Finders Keepers - Lyndon Queripel

I found an old map of gold
That my greed could claim
Looking closely at the deed
I was able to read my name
But the last part was missing
It was a crying shame

Finders keepers, losers weepers game

I found a coat of colours
Lying in the midday mud
The buttons shone like diamonds
But it had a broken stud
So I tried it on for size
But the pockets were full of blood

Finders keepers, left after the flood

I found a box of silver
In a cellar of cold stone
I started to count my blessings
When the wind began to moan
It slammed the door so fast
Was locked in all alone

Finders keepers, misfortune unknown.

Lyndon Queripel

Over the Edge - Diane Scantlebury

Head first over the precipice she plunges,
Freefalling into a different age,
No safety harness to impede her progress,
As her life speeds past to another page,

No mayday calls or rescue boat launched to find her,
Nor helicopter circling to seek out where she’d be,
While over the edge she was falling, falling,
To drown in the depths of the aging sea,

At the edge there’d been no warning,
No easy route on which to stick,
So she’d trundled on through life oblivious
Of the inevitable path that time would pick,

Into the sea of age she was falling, falling,
Life passing before her in a flash,
No outstretched net below to catch her,
No one had pushed, there’d be no splash.

Diane Scantlebury

La Belle Etoile - Tony Bradley

In Spring, before twilight, I saw a star so bright
though so beautifully glinting, the orbit was wrong
I dreamt it was mine, in a warm silvery light
but the dream, and the star, didn't stay long.

The star captured me, but soon left, come the bright day
the pain of reality, stabbing me, like a knife
but it's up there, and although a distance away,
it's still brightening up my dull, little life.

Tony Bradley

The Peace Keeper - John Carré Buchanan

They trained him to kill.
To remove a face mask with his fingers,
slit a throat, sever a brain stem.
He can shoot centre mass,
advance with bayonet,
post a grenade,
take out a tank and make a bomb.
He's directed fire and lase'd targets.
They taught him to ambush
to advance under fire,
to suppress his own fear and press forward,
to fend for his mates - he will go it alone
and can kill with a shovel a stick or a stone.
His aggression's controlled, but
behind his tranquil eyes and square jaw
is a highly trained soldier ready for war.
Now he stands between combatants
capability checked,
the irony...
The rules of engagement in his pocket
and the blue beret on his head
make him the peace keeper.

John Carré Buchanan

Not That We Would Ever Dream Of Not - Ric Carter

You had canned laughter in your hair.
It accompanied everything you said,
drowning out the ends of your sentences,
your sentence ends.

I had had my sentence ends trimmed, tidied up so as
to cut down on my talking, which I told myself was
getting out of hand, and now I never got to the end of
sentences and no one understood what I was trying
to say.

I made phone calls and they came out garbled.
But I knew these were victorious conversations –
uselessly stupid, stupidly fruitless, fruitlessly weird,
weirdly important, dreams with dreamt-up punchlines,
mostly but not entirely jokeless.

Your hair laughed whenever you moved in your sleep,
soundtracking memories accumulated during the day –
our comedy situations that were awkwardly disastrous,
disastrously awkward, awkwardly disastrous,
disastrously awkward, ad infinitum, infinitum ad

Ric Carter