The Fake

by Paul Tristram

She was on 24 hour suicide watch,
couldn’t take a bath, piss or shit
without a female nurse present.
They’d caught her with her head
inside a carrier bag two days ago
a minute after the dinner bell rung
and yesterday found broken glass
under her pillow, when she had thrown
a tantrum and knocked it off the bed
onto the sterile linoleum floor herself.
I was in on a 10 day alcohol detox,
pumped full of vitamins and Heminevrin
awaiting sentencing in Crown Court.
I watched from across the room
as they spooned food into her mouth
with plastic cutlery like a toddler.
I knew her, by sight, same school,
she was a year younger and was in
the same class as my ex-girlfriend.
Which we talked about, briefly
that evening when she sauntered
on over with a nurse at each side
while I was playing a game of pool
with an irate paranoid schizophrenic
(I was cheating, obviously!)
She asked about her old classmate
to which I replied in monotone
“Didn’t you hear? She topped herself ,
no fuss, no messing about, just action!”
and as I turn away from her performance
I saw her hanging her head in shame.

The Collywobbles

by Paul Tristram

Shaking like a virgin out alone in Port Talbot,
she fishes 2 valium from her argumentative purse,
sighs and shudders almost uncontrollably in relief
as she casts them neurotically mouth-wards
and washes those suckers down with a neat gin.
Smudges her lipstick, uncaringly, as she lights up
another Camel cigarette off the smouldering butt
of the old one, after several attempts at coordination.
Tapestries together Tourette’s, sneezing and coughing
for minute, then seems to shift down a gear at last.
Pernod makes her angry usually but today being mad
is far better than being nervous so she orders up
a neat double and wincing sharply she bags it on home.
Half a lager later and she is finally ready to put
those collywobbles ‘out like the Monday night bins’
She rises from the barstool, unsteadily and ungraciously,
then bad-mood’s herself across the struggling road
to the unspectacular Registrar Office were her future
husband and two unknown witnesses are busy a-pacing.

Dares & Knuckles

by Paul Tristram

I was in the Infant School at morning break time,
drinking free milk from a pyramid cardboard container
through a thin red plastic straw inserted through
a small round hole with silver paper covering it.
When one of the Teachers came rushing up to me
and asked nervously “Is your Father Ok now,
I heard about what happened last night, it’s horrific?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my Father, he’s fine,
what do you mean?” I frowned and demanded back.
Just then, another Teacher appeared and said hurriedly
“It’s not this one, it’s his smaller Cousins, you know,
the ones who live over on Caewathan Council Estate!”
I found out later that one of my Uncles and another
Criminal were playing ‘Dare & Knuckles’ drunk
with an hatchet on the kitchen table the night before
which resulted in my Uncle getting the top half of both
his left fore and middle fingers completely chopped off.
(He could never again make roll-ups and smoked
Benson & Hedges straights, right up until he died!)
One of the women present there had franticly picked
them up whilst hysterically screaming and cast them
into the open fire, hence they could not even attempt
to sew them back on. (It’s weird watching a couple of bits
of yourself burn over there whilst you’re sat over here,
my Uncle often mused, whilst ‘in his cups’ for years after!)
My Father went out for 3 whole days and nights searching
for that ‘Dead Guy’ with an iron bar tucked up in his coat
but he’d strangely and mysteriously disappeared completely.

“When Nobody Else Can Understand Me…When Everything I Do Is Wrong!”

by Paul Tristram

It’s the only two lines of the song that he knew
or could be bothered to sing, and he only did that drunk.
It took me years to figure out that it actually belonged
to a famous tune by Elvis Presley (of all people!)
Up until then, I had just assumed that it was a bit of drunken
mumbling that had got stuck in his pissed-up head.
It’s funny but it always reminded me of someone saying
‘I’m Innocent’ or ‘Not Guilty’ when it was obvious
to everyone, including themselves, that it was an open
and shut case and that they were the opposite of ‘Victim.’
But anyway, I digress, I now have the song in question,
I never paid for it, I stole it just like he would have wanted.
I played it last night on repeat, whilst drinking a bag of beer
to him (The daffodils are out, which means it’s his birthday!)
but it wasn’t the same hearing someone else singing it
…I needed to hear that familiar, Welsh, drunken drawl.
I decided to get one of my own and settled on Blitz’s
‘Never Surrender, Never Give In…Never Let The Enemy Win!’
but I just ended up frightening the poor dog and falling
backwards over a coffee table whilst pogoing on one foot.
“Happy Birthday you Old Bastard, this twelfth pint’s for you,
they don’t make ‘em like YOU anymore and thank God for that,
there ain’t enough police and Britain’s running out of prison space!”

