Of all the loves that I’ve loved in life
There was one, crème de la crème,
She turned my head and she caused me strife
But I loved her, way back when,
I met the woman by accident
As the ex-wife of a friend,
We’d see each other and look away
In a game we called ‘Pretend’.

‘Pretend’ she didn’t attract me then,
‘Pretend’ I couldn’t care less,
And she’d ‘Pretend’ that I held no sway
When she’d hide her eagerness.
We’d say, ‘Now, what a coincidence
That you happen to be here!’
But fate provided the incidents
For the best part of a year.

She ditched the guy she was seeing then
And I started calling round,
Just for a morning coffee break
And we’d stare each other down.
There was love and hate in each debate
We’d agree to disagree,
She’d say, ‘I’m glad that I’m not with you,’
And I’d say, ‘That goes for me!’

But then, if ever I missed a day
She’d say, ‘Where did you go?
I had a ride, but I stayed inside
Then in fact, you didn’t show!’
And sometimes, when she was out about
I would knock, and feel aggrieved,
‘Why weren’t you home at ten o’clock?’
I’d say, and she’d look relieved.

We felt a reverse attraction like
The same magnetic pole,
Pushing each other away today
Tomorrow, joined at the soul.
The tension there was electric once
That everything had been said,
And there on a Monday holiday
We tumbled into bed.

Our love was a roller coaster that
Would speed us up to the stars,
Bathed in a perspiration that
Was cold as the planet Mars,
And nothing was ever long enough
It was more like a disease,
For neither of us were strong enough
So we crawled away on our knees.

If love is a desperation to
Cling on to the one you need,
That was the explanation for
The love that we felt was greed.
I thought that I’d found the only one
That this love would never fail,
It was if I had found a holy one
In a search for the Holy Grail.

But nothing will last forever, for
The planets will move along,
Challenging each endeavour, be it
Love, or the right from wrong,
She slowly began to drift away
In search for a sense of self,
Begged for the space to run her race
And left me, high on the shelf.

I spent her absence, caught in a trance
And staring long at the wall,
I knew my soul was lost in advance
When I got the final call,
She fell enceinte with another’s child
Though she wanted to come back home,
But I was too hurt to take her back
So I soldiered on, alone.

Of all the loves that I’ve loved in life
There was one, crème de la crème,
She turned my head and she caused me strife
But I loved her, way back when,
I haven’t seen her for thirty years
But she has a place in my soul,
While I am playing the game ‘Pretend’
And the world is growing old.

David Lewis Paget

He was known as the local Mycophagist
In the dales, the woods and the hills,
What happened was sad, for he wasn’t so bad
Just a tad underdone, Toby Gills,
They say that the cord was around his neck,
He was born with a carroty mop,
And a pale white head, he was almost dead
When the doctor had called out ‘Stop!’

They cut the cord and they let him breathe,
The damage was already done,
The blood had been stopped to his carroty top
So they said that he’d always be dumb.
But he found a niche where the fungi creeps
And went out collecting the spore,
In a year or two he knew more than you
And the college Professor next door.

He studied his mushrooms with loving intent,
He knew about hen of the woods,
He knew about bracket and shaggy manes, magic
And paddy straw, they were the goods;
He fostered his lobster and hedgehog and oyster
And coral fungi and stinkhorns,
But didn’t discern between fly agarics
And toadstools that grew in the lawn.

He grew his spore in a deep, dark cellar
And sold to the folk who came by,
And never would judge between Widow Weller
And the ordinary witches of Rye,
He’d sell death caps, and pigskin puffballs
Not thinking to question them why,
Or who would be eating his laughing Jim’s
And whether they knew they would die.

The air was thick and the air was damp
And he fell in the dark one day,
Scattering toadstools into the air
And their spores had floated away,
He breathed the spores right into his lungs
For he hadn’t been wearing a mask,
But ****** them in right over his tongue
And they came to his lungs, at last.

I happened to see him out in the street
He was finding it hard to breathe,
He could only take a couple of steps
Then sit on the kerb, to heave,
I tried to help but he waved me away
And his eyes were yellow and cruel,
Then I saw what he’d thrown up on the kerb
Some yellow and red toadstools.

The man was a walking toadstool spore
They were popping up out of his hair,
Pushing their way though his carroty top
In a bid to get to the air,
And his skin was blotched like a puffball, he
Looked up at me, and he cried,
As a giant toadstool grew from his throat
And he lay on his side, and died.

David Lewis Paget

The footsteps echoed on cobblestones
When a chime rang ten of the clock,
As a sailor making his way back home
Was walking up from the dock,
It was cold and dark for the lights were out
And the street was wet with the rain,
When he came to an old red telephone box
At the side of a narrow lane.

The clouds were black and they opened up
So he stepped in out of the wet,
Dropped his swag as it turned to hail
And lit up a cigarette,
The box was ancient, was George the Fifth
And hadn’t been used for years,
But stood in a lane that time forgot
When the rot set in, and worse.

For most of the houses were boarded up
And the weeds had grown outside,
Some had embarked for a tree-lined park
And some of the others died,
It was lonely there in the dark of night
As the sailor waited, he sang,
But stubbed his cigarette out in fright
When the telephone next to him rang.

He stared at it for a while before
He raised it, stopping the bell,
It had an echoing, ghostly sound
Like you hear in a deep sea shell,
The sound of sobbing came to his ear
And he cried, ‘Who’s there, what’s wrong?’
‘Oh God, I’ve waited forever my dear,
I’m locked in the basement, Tom!’

The sailor said that he wasn’t Tom
But she didn’t appear to hear,
‘He’s got an axe, attacking the door,
Be quick or he’ll **** me, dear!’
The sailor didn’t know what to say
But a chill ran up his spine,
‘Tell me, what’s your address,’ he said
‘Before you run out of time!’

‘I’m straight across from the telephone box,
You usually meet me here,
He’s found us out, and he screams and shouts
That he’ll **** you as well, my dear!
He just came home from a spell at sea
And called me a cheating *****,
If you don’t come over and rescue me
He’ll have smashed his way through the door.’

The sailor wanted to say, ‘Enough!
It’s nothing to do with me,’
But flew on out of the telephone box,
Leapt over a fallen tree,
He raced right in through the open door
And he called, ‘I’m here, just wait!’
Then made his way to the cellar door
But all he could feel was hate.

The door was shattered, he walked right in
It was dark, there wasn’t a light,
He felt around for a candle, lit
And stared at the terrible sight.
A man lay dead on the basement floor
Where an axe had taken his life,
And there with her throat like an open sore
Was the body of his dear wife.

He staggered, stopped, and fell to his knees
And sobbed like a man insane,
‘Oh God, it’s true, I did this to you,
But my mind’s been playing games.
I thought if I went away to sea
I’d return to find they were dreams…’
As he sliced a razor across his throat
He thought, ‘Life’s not what it seems!’

David Lewis Paget

‘What will you buy when Christmas comes
To show me your love, dear heart?
Will you fill my bower with fruit and flowers
To enjoy while we’re apart?
Will you buy the things that you promised me,
Like a bangle for my wrist,
Or a diamond, topaz, sapphire ring,
Or a giant amethyst?’

He stood, head down and he held her hand
As she lay so pale in the bed,
He didn’t tell her his job was lost
Or what his employer said.
There were charges he would have to face
That would fill her heart with gloom,
That by Christmas Day he would be away
And not be returning soon.

‘I’d rather give you the crescent Moon
As a coronet, dear Tess,
And pluck the stars from the Milky Way
As sequins for your dress,
Then call on the Charioteer, my dear
For your transport to the heights,
Where the gods will fall on their knees to bless
This glimpse of paradise.’

She smiled, then faded away to sleep
And dream of a ghostly tower,
Where her prince stood long at the battlements
At the height of a fateful hour,
An army lay in the fields about
In a siege for her, no less,
‘We’ve come for the Queen of Golders Green,
And we won’t leave without Tess!’

While he sat bowed in a lonely cell
And wept at his sense of loss,
He’d only needed another month
And the price would be worth the cost,
He’d not be there when she needed him
As she glided out through the door,
The Judge fixed him with a puzzled eye,
‘Just who was the coffin for?’

On Christmas Eve she awoke before
Her heart pit-pattered and stopped,
Her fading eyes had looked to the door
Along with her hopes, they dropped.
But in her hair was a crescent Moon
And stars were all over her dress,
While a Charioteer came into the room,
‘I’ve a chariot here, for Tess!’

David Lewis Paget

The ice drew lace on the window panes
We couldn’t see out for a week,
The air had frozen and blocked the drains
And my tears were ice on my cheek.
‘Come back to bed and forget her now
She’s been gone since the crescent Moon,
Her passing has freed you from your vow
Yet your grief’s pervading the room.’

‘I need to know what was in her mind
On the day that she passed away,
She left no message of any kind
Why she swallowed the draught that day.
But you were there when she combed her hair,
You were there for the last words said,
She must have told of her deep despair
Or she wouldn’t have ended dead.’

‘You knew my sister had many moods,
You knew, before you were wed,
She’d lie, consulting the ancient runes
While hiding deep in her bed.
Her superstitions were known, it seems
Her hold on the world was loose,
She drifted half in and out of dreams
But death was what she would choose.’

I shook my head and I walked away,
And ploughed through the drifted snow,
Crunched a trail through the empty streets
To the cemetery gates at Stowe,
The clouds were grey in the sky above
And the snow built up in the trees,
While headstones peered from their icy tombs
Like sinners, down on their knees.

I scraped the ice from the headstone face
That said ‘Elizabeth Jane,’
‘An Angel fallen to earth,’ it said
‘While her heart was wracked with pain.’
A shadow fell on the marble face
As I turned, but no-one was there,
Then words appeared like an act of grace,
‘My sister killed me - Beware!’

The horror showed on my face, I rose
To follow the tracks I’d made,
But somebody else had left their prints
Leading away from the grave,
The tracks were made at a frantic pace
And they forged on way ahead,
Leading me through the cemetery gates
But Elizabeth Jane was dead!

A storm blew up on the way back home
And had turned the house to ice,
I forced my way up the frozen stairs
To confront Margot Desize.
But she lay frozen with eyes a-stare
And a glance said she was dead,
The horror fixed in her final glare
As a shadow stood by the bed!

David Lewis Paget

The wind blew out and the sea rolled in
By the cliffs and the curving beach,
A lonely stretch, they were kith and kin
And had never heard human speech,
A cottage grew by the shore one day
There were figures of surly men,
The sea had muttered, ‘They’re in my bay,’
And the wind replied, ‘Amen!’

The men had left but the cottage stayed
Like a wound to the ocean’s pride,
It split the wind at the valley floor
As it passed there, either side,
The sea said ‘blow it away my friend,
For it grieves my heart to see,
The works of man where I lap the sand,’
And the wind said, ‘Leave it to me!’

It soughed and soared at the eventime
And it scored with sand from the beach,
It struggled to topple the chimney pots
As it surged at one and each,
It lost its puff as the sun came up
When the tide was on the ebb,
‘I couldn’t move it a jot,’ it sighed,
‘And the roof, it felt like lead.’

‘We’ll wait for the winter tides,’ my friend,
‘I’ll surge and wash it away,
I’ll undermine its foundations, then
I’ll sweep it out in the bay.’
But then a flickering candle lit
From a window, facing the shore,
‘There’s something a-move, for a shadow flit
Last night through the cottage door!’

The sea had grumbled, ‘We’ll wait and see
What lingers there in the light,’
The wind peered in at the window pane
And sighed at the wondrous sight,
‘A creature there with its golden hair
And its eyes, a deep sea blue,
That set me quivering in their stare,
So what will they do to you?’

The morning saw at the cottage door
A woman all dressed in white,
She wandered along the empty shore
And the sea had gulped, ‘You’re right!’
He lapped his waters around her feet
As she waded in for a swim,
And said to the wind, ‘She’s warm and sweet,
And it’s sad, but you can’t come in!’

Back on the beach, a gentle breeze
Had whispered the woman dry,
Then flitted, scurrying out to sea,
‘You’ve changed your tune, but why?’
‘I think we needed that cottage there,
In reflection, let it stand.’
The wind just capered along the shore
As the door of the cottage slammed.

David Lewis Paget

There’s always been something controlling me,
I knew, but I knew not what,
Something diverting and foiling me
Since the days that I lay in my cot,
I thought it was simply a parent thing
As they whispered their rules in my ear,
The things that were right and the things that were wrong
And the things I would most have to fear.

They sent me to school and the teachers, too,
Must have read from the very same book,
They always laid blame and they said it the same
And the cane lent a sting to their hook.
‘You’re coming to learn, not to think for yourself,
You’ll repeat everything that I say,
And maybe just some of these rules will stick
If you dwell on the rules every day!’

Then once in the world my employers unfurled
All the rules and the regs I would keep,
I didn’t last long, I’d seen them before
And told them they put me to sleep.
The government fined and unlicensed me
From a book that they said was the law,
The magistrates sat on a heap of these books
As I shrugged and I said, ‘What for?’

I sat in the jail for contempt of court,
Spent plenty of time in my cell,
The world was consumed with a million rules
Designed to consign you to hell.
I watched all the lawyers and prisoners, cops
As they danced to the rules of the cot,
And sensed they were puppets, and most of them fools
Who would baulk at the words, ‘I will not!’

They’d hate to be questioned, they thought they were right,
If you disagreed you were canned,
They’d lock you away for a hospital stay
There was no going back, it was planned.
You had to be made to agree with their way
So they clamped electrodes on your head,
Then slide up the volts, and it wasn’t their fault
If it happened you ended up dead.

They called it Electro-therapy
And said it was doing you good,
But the thoughts in my brain they were never the same
When I came out from under that hood,
I saw the strings jerking from shoulders and heads
In a vision you couldn’t conceive,
And there were the hands that were pulling their strings
When I called out, ‘I don’t believe!’

‘I’ve never believed and I’ll never believe,’
I called, and they all moved away,
A thunderous cracking of mortar and ceiling,
It all fell apart on that day.
The strings fell away from my shoulders and hands
And I knew I was finally free,
And then I called up to the Puppet Master,
‘You won’t be controlling me!’

People were falling all over the place
As he dropped all the strings from his hands,
The bearded Master could see the disaster,
‘You’ve ruined my world and my plans!’
He paused for a moment and then he was gone
Leaving people to blink in the light,
The rules were the rules of the Puppet Master
Now we can decide what is right!

