The sun had set on the mountain top
Before we could get away,
I hadn’t wanted to drive by night
But rather the light of day,
The sky was filled with a ghostly glow
The last few rays of the sun,
When I drove out to the open road,
Our journey had just begun.

I’d promised that I would get her there
I wasn’t going to renege,
She must have asked me a dozen times,
Was even beginning to beg,
I said, ‘They’re going to be waiting there
No matter how late we are,
They won’t be starting without you, girl,
For you are the principle star.’

That calmed her down, she was mollified,
Though she’d been upset for days,
She worried that she’d be there too late,
She’d said, in a blank dismay,
She thought it was such an honour to
Be picked as the chosen one,
‘I’ve never been picked for anything,
Before,’ was the song she sung.

We nosed down into the valley as
The darkness turned to grim,
With only the beam of the headlights
Like a tunnel we were in,
‘It seems to be taking a lifetime,’
Was the only thing she said,
‘I know, but the end of a lifetime is
The time that you are dead.’

She’d paid especial attention to
The dress she had to wear,
Had glossed her lips and had rouged her cheeks
And had tidied up her hair,
I paid her the best of compliments
That I knew she wanted to hear,
And told her that I was proud of her,
On this special night of the year.

We finally came to a grove of trees
And we turned our headlights in,
Throwing fantastic shadows as our
Wheels began to spin,
We stopped just under a giant oak
And I said, ‘We’re here at last.
You’re certain you want to go through with it?’
She said, ‘It will be a blast!’

Then shapes came out of the grove of trees
Wearing hoods and capes of black,
They gathered around the car, and stood
And stared, on that forest track,
When Emily went to join them they
Stood back to let her pass,
And led her into a clearing where
She lay down, on the grass.

It was then they began their chanting
Like a choir in a church,
Rising and falling, lilting, it was fine
And yet a dirge,
For then a man danced into the ring
Who wore the head of a goat,
From under his cape he drew a knife,
Leant down, and cut her throat.

David Lewis Paget

When I was a great deal younger than today, and first embarked on a life devoted to poetry, I made a decision to write a one verse poem every ten years, starting at the age of 21. This was to reflect the way I felt at the time, in relation to my life, and to my writing.  The following is the verse written for the age of seventy-one, and below that the complete verses that built up to this point. The collection is called…
Into the Light

VI

Here I am, seventy-one
They say that only the good die young,
I’ve made the most of my current plight
To find dark corners, to sit and write,
The Chinese taught me their own folk lore
And Poe his raven, above the door,
So now I’ve written a thousand tales
Of shifting time and of dragon’s scales
While things I thought that would bring undone
Before the age of seventy-one
Have left me sat in my garret webs
To pen the last, to the final dregs,
I know where to head, the time is right,
     Out of the darkness
          Into the light.

David Lewis Paget

23 November 2015

- I    -

Here I am, twenty-one,
So many things have to be done,
Many’s the cause I’ll be fighting for
Keeping the vows that I’ve sworn before,
How many children blessing my way,
How much love can a lover sway,
How many words can I write and read
In the years ahead for my restless need,
Where am I headed, this fateful night…
             Out of the darkness
                  Into the light!

                     - II -

Here I am, thirty-one,
So many things still to be done;
Where are the causes? Fought and lost!
What of the vows? Tempest tossed!
Where are the children? Left behind!
What of the lovers? Love is blind!
How many words have you written and read?
Much too much for this aching head.
Where are you headed, this fateful night?
             Out of the darkness
                   Into the light!

                    - III -

Here I am, forty-one,
And all life seems like a dream undone.
Everything I would have taken for me
Has slipped from my grasp, forsaken me.
All my children are grown, but one
And wonder; ‘Where did this man come from?
What was the pact that he kept with me…’
While I have nothing to answer thee.
All my words as a mist, widespread
Have since dispersed from a source long dead.
Where am I headed, this fateful night?
           (Have you learned nothing….?)
                I guess you’re right!

                   - IV -

Here I am, fifty-one,
The daylight fades and the muse has gone.
The loves I loved as my vision bled
All turned from me, and to them, I’m dead.
The rhyme was lost and the music died
As I turned to stone in my heart, inside.
Where is the youth that yearned to write
Through the endless days to the latest night?
Is this what happens, the years take flight –
             Into the darkness
                 Out of the light.

                  - V -

Here I am, sixty-one,
I thought the end would have come and gone!
But then a light seemed to beckon me
To trip through another’s history.
When China called, I know not why
I saw new future’s I’d never tried,
The way was clear, my life was spent
So I fetched up in the Orient.
With all its bustle, its pomp, and pride,
I picked up the pen that I’d put aside,
For black-haired girls feed my heart’s content
And children like jewels are heaven sent;
Is this the future, I know it’s right....
Out of the darkness
      Into the light!

David Lewis Paget

I was sitting outside the house at dawn
Having a quiet smoke,
I’m never allowed to smoke inside
And I’m just a quiet bloke,
I watched the first few friendly rays
Of the sun, rise over the town,
But then it grew dark, I watched amazed
As the sun went slowly down.

So dark, as black as a midden
And I truly felt alarmed,
Our cockerel ran in a circle, then
Fell down, was somehow charmed.
Surely the earth had not reversed,
But my senses said it had,
And when my chair went floating,
Then I knew that the news was bad.

Everything that was not tied down
Had slowly begun to rise,
Even my car and the outside bar
Hovered before my eyes,
I suddenly felt as light as air
And I had to grab a pole,
While the neighbour’s mobile home took off
And left behind a hole.

I made my way to the bedroom then,
It was doing in my head,
And there was the wife, still sound asleep
Floating above the bed,
The quilt and blankets were floating too
And I tried to hold them down,
‘I didn’t think that you cared,’ she said
As she woke, with a puzzled frown.

The problem lasted for seven hours
While we floated round inside,
I made my way to the ceiling light
And repaired the one that died.
The milk flew off from the cereal
And the toast popped up to the roof,
‘You see, the earth has reversed,’ I said,
‘If you need it, there’s the proof!’

The news was coming in fits and starts
From the station in the town,
While men were bracing beneath the desk
Just to hold the anchor down,
‘A giant comet has hit the earth
And has spun it in reverse,
They say that it’s only temporary,
Still, it could be worse.’

At midday, there was a glimmer of light
As the sun began to rise,
The furniture settled down again
And we saw familiar skies,
But the seven hours that we lost will be
Quarantined from time,
Unless we want to be rising as
The Noonday bells will chime.

And one thing that was a certainty
We’ll never trust again,
We said, ‘As sure as the sun comes up…’
But that was way back when.
And now I notice our cockerel
Can’t seem to sing a note,
Since ever its doodle-doodle-****
Came backwards from its throat.

David Lewis Paget

I’d see strange lights in the garden shed
When I’d wake in the early hours,
Hanging out of the bedroom window,
Blowing smoke at the stars,
I wasn’t allowed to smoke inside
So I’d hang out over the sill,
Whenever I’d wake at three o’clock
With the world so quiet and still.

Light would stream from a dozen cracks
Where the timber didn’t fit,
The beams would light up the garden beds
With the rest of the patch unlit.
I’d listen hard for a movement there
But without the bedroom light,
Though nothing stirred in the shed out there
But the silence of the night.

To tell the truth I was just too scared
To go down and investigate,
The lights went off at four o’clock
On the dot, and never late,
I’d wait a while and go back to bed
But I very rarely slept,
While Constance lay with her back to me
As her innocence was kept.

I didn’t tell her about the lights
Or admit that I sneaked a smoke,
She’d simply say that I drank too much
Or get mad, when she awoke,
But I checked the shed in the morning light
And opened the creaking door,
There were just a few old gardening tools
And a broken down lawnmower.

One night, I slept much longer than most
And I woke at half-past three,
But Constance wasn’t there in the bed,
She wasn’t where she should be.
I hung on out of the window then
And looked on down at the beams,
Where Constance was approaching the shed,
Asleep in her walking dreams.

She stopped, and opened the creaking door
Then she disappeared inside,
I held my breath and I lit a smoke
And a second one, beside.
I thought that she might have woken up
For the beams were still as bright,
But she only came when I called her name,
Still sleep-walking in the night.

She climbed back into our bed again
And slept the sleep of the dead,
She didn’t wake until ten o’clock,
At breakfast then, I said:
‘How did you sleep then, Constance dear,
You are somewhat flushed in the cheeks.’
She smiled a mystery smile: ‘That was
The best that I’ve slept in weeks!’

‘You didn’t get up in the night,’ I said,
‘Imagine some lights, and beams?’
‘No, I was lost in some palace, Ted,
And having the strangest dreams.
A prince sat high on a silver throne
But the air in there was a fog,
There was just the prince and myself alone,
But he had the head of a frog!’

She laughed, as never I’d heard her laugh,
And her eyes, they sparked with fun,
I couldn’t believe the change in her,
She’s never a happy one.
‘I suppose that he asked to kiss you then
Like the tale from the Brothers Grimm?’
‘Something like that,’ said Constance,
But her lips were pursed, and prim.

It happened again another night
When I woke to find her gone,
She didn’t come back at four o’clock,
Nor ‘til the sun had shone.
I stopped her as she was walking back
But her eyes were wide awake,
‘Don’t even ask,’ she said to me,
‘Or you’ll cause us both heartache.’

It’s seven long months since they went out,
The lights in the garden shed,
And Constance cries when she tries to sit,
She says it’s the baby’s head,
She told me she doesn’t want me there
When she’s finally giving birth,
So I took an axe to the garden shed
And I piled the wood on the hearth!

David Lewis Paget

Whenever the wind is blustery
And buffets the chamber door,
I find Elaine, curling in fear
Down on the hallway floor.
She cries, calls suddenly out to me,
‘Do you hear the shades of sin?
I know that it’s got it in for me,
You’re never to let it in.’

