From the time that Alison woke she knew
That she had to speak her lines,
It was part of some strange assignment that
Had lodged, deep in her mind,
And every day had begun like this
From as far back as the Prom,
For every day was a part to play
Though she didn’t know where from.

Her lines appeared in her deepest sleep,  
Were as glue upon her page,
She wasn’t allowed to deviate
Protest, or express her rage,
She’d go to Milady’s ballroom all
Dressed up with bustle and flare,
Plastered with ancient make-up and
A Pompadour in her hair.

And Alan, down off the ballroom he
Would finish his last cigar,
Straighten his wig and tails and take
His boots on into the bar,
A tumbler there of Cognac he’d
Toss back, then head for the ball,
Looking to share his heart out there
With the fairest one of them all.

He’d met her before on other nights,
She’d hidden behind her fan,
Her lashes were long and fluttered then
As he tried to hold her hand,
But she had proved to be skittish, she
Would lead him along, then stay,
And disappear in the dancers there
As she struggled to get away.

But Alan was more determined now,
He pinned her against the wall,
Caught the scent of her heaving breath,
‘Don’t you care for me, at all?’
She’d hesitate as those hated lines
Once more came into her head,
‘Oh my, this maiden is blushing, sir,
My cheeks are burning red.’

He led her towards an ante-room
For a long desired embrace,
But he couldn’t see behind the fan
The anguish on her face,
She wanted to live and love, she thought
She wanted to cry aloud,
But all that her script would let her do
Was gravitate to the crowd.

And Alan was so frustrated,
He thought that he’d never score,
For Alison seemed to disappear
As he opened the bedroom door,
And she stood out in the coffee room
With amazement on her face,
Where had he gone, she’d closed her eyes
To wait for his sweet embrace?

Alan tore off his tie and wig
And he hurled them to the floor,
Why did she always disappear
Just there, at the bedroom door?
He flung about, and he just went out
With his face so set and pale,
‘I’ll not be staying a moment more
In a Barbara Cartland tale.’

He had wondered where his speech came from
It had seemed so stiff and trite,
Embedded into his head, it seemed
When he was asleep at night,
He jumped on into a cab outside
In a vain attempt to flee,
When Alison ran beside him then
And cried, ‘Hey, wait for me!’

David Lewis Paget

‘What’s at the end of the garden,’
I would ask my Lisa May,
Each time she came through the garden gate
With that look of pure dismay.
She’d shake her head, ‘It’s the garden bed,
Overrun with weeds and toads,
I’ve said before we should move it more
Away from the old crossroads.’

It didn’t seem to be logical
To remove a garden bed,
‘What difference, if it goes east or west,’
Is what I plainly said.
But Lisa May was intractable
With her fixed ideas and views,
She said she hated the crossroads that
Still ran beside the mews.

I never used to accompany her
I’m not a gardening man,
I tend to let it run riot as
It does, in nature’s plan.
But Lisa wanted to tame it, by
Applying stakes and rules,
To straighten this and align with that,
She’s one of nature’s fools.

I never took her too seriously,
She’d come back and complain,
‘Those toadstools seem to be spreading from
The vermin in the lane.’
I didn’t know there was vermin so
I said that I’d take a look,
Reluctant, as I was always but
I sighed, put down my book.

We made our way down the garden, and
I noticed that there were toads,
Their croaking seemed to be loudest
From the site of the old crossroads,
And toadstools clustered around the base
Of an ancient weathered post,
As I heard a sound that came from the ground
Like when a victim chokes.

‘The mud there seems to be heaving,’ said
My naive Lisa May,
She didn’t know that the post had been
A gallows in its day.
And felons, hung for a week or so
Were buried at its base,
I hadn’t dared to reveal it or
We’d never have bought the place.

‘The land’s a little unstable here,
I see just what you mean,
Perhaps we can move the garden bed
To the other side of the green.’
But Lisa May wasn’t hearing me
For she stood stock still in shock,
She was staring down at the muddy ground
At what I’d thought was a rock.

‘That’s not a rock, but a skull,’ she cried,
And I must admit, it’s true,
That skull rose up of a killer
Buried in 1822.
Then Lisa May, who screamed and ran,
Now leaves the garden alone,
So nature’s riot has run amok
And the grave is overgrown.

David Lewis Paget

Just twelve, I swear, I must have been
The day they took the Witch of Steen
And put a halter round her neck
To teach her magic some respect.

The women in the village square
Tore off her clothes, and pulled her hair
Then called their menfolk out to view
Who crossed them there, what they would do.

They tied her hands behind her back
The rope around her neck was slack,
But tied to Jethro’s stubborn mule
They led her naked, like some fool.

And all her secrets lay out there
Uncovered, in the open air,
She looked quite beautiful to me
Her naked form, such artistry.

The mule dragged her, painful and slow
Along the lanes where they would go
As gusts of breeze blew out her hair,
Revealed what she was hiding there.

And I, I followed, just a lad
Whose eyes were full of her, by god,
Whose ******* were pert and firm back then
Whose thighs held secrets, hid from men.

I saw that tiny tuft of hair
That hid her womanhood in there,
That plagued me since, for every night
I’d think of it in dread delight.

But still they led her, lane and field
No place that she was not revealed,
They took her to the ducking pond
Where life or death would lie beyond.

And when they laid the ducking stool
With her aboard, across the pool,
Her voice rang out, this buxom maid
With words the villagers dismayed.

‘For all that you come judging me,
Look to yourselves, your pedigree,
What sons and daughters sprang at night
From phantom fathers, bred in spite.’

‘When husbands were out tending fields
And wives would wait, temptation yields.
What shadows stood by window ledge
Gained entry to some marriage bed?’

The women quaked before her spell
And screamed, then ducked the witch to hell
And would have left her there to drown
Had not the menfolk brought her round.

In mercy then, they set her free
And she had screamed, ‘A curse on thee!
‘Your cattle will roam free and late
Your catch won’t hold the cattle gate.’

‘Your crops will flatten in the fields
When hail and sleet destroy their yields,
And mud will fill your village hall,
Your church collapse, your roofs will fall.’

She left there with a final shout
The things she cursed, they came about,
But I was left a lifetime dream,
That naked witch, the Witch of Steen.


David Lewis Paget

A single bullet was all it took
And I needn’t have wasted that,
He sat alone in that dismal cave
In an old Field Marshall’s hat,
His eyes were sunk in that pallid face
A demented cast to his jaw,
He didn’t move as I knelt and aimed
And put an end to the war.

It was getting late, it was ‘68
When I ventured into the cave,
My friends said going spelunking was
A bit like digging your grave.
‘Expect big rats, and giant bats,’
They said, before I’d begun,
So I added that to my haversack,
Just to be sure, a gun.

It wasn’t a normal cave I sought
But one by the autobahn,
Where I’d seen a crevice opening up
That nobody else had done,
It seemed to lead deep down in the earth
Could easily close, if found,
So I took a pick, a dynamite stick
And burrowed into the ground.

I had a lamp on my helmet, like
A miner’s, casting a beam,
And climbed on plenty of rubble
That had collapsed in a steady seam,
It led to a concrete tunnel
Plenty of rock strewn passageways,
A giant work of construction that
Lay hidden in former days.

I seemed to go on forever
Then ran into a barbed wire cone,
Blocking one of the passageways
And a sign, ‘Halt! No Go Zone!’
The wire was rusty and fell apart
As I pushed it away to the side,
But then the sound of scuffling rats
Brought the gun out by my side.

Then finally it had opened up
Into what would appear a cave,
With flags and banners arranged about,
The glory of former days,
A corpse sat propped in an easy chair
In a uniform from then,
And there, attached to the shirt front was
A nameplate, ‘Bormann, M.’

Beyond, and under the banners was
A barely human form,
Who stared at me in the darkness there
As if I’d not been born,
The greatest conqueror of our time
And there’s no disputing that,
Lost in pain in his vast domain
For there der Führer sat.

David Lewis Paget

There are places still on this planet where
No man has ever trod,
That lie so deep in the undergrowth,
Put there by the grace of God,
And denizens lie there, watchfully
In guarding their holy place,
Intruders enter but never return
As part of the human race.

The earth entangles and trips their feet
When they stray from near and far,
And vines entwine in a blink of time
To tether them where they are,
While briars inject as they’re taking root
Seep poison into their veins,
To leave them dank with their eyes so blank
With what human thought remains.

I saw you wandering aimlessly
Too close to the place of God,
And followed you inconspicuously
Or you might have thought it odd,
And when you stumbled and almost fell
At the edge of their secret wood,
I found and slashed at the vines that bound
In that alien neighbourhood.

I lured you out of the convent walls
And I sought to take you home,
You raised your head in confusion, said
That all roads lead to Rome,
I said, ‘You’re throwing your life away
For the drear of a lonely cell,
But life is there to be lived, my love,
Or all roads lead to Hell.’

The Penguins came to collect you, tried
To bind you with former vows,
And flapped their wings at your reason
Using what force the law allows,
I slammed the door in my silent war
On their medieval taint,
And hoped you’d say that you’d marry me,
Though I never wanted a saint!

It’s been a year and I see you stare
Each time that we pass their gate,
Wondering if you should be there
But I thank God, it’s too late,
Our daughter bubbles with life, and grins
As a child of God, she should,
I’d rather her path was paved with sins
Than led to their secret wood.

David Lewis Paget

The grave they kept on the lonely beach
Lay under a foot of lime,
Most of the pile had washed away
With rain, and the tides of time,
It had been so long since its stone was laid
As a warning to who went there,
The rough-cut name had begun to fade,
To the solitary word, ‘Despair!’

It said, ‘Despair if you dig it up,
Despair if you set it free,
It savaged the girl called Maidenhair
It ravaged this fair country,
It roamed the farms at the dead of night
And tore into sheep and hogs,
The farmers called it the devil’s blight
When they found their blood-spattered dogs.

The only monk that was left to tend
The grave, now lay in the church,
His Order gone, now the only one
To fend off the tidal surge.
The church was almost a ruin since
It had shattered the oak-backed doors,
And blasted the Brothers altar with
Its devils breath, and its claws.

But the monk lay ill, and he knew full well
He never could make the beach,
To pile the lime on the Beast of Time
And the sea would surely breach.
His fellow monks were all laid in clay
On the upper side of the cliff,
Their duty done, they had one by one
Passed on, and lay cold and stiff.

A crack appeared in the bed of lime
With a rush of air from the shore,
And something groaned with an eerie moan,
The seed of the devil’s spore.
A whisp rose out of the open grave
To join with a gully breeze,
That sent it whirling along a wave
And into a grove of trees.

And then an ominous rumble rose
As a whirlwind formed on high,
It whipped the waves to a surly peak
As it rose to blacken the sky,
A tempest, such as had never been
Tore trees, like beeches and birch,
And cut a swathe like the path it paved,
On its wayward way to the church.

The monk lay there with his gilded cross
As he heard the beast outside,
It gave a roar by the shattered door
And the monk had almost died.
But a gentle hand took the cross from him,
A hand that was soft and fair,
And held it up to the beast so grim,
The ghost of Maidenhair.

It shuddered once as she stood with ease
And the cross then drove it back,
The whirlwind died to a gully breeze
As it fled back down the track.
It seemed confused, and it seemed to lose
Its overwhelming reach,
And sank back into its limestone grave
On that long deserted beach.

The sea had battered the arching cliff
Hung over that limestone shore,
It now collapsed in a final lapse
With the monks who’d passed before.
And beneath a thousand tons of earth
That is holding off the sea,
There’s a rough-cut stone that says, ‘Despair,
Despair if you let it free!’

David Lewis Paget

The ground had rumbled for quite some time
It was only a minor quake,
The people grumbled, it came and went
But it kept them all awake,
‘They say there was a volcano here
A billion years ago,
But it’s long since dead, the geologists said,
And there’ll be no lava flow.’

They’d built the suburb on rising ground,
And roads, right up to the peak,
The ground was rocky and unforgiving
The soil was grey and weak,
So little grew on that rising crest
Just the odd saltbush or so,
They couldn’t drill through the rock beneath
To help their bushes grow.

I would venture out and would take the air
When the house cooled down at night,
But always felt there was something there
That would make me feel uptight,
I felt the rumble, under my feet
It was like a muffled roar,
And I thought a whimsical thought one night,
It was like an old man’s snore.