David Lewis Paget

I’d hidden away the mirrors
Packed them up and sent them off,
Taken the shine off the saucepan lids,
Sandpapered the coffee ***,
Everything that reflected I’d
Sand-blast, like the sliding doors,
Even got rid of the polisher
For shining the wooden floors.

It was very like narcolepsy when
She saw her face on a plate,
She’d go in a trance and sit for hours
In a crazy, dreamlike state,
I’d take away the reflection and
She’d sit and weep for hours,
‘You’ve taken away my beauty,’ she
Would say, and take cold showers.

It seemed like a terrible sickness that
She loved her looks so much,
She’d say, ‘If you won’t let me see myself,
I’ll just make do with touch,’
She’d run her fingers over her face
Explore each crease and mound,
And sigh to her satisfaction as
She felt her lips turn down.

I couldn’t get rid of the garden pool
That flowed on in from the brook,
Babbling over the standing stones
From the woods at Nether Hook,
I’d catch her kneeling beside the pool
And staring into its depths,
Smiling at each reflection that
Would ripple with every breath.

‘Beware of the evil Water Sprite,’
I told her more than once,
‘He takes advantage of lovely girls
For he hates to be outdone.
He’ll lure you into a shady pool
With guile, and his tender lies
And hold you down ‘til you surely drown,
You’ll avoid him, if you’re wise.’

She told me then of a vision that
She’d seen, that of a prince,
He’d smiled at her from the water but
She hadn’t seen him since.
‘That’s not a prince but the Water Sprite
And he’s trying to lure you down,
To put your face to the water, but
I’ve told you once, you’ll drown.’

The water was babbling gently on
A sunny day in Spring,
In shades of the weeping myrtles and
The sound of cuckooing,
Miranda was knelt beside the pool
And I saw her head go down,
When claws reached out of the water
Pulled her in, without a sound.

I raced across and I seized her hair
And I pulled her from the pool,
But claws had raked at her pretty face,
She said, ‘I feel a fool!
I should have listened to you, I know
But I thought that just one kiss…’
But he had turned to a monster and
Had bitten her rose red lips.

I put the mirrors all back in place
And I bought new shiny pans,
Polished the floor, you can see your face
But she hides behind her hands,
She never looks in a mirror now
Though her scars are healed and white,
But goes each day to poison the pool
To **** off the Water Sprite.

David Lewis Paget

I wake and prowl the house at night
And wander through the gloom,
The only light that streams are beams
Of silver from the Moon,
While every room is silent
And the passageways are dark,
There’s just one sound, the beating of
My misbegotten heart.

But no-one else is stirring
And the atmosphere is thick,
With dreams and ancient memories
From some old sailing ship,
They rise up from the midden of
A thousand journeys sailed,
That came to grief on some dread reef
As each one said, ‘You failed!’

And long-lost faces turn away
Before they’ll meet my stare,
I try to capture them again
And say, ‘I know you’re there!’
They shake their heads in silence and
Then drift into the night,
‘I know that I was wrong,’ I call,
They whisper back: ‘You’re right!’

So on then through the early hours
My vigil seeks the past,
Re-visiting each love I lost
As if it were the last,
And tears stream like some sad dream
Repeating: ‘Well, you know
Just why I turned away from you,
I really had to go.’

The years have mounted up, and now
Lie on me like a tomb,
Reflected in the silence of
This darkened, empty room,
And just as dawn is breaking I
Cry out, ‘I cared, you know!’
My voice, it echoes in the gloom,
‘Why do you hate me so?’

David Lewis Paget

I was introduced to her mother
One Whit Sunday, down at the Hall,
They said that this was a ritual
And suffered by one and all,
She wanted to check your hands were clean
That you had no flaw on your skin,
I wanted to marry her daughter
But if I had, I couldn’t come in.

They led me in through the servant’s door
Down a passageway to the rear,
Marching me past some gloomy rooms
Was an ancient Grenadier,
He didn’t reply to a single word
That I said, his face was grim,
Then into a room with a chandelier
That was gloomier than him.

She sat at the end of a table, veiled
And motioned me to a chair,
The dust was thick on the table-top
And I’m sure there was dust on her,
I’d heard she once was a beauty
One of the greatest in the land,
But she sat there bowed like a coffin shroud
As she raised her withered hand.

‘Show me your hands and your fingers,’ she
Then whispered in gravel tones,
Her voice like the dying embers of
The ashes of human bones,
I raised my sleeves to the elbows and
I held them out to her stare,
‘I’m going to marry your daughter,’
I declared, ‘so be aware!’

She flinched, as if I had slapped her
Then she said, as hard as nails,
‘I’ll write the end of the chapter,
I’ll not heed your rants and rails.
My daughter won’t marry anyone
That I don’t approve, you’ll see,
You think that you are the only one
Come cap in hand to me?’

‘There was a time, I was in my prime
When the world was at my door,
And I could have married anyone
But the love that I had was poor,
A rival had him imprisoned, just
To get him out of the way,
Then said I could buy his freedom if
I’d lie with him for a day.’

‘My love was such that I put my trust
That this Earl would keep his word,
So slept with him on a Sunday, then
He put my love to the sword.
He said that I’d have to keep his bed
For I had no place to go,
That I was fit for playing the *****
And he’d let my friends all know.’

‘I couldn’t cry, I would rather die
But my first thought was revenge,
My heart was broken forevermore
But my love would be avenged.
I ran his lordship an evil bath
With herbs and salts disguised,
Then held him down while it ate his flesh,
And put out both of his eyes.’

I leapt to my feet on hearing that,
And staggered back from my chair,
‘So now you know I’m a monster,
If you cross me, just beware!’
‘I think you’ve told me a pack of lies,
But I love your daughter, true!
I’m going to marry her come what may,
I swear, in spite of you!’

She rose and beckoned me follow her
And she led me through the gloom,
Down through a flagstone stairwell and
Into a tiny room,
A man lay there in an iron bath
That was filled to the brim with oil,
And only his face was still intact
Though his eyes had both been spoiled.

‘He hasn’t an ounce of flesh on him,
The oil just keeps him alive,
He’ll never get out of this bath again,’
But he’d heard us both arrive.
‘For God’s sake, **** me and end it now,’
He groaned from his oily tomb,
‘I will when you bring my Martin back,’
She whispered, there in the gloom.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough
But I’d lost my way inside,
I knew I couldn’t get married now
I was far too terrified.
She called me back and she raised her veil
And she said, ‘He stole my grace!’
I saw to my horror that syphilis
Had eaten part of her face!’

David Lewis Paget

On a twisting, winding, rutted track
That weaved from under the pines,
A figure came in a burlap sack
Where the crossroad intertwines,
I could only see the bleeding feet
As they peeped from under the sack,
And the hood hid every feature that
Would deem it a Jill or Jack.

There was purpose in that stolid walk,
And determination fixed,
I thought to offer a helping hand
But my feelings there were mixed,
There were leaves and twigs on the figure’s back
And a slime that looked like mud,
I thought that it might have been attacked
When I saw that the slime was blood.

Nothing could stop its slow advance
As it plodded into the street,
I reached on out but it just walked by
So I thought I’d be discreet,
The day was settling into dusk
As it reached the village square,
And just as the ancient gas lamps lit
It gave a cry of despair.

The cry was that of a woman lost,
Was more of a hell-fire screech,
It echoed up to the steepletop
And I thought of Caroline Beech,
The girl who’d gone to the woods one day
For a picnic of pies and mince,
The basket lay for a week and a day,
She hasn’t been heard of since.

The figure stopped and its arm flew out
To point at the Baker’s door,
I saw his face at the window lace
As pale as a painted *****,
The sweat stood out on his beady brow
As he hurried from room to room,
Locking each door and window now,
And shivering there in the gloom.

A crowd was gathering in the square
Surrounding the baker’s house,
‘You’d better come out and show yourself!’
But he was quiet as a mouse.
The men of the village burst right in
And they ****** him down on his knees,
She put one ****** foot on his head
And he squealed, ‘God help me… Please!’

‘I only wanted some love,’ he said,
‘But you just pushed me away,
I’d never have hurt a hair of your head
If you’d loved me once that day.’
And that was enough for the surly crowd
Who called on Oliver Beech,
To bring a rope from the stableyard
For a lesson they had to teach.

Her father fastened the rope around
The cringing baker’s neck,
Just as the daughter’s burlap sack
Collapsed to a heap on the deck.
There was nothing inside the hood or sack
As it lay there on the street,
Only the footmark stains of blood
From the murdered woman’s feet.

They dragged him down to the wood of pines
And he showed them where she lay,
Under a pile of autumn leaves
He’d covered her with that day,
They left him hanging above the spot
As they bore her gently home,
Now there is no baker in Warley Copse
So the villagers bake their own.

David Lewis Paget

The city was laid like a wasteland
Like a rusting, crumbling sore,
Half of the houses were boarded up
Along a neglected shore,
The spirit had long gone out of it
That had made the city great,
Men fifty miles to the south of it
Were determining its fate.

Way up on the Presidential floor
Was a group of greedy men,
The czars of the old industrial core
Who had bled the town back then,
‘The real estate’s a disaster,’ said
A man who had been the Mayor,
‘The auto plants are a rusting heap,’
Said the man who held the Chair.

‘We’ve got more pensioners on the funds
Than workers in the plants,
There’s crime and violence in every street
And the Unions make demands.
So what’s the conclusion, gentlemen,
Do we give this plan its head?’
‘Whatever we do, it’s much too late,
The city’s as good as dead!’

And that’s how they came to build ‘The Tower’
To illuminate the sky,
‘There’s plenty of work for everyone
At a hundred storeys high!’
Nobody knew just what it did
Or what they were building for,
They only knew that they had a wage,
Could hold up their heads once more.

A central lift in The Tower went up
And down ten times a day,
Taking tools and materials
To restrict the Tower’s sway,
‘They say we’re going to go High-Tech
And they’re closing down the Plants,
The days of auto’s have gone for good
But they won’t tell us their plans.’

The Tower was built within the year
With a gaping hole up top,
A semi drove through the streets one day
And by The Tower, it stopped.
It carried a massive box-like thing
With a mass of flashing lights,
Was loaded into the lift, and sent
Up on its maiden flight.

They took it up and it crowned The Tower
While the people watched in awe,
There hadn’t been people in the streets
Like this since the Second War.
A massive counter was counting down
As the people stood and cheered,
‘I hope it’s not what I think it is,’
Said a man with a long, white beard.

While down in the Presidential Suite
Just fifty miles away,
A group of men put their sunnies on
And stood by the window bay,
‘Well how do you clear a festering slum,’
Said one, as he watched the clock,
While back at The Tower a sign lit up
And the word was ‘Ragnarok!’

David Lewis Paget

He lived in a tiny attic, set
Way up on the second floor,
I’d never have known he lived there, but
He left his shoes by the door,
A note tucked into the left shoe said
‘They’re yours if I don’t return!’
The right said, ‘Put on a dead man’s shoes,
And know that you’re going to burn!’

The boarding house was for down-and-outs
So you know where my life was at,
The final link in an endless chain
Since they threw me out of my flat,
I had no job, I had no friends
My family moved away,
They hadn’t left an address for me
So here’s where I had to stay.

I heard him shuffling past my door
With a walk like bone on bone,
His eyes were dim and his face was grim
And his skin as grey as stone,
I chanced to be in the hallway once
But he just stared straight ahead,
I said ‘Hello,’ but he rattled back,
‘I’ve just returned from the dead!’

He’d sit awhile on the balcony,
In the fading rays of the sun,
Trying to tan the greyness out
But the pallor was not undone,
I grabbed a chair and I sat by him
And he finally looked my way,
His eye delved into my very soul,
‘What did you want to say?’

‘You look like a man of secrets,’
Were the first words that I thought,
‘Maybe you have an insight into
Things that I might be taught?’
‘There’s nothing here in your life, it’s clear,
That would help,’ he gave a sigh,
‘I only know of the deathly fear
That is yours, when once you die.’

‘Nobody knows what happens then,’
I said, ‘for it’s understood,
Once you have left this mortal coil
You’re dead, and you’re dead for good!’
The old man shivered and shook his head
‘I’m the only one who knows,
For I die nightly in my bed
And return when the first **** crows!’

I didn’t believe him way back then,
I hardly believe him now,
But I crept into his midnight room
And I put my hand on his brow.
His flesh was icy cold to the touch,
He had no pulse or breath,
His eyes were pointed up in his head
And I knew he was caught in death.

But still he came on shuffling out
In the first grey light of dawn,
After the **** had crowed, he said,
When his body began to warm,
I asked him what he had seen out there
While caught in the clasp of death,
And he spoke of the chambers of despair
When he finally caught his breath.

‘The chambers are lit with a flickering light
From a million candle’s glow,
A million tubs of candlewax
That light up the rooms below,
And set in deep in the candlewax
Is the shape of a human form,
The head protruding just like a wick
Who wish they’d never been born.’

‘The flames are burning the tortured flesh
The heads are trying to scream,
I pass along them on right and left
As if it’s a nightmare dream,
But this is the fate of terrorists
And suicide bombers there,
Their one reward for the cause they fought
An eternity of despair.’

I turned away and I felt quite sick
At the things death held in store,
And all the other horrors he’d seen
When he’d nightly passed death’s door.
‘How long must you go on suffering this,’
I said, as I turned my head,
But the old man sat in his rocking chair
Quite still, and finally dead!

David Lewis Paget

Down at the end of Charters Street
In a dim-lit part of town,
There stands the old Alhambra and
They’re going to pull it down.
We warned them up at the council, but
They said it’s a waste of space,
There’s not been a film for twenty years
Since the Carol Ransome case.

Carol was found in a pool of blood
By the curtains, up on the stage,
Somebody took a knife to her
In a crazed, death-dealing rage,
They never discovered just who it was
But the cinema closed right down,
Nobody wanted to go again
In this hick, one hotel town.

That was the end of our childhood fun
Our own theatre of dreams,
No more Saturday Matinées
Or milk shakes or ice creams,
Nothing to do in this one horse town
But to chase the girls in the park,
And get some serious kissing done
When the day was getting dark.

So Al and Joe and Mary Ann
And me, I must admit,
Broke on into the cinema
And found ourselves in the pit,
Right in front of the dusty stage
Where the curtains hung in shreds,
Barely hiding the giant screen
That was covered in old cobwebs.

We’d played in there for an hour or so
Running between the rows,
Making the Hammond ***** screech
Like a fat man touching his toes,
When suddenly there was a swishing sound
And the curtains began to part,
And something flickered up on the screen
As if it was going to start.