‘Never to let what in?’ I say,
‘It’s only the southern wind,
Blowing in turgid sudden gusts,
To rattle the panelling.’
‘It’s ever much more,’ Elaine replied,
‘I’ve seen it up in the trees,
Just like a flight of monster bats
To beat me down to my knees.’

As if in reply, a mighty gust
Blew in the chamber door,
In came a flurry of autumn leaves
That settled, down on the floor.
But with it a cold and clammy darkness
Seemed to enter the room,
An awesome sight in the fading light
It huddled there in the gloom.

It came in the shape of a giant cape,
A hood of enormous size,
And peering out from the hood, no doubt,
A pairing of bloodshot eyes.
I heard a bubbling in its throat
A babble of rasping sounds,
‘It’s time to come for the deed you’ve done,
You’re due in the devil’s grounds.’

Elaine lay whimpering in the hall,
She lay there, hiding her eyes,
‘I didn’t think you would find me out,’
She muttered, to my surprise.
‘What was the awful thing you did,
You never told me before.’
‘I poisoned her drink, then ran and hid,
When she fell down on the floor.’

A bony hand reached out from the cape
And seized Elaine by the throat,
She fought and struggled, tried to escape
Then screamed, in a long, high note.
‘You can’t be late for your nuptials,’
The beast had growled in return,
‘You’ll soon be wed to a demon, who
Will take you to hell, to burn.’

I watched it pull Elaine to her feet,
Then drag her out through the door,
The monster bats were up in the trees,
But she lay dead on the floor.
Whenever I hear the southern wind
Come beat on the door outside,
I think of the times that I have sinned,
And shudder, how Elaine died.

David Lewis Paget

He was only a simple storyteller
But looked much like a clown,
He wore red, yellow and jingle bells
When coming to our town,
He’d sit outside by the wishing well
And gather up all the kids,
Who’d laugh, and clap their little hands
At everything he did.

The parents, they didn’t like him much,
Their eyes were filled with fear,
They thought, like the Pied Piper, all
Their kids might disappear.
He seemed to be so harmless, though
He won their trust, despite
The stories that he would whisper by
The wishing well each night.

He set up a little pay booth at
The well, and scrawled a sign,
‘I only charge but a dollar each
For the stories that are mine.’
But no-one left any money
At his tiny little hut,
So everyone woke one day to find
Their doors were nailed shut.

And then they found in their gardens
There were strange things in the ground,
All their veggies were growing square
That should be growing round,
He told a tale of ungrateful folk
Who proved to be so mean,
Their square was filling with artichokes,
Their lawns were blue, not green.

He asked, would nobody pay him
For his stories and his verse,
They said there wasn’t a way in hell,
But he could do his worst,
The beer was turned into water down
At all the local bars,
And when they went to go home, they found
They couldn’t start their cars.

They dragged him before a magistrate
Who said, ‘You’re quite a threat,’
He jingled his bells and said, ‘Oh well,
You ain’t seen nothing yet.’
The bench the magistrate sat upon
Was wood, cut down from trees,
And suddenly sprouted branches
Five feet high and thick with leaves.

They couldn’t admit what he had done,
He’d made them look like fools,
He had a rapport with nature and
He’d modified the rules,
‘I’ve only to tell a story, it
Becomes a new creation,
Anything that I want, I get
From my imagination.’

Everyone pays their dollar now
The streets are neat and clean,
The carrots aren’t growing upside down
And even the lawns are green,
But everyone’s still suspicious when
It comes to telling tales,
They still remember about their doors
And hide their hammers and nails.

David Lewis Paget

He knew that there must be something wrong
From the time he brought her home,
His mother had turned her back when he
Announced her as Alice Frome,
‘She lives in the vale by Abbeville
Where I met her at the dance,
Mother, you have to greet  her for
This may be a true romance.’

His mother had pursed her lips, and turned
Surveying her up and down,
‘You shouldn’t get carried away,’ she said,
‘There’s plenty of girls in town.’
Then Alice blushed, was taken aback
By this woman’s cruel jibe,
‘What have I done to you,’ she said,
And the lad, he almost cried.

She left, and swore she’d never come back
And the lad had left as well,
His mother watched throught the curtains
Knowing she’d put her son through hell,
‘Just what in the world were you thinking of?’
He said, when he came back home,
‘I meant, she wasn’t the one for you,
That girl, that Alice Frome.’

‘You don’t even know her,’ said the lad,
‘You wouldn’t know what she’s like,
She’s good at art and she’s awful smart,
She’s not some terrible ****.’
‘I know her sort, I’ve seen them before
And she’s not the one for you,
Take your mother’s advice, my son
Or she’ll tear your heart in two.’

But he went to meet her secretly
On the odd nights of the week,
And when his mother had asked him where,
She found that he wouldn’t speak.
He woke one Saturday morning late
His ankle chained to the bed,
‘You won’t be going to visit that girl
Unless I’m already dead!’

He cried and ranted and called for her
But his mother wouldn’t come,
She locked the door to his bedroom
And the windows, every one,
She brought his meals but she wouldn’t budge,
‘You will lie here ‘til she’s gone,
‘Til she has another boyfriend, and
I’ll bet, that won’t be long.’

She kept him chained for a week in there
Then Alice came round to call,
She beat and beat on the panelled door
Then sat on the old stone wall.
‘I’ll not be leaving ‘til you come out,’
She yelled, so the neighbours heard,
And soon, the mother had let her in,
Face grim, but her eyes were scared.

They sat and talked in the kitchen there
For an hour, or maybe more,
Then Alice walked with a tear-stained face
Slamming the old front door,
His mother let him off from his chain
But she made him sit downstairs,
‘That Alice Frome said leave her alone.’
He said, ‘I know she cares!’

‘It isn’t a question of caring, son,
But a question of what is right,
You just can’t marry that Alice Frome
And I’ll tell you why tonight.
I felt let down when your father left
And I had an affair or two,
And then I fell, you should know as well
For I am her mother too.’

‘I had her swiftly adopted out,
Burying past mistakes,
I couldn’t care like I cared for you
We do whatever it takes.
But I knew the people that took her in
And I’ve watched her from afar,
You couldn’t marry your sister, son,
You’ll find there’s a legal bar.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before,’
He cried as he turned his back,
‘I didn’t want to reveal my scar…’
He said, ‘It’s too late for that!
We think she may be expecting now,
It’s not just affecting you!’
‘She’ll have to have an abortion, son,
That’s what she’s gone off to do.’

He left the house in a flood of tears,
His mother cried in the dark,
The worst had come of her secret fears
She was losing her son, her Mark.
A week went by then they found the two
Curled up in a four-post bed,
Their pale young faces were tear-streaked,
A brother and sister, dead.

David Lewis Paget

The painting sat in an old junk shop
At the far end of The Strand,
It caught my eye and it made me stop
Though the subject wasn’t grand.
A woman stood in a window frame
And she stared out at the street,
The pavement there was of cobblestones
And the whole thing was, well, neat!

The basic thing that had caught my eye
Was the woman’s face, I know,
I didn’t think she had sat for it
But it looked like Billie Jo.
The likeness there was remarkable
In the lips, that sullen pout,
The hooded eyes that had looked so wise,
Overall, it knocked me out.

I bought the painting and took it home
And I showed my Billie Jo,
She couldn’t believe the likeness, and
I said, ‘I told you so.’
‘You’re sure that you didn’t sit for this,
I find it rather strange?’
The look on her face said something else,
Like guilt, but rearranged.

‘I don’t want to talk about the thing,
You shouldn’t have brought it home,
The look of that woman’s creepy,
I’d have left it well alone.’
‘It’s almost as if you have a twin,’
I said to Billie Jo,
‘There may be some things about you, girl,
You don’t want me to know.’

She shrugged, and she walked away just then
So I hung it on the wall,
She made me pull it down and hang it
Somewhere in the hall,
She didn’t care just where, she said
But she didn’t want to see,
The face of that strange woman, she said,
‘Looking back at me.’

The footsteps came on that very night
And they padded in the hall,
We woke and we lay awake in dread
And Billie began to bawl.
‘She’s come, I know that she's come for me,
When I thought I’d put her down,
The day that she rode that coal black hearse,
And was buried in the ground.’

I said that she’d best come clean with me
And she told about her twin,
‘I didn’t tell you before, because she
Frightened me out of my skin.
She used to say that she hated me
And would somehow bring me harm,
I caught her poisoning fizzy drinks
When we lived down on the farm.’

‘We had a fight in the cattle yard
That was one of her designs,
She kicked at me and she fell back hard,
Impaled on the baler tines.
She coughed up blood and she looked at me
And she spat, with her final breath,
‘You’ll not escape, I’ll open the gates
Of hell, to do you death.’’

‘She must have posed for that picture
In the week before she died,
And you have brought her on home to me,
I could swear that the picture sighed.’
I took it away the following day
And I burnt it in the well,
As the fire devoured the woman’s face,
It shrieked, from the gates of hell.

David Lewis Paget

I wanted to write an amazing piece
That was like a sock on the jaw,
A classical piece like the Golden Fleece
In the Gothic form of yore,
But every time I am caught in rhyme
In the telling of every story,
And then it would have to be dark and bleak
With an ending that was gory.

The heroine would be bludgeoned down
By the boyfriend, who was jealous,
He’d always proclaimed that his love for her
Was pure, and clean, and zealous.
But came the day that she looked the way
Of a ripe and young Adonis,
The boyfriend knew, and his anger grew,
He was violent, to be honest.

The rhyme and rhythm would lead me on
To describe the blood in puddles,
Seeping out of her auburn hair
While his mind was full of muddles.
He saw the blood on the iron bar
That he held, he must have hit her,
But couldn’t remember the fatal strike
And the thought just made him bitter.

Where could you go with a tale like that
Except to the judge and jury?
He put it down to the wine imbibed
And brought on the judge’s fury.
He watched him put on the hanging cap
And he knew just what he’d got,
So pulled the gun from its hiding place
And that’s how the judge was shot.