One night I wandered up to the crest
And I saw two bushes move,
They seemed to tremble and flutter there
Just above a ball shaped groove,
The rumble stopped as I stood and watched
From under the starlit skies,
The bushes opened to crystal orbs,
Just like a pair of eyes.

They fixed me there in their crystal stare
And I didn’t dare to breathe,
The summit started to shake and move,
And then it began to heave,
The houses built on the crest fell down
It was like a huge hiccup,
And I fell tumbling to the ground
As the Mountain God stood up!

David Lewis Paget

I said that there only were ninety steps
To the drop at the edge of the cliff,
As long as she didn’t take ninety one,
She wouldn’t end up as a stiff.
She’d only been blind since the accident
When the car got away from me,
Went rolling, gambolling on down the hill
And ending up flat by a tree.

And Cindy went straight through the windscreen
She shattered the glass she went through,
She screamed out to me that she couldn’t see,
She cried, ‘I’m just looking for you!’
But I was sat pinned by the steering wheel
I couldn’t get out if I tried,
I said, ‘Don’t distress, they’ll fix you up yet,’
One look at her eyes said I lied.

We came up to move in to ‘Ocean View’,
The house overlooking the sea,
I thought that the air would be good for us,
And the view would be okay for me.
I paced out the steps to the edge of the cliff
And reported to Cindy as such,
As long as she kept to her boundary
She wouldn’t fall over - (Not much!)

It isn’t much fun when your partner is blind
When everything has to be done,
She took it for granted that I wouldn’t mind
So sat on the porch in the sun.
I washed and I cooked and I tidied the house,
While she took her lessons in braille,
My life wasn’t funny, but she had the money,
I felt I was living in jail.

I walked with her right to the edge of the cliff
But always stopped seven steps short,
I said, ‘When you venture away from the house,
Remember the cliff is due North.’
I tried to impress it was safer to stay
Within ninety steps from the edge,
What I hadn’t told, as my blood had run cold
It was Eighty Eight steps to the ledge.

They’d say it was ******, I’d say it was fate
If she finally fell from the cliff,
I would say, ‘what the odds, it was up to the gods,’
And ‘life, it was full of ‘what if?’
My plans came to nothing, she drowned in the bath
But I still felt as guilty as sin,
I knew I’d had ****** there deep in my heart
And that evil is doing me in!

David Lewis Paget

Whenever the rain comes falling,
It rearranges our town,
Whatever before was dry and up
Is suddenly wet and down,
They say it’s the fault of Widow Krupp
Who saved her tears in a tub,
And splashes them out with a scream and shout
As rain fills the gutters up.

And the streets lie under the waterways
For the river will burst its banks,
Flooding the gardens, and pathways,
There’s nobody else to thank.
We lose all sense of the North and South
As the East and West drift by,
And watch as the town goes spinning round
By gazing up at the sky.

People go drifting out in boats
To look for the supermart,
But all they find are the floating goats
That litter the flooded park,
The wooden houses meander by
As they leave their place in the street,
And neighbours wake in a different place
To the one where they fell asleep.

No wonder they call it ‘Waterdown’
It could have been ‘Waterup’,
For Waterdown is a drifting town
Thanks to the Widow Krupp,
The townsfolk threaten to duck the witch
As soon as they find the pond,
That lies bewitched by a flooded ditch
Out there, the back of beyond.

The pub has been anchored down with ropes
To stop it drifting away,
They towed it down from the heart of town
To give them somewhere to play,
While Madame Loy is the local toy
Who hangs her shingle outside,
‘Come in and play, if you’re bored today,
Entrée, and come for a ride.’

They finally got to the Widow Krupp
And drowned the witch in her tears,
Ducked her well in her wooden tub
Now it hasn’t rained for years.
The ground is dry and they wonder why
The river is just a stream,
And for those few who are newly new,
The past was a fitful dream.

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d only be gone for a week,
I saw her off in the car,
‘It’s not that long,’ she began to speak,
‘It’s not that I’m going far,’
So I waved goodbye and I turned to go,
I wish I could live it again,
For that was the last I saw of Flo
I’m missing her so, Amen.

Her mother phoned on the following day,
‘What have you done with Flo?
She said we’d meet in the market place,
Did she even set out to go?’
I said she had on the previous day,
‘Is she really not there?’ I said,
And then my mind kept racing away,
I thought that she might be dead.

I called the police and the hospital,
And even the Fire Brigade,
No-one had ever heard of her
Or knew where she might have stayed,
Then I saw a clip on the news that night
She was walking along in the rain,
They were filming down at the station as
She was boarding the Melbourne train.

A week went by and I heard no more,
I thought that she might have phoned,
I saw her brother and sister too,
‘I think that she’s left,’ I moaned.
‘They hadn’t heard, not a single word,
Since that man in an overcoat
Had called in, said he was looking for her,
And left her a simple note.

‘Catch the plane at Tullamarine,
I’ll meet you in Istanbul,
Pick up the pack from the man in green,
Make sure that the pack is full.’
‘I thought you were going on holiday,’
Her brother had said to my face,
I said I didn’t know where she was
She’d gone, with never a trace.

The bomb in the old Ramada Hotel
Went off, I saw on the news
The old city part of Istanbul,
They published a set of views,
And Flo was running from smoke and flames,
I saw her, clear as a bell,
And right behind was a man in green
In front of the old hotel.

They said a woman with auburn hair
Had dropped a pack at the desk,
And then had run, she carried a gun,
Was currently under arrest.
The following day, she got away,
Squeezed out through the window bars,
Then jumped in a waiting limousine,
One of the Russian cars.

I heard she went to Saint Petersburg,
Had asked for asylum there,
They’d said, ‘No way,’ that she couldn’t stay,
She replied, ‘It isn’t fair!’
Nobody wanted to charge her so
They flew her on out to Wales,
And that’s when I met her in Cardiff
Where we sat, with a couple of ales.

She said she had won an adventure
All hush hush, in an online quiz,
But had to deliver a package first,
‘I should have asked what it is.’
She said she was sorry not telling me,
I reached out and held her hand,
‘Where did you think you were going then?’
She said, ‘to Disneyland!’

David Lewis Paget

I wanted to go to the end of the street
To buy a chocolate éclair,
But now I’m at the end of the street,
The end of the street’s not there.
I’ll swear it was there just yesterday,
Was there on the day before,
But now when I look for the end of the street
The end of the street’s no more.

All I can see is a land of waste,
A land of rubble and weeds,
Where bushes grow in untidy rows,
A scatter of burdock seeds,
I wander on where the shops have gone
Where you used to meet with us,
But the road just ended around the bend
Where we caught the 16 bus.

There’s nothing left but a wilderness
An empty paddock and space,
As if I meet at the end of the street
The end of the human race,
The houses, shops and the industry
And the people I saw before,
They seem to be lost in a history
That nobody felt or saw.

That nobody felt or saw, I thought,
That came and took you away,
Strapped in the back of an ambulance
Laid out on a cold tin tray,
And your laughter fades in the wilderness
And your sighs reach up to the Moon,
And my heart that burst at the back of the hearse
Will never be mended soon.

I wanted to go to the end of the street
To buy a chocolate éclair,
For chocolate’s really the only thing
That will feed my deep despair.
But my soul is lost in the wilderness
Of your empty passing by,
I’d spend my grief on the lonely heath
If I thought I could only cry!

David Lewis Paget

Bring all the kids on home from school
And gather the pets in tight,
Send out and warn the village fool
For it’s Crow Fly-Over Night.
Stable the horse, bring in the geese,
Shut up the chicken run,
We can’t rely on the local police
So load me a scatter gun.

Shut the windows in both the Utes,
Drive the car in the shed,
Lay out my anti-vermin boots
And a helmet to cover my head.
Lock the shutters and pull the blinds,
We don’t want to show a light,
Set the locks on the window-winds
For it’s Crow Fly-Over Night.

Then watch for the man in the hood and cape
As he drifts in, under the Moon,
If I sight him well, then he won’t escape,
Not like in the month of June.
He brings his carrion in to feed
In a flutter of feathered blight,
If he’s not dead yet, then he will be soon
For it’s Crow Fly-Over Night.

And the widow Raines in her mourning dress
Has been seen to stray, she roams,
She scatters seed in the wilderness
But the Crows will pick her bones.
At dusk they come in an evil cloud
But with not a single caw,
Then settle over the land, and loud
Announce the word is ‘war’.

So hide the children beneath their beds
And bar each door in place,
Block up the chimney flu with lead
And call your sister, Grace,
If she doesn’t come before the Crows
She’ll find the door locked tight,
And then she’ll know what the Devil knows,
It’s Crow Fly-Over Night!

David Lewis Paget

I didn’t see anything strange that day
When I first drove into the town,
If anything it was normal, though
I was breaking ****** ground.
I’d never been into this countryside
Before, with its mounds and mines,
A patchwork town with its mullock heaps
And its sad, neglected grime.

But the people there, they would stand and stare
As I drove my motor through,
They’d stop and stand on the corners there
With nothing better to do.
The mines had closed when the ore ran out
Though most of the miners stayed,
They didn’t seem glad to see me drive
Or wave on their Grand Parade.

But I thought I’d stay in their tiny town
I was bushed, too tired to drive,
So parked the car by their only pub
And I ventured deep inside.
A man came out with a surly look
And he said, ‘You’re passing through?
I hope you’re not a believer, son,
Or this town will do for you!’

I shook my head at the things he said,
I only wanted to sleep,
His questions rattled around my head,
But then seemed far too deep.
I paid for a room and locked the door
Then went to sleep for a spell,
But then discovered a woman there
By the name of Jezebel.

‘Please help to smuggle me out of here,’
She said, ‘in the back of your car.’
She whispered this with her ruby lips
Too close to my own, by far.
‘Why don’t you just get up and leave,
And walk right out of the town?’
‘Nobody gets to leave this place,
If you try, he’ll cut you down.’

I said that she wasn’t making sense,
She was just confusing my head,
How could I concentrate, when she
Was sprawling over my bed?
‘They thought they’d taken his power away
When they tied him up in chain,
But he only waits at his evil gate
For his thousand years of pain.’

‘This town is under an evil spell
Since the miners found the rift,
If I said that my name was Jezebel
Then I think you’d get my drift.
He needs someone who believes in him
With a kind and gentle heart,
And that will help him to break his chains
Then he’ll tear this town apart.’

I asked her where I could see the man
And she said she’d take me there,
But only if I could promise her
Not to believe, or care.
‘He’ll use his wiles, and his gracious smiles
To get at the heart that’s true,
You have to reject, be circumspect,
Or he’ll take the soul from you.’

That night I followed her down a mine
That was cold, and dark and damp,
The only light we could use that night
Was a feeble miners lamp,
But then we came to a giant rift
In that ground, of ash and slate,
And there was a dark and evil glint
From a wrought iron double gate.

A man was chained to that evil gate
On the other side of sin,
Unless we opened that Devil’s Gate
There was no way he’d get in.
I stood surprised, for I saw his eyes
That were wise, before his fall,
‘Have you brought me a true believer, Jez?’
For a moment, he stood tall.

‘I brought you a non-believer, who
Will help me away from you,
I’ve wasted time on your promises,
For nothing you said was true.’
‘Alas for me, will I never be
Set free to challenge The One?’
‘No-one believes in the Devil now
So your power is all undone!’

There’s a town that’s tame, it has a name
But I’ll not be telling you,
I don’t want to see a believer there
To give the Devil his due.
For the fires that we all feared have gone
Since we learned we’re not to hate,
It would only take one bended knee
To open the Devil’s Gate.

David Lewis Paget

She was everything I ever wanted,
Petite, with a shock of hair,
A dimpled cheek, and a smile so sweet
And my favourite name of Claire.
I’d watched her grow to adulthood
And thought that I’d made my mark,
Until the day that my world turned grey
When I saw her walk in the park.

For she wasn’t alone by the cedars,
She wasn’t alone by the pool,
For Edward Eyre had his arm round her,
A fellow I’d known at school,
He wasn’t exactly a heartthrob,
His eyes were too big for his nose,
His hair was like a rats nest in there
And he seemed too small for his clothes.

