Poems
by Paul
Tristram
Where We Cross Swords No Longer
I’d climb her ribcage,
if she’d only let me.
From the bottom
to the top.
In and out
of nostalgia
to a deeper
understanding.
Where we
cross swords no longer.
Distracting Tangle
They are in the shadows waiting
just up ahead
and all the way through life.
Often times,
you won’t even see
the knives glistening.
(They mostly stab from behind!)
The faces change
but the patterns & games
remain the same.
Don’t argue with those vermin,
you’ll just be giving them
what they want… a chance
to halt your progress through the day
and take that spring out of your step.
You owe no one an explanation
for just being you.
The ugliest thing
upon this beautiful planet
is an envious person.
Avoid them like the plague
and leave them tamping by the wayside.
Besides, you only argue & disagree
with people you love, respect & care about.
The rest are unimportant, vampires
and distracting tangles to be danced around.
She Blushes…
Marshmallow pink and Turkish Delight purple,
a slight stammer that’s not quite a full-flight stutter.
Trembles rather than shakes, looks downwards often
and is extremely excitable yet thoughtful with it.
A soft, gentle charm which captivates,
with a smile that is innocent, mischievous
and adorable all at the very same time.
The centre of attention, always…
even though she prefers watching from the side-lines.
Unless she has given you her wonderful, complicated heart…
then her July-warm personality springs itself open
just like a Stage-Magician’s bouquet of colourful flowers.
Desire’s Hanging From The Corner Hook… A-Begging & A-Pleading
… as I watch obliquely interested.
That’s not exactly mucus
but, it will fit the bill, at a push.
It’s the ‘Sighs’
which grant a levelling hand…
the temper’s merely
mirror-bouncing bound
and caught up within
the rush of its own circle.
Ah, the last step which isn’t really there…
again, and again… and again.
Mercy’s reserved for the most special occasions…
and this is certainly not one of those.
Ouch, with the flailing elbows, already,
you’ll do yourself a mischief.
Enveloped in shuddering,
the Doorman’s on his fag-break,
where the lights still flutter,
far out of ear-shot.
Capture is a Beginning not an End…
the only thing backwards
here is your thinking.
Orchestrating tremors
with a dastardly smile.
There’s a SONIC BOOM
in the mind at the point of death,
I’ve felt it buckle, ripple
and disperse a green coloured energy…
non-toxic and cloudless…
But, I digress… let us go back to Questions
which are really Insults,
and have absolutely no need of Answers.
Bring Out Your Dead
Sweating like a roasting pig
within his heavy wax overcoat.
He staggers towards and then out of
the front door of the old, squalid
ramshackle of diseased apartments.
With a piece of dirty white chalk
his X condemns the entire building.
Through the glass eyes of the plague mask
he surveys the shit and mud churned
street laying stinking before him
seeing with satisfaction only 3 houses left.
Breathing in deeply the ambergris, myrrh,
laudanum, cloves, balm-mint leaves,
camphor, rose petals and storax
through straw packed tightly into the beak
of his mask for a second or so.
He then staggers onwards wearily
as the creaking wooden cart trudges
on half a back lane behind him
with the scruffy street urchin before it
crying hoarsely “Bring out your dead!”
Crazy Like Emotion (The Poem)
There is a long, narrow, darkened tunnel,
straight as a vengeful, bitter arrow,
which helps to keep the piercing shrieks
contained within a small radius
of each inmate/half-life’s
damp, nocturnal dwelling place.
The building materials
are giant granite wall blocks of absolute despair,
rancid crone-hair mattresses
and iron bars forged in the raging hellfire’s
of her arrogant, twisted fucking laugh.
There are no ‘Meals’ to speak of,
no one eats when they reach ‘That’ state.
The Temper-Tantrums help keep
the rot and fungi from inching too close…
so our advice would be, to let loose
and give it everything that you’ve got.
Your Cell is ready and prepared with… nothing!
but plenty of room to go frustratingly ‘Nuts’ in.
This is the Centre Ward within an Asylum,
inside a Category A Prison Fortress,
deep in the Bowels of your Mind.
You should have been more careful with your Heart,
it’s the ‘Achilles Heel’ of your emotions.
How many more beatings and hard labour sentences
will it take you… to leave the naivety
of those Valentine Day fantasies and delusions behind?
