Pressured Speech [SssSssh, It’s My Turn To Talk!]

by Paul Tristram / July 4th, 2021

All I wanted was to… Dance.
Not a princess nor a tomboy,
as a young girl
… I would scuff my knees
practicing pirouettes
… until my ‘psyche’ broke.
The ‘self-harm’ and ‘anorexia’
were but feathers…
floating down upon…
weighing scales of CONTROL!
DISCIPLINE is a tunnel
of shaping-hammers
… I smiled the very first time
I shattered a bottom back tooth
through gritting with FOCUS.
DRIVE is torture and addictive
and a God/Devil given ‘fuel’
unlike anything street-narcotic.
You don’t understand, do you
… I can see it as plain as day,
in your ‘small world’ eyes.
Fingertips upon high ledges
… has become my usual state,
I almost attacked a taxi driver
for taking a wrong turning…
and then refused my meds,
until they let me smoke again.

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, July 4th, 2021 at 8:03am and is filed under Poetry.