Paul Tristram- Three Poems

It’s Like This And Will Be Again

Some days it’s like a noose hanging over your head.

A guillotine waiting to be unlatched.

A murder of crows bastardizing your name

as they bullyingly blotch the sky from you,

ignorant to the suffering you’re trying to ignore.

It’s like this and will be again.

You don’t get used to it, it gets used to you

and jabs its foot into the uncomfortable places

which shine like mirrored glass

within the cracks of your uncomfortable being.

© Paul Tristram 2006

Published in Inclement (Poetry For The Modern Soul) Volume 6 Issue 4, Winter 2006

Charcoal Like Your Heart

It was a lamppost

for Christ Sake!

I never hurt it.

In fact I broke

three of my own

toes and every

knuckle in my

right fist.

My tears and blood

were the only

feeling there.

They found me

face down

where the dogs piss.

Shaking and begging

for mercy

from something

out of sight.

Upwards I looked

uncaringly

at their uniforms

which were charcoal

like your heart.

© Paul Tristram 2006

Published in Poetry Monthly, Issue 120, March 2006

They Were All Knives

That’s how they were back then

you’d see the silver shining

as they pulled them out

of their socks, their boots,

the backs of their trousers,

inside pockets of jackets,

out of the sleeves of coats.

They’d come back home

from the pub drunk

and wave them at their women

shouting to the heavens

“I should have cut his fucking head off!”

That’s how men settle arguments

where I come from

they carry knives and shout at women.

© Paul Tristram 2007

Published in the  In Between Hangovers Chapbook Anthology ‘The Boy’s No Good’  Easter 2007



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and sketches published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.