We stood stock still and we held our breath
When the speakers grumbled and groaned,
‘It looks like we’ve got an audience!’
A voice on the speakers moaned.
Then faces peered from the ancient screen
From the days of black and white,
But there wasn’t a single projection beam
From the room where it used to light.

A shimmering glow from the screen fell on
The first few rows of seats,
And one dimensional girls appeared
With ice creams and with treats,
The figures spilled from the silver screen
And onto the wooden stage,
Dracula, framed in black and white
And Frankenstein in a rage.

We were all of us petrified by blood
And Al was thinking to run,
But ‘Don’t you move!’ said an ugly hood
On the screen, and pointing a gun.
They made us sit in the second row
And paraded their long-gone fame,
Bela Lugosi’s fangs and cloak
And the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Then as they faded a woman walked
From the wings, and out on the stage,
And a man that we knew as Grocer George
Flew suddenly into a rage.
He knifed the woman a dozen times
And he beat her down to the floor,
And over the screams of Mary Ann
We made a break for the door.

The screen went dark and the stage was bare
And the curtains hung like shrouds,
We said that we’d never go back in there
As we lay, looked up at the clouds,
But we each went in to the grocery store
And we whispered, ‘Carol’s back!’
‘We know what you did,’ said Mary Ann
And George’s eyes went black.

He chased us out of his grocery
And he closed the store for good,
Then policeman Andy found him hanging
Down in the Maple wood.
They’d better not take the Alhambra down
Or the ghosts of the silver screen,
Will all get out, and they’ll roam about
Without a theatre of dreams!

David Lewis Paget

He was leaning against the wall, backed up
And staring through fumes of gin and whiskey,
Glaring at all the toffs, dressed up
And ravelling through his sordid history.

But never a sense of ‘us’ with him
He was more like a raging arcane animal,
Caught and caged, as they looked right in
To poke and pry at his painted trammel.

Oils and charcoals, water colours,
Pinned like an insect by their gazing,
Pointing fingers would **** his skin
Pick through his pockets, grinning, gaping.

What would they know of his woods and fields,
The towering oak, or the dew at dawning?
Only the light that a lamp post yields
In the mean streets when the world is yawning.

Theirs was a world of tile and brick
Of diesel fumes and the rail line snaking,
His were the hills of hay and rick
The tumbledown cot and the farmer, raking.

‘What did you bring me here to spill?’
He said to the shyster gallery owner,
‘There’s nothing you couldn’t print at will
With a Laser print, and a barrel of toner.’

‘They’re coming in hordes to see your myth,
You’re a breath of air in a jaded Autumn,
A genuine Primitive, Jordan Griff,
I lured them in, and your work has caught them.’

But Jordan scowled and he curled his lip
As the crowd milled using an unknown language,
‘I’d rather be down at the ‘Rope and Skip’
With a pint of ale and a cold meat sandwich!’

‘You’re really an artist?’ said the woman
Who stood at his shoulder, pale and shaking,
‘I like the one at the farmer’s gate
With the girl, head bowed, as her heart is breaking.’

Griff looked deep in the woman’s eyes
For the chord she’d struck was his secret mourning,
‘How did you know?’ He’d sobered up,
‘I was the girl your paint was born in!’

Jordan halted his glass, mid-sip,
He seized her hand as his heart was pacing,
‘Years have slipped between cup and lip,
I’d give them all for a second tasting!’

He led her into a lumber room
And she locked the door as they pulled apart,
Then found some cushions and in the gloom
They lay on the floor there, making art.

That’s how his Primitives came to start
With a joy not there at his god-rot dawning,
A horse and cart with his palette heart,
And a tousled woman each tumbledown morning!

David Lewis Paget

She started wearing the corpse paint when
She’d just turned seventeen,
Renamed herself Pandora, though
Her real name was Jean,
We thought it was just a cult thing when
She dyed her hair pitch black,
Painted her lips and fingertips,
She looked like a shark attack.

With piercings in her eyebrows, tongue
And thumb rings on each hand,
An ankle chain that proclaimed her game,
‘I’m anyone’s, on demand!’
She’d go to the Metal concerts or
She’d sit and sulk in her room,
And file her eye-teeth down to a point,
And scare herself in the gloom.

She kept a tin trunk under her bed
That she’d picked up second-hand,
But wouldn’t let on just what it held,
She said it was contraband,
We thought that she might grow out of it,
Get sick of being a Goth,
But that was before she came on it,
A huge, Death’s Head Hawkmoth.

She’d always collected butterflies
A Lepidoptera freak,
They hung in frames with her Gothic games
And she pinned them every week.
She’d bring them fluttering in a jar
And she’d spread their tiny wings,
Lay them down on a plaster board
And stick them there, with pins.

She brought the Hawkmoth home one day
And she let it out in her room,
She said she wouldn’t be pinning it,
It danced to an evil tune.
‘It foretells war, and famine, death!’
She said as she watched it fly,
She seemed entranced as she watched it dance
For her mouth was open wide.

I didn’t see, but I heard her choke
And I found her on the floor,
Trying to retch the hawkmoth up
As she choked and spat, and swore,
‘It flew right into my open mouth
And it’s gone right down my throat!
I feel it fluttering way down there,
Will it **** me, if I choke?’

‘It’s probably dead by now,’ I said,
‘It couldn’t survive your bile,
It’s just like eating a turkey roast
You’ll digest it, in a while.’
‘I don’t feel well,’ said the Goth from hell,
But she took a sip of Coke,
Then hid away for the rest of the day
Wrapped up in her Gothic cloak.

She’d never been very talkative
But she now clammed up for good,
She’d sit in the gloom of her darkened room,
We thought it was just a mood.
But then I opened her bedroom door
To check on our evil Goth,
And out there flew, more than a few
Of the Death’s Head strain, Hawkmoth.

Pandora lay way back on the bed
And her mouth was open wide,
All I could hear was fluttering, fluttering
Coming from way inside,
And moths were flying out of her mouth
In a steady stream to the room,
And all the walls and ceiling, covering,
Moths in the afternoon.

A week had passed from the funeral,
The coffin was sealed with glue,
For moths kept fluttering out of her mouth
With nothing that we could do.
I finally opened her old tin chest
And found it was full of moths,
Of every species, fluttering, fluttering
Out of Pandora’s Box.

David Lewis Paget

They say that I came up screaming when
I surfaced, near the boat,
Distraught, they said, eyes gleaming
Thrashing around, could barely float,
They pulled me in with a boat hook, thought
I might be down with the bends,
Then decompressed in a chamber, that
Was where this story ends.

The start was out on a dive boat near
The Isle of Tora Lee,
One of a cluster of smaller isles
Down in the southern sea,
It lay out wide on the outer edge
Of the continental shelf,
‘It’s one of the greatest dives,’ they said,
‘But check it out for yourself.’

It fell away on the eastern side
A thousand fathoms or more,
Nobody knew how deep it was -
And who was keeping score?
The first three did their shallow dives,
No more than 100 feet,
While I stayed back in the boat to wait,
I had to be more discreet.

The record dive was a thousand feet
With our scuba type of gear,
I knew they wouldn’t be happy if
I tried the record here,
I cooked a fish on the after deck
While the rest were down below,
And ate it while I was waiting there
For their heads to finally show.

I checked the depth as I went on down
At a slow and measured pace,
I had to adjust to the pressure as
The fish swam past my face,
I checked the gauge, 600 feet
And I kept on going down,
Til I came to the inlet of a cave
That brought me up with a frown.

For jammed in the entrance to the cave
The remains of a sailing ship,
Just the prow and the forward deck
With the mast collapsed on it,
The stern had broken away and gone
To the seabed down below,
But up at the front, the ‘Black Revenge’
Was painted along the prow.

I swam on into the cave, and lit
My way in through the dark,
Hoping to hell I wouldn’t swim
In the path of a roving shark,
But fifty metres inside the cave
Was a tiny glow of light,
Flickering up above me like
The stars on a pitch black night.

Then suddenly I had surfaced,
There was air inside the cave,
Pulled myself on the ledge and found
I stood by an open grave,
A line of skeletons in a row
That had once been fifteen men,
They must have known they would never roam
Or take to the seas again.

I sensed in the corner of my eye
A movement in the dark,
Then spun around and I saw her there
A woman, standing, stark,
She wore the rag of a printed dress
And she crossed herself, and hissed,
‘Would the good Lord please preserve me!
Be you man, or be you fish?’

I must have looked quite a sight to her
In my rubber scuba gear,
I took off my mask to calm her down
As she backed away in fear,
‘How long have you lived down in this cave,
And how did you arrive?’
‘I eat of the good Lord’s fish down here
And they’ve helped me to survive.’

She said she’d come on the ‘Black Revenge’
As the moll of Captain Tull,
He’d kidnapped her from the ‘Bell and Bar’
And had locked her in the hull,
She’d sailed the seven seas with him
Til the storm that set her free,
Swept her into this cave with him
In seventeen sixty-three.

‘His bones lie there at the head of the line,
I cut his scurvy throat,
Just as he crawled up on the ledge
When he said he couldn’t float.
My name is Mary Parkinson
And I’ve hoped, and dreamed and cried.
To see my own dear home again,
Before my mother died.’

I didn’t tell her the year it was
It would be too cruel to say,
Two hundred and fifty years had gone
But to her, a year and a day,
I told her I’d fetch some scuba gear
And I’d be back down, and soon,
And that was the day I lost my way
On that autumn afternoon.

They said I shouldn’t have eaten it,
That fish with the broad green stripe,
The fish had made me hallucinate,
I said that it wasn’t right!
‘I’ve seen the woman, deep in the cave,’
They patted my hand, and that,
But I’m fretting that Mary Parkinson
Still waits for me to come back.

David Lewis Paget

The store had been closed for a month or more,
The Receivers opened the door,
To auction off all the fittings there,
Whatever stood on the floor,
There were counters, mirrors, plenty of stock,
The tills and the ******* bins,
It was all going under the hammer,
Even a line of mannequins.

When John McRogers happened to pass
He heard the clamour inside,
He peered on in through the window glass
And he watched the human tide,
The bids were coming from everywhere
From phones, and spread through the store,
So he wandered into the human mass
And made his way from the door.

He wandered along the vacant aisles
Saw everything piled in heaps,
There wasn’t much of a bidding war
So everything went quite cheap,
He wondered if he should make a bid
Was there anything there for him?
His eyes then came to rest on a girl,
A fabulous mannequin.

She stood in a line of eight or nine
But caught his eye from the start,
He thought that she had the bluest eyes
Of all, and she stood apart!
She must have been all of six foot six
With a tapering line to the waist,
And ******* of promise and silken legs
A woman of style and taste.

He put in a nervous bid when she
Was auctioned along the line,
But nobody put in a counter bid,
And he thought to himself, ‘She’s mine!’
He had a courier pick her up
And take her straight to his home,
Then stood her up in his office, where
He could savour her there, alone.

She hadn’t a scrap of clothing on
They’d taken it off when she went,
He tried to avert his eyes, she showed
No sign of embarrassment,
Her hands hung limply down at her side
No effort to cover up,
But her eyes had followed him round the room,
Whenever he’d start, or stop.

‘I’m going to call you Jennifer,’
He said to himself, out loud,
Then sensed she shuddered and straightened up
In a movement that seemed quite proud,
His wife had left him the year before
For a keeper, down at the zoo,
So now he said, and in fact he swore,
‘I only have eyes for you!’

‘I only have eyes for you, my dear,
My Jennifer from Le Trée,
I’ll always cherish you near me here
When I work out here, all day,
We’ll spend our evenings here in the warm
With a single desk-top light,
And in the gloom of this little room
You might even come to life!’

He left her naked, stood by his desk,
She had an ****** air,
The wig she wore flowed over her back
Brunette, but the lights were fair,
He worked each night at his desk in gloom
Lit only by one small stand,
And every now and again he’d rouse,
Reach over and touch her hand.

The hand was cold, plastic and hard
And it couldn’t return a thing,
Until one night, he opened a box
And slipped on a wedding ring,
He worked away for an hour or so
Til he’d filled out a batch of forms,
Then reached unconsciously out for her hand
To find it was soft and warm.

He looked up into her shining face
And noticed, to his surprise,
Her cheeks had softened, her lips were red
And a lovelight shone from her eyes,
He stood and reached for her willing form
And she did what he wanted to,
But an urgent message tugged at his brain,
‘I only have eyes for you!’

‘I only have eyes for you,’ she thought
And beamed that into his head,
He never would leave that office again,
His friends soon thought he was dead.
They came in force, broke into his house
And found that he’d really gone,
‘There’s only a couple of mannequins here,
But one of them looks like John!’

David Lewis Paget

They call it the Tall-Ship Pier, because
It hasn’t been used since then,
Its timbers rotted and barnacled,
And black since I don’t know when.
The storms it’s weathered have taken some,
You can’t reach it from the beach,
A hundred yards of its length have gone
The rest is stark at the breach.

But nobody goes there anymore
There’s not much left of the town,
Just a couple of old stone walls
The rest is tumbling down,
It sits forever beyond the Point
Where the sailing ships came in,
A crumbling wreck of years gone by
With a hint of forgotten sin.

The winter storms were a testing time,
The seas flooded over the pier,
The ships sat out in the bay, in line
Rode out, this time of the year,
Til when a black-hulled barquentine
Came in with a Dutch command,
The Captain, Herman van der Brouw
In charge of the ‘Amsterdam’.

They tied her up to the bollards, just
As a storm was coming in,
A woman stood on the quarter-deck
And the lines in her face were grim:
‘You said we’d head to Jakarta,
Not to this god-forsaken place!’
‘I told you, stay in your cabin,’
Was the reply, with little grace.

The Captain turned to the bosun,
‘Make her secure, but down below,
She’s not to come on the deck again
While still in the port, you know!’
The woman struggled, was taken down
But she flung a curse at his head,
‘Your time is limited, van der Brouw,
When Dirk finds out, you’re dead!’

The wind blew up and the storm came in
And the sea began to swell,
The sky was black and the ‘Amsterdam’
Would grind as it rose and fell,
It tore the bollard away from the pier
At the stern end of the barque,
Then slowly swung from the prow out wide
Side-on to the waves, an arc.

It kept on swinging around until
It crashed right into the pier,
Taking a section out with all
The cabins, back at the rear,
The wind was howling around the bow
As the barque sank low at the stern,
A voice screamed, ‘Get me the hell from here,
Or van der Brouw, you’ll burn!’

