A Living Canvas
It just occurred to me,
Life is a living canvas.
Paint your colourful emotions
Brilliantly!
Hermits And Answers
I quit taking the Medication
because it was stifling
the fantastic explosions
inside my head.
There are now rumbling
bass strings playing
when I leopard-stalk
down the street.
Manic gives the colours
deeper understanding,
and patterns run the surface
of almost everything.
Top hats were constructed
for moods not occasion.
Audio hallucinations
soundtrack abstract days…
and the shadows
have minds of their own.
I stopped talking
to that woman
for no good reason,
it troubles her enough to frown…
she just reminds me
of how I used to be,
and I’m far too much
the fractured gentleman
to explain.
I’m really not trying
to annoy you,
merely get around you,
but your questions
are blocking the way.
I’m not allowed
to say that anymore…
there is nothing more offensive
than the truth,
except maybe lies
told with obvious insincerity.
Hermits have all the answers,
but are coded
to keep them to themselves…
some call that selfishness,
whilst I see only wisdom there.
Pastel Pockets Of Warmth
Deep inside her pastel pockets of warmth
I relax into foetal position,
rocking to and fro
contentedly,
rainbow coloured
and teardrop-shaped.
Nerve ends a-tingling and a-buzzing
a soft, humming symphony
of delicate hibernation.
Safe from the purple and black fray,
invasive thoughts and memories
kept in check
by her careful heartstring pulling.
Soul thumb sucking sighs,
regressing back to neutral,
a stripping away and cleansing
of the day-to-day unnecessaries.
Life’s batteries on full charge,
mind and action of limb on subtle standby.
I win another soft victory
with each precious moment not tampered with.
My water levels rise again
as to the universal buoyancy I reconnect
to suckle slowly at the nipples core
of an energy which lies
under the curtain hem of understanding.
A Rusty Butterfly
I saw this little butterfly the other day,
it was so beautiful
that I just had to stop and watch it
until it flittered out of view.
It was a kind of powdery white,
only not a thin, fragile sort,
but a thick, healthy kind,
and it had rust coloured wings.
I’m serious,
I’ve never seen anything quite like it,
it was perfectly white (almost too perfect)
until halfway along the wings
(that’s right, about there, yeah)
and then it was a lovely orange,
rusty colour…
it was indeed magnificent.
I never thought rust was beautiful before,
but the next time I see some
I’m going to stop and venture a look,
and damn it,
I might well discover something special.
And all because of that little butterfly
which danced along the grassy verge
of a busy city street,
while everyone else refused,
or was too busy,
to acknowledge its existence, except me.
That Then Led To This Now
A thousand feather-tips
tickling my Soul’s edges, silly.
Contentedness
almost like drunkenness,
in from the cold
and stamping my feet
enthusiastically
upon the welcome
doormat of home.
An appetite fit for a King
and a Head and Heart
filled with a love
almost to the point of bursting.
Taxidermy Bride
In the cobwebbed shadows
of his long hallway
he sat nervously waiting
upon the partially broken
bottom 3rd stair step.
A whistling excitement
stirred up the dusty leaves
of his delicate, ornate mind.
As he peered downwards
at the Taxidermist’s card
beheld betwixt
his porcelain slender fingers.
And read quietly to himself
‘Your parcel will be
delivered both promptly
and exactly at one and a half
minutes after 6 o’clock
of the evening’.
He gulped down wonder
and smiled deeply
with his eyes only.
As the grandfather clock
not quite 4ft away
struck the 6th hour
and he heard the grind
and clatter of his garden gate
yawning open in the distance.
He rose shakily,
and walked towards
the front door,
each footfall a step further
away from Bachelor.
Rise!
When the self-proclaimed opposition idiot-grin
blindly in falsely supposed victories.
Nothing has your ‘Back’
except either the ‘Rock’ or ‘Hard Place’.
The cowardly gossips cluck
together with whip-cracking tongues.
And the morning’s become
a solitary obstacle course
of both ‘Mountains’ and ‘Molehills’
to traverse and overcome.
Find Strength in your own Tenacity,
focus ‘Long View/Big Picture’
at the treacherous path ahead.
To Earn and Learn from those Battle Scars
you’ve got to bleed some.
There’s no permanent ruin
in ‘Mistakes Made’, ‘Temporary Failures’
and ‘Wrong Decisions Taken’.
They are merely a Platform
to receive ‘Lessons Learnt’
and Shine your way through ‘Thick and Thin’.
It’s your Soul’s Determination, Fight
and Uniqueness that those herds of sheep
are upset and intimidated by…
Ignore their petty, mocking bleats of envy,
Spring your Confident Step and Walk to Win.
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.