The Day Her Majesty’s Prison Officers Birched My Father …They Lost And We All Became Stronger!

by Paul Tristram

It was up at the Notorious house on Penlan Road,
at the bottom of the mountain in Skewen.
We were all still children not yet teenagers,
when he stood up by the stone fireplace
and pulled down his black corduroy Levi 501’s
to show us the stripy scars all down his right thigh.
“Bastards!” I hissed and spat in an astray
as he scanned our faces closely and slowly,
nodding at me-the oldest-just like he always did.
Then he picked up that bottle of ‘Old England’
Medium Sherry and put it to his lips
for the first time in days and started in on thinking
serious about things, the past and life, once again.
We all left him to it, went down to 1 of the 3 cellars,
armed ourselves with empty beer bottles, bricks
and stolen bits of firewood and crawling through
the bolthole in the bottom of the wire fence.
Attacked the back section of Mettoy’s Toy Factory
situated in the middle of the private property
factory complex which lay just across the road.

Hi, I’m Killing Myself…How Are You?

by Paul Tristram

I walked into The Market Tavern
upon the left hand side of the main drag
at exactly noon on a sunny, Autumnal day.
I spied no one employed behind the bar
but there was a female customer sitting
along the otherwise empty stretch of wood.
I walked on over and stood close by,
glancing sideways at her, late fifties,
un-brushed hair, grey bags under her eyes,
smudged traces of yesterday’s make-up.
Also a strange pungent aroma coming
from her which really was quite stunning
in its ferocity and eye-watering thickness.
A mix of stale urine, cheap perfume, grief
(I know this one well, it is unmistakeable!)
rolling tobacco, wet clothing (even though
she appeared dry?) and old library books.
She was drinking a pint of Export lager
and a shot of something whisky coloured.
I was about to ask her where the bartender
was when she turned to me and said
“Hi, I’m killing myself…how are you?”
“Nice to meet you and good luck with that!”
I answered before turning upon my heel
and exiting the building, crossing the street
and strolling into ‘The Virgin & The Gypsy’
Where I was greeted by 3 bleach blonde
21 year old smiling barmaids whom I soon
discovered were named Sian, Sam & Billy.
Who served me several pints of Adnams
Broadside Real Ale and a full roast dinner
complete with Yorkshire puddings, pigs
in blankets and all three available meats.
We’re all killing ourselves, every waking
moment of our lives, some days are better
and some are worse but right now I was not
in the mood to trade scars with anyone at all.

Panic Button Silence

by Paul Tristram

We were in Her Majesty’s Borstal
on the Island of Portland just off Weymouth.
Sat in one of the induction classrooms
in the building upon the left-hand side
of the Notorious, dreaded BLOCK.
Talking shit and waiting (I use that term loosely!)
for a Teacher/Officer to turn up
and teach us the magical alchemy
which comes with the correct knowledge of diet.
(Beans are full of protein and good for you!)
They already had us doing gruelling gym circuits
that would cripple most people in minutes
and now that we were all fitter than ever before
they wanted us to eat like warriors also,
it was getting like a Gladiator’s training camp.
“The Old Bill will never catch me when I’m out,
I can run up walls and vault almost everything!”
laughed Kevin Coed from Penlan in Swansea.
When in marched 2 timid looking new boys
who sat down at the back table next to the door.
Quick as a flash Evans from Cardiff shouts to them
“Oi! matey, bang that light switch on by the side
of you, it’s starting to get dark in here, innit son!”
The one closest turned to the wall and slapped
the big red button with the flat of his palm…
there was a gasp as he realized what he had done
and a fraction of silence before the sirens went off
like the God’s roaring and screaming blue murder.
It was ‘The Riot Button’ only to be pushed by Staff
and then only in case of the said Staff being in danger.
He turned white, then green and looked beseechingly
around the room with desperate eyes, choking
“What do I do…What do I do…What do I do?”
But everyone stayed silent listening for the sounds
of tramping, heavily booted feet through the sonic
chaos that had laid siege to the room around us.
They came running through the door in seconds,
the boy stood shaking next to the panic button saying
“I thought it was the light switch, honestly, sir!”
They spun him upside down, carrying him out that way,
we watched through the prison barred windows
as they took him next door into the Mouth of  Notorious,
dreaded BLOCK and we never, ever saw him no more.