The crew were swept off the quarter deck
Were drowned right there to a man,
While van der Brouw had leapt to the pier,
The part that continued to stand,
The woman rose to the surface for
One moment more in the storm,
And screamed from the top of a breaking wave,
‘You’ll wish you’d never been born!’

They found him lashed to the planking
After a day or so of dread,
His eyes were staring, his face was white
He was just as surely dead,
But something curious came to pass
As they took his corpse ashore
The flesh on his hands was burned and black
With his fingers shaped like a claw.

And she, her body was swept on out
For she’s not been found ‘til now,
And all that’s left of the sailing ship
Is the figure, set on the prow,
A woman, carved as a figurehead
That creaks and groans in a storm,
And seems to mutter against the pier,
‘You’ll wish you’d never been born!’

David Lewis Paget

There wasn’t a lot of love to lose
Between Joe Brown and Brent,
Their farms lay either side of a creek
That now lay dry, and spent,
They used to talk in the early days
When they had no axe to grind,
But Brent came back with a bride one day
Who had been on Joe Brown’s mind.

But Joe was slow in the love-me stakes
While Brent was a bit more flash,
He’d cut on in at the Farmer’s Ball
To the girl with the bright blue sash,
While Joe walked off to sit on his own
And wait for a second chance,
But Brent hung on and dazzled the girl
Right through to the final dance.

The courtship took a matter of weeks
Then they came new-wed to the farm,
And Joe was down inspecting the creek
As Brent showed Jill round the barn,
There wasn’t a fence between the two
They used the creek as a line,
‘The land to the west is yours,’ said Joe,
‘The land to the east is mine.’

The balance wasn’t so equal now
With a new bride over the way,
Joe would have married the girl himself
But hadn’t been game to say.
He soon withdrew to his farmhouse, sat
And wallowed in his despair,
He’d been so set on marrying Jill
There was nobody else out there.

The Autumn rains came on with a flood
And the creek had begun to flow,
Brent stayed at home with his new found love
Not even a thought of Joe,
While Joe lay plotting to get him back
He’d teach him to be so flash,
And walked on up to the top of the creek
With a shovel and old pick-axe.

He felled a tree, and shovelled some stone
To block off the old creek line,
Watched the water form in a lake
Then rested, taking his time.
He chopped a hole in the old creek bank
The water washed it away,
And formed a new creek bed to the west,
And wondered what Brent would say.

When Jill got up at two in the morn
The tide was flooding on through,
In through the back door of their house
And cutting the house in two,
Brent went roaring up to the hill
Astride of his old half-track,
‘Have you gone crazy, Joe,’ he cried,
‘You’d better be putting it back!’

‘Too late, too late,’ said his surly mate
‘The creek is forming a bed,
And anything to the east of it
Is mine, the agreement said!
So move your things to the west of the place
For the east of the house is mine,
The creek that’s flowing right through the house
Will be the dividing line.’

Brent went muttering back to the house
And divided the house in two,
He shored up all the rooms to the west
As the water came tumbling through,
While Joe sealed off the east of the hall
Made sure that his rooms were dry,
While Jill looked over the barricade
At Joe, and started to cry.

‘Why have you done this thing to us,
What did we even do?’
‘He cut me off at the Farmers Ball
In the course of a dance with you.
You never gave me another chance,
I was waiting to propose.’
‘But I would never have married you,
Brent was the man I chose!’

Brent went over and burnt the house
On the other side of the creek,
There wasn’t water to fight the flames
So it smouldered there for a week,
The farms are empty and vacant now
Two creek beds, dry as a bone,
With Brent and Jill now living in Nhill
And Joe in the scrub, alone!

David Lewis Paget

He knew what he wanted to say to her,
He knew what he wanted to do,
He’d step right up to her open door
And he’d quickly say, ‘We’re through!’
Her eyes would show she was startled then,
He thought that her jaw would drop,
But he would turn, walk swiftly away,
And leave with his head held up.

He’d seen her walking out in the park
And he thought he’d seen them kiss,
While he’d been walking there in the dark
With his Mathematics Miss.
She’d flagged him down, and said that his work
Was poor, that he had to choose,
Whether to chase that silly girl or
Square the hypotenuse.

All that she wanted to talk was sine
And something she said was tan,
She’d filled his head up with algebra
But seemed to depress the man.
She’d put her arm round his shoulders then
And said she would help him through,
‘All that you need is a little work
And you’ll be so pleased when you do!’

While Sally had seen her cousin there
Skipped up to him in the dark,
‘Fancy me seeing you way out here
At night, in the Bowling Park!
I thought you were still in Africa
But happen on you, like this!’
Then threw her arms up around his neck
And gave him a cousinly kiss.

They parted then and she turned away
And she saw a sight in the dark,
It looked like Jim, it was surely him
With a woman, there in the park.
She had her arm round his shoulders, they
Looked cosy, walking away,
She bit her lip and her mind went flip
As her world turned bleak and grey.

She knew what she wanted to say to him,
She knew what she wanted to do,
She’d step right up to his open door
And she’d quickly say, ‘We’re through!’
His eyes would show he was startled then,
She thought that his jaw would drop,
But she would turn, walk swiftly away,
And leave with her head held up.

David Lewis Paget

‘Cata, pick up the children, then
We’ll all away to the woods,
They say there’s a mighty army come
To steal our homes and goods,
They’re capturing slaves along the way
So we need to be aware,
These men of steel with their breastplates on
Take children with fair hair.’

Sca had looked at his wife, she had
The hair of ripened corn,
And so had both of their children from
The day that they were born,
But he was dark, from the Iceni
And his face was painted blue,
He’d come from the beach they’d landed on
Where the blood was mixed with dew.

‘I’ve never seen quite so many ships
They’re standing off in the bay,
And way on out, the horizon seems
To be filled with ships today,
They’re crushing all that’s before them,
Our chiefs are down on their knees,
They know we can’t over-awe them
With our spears and charioteers.’

‘This army’s bringing its mighty gods
And they have this one called Mars,
He rules, they say, each clashing of arms
From way up there in the stars,
Their shields are linked in a solid wall
That we can’t get through to fight,
They’ll rule us now as they rule the Gaul
So we must be gone tonight.’

They made their way to a hermit’s cave
And they found some shelter there,
But the Legion came and they took his wife
For the sake of her golden hair,
His children too, were taken away
From the land of their loving home,
And the people gasped in the marketplace
When the two were sold, in Rome.

While he fled back to the Iceni
And he waged guerrilla war,
Served in the army of Boadicea
Once she had come to the fore.
She stood, six foot and her tumbling hair
Was red, right down to her waist,
‘A terrible sight,’ the Romans said
As she laid their cities waste.

They’d stolen all of her lands and laid
The lash across her back,
They’d ***** both of her daughters,
They were fond of doing that,
They didn’t know that the Iceni
As a tribe were more than bold,
Or of the terrible price they’d pay
When they cast her out in the cold.

She wiped out Camulodunum,
And slaughtered the Romans there,
Went on to sack Londinium,
This woman with flame red hair,
She burnt the city down to the ground
While the population fled,
The only people that stayed in town
Were lying in heaps, the dead!

They slew the Hispana Legion
That had marched down from the north,
Went on to Verulamium
And carried a flaming torch,
The Romans there were slaughtered,
The city razed to the ground,
But not before the warrior Sca
Had saved the wife he found.

She’d been enslaved in a Roman house
Had disappeared for years,
And when he pulled her out of the flames
She couldn’t see him for tears,
So they fled to the northern borders where
The Romans held no sway,
And their blond haired, blue-eyed offspring,
They still live there today.

David Lewis Paget

I was doing research in Hubei
Where they executed Yu,
That deity soldier glorified
By Buddhists, Taoists too,
I sat perusing manuscripts
That dated from the Ming,
And came across a reference
About Yu’s finger ring.

A ring of gold so broad that it
Would fit a peasant’s wrist,
For Guan Yu was a mighty man
His ring, an amethyst,
Set round with groups of diamonds
It was lost the day, they said,
That Sun Quan had ordered them
To lop off Guan Yu’s head.

They lost it for a thousand years
It turned up with the Ming,
Was lost again in battle with
That mighty force, the Qing,
I’d heard it round the market place
A whisper, now and then,
That ring, it might have surfaced
In the village of Maicheng.

I scoured the streets and alleyways
For signs of old antiques,
Researching as I went, I walked
Around the town for weeks,
I found a backstreet corner shop
One night, and open late,
Run by a dodgy Chinaman
A total reprobate.

He had links to the Triads, they
Would come into the shop,
A shifty group of gangsters with
Their stolen goods to pop,
From where I sat with manuscripts
Up on the second floor,
I’d look straight down the staircase
Watch them come in through the door.

One day they brought in a bundle
******* in a burlap sack,
Threw it down on the counter, said:
‘What do you make of that?’
Fang Zhang then opened the parcel and
He pulled out a giant hand,
The flesh the texture of leather with
A monstrous golden band.

The ring was almost immoveable
The hand, with fingers spread,
Could grasp a maiden around the waist
Or crush a warrior’s head,
I held my breath as the Triad tried
To disengage the thing,
And all the while the diamonds flashed
On that massive golden ring.

Fang Zhang paid over a block of notes
That looked more like a brick,
There must have been a million Yuan
From what I saw of it,
The Triad left and I caught my breath
Fang Zhang had pulled it off,
He threw the hand in a ******* bin
And then I left the shop.

He hid the ring as I walked on through
I had to get some air,
I’d caught a glimpse of a famous ring,
A thing I couldn’t share,
They’d say it didn’t exist, that I
Was dreaming, if I tried,
They thought that it had been lost to view
The day that Yu had died.

I went back down the following day
The Police were there in force,
They stood out front and barred the way
From normal *******,
They told me through an interpreter
Of the ****** of Fang Zhang,
His face was black, for around his neck
Was a massive, ringless hand!

David Lewis Paget

(Pronunciation: Guan Yu - Gwon you
Hubei - Who - bay; Sun Quan - Sun Chu-arn
Qing - Ching; Maicheng - My - cheng
Fang Zhang - Fang Shjang (soft J))

The Chief of the General Staff awoke
To the ring of the telephone,
He’d tried to ****** a couple of hours
At his Hunting Lodge, in Scone,
But the red phone was insistent, it
Would ring ‘til he picked it up,
‘For God’s sake Carter, what’s it now?’
The answer was abrupt.

‘The Early Warning’s gone to red,
They need you down at Staff!
Hang on, I’m going to patch you through
We’re not sure if it’s naff.
It didn’t go through to orange as
It usually does at first,
But we can’t afford to take a chance…’
The General’s lips were pursed.

‘Scramble the FA-18’s
Are the carriers out, d’you know?’
‘There’s two in the Med and one caught dead
In the dock at Scapa Flow!
The Seventh Army’s at Aldershot
And the Fifth’s in the Middle East.’
‘Well, whether the troops are out or not
It’s Martial Law, at least.’

The Action Room in the basement of
A secret place in Poole,
Had interrupted a war game with
The Army Training School.
The radar screens were alight with scenes
Beamed in from the new AWAC’s,
With missiles coming from everywhere
‘We need to be hitting back!’

The submarines were alerted to
Prepare their missile racks,
The silo’s over in Kansas armed
And ready to attack,
Then suddenly in the Action Room
The radar screens were clear,
There wasn’t a single sign or trace
Of a missile coming near.

And down in a London Nursing Home
They were leading him away,
A nice old fellow with Parkinson’s
With a half-full breakfast tray,
They snapped the lid of his laptop
Told him, ‘George, you’re going to be canned!’
He said, ‘I just got the hang of it,
That game called ‘The High Command!’’

David Lewis Paget

I never can look when I’m riding past
The ruin of Falconridge,
I turn the head of my horse away
When I cross the Narrows Bridge,
And I concentrate on the countryside,
Try not to think of Clair,
Or the simple stone where she lies alone
Beneath its towers there.

But now and then I will think again
Of her and her sister Ruth,
Of the happy days when we used to play
In the dim days of our youth,
We would picnic out in the meadows
And I would chase them over the bridge,
For a kiss or two, though I came to rue
The House of Falconridge!

For Ruth was the elder of the two
And should have been first in line,
She grew to a haughty damosel
So I wouldn’t make her mine,
But Clair was bubbly, full of fun
And she showed she really cared,
So I knew that she was the only one
From the love that we had shared.

‘You will not marry my sister Clair,
I must be the first one wed,
I’ll not be seen as unwanted, left
To cry alone in my bed.’
So Ruth petitioned her father that
He halt our marriage plans,
But he had shrugged off his daughter,
‘This affair is out of my hands!’

The Banqueting Hall in Falconridge
Was decked with flags and flowers,
While Ruth went muttering her dismay
And hid in one of the towers,
She didn’t come out for the service
Though she did come out for the ball,
But sat and glowered at Clair, as we
Had danced our way round the hall.

Their father brought in the caterers
From the other side of the lake,
And they had wheeled in the greatest prize,
A huge five layered cake,
The tiny figures of bride and groom
Stood proudly on the top,
Then Ruth had suddenly come awake,
Leapt up and shouted, ‘Stop!’

The guests had stared, and a sudden hush
Befell the Banqueting Hall,
As Ruth seized both the bride and the groom
And dashed them against the wall,
She seized the knife from the wedding cake
And screamed in a long, high note:
‘I hate you all at this wedding ball!’
Then stabbed my Clair in the throat.

She ran right out of the Banqueting Hall,
I held poor Clair in my arms,
The blood poured over my wedding suit
As they called the Master-At-Arms,
She locked herself in the Northern Tower
And she lit a fire by the door,
Then ran right up to the topmost room,
Lay wailing, there on the floor.

The fire spread up through the Northern Tower
As Clair expired in my arms,
I couldn’t see through the veil of tears
How the guests had fled in alarm,
‘My love, my love,’ she had sighed at last
‘I forgive my sister Ruth,
We shouldn’t have taken her place away,
We wronged her, that is the truth!’

The fire raged, and burnt to a shell
The whole of Falconridge,
But Ruth they found, blackened and burned
As her flesh peeled off in strips,
She’s locked in one of the tower rooms
Will be locked in there for life,
With her claw-like hands and melted face
But it won’t bring back my wife!

I had a mirror placed by the door
She can see herself through the bars,
She has to suffer as I have done
By looking out on her scars,
And from the ruin of Falconridge
You may hear her cry, somehow,
When the Moon is over the Narrows Bridge:
‘Who will marry me now?’

