Watching From the Beach - Diane Scantlebury

Freedom from persecution is all they want
A chance of a new, safe life to live,
But duped by the avarice of traffickers
They’re abused and cast adrift
Onto the hostile sea in a leaky sieve,
Rejected and unwanted by every European nation
Is the certainty of a salt water grave
To be their only hope of liberation?
Desperation drives them to take a risk
That would border on insanity,
To seek refuge from war impoverished homes
And become today’s humanitarian tragedy,
How many more children will it take to drown?
While we stand and watch from the beach,
Because no one wants to put their hands in their pockets
Rescue will always be too late and just out of reach.

Diane Scantlebury

Suitcases - Richard Fleming

Crouching in attic gloom,
where skylight beams illuminate their pool of silver dust,
old leather suitcases doze like alligators
dreaming their prehistoric dreams.

They sleep soundly having eaten up my father’s life ...
the photographs, the hearing aid and collar studs,
the safety razor with its rusted blade,
the letters and the wallet with the ticket stubs

... yet I am so afraid
that when I kneel beneath the skylight
to prise apart those sagging, alligator jaws,
the life that I will find compressed within
will be too small to match my memories of him.

Richard Fleming

This poem appears in Richard’s second poetry collection, Strange Journey.

For further information go to http://redhandwriter.blogspot.com

Folk Law - Lyndon Queripel

Remember that phrase
"If it feels good, do it"?
Well, these days
It doesn't apply anymore
Because if it feels good
It's probably against the law
But there again
It probably was then.

Lyndon Queripel

The Treehouse - Bryony de Lat

Not long ago my life was simple,
a world full of magic and toys,
my den in the trees, where no-one could find me
away from all trouble and noise.

With only the sky and the birds,and the leaves
up there,where Nature's beauty surrounds,
no people, no evil, up here in the trees,
imagination and time have no bounds.

I can't go up there now, my trees are gone,
like a circus, long left the town.
How I miss the beauty, the magic
and the clown, who had to come down.

Bryony de Lat

Vestige - Ian Duquemin

My darker side...
The trigger in mind
The finest of line between badness and kind
My tightrope wire I balance upon
The bullet in barrel that's recklessly spun
A ghost on the pavement who flaunts in the light
The cunning who hides in the blackness of night
You... My shadow
The Hyde within me
Beware of the Jekyll you fail to see

Ian Duquemin