Renovatio
… and then the crows came
to Wuthering Height
the cold, grey morning.
She escaped,
and traded a single life
… for a courtship
doorway into our union.
You instinctively
banish ‘Blackhearts’
… when you have
been through life’s fire,
and re-birthed Spiritually.
Recklessness
becomes ‘Experience’,
and gamble
carries far more ‘Weight’
… after abyss-crawling
back into
a new and improved ‘You’…
Slick, Deft Alchemy
That was not just a sneaky,
passing ‘kiss’ was it?
… only seemed like one,
but that tingling warmth
is spreading to your eyes
… gotcha, baby!
Look what I have trapped
inside this matchbox…
it’s the ‘feeling’
behind that ‘laughing smile’
which erupted (childlike)
from your beautiful face
… when I made that
low-flying grey heron
at Truro’s Malpas River
side-look (squarely) at you.
Mirroring satisfaction,
triggering sentimentality
… I’m tripping-up over
the nonsense… of my
own (pointless) Boundaries.
Sorry, I got carried away
… where the hell were we?
yes, that’s right, ‘Together’.
Swear Box
‘Exquisite’ in an agonising
kind of way…
“Oi! that’s my ‘Heart’
… put it down!”
I am going to demonstrate
complete and absolute
‘Self-Control’… teaching
you a lesson by never
… acknowledging…
your ‘Existence’ ever again.
The Beginning Of Epic
She caught herself… ‘reaching’
for excuses… and stopped!
Swallowing down ‘maybe’,
‘okay’, ‘alright’ and ‘yes’…
she stated (not spoke, or said)
“NO” in a confident, controlled
and unarguably defiant voice…
making her immediately feel
giddy, euphoric and a little sick.
The ‘tables had not just turned’
but been removed altogether…
she had (at long last) climbed
around the obstacle of herself
… set fire to her comfort zone
and was leaving those who had
previously kept her life-frozen
in the past where they belonged.
You’re Not Born With ‘Eyes’ Like Those
That (rain splashed) shop doorway
frames a ‘Life’…
destitute is such a small word
… but, is an entire atlas
of grief, and pain, and misery.
I’ve yet to see him beg,
not that I’d judge…
people pass by and give
… sometimes money,
often foodstuffs, sandwiches,
crisps, chocolates, warm coffee
… one early evening
a young man in his late twenties
ran past, stopping long enough,
to drop a KFC meal bucket
by his crossed, raggedly knees.
His eyes twinkle like diamonds
when he receives any gifts…
and his smile of ‘Thank You’
is always as warm as buttered toast
and as genuine as the charity
that’s just been bestowed upon him.
© Paul Tristram 2025
ABOUT THE POET
Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and flash fiction 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. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, full-length poetry collections “The Dark Side Of British Poetry”, “It Is Big & It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are all available by Close To The Bone Publishing.
About the Author
