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.

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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.

Not from This Anger (by Dylan Thomas)

Not from this anger, anticlimax after
Refusal struck her loin and the lame flower
Bent like a beast to lap the singular floods
In a land strapped by hunger,
Shall she receive a bellyful of weeds
And bear those tendril hands I touch across
The agonized, two seas.

Behind my head a square of sky sags over
The circular smile tossed from lover to lover
And the gold ball spins out of the skies;
Not from this anger after
Refusal struck like a bell under water
Shall her smile breed that mouth, behind the mirror,
That burns along my eyes.

* * * * *

     

Do not go gentle into that good night (by Dylan Thomas)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

* * * * *

     

 

Love II (by George Herbert)

Portrait of George Herbert by Robert White, 1674

Love II
by George Herbert
from The Temple (1633)

Immortal Heat, O let thy greater flame
   Attract the lesser to it: let those fires
   Which shall consume the world, first make it tame;
And kindle in our hearts such true desires,

As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.
   Then shall our hearts pant thee; then shall our brain
   All her inventions on thine Altar lay,
And there in hymns send back thy fire again:
Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust;
   Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blind:
   Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kind,
Who wert disseized by usurping lust.

   All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise,
   And praise Him who did make and mend our eyes.

* * * * *

Love I (by George Herbert)

Portrait of George Herbert by Robert White, 1674

Love I
by George Herbert
from The Temple (1633)

Immortal Love, author of this great frame,
   Sprung from that beauty which can never fade;
   How hath man parcel’d out thy glorious name,
And thrown it on that dust which thou hast made,
While mortal love doth all the title gain!
   Which siding with invention, they together
   Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain,
(Thy workmanship) and give thee share in neither.
Wit fancies beauty, beauty raiseth wit:
   The world is theirs; they two play out the game,
   Thou standing by: and though thy glorious name
Wrought our deliverance from the infernal pit,
   Who sings thy praise? only a scarf or glove
   Doth warm our hands, and make them write of love.

* * * * *