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 (36)
Stories (1374)
Filter by community
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 Stewart4 months 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 Stewart4 months 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 Stewart4 months 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 Stewart4 months ago in Poets