I’d like to say he was on the run
But a tale like that’s suspicious,
How would he vault the wooden dock
In a place that’s so judicious?
The sergeant actually gunned him down
To lie on the courtroom floor,
A pool would spread as he lay there dead,
Stretched out in his blood and gore.

And that’s where we’ll have to leave it now
For lack of a decent ending,
It wasn’t such an amazing piece
And I know it’s needed mending.
But rhyme and metre has bogged me down
To give a twist to my story,
I’ll try to do better next time around
With a tale that’s not so hoary.

David Lewis Paget

She shouldn’t have been on the platform
On that fateful day in June,
The train she needed to catch would leave
Later that afternoon,
But I would never have met her then
If I hadn’t heard her cough,
And was offering her a cold flu pill
Just as the bomb went off.

I don’t think we actually heard it,
It came as a sort of ‘whoosh’,
The air was suddenly filled with nails
And bits of flesh, in a hush,
I felt her calf as it hit my leg,
Was blown clean off at the knee,
As she collapsed with a sort of gasp
And lay there, looking at me.

I think I must have been stupefied
For hours after the blast,
I only came to my senses, down
At the hospital, at last,
The girl lay flat on a trolley there
In the hospital corridor,
While I just sat and I held her hand,
My feet on the bloodstained floor.

I had some cuts and contusions but
She’d sheltered me from the blast,
And bodies lay in confusion as
They prayed, while breathing their last,
The surgeons tried to attach her leg
But too much damage was done,
The leg was dropped in a basket where
It never would walk, or run.

I found her name was Andromeda
After some distant star,
I told her that mine was Tim, she said,
‘I was wondering who you are.’
It was then I knew I’d look after her,
Would be at her beck and call,
For fate had pushed us together when
Disaster had come to call.

She didn’t take much persuading when
It came to me moving in,
For everyone else had backed right off
To see the state she was in,
‘They’ll never be tied to a *******,’
She said with a bitter smile,
I stroked her hair as I pushed her chair,
‘I’ll be around for a while.’

I don’t know whether she loved me back,
But I had fallen for her,
And thanked the lord for her missing leg
When I carried her up the stair,
She acquiesced with my every need
She knew I had to be fed,
And paid me back for each caring deed
By leading me to her bed.

She tried to cover her bitterness
To those who planted the bomb,
But still she seemed to be curious
Like who, and where were they from?
‘What would you do?’ I’d say to her,
‘If I stood them here in a line?’
Her brow grew black, as the words she spat,
‘Vengeance would be mine.’

And then the police had arrested them,
Two men from an evil cell,
Andromeda said she’d see them when
I’d take her to court, as well,
We took our place in the gallery
And could see them, looking down,
An evil pair, a defiant stare,
She pulled the gun from her gown.

I didn’t know that she’d got a gun,
She must have hidden it well,
With just one thought, and a loud retort,
She blew them away to hell.
She didn’t care what they did to her,
She said, ‘I’m not going to beg!’
Then pulling her dress up round her waist
She showed the judge her leg.

David Lewis Paget

She’d walk on out to the balcony
Each day that it didn’t hail,
Braving the bitterly cutting winds
In the search for a distant sail,
I’d wait ‘til she was shivering cold
And her lips were turning blue,
Then drag her in through the open door;
Well, what was I meant to do?

She’d cry, of course, as I thawed her out
By the small, *** belly stove,
The only thing that kept us alive
In that tiny, ice-bound cove,
I’d wrap a blanket around the form
That I’d loved since I was three,
While she looked out for the love she’d lost
And I’ll swear, it wasn’t me!

He’d gone away on a masted barque
With the winter coming in,
Had kissed her once as he went aboard
And swore he’d be back again,
He waved just once, then he turned his back
As the barque had sailed away,
Hauling on the top gallants as
It headed out from the bay.

The three of us had been ***** friends
Until Charles had gone to sea,
But only then had professed his love
For the love of my life, Marie,
I’d been too timid to state my love,
She saw me just as a friend,
I felt that my heart was broken, when
She turned to him in the end.

But I lived up on the cliff-top face
With a perfect view of the bay,
I’d see him first when he sailed back home
So she asked if she could stay,
She settled in, and my heart had grieved
As I watched her pale blue eyes,
Skimming the far horizon as
The rain had turned to ice.

The skies grew dark and the storms came in
And the sleet had turned to snow,
It covered all of the cliff-tops and
The sand on the cove below,
‘We’re in for a wicked winter,’ I
Remarked, as I chopped the wood,
And she had turned, to give me a smile
To say that she understood.

The weeks went by and the storms still came
Til the cove had turned to ice,
The sea froze out in the distant bay
While we passed the time with dice,
‘Isn’t it strange how fate decrees,’ she said
‘How love will lie…
What if it wasn’t Charlie, what
If it was you and I?’

The look on my face betrayed me, for
She sat right back and stared,
A tear had caught at my eye, she said,
‘Why didn’t you say you cared?’
‘I couldn’t see how you’d care for me
Though I cherished you as a friend,
I knew you would set your sights on Charles
And leave me in the end.’

‘You didn’t give me the choice, you should
Have left it for me to choose,
Now it’s a little too late for us,
What did you have to lose?’
She stomped on out to the balcony
Where the hail came down like rice,
And like a fool, I left her there
Til her tears had turned to ice.

I found her frozen, stuck to the rail
Where she stood and stared to sea,
I should have taken her in before
And she might have come to me,
But still she stands with her frozen hands
As a barque sails into the bay,
And Charles will see that she came to me;
What am I going to say?

David Lewis Paget

My heart is empty, my head is full
Of all that transpired in the past,
My short term memory’s wrapped in wool
My long term leaves me aghast,
As age has dotted my copy book
It leaves me the time to think,
Of all the faces I knew back when
That I washed right down the sink.

My eyes are dry, but I often cry
Inside, when a thought will sting,
Did I do everything that I could
Not just the easiest thing?
All those good souls who were lost to me
For the lack of a helping hand,
I put a curse on my universe
For not taking a bolder stand.

I know that some were afraid of me,
My voice and my tone was gruff,
Could they even see the love inside
Or was it never enough?
I only knew what I felt within
I’m sad if it didn’t show,
But I lost my friends, my kith and kin
When they turned around to go.

Why couldn't I ever see it then
I was too wrapped up in life,
And everything seemed important then
Except to my lonely wife,
I loved each one, yes I really did
Though I must admit to four,
And each one left for a better life,
Went out the revolving door.

So I must confess to selfishness
In a life that I lived for me,
I could never see another’s needs
Or take part in their history,
I can see the distant horizon now
And it’s time to call a halt,
But before I meet that judgement seat
I admit, it’s all my fault.

David Lewis Paget

There were twenty women and fourteen men
From the wreck on that tiny spit,
Lost in that mighty ocean, just a
Mile was the most of it,
There were pigs galore from a previous crew
Who’d been wrecked some years before,
And plenty of veg, they fished from a ledge
Jutting out, and over the shore.

So in time the fourteen had paired them off
And it left, forlorn, the six,
There wasn’t a single partner left
For the girls to scratch their itch,
So they huddled up and began to plot
How to thin out the ranks of those
Who took up the men that were meant for them,
They started by shedding their clothes.

There were naked ******* that they thought would test
The men in the rival camp,
Would lure them off in the undergrowth
To lie where the earth was damp,
And it worked for some, though the men returned
To the partners they chose before,
‘The only way that they’re going to stay,’
Said the six, ‘is to go to war.’

Charmaine was found in a grove of trees
With her face, all covered in blood,
And Derek didn’t seem too displeased
He latched onto Maxine Flood,
But the thirteen said, her blood was red,
And they looked askance at the five,
‘We need to arm, and raise the alarm
If we’re going to stay alive.’

But a dozen died in the camp that night,
The soup had given them cramps,
Eleven woman had taken flight
And the one old man, called Gramps,
That left a surplus of thirteen men
And the women numbered seven,
‘There’s not enough to go round,’ they said,
But the women were in heaven.

The six bereft of the men were left
To mumble and scheme and plot,
‘We need to **** at least six of them,
Whether we want, or not!’
So late at night in the pale moonlight
There were shadows abroad in the trees,
And before the dawn, the six had gone,
Beaten down to their knees.

There were six and six, you would think it fixed,
In a year they’d be in hell,
For two of the girls lay down, were nixed
Gave birth, in a winter spell,
The men denied said they had their pride
And attacked their mates of yore.
But somehow managed to **** all three,
So now there were three and four.

‘We’ll keep the fourth in reserve,’ they said,
‘In case of a sudden death,’
But Maxine Flood was in no such mood
Though she sat, and she held her breath,
They made her fish and they made her cook
While she worked upon her wish,
And when just one of the men was gone
She fed them puffer fish.

‘Now there’s only you, and there’s only me,’
She called, when he wandered back,
Staggering into the camp, he said,
‘I’ve been in a shark attack!’
His arm was missing, he bled right out,
And died in front of her eyes,
While Maxine Flood had rolled in his blood
And cried to the empty skies.

David Lewis Paget

We came in through the undergrowth
To a patch of blasted trees,
Then checked the radiation that
Had brought earth to its knees,
The skyscrapers were gaunt and tall
They rose like a cankered cell,
Of shattered forms, all overgrown
With a **** spawned straight from hell.

Then Roach said that we should wait awhile,
Make sure it had stabilised,
We’d seen what happened to men before
When they glowed, before our eyes,
But that had been thirty years before,
When men had made mistakes,
We’d not seen a man since we began
Living on rats and snakes.

I vaguely recalled the woman thing
That had held me in her arms,
Who cooed and cried when the lightning died
And the bells shrieked in alarm,
But we hadn’t seen a woman thing
For years, for they all died out,
It was something to do with ovaries
And things we don’t know about.

