COOL LITERARY QUOTES
by Trev Teasdel
From his own work on Medium https://medium.com/@trevor.teasdel
These quotes, from my poetic flash fictions and stories published on Medium - an online publishing platform, were highlighted by readers of my work on the platform. I have collated them here for anyone who wants to read them!
The highlighted titles will take you to the story on Medium if you click it.
From THE GOLDEN STREET WIZARD
"You laugh at the deconstructed starlight, the textural cacophony coated in coffee with water-winged wellingtons in the Aspidistra leathery foliage of late-afternoon lethargy."
"All the world’s an umbrella and the truth is a patter of raindrops."
"There are medieval streets in your maiden voyage beard."
"You hold your sax like a golden street-wizard."
"Dictators are haunted by you, they envy your lack of compliance."
From A Résumé For Lydia
"She didn’t like the man who hid in her loft on a Sunday, his eyes were unholy and he only spoke in sine-waves."
"She kept an annotated scrapbook of unholy lies with Zen illustrations etched in edible inks and lay in her underwear ripping up to do lists and longing for intimacy with no strings attached."
"Her lovers were meat heads with mountains of man buns with minions that carried their craven head thoughts to chambers of commerce for an afternoon lark."
"Lydia was lovable with an insect collection and skirts of pure space."
"The world was an artwork by artists that can’t paint and expressed by a poet who was allergic to words."
"I met Lydia in an autograph shop, she messaged on Tic Tok, and asked me to write her a short résumé. I wrote it on-line, she said she’d pay me in kind and I guess this is all I could say!"
From Power Chord Primate
"Nothing makes sense in a wild town, you have to invent all your own meanings."
"I wasn’t born to be understood, I peeled the fruit of life on the run."
From Summer Nights — Bourbon Barbecue
"Talking football, talking shop, in a flap and talking crap."
"Jilted lovers under covers, would be lovers undiscovered."
"The thin and fatio under parasol and on the patio."
"Summer nights and some are pregnant."
From Meandering Down the Stream of Consciousness.
"Buttressed leaves in kick crumble rouge,"
"Blow-bubble clouds with tingle-drop raindrops"
"While taxies cut corners to pick up cut-out commuters from their brief-cased compartments and deliver them quickly to lap-top lovers with micro-soft thighs, and dropdown menus."
"The call of the duvet and feather-down pillows in the lover time night."
From The Hippocratic Oath
"I was the hippest hypocrite my hippy friends had ever seen."
"I had a double Martini followed by a double entendre. I was a double of myself in reverse."
From Life on Streetview
"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."
"The music was unbelievable and cut to the chase and the poetry broke all of its rules."
From FISH PIE ALLEY
"In Fish Pie Alley where sullen shoppers swim, time has no power to reign."
"Cashless shops with no joy of tills, slumped in restless arcades."
"I walk defrosted in the neon glare through the ghosts of the belly dancing hoards."
"We are chemical constructs that spark and light and then are heard no more."
"Maple Leaf or make believe, could reality be this absurd!"
"Lovers bathe in Malay Specials, pineapples, bananas, and the grapes of wrath."
"Absurdist politicians walk the catwalk with Pablo Picasso painted policies."
"The harmony of the intuitive revolution, the freedom of the hard pressed."
"The world was born out of jesters, all meaning is transient."
"This is jazz, cool jazz, rocking the rafters; break free of the clichés."
"This is the creative revolution where words and melody override their instruments."
"Break free of the TV, watch the news in a language you can’t speak, ditch the fashion brands, be an individual."
From HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL IN THREE MINUTES!
"To think a novel and never write it is the mark of a craftsman and I’m a remarkable craftsman."
"I work best when nothing hangs on it and why would I want to impress anyone, I’m enough in myself!"
From Investment Poet
"I’m an investment poet, cynical and stoic."
From The Apple-Dumpling Streets
"In the apple-dumpling streets in the Brussel-sprout winter, neon flashing umbrellas reflect thunderstruck window-shoppers."
"With the green melon taxis that pick up and go, near the horseradish banks with potato mash cash."
"The rain is a ballet-burlesque for wet rushing wanderers."
"It’s a Twitter democracy, a Facebook video, brazen on Instagram, barred out of Tumblr and sitting pretty on Medium."
"It’s an impeachment of rain, a conspiracy of drenched-ness, deregulated decency, in the shower curtain subway."
"You sip cappuccino with your French yellow parrot and wait for the weather to pass."
From RISTRETTO
"I met her for Ristretto, she was freshly ground, a barista, expresso, half milk, half water, with oat milk eyes."
“How come you don’t use clichés” she said, I shrugged, “I find them difficult, they always come out wrong”.
“The world is like coffee, it comes in different styles, you can mix up the ingredients and call it different names but it’s always just coffee underneath”
"She was like a skimmed milk Caramelatte, with a shot of syrup and whipped cream."
From THE MAN THEY COULDN’T SACK
"They had sacked him so many times they had runout of sacks — he just recycled them and sold them on."
From Anaïs
"There’s snow on the mountains of the wild Pyrenees, there’s a war in the east that nobody can win, the soldiers are puppets of casino politics and the gas meter’s empty and the candles are lit."
"Now she bathes in her realism and soaks in surrealism and dresses in assonance with essence of synecdoche."
"She’s metaphor and cliché, colloquial and fashionable."
From The Ministry of Easy Lies
"I was sitting in the Ministry of Easy Lies, playing noughts and crosses with the Wife of Bath when Aristophanes came in with Lysistrata."
"His friend, the Queen of Spades was at the roulette table with a secret rouse to wipe out all the value in the tax havens."
"The story really begins with Jack Daniels and Ma Rainey, the mother of the blues, playing Strip Jack Naked in New Orleans back in 1923."
From Off the Rails
"They had words they had to call me, forms I could never fill in truthfully, punishments they had to administer, that always came, they said, from above."
"It’s hard to know when I went off the rails — I never could stick to the training!"
From The Stocking Exchange
"Climb it and fly it, flip it and fry it."