I couldn’t believe I was seeing
Her laughing and smiling with him,
At school we’d called him the village fool
An idiot under his skin,
But here he was with my darling,
The vision was somehow grotesque,
As I recalled how he once had crawled
Under the teacher’s desk.

It wasn’t as if he could smell too good
With the egg stains over his chest,
A shirt would have been an improvement,
But he wore a ***** old vest.
What on God’s earth could she see in him
I made up my mind to see,
To question Claire, what went on in there,
And what did she think of me?

Her words were a revelation,
To her he was handsome and tall,
But she was barely just five foot three
And he only five foot small.
She spoke of his wit and his humour,
She said he made her heart full,
Then what of me, and she said, ‘Let’s see,
I think you’re remarkably dull.’

I said she should see a psychiatrist
Perhaps an optometrist too,
‘For what you see is a travesty
That nobody sees but you.’
She said they were going to be married,
To tie them together for life,
‘But once you see what the others see,
You’ll make him a terrible wife.’

I went to their wedding reception,
And hung in the passageway hall,
Got Claire to see his reflection
In the mirror that hung on the wall,
She blanched, and gasped at his image,
She’d not seen him like that before,
She’d seen but dreams, and she grimaced,
Threw up on the passageway floor.

There are those who see what they want to see
And Claire had been one of those,
They dress their dreams in a web it seems
Made up of the Emperor’s clothes.
We’ve been together a year or so
And try to hang on to our youth,
Whenever reality strikes a pose
We look in the mirror of truth.

David Lewis Paget

I think she came from a Gypsy Clan
Where Dracula spilt his blood,
All that way in a caravan
To live in a field of mud,
But she danced like a whirling dervish,
At the campfire by the sea,
While I looked on like a love-lost one
Each time that she looked at me.

She wore a bright red rose in the hair
That was long, and thick, and black,
And dangling golden earrings,
With a shawl across her back,
But I stood transfixed as she twirled and kicked,
I felt like a man who begs,
Her skirt flared out as she danced about
And all I could see was legs.

All I could see was legs, I said,
The legs of a country girl,
The fine and moulded calves and thighs
That had danced half round the world.
She smiled with a hint of mystery
As she flashed her cute behind,
And said, ‘I know all your history,
For I can read your mind!’

She danced away in a sort of play
Now she’d got me on the hop,
I didn’t know where to put my eyes
On her *******, or eyes, or what!
She certainly was a buxom girl
But her legs had made me blind,
She kicked up high and she showed a thigh,
That said, ‘I can read your mind!’

I hadn’t much of a mind just then
It was all consumed with lust,
Why can a thigh make a grown man cry?
I thought it was so unjust.
A man could dance til the cows came home
But it wouldn’t raise an eye,
While the other kind could make men blind
At the glance of a naked thigh.

I shook my head and I turned away
I couldn’t take more of this,
If that, her wheeze, was merely a tease,
She’d cornered the world of bliss.
But she stopped her prance and her wild dance
As I walked off into the trees,
She followed me from the clearing there,
Kicking up autumn leaves.

I turned, as she was behind me then
And pressed her against a tree,
I said, ‘Just tell me your Gypsy name,’
She said it was Chavali.
‘Well, Chavali you’re a teaser,
Are you really one of a kind?’
She raised her eyes to the northern skies
And said, ‘I can read your mind!’

We wandered into the furthest woods
And we found a bed of leaves,
I couldn’t tell you what happened there,
Though Chavali skinned her knees.
But now, today, it’s a world away
And I’m not a man who begs,
For every time, she can read my mind
And flashes her Gypsy legs.

David Lewis Paget

He watched as she passed each morning,
Same time, each day of the week,
But his lips were dry and his tongue was tied
And he found he couldn’t speak.
She had such a heavenly beauty,
That he’d raised her up on high,
So how could he, a poor mortal seek
Such a goddess, up in the sky?

Her hair the colour of ripened corn
Her lips the pink of the rose,
The dimple sitting in either cheek
And the tilt at the end of her nose.
Her eyes would flash as she passed him
In that wonderful glide and sway,
He almost spoke, but he always choked,
And cursed as she walked away.

While she kept steadily walking,
She never would look around,
Though the sight of the young Adonis made
Her heart pit-patter and pound.
He looked like a Grecian statue,
From the Pantheon of the Gods,
Why would he spare a glance at her
With her features all at odds?

For the blonde was out of a bottle,
And her eyes, they must have looked scared,
She tried to appear so nonchalant
And not that she really cared.
But she walked that way each morning
Just to get a glimpse of him,
Hoping he’d say one word to her
That would be encouraging.

The days passed on through the Summer
Then Autumn had come to stay,
And he still stood each morning
And she still walked that way,
But he paced in desperation,
Chewed his fingers down to the bone,
‘When would he pluck the courage up,’
She thought, as she passed his home.

They seemed to be making progress,
For they’d nod as she walked by,
But he didn’t see as she raised her eyes
Frustrated, up at the sky,
She’d put on a brighter lipstick,
Mascara, as black as coal,
While he despaired as she disappeared
At the emptiness in his soul.

He practised before the mirror,
And tried out a ‘How are you?’
But shook his head at the words he said,
It simply wouldn’t do!
What if he came straight out and cried
The thoughts he felt in his heart,
‘I’ve fallen so much in love with you
That it’s tearing me apart!’

While she broke down in the ladies room
The moment she got to work,
Her friends came gathering round to say,
‘He must be a total ****!’
But she flared back to defend him,
‘I think that he fancies me,
He stands and nods like a Grecian God
But his face is misery!’

The morning came that he steeled himself
And walked right into her path,
While she stood still as she broke a heel
And sat with him on the grass.
‘You can’t go to work like that,’ he said,
‘My name, by the way, is Bill.’
‘I often wondered,’ she smiled at him,
‘And mine, by the way, is Jill.’

David Lewis Paget

Alan had stood at our open door,
Shaking and white with fright,
First he was speaking to Eleanor,
Then had a word with Dwight.
‘What seems the problem,’ I said to him,
(My name, by the way, is Bill),
‘Haven’t you seen it,’ he said to me,
‘It’s moving, McAvanagh’s Hill!’

I went to the door and I looked on out,
The hill seemed to still be in place,
On closer inspection, it seemed to me
It had moved to the south, a trace.
‘It must be a trick of the light,’ I said,
A hill is a hill and can’t move,’
‘But look at McCafferty’s,’ Alan said,
‘It’s settling down in a groove.’

And true, but McCafferty’s roof had moved,
It used to stand up on the height,
The moon would come up just behind his roof
And highlight his house every night.
His house had dropped down the back of the hill
Or the top of the hill was too high,
‘Now isn’t that strange?’ I said in a muse,
And Dwight said, ‘I wonder why?’

The rumbling, grumbling started that night
But deep in the earth, underneath,
And Eleanor came in a panic to cry,
‘There’s movement, out there on the heath!’
We ran to the garden, and under the moon
We could see the heath starting to tilt,
As slowly it moved, and then it became
The rising front side of the hill.

Alan ran home and brought back a gun
He said, ‘I feel better with this!’
‘You think you can stop it by firing a gun?’
‘At least with a hill, you can’t miss.
There’s something behind it, something so weird,
A hill can’t just move by itself.’
Then Eleanor suddenly burst into tears,
‘The Devil’s come into the Dell!’

We didn’t get very much sleep that night,
We took it in turns just to watch,
The nearer the movement came up to our door
The more Alan knocked off my Scotch.
We felt the first tilt of the house next day,
Our porch was beginning to rise,
The hill loomed above us, and leaning back,
The house pointed up to the skies.

McCafferty’s house had quite disappeared
As it slid down the other side,
While our house was on the way to the top,
It was really a question of pride.
McCafferty lorded it over us all
As long as his house was on top,
But now he came racing along, was appalled,
‘I order this movement to stop!’

‘I know you’re behind it, you’ve conjured a scheme,
What set this in motion, Bill?’
I shrugged and I mentioned that my hands were clean,
‘It is, after all, just a hill!’
‘My real estate value just fell through the floor,
I’ll sue if you don’t move it back!’
‘Then go for it Buddy, there isn’t a court
That can order a hill… See you Jack.’

We’re sitting in clover, our house at the top
Of what was McAvanagh’s Hill,
For once it had moved, it suddenly stopped
And now it’s the Hill of Bill!
McCafferty sits down the hill in a glade
And he rages at everyone,
While Alan’s deluded, he swears at this stage
That it stopped when it noticed his gun.

David Lewis Paget

I was out when the heavens opened up,
I was only but halfway there,
I hadn’t a coat or umbrella then
On my way to my darling dear,
But she was dry in her great big house
That was built up high on the ridge,
The river rose and it blocked my path
With the Warlock, guarding the bridge.

His hat was wet and his cloak had flared
While his eyes, pinpoints of red,
Stood out from under his hat and stared
As my mind was filled with dread,
I didn’t know if he’d let me pass
I had met his type before,
He was grumble-growl with a werewolf’s howl
And a sharp and mighty claw.

I tried to pass on the narrow bridge
But he growled, ‘Who goes you where?’
I said, ‘I’m going to meet my girl
In the house on the ridge up there.’
‘You shall not pass, you shall not go,
I shall tear you limb from limb,’
His claws he raised in a grisly show
And his jaw was set and grim.

The rain continued its pelting down
And the thunder pealed above,
I felt determined to beat this clown
I was fortified with love.
‘You’ll not be wanting to cross Nyrene
She will drop a spell or two,
That will tear apart your Warlock’s heart
When her spell is done with you.’

The Warlock started to make reply
When the lightning hit the rail,
And lit him up like a paper cup
From his head down to his tail,
The river washed him across the bridge
And into its raging flow,
Whether he drowned or fried that day
Well really, I wouldn’t know.

‘You shouldn’t have used my name in vain,’
Nyrene told me at the door,
‘That lightning flash may have caused you pain,
It was kept in my ‘Un-aimed’ Store.’
I never go up if the rivers rise
When Nyrene’s home on the ridge,
If lightning’s lurking up in the skies
Or a Warlock’s guarding the bridge.

David Lewis Paget

This government’s greed’s cut into my need
By taxing tobacco smoke,
I needed my **** to concentrate,
They’ve turned it into a joke.
So how many lines of poetry
I’ll never be able to write,
All for the sake of the Nanny State
Insisting I quit tonight.

I see it as persecution of
The few of us that are left,
Turning us into a cash cow that
Has left us feeling bereft.
I thought that the days of fascists died
In the bunker with ******’s crew,
We seem to have re-elected them,
They’re telling us what to do.

We should be allowed to live our lives
The way that we always did,
Making our personal choices then
And not be ruled by the quid.
They keep on edging their taxes up
To make us submit by stealth,
By making it unaffordable,
They say it’s all about health.

What will they do when we all give up
And they find all their coffers bare?
What will they find to tax us then
To make up the smoker’s share?
Maybe they’ll tax the pollies perks
That they vote themselves at night,
Whenever the world’s not watching them,
But that never happens - Right?

We seem to be ruled by a den of thieves
Who make up rules as they go,
Their arrogance you would not believe
As they crush the ordinary Joe.
It’s time that we formed a voting block
To target the safest seats,
And toss out the whole corrupted lot
By dumping them out in the streets.

David Lewis Paget

We were friends of a sort, when we were young
When we grew, I thought he was weak,
Jumping at shadows in shady lanes,
At jokes that were tongue-in-cheek.
He thought that life was a trap for him
And looked for someone to blame,
He could have been so much more, I thought,
Than he was, and that was a shame.

His soul was timorous, that was true
But he seemed to attract the girls,
They’d give him a shoulder to cry on, when
He was feeling at odds with the world.
They called him ‘Bobby’, that said it all
When he should have been known as Bob,
He never grew to be Bob, I knew
But won their hearts with a sob.

He brought out the motherly instincts in
The girls that he got to know,
They would pet his hair, and say, ‘There there…’
And motion for me to go.
My sweetheart, Carolyn Ainsworth said
That he’d won a place in her heart,
I couldn’t believe she could be so dumb
But her interest tore us apart.

I watched as she moved on into his life
And catered for every whim,
He told me not to approach her then,
She was only there for him.
They moved on into a haunted house
On a plot, with a dog outside,
A wooden house with a creaky gate
Where her grandfather had died.