We’d met as a pair of ragamuffins
Roaming over the plains,
Hiding under a hollow tree
To avoid the acid rains,
Our skin was scarred, and our life was hard
But we managed to survive,
And now, as far as we knew we were
The only men alive.

I knew she’d read from the Bible for
That was a woman thing,
She taught me plenty of words back then
And showed me scribbling,
So I read fragments to Roach who said
He’d had something called a sis,
I had a piece of a Bible, torn
That was just called Genesis.

We smiled at the thought of a world that was
Quite empty, just as now,
But set in a fabulous garden with
A God, we’d find somehow,
And in there was the name of a man
My woman thing gave to me,
And while he slept, the God man kept
A rib, and he called it Eve.

The city that lay before us may
Have well been Babylon,
But silent now and deserted with
Its ancient people gone,
We wandered into its cluttered streets
And we saw the things of men,
All scaled with rust and a loss of trust
It would never come again.

It was there that we found a woman thing
Who was scarred, and scared as well,
For she’d never seen a man before
And thought that we’d come from hell,
She sat, backed into a corner,
And begging us both to leave,
But I said I was known as Adam, so
She must have been known as Eve.

And then that night, we had a fight
I committed a mortal sin,
I killed my friend as he went to bend
Over the woman thing,
And God roared out with his thunder,
I would always be to blame,
And then decreed in my hour of need
I would call my first son Cain.

David Lewis Paget

‘It’s not that I wanted to leave,’ he wrote,
On a scrap they later found,
‘Just that the stress was too intense,
You drove me into the ground.
You’re like a terrier, won’t let go
Til you drive us all to tears,
You have to worry the same old thing
You’ve clung to your chest for years.’

‘It’s not as if you can let things go
When you’ve lashed, and whipped and scourged,
You won’t let the pain just go away
Though I’ve pleaded, and I’ve urged.
I’ve read the letters you wrote before
And it’s word for word the same,
You said you were writing your demons out
But I see that nothing’s changed.’

‘When will you learn that a man’s a man
With his rights and wrongs intact,
You can’t go changing a leopard’s spots
With your mouth, and that’s a fact,
You share your misery every day
Til it’s all far too intense,
You think your way is the only way
And allow no recompense.’

‘Why did I ever stick with you?’
I ask of the stars above,
‘The answer comes, as it does with you,
‘I stayed for the sake of love!’
What is this love but a trail of pain
From a scar that will never heal,
That rakes the ashes, over again
Til our love can’t see or feel.’

‘It’s not that I wanted to leave,’ he wrote,
‘But it’s better for you and I,
There must be someone better for you
And I’ll put my faith in the sky.’
He’d dipped his pen for the final time
As despair had come in a flood,
And she had muttered, ‘I don’t know why,’
That he’d signed his name in blood.

David Lewis Paget

‘It’s coming in every night,’ she said,
‘And creeping across the floor,
It gives me an awful fright,’ she said,
‘Though I’m sure to lock the door.
I hear it shuffle, and then the creak
As it starts to climb the stair,
It stops outside on the landing then
And listens for me out there.’

‘And I’m aware of my breathing then
As it’s rattling in my throat,
I’m hiding under the covers when
I scream, in a long high note,
But still it’s there and it tries the door
For the handle slowly turns,
Then I hear a ‘pop’ as my heart will stop,
As my face and my forehead burns.

‘The door will creak on its hinges then
As it swings, and opens wide,
And I see a shadow dim and black
As it slowly comes inside,
I can’t make out any features though
I think that it wears a cloak,
And a velvet mask of a black damask
As the scream dies in my throat.’

‘It’s like the Devil has come for me
Though it’s way before my time,
I feel I’m starting to suffocate
In a coffin, filled with lime.
Oh why, Oh why don’t you come for me
When I’m screaming in the gloom,
You’re only just down the hallway
And asleep in another room.’

I sit by her and I pat her hand
And I make some soothing sounds,
I know why I’m never there for her
I’m coming in from the grounds,
I slide the key in the outer door
That she thinks I haven’t got,
And creep on slowly up the stairs,
Whether she sleeps, or not.

I know that I’m mentioned in the will
That is under lock and key,
The house and all of its acres will
One day, devolve on me,
So I sit and soothe, and hold her hand
And I pat her on the back,
For one day soon, it won’t be long
She’ll die of a heart attack.

David Lewis Paget

We lived right up on a grassy bluff
That looked down on the sea,
In a tiny cottage, fit for two,
Just Arabelle and me.
But Arabelle was a wistful wraith
Insubstantial in the flesh,
She hovered around in her ghostlike way
With an air of faint distress.

The surrounding air was turbulent
For it always seemed to blow,
Over the top of the bluff from depths
Down in the cove below,
But Arabelle was restless in
Even the faintest breeze,
Worse when the wind came surging up
And swaying the tops of trees.

‘Why do you let it get to you,
Why are you so forlorn?’
Often I’d say, as Arabelle
Would sit hunched up, at dawn.
‘I can detect a spirit there
That tumbles from out my breath,
That’s where the wind is coming from,
It’s a portent of death.’

Then she’d begin to gasp for air
As if she couldn’t breathe,
I’d say, ‘there’s plenty of air out there,
It rattles around the eaves,’
I’d take her hand and I’d lead her out
Walking along the bluff,
While she took many a gulp of air
Until she had had enough.

She died quite early one Sunday when
The wind had clattered outside,
I found her slumped on the grassy bluff
From watching the rising tide,
But now, there’s only a gentle breeze
Since I’ve been living alone,
I only hear the clattering gale
When visiting her headstone.

David Lewis Paget

We went to sit at the front of the train
In seeking that extra thrill,
Marlene and me, and a guy called Kane
Who came from Mulberry Hill,
I hadn’t known him at all till then
He said that he knew Marlene,
And she had smirked when he said he knew,
She didn’t know that I’d seen.

Now this was one of those super trains
And we knew how fast it could go,
Over two hundred clicks, they said,
They certainly put on a show,
We sat in the very front window seat
Could see where the driver sat,
He wore a coat of orange and green,
A ridiculous pork pie hat.

Well, finally someone had signalled ‘Go’
And we rumbled off down the line,
To start, the engine was going slow
The driver had plenty of time,
But then, once out in the countryside
He must have been feeling the heat,
For it went so fast, down the track at last
It threw us back into the seat.

The trees and the meadows were flashing by,
No sooner there, they were gone
The little farms and the rustic barns
Like the gardens of Babylon,
Marlene was pale, I looked at her face
And Kane he was almost white,
‘I think we’d better move back,’ he said,
‘I’d like to get home tonight.’

I said I’d stay, when they both got up
And moved to the back of the car,
I didn’t want to give in to fright
We wouldn’t be travelling far,
But we missed a stop, went roaring through
And I looked where the driver sat,
He was slumped on over the speed controls
With his pork pie hat in his lap.

When the speedo said a hundred and ten
I first thought of throwing up,
It reached a hundred and ninety when
I did, in a paper cup,
The driver lay there, dead on the stick
As far as anyone knew,
We couldn’t get into his cab to check
And as for the train, it flew.

I joined the others, up at the back
And wrapped myself round a pole,
So when the rescuers got to me
At least they would find me whole.
The others stood, and clung to a rail
That passed up over their heads,
I said, ‘Get down, that metal will fail
And both of you end up dead.’

They wouldn’t budge in their deadly funk
Their eyes were popping and white,
We hit the buffers at General Trunk
And both took off in their flight.
Kane headfirst like an arrow flew,
Marlene went more like a ball,
So where Kane went through the windscreen first
The hole was narrow and small.

Marlene, there wasn’t a piece intact,
A rescuer known as Krips,
Said he had just been checking around
And found her child-bearing hips.
I got a terrible rupture where
The pole almost cut me in half,
Since then, I don’t ever travel by train
But stick to a horse and cart.

David Lewis Paget

The storm was raging within, he thought,
Not out in the trees and fields,
It must have strayed in his mouth, and caught
His throat, for the breath it yields,
He sat himself on a wayward bench
Composed his thunderous sighs,
And caught a glimpse of a passing *****
With slumbering, lustrous eyes.

She had auburn hair, and a face so fair
She had dimples set in her cheeks,
She walked the snow in an afterglow
Of the first snowfall for weeks.
He’d sat so long and the storm was strong
As he waited the snow to melt,
She kicked the flurries of snow along
In the inward storm he felt.

Her eyes were a vivid lightning flash
That lit up his restless mind,
Her footsteps, more of a thunder crash
At his heart, but more unkind,
Her smile revealed her perfect teeth
Like a line of pure white stones,
Or headstones, laid in a cemetery
Like some bleached and ageing bones.

Her auburn hair was a-twist out there
All twirled like a plaited bun,
It seemed to fly in his storm-wracked sky
Blotting the morning sun,
Then as she passed, she looked in his eyes
And she saw the hail and sleet,
And caught her breath like a glimpse of death
Or the end of life, complete.

He stood, and held out his hand to her
And she halted in her stride,
Opened her mouth, and thunder clapped
And he felt it crash inside,
‘Nothing you say will draw me in
It would only do me harm,
If I should wed, it wouldn’t be
To you, as the Bride of Storm.’

David Lewis Paget

Giselle went down to the Supermart
For milk, and a loaf of bread,
‘Don’t be too long,’ said her husband, Tom,
‘It looks like rain ahead.’
The sky was dark and the clouds were grey
And a breeze was gusting the trees,
As she walked a block to the corner shop
The road was covered in leaves.

She tarried a while at the Mercers,
Checked the price on a bolt of silk,
Picked up a colourful tie-dyed scarf
Before collecting the milk.
She noticed the aisles were empty when
She got around to the bread,
The only girl at the checkout said:
‘It looks like a storm ahead.’

The thunder came rumbling over the shop
And the rain began to pour,
Giselle had nothing to keep her dry
So stood by the sliding door,
She read the messages on the board
For Sale, to give or swaps,
But one stood out like a weeping sore,
‘This is where reason stops!’