"Tight-knit, fish boat, fish net fantasies."
"This footsie, tootsie, don’t hedge your bets."
From I want my Poems on the World Wide Web
"There for the Twitterati’s Trolling literati,
Blog-spotters, and geeky
Google globetrotters."
"Read by real spies,
That collate and analyse."
From The City by Night
"The smooching smog on Lover’s Lodge."
"Beer spill alley where crooks go straight."
"The towering blocks with eye-lashed windows."
"The mellow thieves with make-believe wallets."
"The wanton ladies with pebble-dashed dreams."
"The cocktail pubs too shy to open."
"The bent accountant that couldn’t count."
From Crypto Currency Nightmare
"Where the bone-dry pubs rattle empty glasses."
"Where the fracking caves of secret sins hide the lies of the universe in clay jars."
"Pyjama wearing citizens, dozing through the day with iPad Euphoniums monitoring every snore."
"On the corner, Little Jack Horner and the protesters from hell."
From The Man Who Had Run Out of Things To Say.
"They have the world taped and tagged with full facial recognition."
"Ask Siri or Alexa why the man who had nothing to say said nothing. They will tell you the same — nothing beats good coffee in the morning."
From RATSVILLE
"I ended up in Ratsville, an infestation of human beings."
"I was a nosy fucker, had an ear for a story and knew how to cash it in."
"I booked into B & B, the place looked like Hiroshima, the radiators were radioactive, I collected rainwater for the coffee."
"Ratsville is a hole, they fight over a crumb of cheese but the whole system is a trap."
"People came here for the threesomes, said they’d had enough of Ratatouille!"
From Winter Apple Boulevard
"In the Winter Apple boulevards with scrumpy cider clouds, the Bilberry Bramley omnibuses are belching to a halt."
"The strawberry-watermelon evening strolls along within the rain."
"The Mango orange cars, the Kiwi banana stalls, the nightfall neon lights, of this kinetic water colourful night."
"All the hidden genders of this magical multicultural madrigal."
From They call me Merlot
"I walk the apricot streets, orange neon and the blue light of Belvedere — the lantern lights of Vodka."
"I’m the wild austerity of good manners, born in the alley of ‘give-no-fucks’, I’m uptown and downtown, in the bootleg bars of a fast-food night."
"I’m Ricotta, Romano, Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano, I’m hot Pepperoni, walking the coffee cup night."
"I’m the rolling cobbles, the trembling tram lines, the nervous news-maid at the paper stand, the horn of every impatient automobile, the screeching tyres, the insecure security guard longing for a good Samaritan."
"I walk with the homeless, the handcuffed buskers, the petrified paupers in this zero-hour town, the shuttered shut down shops, the joking job centres, the soaking, soggy social realisms, the upturned apple carts of the apple-pie tarts, the crumbling pastry of the social order, the current bun politics."
From Poetry Is Not What it Seems
"Poetry doesn’t care for rhyme,
Prefers to remain stress-free
and its syllables are private!"
"Poetry doesn’t have to stand in line,
Salute preconceived ideas,
March on the orders of General Opinion."
"Poetry is ‘Dark Matter ‘
Continuing to confound the scientific mind,
Measurable by intuition,
and insight thinking."
From Lilypad Station
"The mobile lives of brief-cased minds."
"The drifting mists of human episodes and drama, we’re three act plays in a cosmic drama fest."
"Meeting a lover in a soft bedded bower."
From A Sleepy Cliché
"Woke up, a sleepy cliché in a bed of proverbs."
"And paid the rain off in stolen cash."
"I was born without caller ID, you can’t track or trace the world’s biggest after thought."
"Some say I was born with end to end encryption, a mystery to those who don’t know me."
From The Tale of Joey Quantum
"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."
"Joey met this violinist in some bordello on the border."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
From Debt Ceiling
"Money is a lie, that we buy, wrapped up in pie,
Cooked in the books, ’til debts are skyscrapers high!"
"I’m packing up my sub-prime-loans, portfolios, lack of interest rates,
Credit agreements, promissory notes, commercial instruments."
"In this block-buster world,
Full of shadow and sound,
With conspiracies for plots ,
And guns for compassion,
And storylines written by,
Spin-doctors on super-yachts!
You’re loan funded world is in administration!"
From Mushroom Heads
"We are corner street coincidences, silk-gown synchronicities, constructs deconstructed, or biomorphic brocades with built-in brushwork."
"From the nimble nudes of nowhere street to the batik Bauhaus beat of Belle Époque."
"The cityscapes of greenhouse gas, the Cinématographe of the riot squad, the cladding foam of city planners, the crony Classicism of designer politics."
From Hey Up! What’s the Crack?
"Through Venetian specs with special effects,
You get sex by text — whatever next!"
"You get post-grad cash-back
For shagging in the love-shack"
"A 6-pack, fast-track, 0% APR, the money goes far,
A free toy car. So there you are!
In this fiscal boom, you are what you consume
A two-timed dildo under a lover’s moon."
"Your life is a bank,
Instant credit, instant decision."
From Love Song
"When it’s hearts that speak not tongues
In a language queer to pens.
When you feel the tears swelling
And they’re not the tears of pain."
From The People Who Live in the Pavement
"The people who live in the pavement won’t have it, they don’t like their asphalt."
"They know the talkers and the silent ones, the purposeful and the amblers, the skateboarding jay walkers, sidewalking cyclists, crime stoppers and obsessive shoppers."
"No one speaks to the people of the pavement, they are beneath our feet, there for our discarded cans and litter, our dogs pee on the faces, pigeons peck crumbs off their face, their world is a flat earth, they shower in the rain without shame, host shadows from streetlamps, hear the whisperings of the hurrying, the banter as they gallop and canter."
From Opinions from Mars
"It’s a fact, look it up on fact-checker, if they say I’m lying, their algorithms have gone wrong."