They married, out on their own front lawn
Then scurried away inside,
He wouldn’t let her out of his sight
But clung to his captive bride.
I never saw her out on her own
He was always there, like a freak,
And pulled her in, like a dog on a leash
Whenever she tried to speak.

I got a note in the mail one day
That was signed by Carolyn,
‘Please come and take me away,’ it said,
‘Oh, what a fool I’ve been!’
I drove on out to the haunted house
But the gate and the doors were barred,
Then she came out to the balcony,
I could tell she was more than scared.

Her eye was blackened and bruised, I saw,
Her lip was swollen and split,
I called ‘Come down!’ and I waved to her,
‘I’ll take you away, my sweet!’
But Bobby came to the balcony
And he dragged her in by the hair,
The doors had slammed and I heard them lock,
And a terrible scream up there.

I vaulted over the creaky gate
And I kicked the front door in,
Then made for the central stair, but fate
Was putting paid to his sin.
A shadowy figure had seized him there
And ****** him against the wall,
Then sent him tumbling down the stairs,
He broke his neck in the fall.

It stood there, glaring down from the top
Then slowly faded away,
I’d never have met her grandfather
If I hadn’t been there that day.
I took her home and I patched her up
But knew that my love had flown,
I see her now and again, she lives
With him in her haunted home.

David Lewis Paget

She sat and stared from the window ledge,
She sat and stared at the sea,
Was sitting all through my childhood there
Since Eighteen fifty-three,
They said that she’d only stand upright
When a sail came into the bay,
When a ship came back from the Indies, or
Returned from Mandalay.

Nobody knew what she did in there,
She knitted, or she sewed,
Perhaps she was sat embroidering
As she watched the old sailroad,
They say she looked for a purple sail
Run up at the mizzen mast,
A sign that a certain Captain Hale
Had sailed on home at last.

She had a gentle and kindly face
I remembered from my youth,
But time went on and her face had shone
With tears, to tell the truth,
Her beauty gradually faded as
The years, they took their toll,
And sadness leached from her pale blue eyes
Before the house was sold.

A ship sailed into the harbour on
A warm spring afternoon,
A tattered sail at the mizzen that
Had lost its purple bloom,
The Captain wandered along the shore
From out where the sea was calm,
And stopped to gaze at a window,
But with a brunette on his arm.

He shook his head for a moment
As at a distant memory,
One of a thousand left behind
In the years that he’d spent at sea,
His eyes were held for a moment by
The eyes at the window pane,
But then he turned to the young brunette,
And went on his way again.

I bought the house when the sign went up
Though the agent said, ‘You’re sick!
I wouldn’t be touching that tumbledown,
It’s just a pile of brick.
Nobody’s been in there for years,
The thing needs pulling down,
You’ll get the place for a song, of course,
But there’s better in the town.’

I went and I picked the key up and
I stood out on the grass,
And stared on up at the window that
Was crazed, with broken glass,
The house was dark as a midden, all
Was shrouded in a gloom,
I felt my way up the passageway
And ventured in that room.

She sat quite still with her back to me
And stared out as before,
The window, it was crazed and cracked
And that was the most she saw,
I walked up slowly behind her, though
I didn’t know what to say,
She looked as if she’d been porcelain,
But now she was only clay.

I had the glazier fix the pane
And I locked that room up tight,
I wouldn’t let anyone go in there,
It didn’t seem to be right.
I put on a Captain’s hat, and stand
Between the house and the sea,
And swear that I see a gentle smile,
But now, she’s looking at me!

David Lewis Paget

The old man sat in a musty room
And his eyes peered on outside,
Where trees were lost in the evening gloom
With the rest of the countryside,
He watched the woman, tied to a tree
As she shook her golden hair,
And cried again, so piteously
In the essence of despair.

There weren’t so many, roaming and free
He thought, in the cruel world,
Not more than a few in captivity
And some, they called them ‘a girl’,
He thought of his faded mother then
Before they took her away,
And told him then, he was only ten
That they needed her for ‘play’.

He’d caught this one in a rabbit trap
As she crept in the depth of the wood,
Her hair was gold but her eyes were black
And she’d fought him, well and good,
He bound her wrists and shackled her feet
Before he could let her be,
Then carried her back to his tiny shack
And tied her fast to a tree.

He didn’t know what to do with her
He’d never had one alone,
Maybe she’d make good eating when
He stripped her down to the bone,
Out in the night he tore her dress
When taking her clothing down,
Then stood amazed with his eyebrows raised
At the extra flesh he found.

She couldn’t speak in his language then
But only could scream and cry,
He hadn’t hurt or abused her, when
She glared, and spat in his eye,
So he filled up the ancient cooking ***
And he brought her slow to the boil,
Then when she was dead, he took her head
In hopes that her meat not spoil.

David Lewis Paget

The house dated back to the Tudors,
Half timbered, in need of repair,
They offered it me for a peppercorn rent
If I’d do some work on it there.
Right next to it stood the Catholic Church,
All pillars and deep seated vaults,
I thought I could make it a comfortable lair
Despite its old timbers and faults.

But Kathy was not so enamoured,
She said that she’d rather a flat,
‘There’s dry rot and beetles,’ she stammered,
‘So what will you do about that?’
‘I’ll think about that in the morning,
For now you’ll just have to be brave,
You’ll love that old bed, and its awning,
And think of the money we’ll save.’

We got settled in and explored it,
The wainscoting seemed to be fine,
With three rooms upstairs, and an attic,
I seized on that, told her, ‘It’s mine!’
She wouldn’t come down to the cellar,
‘It’s too dark and creepy for me.’
I thought it would do for a storeroom,
It had its own hearth, and chimney.

One day I had leant on the mantle
When something had moved in the wall,
A bookshelf slid back near a candle,
Revealing an ancient priest hole,
But way beyond that was a tunnel
The led all the way to a crypt,
So this was their ancient escape route
For anything termed Catholic.

I thought I would wait to explore it
Till Kathy would like to come too,
But she had just shivered, ignored it,
And said, ‘you just do what you do.’
I couldn’t contain my excitement
As into that tunnel I went,
Imagining priests that had used it,
To burn at the stake, or repent.

Then halfway along in an alcove
I flashed the light, looking in there,
And there was a man in some red robes,
He sat, sprawling back in a chair,
And there on his skull was a mitre
That headdress for bishops of old,
And down by his side was a crozier,
All glittering, fashioned in gold.

But lying between his skeletal feet
Was a sight that I couldn’t absorb,
I felt at a loss, on top was a cross
On a gold and magnificent orb,
Caught short in his flight from the protestant’s might
He was stealing these treasures away,
In hopes that the realm of England returned
To the one true religion one day.

I picked up the crozier, picked up the orb
And I took them from where he had fled,
I didn’t tell Kathy, but thought it was best,
So I hid them both under our bed.
That night we heard chanting, a hymn in the dark
That had Kathy awake and in tears,
While I could see phantoms surrounding our bed
Giving form to a host of my fears.

There was an abomination of monks
That were filling the room from the stairs,
And chief among them was a bishop who stood
At the base of the bed, and just glared.
I leapt out of bed and recovered the orb,
And I handed the crozier to him,
He gave a faint smile, and then in a while
He was gone like a ghost cherubim.

I never went back to that tunnel again,
To tell you the truth, I was scared,
I knew that a fortune was hidden within
But to go back again, never dared.
I’m hoping that bishop has saved me a place
In a heaven for those who are saved,
So I can tell no-one where he lies in grace,
That knowledge I’ll take to my grave.

David Lewis Paget

I’m sitting mute in my wheelchair,
They think that I’m deaf and dumb,
Since ever the stroke that took me out
Emboldened everyone,
The jokes that they told behind my back
They say straight out to my face,
They think I’ll die of a heart attack,
I think they’re a sad disgrace!

It’s always about the money,
It’s always about the gilt,
They think they’re getting a fortune,
They’re all hocked up to the hilt,
They think that my Corporation
Will soon be theirs for the take,
They’ll shunt me out to the sidelines,
I think that’s a big mistake!

If they think that I’m weak and dying,
They really don’t know the man,
I built up a corporation
With the strength of these two hands,
I was out in the streets at fourteen,
I was selling and hustling then,
While they were ******* their mother’s paps
I was out with working men.

Not one of them’s done a hard days work,
They sit there, pushing a pen,
They’ve never raised blisters on their fists
That bled, oh, time and again,
They sit in their pristine offices
With a wall of framed degrees,
But never spent time in a filthy trench
With water, up to their knees.

When I’m left alone in the evenings,
I stagger up out of this chair,
And force myself to walk to the wall
And back, as I fight despair,
But I’m gradually getting stronger,
And my head’s as good as it was,
I’ll show these ignorant jokers
What it takes to be a boss!

I think they’re getting impatient,
They want me out of the way,
I’ve heard them mutter between them,
That they’ll speed my going away,
The one that I used to trust the most
Has sat in my chairman’s chair,
He smirks and shirks all the daily work
While I can but sit and stare.

They’re treating me like an imbecile
They’re treating me like I’m mad,
They’ve draped a blanket over my lap
And don’t realise, I’m glad.
They come at night with a plastic bag
And they place it over my head,
But out from the rug my Magnum looms
And then, Bang Bang, they’re dead!

David Lewis Paget

Some say that life is a mystery
That we have to pay our dues,
It’s written in every history
Marked out by a series of clues.
So it was when I saw her sally forth
With that lost refrain of us,
Older now, but a constant muse
As we caught the self-same bus.

I hadn’t seen her in twenty years,
Her temples were going grey,
She’d gained a little in weight, I thought,
Since she’d stormed on out that day.
She didn’t see me at first, I know.
Or she might have raised a fuss,
But I sat beside her, anyway
On the rearmost seat of the bus.

She huddled up in the corner when
She saw just who it was,
I couldn’t get her to speak at first
And I felt a sense of loss.
‘Fancy seeing you now, out here,’
I began, ‘it’s been a while.’
Could I detect the hint of a tear?
There was no sign of a smile.

‘It’s been forever,’ she said at last,
‘And I’ll thank you now to go,
I have no need of ghosts from the past
In the life I’ve come to know.’
I heard my voice, it broke in my throat
As I tried to suppress a sigh,
‘I have no wish to alarm you now,
But I thought to ask you, Why?’

‘Why did you leave that sunny day
In that terrible month of June,
You said you were going to make me pay
When I came back into the room.’
‘You know full well that I had to leave
When that woman knocked at the door,
That painted Jade, that Jezebel,
That blonde, unspeakable *****!’

My jaw dropped open in bleak surprise,
I struggled with grim intent,
I couldn’t think for the life of me,
Or remember who she meant.
‘There was no woman, as I recall
Though you always thought there was,
Your paranoia was there on call…
Did you mean my region’s boss?’

The mist was beginning to clear away
From that mystery, lost in time,
‘My god, she called to discuss our costs,
Did you think that she was mine?’
She stared at me and her face went pale
As the truth came home to bite,
‘I sat and waited for months, when you
Didn’t come home that night!’

A tear now flowed down her pale white cheek
And she turned her face from me,
She stared on out of the window at
Some vagrant, passing tree.
‘I always loved you alone,’ I said,
But she’d never brooked delays,
We both got off at the same bus stop,
And went our separate ways.

David Lewis Paget

The waves came crashing in from the sea
We were caught on a spit of land,
With no way back, not one I could see,
I reached and I held her hand.
‘I’ve never seen the breakers so high,’
She cried, in a fit of fear,
‘You must have known, it’s hard to deny,
So why did you bring me here?’

‘I brought you for a moment of truth,
A moment for you and I,
There’s only you, and me and the sea,
This spit of land and the sky.
We never manage to be alone,
There’s always somebody near,
And every time I open my mouth
There’s somebody else to hear.’

The spray was drenching her beautiful hair,
And running into her eyes,
Her make-up running most everywhere,
It gave her a look of surprise.
‘You might have picked a quieter spot,
We still could have been alone,
You never said what you wanted, or not.’
‘I needed you on your own.’

‘I needed to tell you that I’m in love,
Have been since the day we met,
But you’ve hung out with Derek, the drone,
I hoped that you’d leave him yet.’
‘He’s just a friend, I told you before,
He’s easy to be around,
You do go on! He isn’t my love,
You cover the same old ground.’