‘This is where reason stops,’ it said
In an ugly, spidery scrawl,
The damp had made the lettering run
And the ink dripped down the wall.
Guiselle had shivered and stepped aside
As she noticed the second line,
‘You’ll never be able to find your way
When caught in the tangle of time.’

The lightning flashed and it lit the store
But nobody else was there,
Not even the only checkout girl,
She’d gone, but heaven knew where.
Giselle dashed out to a clearing sky
Where the rain had ceased to pour,
She checked the time, was surprised to find
She’d been gone, two hours or more.

Tom would be more than mad, she thought
As she hurried along the way,
She’d never been able to keep good time,
For it seemed to slip away.
She never had kept her appointments
And Tom had been known to yell:
‘You’d keep the Devil himself in thrall
If you went to Hell, Giselle!’

The sun was dipping beneath the earth
And leaving a twilight glow,
She noticed that all the leaves had gone
That were there, a while ago,
There were fences now she’d never seen
And some gardens overgrown,
And on the block where her house had been
She was stood there, all alone.

There wasn’t a house, there wasn’t a brick,
Just bushes and bundles of weeds,
And trees, she turned for a second look,
She’d planted them all from seeds.
She thought that she must have lost her way
And ran to the corner to check,
The sign, as always, said ‘Shepherds Lane’
And a chill ran down from her neck.

She knocked on the screen of the house next door
And her neighbour, Ted, came out,
He cried, ‘Good God! You must be a ghost,’
And called his wife with a shout.
‘Where is my husband Tom,’ she said,
‘And where is my lovely home?’
‘Your Tom’s been dead for a dozen years
Since you left him here on his own!’

‘The house burnt down and they cleared the block
When they found him dead inside,
It was just a year since you took off
And he said that his heart had died.’
‘But I’ve only been two hours,’ she said,
‘I’ve just come back from the shops;
I should have known there was something wrong,
This is where reason stops!’

David Lewis Paget

Whenever I went with winsome Kate
She’d say, ‘I’m a witch, and that,’
And while in bed, with love in my head,
All she would do was chat.
She’d chatter about the latest spell
She’d found in her old Grimoire,
While I would lie, and dream of her thighs
And hope she’d surprise me there.

And so she did, a number of times
Each time that I’d reach for her,
Like shifting sand, I’d find in my hand
A handful of ***** fur,
The black cat under the counterpane
Would wriggle and spit and scratch,
And I’d withdraw, away from its paw
I’d find it more than a match.

Then she’d go on about frogs and spawn
While up above in her flat,
And hanging down from her ceiling fan
The nastiest looking bat.
‘I hope that’s not going to drop on us,’
I’d say, but she didn’t care,
It often lay on her pillow case
All tangled up in her hair.

‘Wouldn’t you like to make witching love?’
I’d say to her, in despair,
While she would lie, with spells in her eye
And some that would really scare.
She said she needed to concentrate
And would make some terrible moans,
They seemed to come from the mantlepiece
Where she kept a pile of bones.

She called them Fred, he was certainly dead
And he stared at us from above,
She’d cry, and say that there was a day
When he was her one true love.
But he’d fallen into her pickle jar
One day, when casting a spell,
And she’d pulled him out, too late, no doubt,
He’d pickled his way to hell.

I bid farewell to my witching one
Before I suffered his fate,
I’d prayed for love to heaven above
Knowing it was too late.
She’d filled a cauldron with toads and newts
Then turned and reached for my hand,
But I had fled, the moment she said,
‘Now all I need is a man!’

David Lewis Paget

The cloud hung over the mountainside
Like a black and evil pall,
It took the sun from the valley, and
It held the folk in thrall,
The crops lay dormant in the fields
For they wouldn’t ripen now,
The farmers down in the valley cried,
‘It has to go, but how?’

They’d watched the cloud as it gathered
Bringing a dark and fierce storm,
With hail that battered the tender shoots
And flattened the barleycorn,
They shook their fists at the darkening sky
At this untoward attack,
But the cloud had threatened them, by and by
When the lightning answered back.

Then thunder rolled down the mountainside
And it shook their rustic homes,
It rattled the beams and the rafters, and
Was felt in their feeble bones,
They thought the wind would blow it away
But the air up there was calm,
And still it hovered there, day by day
To blanket each valley farm.

The tiny Kirk was amass with men
Who’d never been there before,
In hopes that a sudden show of faith
Would bring their god to the fore,
But the cloud still leered from the mountaintop
For weeks, and it hung there low,
‘Perhaps the answer is not with God,
But the gods of long ago!’

The older men in the village thought
The answer might lie with Baal,
And some had prayed to the thunder god
But the answer they got was hail,
‘There must be something the elders knew
To bring such things to a stop.’
‘That cloud up there is the Wandering Jew
Who never may reap a crop.’

They racked their brains for the thing to do
And one of them wasn’t nice,
‘What we need is a ****** girl
To send up a sacrifice.’
So they seized a maid called Annabelle,
Whose parents were dead and gone,
And dragged her up to the mountaintop
In hopes it would move along.

But they weren’t too sure just what to do,
Should they play a chord with a lyre,
Should they sound a note, then cut her throat
And throw her corpse on a fire?
She screamed at the top of her voice, just once
And the sun came shining through,
‘I’ve not been a ****** now, six months,
But I wouldn’t be telling you!’

David Lewis Paget

They put me in charge of the churchyard,
And said, ‘mow between the graves,’
The weeds out there were atrocious
Grew in lumps, and clumps and waves,
They tangled up in the mower blades
And they shut the motor down,
So I had to use the garden shears
As I knelt upon the ground.

They covered some of the headstones, so
I had to rake them clear,
Spent half of my time sat reading them,
The date, the time of year,
The ground had given away on some,
Had fallen into a hole,
Wherever the coffin lids had caved
On some benighted soul.

The nights were coming on early so
I laboured into the dark,
Just by the light of a spirit lamp
That I’d borrowed from the park,
At length I came on a sunken grave
And I pulled the weeds aside,
To see the shape of a bony hand,
With the shock, I almost died.

The hand came up through the stoney earth
And it pointed to the sky,
With no flesh left on the fingers, yet
It seemed to question ‘Why?’
It still belonged to the corpse below
But had tried to get away,
Out of the dark of doom and gloom
And into the light of day.

The name on the grave was ‘Clarabelle’
And, ’She of the evil eye,
She hexed the cattle in Fingal’s Dell
And the swine, while passing by,
They hung her high on a willow tree
When she pointed at Belle Raye,
Who choked, then withered and sighed, was dead,
And all in a single day.’

The hand had twitched, I couldn’t resist
As I sat and watched it there,
I reached on out and I seized the wrist
And I felt some strange despair,
The hand was warm, and was then full-fleshed
As a shape rose from the ground,
That held me tight in the darkening light
With the hand that I had found.

I heard the rattle of death as she
Had tried to clear each lung,
Full of the body’s liquid waste
That had formed when she was hung.
I heard a croak, and the words she spoke
As she glared into my face,
‘I might be saved from my early grave,
But you’ll have to take my place.’

Whatever power it was she had
It dissolved and turned to sand,
The moment I pulled away from her
And I let go of her hand.
She didn’t speak, but let out a shriek
As she slid back in the grave,
So I’ll never know if she heard below:
‘You’re much too bad to save!’

David Lewis Paget

I’d seen her wander along the street
A number of times, or more,
And know I should have approached her then
But she might have said, ‘what for?’
I could have asked for a date, but then
I left it much too late,
And saw her then with a guy called Ben,
But he looked like spider bait.

He had a straggly beard and hair
That stood up straight in spikes,
I don’t know what she could see in him
For my first response was ‘Yikes!’
His frame was thin and all caving in
And his clothes were contrabands,
But he clutched at her with a bony paw,
With hair on the back of his hands.

She went to stay at his cottage, which
Was set at the edge of the wood,
More of a tumbledown shack, I thought,
Not right for that neighbourhood,
It lay half-hidden between the trees
With their foliage hanging down,
You had to push past the bushes that
Enclosed the whole surround.

She’d sit out on the verandah with
The sun about to set,
While I would creep in around there
For a glimpse of her, Colette.
I thought, perhaps if she saw me there
She might come out to see,
And once I’d managed to talk to her
She’d fall in love with me.

But Ben would never let go of her
Nor let her out of his sight,
He kept her there by the spiders that
Would weave their webs each night,
From every dangling branch there hung
An orb web in the breeze,
And in each centre a spider that
Would make Colette’s blood freeze.

I think he must have been breeding them
He seemed to take delight,
In pointing out how the thousands seemed
To weave there every night,
Then she began to withdraw from him
And refuse his coarse demands,
Whenever he went to reach for her
With his scrawny, hairy hands.

The webs ballooned and they hit the roof
Formed a blanket from the trees,
They covered the little cottage and
I heard her frightened pleas,
She couldn’t leave the verandah though
She said she’d have to go,
He said that he was a spider man,
And that’s when I heard his ‘No!’

She didn’t come out again for days
And I heard her cry at night,
‘I hate this place, and I hate your face,’
But he said, ‘You’re my delight.’
A week went by and I heard her sigh,
The last sound that she made,
So I burst through all the gossamer webs
With an old and rusty blade.

He was knelt beside her form supine
In the corner of the room,
While she was wrapped in gossamer fine
And looked like a large cocoon,
I lashed out with the rusty blade
And cut off his evil head,
When thousands of spiders scurried out
From his neck, and over the bed.

I cut her out of the tight cocoon
And peeled it back from her face,
She hugged me in the gathering gloom
And said, ‘Let’s leave this place.’
I’d like to say that she went with me
But I’d left my run too late,
‘I’ll never look at a man again
Since he made me spider bait.’