From The Parallel Gallery of the Jazz Tate
"Hail the multi-instrumental universe, the abstract cosmos, the expanding jazz quartet, the Big Banging bluesy Bill Broonzy. This is the Parallel gallery of the Jazz Tate. Bow to the holy trio of Art Critic, Jazz Critic and the Holy Laddered Tights."
"It was jazz as usual, breakfast was improvised, we headed off in a Trumpet solo to Trombone town, played in the basement of an upright bass."
"The gypsy jazz of red-bra women."
From I Don’t Want to Talk to Anyone
"I don’t want to tell you anything, it’s none of your damn business, so I won’t, so there."
"I’m with Shakespeare, I do soliloquies, talking to anyone else is plain stupid."
"I tell you right now, I’m not here to please, write your own damn stuff, writers aren’t waiters “What would you like with your wine Sir / Madam — hot sex, murder with a little mystery — would you like it 50 Shades Grey or with peppers?”
"This ‘market’ stuff — stuff the market, appal the editor, send them into liquidation — genre no longer matters! I don’t write for the market, I write to kiss imagined lovers in the dark."
"You want ‘plots’ — well look what happened to Guy Fawkes — and we still have a government centuries afterwards! Fake the plot — the world is a fiction!"
"Ok, I got a little carried away, I know, I’m a ‘Happy Gilmour’, whacking the words like golf balls and still missing the hole!"
"We were born to have orgasms — that’s all we came here for — the rest is just beautiful packing!"
From On the Edge of the Moors
"On the edge of the moors, northern sky skinny dipping in the sea, smuggling seagulls in fish-cake rock, on fossil beach with anthracite trees."
From Moon, You Old Sixpence.
"Moon, you old sixpence of lamplight, rolling about in the roulette sky, hedging your bets, hanging out in old bars and cobble streets, drinking the Sun under the table."
From Apple Juice Alley
"The mango and lemon lies of a lover."
From The Morning…
"The morning was hanging around outside when I awoke, full of birds on their iTunes apps, tweeting their latest creation. Deprived cars, begging for petrol, kept a low profile when their owners approached, languishing to robotic jobs in rush-hour queues, as if this was the planet of work and idleness!"
From Lemon Drizzle Avenue
"All the world’s a dust cloud
of philharmonic
lemon drizzle
love juice…"
From A Place Called Nothing
"Poetry is money, to be treated as cash, a promise to pay, valued but nothing special."
From BOOKCASE STREET
"My personality was a mix of early drafts, cute revisionism."
"I was dramatic monologue in a world of broken dialogue."
From The Jam Pancake Rain
"Lamplight lovers in lollipop shops.."
"Toblerone telephones in tumbleweed bags."
"In Kit Kat cafes or Dormouse Bodega bars."
"Embrace the Expressionism, wear one boot reversed."
From THE CONFESSIONS OF AN UNPUBLISHED POEM
"I am ink-resistant, page phobic, happy not to be just another poem in an anthology."
"I’m a wild dog poem in sniff alley at one with the rag and the bones."
From I Bought the Earth on eBay!
"We tried to buy the sun, but the price tag was too hot."
"I bought the Earth on eBay, no money-back-guarantee, Capitalism was fully installed."
From Tracy Woke Up..
"It was raining cigarettes and all the laws were written in lipstick."
"Her daughter, wore pinstripe predictive text and dated a stamp collector from Harrods."
From I Fell Out With Poetry…
"My rhymes had been hacked and lost their sparkle and I was stressed by the second syllable."
"I’m not one to shout “give me a line break” but I’ve sat on my assonance too long."
"Some have seen me walking the doggerel, muzzled with no bite but I’ve been known to cock my leg and leave my scent on leaves of grass."
"I am a man of letters — most of them are French — it’s not that I’m bilingual, but poetry must have a stench."
From Not a Cluedo
"My thoughts are Financial Instruments, I trade them like derivatives, watch them on the FTSE 100 Index. The more I think, the higher the capital Gains. It’s all a game of Monopoly, a Scrabble for words and clues."
"Professor Plum had a theory, he said all literature is made of anagrams and that’s how to arrive at the truth."
"We live in a world of blame, and I’m big enough to take it all and let the world go free."
"We are all born to contradictions, it’s how we navigate our way, some toss a double six, others get by with 3, it’s all to do with relativity, the space time continuum."
"Miss Scarlett just sent a text, I can’t believe what she just said, I’ll be around to see her later, if Professor Plum doesn’t get there first."
From Secrets You Will Never Know
"The town was wet and full of people working in miserable jobs with little pay as if it was their duty to please somebody in authority."
From Snack Bar Morning
"We live in a forgotten novel in a second-hand world, with notes to ourselves in the margins of time. Time is a trumpet, blending and blurring the notes, we no longer know what the game is."
"Quinton street is full of rain, the drains are busy labelling raindrops, the letter boxes are hungry for letters, the cars are punished with parking tickets, the wheels are being clamped, coffee has replaced petrol and the pumps are full of price tags."
From Guinness and the Philosophy of the Gods!!
"I came to the world for the philosophy — I like a good argument — but it wasn’t out of idealism and I still feel a little alienated."
"I light up a beer — take a long cool drag on it, inhale it, blow beer rings over the beer gardens for philosophical amusement."
From Joe Toe-Rag
"The world was built out of dictators, money-lenders and racketeer politics but Joe just slid underneath their understanding and turned his poverty into a pentatonic harmonic."
"He built his wooden shack utopia on the edge of some dark dimension and slid up to the 12th fret whenever the rent was due."
"Joe was no dinosaur despite the scales all over his guitar. He bent the rules like he bent the strings and escaped along his endless bass-runs whenever the authorities called."
"Joe was nobody’s fool and his one and only very best friend."
From Walk in Friday
"In walk in Friday with the hours arranged like chairs and the semi-colon of the weekend ahead, I counted the cameras watching me."
"Plodding pedestrians pretending to be free in a free economy where everything costs too much."
"I am the cascading poet with cascading words cascading all over the page."
From “..As a Judge..(Hic)”
"I was born drunk, it’s a sobering thought."
