My Strange Ways

My strange ways have led me

in and out of trouble,

ridiculousness and nonsense.

Drunkenness and violence,

insanity and confusion,

homelessness and stark

truth and realization.

I’ve mentally scaled the walls

of prison cells and psychiatric wards

both anorexic and demented.

Yet, I have also climbed mountains

both physical and emotional.

Surfed those rapids of true feelings

and smiled so wide

I almost caused an earthquake

right down in my soul.

I have experienced heartache,

loss and cruelty, betrayal and trickery.

but I have also felt the comfort

of a strangers hand full with mercy,

help, kindness and charity

repeatedly along the crooked way.

I will never take or accept

that safe, middle road,

my Soul’s too big to just plod along.

I’ve tasted the sweetness and bitterness

of both sides of life’s coin

and am a better person for it,

in my strange ways I do belong

and them inside of me…Amen.

© Paul Tristram 2014

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.