David Lewis Paget

It was after the funeral service
In the church at Calder Rise,
Hoping to catch a final glimpse
Of you, where your coffin lies,
I’d waited until the others left
And the church was quiet and still,
Then crept on round to the vestry door
And felt a sudden chill.

The coffin lay unattended on
The bier, by the font,
But someone was standing over it
Not someone that you’d want,
He raised the lid and he looked on down
Where you lay in your wedding dress,
Then reached on over your folded arms
And placed some bread on your breast.

He bowed his head and he muttered words
Of some Slavic, Eastern State,
I wanted to interrupt him, but
By then, it was too late,
He took the bread and he wolfed it down
And gagged on the slice of rye,
And as he did, your body heaved
In the coffin, and gave a sigh.

‘My God,’ I gasped, as I staggered in,
‘What awful thing have you done?
What spell could possibly interfere
With death, but an evil one?’
He turned to me, was taken aback
That I’d seen the thing he did,
‘Don’t mess with what you don’t understand,’
He said, then closed the lid.

He started to walk back up the aisle
But he choked, then doubled up,
He started having convulsions
Then his face became corrupt,
His brow was furrowed, his jaw was locked
With his mouth, an evil grin,
‘I’ve taken away her path to Hell,’
He groaned, ‘I’ve eaten her sin!’

While back on the bier the coffin lay,
Began to open its lid,
And you sat up in your shroud of death
And fluttered each dead eyelid,
You stared at me with a great intent
And muttered, with words like ice,
‘He’s eaten the sin of you and I,
So meet me in paradise!’

Your corpse collapsed on the coffin’s side,
Your arms were reaching for me,
I backed away in a panic then
And hid in the church vestry,
We’d lain together the month before
And the sin was deep in my heart,
The Sin-Eater was dead on the floor,
My guilt would tear me apart.

I knew I would have to cleanse my soul
If you were to meet with me,
Though you were headed for paradise
I didn’t know where I’d be,
I came again when the church was dark
And knelt, where the man was dead,
Crossed myself, and I laid it down
On his chest, a slice of bread.

David Lewis Paget

You caught at my understanding,
You shocked me right to the core,
I’ve not had a harder landing, than:
‘Don’t come here anymore!’
I thought that you must be joking,
But couldn’t detect a smile,
My heart had missed when you said that this
Was coming on for a while.

I shook my head in confusion,
How could I have missed the signs?
You working, close in collusion
With your mentor, Matthew Grimes.
He promised you’d have a starring role
In a film he was going to make,
I said right then to be wary, when
He was probably just a fake.

He’d said he was a Producer,
I treated all that with scorn,
The only score that he’d had before
Was something to do with ****.
You shrugged, and said that you trusted him,
That he was your first big break,
And then, ‘So what,’ for he said you’d got,
Everything that it takes.

‘Everything that it takes,’ he said,
We know what he meant by that,
He wanted you *******, on the screen
With a cane and a tall top hat.
I didn’t think you would go for it
But I see, how wrong could I be?
You’ve let the seed of ambition rule,
Confused it with artistry.

I toss and turn in my fretful sleep
And sweat in my bed at night,
For every dream is of you, it seems
And it puts my sleep to flight.
I can’t tell whether it’s real or dream
When I knock at your old front door,
And you keep repeating the same old theme,
‘Don’t come here anymore!’

David Lewis Paget

There’d been stories about a tunnel
In the old, Victorian house,
We didn’t know where it led to,
But were keen on finding out,
It opened into a passageway
From a library wall of books,
Was dark, and damp and foreboding
If you merely went by looks.

To us it had spelt adventure,
To Jeremy Coates and me,
‘As long as we take a flashlight,’
I’d said to Jeremy,
We waited till after midnight
When the others were asleep,
We didn’t want to involve them all
Till we had taken a peep.

‘What do you think we’ll find there?’
He said as we opened the door,
Pushing aside a shelf of books
To stand on a flagstoned floor,
The passage led down a flight of steps
All green, and covered in moss,
We’d ventured in to this place of sin
On the date of Pentecost.

We should have known what we’d find there
If we’d taken note of the books,
The ones on the sliding bookshelf
And hidden in crannies and nooks,
There was more than a single Grimoire,
And the Oera Linda book,
That was known as Himmler’s Bible,
If we’d only taken a look.

There were copies of the Picatrix,
And the Munich Manual,
The first bore spells in Arabic,
The next strange animals,
There were books on demonology
Black magic spells as well,
And even a long chronology
Of the many circles of hell.

We ventured into that passageway
Not knowing any of this,
No doubt, if only we’d read them all
We wouldn’t be risking this,
But on we marched in the dead of night
To follow the flashlight beam,
Where the walls oozed iridescent streams
And the smell was quite obscene.

We walked a mile through the tunnel
Where it ended in a crypt,
With panels through to the street level
That would keep it dimly lit,
But this was night and the only light
Beamed in through the pillar flutes,
From the gas lamps out on the cobbled street
By the church known as St. Lukes.

And all around there were catafalques
Where the coffins lay in state,
Down in this modern catacomb
Where the devil lay in wait,
For a goat’s head sat on the further wall
By an altar, scarred and scored,
With the shapes of naked women who
Were seen as the devil’s ******.

A cross was stood on the altar but
It was mounted upside down,
Ready to celebrate black mass
In this hidden underground,
Then just as we stood and took this in
A coffin had raised its lid,
And Jeremy screamed a terrible scream
While I ran round and hid.

A shape rose up in a long black cloak
That had eyes of instant fire,
Teeth that could rip a corpse to shreds
In a moment of desire,
For evil never had looked so dark
As the horns on that spectre’s head,
While Jeremy screamed just one last scream
And fell by the coffin, dead.

I don’t remember how I survived
My flight up that passageway,
I’d thrown all caution to the winds
When I heard the spectre say:
‘Who dares to sully my sanctum, and
Disturb my sated sleep,
I’ve roamed abroad for a thousand years
That the seeds I’ve sown will keep.’

I reached the end of that passageway
And I slid the shelves across,
All of those books were glowing now
With the innocence I’d lost,
And then I heard but a mile away
Was the tolling of a bell,
Up in the belfry of St. Lukes
That covered the path to hell.

David Lewis Paget

The hills were awash with winter rain
As I walked on down to the cross,
My coat was drenched and my feet were wet
As I thought of my recent loss.
The sun was hidden behind the clouds
When I got to the crossroads there,
And a single sliver of lightning flashed,
Shed light on my own despair.

I knew that I’d get there early, so
I sheltered under a tree,
They’d not set off from the market place
At least, ‘til after three.
I should have come down in a coach and four
And kept right out of the rain,
But to freeze on the muddied bridle-path
Seemed to cauterize my pain.

It gave me time to adjust my mind
For the deed that had to be done,
Walk down the Hall of Remembrance for
A love that had been hard won,
The eyes that sparkled and smiled for me
Each time that I came in view,
Oh Caroline, sweet Caroline,
I’d have given the world for you!

That terrible night on the balcony
When you fought with Emily Krause,
You said she’d uttered some infamy
I should throw her out of the house.
I’d only left for an instant then
To recruit some help downstairs,
But when I returned to the balcony
She welcomed me back with a curse.

She said that you’d jumped, were in a rage,
She said that you’d had a fall,
She said that you’d gone, and I could gauge
That she was the best of all.
She backed away, and fell to her knees
While I stared down at the Mall,
She begged and sobbed, and she whispered ‘Please!’
But you lay there in a sprawl.

The cart is pulled by a single horse
As it ambles down from the town,
She’s dressed herself in a bonnet of blue
And worn her second-best gown.
A line of townsfolk follow it down
And they pelt her with refuse,
She screams with fear and I can but hear
Her say, ‘Please cut me loose.’

The crossroads are a terrible place
With a sign that points to town,
The single arm that is braced in place
Has a rope burn, up and down,
I clamber up on the ancient cart
And I check that her hands aren’t loose,
‘Not you, my love, not you, by God!’
As I place her neck in the noose.

David Lewis Paget

He came one day to the village green
And rented a cottage there,
The village gossips said, ‘have you seen
That guy with the flame red hair?
We know he’s up to some evil scheme
He wouldn’t be up to good,
He goes inside and he’s rarely seen,
He’s bad for the neighbourhood.’

He never went out to work at a job,
They didn’t know how he lived,
He always had funds at the supermart,
‘He must be a crook,’ they believed.
One of them pushed through his letterbox
A message to curdle his fear,
‘Your kind isn’t wanted,’ the message read,
‘So why do you want to live here?’

They hung a bad omen up over his door,
Threw rocks through a window-pane,
Left his milk bottles smashed on the floor,
And did it again and again,
He never seemed flustered or worried at all,
But wandered abroad with a grin,
They thought he set fire to the village hall,
But never could prove it was him.

Then girls were beginning to knock at his door,
And he began letting them in,
They’d stay there for hours, but none could recall
Why tattoos were found on their skin.
For each had a number, embellished in red
And nobody knew what it meant,
The higher the number the shorter the skirt
The answer, it seemed evident.

The mothers, they gathered then, out in the street
And cried ‘leave our daughters alone!
Stop tattooing numbers on arms and on feet,’
The neighbours would hear them all moan.
But he would ignore them and lock himself in,
The guy with the flame red hair,
He’d not venture out till the dark had set in,
And scattered the women out there.

The night came that fathers, with cudgels and belts,
Came down on the house on the green,
‘Come out, take your medicine, bruises and welts,
We know all your crimes are obscene.’
They tried to set fire to the front of his porch
To drive him out into the street,
But he had escaped by the light of his torch
And the silent pit-pat of his feet.

He should have been able to seek his revenge
On this village of trivial minds,
But he was content in the time he had spent
With the daughters of them at the time.
For long after all had forgotten their angst
At that stranger who’d angered them there,
Some seventeen daughters, the pride of the town
Gave birth to a tribe with red hair.