I took the ring from my sodden shirt
And held it for her to see,
‘I’d like you to take this diamond ring,
And say you belong to me.’
‘I only belong to myself,’ she said,
‘I’m nobody’s girl in the end,
But if I put on your diamond ring,
I may just give you a lend.’

The breakers crashed, like a waterspout,
And washed us both off the spit,
We laughed so much as we flailed about,
Trying to swim through it.
We headed in to the distant beach
Together, and that was the thing,
For when we got to the sandy breach
I saw she was wearing the ring.

David Lewis Paget

There is something that feeds on the evil
It finds in the well of its mind,
To bolster the work of the devil
And other bad cess it might find,
It joys in the hurt it is causing
It revels in pain it may bring
To all who once loved and adored it,
For it never loved anything.

Revenge is the one thing that drives it,
A payback to feed discontent,
But it does it in dark and in hiding,
It’s sly and it doesn’t repent,
It tries to unwrap any secrets
That may have been hidden from view,
In diaries, letters and journals,
Or letters, specific to you.

It doesn’t know shame in its spying,
That others feel only disgust,
A soul that is black and repulsive
That’s headed for Hell, as it must,
It thinks its success is so clever
And laughs when revealing its scar,
But others laugh at you, not with you,
And evil, you know who you are!

David Lewis Paget

He’d worshipped her since Primary School
And through to the later grades,
He’d carried her books at High School,
And envied her escapades,
She was in demand with her Uni friends
And went with more than a few,
But always said, to make amends,
‘I think I’ll end up with you!’

So he waited for an eternity
For that all-committing kiss,
She plagued his dreams with what would seem
A life that would fill with bliss,
But she seemed to like her fun too much
And returned his engagement ring,
‘I don’t think I’m ready for that, as such,
It’s only a freedom thing!’

But he stayed content, he thought she’d relent
When her fun-filled friends all wed,
Until the day she blew him away
And dropped him, right on his head.
She married a wealthy businessman
Had taken a giant leap,
He said, ‘But you were promised to me,’
And she said, ‘Talk is cheap!’

But he bit his tongue, she was still so young,
And he nursed his sad regret,
Her husband, he was a ladies man
So things might work out yet.
He went to all of their parties, and
He ran all her errands too,
So when, of course, it came to divorce,
She said, ‘I’ll end up with you!’

But she won a great big settlement,
And wanted to have some fun,
‘I’ve done that housewife thing to the hilt,
Don’t stress, don’t force me to run!’
‘You know I’d wait for eternity,
I’d walk to the stars for you,
I’d give my life to make you my wife.’
‘Well, do what you have to do!’

He hung about on the fringes while
She played with a whole new set,
She flirted, went on her binges, and
He found he was waiting yet.
He cried all over the invite that
Had seemed to come out of the blue,
‘We’d welcome you at the nuptials,
Of Elspeth and Gordon Drew.’

Gordon drove a fabulous Porsche
Worth over a hundred grand,
And John could only wave as they passed him,
Off to their fairyland.
But he followed along the old coast road
Though they left him in their wake,
At a hundred and twenty miles an hour
A second is all it takes.

He found them, hanging over the edge
Of the cliff at Dead Man’s Tor,
A sudden move would help it to tip,
Crash down to the rocky shore.
‘Please help, you said you’d walk to the stars
For me, this cliff is steep.’
‘Too bad,’ he said, while walking away,
‘You should know that talk is cheap!’

David Lewis Paget

The man had a terrible temper,
Would rage at the skies above,
Would screech and howl, like a midnight owl,
He’d been unlucky in love.
He’d stomp about in the village square,
Go out, and look for a fight,
The villagers always avoided him
When he’d roam around at night.

Then he’d come and knock at my own front door
Demanding to talk to Jill,
I’d hear her say from the passageway,
‘I don’t want to talk to Bill!
I’d had enough when he beat me up
And my heart would never heal,
Just tell him I’m sticking with you, my love,
I know that your love is real!’

He’d punch the door, then he’d stand and roar
So I’d slam the door in his face,
He kicked a panel across the floor
And I said I’d call the police!
I heard him muttering as he left,
‘Come out, I’ll give you a fight,
Tell Jill she’s dead if she’s in your bed,
I’ll call in the dead of night!’

I took the hammer and nails outside
And battened the shutters down,
Then strung an electrical tripwire that
Would pulverise the clown,
‘The man’s as mad as a meat axe, Jill,
Bi-Polar, that’s for sure,’
‘More of a schizophrenic, Jim,
‘Be sure to bar the door.’

We’d sit in a petrified silence in
The cottage, every night,
Listening for the slightest sound
If something wasn’t right,
The roof would creak as the timber cooled
And the wind soughed through the eaves,
We even strained by the window panes
At the patter of Autumn leaves.

‘How long are we going to put up with this,’
I said to Jill, one morn,
‘He’s tempting fate by the garden gate,
He’s been there since the dawn.’
‘I’m going to have to confront him,’ said
The darling of my life,
I hadn’t proposed to her just then
But I hoped she’d be my wife.

She walked on out to the garden gate
And I heard him raise his voice,
I couldn’t quite make his words out, but
He was giving her a choice.
Then Jill I heard in a voice that stirred
From the depths of a gravel pit,
And he went white with a look of fright
And he left, and that was it!

‘What did you say to the maniac
That he turned and went away?’
She smiled, and cuddled on into me,
‘I think I made his day.
I said that I’d go back home with him
But I’d poison his meat and drinks,
Or slit his throat when asleep one night…’
He hasn’t been back here since!

David Lewis Paget

Christmastime was lurking at
The corner of the street,
Just waiting for the 25th.,
It tried to be discreet.
It didn’t want to force itself
On Muslims or on Jews,
On atheists, agnostics, or
On skepticism views.

It checked on all the homes that hung
Their holly in the hall,
Dressed up their trees with mistletoe
Hung greetings on the wall.
It wants us to be jolly
It’s a giving time of year,
Of gifts of Roses Chocolates,
And cartons full of beer.

For Christmastime is such a gift
To every creed and race,
It doesn’t have the time to check
On every scowling face,
For all of those believers it’s
The birthday of their Lord,
The one and only saviour
With the favour of his word.

So think on Christmas morning
Of the Lord and of his grace,
Watch emerging little children with
A smile on every face,
And kiss all your beloved ones
Standing by the Christmas tree,
So that Christmas won’t be lurking
At the birth of Jesus C.

David Lewis Paget

I thought that I was the only one
Who had never found a mate,
I’d been so busy with other things
That I’d left it up to fate,
Then I was suddenly fortyish
When I started looking round,
But other people had caught the fish
That were swimming in our town.

The single ones were too young for me,
Their glances all were cold,
Whenever I’d proposition one
They’d say, ‘You’re much too old.’
And fate had seemingly passed me by
For my early diffidence,
It said, ‘you couldn’t be bothered,
Now there is no recompense.’

Though most unkind I became resigned
To my lonely single state,
I thought that whether I lived forever
I’d never get a date,
I’d wander aimlessly round the square
Of my village, Gretchley Green,
And sit alone on the benches there
To watch the passing scene.

I thought I knew every woman there
As they passed, or pushed a pram,
And some went by with their only guy
Or would not know who I am.
But then one day just a yard away
Passed a woman dressed in black,
Her face was covered in net, but then
She turned, was heading back.

She came and sat on the bench by me
And said that her feet were sore,
She’d had to walk from the town hall clock
On some yet unmentioned chore.
I said I’d carry her bag for her
And would see her safely home,
But then I spied her sparkling eyes
As the net on her face was blown.

She didn’t look very miserable
For a widow, dressed in black,
But said she’d had a terrible loss,
He’d died of a heart attack.
Though we’d just met, she removed the net
And I saw her dimpled cheeks,
Her hair in clips and her full, red lips
That would haunt my mind for weeks.

She started passing me every day
As I lazed in the village square,
And often sat on the bench with me,
‘I thought that I saw you there.’
We’d talk of the trivialities
That you find in village life,
I said that it must be strange for her
As a widow, and not a wife.

I think I must have embarrassed her
So I let the subject drop,
She said she had a confession, but
I told her then to stop.
I wouldn’t pry in her private life
Or her deep felt hurt or grief,
She must have loved her departed one,
So I felt like a furtive thief.

She ceased to cover her hair or face
But she still remained in black,
Though wearing more of a jump suit now
Designed for field or track.
It showed her marvellous figure off
And my heart stuck in my throat,
I said if only I’d met her first,
And she said, ‘you surely joke.’

It took me weeks to confess my love
When she turned to me, and kissed,
She said, ‘I prayed to the lord above,
Now I’m really feeling blessed.
It’s hard for me to approach a man
So I had to work a ruse,
I hope that you will forgive my plan…’
But she left me all confused.

‘I’d watched from off in the distance
And I really fancied you,
I couldn’t come, for it isn’t done,
I didn’t know what to do.
I’m not a widow at all, you know,
I’ll have to make it plain,
The one I lost to a heart attack
Was just my pet Great Dane.’

David Lewis Paget

I always knew there was something strange
About that farmer’s stile,
For no-one ever climbed over it
And I’d watched it for a while.
The field beyond it was out of sight
Behind a hawthorn hedge,
I didn’t know till I tried to go
It was perched along the edge.

The edge of history, edge of time,
It may have been the gate,
That hell was hidden behind in that
It saved us from our fate,
I threw a stray dog over it first
To see what would transpire,
It came back ravening, racked with thirst
And it set the hedge on fire.

I wasn’t going to risk my health
Nor even my sanity,
But somebody else would have to go
For my curiosity.
I passed young Ann in the marketplace
And I thought she’d be no loss,
I talked her into crossing the stile,
She did, at Pentecost.

Now Ann had been unattractive when
I sent her over the stile,
I didn’t hear from her straight away
But hung around for a while,
Then out from behind the hawthorn hedge
She suddenly poked her head,
A ravishing beauty Ann was now
When I’d thought she might be dead.

‘Could that be possibly you?’ I said
When I saw her pouting lips,
Her stylish sash and fluttering lash
And her painted fingertips,
I hadn’t noticed her dimples when
I’d looked at her before,
But now she was drop dead gorgeous,
And the word was, ‘I adore.’

I tried to get her over the stile
But she said to me, ‘No fear,
For everything is so beautiful
I think I’ll be staying here.’
And then if I really wanted her
I would have to cross myself,
She said there was gold and rubies there
Amid signs of untold wealth.

I conquered my inner demons and
I took the step at a run,
Leapt over the farmer’s stile to Ann,
There in the midday sun,
But all I found was a battleground
Littered with heads and hands,
The ******* of seven centuries
And a pile of old tin cans.

While Ann was dressed in a peasant gown
And had lost her pouting lips,
Her stylish sash that had turned to ash
And her coarsened fingertips,
‘What did you really expect,’ she said
As she pinned me to the ground,
‘Now you’ll be mine, though it seems unkind,
As long as the earth turns round.’

I’ve tried to escape for seven years
But I cannot find the stile,
The one that I jumped up over once
In response to her woman’s wiles.
I really thought I had played the girl
When she wasn’t much to see,
But she found me in the marketplace
And she ended playing me…

David Lewis Paget

I sit in the room in my easy chair
And ponder my life in the gloom,
The source of my wonder is where did it go,
While racing me on to the tomb,
I thought that forever was all that I had
Before me, when barely a teen,
But now in my dotage I look back upon
The little that lay in-between.

It used to be easy when I was young
And supple and fit, without care,
I didn’t believe it would come so undone
But that was when I was still there.
The aching of muscles and creaking of bones
Were something that old people had,
And I was determined to die, before moans
Would rack me, and make me feel bad.

But life is deceptive, it sneaks up on one,
By not even making a sound,
It pads up behind you before you can look
And then it starts beating you down.
We cling to our dreams and impossible schemes
And hope that our time will come in,
Just as the ship of our fortunes will stream
In to shore, with the laurels we’ll win.

I never got married, or tied myself down
For why should I borrow a book?
With so many women abroad in the town
And each could be had, with a look.
So that was my folly, and that was my creed,
I bedded each one as they came,
I knew no regret as I scattered my seed,
Nor even the feeling of shame.