She Buzzes Colour Like A Monet, Inside Me

by Paul Tristram

Making these Springtime mornings
warmer, fuzzy and less crookedly achy.
It’s sometimes irrationally overwhelming
yet cartwheel dizzyingly wonderful.
A cartoon steamboat tugging merrily
irresistibleness arm in arm with smiles
against the grain of my age-old pewter frown.
She blossoms in but a twinkle,
petal splashing everything beautiful
within the circumference of her gentle glow.
A giant bursting Moet bottle
of excitement, euphoria and enthusiasm
which wipes the hard work completely
and seamlessly from the now splendid day.

I Shouldn’t Drink Whisky…Even In Thought

by Paul Tristram

‘It was another ordinary day on Festive Road’
I thought to myself in Cell 2 of Neath Police Station.
I was awake because the old drunk guy in Cell 1
had awoken at Dawn soberish and was panicking
at his newly found sobriety and bleak surroundings.
He was voicing his objections loudly or was trying to
but the Police were proving to be an unreceptive audience
on this cold and dismal Welsh Winter’s morning.

“I’m sober now boys, let me out…please?
A drop of water, you wouldn’t begrudge
an old man a little drop of water, would you?
I’ll be 62 in April and I still haven’t learnt my lesson,
I shouldn’t drink whiskey…even in thought.
A fag, how ‘bout a fag, eh?
I’ll sweep that corridor outside for a bit of ‘baccy and a Rizla?
What am I in here for, anyway?
It’s not fighting, I can’t fight, never could, even as a nipper,
the last fight I had was 20 years ago
and that was with my ex-wife and she cowing battered me n’all!"

But he was talking to himself, no one was listening but me,
the Cruel Bastards left the poor old bugger another 2 hours
before letting him out and explaining that he was only in
for singing and dancing in the hospital waiting room drunk.
(You can’t be upsetting the normal folk with that sort of carry on!)
I sat upon the wooden bunk and smiled as I heard him cackle
light-heartedly down that happy corridor to freedom.
My own outcome would be different, I was going out the back way
and off to something that was much darker and more terrible.

…And The Bottle Is Empty

by Paul Tristram

The forehead of the bone Full Moon
frowns down big, fat and oppressive,
keeping slightly out of punch range.
As a knot of frustration entangles
my mood giving solitude Chinese burns.
There is a stench of death adrift
upon the crippling Winter wind
yet it is almost certainly not bodily.
The Town Clock behind to the right
neurotically tolls another bleak 2am
as I lift my stiff carcass up off this coffin
smooth park bench and walk unsteadily
in an antisocial fashion across to where
the streetlights adamantly refuse to go.
Then with collar up and jaw fixed
I step onto the dusty old Dram Road
to pilgrim into the night alone just like
my Father and Grandfathers before me.

Runaway

by Paul Tristram

It has taken the fourteen year old boy
less than six hours to realize
that these stinking, merciless streets
are in fact paved with shit not gold.
After narrowly avoiding the offers
of a warm meal, a safe place to sleep,
friendship, trust and understanding.
From the vampiric paedophile clergy
hanging around the greasy-spoon cafes
of Euston Station wearing smiling
old man faces hiding the vultures inside.
He was abruptly robbed of his last £3:50
and beaten black and blue somewhere
upon the cold, unforgiving underground
by a gang of older homeless boys.
After recovering for 20 minutes or so
in the cold recess of a Bank side door
he lucked it and managed to cadge £2
off a very nice Salvation Army lady
(who reminded him of what he thought
an Aunty should sort of look like?)
selling poppies outside of a subway.
He bought himself sausage and batter
and chips and devoured them hungrily,
even sucking the warm dampness out
of the Styrofoam tray and newspaper.
Afterwards he went over to Hyde Park
where he felt better for a little while
(even noticed his own breathing again)
until the rain fell down like retribution
soaking him completely to the very bone.
Now it’s 2 hours after dark and he’s
climbed a boundary wall and is hidden,
curled up on a doorstep at the back
of a church singing quietly to himself
the only song that he still remembers
from childhood ‘Show me the way
to go home, I’m tired and I want to go
to bed. I had a little drink about an hour
ago and it’s gone right to my head’
All the while knowing that there is no
home only survival, there is no future
only today, there is no hope for anything
wider than his next warm meal and the
cleverness needed to problem solve this.

