Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Straight For The Throat

Your love came
lunging
like a striking Viper.
With the strength
of mayhem
and destruction.
It’s twisted purpose
cracking
like a step-parents whip.
Breath
reeking of schizophrenic
self-righteousness
battling
narcissist selfishness.
Eyes ablaze
with a
demented fury
irrational to all
but the insane.
I unclasped those iron
claws
determinedly,
avoiding
the awful trap
of your
lustful, destructive, greed
and
watched you tremor
the ground
beneath yourself.
As I wiped my
dirty brow
and backed quickly
away…Free.

© Paul Tristram 2014

Hot Knives

She drops the metal butter knife,
handle first, through the mouth
of the glass milk bottle.
Puts a palm over the top of it
and jerks rapidly twice
until the bottom pops off
at an almost clean angle.
Grabs the 2 kitchen knives
with blackened tips, heating
upon the ember cooker ring,
puts a small chunk of soap bar
between them and presses firmly
whilst filling the bottle full
with it’s harsh, swirling smoke,
then sucks the lot down in one!
Holds it in for a few seconds
then exhales whilst offering me it.
“Later, we’ve only just woken up
I’ve just cracked this beer open
and haven’t had time to sip it yet!”
She replaces the knives upon the heat
to prepare herself another hit.
“You know, you haven’t pissed yet?”
I muse amused by her shenanigans.
“One thing at a time, my lover!”
she coughs and cackles tenderly
“One God Damned thing at a time!”

© Paul Tristram 2014

A Little Boy In A Big Building (Crown Court!)

Some people ask me what it’s really like?
And I try to answer them as honestly as I can.
The outside steps are crowded with nervous smokers.
Inside: Marbled floors and pillars, benches.
Cold, oppressive and unemotional, apart from the women
(Mothers, Wife’s and Girlfriend’s sobbing helplessly!)
People in black suits walking fast and determined,
quiet policemen (quite rare in any other habitat!)
looking immature and just as vulnerable as everyone else
and lots and lots of……………………….waiting.
Further Inside: Oak and leather, Crowned back walls,
bibles, young journalists (Waiting like vultures!)
for’s and against’s, wigs and robes, frowns and seriousness,
no humour unless directed and at the Defendant’s expense.
Loss of liberty, the end of a chapter, a darker turn of events.
Even Further Inside: All of those steps, restraints,
further down the rabbit hole, name switched to a number,
stuck for now, goodbyes through bulletproof glass
and a last thoughtful van ride to those big old prison gates.
I remember my first time inside an adult prison,
I was 17 years old, sat on my bunk in a Dorm with 3 others,
smoking dope and shouting out the cell window
and passing ‘lines’ to my mates in the cell below
(String pulled out of blankets and tied to the handles
of plastic cups and lowered and swung to get contraband
from one window to another, you could get something
from the top corner of one end of the wing to a lower
landing on the other side of the wing in minutes!)
There was this new lad in the next cell and 10 minutes
after they shouted “Lock up on the 2’s!” and the doors
slammed and clanged tight for the night he started crying.
When the lights went out he went hysterical
and started beating on the door with a slopping-out pot,
screaming for his ‘Mammy’ and begging for help.
Until the Screws came and silenced him with lots of dull thuds
and a “Your fucking Mother ain’t here now, boy!”
as they dragged him off, semi-conscious to THE BLOCK.
And this is what I tell people, you’ll find your strength
(If you’ve got any?) and if you haven’t any (You’ll find
something else you’ll really wish you hadn’t have discovered!)
If you’re a Violent Man when you’re Drunk that’s not the ‘You’
which will be standing alone in that courtroom dock
or sitting in a prison cell ticking away those endless days,
No Sir, it’ll be the Sober, Real ‘You’ dealing with it.
If you lose your Temper, it might be the furious ‘You’
being Judged but it’ll be the Calm ‘You’ standing there.
If you can help it, don’t put yourself there in the first place,
find another way, there is always at least one other way.
Because if you really want to know what prison’s like;
Take every Bully and Nutter from every Council Estate,
Gang and Shithole in Britain and stick them all in one building
and then imagine yourself locked up inside there with them?
And you’d better be tough enough, strong enough and streetwise
enough to handle it because excusing the necessary pun
they really don’t take any Prisoners inside the Walls of Prison.

© 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/