"My tenure at school was a Rum deal, I got a B+ in the Whisky class and was in the school orchestra as a Barrel Organ."
"I was an Inebriate of the College of Eloquence and slurred my way through the exams and reached an Impasse in the Psychology of Intemperance."
"I was a Barrister of some swagger and litigated my way to wealth, I owned Vineyards in Bordeaux and was appointed Liqueur of Saint-Émilion."
From A Man With Seaports on his Head..
"His thoughts were trade routes, the neural networks of global shipping lines."
"Voltaire watched his own imagination behind a paywall on Netflix."
From Second Hand Story
"If time was caught on a speed trap camera, imagine the points on its eternal licence, and to whom would it pay its fine?"
From Holographic Monday
"Poets, landing on the veranda, pecking at loose metaphors in crevices and chewing on weather beaten rhymes."
"Bone idle politics slumped on a park bench."
From Personal Analytics..!
"I am the Oculus of an Onion Dome
A Gothic arch,
a parapet with panelling in the pavilion
Art Deco, Romanesque,
Bauhaus, brutalist, deconstructed Byzantine vernacular."
From Nicky had a Soft Touch..
"She was learning to be who she was, not some product stacked on a shelf waiting for some shopper to put her into his cart and check her out."
From Deviant and the Author
"He pushed through the world as if all the molecules had no right to be still"
"Deviant was a writer that couldn’t read or write but there was a book inside him just waiting for a literacy course."
"If the world was made of words, it would talk nonsense!"
From The Outsiders
"We wrote in smoky cafes like existential monks, dreaming of literary sex in downstairs musical dives."
"We wrote our poems like lead-guitar solos, bending our metaphors through cheap and earthy amps."
"We lived in the second-hand bookshops, musty with paraffin heaters, read the books for free."
From Medium Rare
"Don’t call me baby, I was old for my age, a quirk of nature, I played with rattle snakes while lounging in the cradle."
"I’m just ordinary, just like you, nothing to shout home about, but I took a left turn on the road to nowhere."
"I married at 24 and divorced at 23, I did a double flip backwards and landed on my feet. The world owes me nothing, I took it all already, smart meters have got nothing on me."
From In Velcro
"I was news phobic — it’s all bollocks anyway."
"The weatherman came round on Tuesday, he was a bit stormy in the east, but the sun was shining out of his ass."
"I went fishing off the dock, the wind blew the town out to sea. They all came back looking like shipwrecks, I poured a little whisky on their sails."
"I run my stories through a Velcro machine and somehow all the random lines hook up."
From Market Forces
"When T.S. Eliot got out of his car and spoke to the press, the news went silent for a second, “As a man familiar with Wastelands, how do you think society is going?”
"There was a revolution on Lincoln Street, the police were out in force, but all they found were empty words and a few posters on the floor."
From The Barleycorn Bacon Hills
"The white hoary wind that twists and turns your hair."
"The dog-eared towns, waiting to get out of themselves and walk with the abseiling hills, jingling their cash tills and taking off their corporation taxes in the hot sun. resting their ring roads on a tiny hillock, overlooking the plastic cup sea."
"I wind up in the snug where the real ale purrs, beside the fire where the gossip-sippers spit and snarl, where the fire cracks, and the story tellers spin their yarns."
"The world is a film, barred in 6 countries, with weak shallow characters, that’s nothing like the book and the plot is a travesty, slated by award winning critics with mentions in the credits."
From TIME LAPSE WORLD
"We are premature orgasms, never fully satisfied, chasing unreachable goals, driven by culture, by DNA, peer pressure and notions of destiny."
From My Day in the Shed
"The world is a rich man’s play toy, it’s time we took the batteries out. They’ve had far too many free lunches, it’s time to lock them in the shed."
From Nothing
"The Donkey jacket bulldozer clouds bully their way across the sky."
"Does love even matter — gin comes two dollars cheaper,
but don’t quote me on that."
"I took these two cent words, this long and ruffled sentence, these missing notes from a onetime melody, and gambled them on this post."
From Clarissa Tested Positive
"Clarissa looked at her sex toy, it was the wrong colour and looked cheaper than it did on Amazon, she re-packaged it and put it up for sale on eBay — unused of course!"
"Strange times, the fascists sounded like socialists and the socialists sounded like fascists, their rhetoric had come straight out of a blender."
From Polished Script
"I’m no actor, I drive a tractor, I’m a nuclear reactor, Max Factor, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC…"
From El Zorro
"It was strange how the rain fell out of the clouds with pink parachutes."
From Poetic Vérité
"Out again
in the poetic rental rain."
From Small Town Pub
"A man could sleep in a beer glass or curl up in a crisp packet or slip on a time spill from the kegs in the cellar."
"It didn’t matter, the gods were dyslexic, and their texts were ambiguous."
"This was the beer academy for liquid intelligence and slurred analytics, you pickled your opinions and forged your certificates."
From Frozen Reverie — Take Two
"Snowfall on the footpath, icicled bikes and closed down shops — are humans smart — I doubt it "
"The snow is puffed up rain, white suits of crystal, crunchy and crisp, it stopped the monorail, closed the schools and indoctrinated the world with coldness."
"Shhhh, don’t make a noise, no one has spoken here for years, the libraries liberated the words — they drink it out at the Verb and Noun, slur their nuances and sleep with fancy numbers in the Mathematics Bar."
"I came here for the wisdom, the stream of consciousness, the meticulous manifestations of cooperative corruption — don’t question me — I spell things differently — I am empowered that way."
"I read it in the Financial Times, the bottom dropped out of the market, I scratch my bottom — it’s mine so I’m allowed!"
From My List…
"My words are a list, functional, sequential and instructional, matter of fact, lacking interest, invoking no ideology, or energy or anything exotic, erotic, or despotic."
"I am a list of raindrops leaping from top heavy clouds, sequential and functional, erotic in my bounce and puddling."
"I tell the wind of Chaucer, it rebukes me with its Shakespeare, for a roll in the hay, ho, the merry go, dancing Maypole."
