thought for a moment, the room filled up “A society of atheists soon invent a religion”, he said, throwing out another random quote of his own. "You watch him rock man, he's a novel with a backbeat ­ show me the guest list.." Honore read out the guest list, a little pensive but somehow exhilarated "Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Edgar Allan Poe, Eça de Queirós, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Pérez Galdós, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac." Elvis was a little nervous when Napoleon walked in "French Revolution, good gig man ­ how did you deal with your critics?" Napoleon poured some more wine and looked up at Elvis "The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.", he said quoting himself as he often did. Balzac walked up to Elvis, 'Man, you're on now ­ to make great comedy you need to be serious but are the French ready for you ­ this is 1850 after all..." The icons laughed, as Dostoevsky put pen to paper ­ "Yes 'Crime and Punishment', what an idea.." he said, paying attention to the video..(Note ­ this story may be just hearsay).... (Note ­ this piece contains some quotations underlined) ……………………………………..

Bluebottle Milky Way, Milk Tray Roundelay, shopping for stanzas in Bonus Bonanzas, eating a pizza and hoping to feature in somebody's poem. Rhymes clashed, the diction trashed, the metre ran out; the jukebox, Graham Nashed. I was leaning for meaning while sweeping and cleaning, the sheets and the shirts where the faithful and flirts, the trousers and skirts, spill out on the streets where the homeless are huddled in tax­credit forms. I made it with Glenda, a mortgage lender, who lived with one accord, to repossess the House of Lords and paint my words, however absurd ­ invisible......s h K a l m....

On Dylan’s Cutting Edge ­ the shunting engine of the 60's with French Symbolist sunglasses and Picasso hair, with jigsaw chords and bowtie words. Hear the deluxe workbook versions of the classics and the tracks that followed the legendary, parallel, bootleg watercourse way. Desolation Row on piano, Like a Rolling Stone in 3/4 time. The original, non digital cultural mash­up as it was forged in time.

There was a clock that couldn't tell the time, that couldn't stand still for a second, that waved its hands in every direction, like Elvis gyrating to Hound Dog in the black and white 50's, that was hysterically numerical, that ran fast then slow and in reverse. For people who viewed the clock, time was an adventure, full of surprise, a roller coaster liquid time­paint­poster, living in reverse, fast­forward and twin­time. Time without reason, without rhyme without season. Then came the Zombies and the music was good! remember to always let time out of it's cage!!

Alien Megastructure Soon after we built the alien megastructure we went fishing in the Parallel Universe. I saw myself looking at me ­ "How come you're rich and I'm not" I said to my parallel self. There were five Bob Dylans sat around his table talking to each other like they were strangers. "I'm not here to sell you anything " I said earnestly "but i have a question for y'all" I continued, while looking at their name tabs "is this 2015 or 1965?". The 5 Bob's looked at me as if I was a telescope and i just retracted. Just then the wispy empress of the Milky Way brought me my morning coffee. I looked deeply into her eyes and saw all my inner riches leaning against my self awareness. Later in bed, the 5 Bob Dylans shouted 'take two' and we all began to roll…

Pressing the Button anyway, after we got back to earth, they told us this was a 'PolitIcal World'. Well, we'd been away too long and it didn't sit well with us. We just pulled out a fake life­style and filtered out the news. "Would you press the button?" said something with a microphone. "Yes" said I squirting him with my Rosette. He was little amused "Some people don't know how to be serious" he murmured into his autocue. "That's very true" I confirmed. It's was 9 O'Clock when I finally pushed the button, and everyone in the world became naked! "This is not what we meant" said the man with the Microphone, 'we need news not nudes.' I gave up and put a coin in the juke box.. The 9th Planet We came from the 9th Planet ­ 'Spirographik' ­ elliptical illusionists with multi­tracking minds; lucrative gamblers with DNA markers; high brow colonists with zoom­in science. We lived in your forests, coexisting with apes, precipitating the earth into luxuries of life. We plotted the cosmos, straddled the stratosphere, harvested the energy, invented the language; the seedbed of consciousness and all knowledge and excavated the gold! Our motives and plans were lost in time, we became a footnote of myths, a hybrid of fiction, script elements in blockbuster movies. The past exists in spirographs and at certain points we communicate at least obliquely. All the solutions exists ­ you just need to find them. That's all we can say at this point on the graph ­ stay tuned.......

