There’s No Back-Pedalling From Here On Out

by Paul Tristram / April 23rd, 2017

You can have that ‘Gift Of Guilt’
which you spent so much time preparing
and working upon… back, I don’t want it!
It’s laying next to that ‘Burden Of Shame’
which I cast off the moment
I mounted the peak
of that emotional mountain
I’d wasted half my life crawling up.
The New Dawn
hit me full in the face
with its clear possibilities and brilliance.
Yesterday is cancer black…
but tomorrow is tangerine.
I know which direction I’ll be walking in.
Under your spiteful boot heel no longer,
there’s a rhythm and sense of purpose now,
my breathing has meaning and colour.
The heart does not break,
it only lets itself get tormented sometimes.
If your thinking contains the expression
‘It’s Better The Devil You Know’
then you are in serious trouble.
Sometimes you just have to start out brave,
trade-in the ’Ten Of Swords’ for ‘The Fool’
and without an obvious ‘Hope In Hell’
distance yourself instead of stubbornly clinging
to the travesty you’ve got tangled up in.
Follow the light of ‘The Sun’
and keep those shadows behind you.
A ‘Life Path’ means movement not stagnation.
believe in ‘Yourself’ again
and the rest will follow… I promise.

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since.  His novel ‘Crazy Like Emotion’ is available to purchase right here . Also his collection of shorter fiction Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves' is available to purchase at https://bookgoodies.com/a/B0DFMTSR4F Both books are published by Close To The Bone Publishing. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

This article was posted on Sunday, April 23rd, 2017 at 8:03am and is filed under Poetry.