Paul Tristram

Rottweiler Soul

The first time I saw girls
fighting like men
was by the side of the railway
on the way home from school.
I was in the ‘First Year’
and we watched two girls
from the ‘Third Year’
beat Hell out of each other.
The small one was from the Melyn
and the taller one from Briton Ferry.
The Melyn girl battered her
until she pissed herself completely
and her face and hair
were a mess of blood, snot and tears.
Slight as she was,
her punches drummed the air
around us like shovels hitting cowhide.
The focus upon her face,
I’d never seen anything like it
and she kept repeating
“You Bloody Bastard!”
over and over
as those blows landed,
which was funny because
only old people said ‘Bloody’
we all said ‘Fucking’
Yet, no one laughed at her,
as she worked away,
well over a minute after
the other girl had given up.
And as she rose, in all her glory
she spat down upon her victim
and hissed loudly
“Nobody bloody messes with the Melyn!”

Dog Unit

I was at the bar when he limped his way on in,
jeans ripped from the knee down,
scratches and red marks over both hands.
“What the hell’s happened to you?”
“Oh, my Ex phoned me up this morning
and said it’s Valentine’s Day, let’s make up,
come around I’ve something waiting for you!”
“But she has a restraining order out on you
and she tried to have you killed, she’s nuts!”
“I know but she invited me herself
and I wanted to see what she had waiting?”
“So what was it, it doesn’t look like kisses?”
“It was a fucking Police Dog Unit,
I’m back up in court a week on Wednesday!”

 

Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published 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.