I heard people mention that love was the thing
But I didn’t know what they meant,
Was love a new sports car, or masses of bling,
I carried that stuff on my belt.
My friendships were shallow, and selfish I know,
I look back, and measure the past,
If my life were a steamer, they’d take it in tow
And fly all my flags at half mast.

There once was a woman, I’ll call her Karrel,
Who worked her way into my heart,
I almost felt things that I never could spell
And soon we had drifted apart.
But her presence had lingered so long in my mind
That I spent my days, just feeling sad,
She said I was empty, and heartless, unkind,
Till I thought I was quite going mad.

So now I sit here, quite alone in my chair
And I ponder on where it went wrong,
The tears on my cheeks tell me life was unfair
That it got the wrong words to my song.
But deep in the dark of my shrivelled old heart
Where Karrel still resides, fancy free,
I look in my shame for somebody to blame
And the answer comes back, it was me!

David Lewis Paget

He sat on top of the headland in
The driving, pouring rain,
The way that the clouds were gathering,
He’d never be dry again,
He thought of the girl at Windy Tor
Who had screamed at his only sin,
‘You’d better beware of that witch’s stare
For the tide is coming in!’

And down in the river valley, there
Was a cottage, made of stones,
Where a temptress with a gleam in her eye
Was juggling spells and bones,
She called the lightning out of the sky
With a book full of ancient tricks,
And blasted the heath round Windy Tor
While lighting her candlesticks.

But up at the Tor, Myfanwy raged
And bubbled and boiled the sea,
She churned it into a raging storm
That her lover could plainly see,
He thought of warning the temptress who
Had entered his eyes and ears,
But heard instead his Myfanwy say,
‘It only will end in tears.’

He couldn’t go down to the valley, and
He couldn’t go up to the Tor,
He could feel his life unravelling
From the bliss that he’d felt before,
A wind soughed up from the valley floor
Full of tempting overtones,
But from the Tor there was something more
An ache, and a Wake of moans.

The sun went down and he turned to go,
He made his way in the dark,
The spell that he was enchanted with
Had finally made its mark,
He turned his back on the love he’d lost,
Went down to the valley floor,
But all he could hear when he got quite near
Was the sea that beat on the shore.

The sea rose up and it poured right in
As it flooded over the plain,
The tide had entered the valley, it
Would never be dry again,
And under the flood of Myfanwy’s mood
Was the cottage, made of stones,
While all that was left of the temptress was
A gaggle of spells and bones.

Myfanwy’s still up at Windy Tor
And nurses a constant ache,
While his regret hasn’t left him yet
For his foolish, one mistake,
He’d sought a spell that she’d love him well
Then fell to a mortal sin,
And always he heard Myfanwy’s words,
‘The tide is coming in!’

David Lewis Paget

One last night in the dungeon,
One last night to his fall,
The Earl of Grace was chained in place
To the damp of the dungeon wall.
They’d taken him at the tourney,
The knights of the Duke of Beck,
While the King had turned his face away
As they fettered him by the neck.

They’d taken his chain of office,
They’d taken his rings and seal,
The shifting tides of the time had sighed
In showing him what was real,
The King had removed his favour,
The court had looked on askance,
That final fall from a height so high
Was part of the courtly dance.

For no-one survived forever,
In that court of grim intrigue,
He’d been aligned with the prince to find
The prince was brought to his knees.
Grace didn’t have the King’s permit
To marry the Lady Grey,
And that, just one of the sins he wore
Conspired to put him away.

For Beck was stalking the lady,
The wealth and the lands she had,
Her cold response to his needs and wants
Had driven the Duke quite mad.
The prince, confined to his quarters
Was backing the Earl of Grace,
But once the marriage had come to light
The scandal had brought disgrace.

He stood in the dark, and shivered,
In the hour before the dawn,
And watched them setting the gallows up
That would take his quaking form.
Beck had wanted the axe and block
But the King had murmured, ‘No!’
‘I’ll not part him from his noble head,
But I’ll hang him, long and slow!’

The hangman came at the dawning,
Was strapping his hands and feet,
While shuffling him to the drop, he said,
‘Hanging an Earl’s a treat!’
And Beck was there to await him,
To whisper his evil spite,
‘You’ll be deep in the earth, while I
Will be with your wife tonight.’

They took their time with the halter,
Were seeming to draw it out,
When down in the court a clatter
Of knights, and an awful shout:
‘The King is dead, long live the King,’
As they rescued the Earl of Grace,
Shuffled him off the drop, and then
They hung the Duke in his place.

David Lewis Paget

He crashed on into our dining room
Like a man convulsed with pain,
And breathless, gasped as he tried to ask,
‘What have you done with Jane?’
I stood En Guarde by the mantelpiece
And clutched at a kitchen knife,
‘Who are you, and what do you want?
You’re talking about my wife!’

He leant exhausted against the wall
And groaned, like a man obsessed,
I thought he could have escaped somewhere
That he might have been possessed.
‘I can’t believe she’s done it again,
She’s going against the plan,
I’ve told her time, and time out of time
To wait for her rightful man.’

‘See here,’ I said, with a touch of fear,
‘She’s mine, with never a doubt,
We married a couple of years ago
So I think I’ll show you out.’
‘I have to stay ‘til I see her face
She’ll remember when I do,
If you can’t stand up to the challenge, then
She never should be with you.’

He’d hit a nerve, and he knew he had
For I’d never been too sure,
For Jane had always been hesitant
When I’d asked for her hand before.
I thought there might have been someone else
Lurking behind her fan,
A former lover, she’d have no other
Now here was this crazy man!

I sat him down in an easy chair
And gave him a shot of Beam,
Then took a double shot for myself,
And stared at him, in a dream.
I tried to imagine her with him
And it shook me, without doubt,
For I could tell that they’d couple well,
Then wished that I’d thrown him out.

Jane came back home from her shopping spree,
Came in through the broken door,
And stood aghast at the pile of glass
He’d smashed there, down on the floor.
The stranger stood, he jumped to his feet
And held out a shaking hand,
‘I thought I saw you out in the street,
Don’t you know me, I’m your man!’

She held her nerve and she looked at him
As a stranger, far away,
‘I seem to recall,’ she muttered, ‘but…
‘All that was another day.’
‘Another day in a another time,
The fifth, but never the last,’
He looked at her with his pleading eyes,
Please try to remember the past.’

Then Jane went white as a cotton sheet
And said, ‘You couldn’t be Paul!
I left you last in the marketplace,
Leaning againt a wall.’
‘The soldiers came, and took us away,’
He said with the slightest tear,
‘They took us behind a barn that day…’
I said, ‘What’s going on here?’

It was suddenly like I’d disappeared
There were only two in that room,
Their eyes were locked in an act of grace
That I couldn’t share in the gloom.
‘Of course, it’s coming on back to me,
The bed in that cheap hotel,’
She seemed to blush as her eyes cast down,
And my heart had stopped, as well.

‘I’ve had just all I’m about to take,’
I said, ‘I want you to go!
And Jane, just tell me for heaven’s sake
You continue to love me so.’
The man stood up and he shook her hand
And he said, ‘That’s really an art.
I didn’t think you could act, my dear,
I was wrong, you get the Part!’

David Lewis Paget

We’d bought a cottage, but sight unseen
At the edge of a thickety wood,
We’d had enough of the city scene
And thought it would do us good.
At one with nature, with birds and bees,
The owner was eager to sell,
He didn’t tell us it had no power,
And water was drawn from a well.

He wouldn’t leave us his new address
So we saw it after he’d gone,
I looked at Ellie and she at me,
She said, ‘I think we’ve been done!’
The thatch was leaking, the walls were cracked
And it needed a coat of paint,
‘Oh well, we’re stuck with it now,’ I said,
‘But a palace it certainly ain’t!’

The one surprise was a fairy dell
That lay at the edge of the wood,
And in the midst was a Wishing Well,
Under a Witch-Hat hood.
A wooden bucket was still in place
And hung from an oakum thread,
‘We’d better replace the rope on that,
Or you’ll be fishing,’ she said.

The ground was covered in bluebells, for
They bloomed, that time of the year,
And all around them were butterflies,
Testing their wings in the air.
‘Oh Jack,’ she said, ‘what a dainty place,
What a marvellous, magical scene,’
I had to admit, it moved me then,
So different to where we’d been.

We roughed it there for a day or so
While I fixed a couple of leaks,
I hinged the door and I blocked the draughts
Though the cracks would take me weeks.
We bought an antique paraffin lamp
For a little light in the gloom,
And lay on cushions that Ellie brought,
Made love on the floor of the room.

The water level within the well
Was high with the Springtime rain,
I only dipped the bucket a foot
To fill it with iced champagne,
The water there was so pure and clear
And cold, from the Wishing Well,
I said, ‘This couldn’t be water, Ell,
It’s more like a fine Moselle.’

We worked by day, then we sat and read
In the pale white evening light,
Then rose with the early morning sun
After a dreamless night.
But after a fortnight Ellie rose
And she said she was feeling queer,
I said it was probably just a bug,
‘It’s the flu time of the year!’

But the pains, she said, got worse, she said,
She began to sweat and grieve,
She couldn’t eat, but she drank a lot,
And then she began to heave.
I fed her the water from the well
And said it would flush it out,
But she soon went into convulsions,
And I panicked then, no doubt.

The doctor took over an hour to come
And that must have sealed her fate,
For Ellie lay, and she breathed her last
As he entered the garden gate.
He took one look at her pale white face
As I wept, and held her hand,
‘I think it’s a case of cholera,’
He said, ‘Do you understand?’

The white coats swarmed all over the place
And took in the Wishing Well,
Wanted to know if we drank from it
And I cried out, ‘God in Hell!
They grappled down to the very depths
And their hook was jagged at the bed,
Then hauled on up to the surface by
The hair, was a woman’s head!

She’d been down there for a month or so,
Was starting to come apart,
The rest they got the following day
And took away on a cart.
I drained the well in the Autumn, and
I filled, with gravel and shell,
I should have known by the Witches-Hat
It was under an evil spell.

They caught the guy in another state,
They fairly ran him to ground,
He hadn’t left a forward address,
He thought he’d never be found.
He’d killed his wife and had weighed her down
And had dropped her down in the well,
I pray to the God of just rewards
That his soul will burn in Hell!

David Lewis Paget

I’m not into modern music since
The Spyders came to town,
One of those painted-tainted groups
That you often see around,
But Anne-Marie was younger than me
And she went with every craze,
She called me a boring dinosaur
At the height of those Spyder days.

I’ve always been a conservative,
I don’t get carried away,
I know whatever is going down
It won’t be there next day,
The house was full of discarded things
That had lost their first allure,
The moment she saw the Next Big Thing
Come barrelling through the door.

The Spyder thing was over the top
I said to her more than twice,
‘They’ll be forgotten within a month,’
She replied, ‘That wasn’t nice!
Why do you always bring me down,
You’re turning into a grump!’
So I wasn’t allowed to criticise,
She put me under the pump.

She came back home from the hairdresser’s
With a bouffant type of style,
Sprayed and lacquered so it was hard,
She slept upright for a while.
She said that it was the Spyder look
That the girls all thought it great,
With hair like a spider’s legs each side,
Bobbing around her face.

I shook my head, but I held my tongue
There was nothing to be gained,
For anything that I said just then
Would bring me future pain.
The following day, she went away
And she came back home that night,
With a square of plaster on her neck
And I thought, ‘This isn’t right!’

She said that she’d got a small tattoo
And I nearly had a fit,
I said, ‘That’s going to be there for life,’
So she wouldn’t show me it.
She kept me waiting a week to see
The blue-black spider there,
Crawling up the nape of her neck
And heading into her hair.

‘How shall I ever kiss you there,’
I howled, while shaking my head,
‘That’s the end of our necking days,’
‘Oh don’t be soft,’ she said.
We barely spoke for a week back then
It was just the early Spring,
She spent her time round the roses with
Her bouffant, and that ‘thing’.

There’s always a lot of spiders webs
Outside, at that time of year,
And Anne-Marie must have brushed through them
And got them caught in her hair,
For days she said that she wasn’t well
That she must have had the flu,
But then one morning I woke in bed
To see that her lips were blue.