Oblivionville (The Next Phase)

by Paul Tristram

They’d jammed a chair against the kitchen door handle.
I kicked it open and the skinny, junkie guy ran out
carrying with him his little bag of tricks and misery.
I saw her first track mark on the back of her left hand
I shook my head disappointedly and asked why?
“This is Oblivionville, the next phase and you’re either
coming along for the ride with me or you’re not?”
I grabbed my cider flagon and denim jacket and left.
20 years later, I heard she threw herself under a train,
she didn’t die, one of her legs was hit the wrong way
around and one of her arse cheeks needed to be removed.
We used to be schoolyard sweethearts, once upon a time.
I remember her bringing me bread & butter in the shed
at the bottom of her grandmothers garden where I was
hungry and hiding, she also brought a potted flower
and put it on a shelf by the window to make it look nice.

Line-Hopping

by Paul Tristram

Back when I was a teenager
a lot of people were poor.
Some nights as we hung around
the streetlights on back corners
we would see them and laugh
to ourselves in between drinking
cider flagons and plotting tyranny,
as they came jumping over fences
or falling off moonlit garden walls.
Kids as young as seven or eight,
from a few council estates down,
stealing clothes off washing lines.
No one could afford to buy dryers
so you had to use the garden lines.
But if you snoozed you loosed,
guard them or they were gone.
The dirty little thieving urchins
would take absolutely everything,
except for the jeans, they gave them
to us as a tax for a peaceful
crossing of our home territory.
They were worth a grubby £5 note
of your money, any day of the week,
in the pubs of Neath the next day.
Glue-sniffer even claimed
to have sold back a pair
to their original owner once.
They would even grab underwear
men’s, women, boys, girls
and big baggy old peoples.
Dragging them back home in sacks
to their Mam’s who would in turn
dish them out to everyone in the family.
Happy days for these women
for some other poor bugger had even
washed this season’s attire for them.
You haven’t lived until you have seen
grown men set ferocious dogs
on the heels of scarpering children
over second-hand T-shirts,
old Y-fronts and a pair of holy socks.

Claustrophobic Closeness

by Paul Tristram

We are now a circle,
complete, compact and concealed
like an anklebone in snow.

A breathing rhythm,
with scent circulation,
warm and moist muscle padding.

Comfort in this darkness,
finger joints: chain locks,
legs: skin and flesh double bows.

Busy in our duel employment,
catching wishful stars
and weaving unrealistic daydreams.

Selfishly happy and contented
in two-seated oyster shell discipline,
revolving together as we roll.

Love Letters & Kisses

by Paul Tristram

Written Thoughtfully

upon Prison Headed paper.

When Tempers & Wild Sides

are now Dormant & Sleeping.

Alcohol has been Removed

from the Equation & System

for some months.

The Hecticness & Chaotic Struggle

of the busy Outside World

has slowed down

and you are settled

into the Daily Routine

of ticking away

Days from your Sentence.

Can, often times

be more Honest

& Trustworthy.

Than a Nervous

Fight or Flee hand

grasping Heavenward 

a worn black Bible

and Swearing so, Adamantly

from a Crown Court Dock

with a Severely 

Wigged & Justice-Robed 

Audience in full Attendance.

I’m Trying To Find A Stepladder To Get Out Of This!

by Paul Tristram

He kept repeating frantically
to the other confused patients
in the afternoon common room.
Until the sectioned bag-lady
screamed and attacked him
with the bottom of a fruit bowl.
The teenage boy and girl
on suicide watch in the corner
both felt guilty immediately.
The blind retired magistrate
scared to death of loud noises
began crying and pissed his pants.
The school dinner lady with OCD
started to fix and rearrange
the curtains whilst naming all
of the Disciples backwards.
Dancing Edna began discreetly
flashing her lemon panties
and Billy ‘False Teeth’ started
turning into a werewolf again.
Whilst mean old Tilly 2 Canes
stood by the side of the TV
watching John The Baptist
with anger management issues
who had been for 5 days solid
tenaciously playing ‘Donkey Kong’
finally make it to the last level.
And as he stuttered and bounced
excitedly towards the finishing line
she pulled the plug from the wall
and drown him with her screaming.