David Lewis Paget

When the roof came down in the copper mine
There wasn’t much hope, we said,
Those twenty men on the south-west drive
Are buried, and probably dead.
The guys came in from the midnight shift
And they shovelled away ‘til dawn,
Pumping air in over the drift
They propped where the roof was torn.

For nearly seventeen hours they worked
They took it in turns to drive,
A passage was finally opened up
Though the men were barely alive,
I watched them all come staggering out
They’d all survived to a man,
But the last one out had begun to shout:
‘There’s a guy in there, like Pan!’

They sent in the stretcher bearers, who
Were there for an hour or more,
The men were shaken and pale of face
And wouldn’t say what they saw.
The stretcher was bearing a crumpled form
That they’d covered up with a sheet,
‘We’d better be taking this to the zoo,
And everyone, be discreet!’

A rumour, much like a whispering sigh
Was spread through the mining town,
For everyone wanted to know the guy
They’d pulled from under the ground,
The men they’d saved from an early grave
Lay still in their hospital beds,
At every question they looked away,
Just lay there, shaking their heads.

Their syndicate lottery numbers won
On the Tuesday of that week,
A million each for the twenty men
But still, they wouldn’t speak.
I guess I was feeling curious
So I took myself to the zoo,
They’d closed it down for refurbishment
But I knew the keeper, Hugh.

He put his finger up to his lips
And he said, ‘Don’t make a sound!
You’ll get me shot if as like as not,
They see that you’re looking round.’
He let me in through the rear gate
That was clogged with vines and weeds,
And we crept unseen where we’d best be screened
In the shade of the lilac trees.

He pointed me up to the Tiger’s cage
And he said, ‘You go ahead!
I’ll not be going further than this,
But don’t get close, or you’re dead!’
I wandered carefully up to the cage
It was slowly becoming dark,
And something hung in the evening air,
A sulphurous smell in the park.

The Tiger lay all over the cage
Its body was ripped to bits,
Its blood was spattered in violent rage
A snarl was on its lips,
Then from the rear of the cage a shape
Came shambling up to the bars,
It stood upright as a human might
But it certainly wasn’t ours.

The eyes were narrow and slitted, and
They glowed with a dull rich red,
The beard was long and the teeth were strong
Set deep in a goat shaped head.
It seemed to be wearing an evil grin
As it seized the bars with its claws,
And over above its pointed ears
Was the hint of a pair of horns.

Its legs were the crooked legs of Pan
There wasn’t the slightest doubt,
I took one step away from the cage
And stifled a fearful shout,
But then its shape had begun to change
And a tail whipped round at the bars,
It was long and pointed, covered in scale
And marked with a hundred scars.

It grew in size, in front of my eyes
As I stood, stock still and stared,
Pressed its face up close to the bars
And grinned with its nostrils flared,
A sudden flame shot out of its mouth
And a voice rose up from its gorge,
And rasped a name that lay deep in my brain,
‘So we meet again, St. George!’

David Lewis Paget

The weather was starting to worry me,
The days were hot and the nights like ice,
The winds were gusting and hailstones
Were battering down on the roof, like rice.
Marie was listless and wandered about
She wouldn’t get dressed until way past noon,
She’d toss and turn in her sleep, and shout:
‘The man with the beard will be coming soon!’

I didn’t know what she had meant by that
I couldn’t be bothered to ask her why,
She said she soon had a sense of doom
The way of the world was passing by.
We stood outside on a starless night
And she pointed up to a cloud on high,
‘I saw a hand in the dawning light
That plucked each star from the morning sky!’

I slept but fitfully after that
My dreams were troubled by what she’d said,
They’d taken the blue from the morning sky
Had withered and rolled up the garden bed.
He’d come to ruin the countryside
Put all the trees in a cardboard box,
Took all the daisies and all the weeds
And ripped them out with the hollyhocks.

While strange marauders wandered the land
And one-eyed women disturbed my head,
They bred like rabbits and grains of sand,
‘We’re here to do what our masters said!’
The seas were suddenly drained and gone
All was that was left was a dusty plain
‘The earth is finished,’ a voice then said,
All I could see was a Moon terrain.

Then lightning crackled over our heads
And thunder rolled like a toll of doom,
I lay awake in my narrow bed
And watched Marie, who stood in the gloom.
‘A new Dark Age has begun tonight,
He said that he’d given us all he had,
Would try again when the time was right,
But packed the Moon in his travelling bag.’

David Lewis Paget

When the sun sank low in the midday sky
And the clouds came in from the south,
He knew that the winter was coming in
And it made him down in the mouth.
With a hint of rain in the morning dew
The breeze cut in like a knife,
And he went to fetch the firewood in
For the sake of his invalid wife.

She sat and shivered before the hearth
When he opened the outer door,
As the wind whipped icily round her legs
A trail of leaves on the floor,
‘My love, be still, I’m lighting the fire
And you’ll soon be warm by the hearth.’
‘I fear it’s settling into my bones
And I’ll soon be deep in the earth.’

‘You’ll not get away so easily,’
He said, and gave her a smile,
‘We’ll settle this ague with bark and tea,
I’ll heat your bath in a while.’
‘I’d rather not leave the fireplace
While my thoughts are making me brood,
So put your spill to the wood fire, Will,
Then sit, and lighten my mood.’

He lit the fire and he made it roar
And he checked each draught, at last,
Jammed the rug right under the door
And he made the windows fast,
Then he sat and held his Helen’s hand
That was freezing to the touch,
And said, ‘Now winter’s sat on the land
I needn’t go out so much!’

She smiled, and ran a hand through his hair
And said that she loved him so,
‘Tell me a tale of foreign lands,
It will help the time to go.’
So he plucked a single hair from his head
And he said, ‘Each hair’s a tale!’
Then he told of sailors swinging the lead,
Of mariners under sail.

He told of pirates, walking the plank
Of treasure chests in the deep,
And saw that she was slumbering there,
Was slowly going to sleep,
He sat beside her all through the night,
Was piling wood on the fire,
And nodded off in the broad daylight
Right next to his heart’s desire.

The squalls came in, it began to rain
And the rain then turned to snow,
He only went out to chop some wood
And to make the cabin glow.
Each night he’d sit there, holding her hand
And he’d pluck a hair from his head,
‘Now here’s a tale from a northern land
Where the snow lies deep,’ he said.

He thought that she’d get better in time
And he brought her gruel and soup,
Fed her a tincture of laudanum
Made from the ***** group.
But she still sat listless, pale and wan
And she slept more than she woke,
Though he plucked a hair from his head each night
And he whispered as he spoke.

He spoke of the place that lovers go
Away from the world of cares,
Of bubbling springs, and diamond rings
And a love that everyone shares,
But the snow outside was packed in a drift
Right up and over the door,
He couldn’t get out for the firewood
But shivered, asleep on the floor.

He woke next day when the sky was grey
With the cold set deep in his bones,
And looked at his wife in a mute dismay
For he knew that he was alone.
The undertaker was there by ten
With a coffin as cold as ice,
And he wept as he plucked a hair from his head
And wished her in paradise.

They buried her down in the cemetery
Not far from their cabin home,
And every day he would make his way
To her headstone, on his own.
The snow had finally melted when
They found he was there, stone dead,
Draped all over her headstone, but
There wasn’t a hair on his head.

David Lewis Paget

They came by the Inn that morning,
A troop of Cavaliers,
With their swords and buckles shining,
And ringlets round their ears,
They called to the simple stable boy
To attend without delay,
To feed and water their horses,
The King would be there today.

They kicked the Inn door open
With boots that came to the knee,
Demanded an instant pottage
For the troop of twenty three,
‘So get your wife to the kitchen,
Your daughter up to the bar,
By serving us you will serve your King,’
They said to the Inn-Keeper.

They crowded into the tap room,
Where Molly was serving ale,
Made rude and haughty gestures
‘Til the girl had turned quite pale,
Their empty steins were flung at the hearth
And shattered, over the stair,
The Inn to them was beneath contempt
With its simple peasant fare.

The wife served up a ploughman’s lunch
Of wheaten bread and cheese,
They snatched and curled their lips at it
And not one mentioned ‘Please!’
They tore an edict of Parliament
That was hanging over the bar,
And held it over a candle ‘til
The ash was spread on the floor.

‘We have us an act of treason here,’
The Captain said to his men,
‘What shall we do with an Inn-Keeper
Who favours Parliament?’
They dragged him out to the stable yard
And hung him high on a tree,
Dragged the wife and the daughter out
As he died, so they could see.

‘God rot you each and every one,’
The wife screamed out in pain,
‘I curse your colours and curse a King
That could be so cruel - For shame!’
They held the daughter and dragged the wife
Out of sight, in alarm,
Despatched her with a rusty pike
And then set fire to the barn.

The soldiers started to fall about,
Were throwing up, and pale,
While Molly shrieked, ‘How did you like
My Belladonna Ale?’
They still were there when a troop rode up
Of Cromwell’s Ironsides,
Who slaughtered the King’s own troop that day
As the daughter sat, and cried.

David Lewis Paget

‘I am pure, forever now,’
The words scratched on a skull,
That I dug up one morning
In a garden, back in Hull.
I didn’t know just who it was
Or where the skull had been,
The skull itself the only one
That knew what it had seen.

There were no other bones, they were
All missing, neck to toe,
Perhaps they’d gone on walkabout
And said, ‘We’ll let you know!’
The skull was left to rest in peace
Beneath a flower bed,
Where jonquils wavered in the breeze
Above this lonely head.

The bed was bound by sleepers
That were there before the time
My grandparents had owned the house -
Who covered up this crime?
They must have known, had surely known
Whose head it was, deceased,
Before they laid that garden bed
Hacked off the head, at least!

For someone scraped those five short words
Bit deep into the bone,
Had used the knife that cut its throat?
Or merely, some sharp stone.
I held the skull beneath the tap
To wash away the dirt,
The empty sockets stared at me
Relentless, in their hurt.

Was this a male or female skull?
I found it hard to say,
The teeth were young and pearly white
I called it ‘she’ that day,
Old Jeb, the gardener came round
And saw, and burst in tears,
‘I haven’t seen that pretty smile
In more than fifty years!’

‘Her name was Clementine,’ he said,
‘A little pantry maid,
Back in the days of service when
We all were underpaid,
When I was just a lad myself
And new into the fold,
Your crusty great grandfather ruled,
Old Ebenezer Gold!’

‘We weren’t allowed to mix back then,
We slept on different floors,
He took a special interest in
The womenfolk, indoors.
He’d stalk around at midnight, checking
Under every bed,
Would threaten us with vengeance from
The Lord above, he said.’

‘I’d meet with Clementine outside,
We’d use the potting shed,
She’d tease and tempt me daily, dare me
Sneak into her bed,
Then one day she came crying, but
She wouldn’t tell me why,
Just said that Ebenezer was
A sneak, a ***** spy!’

‘I thought she must have got the sack,
She simply disappeared,
And nobody would mention her
Their lips were sealed, I fear.
He really had a hold on us
He oversaw the plots,
And said I had to seed that bed
With blue Forget-Me-Nots.’

He died near forty years ago
So Jeb and I agreed,
There wasn’t any point to raise
A scandal, without need,
I told him to put back the skull,
He cried, and kissed it lots;
Pulled out the jonquils, planted seeds
Of blue Forget-Me-Nots!

David Lewis Paget

The brothers Carmody, Jim and John
Were hooked on the keyboard wars,
While growing up, they’d never got on
It was always, ‘Mine, not yours!’
Jim would destroy his brother’s bed
John was more subtle than that,
He’d battery acid his brother’s clothes,
Burn holes in his favourite hat.

They lived just barely a mile apart
When they both left home for good,
If one ran into the other, then
They’d part in a surly mood,
So each had opened a Facebook page
To put the other one down,
Where Jim said, ‘You can’t control your rage!’
And John said Jim was a clown.

They both got married, their wives joined in
To this internecine war,
‘I hear your Betty’s seen round the town
On a bicycle built for four!’
‘Your Jillian picked up the second prize
When she won a date with you,
The ugliest guy in the neighbourhood
And that was the third prize, too.’

Jim sprayed bleach on his brother’s lawn,
John was as sly as a fox,
One night he crept to his brother’s place
Set fire to his letterbox.
The knives were out, there were no holds barred
‘Til the night of the power blackout,
They each paused over the enter key
With a message to chill them out.

‘I’m ready to bomb your citadel,
And nobody will survive!’
‘My crew is coming to do for you,
You’ll never get out alive!’
They hit the keys as the power went out
The messages couldn’t be traced,
They’d flown unguided from each P.C.
And travelled in cyberspace.

Three hundred years they would float adrift
The Carmody boys, long dead,
With thirteen generations of theirs
Not knowing what each one said.
Their words, unscrambled in outer space
Would alight on an alien shore,
Where the native Rogons got what they wished,
An excuse for planetary war!

‘They’re coming to bomb our Citadel,’
Said the Chief of the Rogons, Vork,
‘We’d better send out our nuclear fleet,
This Earth is sparring for war!’
The fleet set out on their ten year hike
On their mission through hyperspace,
The Orkon Fleet was heading on back,
They’d been to the very same place!

‘They sent a message to us as well,
Were sending a crew to attack,
They said we wouldn’t get out alive,
We couldn’t put up with that!
We blasted Earth to a thousand bits
That are floating out by the stars,
They’ll never be threatening us again…
Come on, we’ll race you to Mars!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I used to work for the council here,’
Said ‘Ripper’ Jones at the bar,
Fortified with a Beam or two
And a pint of the best, Three Star,
Trelawney winked at the barman and
The barman, he winked back,
‘We’re in for another ripper yarn,’
Said the bearded Cousin Jack.

‘They always gave me the ***** jobs,
It was always just my luck,
They’d point to me, say, ‘Ripper’s free,
Break out the tipper truck!
You know, that beast with seven gears
But only three of them worked,
The brakes were non-existent, and
The Foreman, he was a ****!’

‘We used to call him Father Time
He was always on the prowl,
Calling time to the Smoko breaks
With an ever present scowl.’
He said, ‘Pick up that giant rock
In the Commer Tipper Truck,
The ocean’s sprung a giant leak
And we have to seal it up!’

‘It took us a crane to lift this rock
It was seven feet across,
‘This mother has to be fifteen tons,’
Said my mate, crane driver Ross.
‘What did he say you need it for?’
He yelled, in a sort of screech,
‘I have to drive it down to the shore,
There’s a great big hole in the beach!’

