Paul Tristram- Three Poems

 When A Slump Hits You…Hit It Back!

With energetic positivity.
Switch lanes, take a detour
just do not give in to apathy.

  
© Paul Tristram 2015

A School Of Drunks

The collective name for a group
of park bench drinkers
is ‘A School Of Drunks’.
I remember one such band
of merry men and women
squatting a terraced house in Gloucester.
I was staying a few doors down from them
in a Bail Hostel (Right across the park
actually, from Cromwell Street
and at exactly the same time
they caught the serial killer Fred West!)
There were eight of them in the house
and they had a little game going on
where they tried to fill one of the rooms
upstairs with empty (Obviously!)
blue plastic White Lightning cider flagons.
They managed to get it over halfway
before I left and went back to Wales.
They could no longer open the door
and instead had an ‘half-inched’
window cleaners ladder in the back garden.
Where every morning after drinking
away the shakes and D.T’s
they would fight over who’s turn it was
to climb up and throw yesterday’s empty
liver casings through the broken window.
I often wonder if they completed it
before death, jail or eviction got them?
But of course they did, I mean,
the room was half full not half empty
and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

© Paul Tristram 2015

 

Tournament Of Tears

“There is nothing more horrific
than watching your handsome boyfriend
defending your honour
and losing spectacularly.
It was at the taxi rank
two Saturday night’s ago,
in front of nearly everyone we know.
Everyone from work and school was there.
I encouraged him on at first
shouting ‘Yes, get in there boy!’
until he slipped sideways
upon that empty fucking beer can in the gutter
and that was that, all down hill quickly after that.
I didn’t realize that grown men still cried?
and when he actually called out for his mother,
with that broken front tooth
and the blood and snot bubble
coming from his mouth and broken nose,
Jesus Christ, it still makes me cringe.
I ghosted him completely until yesterday
when I give his ring back to him
(Fucking thrown it at him I should have done!)
‘You’ve let me down and you’ve let yourself down!’
I told him honestly and left it at that.
I mean, who in their right mind
is going to walk proudly arm in arm
down the judgemental street with THAT now?
I’m telling you, I feel more than fucking cheated!”

© 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/1326241036
And also read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/