David Lewis Paget

He got to the top of the mountain
And he saw the shadow of God,
Then he heard it mutter, and shouting
‘Will you heed the reck of the rod.’
Then he fell on his face in horror
When he saw the burning bush,
And he said, ‘I’ll begin tomorrow,
Don’t be in such a rush.’

He headed down from the mountain
And his face was strained and grey,
He stood by the edge of a fountain,
Said ‘I’ve come to make your day.’
He saw the villagers gathered
And he said, ‘New rules from God,
They’ll clatter down from the mountain
And will make you reck his rod.’

And then the first of the tablets
Came rolling into the square,
Engraved with a form of writing
That they’d never seen out there,
They asked the man to explain it,
And he thought, ‘this might be fun,’
‘No matter what you might gain by it,
Don’t ever design a gun!’

The wise men nodded so wisely,
And the dumb ones just looked glum,
Whatever they knew, knew slightly,
They’d never heard of a gun,
The second tablet tumbled down
From somewhere up on the mountain,
It bounced and reared and fell right in
To the water, deep in the fountain.

‘All should be baptised here, it said
By jumping into the water,
But know you’ll be married here instead
If you jump with somebody’s daughter.’
More tablets rolled down the mountainside
To quick for any to count them,
And some were crushed in the awful rush,
The ones that had tried to mount them.

‘You mustn’t commit adultery
Unless you’re adults in play,
And then when you swap your wives about
It’s only for just one day,
The seventh tablet deals with death
And what you should do, or oughta,
After you ****, just take a breath
Then go for a general slaughter.’

The man went back to the mountain top
And he sought the shadow of God,
‘Got all the tablets, thanks my friend,
But isn’t it rather odd?
I couldn’t make out a word they said,
They passeth my understanding.’
‘Don’t call me your friend, you slimy sod,
The Devil wants you, for branding!’

David Lewis Paget

She always seemed to run on ahead,
Skipping, prancing and dancing,
All the way to the Goblin’s Wood
While I followed on, romancing.
She never seemed to see me at all
Though she was my only vision,
The only feature that filled my world
Right through to the intermission.

She wore her hair in a plaited braid
That jiggled along behind her,
And left a trail like a dragon’s tail
So bright that the light would blind her,
But I was mesmerised by the legs
That danced in a crazy pattern,
They moved too fast for the man who begs
Or the girl that they call a slattern.

I’d see her shadow between the trees
As it weaved and it side-slipped gladly,
Whipping the pale white flight of the breeze
As the leaves whirled around her, madly,
Then all the denizens of the wood
Would come to the sight entrancing,
Dressed in the garb of the neighborhood
I’d leave them behind me, dancing.

‘Come out, come out,’ would the Goblins shout
But she’d leave them behind her, whirling,
The old ones suffered from reams of gout
And would sit with their hair there, curling,
I live in hopes that she’ll turn to me
When her dance has become more mellow,
Entwined around the mystery tree
Her dress fading green to yellow.

They call her Summer, but Autumn shades
Seem they’re a long time coming,
The leaves are skittering down like blades
In a part of the year that’s slumming,
The breeze is cool as I call her in
From the dance that she’s in the making,
While I, contented, await the sin
She keeps in the oven, baking.

David Lewis Paget

‘To whomever it may concern,’ he wrote,
Hunched over an evening star,
‘This, my last will and testament
For you, whoever you are,
I leave your planet, the universe
To face an unthinking fate,
I tried to guide, but your priests all lied
And repentance came too late.’

‘I was the Lord of Creation, set
Each atom of you in place,
Designed and sculptured your godlike form
Placed heaven in every face,
I gave you animals, birds and bees
And fish in the waters deep,
Flowers and colours and stately trees
And that blessèd rest, called sleep.’

‘I took the rib of an Adam, as
He slept in my garden home,
And made for him a companion, that
He’d never have need to roam,
But now you treat as a chattel, she
Who loves, do you think it odd?
That man is born of a woman, while
A woman was born of God!’

‘I hoped and wished you would be content
With the home that I made for you,
I charged you just a peppercorn rent
That you would acknowledge my due,
But you turned from me and created gods
Of mammon, and things unclean,
You fought each other and played the odds
For you said I was unseen.’

‘I couldn’t reveal myself to you
While giving you all free will,
I hoped you’d do what you had to do,
Driven by good, not ill,
But how many false religions now
Have taken my name in vain,
Have turned me into an evil god
As my tears fall down, like rain.’

‘You’ve stolen my nuclear secrets, though
You wouldn’t know where they’re from,
And rather than make some godly thing,
You’ve manufactured a bomb.
So I leave you now to your schemes and fate
For you failed to reck my rod.’
Now heaven is closed, the sign on the gate…
‘Farewell, Best wishes, God!’

David Lewis Paget

The woman walked up to the prison gates
But the guard wouldn’t let her through,
‘We only have room for the prison inmates
There’s certainly none for you.’
‘But I need to get in, I have to get in,
My love’s to be hanged at the dawn,
If you could show pity, show pity for me,
I need one more kiss, then he’s gone!’

‘You want dispensation, then talk to the judge,
His chambers are only next door,
He’s cold and he’s heartless, a hard man to budge,
Tell him what you’re looking for.
He came to the judgement that fastened the noose
Of death round your lover’s throat,
There’ll not be much pity to see in his eyes
As he watches your lover choke.’

She went to his chambers and knocked at his door,
He opened it up in surprise,
‘Why would you come knocking, it’s late in the hour?’
‘Tomorrow my lover dies!’
‘The judgement is given, it can’t be reversed,
He’s condemned by the law of the land,’
She looked for compassion, his message was terse,
‘When he dies, it is by his own hand.’

She quailed at his hardness, went down on her knees,
‘I just need to see him once more,
I’m willing to pay with whatever you please,
I’m begging you, down on the floor.’
The judge saw his options and wickedness gleamed
In the eyes of the law of the land,
He offered an avenue by which it seemed
She’d get one more glimpse of her man.

She’d made up her mind to not shrink from the task
That she’d set herself, nor would she slip,
From offering everything that he might ask
For her man was the prow of her ship.
He took his advantage, it was as she’d feared
On the bench of his Chancery Court,
And left with a pass he had signed as he leered
At the precious few moments she’d bought.

The guard let her in where her man was condemned
And he let them alone for a while,
Her urgency stemmed from the moments they hemmed
In between both a kiss and a smile,
The guard noticed nothing amiss when she left
Her tears hidden under her hair,
Not even a glance at the prisoner in rags
Who crouched in the corner in there.

The figure they dragged to the gallows floor
Was weak and unusually soft,
The judge had been waiting to see the despair
He had caused, with the figure aloft.
Then out called the hangman, ‘it isn’t a man,
You’ve brought me a woman to hang,’
A woman who’d already cut off her hair
And given her wig to her man.

‘Someone shall pay,’ cried the judge in his ire,
‘I’ll not have the law over-ruled.’
‘That someone is you when the things that you do
Allow you to ****, and be fooled.’
The judge then had bellowed, ‘we’ll hang her instead,’
And the hangman had knotted the noose,
She cried as the trap dropped, ‘My love is not dead,
And your law is of no further use.’

David Lewis Paget

I like to walk on the beach, I said,
As it sweeps around in the bay,
There isn’t a single building here
To rise, or get in the way,
It’s as it was when the world was formed
For only the tides will change,
And God sits there in his easy chair,
There’s nothing to rearrange.

You brought me here when the sky was clear
In the first full flush of love,
Your eyes met mine, they were so divine
And I thanked the Lord above,
For what were the chances of meeting you
In the larger scale of things,
Angels are usually out of view
But they gave your soul bright wings.

It was just by chance, but I saw you dance
When you thought you were on your own,
But I was out in the park at dawn
When you fluttered down from your throne,
I thought my eyes had been mesmerised
When you twisted, turned and spun,
That perfect grace, and an angel’s face
In the rays of the morning sun.

You brought me here to this lonely beach
Where the love we made was fun,
But then you said it was out of reach
It would soon be dead and gone,
For nothing as fine as this could last
It was tempting fate, you said,
And ‘darker shadows will come to pass’
Were the words I came to dread.

The season is brief for everything
For life, you said, for love,
And youth is merely the briefest dream
When it comes to push and shove,
But I walk the beach now the years have gone
With the memories that we share,
But now you share them from up above
With God asleep in his chair.

The future yawns, for we’re just the pawns
In some sad, celestial game,
A brief exposure to happiness
And the rest in eternal pain,
So I walk the beach for I try to reach
The days I was here with you,
Your shadow teases me at the breach,
In the end, there’s only the view.

David Lewis Paget

She turned up here on my doorstep
Completely out of the blue,
She didn’t say where she was coming from
Or where she was going to,
She carried a single paperback
And I think it carried his name,
I tried to see, but she held it back,
The book had a title, ‘Shame!’

I should have been warned by that single word
And barred the girl at the door,
She didn’t say, or I never heard
Just what she was looking for,
She stepped inside, and pushed me away
And walked with a silent tread,
Along the hall where the stairway lay
And muttered just one word, ‘Bed’.

She found the room on the upper floor
That saw the occasional guest,
With a single bed and a counterpane
And a walnut, inlaid chest.
She went to bed and she fell asleep
Nor even kicked off a shoe,
I stood perplexed on the landing there
Not knowing what I should do.

I waited for her till she awoke
Then headed her off at the stairs,
‘What did you mean by coming here
Our guests are often in pairs.’
‘I meant to challenge your friend, my ex,
He left me mired in pain,
You well should know him, his name is Rex,
He wrote this novel called ‘Shame!’

Then Rex had entered and faced the stair
And she rushed into his arms,
If I’d known better, or been aware
I might have raised the alarm.
The book flew open, revealed a knife
Secreted into its pages,
And she had stabbed him, not once, but twice
Revealing one of her rages.