‘The Commer sank right down on its springs,
This rock, a hell of a load,
I had to drive it in second gear
With the tyres flat on the road,
I finally made it down to the shore
And thought, ‘I must be a mug!’
The sea was circling round the hole
Like a bath when you pull out the plug.

I had to wait for an hour or two
‘Til it emptied out the bay,
All you could see was a dry seabed
For a mile or so, each way,
Then I drove the truck right up to the hole,
Thinking to tip it in,
When a giant geyser of steam shot up,
The sea was turning to steam.’

‘You know what the brakes on that truck were like,
They hadn’t been fixed for years,
I thought I’d better get out of there
Or it all would end in tears.
But the truck rolled forward, over the hole
And began to sink right in,
While I climbed out of the window there
Determined to save my skin.’

‘The truck sank down, under the rock
And it plugged that head of steam,
You could barely see the tip of the tray
When the tide came rolling in,
And that’s the rock you go fishing off,
You can say it was down to me,
While you were throwing your schooners back
I was out there, saving the sea!’

David Lewis Paget

‘Hush ye, hush ye, little pet ye,
Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye
The Black Douglas shall not get ye’
(Northern English lullaby)

The Scottish records call him ‘The Good’
The English call him ‘The Black’,
They never knew just where he was hid
Before he would launch his attack,

He stood alongside Robert the Bruce
And they learned from their defeats,
Hit hard and fast with a mobile force
And be swift in their retreats.

They captured Roxburgh Castle at last
To the ire of Edward’s spleen,
Disguised as cows so they wouldn’t arouse,
They scaled the walls unseen.

And so the English called him ‘The Black’
For his many heinous deeds,
But he saw them off at Bannockburn,
When his spearmen killed their steeds.

The Bruce was weary and short his breath
With his soul bowed down by sin,
He told of his need to atone the death
Of his rival, ‘The Red’ John Comyn.

They’d come together at Greyfriar’s Kirk
And had fought, they’d both be king,
And there in front of the altar, Bruce
Had murdered his rival, Comyn.

‘So take my heart from my Scottish shores
To the Holy Land, to atone,
My heart will help you defeat the Moors
And my soul may then come home.’

The Black Douglas took on the task
And he went to fight the Moors,
But Alfonzo held his army back
And the Douglas fell from his horse.

They took his flesh and they boiled his bones
But they first embalmed his heart,
Then sent them back to his Scottish home
Though they somehow came apart.

The heart was found in the Douglas vault
In the ancient Kirk St. Bride,
But when they opened the old stone vault
His bones were not inside.

Perhaps they wander the Holy Land
In a search for the heart of Bruce,
He’d flung it at the advancing Moors
Before he fell off his horse.

But Melrose Abbey has Bruce’s heart
So his wanderings are in vain,
Though his soul will search ‘til his bones are found
For the sake of the Douglas name.

David Lewis Paget

The phone rang almost off the hook
But I got to it in time,
‘You’d better come here and take a look!’
Said the voice of Esther Clyne.
I shook my head, rolled over in bed,
And said, ‘It’s after one!
It’s after one in the morning, Ess!’
She said, ‘You’d better come!’

Ess was an ornithologist
And she lived in Chandler’s Wood,
She’d never been an apologist
But demanded, when she could,
‘It’s pretty late,’ I tried to state,
‘Can it wait until I’m free?’
Her voice came rattling down the line,
‘Not now, just come and see!’

I dropped the phone with a silent curse
As I scrambled out of bed,
And wondered which of her feathered friends
Had disturbed the woman’s head.
She’d called me out for a frigatebird
That she’d spotted from her snug,
And many a rare and crested tern,
And even a vagrant dove.

I wore a hat and a leather coat
It was getting cold outside,
Grabbed me a pair of driving gloves
And I took the four wheel drive,
The track was sticky in Chandler’s Wood
It had rained the day before,
And headed in through the Maple trees
To the house she called ‘Jackdaw’.

I pulled up by her verandah, she
Had been waiting there for me,
Handed over a walking stick,
‘To beat them off, you’ll see!’
We walked together towards the lake
And there we saw old Jack,
The poor old guy was about to die,
Was lying flat on his back.

He seemed to have lost a lot of blood
It was streaked all over his face,
His shirt was tattered his trousers torn
There was blood all over the place,
And round him gathered the strangest group
That  ever I’ve seen, no lies!
For there was a couple of hundred owls
And one had pecked out his eyes.

I started to raise the walking stick
‘Shall I beat them off with this?’
She said she didn’t know what to do,
The ornithologist!
‘The stick is just to protect yourself
Should they suddenly attack,
Owls are nocturnal hunting birds,
We don’t want to end like Jack!’

There were Tawny Owls and scrawny owls
And a Snowy Owl or two,
A couple of hundred Barn Owls
Up in the trees for a better view,
The Moon was reflected in their eyes
As they sat and stared us down,
Perched in the trees around us and
A-blink, not making a sound.

Esther motioned to come away,
‘We can’t do anything here,
We’ll come again in the morning when
The ground and the trees are clear.’
So we edged away and we got to pray
But neither would turn our back,
We knew if we tried to run away
We’d end up as dead as Jack.

No sooner back at the house, ‘Jackdaw’
We locked the shutters in place,
Bolted the front and laundry doors
And blocked the chimney piece,
Esther put on the kettle, thinking
To make a *** of tea,
But outside there was a whirring sound
So we both looked out to see.

The owls were perched on the hand rail
On the verandah, all in a line,
They stared at the house unblinking
Being so patient, biding their time,
They pecked their way through the telephone line,
We couldn’t call out by phone,
And then they set up a screeching that
Sent chills through me to the bone.

I knew all about the Hoot Owl
But I’d never have heard them screech,
If Esther hadn’t have called me up
When I should have been asleep.
The screeching rattled the window panes
Then Esther let out a howl,
And suddenly they all flew away,
There wasn’t a single owl!

They found her out in the woods today
I can’t say I was surprised,
They said it must be a bird of prey
Attacked, and pecked out her eyes.
I’ve never been back to Chandler’s Wood
Since I got that late night call,
But don’t want to end like Esther, so
I keep a gun on the wall.

David Lewis Paget

My life was pretty well empty,
I hadn’t a friend to call,
Trying to make a friend was like
Hitting your head on a wall,
Most other people bored me,
Others had nothing to say,
I didn’t know how much longer I
Could go on living this way.

My folks had died in the autumn,
In a wreck on Highway One,
I suddenly felt like an orphan
When nobody wanted one,
My brother had gone to the tropics
My sister had gone to the west,
So there I was on my lonesome,
Just me and an old tea chest.

I looked at the chest in the corner,
It hadn’t been opened yet,
I didn’t know if I was ready for
The surprises I might get.
My sister had packed and sealed it,
She said she felt like a thief,
‘Don’t even think of opening it
Until you’re over your grief!’

It was full of our family papers,
Documents, photo’s and rings,
All the stuff that our folks had left,
Some of their favourite things,
She knew that I’d cry when I opened it,
And went through the things she’d packed,
Our family had been torn apart,
There was now no putting it back.

It was late on a Saturday morning,
And I had nothing to do,
I prised the lid off the old tea chest,
And took a deep breath or two,
I shut my eyes and I dived right in
Tipped all the stuff on the floor,
A thousand pics of a thousand things
That the family did before.

I must admit that I almost cried
When I saw my mother’s face,
Just as she’d looked when I was young
In a bonnet of Irish lace,
My father was holding me close to him
In his army uniform,
He didn’t know it would end like this
In a crash, and a firestorm.

All the sepia tints were there
And the studio photographs,
Each one holding a simple pose
To wait for the camera flash.
There were faces there unknown to me
From the family, way back when,
Victoria sat on the English throne
And our ‘Grands’ were living then.

There was one old tattered photograph
Of our Great Grandfather Jim,
******* away on a gnarled old pipe
And our great Grandma, Eileen.
Then I heard a noise and I looked around
To the corner, in the gloom,
Where an old man sat in a trilby hat
Smiling across the room.

‘Don’t be alarmed, I mean no harm,’
He said, as I went to rise,
There was something vaguely familiar
About the grey in his eyes,
‘I see you’re checking the photographs
And I thought I’d just drop in,
I keep an eye on the family ties
And you, so how have you been?’

I looked again at the photograph,
At the man in the trilby hat,
‘I don’t know whether I’m going mad,
Are you Great Grandad, or what?’
‘I am, I am, you got it in one,
I’m part of your family tree,
Your folks just asked if I’d pop right in,
They’re out there now, with me.’

‘They worry about you doing well
You’re too much on your own,
I came to give you a tip or two
To brighten your life at home.
I met Eileen in a butcher’s shop
There’s one just down at Cleve,
She watches you when you walk on by
And wears her heart on her sleeve.’

I knew the shop, I knew the girl,
I wanted to ask him more,
But where he’d sat in the corner there
Was a piece of empty floor.
I went for a walk, to buy some meat
And she smiled in a sweet surprise,
When I said, ‘Don’t think that I’m forward, now,
But my, you’ve got lovely eyes!’

David Lewis Paget

‘The time has come,’ he heard them say
Outside his tiny cell,
‘Go in and get the beast to pray
To save his soul from Hell.’
The Priest then walked up to the bars
And stated his intent,
‘Will you confess at last, my son?
Will you, at last, repent?’

‘The only thing that I repent,’
The prisoner said at last,
While staring at the Priestly face
At length, through double glass,
‘Is how your justice operates,
Your Judge sits on his bench,
Determines guilt before the trial
And brooks no argument.’

‘You have been tried by twelve and true
Your jurors had their say,
Condemned you as a murderer
Before they walked away.’
‘They would have found me innocent
Had he not been precise,
And sent them back to change their view,
Not only once, but twice.’

‘The law’s the law,’ the Priest replied,
‘The verdict said it’s you,
You had your day in court, and now
You’ll have to pay your due.’
‘I’m innocent,’ the prisoner said,
‘I swear it before God!’
‘Take not his name in vain, my son,
It’s time to reck his rod.’

‘Your God is just an ornament
To keep us fools in check,
If he were real, he’d swoop on down
And break the Judge’s neck.
The only God is in my heart
And he knows everything,
He welcomes us, the innocent,
Hypocrisy is sin.’

‘You risk your soul,’ the priest replied,
‘So hold your tongue in check,
For soon it will be silenced as
The rope, it breaks your neck.’
‘How many Nuns have you despoiled,
How many children died,
How many now lie buried, spread
Across the countryside?’

‘You hide behind your surplice, and
Your cassock and your gown,
You say you represent him, but
In fact, you put him down.
You tie us up with ritual
And steal our Peter’s Pence,
Then hide your sins by making all
The laity repent.’

‘I’ve had enough,’ the Priest replied,
Then turned and stepped aside,
The gaolers tied his hands and feet
And shuffled him outside,
They dragged him to the gallows and
Put on the dreaded hood,
But still he called, ‘Repent yourself,
Oh Priest! You know you should!’

It barely took a minute for
The rope and then the drop,
And then just twenty seconds for
His beating heart to stop,
The Priest’s thin hands had trembled
As he walked out in the cold,
And prayed, not for the prisoner,
But for his own poor soul.

His sins lay heavy on him as
He walked up to the nave,
Then knelt before the altar asking
God, his soul to save,
But God was strangely silent
And the Priest had felt like dross,
The morning saw him hanging
From the altar’s Holy Cross.

David Lewis Paget

The SatNav said, ‘Turn left ahead,
There’s going to be a crash,
A dozen cars are headed in
For one almighty smash!’
I slammed my foot down on the brake
And pulled off to the verge,
As other drivers honked and cursed
And flew past, in a surge.

I think my mouth fell open as
I stared down at the screen,
An LED was pulsing red
Ahead, at Winson Green,
‘Would you repeat the last command,’
I muttered, still in shock,
‘Sit here and wait, avoid your fate,
Five minutes on the clock!’

The papers said the lights had failed
When they came out next day,
A dozen cars had met head on,
Three died in that affray,
I didn’t dare say anything
In case they thought me mad,
An Oracle SatNav indeed,
I shook my head - How sad!

I lay awake in bed at dawn
I hadn’t been to sleep,
The automatic toaster by
The bed began to speak,
‘Get up, get up,’ and popped the toast,
Its usual discourse,
But then, ‘you’d better get downstairs
And check the neighbour’s horse.’

The horse was in the living room
Had come in from outside,
Had gifted us a steaming pile
Right there, on Maggie’s pride.
‘That rug will never be the same,’
I shouted at the horse:
‘I saw the door was open, so
I just came in, of course!’

A talking horse? It couldn’t be,
I went to see the quack,
‘I keep on hearing funny things,’
I said, he turned his back.
‘I think my ears are playing up,’
I motioned with my thumb,
He shook his head, I’d quite forgot
The Doc was deaf and dumb.

My life is quite impossible
I must admit defeat,
As phones and televisions all
Abuse me in the street,
But I never seem to hear the wife
Who tends to scream and shout,
So it seems there’s still an upside
When you’re going mad - No doubt!

David Lewis Paget

We’re all down here on a long, long train
To be taken for a ride,
As the signs flash past each year, we gasp
At the changing countryside,
Each mile is a passing minute, and
Each year is a passing mile,
The further we get from the starting point
The more that it seems worthwhile.

Each coach is numbered a different year
It depends when we got on,
Each coach was first hooked on at the back
But then it will move along,
The train gets longer with every mile
As we slowly move to the front,
And nothing can stop this railway ride
He gave as his covenant.

We know there’s a tunnel coming up
It’s somewhere around the bend,
We left our names at the starting point
There’s a headstone at the end.
I drop my poems along the track
For the ones that are far behind,
In hopes that they might remember me
As a man who was simply kind.

My children are twenty coaches back
My parents further ahead,
They’ve both gone into the tunnel now
Past a light that’s showing red.
That tunnel’s ahead for all of us
As each coach will end its ride,
But isn’t it going to be glorious
When we pass out the other side?

David Lewis Paget

I saw the note on the mantelpiece
When I got home, rather late,
I knew that something was wrong when I
First saw the open gate,
The house was still and the air was chill
As I called her name, Lorraine,
The note said, ‘Don’t try to follow me,
I’ve caught the evening train.’

I stood for more than a minute
Staring down at her tidy scrawl,
And didn’t breathe for a minute more
‘Til I thought that I would fall,
She’d often threatened to leave me but
I’d put that down to pique,
I stood there now with a furrowed brow
And a future, looking bleak!

I studied the train timetable
Was she going West or North?
The West Express would have left, I guessed,
She’d head for the Firth of Forth,
I backed the car from the garage
Dipped the lights and stepped on the gas,
And headed on up the Great North Road
Beside the railway tracks.

