Any Day Now
Your mocking laughter
with rip apart
to give birth to your ruin.
with rip apart
to give birth to your ruin.
© Paul Tristram 2015
Silent Flight
Hoody up fully,
the boundary wall
scrambled,
the end terraced house
garden by the lane.
Fluid and agile
as water down rapids,
he leapt and scaled
the dividing
fences and brickwork
without slowing down.
Ears strained
for the unwanted sounds
of grunts and chains
(He did not want
to fight another pit-bull
after the last time!)
Up a fur tree
at terrace end,
with only
fishing gnomes
as silent witnesses.
He sprang
pavement-wards,
tearing a hole,
escape size,
in the side
of the midnight street.
Disappearing
twice as quickly
as he had appeared.
© Paul Tristram 2015
The Seaside Dancing Monkey
“Yes, Officer, I witnessed the entire thing.
I’ve lived in Weston-Super-Mare all of my life,
so I’ve known Joe and Lucky, his dancing monkey
for years now, always down on the sands they are.
They used to live in one of those beach huts
up until three months or so ago until his missus
ran off to Glastonbury with that bearded lady
busker who used to pitch outside of Woolworths.
He’s been a mess ever since, drunk all the time,
burnt down the hut, sleeping on park benches.
Anyway, as you well know, his missus used to sing
to get the monkey dancing, Joe can’t hold a note
so he’s taken to mumbling and a-whistling instead.
Aw, it’s heart breaking and pathetic is what it is,
people are giving him a few shillings to get rid of him.
Well, earlier you could see Joe coming across
the beach, face like a wet fortnight, drizzling slightly,
dragging poor Lucky behind him like something lost.
Looking over at that clock every few seconds or so,
it was a quarter to eleven and pubs nearly open, see,
it’s not rocket science working out what’s troubling him.
When he stops in front of this family and the little girl
gives Lucky her lollypop which makes him stop dancing.
I swear to God, it’s the first time I’ve seen that monkey
happy in months, Joe reaches down, snatches it up
and throws it a good twenty foot over that way,
right at the feet of Hilda the oldest donkey at the rides,
she reaches down and eats the cowing thing in seconds.
Lucky gave a scream so mournful and terrible
that it gave me the willies, Jesus, I can still hear it,
then there’s Hell up, he bit Joe’s thumb a beauty,
then run up his arm, scratched his face and gnashed
a chunk out of his lughole, never in all my born days.
Everyone’s screaming, kids crying in all directions
and by the time a couple of men brave enough
to intervene actually intervene, Joe’s got Lucky
by the throat and was throttling the life out of him,
whilst wailing his ex-missus’s name heavenwards
and frothing at the mouth like a sodding madman.
They managed to pry them apart eventually,
one of them sat on Joe’s back who was by now
laying horizontal upon the ground sobbing like a baby.
The other man put Lucky in a litter bin and held
the lid shut until you and the other officers got here!”
© Paul Tristram 2015
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.
Buy his book ‘Poetry From The Nearest Barstool’ at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/
And also read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.
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