Don't do that

I've told you before, dear, don't do that.  Because it's rude.  And because I said so. Yes, I know Tommy does it, his Mum lets him, but in my house...  If Tommy rode his bike over a cliff would you follow him?  Now that's being silly.  What do you mean, Daddy does it...?

© Sheila Rogers
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Don't Do That!

Don't do that, do this
I can't think why you did that,
Don't do it.
If I were you, I'd do it like this.

Don't tell me what to do
You don't know 
What I think, what I feel and know
You're not me, nor I you.
Would you like it if I went inside your head
And danced there, trampling down your treasures,
Knocking back your cobwebs?

Isabel Hare
© All rights reserved 

Don't Do That!

She's overloaded
with confusion,
misery, anger;

Tangled, sticky,
swollen with
misdirected energy,
so she propels it
down the phone.

My arms outstretched,
ready to receive,
too late
a bitter taste
hits me.

She goes.  Fine now.
I whisper,
unable to say it aloud;

"Don't do that!"

© Valerie Taylor
All rights reserved 

Don't Do That!

My very favourite teacher
Mrs Chandler
how I messed about with her
a gentle soul who disliked violence
Whilst I clowned through lessons
History-English-Maths-RE.
Don't do that, she'd gently chide
but I knew she wouldn't cane me
was I hoping that she would?

© William Botley
All rights reserved 

Curmudgeonly Me?

From across the kitchen table
your kindliness becomes you.

The soup is homemade, nutritious
and piping hot. To the grumbling growl
of an empty tum, you lean forward,
chin pitched deep over trough, and
hoover in an appreciative symphony of
blow, suck, slurp.

I seethe and breathe:
‘Don’t do that!’

© Helen McIntosh
All rights reserved

Hope Cove

Hoping for plunder
they set false beacons.
Waited with hard eyes
and harder hearts,
knowing few had sufficient seamanship
to ride out the screaming demon
of the storm.

Hell’s hungry teeth would do the rest.

Of course, they drowned the drowning.

The old map shows
this coast fringed tight
with names of wrecks.
It might well have read,
‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

© Gill Dunstan
May 2016
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Hope

…is holding on when all else has fled;
sun shining through the rain
clouds lifting, drifting into skies that have no end
nor ever yet began;

small window in a pall-black room
birdsong no chains can ever bind
speck of light on a distant shore.
Hope…
is ‘When shall I see you again?’

© Sheila Rogers
May 2016
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Hope

Like sea, our lives tremble through time,
depths and complexities elusive, often beyond us.

Surface effervescence threading
through a tumult of waves,
ploughing around continents.

Looking towards the horizon;
lift of the heart;
fingers crossed,
we'll make it beyond today.

An arrow from within
aimed into the blue unknown.

© Valerie Taylor
May 2016
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Hope

I'm sitting on a donkey
a noose about my neck
my friends have hired
Dead-eyed Dick to shoot
the rope in two
I hope it's not his brother
Cross-eyed Pete
that they've sent 
in lieu.

© William Botley
May 2016
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Unforeseen

Heaped in a doorway, the trappings of 

homelessness absorb the rain and
rejection of passersby.

An oak, gnarled barren limbs devoid of leaf,
rests unseen by parkland walkers
preoccupied with beauty.

In Spring, green buds of unforeseen hope emerge;
a lad stops to chat, hands him
a coffee and burger.

© Helen McIntosh

May 2016

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Hope

At nineteen
you were one of those girls
who seemed old before their time:
you liked Jane Austen
and country walks with spaniels;
but your underwear -
black, lacy and bold,
drying on your radiator -
confounded this.

You stayed in an old convent
with rooms named after virtues:
you lived in Hope.

Twenty years later
it was MND
that took this from you
and you from me.

© Tim Scott

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