"I roll in a wet sociology with historical facts arranged in a list, the thick mud of mad politics messy with austerity."
From Noted…
"I stole all my words from the dictionary — my librarian was suspicious."
"We are just sprouts and dumplings in the iron-stew of life, our choice in life is gravy or apple-sauce — we dream all day of pudding."
"We are all football fans — war is football gone mad — we cheer our teams and riot when they score."
"I live in the library of my own imagination and lend ideas to the world — it’s quiet in my library — the rat race is fearful of the library cat."
From Cuban Heels
" was born one fine cubist morning, a growing work of art of shape and colour, rich in word dapples and tethered meanings. A walking canvas of some showcase, a catwalk of purring expressionism."
"I lived the life of artist-late-for-work and collaged all my audits for the corporate Avant Garde and regarded all my reprimands as placards and portfolios."
"My CV rang loud about the joy of sex, of each obsession and how I love the kinks."
"‘Problem Solver’, yes that’s me, I created more than I could solve."
"I embraced the leadership, used my initiative and bragged about my skill in crafted laziness."
"Oh, I was such a one, or maybe two or even three, I faked arithmetic and undid the algebra until the fabric of the world came loose."
"I repeated myself so often, I only watched repeats, with the risk of repeating myself, repeat after me, I only watched repeats."
"I sold my soul to Geometry, I had an angle on everything going."
"I walked on Cuban heels and wrote the only poem not to be worthy of the name."
From A Change of Trains.
"The station was packed, a cat and dog chase up staircases, across platforms, a catalogue of delayed trains and a dogma of reasons."
"The station was full of AI soldiers, too intelligent for war, a twist of politics and all the war trains were reassigned. We talked literature, from Lady Chatterley to War and Peace and felt like imposter character traits in a fake realism."
From WHY WOULD YOU?
"It’s all so serious, spreadsheet series, bill deadline serious, money making serious, relationship serious, regulation serious, law-making serious, territorial serious as if countries really exist, as if the sea isn’t a glorious flood zone, as if it never rains in November — where is the fun in all of that and what do you get for all this seriousness"
From The Beluga Caviar and Saffron Scenario.
"Finally the novel came out, I hired a bureaucrat to finish it off. Sure it sold 3 million in four days before the authorities shut it down."
From The Writing Industry
"I broke into the writing industry, if you pardon my verbs, and famished, I consumed a few pastiches and slandered my clichés over fresh parchment."
"I was a would be, could be, might have been, bit green behind the horns poet of some anonymity and award winning scrabble player."
"In these days of the Industrial Writing Revolution, I am non-industrial and certainly not industrious, but I know how to make words revolve."
"I am master of the smoky metaphor and tall chimneys of erotic onomatopoeia. I weave my poems on a jacquard loom and mentor myself in the midnight mirror."
"My first novel was written by a ghost writer who scarred the publisher into paying out a golden jackpot."
"I was commissioned to write a play, but they didn’t like my long dramatic pauses."
"I escaped down the disclaimer with a laptop lover in my arms."
"No words have been used in creating this — it’s really still a blank page."
From A FALLING FROM GRACE
"I wish the rich would learn some mathematics — they constantly overestimate people’s ability to pay."
"Yes, I leaked it to the press — we are starting our own energy companies — giant solar panels on the desert — free power to the whole world."
"In this cool lentil curry evening where the chickpeas creep and the spraycan wine machine is burping in tune with itself."
"Monsieur Bakerloo is trimming his roast garlic beard and preening his feathers, his women are streams of consciousness, impressionistic, auditory, physical with erotic eyelashes."
"The world is predicated on war and well hung moustaches but Monsieur Bakerloo is unconcerned with Jalfrezi and Madras — he’s more Malay Special with soft sauce, pineapples and banana and ribbed condom aphrodisiac cocktails."
"The evening is smoking a pipe and reading Le Monde founded by Charles de Gaulle and filming lovers for leisure."
"The world is made of Goat’s soup with fine chopped asparagus — I leave my calling card and visit the bathroom."
From I FAILED…
"Money — it’s a whip — a baby’s rattle — an attention grabber — you never get to keep it— and if you do it becomes a worry."
"The world of men is a liars dream — a pyramid scheme of deceit — a wrong turn at the crossroads of history."
"Trust is a fiduciary you’ll never be the beneficiary of.."
"We sleep with the moon in the banana sky with twinkle dimmer lights and the faint buzz of UAP’s humming around our head."
"I lost the plot but I wrote the dream."
"We are authors lost for words, scrambling for ideas in Phrase and Fable, throwing the dictionary out with the bathwater, confessing our synonyms to Roget’s Thesaurus — I bet all my adjectives on the bubble economy."
"We are all up our own arse — the famous get cancelled — the cancelled get famous — the world goes around and around — it’s all really just a nonsense — we are all actors with no sense of the play."
"I am your servant — and liar extraordinaire."
From An Apology…
"I hate to mess up a blank page like this but I have no manners at all."
"All my whistle blowers have been arrested and all their whistles have been destroyed."
"I’d use the app with facial recognition but I’ve no distinguishing features, they say I’m faceless in the crowd."
"My passport says Atlantis, I’m lucky those at the customs don’t know their Geography, they were busy putting parking tickets on UAP’s and asking if I was promiscuous."
"By now you are wondering if this author knows what he’s writing about — it’s a good bet he hasn’t got a clue. I bet he hasn’t got a clue, he’s not the kind of author to care — just ask him, he’ll confirm it and sign his autograph."
"And as for party politics, well I was at each and every party and apart from discarded underwear, I couldn’t tell you if anyone else was there."
From The Apple Crumble Pie
"The world was full of adults, busy with work and finances, shopping on a low budget and collecting postcards. On a school day they locked us in the back of a black and white TV and let us out when we had been programmed."
"There was always a control freak on the block, someone watching your every move and criticising, they had giant Alsatians that barked and made you run up beanstalks to get away from them."
"I lived in Toy Town, it was a stress free environment and everything we knew was pretend. Things are not much different now — they fake it all and continue to toy with us."