Idiocracy It was somewhere out on the idiot wind, Tent Pole Wallaby was watching in the Mona Lisa mist. His opinion was vague for most of his motion picture life, his air­brushed hair and rubber­stamped profile did nothing to impress his loose­elastic­wife. He was aloof in Alaska, Husky with winter travel, log cabin lifestyle, misunderstood when orders came from the Hounds of Hooverville. He was one of a kind, half idiot, half maverick, seeking fame but incognito. "Tent Pole Wallaby's the name" he said to no one discernable but the sound of his voice carried on the wind. He was a bass player in Buffalo back in the 90's with a two­hump Camel and an unsigned pledge. "What kinda shit is this?" he said to the Hounds "I don't take orders" "You're an idiot boy" said the Hounds and he was last seen out by the gulf, howling like a wolf and listening on instagram to Lisa Marie Presley..

DIVORCE BEFORE MARRIAGE! Casey and Superlative had never married but had divorced each other 15 times. "It's just the way we do things" said Casey, carrying a hatchback mobile phone with twin carburetors. "People do things in a certain order because everyone does ­ you can learn a lot from changing things". Superlative threw back her hair and stared at the camera "Divorce is so much fun, the accusations, the slanging match, sleeping alone and crying into the pillow ­ it can get you pretty horny". "We just enjoy that somehow" added Casey, looking at the exhaust pipe on his 1950's iPhone. "and by not

getting married in the first place, we can sleep with anyone ­ totally free" purred Superlative, thinking of nothing in particular. The camera zoomed in on the couple with no ties to each other and the commentator was lost for words. "I don't know what to say ­ it's wacko ­ can you believe this stuff! A couple that divorce but never marry!". Casey and Superlative loved this level of incomprehension. "If it was necessary to understand everything, we'd have been born with a handbook" said Casey. "I mean, who understands life or the reason we're here? Exactly ­ no one ­ although plenty think they do, and yet we live and die without knowing what dark matter is, whether or not there is life on other planets, how it all was created, the purpose of it all ­ we just get on with it, fake the meaning and try and some fun along the way".

Superlative fancied the cameraman and began snogging on the other side of the lens. "I could really divorce you" she said as the camera spun round and the studio made apologies on air. "Do meanings have to be fixed?" rambled Casey, stepping up the gears of his iPhone. "I mean, I like the fluidity of things; that meanings can flow into each other; alter, reverse ­ it so much more fun than fixed meanings"

By this time Superlative and the cameraman were down to their

underwear and the studio were switching to a documentary about Zebras. "Skip the denouement" cried the producer "let the viewers make up their own meaning" and with that the story kinda disappeared.....

(Photo of Trev and Ann by Rocking Brian Stubley)

The Trev's Speech Christmas 2015: I've just had lunch with Robin Hood. Listening to his stories around the campfire in what's left of the forest, it's evident nothing has changed much except the technology. We pulled up some roots to cook, some nuts and fruit and camp made wine. It's a sad world of lies and subterfuge. You can't believe what you see via the media. Christmas is not about getting out of one's head on a cocktail of drinks, buying expensive presents no one can afford these days, being humanitarian for one day only. It's a time to reflect on what's going on, what true values really are and for switching off the TV. The real world (if anything is indeed 'real' in this quantum soup of waves and particles) is not what you see on TV, on the news, in the papers. This planet, this bit of rock, coated in water and plants and teeming with life (some of it struggling to exist now) is a beautiful place. It's earthy, intelligent and creative in how its systems work. We are not endless consumers defined by economic growth rates, aroused by the fiction of derogatory headlines and conveyor­belt life­styles. The spirit of Christmas is for life, not one day, the consideration, the love, the peace, the camaraderie. Chistmas is a time to think ­ reflect ­ perhaps with a glass of wine! The only true news is the light inside you ­ you're intuition, that gut feeling. Hic and holler and a christmas cracker

The Lou Reed Act The UK, Corridors of Power. Everybody talked about the mysterious 'Lou Reed Act'. Top Secret, said Candy. The rumours were wild. The papers ran the story ­ 'a memory stick stuck in the foam seat in Macdonalds'. No truth said Home secretary "Papers lie". Big Ben was feeling small, times had changed "Young people are so laid­back these days, they don't notice me". The BBC had run out of microphones, the news stories were condemned for predictable plots. "The Economy Walks on the Wild Side" said the Chancellor. Lou Reed wasn't available for comment. He was dating some chick in Miami. Some thought there was a secret code in that bass line ­ a reverse numericalisation of the notation! The Underworld wasn't where it was supposed to be. 'What about the 'Lou Reed Act’ said Miriam, low­cut on London Bridge. Rumour had it she was doing quantitative easing for midnight spies. "The World has Gone Crazy" read the tabloids. That clearly wasn't news and the papers never sold. Just then Lou Reed came back to put the record straight ­ you're all wrong he said ­ listen up.......

