Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Live By The Bottle

If you live by the sword
You die like a Lord.
But if you live by the bottle
You only die alone.

© Paul Tristram 2010

A Famine Of Fortune

Sometimes just getting yourself across to the shop
and back again means you are doing alright.
Sixteen tall cans, a pre-packaged sandwich,
a packet of cheese & onion crisps and a banana.
It’s only the size of a seven year old child’s
school packed lunch but in your anorexic state
it’s as appealing as house brick and cardboard soup,
all the same, you need to get it down and keep it down.
The first beer is hardly pleasant but the second one
is much more difficult because now you need to smoke
and so begins the morning tango with your old friend
‘stomach bile’ around the unforgiving kitchen sink.
By the middle of the third can, you have eaten
half of the sandwich, a handful of crisps, some banana
and you are smoking your second roll-up whilst gently
nodding your concrete headache along to the music
which you have bravely just started playing.
It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t remotely rock ‘n’ roll
but it is real and you are surviving it one day at a time.
There is no right way or wrong way to do this,
there is only strength of character, stamina, tenacity
and coming out the other side a God Damn Survivor.

© Paul Tristram 2015

Gin Addict #102

“She died around the time of last nights witching hour,
in a stinking back lane known as ‘Muggers Clinch’
in a pool of her own blood and vomit.
There were no signs of violence or foul play
(apart from general corpse rifling, of course)
it would seem that her insides literally blew up
(possibly whilst engaged in an illicit sex act,
for there was semen un-smeared inside her left thigh)
At a guess, I would say she was in her early thirties
but with no teeth left in her head, it’s hard to tell?
She had nothing upon her person apart from two
wipe-rags, commonly used by prostitutes these days,
one heavily soiled and the other was getting there.
Historical wounding consists of childbearing
stretchmark’s, healed slash scars on both cheeks
and a nose badly broken, several times by the look of it.
Although her life seems to have been despicable,
she was not infamous, so is unknown by the police.
We’ll label her ‘Gin Addict #102’ and bury her
in with those fifteen wharf itinerants tomorrow,
make sure that the clothes she was wearing are burnt,
and do it immediately, they are absolutely crawling!”

© 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/