Paul Tristram

Three Sheets to the Wind & Stumbling Back the Wrong Way Home

“Whomever invented the ‘Cobblestone’
was not a ‘Drinking Man’ he muses
whilst grabbing a-hold of the bus stop railings
and righting himself with a balancing act
quite wonderful in its swaying clumsiness.
It starts to rain lightly, as he sparks-up
an already half-smoked roll-up
the wrong way around.
Peers downwards into the giddy gutter
with one eye clenched shut tight
and spies two farthings and a shilling
which makes him beam a childlike smile.
Stoops a little too quickly, like a drunken heron
and tumble-tosses right over onto his arse.
He looks happily at the new found coins
glistening in the palm of his nicotine stained hand,
then notices a half a crown
peeking out from under an Autumn leaf.
“I’ll never sober up, at this rate, I tell thee!”
he wheezes with a chuckle to himself
as he grabs an invisible rope to Upright Standing.
Then zigzags back to The Collier’s Arms
singing “Take The Blanket From The Bedroom!”

Dartmoor Wanderer

They found him inside a farm barn,
on the Tavistock side of the moor.
Right ankle, shin and knee
completely fucked
(Won’t be scaling no prison walls no more!)
from being hit by a Royal Mail van
in Princetown a few hours earlier.
Wearing a stinking, old
tattered donkey jacket
someone had been using
as a tractor seat cover.
Strangled two chickens
but was waiting until night time
to light a fire to try cooking them.
(Fucking amateur…
you don’t construct beacons
when you’re out
and away on your toes, like!)
Sitting on a hay bail eating cat food
as happy as Larry (Dirty cunt!)
when the dogs found him.
(Hell of a right hook on him…
knocked the first hound bang-out!)
Yeah, he’s on the Hospital Wing now…
and he’ll be there a little while and all.
Fucking newspapers were all over it,
and there’s no going quietly
after leaving that fucking noisily 

 

A Great Fucking Cacophony of Drunken Voices

His funeral was absolutely magnificent!
Every Villain (Out Of Prison!), Gypsy,
Street-Urchin and Toe-Rag was there
from every dive, Council estate
and campsite for every ASBO mile around.
The bog doors were a-swinging wildly
like bored, middle-aged housewives,
with lines of colourful characters
re-entering the ‘Drinking Contest’ arena,
sleeve-wiping white powder from their snouts.
The fighting and mayhem had started early,
well before the hearse had even arrived.
“Watch out she’s got a-hold of a knife again!”
and “Who’s throwing broken whisky tumblers?”
I’d sold that van full of copper we’d been tatting
before reaching the bottom of my second pint.
Bought a microwave, hoover and Blu-ray player
for a slick fifty notes for ‘Her-In-Doors’
Me and our Danny spit-roasted The Widow
(Aye, and I had the messy-end again!)
out the back of the boozer later on that night.
“If I’d known the day’d turn out this much fun.”
she exclaimed wretching and drunkenly laughing
“I’d have strangled the cunt in his sleep yonks ago!”

© Paul Tristram 2017

 

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. Buy his book Scribblings Of A Madman (Lit Fest Press) http://www.amazon.co.uk