Paul Tristam - Issue 37

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer. 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” is published by Close To The Bone. Short story collection “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “It Is Big And It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw”, “The Gutter Symposium”, “The Dark Side Of British Poetry” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are all published by Hunsbury Press.

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Feral-Lean

Lost far more than most

could bear,

but gained a mountain.

Outside of

concrete blocks,

wind-whipped 

and nutrition-tested. 

The rough side

of each new season,

and there is no

greater magic

than the perspective

shift arriving,

like a dawn chorus,

after battling chains-free. 

Back Around Wiser

Take the return of that 

dark energy,

bad luck, 

and karma… 

handle it with grace,

dignity,

and courage…

let me witness

the transformation

upon your fallen

character…

as you rise back up

after having learnt,

elevated,

become a new version.

Another Winter

“And, I now take-back

each and every

harsh word uttered

… in advance,”

spoken three times

upon a New Moon

through a window

with a couplet

scrawled in blood

upon its cold surface.

An Engraving of 

Altzenbach and Fürst

given each

Anniversary…

whilst, wearing a

Medico Della Peste

mask… before,

gaining another 

‘Notch’… closer…

by each acting 

‘Empiric’… as 

t’other Scalps 

another ‘Secret’ out

into the Sacred Circle.

“I know that you like

‘Spiders’, my lover.

And, sugar and spice

are mere condiments 

to the REAL

meat and gristle…

Depth and Marrow

which Groove… our

Dark ‘Jigsaw Pieces’

Macabrely To-geth-er.”