The train was fully a mile ahead
It was lit like a silver snake,
Winding in and out of the bends
And easy to overtake,
I pulled abreast by a hillside crest
To a carriage, just on the rise,
With a single female passenger,
Who sat there, dabbing her eyes.

I knew that the train would stop at York
So I raced on there instead,
Jumped out and ran to the station
While the blood had rushed to my head,
I caught the train as it pulled on out
And I found her on her own,
Weeping free, with her back to me,
She thought she was all alone.

She jumped when I sat in front of her,
And I reached on out, in vain,
‘Why did you even follow me,
I thought that I’d made it plain!’
‘You know I never could let you go,
You mean all the world to me!’
She turned and looked out the window
So I knelt there, down on one knee.

I fumbled deep in my pockets, felt
For the only helpful thing,
Slipped it onto her finger, then
A big brass curtain ring,
She laughed and said, ‘You don’t mean it!’
But her eyes were bright with tears,
And I said after I’d kissed her
That I’d meant to ask, for years!

‘You know that you’ll have to come on home
At five, or six at the most,
No more of your office parties where
I burn and spoil the roast!’
I put my hand on my heart right there
And I quelled her, with a look,
It has to be pretty special when
The master marries the cook!

David Lewis Paget

He lay in bed and he watched the sun
Beam in through the double glaze,
The leafless treetops, withered and bent
In an unforgiving haze,
His wife lay sleeping, innocent
In a dream of former times,
As the clock downstairs in the hallway gave
The last of thirteen chimes.

He slipped on down to the basement, tried
To leave his wife in grace,
Took heart, looked over his shoulder just
To see her peaceful face,
Then carefully donned the gamma suit
That they’d issued with the hood,
And slipped on out through the airlock to
Assess the neighbourhood.

The visibility through the haze
Was down to fifty feet,
The yards were blackened and burned of
Every house along the street,
He checked each one with an open door
Where the occupants had fled,
But every now and again he’d find
They’d not be gone, but dead.

He’d make a note of the time of day
Of the house, its street address,
And note if any had decomposed
So the squad could clean the mess,
His friends peered out from their windows
Watched and mouthed their mute dismay,
While he would hold up a sign to them,
‘You can’t go out today!’

It took him an hour to check each block
That he’d got from Air Defence,
He’d watch the flickering LED
And would note the roentgens,
The cloud had covered the neighbourhood
But would move along, they said,
The dust-storm muted the morning sun
And at night, the sky was red.

The Homeland Squad would deliver food
To the ones without supplies,
Would drop their cases of powdered milk
To stem the babies cries,
While Gordon Hay would complete his day,
Rush back to his lady, Sky,
Wash off the hood and the gamma suit
And hang it on up to dry.

She’d dressed and put on her make-up
Added a touch of rouge to her cheeks,
And said, ‘I’m going to pop right out,
I haven’t been out for weeks.
I need to go to the supermart,
And visit the folks on the way,’
Then waited for Gordon to shake his head,
‘You can’t go out today!’

‘I’m sick of hearing you saying that,’
She stamped, and she burst in tears,
‘How long do you think you can keep me in,
This might go on for years!
You go out there in your funny suit
And there’s nothing wrong with you,
While I’m stuck here with our baby girl,
I want to go walking, too.’

She waited until he was fast asleep
And the baby fed and dried,
Then quietly opened the airlock, took
A breath, and she walked outside,
The dust was thick and the air was hot
And her skin began to burn,
She thought she’d better buy sunscreen
At the shop, on her return.

The supermarket was boarded up,
And so were the local shops,
She didn’t see anyone on the street
Not even the local cops,
Her folks refused to answer the door
Her friends had waved her away,
And Gordon’s words had hung in the air,
‘You can’t go out today!’

She turned, went back to her home, and found
The airlock had been barred,
She beat in vain on the window pane
But her husband’s words were hard,
He saw the blisters, over her face
And the pustules on her skin,
His tears were based on her lack of grace
As he said, ‘You can’t come in!’

‘I have to protect our baby girl
And I’ll do whatever it takes,
I love you Sky, but you’re going to die,
We pay for our own mistakes.
You always were too stubborn for me
And you had to have your way.’
She cried in dread at the words he’d said:
‘You can’t go out today!’

David Lewis Paget

They’d all set off for an island, that
Was fifty miles off the coast,
They were only going to stay a day
And a night, or two at most,
There were seven men and a woman there
On a twenty metre yacht,
The sea was calm and the breeze was light
And the day was rather hot.

‘What do you think we’ll find out there,’
Said the salesman, Alan Brown,
‘Whatever it is,’ the lawyer said,
‘It’s away from the **** of town.’
‘We’ll probably find ourselves again,’
Said the Judge, Lord  Allenby,
‘In a part of the world still pure, unspoiled
Like the way that we used to be.’

‘We may even find the Godhead,’ said
The Reverend Michael Shaw,
‘He hasn’t been seen around for years
And that’s what I’m looking for.’
‘I doubt if you’ll find him way out here,’
Said Franks, the Physicist,
‘Modern Science has followed his tracks
And proved, he doesn’t exist.’

‘Maybe we’ll find the remains of men,’
Said the archaeologist,
‘An ancient settlement, tumbled down
And pottery shards, to list!’
‘To me, you sound like a crazy lot,’
Said the butcher, Roger Dunn,
‘I just want to score a wild boar
So I brought along a gun.’

They’d sailed right into an island cove
When Mary Martin spoke,
Her eyes were dark and her hair was black
And she wore a scarlet cloak,
‘You’ll not find anything that you seek
But the runes of Druid lore,
For this is the ancient gods retreat
As you’ll find, when you explore.’

They rowed ashore in the dinghy
Pulled the boat high up on the sand,
Then each went off in his different way
To search for the inner man,
The Judge walked up to the highest cliff
To regret his judgement seat,
And as he fell to the rocks below
Knew all that he’d sown, he’d reaped.

The lawyer walked through the undergrowth
And fought his way through the vines,
The briars tore at his face and clothes
As he’d fought each case with lies,
He cried for help from the others as
The vines wrapped round his throat,
But couldn’t utter a plea for himself
As he fell to the ground, and choked.

The archaeologist had found
The ruins of ancient walls,
And thought of the riches taken back
He’d stolen from Mayan Halls,
He’d just unearthed a fabulous vase
Encrusted with amethysts,
When a wall collapsed, a future task
For some archaeologist.

A shot rang out, and it echoed then
The length of the island shore,
The Physicist dashed around the point
Expecting to see a boar.
But the butcher stood with his jaw agape
By the mouth of a cave, due south,
For the salesman bore lay dead on the floor
So he put the gun to his mouth.

Franks threw up as the butcher died
But walked right up to the cave,
He peered in as a rumble grew,
A voice dredged up from the grave,
‘You don’t believe in a god that’s real
You’re wrong, there’s more than a few,’
The ground then opened and swallowed him up,
‘Your science has done for you!’

The Reverend Michael Shaw was there
When the ground closed up again,
Crossed himself as he ran away
And he prayed and said, ‘Amen!
He pushed the dinghy down from the beach
And he rowed straight back to the yacht,
‘Preserve me Lord, from a fate like that,
If that’s God, I know him not!’

When Mary Martin got to the cave
It was late, was near on dusk,
She placed wild flowers there at the mouth
With a scent that smelled like musk,
‘I come in peace, I’m a nature’s child,
Though I’ve come from a world of sin.’
The voice then whispered, deep in the cave
‘For your grace, just come right in.’

David Lewis Paget

The first time he came into the light
He thought that his eyes had gone,
The sun was shining, ever so bright
With nothing to focus on,
They led him out to sit on a rock
And hacked off his ball and chain,
It took a week of his ticket of leave
Before he could see again.

Richard Dawson, a broken man
Had finally done his time,
He’d spent three years in shovelling coal
In the colony’s first coal mine,
They said it was only his just desserts
For a pocket, picked in the Strand,
And sent him out on a convict ship
To the hell of Van Diemen’s Land.

At first they set him to breaking rocks
For laying the first rough roads,
He worked while tethered in iron chains
That chafed his skin and his bones,
He wasn’t allowed to take a rest
From swinging the pick or axe,
For the guards would follow the line of men
And lay the whip on their backs.

He lost his God and he lost his soul
Or he thought that he had, out there,
Where men were hung as a matter of fact
And nobody seemed to care,
He slaved four years with the other men
But his future was looking bleak,
When he hit a man who was guarding them
He was sent to Saltwater Creek.

If ever there was a hell on earth
It was called Saltwater Creek,
The devil had got in the minds of men
And they formed a barbaric clique.
The cells were buried, were underground,
There wasn’t a spark of light,
And the men were taken out of the mine
When it was dark, at night.

They started before the sun was up,
They finished when it was gone,
Were locked and chained in their pitch dark cells
In a terror that just went on,
And while they were buried and mining coal
They’d think of the old country,
While their judge sat cool in his stately robes
And finished his morning tea.

A man turns into a surly brute
When he’s kicked and cursed, and beat,
But take the sun from his daily run
And his soul admits defeat.
Richard Dawson, later in life
At night, would take to the street,
And never could quite explain to his wife
The Hell of Saltwater Creek.

David Lewis Paget

It’s thirty years since I travelled back
To wander my childhood home,
To check out the trees I used to climb
And the fields where I used to roam,
I remembered the friends that used to play,
Wendy and Paul and Mark,
And the local bully that had his way
Back then, in the Boating Park.

We’d go up there on a Sunday, pay
Our money and hire a boat,
That fourpence each to the gatekeeper
Saw the three of us afloat,
Each boat had paddlewheels either side
You could turn, and stop or start,
Or spin around in a circle, just
For fun, at the Boating Park.

The Park, laid out in a rectangle
Took an hour to paddle round,
Once out of sight of the gatekeeper
The banks would muffle the sound,
We’d scream and shriek and laugh and beam
As we rammed each other’s boats,
I often thought it a wonder that
We didn’t puncture the floats.

Then over beyond the halfway mark
We lay in the shade of trees,
The sun would sink, it was getting dark
And we’d hear the murmur of bees,
We had to pass there under a bridge
And duck, for the bridge was low,
And that’s where the bully McPherson stood
On the bridge, those years ago.

He’d jeer, throw stones and catcall as we
Tried to get under the span,
Then climb and drop into Wendy’s boat
He wouldn’t have tried with a man.
He’d paddle over the further side
And make her get out of the boat,
Then paddle it back the way we came
Get out, and leave it afloat.

One Sunday I sat under the bridge
With Paul and Mark beside,
While Wendy came along on her own
As if on a solo ride,
The bully tried the very same thing
But we each pulled on his coat,
And when he came up, he couldn’t scream
For the water lodged in his throat.

He splashed about and he tried to grab
The boat, but his clothes, like lead,
Were trying to drag him down, while Paul
And Mark, they stood on his head.
Wendy had clambered up on the bank
Controlled, and well in command,
For every time he tried to get out,
She’d stamp and stomp on his hand.

The paper said it was very strange
That he must have put up a fight,
But hadn’t the strength to pull himself
Up out of the cut that night.
His hands and fingers were shredded, where
He’d tried to climb up the bank,
But the weight of his heavy, sodden clothes
Were the demons he had to thank.

I went to visit the Boating Park
It was just the way I feared,
I met up there with an older Mark,
A man with a greying beard,
He told me Wendy and Paul were dead
Weighed down with a sense of sin,
And the gatekeeper at the Boating Park
Had gone, when they filled it in.

David Lewis Paget

He gazed at me with his rheumy eyes,
‘You think that you’re getting old!
You’ll not go travel that lonely valley
Until your bones are cold.’
His voice was like the sound of a rasp
Bubbling up through his chest,
And his claw-like hands reached out for mine
As I backed away from his desk.

‘I see that you won’t come close to me
And I can’t blame you for that,
This body holds a corrupted soul
That’s caught, like a drowning rat.
I tasted sin ‘til I’d had my fill
When I once was young, like you,
I’m twice as old as you think I am
At a hundred and twenty two.’

I took a further step from his desk
And I let his words sink in,
I’d known that he was a billionaire
But not that he’d tasted sin.
‘They told me you had the answers, you
Could steer me to great success!’
‘I could, but given your chances, you
Should probably aim for less.’

‘I aimed as high as I thought I could
But life only gave me gruel,
I wanted to rise as high as the rest
But the lack of success was cruel,
They passed me by for promotion while
The idiots by me flew,
I watched them counting their bonuses
While the ones that I got were few.’

‘So envy lies at the heart of it,
You think it’s better with wealth,
You only can spend a part of it
What you really need is health,
Your cheeks are ruddy, your eyes are bright
You can walk in the winter rain,
While I sit crippled with untold wealth
In a body that’s racked with pain.’

‘But you’ve been able to buy the best
In a long and a fruitful life,
While I’ve been able to give much less
At home, to my loving wife.’
‘At least your woman has stayed by you,
She hasn’t been fired by greed,
She’s more content than the wives I knew
Who wanted more than they need.’

‘I don’t have even a single friend,’
He said, with a misty eye,
‘But plenty of greedy hangers-on
Who are waiting for me to die.
I wasn’t warned when I signed the form
In blood, that the heart grows cold,
That even the love of my children then
Could only be bought with gold.’

He shuffled the papers on his desk
And pushed one across to me,
‘Just sign on the bottom line in blood
And you’ll have everything you see.’
I looked at his ancient, withered form,
At the lines in his face of woe,
Thought of my wife and children, then:
‘I think I’d better just go!’

David Lewis Paget

The Convent at Le Cap Fureur
Lies empty, by the sea,
Its ancient walls a grim despair
Of anonymity,
No more the chants of singing Nuns
To vespers, weave their way,
A thousand years of heartfelt prayers
In silence, drift away.

The Sisterhood of Sainte Bernice
Is cloistered there no more,
The end came in a fury from
The world outside, at war,
The Nuns were fasting, deep in Lent,
When soldiers came across
To find each sister worshipping
The Stations of the Cross.

No godly men were in their ranks
No thoughts of sin or Christ,
The Nuns were ***** and beaten in
Some pagan sacrifice,
The Abbess stood with arms outstretched
And prayed, ‘Forgive them not!’
Was taken to the courtyard where
The sergeant had her shot.

There’s blood still on those convent walls
It leaches out at Lent,
Runs down the walls of dim-lit halls
And stains the grey cement,
We lodged there late one April night
Myself, Joylene and Drew,
Lay staring at the stars above
As round us, silence grew.

