Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Reality Bites

It claws and scratches,
dragging irritated talons
across the blackboard of the mind.
Pokes, prods and pinches,
chewing mercilessly
upon the dog-eared edges
of your battered soul.
Until it all becomes too much,
unstructured, un-sectioned miles
of absurd clarity
to exhaustingly deal with.
Forcing you sideways,
often with relief,
into that temporary
little world of your own
once more.

© Paul Tristram 2014

Under The Hammer

The Defendant stood in the Dock
of Crown Courtroom No. 2
as the cold faced Judge slammed
down his little wooden hammer.
Sentencing him to an 8 year stretch
with a further impending 6 years
to be served in Her Majesties Prisons.
He felt absolutely nothing at all,
the closest thing he could equate it to
would be standing on a train platform
and hearing the announcement
that there had been yet another delay.
He yawned, looking in the direction
of his Barrister, who was mouthing
silently ‘See you downstairs, directly’
He heard one of the 2 guards cough
at the left hand side of him, he turned
bored and was led down the concrete
steps into the bowels of the building
where the transfer cells lay in wait
like silently laughing mousetraps.
He sat down almost peacefully
upon a wooden bench still feeling
nothing but knowing that it was just
‘Sentencing Shock’ yet enjoying
and savouring it all the more because
of that wonderful, gentle knowledge.

© Paul Tristram 2014

Dressing Up To Fall Down

You see herds of them a-stomping loudly in high heels
down The Kingsway on a Friday and Saturday night.
Stinking of a thousand different smells and perfumes,
wearing mini skirts and war paint in the middle of winter.
2 hours out of work and already arm in arm and singing,
giggling hysterically with handbags full of contraception’s,
weaponry, half bottles of vodka, cigarettes, straighteners,
and drug dealers, baby sitters and taxi phone numbers.
You see the young Lads in groups of 8, 10’s & 20’s
best clobber on and looking smart, white tops a-gleaming,
not a crease or wrinkle in sight, gelled hair and wearing
their chains, already 4 cans down and singing football songs.
It’s a typical weekend evening in any British town or city
at 7:30pm but come midnight the Carnival has been turned
upside down upon its head and it’s now become a freak show.
Girls wandering around lost and crying wearing only 1 shoe
or often times none at all, make-up smudged and puking
into litterbins or slumped in the back of stationary ambulances.
The doorways are full of semi-conscious and the comatosed,
the Lads are busy fighting Bouncers, the Police or each other,
wearing bloody, ripped clothing and drunkenly punching
clumsily double-visioned staggering images in the rain.
Some have done it sensibly, planned routes, pre-booked cabs
and are already two thirds home and still only half-cut
but I never meet those kind of people, if they actually exist?
I’m always amongst the carnage, the chaos and the craziness,
panning for gold knee-deep in the drunken, sleazy gutters
still trying to fathom out the aches, pains and bewilderment
of the magnetic downward sloping of the questioning soul.

© 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/