Her head fell back on the head rest, and
Disturbed the bouffant style,
And thousands of tiny spiders rushed
On out of her hair, meanwhile,
They swarmed on over her shoulders,
From the nest she had on her head,
But Anne-Marie was beyond it now
For Anne-Marie was dead!

I never listen to music now,
I turn off the radio,
Whenever the Spyder’s music’s played
On the Old-Time Late Late Show.
The band broke up a decade ago
And the lead is doing time,
He said that his skin began to crawl
With the tatts all down his spine.

David Lewis Paget

He went ashore with the duty crew
The moment they got their leave,
And headed home for his two by two
And his waiting Genevieve,
He wore his official navy rig
With the medals on his chest,
Had taken pains that his suit was clean
And his blue jean collar pressed.

He followed the crazy paving that
Led up to his cottage door,
Could only see a glimmer of light
A smidgen of light, no more,
A heavy footfall came to the door
And flung it out wide, apace,
While he stood grim, and staring at him
A man with a stranger’s face.

Then Genevieve came breathlessly out
Went breathlessly up to him,
I want you to meet a cousin of mine,
He’s staying with us, meet Jim.
The sailor took a step in the door
And shouldered the man away,
‘I see,’ he said, ‘not seen him before,
I’ll see if your Jim can stay.’

They settled down in the kitchen, sat
Across the table and glared,
While Genevieve had served up a meal
A meal that had been prepared,
‘So who’s your cousin related to,
Your mother’s side, or your Da’s?’
She stopped for a moment then to think
‘It must have been Grandpa’s.’

But he’d grinned over the table then
At Genevieve, this Jim,
And that was the moment the sailor knew
That he’d been suckered in.
‘I don’t think this is your cousin, dear,
But there, I think you knew,
And hit the stranger fair in the face
With a plate of boiling stew.

I think that he scarred the guy for life
For his skin came off in strips,
While Genevieve took a paper towel
And tried to save his lips,
‘Take your mate to the Rose and Crown
And buy him a cooling beer,’
The sailor said, as he cuffed her head
‘For you’ll not be staying here.’

David Lewis Paget

We were on a tour of the Breton Caves
That had stalactites galore,
A one-time trip to that limestone drip
Forming stalagmites on the floor.
There were only eight, and the tour was late
Was the last one for the day,
It was getting dark in the tourist park
But the guide still led the way.

And that’s when I first saw Monica
Who hung on her boyfriend’s arm,
There was something about her, even then
Some quiet, ineffable charm.
I tried to speak, to engage her there
But she snubbed each tame advance,
And flashed the ring on her finger that
Proclaimed her one romance.

The party wandered about the caves,
Spread out on the limestone floor,
And even Monica wandered off
For what she was looking for.
So when the ceiling had tumbled in
Creating a great divide,
With she and I all alone in there,
The rest on the other side.

The only light was a single beam
That came through a crack above,
And Monica stood in fear, and screamed,
Called out to her new-found love.
But he was stuck on the other side
Of a thousand tons of stone,
I told her, he couldn’t hear a thing,
She said, ‘Just leave me alone.’

She treated me with a great disdain
As if it had been my fault,
That she’d been caught on the further side
At the drop of the limestone vault.
I said, ‘We’re lucky to be alive,
It’s better than being dead,
Under a thousand tons of rock,
Get that in your pretty head!’

The beam then slowly faded away
And left us sat in the dark,
I heard her sigh, and begin to cry,
Our future was bleak and stark.
I thought that I’d try to comfort her
But she pushed my hand away,
‘Don’t let my fears give you sick ideas,
We’ll be out of here in a day.’

That was a long and lonely night
And the worst, by far, of three,
‘They may come looking for you,’ I said,
‘There’s no-one looking for me.’
‘Haven’t you got a girl at home?’
She ventured, one little spark,
Said in an almost friendly tone
As we lay there in the dark.

We heard the skittering sound of rats
As I said, ‘No, I’m alone.’
And then she suddenly came up close,
‘I’m sorry,’ was in her tone.
We shared a couple of chocolate bars,
I sensed her shivering form,
And threw my coat round her shoulders then
Just trying to keep her warm.

The beam appeared as the sun came up,
She finally met my eyes,
‘I’m sorry if I was off before,
You seem to be kind, and wise.’
‘I simply think that you’re beautiful,’
I said, with a touch of awe,
‘Your guy must think you’re incredible.’
‘I wish…,’ and she softly swore.

The hours dragged by, and a day and night
Seemed more than a week to me,
‘Maybe they think, on the other side
We’re buried, so let us be.’
The pangs of hunger were bad by now
And nothing to slake our thirst,
‘If only I’d known,’ said Monica,
‘I’d never have come, we’re cursed.’

The cold got us on the second night,
She didn’t resist me much,
My coat we draped over both of us,
I felt the warmth of her touch.
Her head was lying across my chest
My arms held her, in bliss,
And that’s when she raised her face to me
And gave me a gentle kiss.

Three days we lay there in misery,
We felt that it was the end,
‘If we’re to die, then I wonder why
I’d not make love with a friend?’
The thought of death fairly takes the breath
There’s things we wouldn’t have done,
But she was as eager as me, you see,
In coming together as one.

They broke on through in the afternoon
Of the third day after the fall,
And there her guy with a glistening eye
As she climbed over the wall.
They took us both to the hospital
And I thought she had gone for good,
A brief respite in a lonely life,
But suddenly, there she stood.

I felt bemused and a mite confused
When I asked her, ‘Where’s your guy?’
She shrugged and said we were almost dead,
While he was as sweet as pie.
‘He didn’t share my imprisonment,
So what did you want to do?
It only took three days in a cave,
I've fallen in love with you.’

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d made a collection up
Of certain sticks and stones,
To cast a spell in a paper cup
That drank, would break his bones,
She followed him to the mountain top
And down to the pebbled beach,
But every time she got close enough
She found he was out of reach.

He’d seen her sat at her cottage hearth,
He’d watched her casting her spells,
He knew that something quite dreadful was
Heading his way as well,
She’d not been over forgiving when
He’d been well caught in a lie,
And watched the remains of repulsive spells
As they came stumbling by.

He got in the way of avoiding her,
He wouldn’t respond to her call,
That’s when she made her potion up,
No-one would have him at all!
She had a draught that would bring him down
If ever it passed his lips,
She cast her spell from the deepest well
And it only took two sips.’

He turned his collar across his face
You could only see his eyes,
Then swept on up with his cloak in place
When she slept, as the moon would rise,
He seized the potion sat on the hearth
And he poured it down her throat,
And heard the crackle of breaking bones
As she screamed, one long, high note.

She lies awake in the cottage gloom
But she can’t quite make a fist,
Her spells that lie in the darkened room
Are beyond her shattered wrist,
While he will sit, and read them aloud
Though he never will see her smile,
For every spell is part of the shroud
He will torch in a little while.

David Lewis Paget

My father lies in an orchard,
My mother lies at his side,
But once, a million years ago
He made that girl his bride.
And love was all that they knew back then
In that world of endless time,
They conjured me in a magic glen
And they shared their lives with mine.

But life is merely a dripping tap
With a leak that can’t be sealed,
And much as we’d like to take it back
Once lived, it can’t be healed.
It drips away through our laughter,
It drips away through our pain,
It slips away on our sunny days
And fills our gutters with rain.

We’ve seen where that grand horizon lies,
So far away for the young,
And seek to fill it with needs, and deeds
That never will be undone.
But while we’re chasing our dreams and schemes
Ignoring what we were told,
That life is merely a race to run
The people we love grow old.

And one by one they depart from us
Like a breath of wind in the trees,
With nothing to mark their passing now
But a stone in the cemetery.
The end of time comes to all of us
When that tap will cease its drip,
That dreaded death that will take your breath,
Your mind, and the rest of it.

And people say it’s a void that takes
Our memories, one by one,
My folk live on, though a long time gone
In the mind of this orphan son.
I sometimes sit, and I think of it
On the grey of their granite stone,
And weep for the years they’ve been asleep,
I’m a long, long way from home!

David Lewis Paget

The path that I like to wander on
Is a rural lane in the trees,
It’s a pleasant walk, and I tend to talk
To myself, just shooting the breeze.
Then it comes to a wood, and it parts in two
The main path tends to the right,
And heads up ‘til, just over the hill
It’s bathed in a pure sunlight.

And there stands a mansion in plain stucco
With columns that hold up a porch,
And each of the windows send out a beam
As of someone, holding a torch,
A woman dressed plainly in white comes out,
Invites me to come in for tea,
Then sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,
But we spend our time pleasantly.

We sit in a kitchen that’s tiled in white
And the sunlight beams through the door,
She sometimes reads to me from a book,
And asks what I’m looking for.
I tell her I’m totally lost, and then
Confusion’s writ over my face,
So she makes the sign of the saviour’s cross,
And blesses me with her grace.

The other path veers off to the left,
Is narrow and mean through the trees,
It slopes on down to a valley with grass
Though a turn in the path deceives.
For hidden there in the undergrowth
Is a cottage in shadow, and grim,
Where a gypsy girl with an evil smile
Beckons for me to come in.

And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,
She isn’t offering tea,
She dances and whirls in the kitchen there,
And sometimes, sits on my knee.
She places my hand on her silken thigh,
And asks what I’m looking for,
I tell her I’m totally lost, and then
I struggle on out of her door.

A poet once said that he took the path,
The one less travelled by,
I’ve tried them both, and I still go back
To the ones both low, and high.
For my soul is soothed by the woman in white,
She lifts me up to the heights,
But the gypsy girl puts my mind in a whirl
And she sates my darker nights.

David Lewis Paget

We ran aground on an island,
In the eye of a hurricane,
The wind was swirling around us,
As loud as a runaway train,
A dozen people had floated up
****** off the deck of the ship,
Lost forever in giant seas
At the height of our pleasure trip.

The ship was battered and spun around
Like a toy in the hands of a boy,
This giant behemoth of the seas
Tossed round like a tinker toy.
We heard it grind on the outer reef
Then be driven right up to the beach,
It slowly toppled, onto its side
With the lifeboats out of reach.

We hid inside till the storm was spent
Then cautiously went ashore,
There must have been a hundred of us,
But there had been hundreds more,
Some drowned in the lower cabins
When the sides of the ship were breached,
And others died, fell over the side
As the priest of the ship had preached.

But there was no god in the heavens,
Just the mighty god of the storm,
We were soaked, and so dishevelled,
Just trying to keep us warm,
So we sheltered in a grove of trees
That had swayed, but still they stood,
While the men went through the fallen trees
Gathering firewood.

It was night before we knew it,
There had been torrential rain,
The many fires that we had lit
Were lit, and lit again,
We managed a palm frond shelter
To protect us from the breeze,
But people were dying, by the score
With old men on their knees.

If only the ship had stayed upright
We could treat it like a shack,
But once we found we were on the ground
There was no way to climb back,
And then at night we were all in fright
When we heard a roar, so bold,
Like a raging beast in the further trees
That it made our blood run cold.

People were screaming in the dark
On the outskirts of the crowd,
And sounds of ripping, and gnashing teeth
In the darkness were so loud,
The morning showed us the grisly truth
There were pieces everywhere,
Whatever it was, and to our cost
They’d been sounds of rip and tear.

That only leaves a dozen of us
So I cast this into the sea,
A scrawl in a tiny bottle in
The hopes that you’ll set us free.
We take it in turns to keep a watch
For the monster of this shore,
On this tiny little island that
Has never been mapped before.

David Lewis Paget

He met his Dad for the first time when
His father came marching home,
After the war to end all wars
From London through to Rome.
He’d never seen him before he stooped
As if to pluck out a thorn,
And asked his Ma in his army suit,
‘Just when was the young one born?’

He hadn’t been home for five long years
And Jeremy then was four,
He constantly seemed to be adding up
The years that he’d been at war,
His Ma would say, ‘He’s a miracle,
Young Jeremy went full term,
I carried him for a year,’ she said,
‘It must have been wartime *****!’

Then his father growled, and his mother howled
As he placed her on his knee,
And running his hand on sacred ground
Said, ‘all this belongs to me!’
His mother cried when he said she lied
In the years of his growing up,
And treated him, apart from the rest
When he called him a ‘scoundrel’s pup.’