We slept within those hallowed walls
Until I woke in fright,
And roused the others, ‘Come and see
This strange and fearful sight!’
For out there in the entrance hall
We heard a weird chant,
And two long lines of Nuns approached
To keep their covenant.

Two lines of candles in the dark,
The Nuns wore hoods and cowls,
And as each candle flickered out
Their chant gave way to howls.
Screams and pleas then filled the air,
The sound of steel-capped boots,
A pagan army from the east
Of rough and raw recruits.

Joylene was in hysterics by
The time this vision went,
And Drew was praying loudly on
That final day of Lent,
We grabbed our things, rushed out and then
We heard a single shot,
The blood-stained Abbess blocked our way
And cried: ‘Forgive them not!’

David Lewis Paget

Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, up on the bluff,
He’d spent his life as a rover, and
He said, ‘I can’t get enough!
The sea, the sea, the lure of the sea,
It whispers at my front door,
And calls to me, here up on the bluff,
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’

‘But I can’t go down and I won’t go down
For I daren’t go down, you see,
Not since I was caught in the maelstrom
When the seabed beckoned to me,
My mate had clung to the mast, while I
Had lashed myself to the rail,
And he went down to the stony ground
Along with the yards and sail.’

‘I hear the sound in my ears still
The roar of the whirling pool,
I’d cried, ‘Let go of the iron chest,
But he’d not let go, the fool.
It was filled with gold and pieces of eight,
Dubloons and precious stones,
It carried him down to an awful fate
Is spread, all over his bones.’

‘But I clung on ‘til the turn of the tide
I could almost touch the ground,
My head was spinning, deep in the pool
As the ship whirled round and round,
But then the tide began to subside
And I said goodbye to Bjork,
For then the ship rose up to the lip
And popped right up like a cork.’

‘We’d sailed forever the Spanish Main
The ship, Bjork and me,
And searched the atolls of rocks and sand
Of the Caribbean sea,
We found the treasure that Blackbeard hid
In a shaft, six fathoms deep,
Then Bjork had pined for Norwegian lands,
Said, ‘What we’ve got, we’ll keep!’

‘The further north that we sailed, the sea
Grew surly in its ride,
The waves crashed over the foredeck and
They tossed us, side to side,
The squalls came in and the rain came down
And we had to reef the sail,
The water rose in the bilge, until
I thought we’d have to bail.’

‘But then one night it was flat and calm
And the water lapped below,
I heard the voice of a siren then
That whispered, sweet and low:
‘Come down,’ she said, ‘you can rest your head
And give up your earthly seat,
But lie instead on a seaweed bed
With a mermaid at your feet.’’

‘I think of Bjork on the ocean bed
Though I don’t know where he lies,
His bones are covered with precious stones
With two dubloons for his eyes,
I’ve never been back to the sea since then
For I fear it, more and more,
As still it whispers on moonlit nights
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’

Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, facing the sea,
He seemed remote, but a final note
That he wrote was left for me.
‘My days of watching the sea are done,
I think that I’ve had enough!’
And then he strode as the tide arose
And walked, right over the bluff.

David Lewis Paget

(Inspired by E. A. Poe’s ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom).

The news came rustling through the trees
As I tethered the horse’s head,
It came with a gentle sigh on the breeze,
‘The Lady Mulcrave is dead!
She waits for you to attend her now,’
I shook in a craven fear,
‘Her arms are crossed in eternal rest
As she lies on her oak wood bier.’

I stared in horror about me then
For the voice I heard in the glade,
Though nothing moved in the gloom out there
But the shadows the fire made.
‘You lie,’ I cried, as I saddled the horse,
Buckled and fastened the bit,
Then spun around by the river’s course,
‘I’ll not hear a word of it!’

We galloped over the rickety bridge
And the hoofbeats rang in the air,
They seemed to echo the one refrain
That desperate word, ‘Despair!’
The moon hung over the distant hill
With the Motte and Bailey Hall,
Where I’d left Milady an hour before
At Sir John FitzAlan’s Ball.

She’d said, ‘Be certain to call for me
When it strikes the midnight hour,
I wouldn’t like to be left in there
Bereft, in FitzAlan’s power,
I’ve fended off the proposals that
He’s made, in the times before,
Be sure to wait at the Bailey’s gate
With my father’s coach and four.’

I’d left her there with a merry throng
In their masques and gowns and lace,
The gentlemen with their tricorn hats
And coats, cut high at the waist,
I’d ridden off to the distant wood
To sit out the time before
I’d ride alone to her father’s home
And collect the coach and four.

But now, I hurried on back in fear
That Milady was taken ill,
I prayed to God on my foam fleck’d ride
As we crested, over the hill.
The Motte and Bailey was dark outside,
Not a lantern at the door,
And not a guest to be seen out there
Where they’d thronged, an hour before.

I rode on into the courtyard where
The coaches had wedged in tight,
There wasn’t a single coach or horse
To be seen in the pale moonlight,
I called, ‘Is anyone left in there
I’ve come for Lady Mulcrave!’
There wasn’t a sound in the silence there,
A silence, deep as the grave.

I beat on the heavy oaken door
It echoed on through the hall,
I thought that I heard some breathing, breathing
Whispering through the wall,
‘Open the door and let me in,
I know you were here before,’
The hinges creaked and the door gave way,
Into an empty hall.

The air was rank and the walls were damp
And a moss grew on the floor,
There hadn’t been anyone living there
For fifty years or more,
And standing near the ancient hearth
Was a shape that brought a tear,
For stood in the gloom of that ancient room
The remains of an oak wood bier.

I sit in my cabin, deep in the woods
And avoid the world outside,
Something that happened late that night
Disturbed my time and tide,
The Lady Mulcrave died that day
In that Motte and Bailey Hall,
On the same day I was born, they say
As Sir John FitzAlan’s Ball.

David Lewis Paget

The Press surrounded the boarding house
That was kept by Mary Toft,
Her sailor man was Rickety Dan
Who was hidden, up in the loft.
‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’
Cried the head of the Press Gang crew,
We’ve got you a berth on the frigate ‘Perth’,
‘Don’t make us come looking for you!’

Mary stood by the door and blocked,
‘You’ll not be coming in here,
You can’t Impress in a private house,
The law of the land is clear.’
‘But this is a plain old ***** House
It’s the Navy’s right to come in,
You don’t say no to a guinea or so
From a sailor, looking for sin.’

‘I’ll have you know it’s a Boarding House
Not a ***** House, Oh dear!
You’d better go off for a pint of gin
And swill it around in your ear!
A Boarding House is a private house
And protected, under the law,
You’d better go looking somewhere else,
Like ‘The Angel’, down at the shore.’

‘We’re here to pick up Rickety Dan
We know that he’s here with you,
There’s no protection since Bony came
And the Navy’s short of a crew,
So stand aside, by the rising tide
He’ll be lost to you, Miss Toft,
For somewhere out by the channel ports
He’ll be clambering up, aloft.’

Dan had rickets when he was young
His legs were bowed like a bell,
He heard the door come clattering in
And he heard young Mary yell;
He seized his favourite capstan-bar
And he leapt right out of the loft,
Then laid about him from right to left
In defence of his Mary Toft.

The Press consisted of Isaac Raines
A farmer, plucked from the hay,
A weaver, minus the broken frames
The Luddites had taken away,
A shipwright, also a ropemaker
Who had joined to avoid the Press,
‘As long as you bring them in, my lads,
I’ll not let you go for less!’

Dan lashed out with the capstan-bar
And he laid the weaver low,
Sent the farmer to tend his fields
With only a single blow,
Chased the shipwright out of the door
Where the ropemaker had fled,
Knocked the Lieutenant down to the floor,
Then saw that he lay, stone dead!

‘I’m gone, I’m gone,’ said Rickety Dan,
‘I’d better head back to the sea,
It’s bad enough that I’ve killed the man
They’ll all be looking for me,
I’ll go and sign on an Indiaman
If I have to sign as a cook,
Once I’m safely away at sea
It’s the last place that they’ll look.’

She never saw Rickety Dan again
Though she’d wait at the turning tide,
Whenever an Indiaman came in
She would dress herself as a bride,
And even after they’d left this life
With Dan no longer aloft,
A bird perched up on the mizzen mast
Would look out for Mary Toft.

David Lewis Paget

He lay awake in his narrow bed
And opened his bedside drawer,
Then fumbled around until he’d found
The thing he was looking for,
A faded folder, covered in dust
It must have been there for years,
‘I want you to take this folder, son,
And give it to Mildred Pierce!’

His grandson blinked away a tear
And uttered a silent sigh,
Then dropped his gaze, he found it hard
To look in the old man’s eye,
He knew he wouldn’t be there for long
Though his steely brow was fierce,
He said, ‘Sure Gramps, I’ll pass it along
When I find your Mildred Pierce.’

‘You’ll find her back where I left her, when
The way of the world was wide,
Up on the banks of the Darling, she’ll
Be there on the Wentworth side,
She used to teach when the town was young
In a little timber school,
I should have stayed, but the girl had clung
And I guess I was just a fool.’

‘She looked so prim in her teacher dress
And her hair was up in a bun,
We used to walk by the river banks
When her teaching day was done,
Down in the shade of the eucalypts
I kissed her there one day,
With her hair let down on her shoulders
She said, ‘Please don’t go away.’’

‘I only stayed for the shearing, then
I followed the shearing tracks,
I had to keep on the move as long
As the wool grew on their backs,
We said goodbye at the junction where
The mighty rivers join,
I should have stayed for the love she gave
But my only love was coin.’

The old man, he was exhausted then,
Lay back, and then he sighed,
His grandson waited a moment, but
He saw that his gramps had died,
He took a look in the folder when
He settled in back at home,
And found a number of pages there
And each one was a poem.

One called ‘Sorry!’ and one called ‘Why?’
And one that he’d drowned in tears,
One that was just a stark lament
‘For the Love of Mildred Pierce’.
The boy had blushed at the poem meant
To eulogise her thighs,
While others sought for her tender lips
And the lovelight in her eyes.

He waited until the summer break
When the funeral was done,
Loaded the car and headed out
To where the rivers run,
He thought that she would be dead by this
It was just an exercise,
But when he had asked for Mildred Pierce
They had caught him by surprise.

‘She’s out on the banks of the Darling
You can’t miss her little shack,
She keeps herself to herself, prefers
To wander the outback.’
He stopped the car at her garden gate
And he called out by her door,
‘I’m looking for Mildred Pierce!’ Then heard
Her footsteps on the floor.

He half expected an ancient dame
With half a foot in the hearse,
But what he saw was a lovely girl
And still in her tender years,
‘They named me after my mother
Who was named for her mother too,
But Gran’s been gone for ever so long
So what did you want to do?’

They sat on her small verandah, and
He showed her the folder then,
‘My gramps wrote these for your grandmother,
Some time in the way back when.’
She slowly read through the pile of verse
And her eyes had filled with tears,
‘I’d heard all about this shearer from
My grandma, Mildred Pierce.’

‘He couldn’t have known they had a child,
My mother arrived in the spring,
And she was told who her father was
But they never heard a thing.
My Grannie died as a spinster, still
A teacher at the school.
How sad that he couldn’t reach her then
To say that his heart was full.’

They went to walk by the river where
Some fifty years before,
A teacher walked with a shearer for
A magic moment more,
They stopped, stood under the eucalypts
With them both reduced to tears,
And that was the moment he kissed her,
For the love of Mildred Pierce.

David Lewis Paget

I was born and bred in a valley,
It was all that I ever knew,
The cows grazed out in the pasture and
The cottages were few.
I grew surrounded by simple folk
Who toiled, and ate their fill,
They had one rule that they never broke,
‘We don’t go over the hill!’

They said, ‘Be happy with what you’ve got,
A pleasant country life,
One of the girls you play with here
Will grow to be your wife,
We have no use for the world out there
With its thrills, and shrill alarms,
We’re all content with the life we’ve spent
On our peaceful valley farms.’

The school was simply a single room,
We had no need for more,
At best, the students were twenty two,
At least, they numbered four,
They didn’t study so very hard
For the life they lived outside,
To the best of my recollection there,
Nobody ever died.

The cemetery hadn’t been in use
Since eighteen eighty-nine,
We had no use for a doctor there
For our health was always fine.
It always seemed like a mystery
But one that was never told,
Just why in our recent history
Did no-one ever grow old?

They told me when I was twenty-one
The story of Maggie Grey,
Her headstone stood in the cemetery,
The last one from her day,
She’d gone as a girl to the mountain top
Picked flowers for a bride,
But when she staggered on down again,
Something had changed, inside.

She said she’d eaten a purple fruit
From a bush that fateful day,
Whatever it was, we didn’t know
But it changed her DNA,
Of all the children she bore from then
They all were still alive,
Seven were born to her husband Ben,
And then another five.

They intermarried to keep their blood
As pure as it was fine,
And everyone in the valley now
Was descended from her line,
The rest of the folk had died and gone
As it was, before her day,
And the very last to be buried there
Was poor old Maggie Grey.

They said that we never could leave there
Just in case our blood would spill,
Or mix with the common herd out there
For the mix would make us ill,
They said we lived in a paradise
But could never make it known,
The moment the world had heard of us
They wouldn’t leave us alone.

My girlfriend, Catherine Mundy was
Rebellious from the start,
She said she wanted to travel, that
To stay would break her heart.
I followed her on a moonlit night
Where she went, to work her will,
And called out, ‘Catherine, please come back,
We don’t go over the hill!’

She stared at me from the mountain top,
Plunged down the other side,
I chased her then and I caught her, said:
‘Come back, and be my bride!’
‘I have to go or I’ll never know
All the things in the world out there,
But when I’m done, I’ll come on back
To find if you really care.’

She disappeared in the darkness, and
I wandered sadly home,
They sent a party to search for her
But then came back, alone.
‘She’s down in that village of miners,
We just hope that she holds her tongue,
If she tells them the story of Maggie Grey,
The valley will be undone!’

A year went by and the soldiers came
And they locked us in our farms,
They brought a team of physicians who
Set up in one of the barns,
They tested us and injected us,
Took blood on alternate days,
They wouldn’t say what they expected,
But they checked us with x-rays.

Catherine came back home as well,
She was cuffed to an army jeep,
I asked her what she had told them, it
Was then she began to weep.
A farmer died in the early Spring
And his wife went to her grave,
The first ones buried in paradise,
In a valley too late to save!

David Lewis Paget