"We ironed our poverty ready for work and travelled in an old flat-tired bus."
From THE RUMOUR
"The rumours were true. I investigated myself and found myself to be suitably investigated. I couldn’t make it up, so I didn’t try."
"I’d read the papers if it wasn’t for my illiteracy — they say my virginity is all over the news — if that’s true — I’m fucked!"
"We are all scandalous bastards in the epic episode of our slice of life alternative comedy."
"I’m a poet and handed in all my rhymes. They hate anyone who goes free verse. I refuse to stress my meaning."
"Why the other day someone asked me if I was guilty — they were on the phone to someone who wanted to know."
From Web of Wine.
"I am the poet of the underground physics class, I mess with theorems in a test tube of poly-frantic politics."
"I am the fifth lover on the moonlit ladder, drunk on corporation tax and social expectation."
"Don’t ask me for my identity, I lost my identity decades ago, on a night of abandoned ego, in a suppression of passion, I came far too soon and was sent back to try again."
"I am wine verified, qualified to teach nonsense to no nonsense inquisitors."
"I’m the rumbling tub of the money making world — who are you calling corrupt?"
"I raise my glass to the lateral thinking scientists, the scientific method actors, the dancing data of fact and fiction, the law and disorderly, I accuse myself of soberness. I only came here to dump these random words on the page — I faked it all — I can’t lie."
From I am here to tell my story
"I was created in a fiction, slipped out through a space in a sentence and found myself here in the back room of an alehouse making notes."
"My family were alchemists, no gold or silver, a precipitation of the soul, they hid their light from the soldiers of the state, candle lit ancient literature, ale and breadcrumbs on the floor, the deep-state of the universe in a room without a view."
From Raven in the Fairground Sky
"The clouds, like rare plums, raven in the fairground sky, the ravenous rain on Marmalade tops, the dayglow cereal of everyday life, a cut up mural of Marx and San Miguel, pen pals in the lost mountains of a paperless office."
"The universe is a critic’s dissertation, a bibliography of supernovas and black holes, in dispute and sent for arbitration. The world is a government of soft-soap and distraction, messy with paint pots of noodles and crossbows of corruption. I wear Wellingtons in protest and eat at the table of the poor."
From Mindy’s Cafe
"I was due back on Facebook, but I’m sure we would have made love, it wasn’t anything physical, just an energy we couldn’t ignore, but there were 16 messages and 200 likes and I was curious to see what kind of shit I’d stirred!"
From THE ARMADILLO BEACH
"In the deck chair summer where the crossword novelist resides in a world of cryptic clues. His life is a puzzle in a black and white grid of wordplay definitions that fill in the blanks in his novelette life."
"His plots are like whisky, best taken neat, and the subtext is the brandy in the eyes of his best friends wife."
From Untangling Threads: A Journey through Expertise and Simplicity.
"My cave was full of Council tax assessors — I couldn’t believe the cheek — “Look it’s a bit of rock with a hole in it” and still they wouldn’t go — until they noticed that I shared the place with a Lion!"
"The world is full of price tags, financial pollution is a real concern in a pro-debt economy."
From Urban Mosaic: A Whimsical Portrait of Town Life.
"In the cucumber chambers with parsley sprig policies the prattle of clauses are pickled in plunder, the world is an onion spinning in space with sliced carrot moons and lemon curd suns."
From Leaha’s Story
"We sit in the storytelling café where stories tell themselves, and in their own time and their own way."
"Love is not like a war — no one has to win or lose — it’s just what helps us get through."
From JELLY FISH LANE
"We made love on Crab-Fish Lane in a shelter out of the rain, the world was made of oysters while we ran naked in the Flat-Fish Rain. I made my money on Fish Pie Lane and rented out my soul. I took a boat to some place of note and did business at the House of Clones. They all looked like people I had once known and they’d travelled there by Drone."
"The world is made of popcorn, the world is made of fish. I was born to change the world and live the Jelly Fish wish."From A PACK OF CARDS
"The day has been like a pack of playing cards, full of jackasses and a 52 card pick up and even the beer was on loan."
"Jealousy’s a losers game, I go with the flow, and role with it, no one owns anyone, it’s all a game of bluff."
"I was born on Inkblot street, I had to read the signs to survive. They said I had the brain of a Parker pen and the personality of an august fly."
"I am the genius on Inkblot Street, I own my own well known inkwells. My cars run on the nib action and insert their own ink cartridges at night."
From Catalytic Lovers
"Some of us are logged in, or timed-out or in sleep mode, we are fat data-bases with wild emotions, accusative or encouraging, sparking on our chemical base, neural connective tissues with social issues in this virtual reality, we call life."
" We are sponge fish or cat fish running for the train that’s always late with underpaid staff and QR codes that open the brain to other realities, realities that cut loose from multiple choice classrooms where there is only one right answer."
"Work is always punishing, the sea always beautiful and blue, but never a flood zone, an inundation with lost advanced civilizations awaiting discovery beneath. We know so little — yes, we who think we know it all…"
"We are catalytic particles, sparking and cackling with electrons, elliptical in shape, going round in circles while our thoughts abound in parallel universes…"
From THIS SWEET PEA WILD
"I am the wrapped up and entangled seaweed of human emotions, soothed by summer waves, a sand sculpture of intuitive thought, the secret of the Easter Island effigies."
"These paperless reaches of flat bedded sands where humans walked naked and first wondered who won the match, what was the score and if politics is the gospel."
"I am the sweet pea of Sicily, a climbing Lathyrus of the silken Aegean — this life of mystery and intrigue."
From Salamander
"I asked the world if it was a flat bed beach of rolled cheddar cheese, vintage, buttery sweet, sharp and salty. The world was sandwiched between replying and not replying."
"I feel like rolled oats on the Salamander beach, amphibious, polyamorist and honeyed in a hot sun stoneware breakfast bowl."
"Most people ignore poetry because it can’t be eaten, or made love to or declines to add shareholder value to anything at all."
