Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Tether’s End

At Tether’s End she sits
upon a crumbling chair
of helplessness
…waiting, waiting, waiting…
For her stitching and hinges
to break and come undone.
She let off steam
yesterday
the lid of her boiling mind
almost burst through the roof.
When that was finished
she had her
20th nervous breakdown.
But that little helper used
by her mother’s generation
doesn’t quite have the same
effect or appeal
upon the young women
of today’s world.
It’s like rat poison,
the following litter
is born practically immune.
She clenches
in sharp rigidity
chanting nonsense for awhile
blinking in a fury
rapidly and repeatedly
trying to dislodge
the flashing images
of scissor blades and scalpels
from inside her re-run head.
When it fails to work
she levels herself floor-ward,
crawls into the musty room
of her absent daughter
and hides her coming-apart
under the mausoleumness
of the shadowy bed.
Screaming silently once
every few seconds or so,
imprisoned without mercy
within her own personal hell.

© Paul Tristram 2014

Stillness

Like hiding inside a wardrobe as a child.
Sitting thoughtfully in a garden shed
when no one knows that you are there.
Wandering around a derelict building
by an unused railway miles from town.
Exploring an old woodland cemetery
with ancient mossy, lichen covered
lopsided gravestones with a boarded up
Sexton house somewhere in the middle.
Breathing in the damp, fresh salty air
of a deserted midnight Autumn beach.
A redundant rock quarry afternoon walk.
A mountain to stroll up and down alone.
Standing behind that out of the way thing
that no one ever bothers to look behind.
Far away from the crowd with all of its
nonsense, noise, distraction and racket
is sometimes the only sensible place to be.

© Paul Tristram 2014

Distant Happiness

I can see it all the way over there
upon the coming horizon
whenever I go up on tip-toes,
strain and peer over the top lip
of the dark pit I have been chained
inside of for the last year or so.
It’s a dim purple and red light
smudged across the distant sky.
The thunderous, murderous mess
that once occupied that place
has now mostly rolled over my
tortured cranium and heavy shoulders,
off behind into the unimportant past.
I am 75% the way through this
mental and emotional prison sentence.
Just catching my breath ready
for the final few months of strain.
I would change absolutely none of it!
for I am more alive than ever before,
in the flames of suffering I have forged
a far stronger, wiser and better me.
Once more I settle into the pain,
wrestling with my chains, patience
and excitement, repeating loudly
through my focused gritted grin
“Yesterday’s Fool is now Dead
but long live Tomorrow’s King!”

© 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/