Tales Of The Mysterious Warrant Dodger

by Paul Tristram

The banging upon the front door started again
for the third time on this otherwise peaceful day.
Then they traipsed heavily up the creaking stairs
with big boots and started knocking and shouting
at the door of Room 5, situated right next to mine.
“Anthony David Michaels we have an outstanding
warrant that we need to speak to you about.
Open up the door or we will have to break it down!”
stated someone with a voice of aggressive authority.
“Aye, if that warrant permitted you to do so
that door would already be down, so seeing as it ain’t,
if either the door, frame or lock is accidently damaged
due to your persistent enthusiasm for your job
it will be you paying for it mate, so bare that in mind,
you ain’t even proper Old Bill your just ‘PCSO’s!”
explained-via shouting-someone clued up on law
from the attic room which I always thought was empty?
I leapt off my rented bed and ran to my rented window
which was slightly open and saw him from next door
dangle and swing from the windowsill across-that way,
let go and fall 3ft down onto the garden dividing wall.
Sprint along it nearly to the lane at the far end
but upon hearing footsteps…backtrack halfway
with the balance of a gymnast and jump into the next
garden with a soft thud, then proceed to scale
and monkey every boundary wall and fence
of every garden right up to the end of the street
where he then disappeared as quickly as teenage
virginity at a Resolven council estate house party.
With the excitement now at an end, I lay back down
thinking to myself  ‘screw that for a game of soldiers,
I would rather just pay the fine and have done with it.’

Stretcher Case

by Paul Tristram

It is a contradiction completely,
when the thing sent to help you
is actually making you feel worse.
That awkward juttering and rocking
motion bringing seasickness to the land
that you are rapidly being carried over.
To the point where you are constantly
swallowing and trying not to breathe
to stop your soul (which has become
precarious like a goldfish in a bowl
that’s been temporarily forgotten
and balances on top of a moving car!)
from actually bursting out to freedom
from one of your clenched orifices.
The Riot is still in full swing
as everything shudders to an  halt
and the inside of an ambulance roof
comes sliding into view
and a calmer kind of movement
interferes and now takes its place.

Cadoxton Murder Stone

by Paul Tristram

The Stonemason worked the word
MURDER in big ominous letters
upon the top of the gravestone in 1823.
The victim was only aged twenty six
when she met her violent fate that night.
She had been beaten and strangled
and thrown down into a marshy ditch
upon the other side of The River Neath.
To lay until discovery in shallow water
with her basket and the sheep head
which she had walked into town to buy,
floating with her dress hems around her.
She was sixteen weeks pregnant at death
and for sometime had vocally attributed
fatherhood of the unborn child publicly
to the Squire’s Son whom she had been
sacked from working for a few weeks
before the gruesome events unfolded.
He was arrested almost immediately
but being wealthy and pleading ignorance
he was released through lack of evidence.
Although the locals all as one swore blind
that they knew exactly who the killer was.
In the graveyard of the Church of St Catwg's
in the quaint parish village of Cadoxton,
the bodies were finally laid down to rest.
With a ‘Murder Stone’ set big and bold
to mark the hideous –as yet- unpunished act
directly opposite the house of the Squire,
so that it may be the first thing the Son
saw each morning from the windows.
This did not last long and guilty as it looks
he left and emigrated across to America.
Some say that he fled the guilt and curse.
yet, others wisely nod and think otherwise.
For the ‘Murder Stone’ it does still stand
and for those thinking he got away free
should go read the bottom few eerie lines.
For it insists in no uncertain terms that
‘God hath set his mark upon him
either for time or eternity and the cry
of blood will assuredly pursue him to
certain and terrible but righteous judgement.’

The Morning After Chill

by Paul Tristram

Her breathing has changed
and she is starting to fidget, slightly
but she is still pretending to sleep.
We are no longer even remotely touching
which is important, now.
There is at least an arm width of space
between our bodies
all the way down this long single bed
from our heads to our toes.
That thin chasm is icy cold,
filled with screaming regrets,
half-remembered names
and last nights drunken smiles.
The bitter aftermath
of an intoxicated attraction now dead.
If I was not so hung-over
and so far from where I live
I would have taken my leave already.
But that time comes at last
as she stirs more regularly with impatience.
I quietly slide out of her bed
and silently into my clothes,
then steal out of the creaking door
of this smoky one night stand bedsit
like a criminal backtracking his way
from the scene of a crime.
Openly wearing the opposite of a smile
upon my weary disillusioned mug
I try to squint away the guilty
grey morning light
as I tread quickly along
this unfamiliar Cardiff backstreet.