Serena Malcolm

Accept nothing,
Believe no-one,
Check everything,
Do not lose yourself admist all their lies,
Even the innocent can
filch and can savage the
goodness that I see in your eyes,
Have a refuge
in which you
just breathe,
Kill some time there when things go awry,
Learn to leave the day’s
madness behind you,
Never sleep with
other
people’s woes on your mind,
Question
regularly if your
sanity’s intact, it can be a burden;
This
uniform, these rules,
Violence of this volume
will scar you… Now sign by the
X
(You
zany young fools!)

Today’s NaPoWriMo challenge was to write an abecedarian poem (a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet). Immediately I remembered the mantra of an old police sergeant friend of mine. He used to tell all his probationary constables “Just remember ABC: Accept nothing, believe no-one, check everything.” And so I continued from his mantra and added in some other ‘advice’ for all new police recruits who are entering an unenviable job. Each line begins with a letter of the alphabet, from A-Z.  Hope you liked it!