Paul Stewart
Bio
Award-Winning Writer, Poet, Scottish-Italian, Subversive.
The Accidental Poet - Poetry Collection out now!
Streams and Scratches in My Mind coming soon!
Achievements (27)
Stories (1309)
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That Same Old Refrain
Misery or Missouri. I'm sure there's a bad pun there. As two local boys with long-established heritage in the state, we knew better than most how easily small town existenz can chew you up and spit you out. Strum, strum, strum, strum, strum, The strumming reverberated from the banjo upon my father's lap through the floorboards to my soul. ingratiating into me a sense of ... Nothingness. Seems I hear those banjos playin' once again, Hum, hum, hum, hum, hum, That same old plaintive strain. As boys we felt the growing strain of Arrow Rock living. Moonshine tainted blood passed from generations supped on from the Ozarks. Hear that mournful melody, It just haunts you the whole day long, And you wander in dreams back to heaven, it seems, When you hear that old time song. Recounted and recalled as. Something like naustalgea. Hush-a-bye ma baby, go to sleep on Mommy's knee, Journey back to paradise in dreams again with me; It seems like your Mommy is there once again, Even after she disappeared in Marvel Cave or was it Taberville Prairie. Memories are so fickle, so lost on plaintive strain of existenz. And the old folks were strummin' that same old refrain. Binaurally as we waved hush-a-bye to our childhood Thomas looked like Mommy did. Then. Nothingness. Too late. Too beyond. I was once. Aware. But awarenez dissolved. Way down in Missouri where I learned this lullaby, When the stars were blinkin' and the moon was climbin' high, And I hear Mammy Cloe, as in days long ago, Singin' hush-a-bye.
By Paul Stewartabout a month ago in Horror
When the Story Forgets Itself
I've been thinking lately that sometimes all I'm good for is bad metaphors and nonsensical whatever you want to call it. Some say art, some say a futile attempt to prove that I am anything more than whatever you want to call me. Working backwards or counting breaths
By Paul Stewartabout a month ago in Poets
Hiding Away Until the Tinsel Melts. Content Warning.
When I was younger, in a younger man’s—no, a younger boy’s—shoes, I bought into the magic of the Saturnalian festivities that followed the last fall of brown leaves onto concrete and grass. The frenzy of family colliding for food, for drink, for the exchange of gifts and the anecdotal evidence that we were here at all, all tucked under the loose lore of a Messianic birth. It was joyous in its pomposity and, for me, rooted in imperfect humanity.
By Paul Stewartabout a month ago in Humans
Under the Cold Shine
The things I should have said and done Are burning, tearing holes of honesty Under the cold shine of life's winter sun / Would choices be different under a gun Saving me from emotional travesty The things I should have said and done / Avoid the fate of Attila the mighty Hun Benefit from a merciful amnesty Under the cold shine of life's winter sun / From me the crowd’s eyes would not shun Would turn against fate in cambistry The things I should have said and done / Gripping the ripcord before it became a run And not suffer the stain of my tanistry Under the cold shine of life's winter sun / Could stand atop the hill as the battle is won And revel in the profane-free majesty The things I should have said and done Under the cold shine of life's winter sun
By Paul Stewartabout a month ago in Poets
Someone Else's Property
This Airbnb has me lost in thought I've been thinking about regrets As so often I do when I'm awake At night in the wee small hours Or the light of day, anytime really Sitting in someone else's property Makes me think how weird it is To be sitting in someone else's property I think there's been a cat here My allergies have been triggered Hotels are designed for strangers But homes are not — unless money That's true of most things Gifts, acts of love, sex and death Become things for strangers When there's a bottom line _ Someone else’s time, their body, their mind, their heart. My nose is swollen a little — not too dramatically — In someone else's property, in a city unfamiliar That could be any Scottish city, save for the green buses and the coastal-meets-urban landscape _ The gulls are calling now, replacing the distant sirens and the calls of the delinquents and disreputes _ Not that I can judge, as my regrets and guilt and growing uneasy, and the damn allergic reaction, remind me I am not sinless or saintly. My halo chokes and I too have benefitted and suffered from the commoditisation of someone's property, visually beyond physical reach but still enough for viscera.
By Paul Stewartabout a month ago in Poets