“Down at Joe’s Pool Room” It was 1968, the cover of Donovan's 'What's Been did and What's Been Hid', lay on the dusty Dansette. In the laid back afternoon with an early moon rising, we listened to the words 'down in Joe's Pool Room'. Joe was texting, booking tickets for Star Wars, Marx was scribbling notes towards some book or other on the back of a Woodbine packet. A flock of jets flew over the chimney pots, 'looking for trouble' in some far off part of the globe, but we just strummed along, cutting out words in the long poems we wrote. Joe never had a Pool Room, he was too busy texting, but we used to pretend, and we took our cue from the song and played the skiffle band in the corner. Joe fell in love with every girl in town, his texts got complicated. He was stuck in the Summer of Love and spread the love around! On a good day it was 2008, we played Calendar Games and meditated through time. We'd sit on a sand dune and play sand castle tunes with Joe's Pool Room floating on the waves of St Ives. Gipsy Dave wrapped in a bedroll behind the bar, the wind cuttin' through the holes in the door, we sang with some chick from a 60's flick 'Josie I Won't fail you, give me one more time' as the rolling waves moved the Pool Room through time. We were all 'Universal Soldiers' of love, Buffy St. Marie was handing out thoughts that made us all think. Joe became a painter in 2015, he'd still send us texts. I stayed in 1969, watching the Stones in Hyde Park, avoiding all responsibilities. Donovan was still 'Cuttin' it' from Scarborough to San francisco, the last i heard. I got a text from Joe, he'd booked a ticket on ebay. He was still playing that song, and I remember only too well....

Bottle of Notes We broke open the bottle of notes and plastic water murmured inside Middlesbrough Mima gallery nearby. The sky was painted by Picasso in his Monet period and Turgenev wrote the cheque for the Champaign and included the whole of Middlesbrough in his novel 'A Nest of the Gentry'. The 'bottle of notes' was Quantitative Easing at its best with the poor inheriting the Earth from Victoria Mindfield who was dancing at the County Court in an austerity of underwear. Captain Cook, whose ship folded up into the bottle, was caught colonising Starbucks for Mcdonald's. As usual, nothing in the world made sense but everyone pretended that it did and carried on. meanwhile at the masked ball....

The King of Kindness "Hell bent" said the King of Kindness "Give them the Citizens Wage but make sure it covers the rent", "it makes no sense having the myriad homeless and the downtrodden poor with rising resentments, the sad sanctioned masses with their political hatreds". "Top level corruption" he bellowed "is there no one we can trust?" "Off with their heads ­ there's kindness and there's the 'look after their own kindness'" chanted his Royal Fiction. "War and more war, selling weapons to all sides, selling loans in the form of aid at record interest rates ­ enough of this shit" bellowed the Kindly king "Let there be reason, let there be cooperation ­ we're all modified monkeys, look at the way we waddle, who do we think we are? Mere particles in an imagined universe!". "Get a grip!" said the king, “enough of this fuckery and bogus media bullshit. Abandon the comic book tabloids, what have these clowns done to my democratic kingdom? Creeping dictatorship, stuck in this surreptitious, Trans­Atlantic syrup. Work should be fun, creative and well paid. Be gone the whip of inferior superiors, pretenders to governance, mock economists in the penniless arcades." The King of Great Kindness, in a rare appearance, spoke from the hilltop of the internet towers to a world of people tired of all this crap. "Say no to the bullshit!" he ranted on and on until.....

Found the World in a Paul Simon Song Book I found the world in a Paul Simon songbook, walked the plank of imagery, lost my innocence in the metonymy; heard the chiming of a new age in the illumination of alliteration; felt like an assonance in the silent alienation; strung out in a dangling conversation, I graduated “Mrs Robinson'' who held me 'homeward bound'. Rosemary was sage, hazy in the shade of winter thyme Could I have been 'so hard to please'? I read each line of every lyric and slept between the rhymes, in a world of harmony and cacophony, I forged my silent soliloquy and faked it at the Human zoo. I found the world in Simon's songbook...