His father clung to his Khaki suit
It was washed and pressed each week,
‘You never know when they’ll call me up
If this treaty doesn’t keep.’
He worked back down in the coal mines where
He’d emerged to answer the call,
Black from coal like a demon’s soul
But he’d gone, to fight for them all.

But Jeremy never saw him smile,
He never could do enough,
The others would go on trips the while
But Jeremy got a cuff,
‘What have I done,’ he’d often say
As his father sat and yawned,
‘Don’t come bothering me today,’
And mutter of ‘wartime spawn.’

The years went on and the son had gone
To live on his own, nearby,
But always came to visit his folks
Each month, till the one July
He came around to the house and found
That the dust his father choked,
Was sat so deep in his lungs that he
Had suffered a massive stroke.

‘Your father’s down in the hospital,
He might not ever come out,’
His mother cried, while his brother, Clyde,
‘He’s all washed up,’ he’d shout.
The others wouldn’t go visit him
They had much too much to do,
So Jeremy took his favourite book
To visit him in Ward 2.

His father sat in a wheelchair there
And he looked up in surprise,
‘Nobody’s come to see me, lad,’
He said, with tears in his eyes.
‘Why, of all people, would you come,’
As he helped him into his cot,
‘What do you think, you silly old man,
You’re the only Dad I’ve got!’

And he read to him from his favourite book
And he sat and held his hand,
And the years of hurt that disconcert
Lay buried in No Man’s Land,
For the feeling came back in his limbs
As the father did atone,
And Jeremy came, the spawn of war,
‘Come on, I’m taking you home!’

David Lewis Paget

He stood at the end of the pier that day
In hopes that they’d ask him on,
But Marilyn had just sailed away
With his elder brother, John.
He stood and scoured the horizon till
The sun went down in the west,
Then turned and wended his way back home
Though he’d get but little rest.

He tossed and turned for an hour or so
But he couldn’t get to sleep,
Then crept on out of his bed, he thought
He might take a little peep,
For out of his bedroom window there
The sea shone under the Moon,
The surface calm as a millpond as
He fell back into his room.

And his dreams that night were turbid dreams,
Obscured like a murky pond,
Where he couldn’t see the half of it
Viewed through the slough of despond,
Had he lost the only love he had,
And the brother he loved so well?
The morning dawned on a sudden storm,
And the sea, with a giant swell.

There wasn’t a sail on the sea that day,
There wasn’t a boat at all,
The yacht was found all smashed around
The end of the stone sea wall.
They said there wasn’t a soul aboard
Whoever there’d been was gone,
He didn’t know who he mourned the most,
His Marilyn, or his John.

John came to him in his sleep that night
With his eyes all brimming with tears,
‘I shouldn’t have taken her out, despite
I’d loved the woman for years.
But don’t blame her, it was only me,
For she made it plain that day,
She’d only come for a friendly sail,
And then she pushed me away.’

And Marilyn came to his dream as well
With the seaweed caught in her hair,
‘I shouldn’t have gone with your brother John,
Now I’m lost beyond despair.
He said you’d come, but he sailed away,
Said, ‘just a bit of fun,’
But now I weep in the ocean’s deep,
It’s the end for everyone.’

They found the bodies beyond the pier,
They were floating, hand in hand,
And when they got them ashore they found
That she wore John’s wedding band.
They never appeared in his dreams again
And he thought it just as well,
If ghosts could lie, he at least could cry
As he wished them both in hell.

David Lewis Paget

Is it God out there in the woods tonight
Or some weird, unhallowed troll,
Uprooting trees in the scorching breeze
With a dread that shreds my soul,
The sky is glowering red like blood
For a warning, in advance,
Since ever the Hadron Collider fired
And swallowed half of France.

A planet, black as a pit of tar
Has appeared just up on high,
Has popped up out of some x-ray realm
And filled up half the sky,
The earth is teetering on the edge
Of a black hole, forged in space,
And threatening us with extinction,
What’s left of the human race.

It was all for the sake of science, so
They told us, overall,
To add to their fount of knowledge like
The new God Particle,
Though why they wanted to raise it when
There is no recompense,
As it ravages half of the planet,
What did they use for common sense?

There’s a hole down deep in the ocean that
Is swallowing half the sea,
The earth it quakes, and volcanoes
Are erupting frequently,
While we lie low in our cottage home
To the growling in the woods,
From some atavistic animal
Unwrapped from its hellish shrouds.

The ones who unleashed this savage beast
Have all been swallowed whole,
Are floating in some dimension in
Their Hadron hidey-hole,
We should have had them arrested long
Before they hatched their plot,
Lined them up with their arrogance,
Their science, and had them shot!

David Lewis Paget

He’d been tapping away at the keyboard
So he could get the ending straight,
A labour of love he’d called it
But it was dark, and getting late,
The villain had to be sorted out
By the heroine, called Cath,
He wanted it all to jell before
That final paragraph.

The Moon had risen outside and shone
In a strange and subdued light,
He should have finished before, so this
Was not a welcome sight.
He backspaced over a typo, then
He looked hard up at the screen,
But all that he’d typed was gibberish,
In a font he’d never seen.

It must have jumped to another font
Was the first thing that he thought,
So he scrolled back up, to see how much
Of his work had gone for nought.
The font looked vaguely Arabian
With a hint of Russian too,
Had taken all of his storyline
So he didn’t know what to do.

He tried to highlight the paragraph
And switch to the font he’d used,
But when he read what the wording said
It had left him quite confused.
‘You’ve stumbled in to a place of sin
Have opened an ancient page,
Locked down for over a thousand years
You’ve opened the world to rage.’

‘Delete the whole of the manuscript,
Don’t let it stick in your head,
The more you read you will feel a need
And will probably end up dead.
Delete the curse, and the final verse
And destroy your hard-drive too,
Be sure, if you wish to stay alive,
To do what I tell you to!’

He thought of the work that he’d put in
And the rebel within him stirred,
‘Why should I wear some other’s sin
When I only have your word?’
The screen grew misty, and Cath appeared,
The heroine of his tale,
‘Take no notice of him, my dear,
I’ll die if his will prevails.’

His villain pushed her out of the way
And snarled at him through the screen,
‘Where do you think my evil comes from,
Not from some fictional scheme!
You drew me out of an ancient well
Of lies, of sin and deceit,
To clear me out of your sub-conscious
You’d better hit the delete!’

He heard the footsteps pound up the stairs
And beat on his garret door,
‘You’d better not have my wife in there,
Or else, I’ve told you before!’
And Cath appeared for the final time
In the tale that wasn’t complete,
His neighbour beat on the padlocked door
As he sighed, and hit the delete.

David Lewis Paget

Solomon thought he was doing well
His assets just grew and grew,
He had no moral imperative
While ripping off me and you,
He’d made a fortune in stocks and shares
And a little insider trading,
Had married, divorced, with a bit to spare
For his extra-marital mating.

He wasn’t exactly a murderer
Though he’d peddled horse and hash,
If someone died he would say they lied,
He needed the extra cash.
He was at his prime and was feeling fine
At the age of forty-two,
When an evil bloke with a scythe and cloak
Said, ‘I’ve been looking for you!’

The sudden shock was a heart attack
The pain caught him by surprise,
He thought he might buy him off, but saw
The implacable, staring eyes.
The guy said, ‘I’m just the messenger,
You’re going away, it’s sad!
You’ll have to leave it behind, you know
But you can’t complain, you’re bad!’

He found himself on an open road
That was either up, or down,
He thought, with the wisdom of Solomon
He'd try the high end of town,
But a clerk with wings at a Pearly Gate
Said, ‘First you must come by me,’
Pulled out a plate that was headed ‘Fate!’
‘I have to check your CV!’

He read, and mumbled and held him there,
And whispered under his breath,
‘This can’t be right, you shouldn’t be here,
You suffered an early death!
You haven’t had time to mend your ways
But the rules are more than clear,
You’ve not enough points on the ‘Goody’ side
So you won’t be welcome here!’

He pointed to way, way down on the road
Where there shimmered a reddish glow,
‘They might be more than amenable
To letting you in, you know.’
So Solomon turned, his heart in his throat
And he made the long trek down,
To a surly goat in a pigskin coat
Who greeted him with a frown.

He tried to enter but, ‘Not so fast!’
The goat had stood in his way,
‘I have to check your CV you know,
Before you get in today.’
He read and mumbled and held him there
And whispered under his breath,
‘There’s not enough evil here to spare
With you guys from a premature death.’

‘It’s sad,’ he said, ‘but you can’t come in,’
He said in a voice so gruff,
‘You’re bad, I see, but your history?
You’re simply not bad enough!
I have to be able to justify
That you’ve earned more than you can handle,
It’s a serious thing, for eternity,
To make you a Roman Candle.’

So Solomon found himself out in the cold
On a long and deserted highway,
With all of the others rejected there
Who’d said they would do things ‘My way!’
If only they’d thought before they died
What they’d need for a clear admission,
The goat would have welcomed them all inside
As a lawyer, or politician!

David Lewis Paget

Driving blind through a flurry of mist
On a road beyond the glare,
I’d left the hurrying city behind
For the peace of who knows where,
There wasn’t a light on the country road
But a glimmer from the stars
Was high ahead where the road had led
To the faint red glow of Mars.

I’d had to get me away that day
Or I thought I’d go insane,
My life was sputtering in the gutter
And all it brought was pain.
I’d had my fill of the diesel fumes,
Of the cold, unloving ways,
The condescending, trivial chatter
That marked and maimed my days.

And she, the light of my underworld
With the flaming, golden hair,
Had gone with one of the chattering kind,
Had turned and left me there.
The lips that had whispered words of love
Way back, when our world was new,
Had now been pursed as my world was cursed
With her eyes, ice cold and blue.

My headlights, dim on the road ahead
Formed a short and rounded arc,
I couldn’t peer past my inner fear
That my road ahead was dark.
The wind blew up and the rain came down
And it burst across the screen,
I couldn’t see twenty yards ahead
So I questioned what I’d seen.

A sudden flash on the roadside there
Of a figure draped in rags,
That flapped and fluttered about his form,
A hat with a brim that sagged,
A paltry second I’d seen him there
Then gone, as the car swept by,
I sat in shock, and was taking stock,
Should I stop and help the guy?

I’d travelled almost a mile before
My conscience had got to me,
Then turned around and retraced the ground
Where I thought he’d surely be.
He stood alone in his flapping rags
As I turned the car around,
Glistening wet on the darkened road
He stood, not making a sound.

He wouldn’t sit in the front with me
But sat in the back, and sighed,
‘It’s awful wet on the road tonight,
I thought that you’d like a ride.’
I saw him nod in the mirror then,
He just inclined his head,
But then I saw that his eyes were gone
And I felt a creeping dread.

The things that I thought were rags I saw
Were feathers, tightly sewn,
The feathers of some black, evil bird
That had once both soared and flown.
‘I’m heading North, I can drop you off,
But you’ll need to tell me when.’
He mumbled something I couldn’t hear
And, ‘I won’t tell you again!’

His voice sent shivers all down my spine
For it croaked, just like a crow,
Rumbling up from some deep pit
Nightmares and phantoms know.
I kept one eye on the mirror then
As the sweat formed on my brow,
He seemed to sense I was more than tense,
‘You mustn’t be worried now.’

‘I’m leading you to a future that
You’d possibly never find,
I wouldn’t normally help you, but
You stopped, and were more than kind.’
He said to turn on a track ahead
And I did, but didn’t know why,
Then saw a glimmer of light ahead,
The flames reached up to the sky.

A house was burning, the upper floor
Was bathed in an eerie glow,
I jumped on out of the car and went
To scour the floor below,
A girl lay pale on the kitchen floor
And I scooped her up where she lay,
Carried her out to the waiting car
As she woke, in a mute dismay.

The figure stood in the pouring rain
And rustled his feathered cape,
‘Your future lies in your own hands now,
The past is yours to escape.
Be strong and true, it will come to you
That you’ll never have to atone,’
His feathers fluttered, and then he flew,
Leaving us there alone.

When people ask how we came to meet
I always let out a groan,
While Amity says, ‘That’s a subject
That we think’s best left alone.’
We might tell them of the burning house,
How I scooped her up from the floor,
But never mention the raggedy man,
His flight, or the clothes he wore.

David Lewis Paget