"This is not poetry — just my weird looking timesheet. Poets should go on strike!"
From Life on Mars
"Rickie Lee was reading panpsychism when the telephone rang. I was still learning the alphabet down in the basement. Rickie didn’t even have a telephone — she could make things ring just for the hell of it."
“I added a ‘Time- Rollback’ app to the atomic clock. I wanted you to be the first to experience it, that’s why I brought you here”. I have called the app ‘The Teleporter Auberge’"
From What are days…
"It’s Monday today — no wait it’s Thursday — oh what does it matter — a day’s a day whatever its name — things are what they are — not what you call them."
"I took my poetry down to the garage to have the metaphors cleaned and tested — now they sparkle and my personification has had fresh oil — you have to wear gloves when handling poetry — it gets under your finger nails."
"It’s marmalade Friday, the UFO’s pop in for toast from a pop up toaster, the military hand over their weapons to the Toy Shop owner and war is declared null and void."
From Somewhere in Time
"The world has been consistently photoshopped for thousands of years. You are slaves with small and varied degrees of freedom."
From Car in a Sand Dune
"Smithford worked at the local tax haven fabricating shell companies for clients and secretly leaking their data to anonymous whistle-blowers. He was happy in his job and often kept secrets from himself."
"Smithford would often drive his car into a Bob Dylan lyric and talk to some of the characters and change the lyrics when no one was looking and soon became the unacknowledged copyright holder of a huge back catalogue."
"When I lied about being an extra in A Hard Day’s Night, I was merely being creative. Actually I was hardly born yesterday. I wore the 60’s like an apron, while cooking up some apple crumble. I too have no idea what I’m talking about — it’s really not a requirement in a world entirely of my own."
"I am creative television, I broadcast my daydreams 24/7, you have to be over 18 to tune into my fantasies though."
"And what do I represent, if art has to be representational, I represent the confusion of life."
"I wish I could ‘see what I’ve done here’ but I can’t, I have my limitations, so you’ll just have guess. I am so sorry!"
"This little piece was brought to you by a rise in the cost of living — enjoy!"
From I Admit I Am Stupid!
"I am like the fishcake sea, I work from wave power, I look out the window and wave at everyone."
"I can’t say for certain but I was made out of experimental clichés and married literature one drunken night. I invented plasticine realism and shaped it to my imagination. The world owes me nothing, but I’ll take it anyway."
"Oh I get stupid, I can’t help it, I was born in the absurd theatre, the Commedia dell’arte has nothing on me, what, with its stock characters and improvisations. I played the laughing stock and never apologised."
"I do try to be typical, but it just doesn’t work on me. This is the best I can do!"
From Artificial Stupidity
"The red sodium sponge sun smiled for the camera and combed her golden flares. Anorak, a man in a coat who looked like an armadillo, smiled, as the soft play rain with the vanilla soufflé brain, lounged in some far off cloud dreaming of rivers and seas with slinky dished fish and Turtle crab shells."
"I was sitting in this bar feeding ideas to TS Eliot when Wystan Hugh Auden stopped by for a chat, he’d invented the world’s first computer with syllable-count code and wanted to swap it for a meal and a pint. Of course we all agreed that would only be fair."
From Botticelli Italiano
"The world is a pasta dish painted by Hieronymus Bosch, with tincture of Philosopher’s Stone."
"Botticelli Italiano served small air tubes of Tortellini. The Rigatoni rain belted down on the tight torsos of Italian male sculptures. The wild spaghetti haired women, like walk-in frescos with deep, rich hues and intricate shadings."
"The covers are always on your side of the bed, I was hoping for a blanket decision, that’s frost on the windows, I’m writing a covering letter to myself!"
"Banks are a spent force!"
"What happened to wild sex — I haven't seen it for a while — you need a license for passion now and it’s taxed at the basic rate."
"Yes, I’ve seen the divorce papers — you could have spiced it up a bit for newspapers — that section on performance in bed was a bit limp."
"All those women I’ve been seeing, you got them out of a phone book, they’re just numbers, nothing special I swear. And anyway I use WhatsApp now with end to end encryption."
From Corruption is the New Integrity!
“Corruption is the new integrity — embrace it — accept it” read the posters all over town."
"Corruption likes to keep dry, water causes leaks and that’s not good for a crooked set up."
"It’s hard to write to all my past selves, I have been so many people."
From Downtown Dullsville
"This was Dullsville, where the bread fell off the back of a lorry, where the beer drank itself under the table, where the radio signals from the other side of the universe never reached down to. You could hear a pin drop, a bed bug singing in the bath, even Joey, a local god, sat motionless with his fallen angels, and as for the gambling casino, it was definitely a case of “no dice son!”"
"The sea was in therapy, someone was trying to coach it to wave again naturally or else fix the wi fi back up to the moon, there were experts on the job, even the salt had walked out of the sea in disgust."
From The Thing About Conrad…
"All the streets were fitted with Ad blocker but you’d need a three step verification to drive down them. Conrad unfriended me and I accepted his unfriendliness, he’d failed English and they had fitted him with an app called Grammarly — there was red line under every word he spoke."
"Conrad rang to tell me he was seeing my girlfriend, as if that was going to rattle me. He told me in detail what he had been doing with her, until I told him I didn't have a girlfriend."
"I tried not to think about Conrad but he turned up everywhere, he was like rain when you’re on holiday, clouding your judgement with a liquid presence."
"Do we really need schools now, can’t we just Google it? Google is great for facts but it doesn’t make you think — but then neither does school."
"Conrad would be gone for long periods of time and would return covered in Dark Matter, “It’s pure data” he told us — and of course he had an app to read that data."
"Yes, yes, I know you’ve had wrangles on the board of the Cancel Culture and you are editing all the poetry out of Shakespeare to make him sound lame and it’s not now clear what Macbeth saw before him, I’d hazard a guess but you’d have me shut down."
From The Sun Rolled Out of Bed…
"The news were blaming the ‘woke’ but hardly anybody was awake, the earth was like a sleeping carriage spinning around an inebriated sun. It’s a sleep walking planet, we’re all engrossed in our dreams, it’s a wonder we bother to say ‘hello’ to each other."
