Paul Tristram- Three Poems

The Path Side Weeds

She likes to sit upon the cracked
concrete paving slabs
amongst the wild path side weeds.
It suits her much better indeed
than feeling awkward and out of place
on the manicured lawns
with neatly cultivated flowerbeds,
where the ‘pretty, perfect girls’ go.
She’s reading Sylvia Plath,
rolling her own cigarettes
and dealing darkly yet seriously
with her Change.
The cliques and gangs
and sheep like nonsense
make her cringe
and happy to try a different way.
She leans back against a graffiti wall
and watches the clouds roll by
and looks for shapes amongst them
just like Daddy taught her how to
(Before he simply disappeared!)
finding a wolf’s head, anarchy symbol
and a delicate skull and cross bones.
Yawning she rises and heads off that way
down to the motorway bridge
to count the day’s road kill
and record her findings in her A5 journal
of ‘Cool Shit Them Normal’s Don’t Do.’

© Paul Tristram 2014

Degradation, Comes With Your Glance

The medication does not stop
the crumbling that’s going on inside,
it merely takes away some
of the gnawing pains of the erosion.
And as she winces away his laughing face
from inside her traitorous mind,
her Mother’s scolding, condemning voice
takes its place, spitting words as sharp
and deadly as ice cold Chinese throwing stars.
“I should be able to go to the police!”
she mumbles aloud to herself.
“For my mind has been kidnapped
and held hostage for years
and no one can damn well see it?
I am being tortured and murdered slowly
and I know the names and faces of my killers.
The taste of their hatred and resentment
scents my soul and gives me internal vertigo.
But there is no physical evidence
to link anyone to the crime but myself
and explaining to the medical profession
just leads me back down much darker
corridors than I pace demented at home!”

© Paul Tristram 2014

The Confused Picture

Was painted by a desperate man
soaking permanently in thick, syrup depression.
Dripping squealing agony
from his scalpel like brush,
he marks and bores a tunnel, horrid.
No seagulls for a sky
but smeared semen eyes
with violent slashes of melancholy.
A fruitless basket of hunchbacked limps,
a smothered sunset boiling dry,
fiddle fingers broken sharp as utensils.
Centre stage:
a strangled, bright, bold yellow canary
nailed sideways to emphasize
the gravity of the waste and nothingness.
Intangible love sails purple………………….
……………………………...close to the edges
it’s bitter darkness the only side fixate-able
upon this yawning canvas of disappointment.
With over forty years of tormented images
sliding in Anarchy & Chaos circles
‘round the focus of its stubborn plight.

© 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.
 
You can read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/