She Was Lactating And Crying To Big Band Jazz The Last Time I Saw Her Sweet Face (by Paul Tristram)

She Was Lactating And Crying To Big Band Jazz
The Last Time I Saw Her Sweet Face

She would be sat just there
by the early evening window
of the downstairs front room
each day as I returned
to my lodging house
deep in the French Quarter.
I had never actually spoken to her
but I had heard the Landlady
call her ‘Mary’ as she gossiped
with visiting strangers
about her bad luck and problems.
That was 14 years ago this Fall
and she haunts my evenings still.
I remember the rhythm
of her melancholy
climb up the stairs
and slide under the door of my room
just like late night swamp mist.
I wondered long about her then
and I wonder long about her now
as she watched that dirty street
holding her fatherless child
close to her young tear-wet breasts.

© 2014 by Paul Tristram, used with permission

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.

Hand Me My Loss, It’s Time I Hit the Street (by Paul Tristram)

Hand Me My Loss, It’s Time I Hit the Street

Sometimes it is better to walk, run, flee
get on out of there before
the shit completely hits the fan.
Some things are worth fighting for
yet sometimes the opposite is true.
You can often sense it before
the entire brick wall collapses
upon your squirming self.
Peace can only be found in one place
and that is out the other side
of the aftermath of the shit explosion
that is descending with the force
of stampeding rhinos towards you.
To fight will just keep you chained
there longer in the heat of the furnace.
Sometimes it is better to walk, run, flee
before her love turns to crucify you.



(c) 2013 by Paul Tristram, used with permission

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.