From Walking in the English Rain
"I decorate beards, it’s an unusual occupation but it’s the only job I could get in the loneliness of a world wide recession. If anyone asks, I say I’m English, although I know that countries don’t exist."
From I Think My Story Has Gone Viral!
"I’m ahead of the game — all my works are a blank page, I’m a literary contradiction, the word is out…."
"PS This was written before civilisation was wiped out — if you are reading this you are in a backward time loop — contact your service provider for advice…."
From Post Truth Logic
"Logic is stretchable, gooey stuff, you can pull it this way and that way, roll it in a ball, throw it at the wall, snip it short or pull it long. Logic isn’t for losers, it’s off the wall freeform reasoning for no reason, it’s seductively deductive, it’s statements are unstated, bohemian, Pop Art and DaDa Expressionist Impressionism."
From Hedging My Words
“That’s the long and short of it” said the Hedge fund manager, slamming the door and bank rolling one billion on a bet against the pound. “Seek out the weakness and play to the detail not the trend”
From How We Grow Up
"I never grew up. I cut and paste my personality to match the day, a scrap book collage of my best moments, we are artists, whoever we are, days are easels, foolscap, blank screens, we fill it with the splash and colour of raw emotions and episodes, hang it to dry and try to sleep."
From Ramone Syndrome
"Everyone was in the news, you couldn’t move for the war crimes and social media leaks. Lying was the new truth, deceit a social skill, everyone thinks they own the world."
Holograms From the Lilac Canopy The first of 13 books written on Facebook and other social media published 2015. Consists performance poems, surreal / humourous and poetic flashing fictions and stories. Read or download the free PDF book here https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/02/holograms-from-lilac-canopy-by-trev.html
Holograms From the Lilac Canopy The first of 13 books written on Facebook and other social media published 2015. Consists performance poems, surreal / humourous and poetic flashing fictions and stories. Read or download the free PDF book here https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/02/holograms-from-lilac-canopy-by-trev.html
JAZZ TOWN - Spoken Word and Music album and book. Selection of work set to my guitar or bass guitar. Click the link to the Jazz Town page to view the PDF book and the Bandcamp player for the musical versions. "This is Jazz Town. The melody of the rain, Trumpets of improvised images rain down. Maple Leaf or make believe, could reality be this absurd!" https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/02/jazz-town-by-trev-teasdel.html
LEMON DRIZZLE AVENUE Publish 2022. Newest book. Click link to view or download free pdf version of the book. Titles include Paprika Street, Snack Bar Morning, Walk in Friday, All My Houses Are Drunk, Apple Juice Way, Up On Easby Moor, Nicky had The Soft Touch, Lantern Lane, Mad Planet. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2022/12/lemon-drizzle-avenue-by-trev-teasdel.html
The BRIDGE AT ANGROVE published April 2022. "In the Winter Apple boulevards with scrumpy cider clouds the Bilberry Bramley omnibuses are belching to a halt. In the raincoat-hatted bus stops" Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-bridge-at-angrove-by-trev-teasdel.html
APRICOT SUNDAY Published July 2021." Holy fuck, the clocks slept in - sprawled over the wall like a Dali sketch - even the digitals were buffering and burping on low coffee levels." Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/07/apricot-sunday-by-trev-teasdel.html
LILYPAD STATION Published 2021. "Clarissa tested positive for sex appeal, lockdown had put her in a strange position, she looked out of her curtains at the makeshift homeless shelters built out of reinforced toilet roll tubes" Click the link to view or download the book or for further information https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/02/lilypad-station-by-trev-teasdel.html
The DAWN CHORUS OF A RURAL REBEL. Published in 2020. "I grew up in Bookcase Street, in a 3 bed-room bookend, sentenced to verbosity, but don't quote me on that." Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-dawn-chorus-of-rural-warrior-by.html
OFF THE RAILS Published 2019. "It's hard to know when I went of the rails, I could never think in straight lines, I took the detours, the tangents. They said leave school, get a job, buy a car, a house, marry, consume, invest and save, grow old gracefully, that was the plan." Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/01/off-rails-book-by-trev-teasdel.html
A Cheap Novel in a Backstreet Charity Shop Published 2019. "Your name is Saxon Picasso, your food is the love of a painted lady, polyphonic, vamping, colourful, semi-surreal. You wear a top hat with white rabbits for brains, and a suit of autumn leaves. You play for the symphonium sky and Brazilian braziers and Parisienne bras." Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-cheap-novel-in-backstreet-charity.html
Born in Atlantis Published in 2018. "Tom thumbed a ride across Desolation UK, sleeping in alleys and shop doorways with spikes. The cops stole his sleeping bag and fracked him until he shook with cold.." Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/01/born-in-atlantis-by-trev-teasdel.html
The Lost Scrolls of the Apekalypse Published 2018. "Moneyfact lived in a brown worn out wallet in Tango Town and slept on a Visa card in the orange light of a Tango Town night. There were a few of them in the wallet sharing food with straws." Click the link to view or download the book or for further information. https://trevteasdelpoet.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-lost-scrolls-of-apekalypse-by-trev.html
Picasso's Secret Cafe and the Planet of Debt Published 2016. "Joey Quantum came on like a wave-form 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
Poet Reprobate This was my second book, first published as a physical chapbook by the Poetic Licence Collective 1985 and revised and added in to as a PDF / ebook in 2021. Consists of early material written in the 70's and 80's. "Is this it, the final handshake, the last goodbye? Have they finally decided not to tolerate my ability not to be manipulated by their system but in-
The Cannon Hill Park Soliloquy - Extended performance poem / sequence originally performed live with music at various venues in the early 1980's in Sheffield Art College, Middlesbrough Town Hall, Stockton Dovecot Arts Centre, Darlington Arts Centre, Guisborough Tocket's Mill and more and set in Birmingham's Cannon Hill Park with a surreal but anti-war theme.
