Paul Tristram- Two Poems

Broken Fingers

“You wanted me to prove my love for you,
Well I have!
You wanted to know how much I love you?
I love you this much!”
He held up both hands
bandaged and with finger splints
before her gobsmacked face.
“I walked in ‘The Swansea Jack’ 5 hours ago
and declared my eternal love for you
to your brothers, yes, all 6 of them
and in front of the entire gasping pub.
I had to used my bloody elbows just now
to knock on your front door, Jesus Christ!
Well, don’t just stand there gawking like an idiot
it’s raining, let me in or I’ll get pneumonia as well!”  

© Paul Tristram 2014

Those Drunken Heights Of Absurdity & Glory
In Between Hangovers!

The scars, bumps and lumps.
Fractured, broken, flaked and chipped
teeth and bones.
The tattoos both decorative
and gang related.
The days ticked away
in different prison cells in different prisons.
The countless nights dragged in through
and kicked out of
the ‘Wooden-Pillowed Hotel’
revolving police station doors.
Fighting the system, each other
or whoever came along first
both winning and losing loads of times.
Running team-handed down back lanes
well past midnight
escaping the flashing blue light menace.
Nights freezing in skips and bins,
shivering under a thin blanket
of loose cardboard and paper.
The first Roast Dinner and pint of Ruddles Bitter
after a 4 day walk to get home, ah!
Bedding down with deranged, psychotic women
nearly half as crazy as your demented self.
Smiling bravely or sometimes idiotically
through the torrential rain and pain of it all.
Waking up and sharing a flat flagon
with those 2 rigid fingers
that have been sticking up in your face
ever since the hour of your birth.
Insanity, nervous breakdowns, addictions and excess.
The complete fucking derangement and self abandonment
of the mind, body and soul.
The punk rock, the adrenalin, the energy and the vice.
Realizing that both losing and winning
are part of life’s game and not slowing down
because of either.
I would not change any of it, nor spare the rod once.
For on my deathbed I’ll smile because I will know
that I did not waste my life at all,
I experienced it and lived it to the full
and squeezed out every last drop before leaving.

© Paul Tristram 2014 



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography
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.