A Poem by Paul Tristram

Sherbet Lemons, Pineapple Chunks, Rhubarb & Custard Or Pear Drops

With icy cold teenage fingers
I would pull free
from the front right pocket
of my black school trousers
a corner of a paper sweet bag.
It had been ripped in half
by the mean old shop lady
to penny-pinch by making two.
The paper would be pinkish
and yellowish in places
where the 5 or 6 knobbly objects
inside dimly shone through
the wrapping that was now
stuck and moulded around them.
I would pick off the loose bits
of tobacco and pocket fluff
with my evenly bitten fingernails.
Then I would start the delicate
operation of removing the sweets
from the complicated cluster.
I would eat them one by one
but only after freeing them
completely from their sticky prison.
It was about a mile and a half walk
home from school and I would
often stop in my concentration
and dawdle along busy in my work.
I would still be sucking upon the last
Sherbet Lemons, Pineapple Chunks,
Rhubarb & Custard or Pear Drops
when I finally reached the front door.



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.