City of Culture: I announce my facebook page as the City of Culture, hijacked, horsebacked, take the money and run. I will paint my cityscape with prosperity, paint over the foodbanks of austerity. Portray my warplanes as white doves, give free accounts to the knowledge bank. My citizens will be drunk on metaphors, speak in surrealist sentences, appear in the absurd theatre of reality, dance wild in the carnival of new ideas, unravel the oxymorons of conventional society. We will live in a Van Gogh landscape, play the Glass Bead Game with Hermann Hesse, lose ourselves in the philosophical visions of Goethe and Schiller and dance with Nijinsky and Isadora Duncan, make love in Trochaic Tetrameter till the streets rock like syllabic castanets, fish for fold up buildings we carry in our holdalls, re­design poverty as money tree. We will build a new world on facebook and link out till the world is one city of artists defined in new creative ways so work can be fun and fun can be work. A world of culture, a universe of the unspoken imagination. I make no speeches, I relax the rules, the cash is merely symbolic!..Is that clear? ………………………

Debora lived next door. She had a galleon full of Unicorns and milked them every morning when the sun woke up late. The ice­cube milkman collected the crates and paid her in moon gems. The clocks of the world were always drunk, lying on the sidewalk talking in hybrid legalese and ignoring the diurnal chase pursued by plastic crooks with hydrogen backdrafts. Tabitha Tabloid was editing the Daily Lie and tapping the fiscal mind of a fallen funicular financier she half fancied and half didn't! Maxwell Marx, the Hegelian Heliotropist turned everything upside down just for the sake of it. He was a spy with an I Spy phone and watched everyone all at once. He had a million eyes and satellite ears and drank beer in broken sentences. He often went on Facebook and put pigeons among the cats and typed extracts from the Daily Lie. Debora was more funky though, she rode Unicorns and hung out with conjurers. The world was a huge jigsaw puzzle with lots of pieces missing. It was her job to work it all out put the pieces in place. Debora came across a dinosaur one day playing guitar and some kind of alchemy began to happen..

HEADLINES HARRY

Harry came out of the HEADLINE FACTORY and headed down to the hairdressers for a shave, tie replacement and quick brainwash. He was feeling fine after they injected him with headline spells ­ Austerity, terrylisms, and nuclear hairfallouts. They had pulled out his imagination and sold it to a scrum on Fleet street. "We believe in individualism" shouted the editor "but our journalists are clones". A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Freedom to Breastfeed in Public came on to the podium wearing only a tie. Something was happening and the cameras averted their eyes. Harry's instinct was to look for his imagination but it had gone. He could only think as to act as he was pre­programmed to do. Everything he had known had been turned upside down, inside out. Journalism was growing thin and the fat headlines were shedding weight. "Our newspapers aren't comics" screamed the editor, looking menacing like Dennis. "Get out on Bash Street Row and dig up some dirt!" Harry was confused, men in suits feared for their piggy banks hidden in Tax haven sinkholes on Fourth Street and now ­ men in taxies were reporting the news! Some of them even had long hair and looked like Jesus! Harry stopped and dropped his notepad. A man, alone, beneath the neon headlines of Piccadilly Circus, struck a chord on grand piano. Something indeed was happening but he didn't know a thing.... ………………………

Henry lived inside a TV, his job was to suck all meaning out of the news with his portable Vacuum cleaner and milk the cows in the newscasters hair. He grew up in the Parson's Nose, with furniture made out of prayer books and put the clouds in the washing machine everyday to keep them white and fluffy. He believe everyone should have a job but the responsibility for creating enough jobs should be left to the 'Invisible hand' of market forces. Nobody had ever seen this 'invisible hand' because it was, er, 'invisible', but if you were to say it was absurd, he would turn into a liquid Parrot and splash you with his good self. Henry thought no one should cause a 'breach of the peace' but gave you a piece of his mind if you suggested wars should be resolved in non violent ways. Henry embraced all kinds of absurd notions but he never understood the 'Absurd Theatre' even though he lived in it's greatest play ­ Modern Society!

Open D, encrypted chords, 12th fret turnaround, love on the sofa, interstellar dreams, the fat cat in the poor house, bent strings in phased out time, fifth fret, seventh bass, the rumbling arpeggio of politics, riffing on hypothesis, ultraviolet pancake mix, sugar­lemon analysis ­ turn up the amps of simple thought, harmonica pending, semitone intimacy, sex with harmonics in chromatic increments, 12 bar couplets, bottleneck slides, screaming up to the 15th fret, calm front denouement, fade to silence...warm kisses...four­tracked hugs.....

PICASSO’S SECRET CAFE AND THE PLANET OF DEBT

Trev Teasdel