Rex was lying so still, and cold
We held her down on the floor there,
‘Are you quite crazy,’ I tried to scold,
But she had cut her own throat there.
A pool of blood spread across the floor
And mingled there from the lovers,
I swore right then I would bolt my door
Deny all entry to others.

David Lewis Paget

I didn’t think I’d be affected,
I thought I could just be aware,
When she left me for another man
I thought I could sit and stare,
Could sit and stare as he held her hand
Could stare as he touched her knee,
And not be moved when another man
Roamed over my territory.

We’d been together forever
But things had fallen apart,
There’d been a change in the weather
A canker, aimed at the heart,
The words we said became twisted,
We fired our arrows of pain,
And all our wrongs became listed
Our pleas were met with disdain.

I slept alone in the parlour,
She slept alone in the bed,
And life itself became harder
Despite that little was said,
She started seeing her friends alone
While I got on with my life,
A lonely desert became our home
No place for husband or wife.

And that was when she had met him,
The man who would take my place,
She laughed with him as she’d laughed with me
Back when, in my memory’s trace,
The pain would hit as I’d sit and stare
When she balanced, and sat on his knee,
While running her fingers through his hair,
She never did that with me!

She’d never done that, or a dozen things
That she suddenly started to do,
But like a bird that had found its wings
She suddenly woke, and flew,
That’s when I woke to the simple truth
That she’d never been right with me,
I walked away from the pain that day
And said, ‘I’m setting you free!’

David Lewis Paget

‘Why would I even look at you?’
She said, when I made my bid,
She must have been all of thirty four,
While I was just a kid.
‘I only have eyes for you,’ I said,
‘That’s just the way that it is,
I lie awake in my bed at night
And dream of just one kiss.’

Her hands had fluttered, waved me away,
She was flattered, nevertheless,
I knew, because the way that she turned
Flared out the hem of her dress,
Her legs were fine, and smooth and strong
With shape to her calves and thighs,
I stared at them, though I knew it wrong,
They were candy for my eyes.

‘You’re far too young for the likes of me,’
She said, a gleam in her eye,
‘You’re half my age, you’re seventeen
So I’ll have to say goodbye.’
‘I never think about age,’ I said,
‘I think about looks and grace,
And you have plenty of both,’ I said,
‘You have a beautiful face.’

She laughed then, showing her gleaming teeth
And the dimple in each cheek,
Her lips were crimson, egging me on
I could have stared at her for a week.
‘You do go on,’ were the words she said
But her cheeks began to flush,
While I was thinking of her in bed,
And that brought a sudden hush.

‘I really think you are serious,’
She said, as if in surprise,
‘Never more sure and certain,’ then
I caught the look in her eyes.
‘Maybe if you were twenty-one,
I might just give it a whirl,’
‘I’m old enough and I’m full of love,
To me, you’re only a girl.’

I reached on out and I held her hand,
The palm of her hand was wet,
I sensed that here was the promised land
I might be successful yet.
And then in a moment’s madness she
Had raised her face to my lips,
And heaven opened before me as
She gave me just one kiss.

David Lewis Paget

They said that The Grange was a haunted house,
I said, ‘you’re having me on!’
But no, they said, ‘he’s back from the dead,’
I thought it a giant con.
‘Just spend one night in that house alone
With the power cut off, you’ll see,’
I said, ‘I’ll go, if Carolyn goes,
If Carolyn stays with me.’

Now she was more of a nervous type
But she said, ‘I’ll go with you,
Just promise you won’t make whooshing sounds,
There’s nothing a ghost can do.’
‘There isn’t a ghost,’ I told her then,
They’re all just having us on,
We’ll spend the night, if you feel uptight
I’ll prove that it’s just a con.’

We ventured in through the cobwebbed porch
As the hour was getting late,
The only light we had was a torch
And the fire we lit in the grate,
The Moon came presently shining in
Its ghostly beam through the gloom,
And Carolyn came and cuddled up
As we sat on the floor of the room.

‘Where did they say the ghost would be,’
She asked, as I patted her hair,
I couldn’t say, I was miles away,
Then we heard a creak on the stair.
I thought, ‘Oh no, it will spoil the show,’
I was hoping for just one kiss,
For this was the first time, she and I
Had ever been close, like this.

Then from above there were creaks and groans,
It came stumbling down the stair,
It looked like a bundle of rags and moans
And a skull, with eyes that glare,
Carolyn screamed as it reached for her
This thing from another world,
It bubbled and rasped in its throat, and said
One word that I think was ‘Girl’.

It must have remembered from days before
It had held a girl like this,
Death had never erased the thought,
Or the feeling that was bliss,
But now, the rags of the grave were foul
It gave off a graveyard stench,
And Carolyn, all she could do was howl,
This alive and lovely *****.

What seemed to me an apparition
A ghost in empty air,
Was rotting flesh and bones to Carolyn
Tangled in her hair,
It held her in a grip of steel
As it probed beneath her dress,
I couldn’t even fight it off
For to me, it was stagnant breath.

They came to us in the dawning light
With a key to let us out,
I lay as in a palsied dream
But I heard them scream and shout,
‘What have you done to Carolyn,’
But they were to late to save,
For she had gone where the ghost had gone,
To join him in the grave.

David Lewis Paget

There comes a day when a love that’s frail
Will shatter at a touch,
No matter how long it’s been that way
And has hung together, just,
The storm that gathers at eye and lip
Bursts out of a clear blue sky,
In a day of rage that will turn the page
And will leave you asking why?

The clouds will gather, the lightning strike
And the swift torrential rain,
Will tear apart an uncertain heart
And will douse your love with pain,
It matters not if you back away
Or appease a fevered mind,
For words are said that in truth are bled
From a feeling most unkind.

You’re torn apart in a retrospect
Of the years you thought were fine,
But now discover that ancient lover
Was keeping tabs on time,
It seems that nothing was ever right
That you did in years before,
The cruel asides and the parting jibes
As they slam that final door.

It taints the best of your memories
It empties feelings inside,
It’s like a war with an empty core
Lost in a sea of pride,
But even then when you can’t pretend
That the end is worth a sigh,
The saddest sound in that dismal round
Is that final word, ‘Goodbye!’

David Lewis Paget

He came on home to an empty house
In the early morning chill,
The one he’d left when his blood was up
And he’d bent her to his will.
Harsh words had passed at the very last
When he stormed on out the door,
But now the silence seemed so vast
That his heart dropped to the floor.

There wasn’t a light in the passageway,
There wasn’t a light on the stair,
He crept on up to the bedroom
Only to find she wasn’t there.
Her clothes were gone from the cabinet,
Her shoes were not by the bed,
He sat hard down on the mattress
Next to the note she’d left, that said:

‘I knew that it had to come to this,
And you must have known it too,
This marriage has never brought us bliss
As marriages ought to do,
I tried to be a devoted wife
To support your dreams, and such,
But all it brought was despair and strife
And a life of nothing much.’

A tear rolled suddenly down his cheek
And he brushed it quickly away,
He didn’t want to be seen as weak
When he ventured out in the day,
Her words had cut to the very quick
For he knew she’d spoken the truth,
A wave of misery made him sick
As he softly cried, ‘Oh, Ruth!’

This wasn’t the way he’d planned his life,
This wasn’t the way at all,
He’d met her under the coloured lights
In the barn of a country ball,
The moment he’d looked into those eyes,
And smelt the scent of her hair,
He’d whirled her into another life,
One that she said she’d share.

But none of his dreams had come to pass,
His heart and his mind were spent,
He cursed himself in the looking glass
And struggled to pay the rent.
His heart grew bitter as time went on
And he took it out on her,
And she had wept as her husband slept,
It seemed to be so unfair.

He went downstairs to the bureau,
Raised the lid, and picked up a pen,
He wanted to write some final words
To the love that he had, back when:
‘Just know that I’ve always loved you, Ruth,
Though I’m bitter, and out of touch,
I know that I failed, and that’s the truth
In a life of nothing much.’

David Lewis Paget

The sculptured mermaid hung at the prow,
And breasted the highest waves,
Her hair flew back from the salt and spray
Was carved from some wooden staves,
She never smiled in a cruel sea
But watched for the distant shore,
In hopes that one day, try as they may
They’d leave her behind once more.

She’d had enough of the fuming foam
Of the white capped waves by the shore,
The heaving swell made her feel unwell
And each storm brought a taste of Thor.
She’d once been used to a merchant’s lot
Had sailed to the East and West,
Her arm was shattered by cannon shot
When the French attacked at Brest.

But now she was tied to a Man-of-War
She couldn’t escape her fate,
She knew she’d end on the ocean floor
If support was a little late,
Her skirt was ragged, was chipped and torn
And her paint beginning to fade,
She lived in dread of the Dutchmen’s horn
Or the sound of a fusillade.

The only time she was known to smile
Was back in the port once more,
She’d meet and greet with all of her friends
The carved figureheads of war,
She’d will the ship run into the pier
To tear her away for good,
And hope the break would be clean and sheer
To pamper her aching wood.

The salt and damp got into her pores,
The rot set into her bones,
Then one fine day when a world away
She dropped to a bed of stones.
She sits below where the sailors go
When their ships cast them to the deep,
And as they pass she will smile at last
As they enter their endless sleep.

David Lewis Paget

The Whispering Wall of Shah La Mere
Had drawn him over the hills,
They said that it only whispered truth
That the listening ear distils,
His lover stood at the further side
And whispered into the wall:
‘I’d like to give you it all,’ she said,
He heard, ‘I wish you were Paul.’

They’d fashioned the Dam at Shah La Mere
Where the valley narrowed down,
To catch the tumbling waters there
When the winter floods came round,
The wall of the Dam was curved across
From the cliff on the western side,
And fixed to stone in the eastern zone
On the hill called ‘Devil’s Pride.’

A walkway followed the curve across
That was barely three feet wide,
A thousand feet from the valley floor
You could walk it, if you tried,
There wasn’t a safety rail out there
For the faint of heart, or weak,
But those who needed to hear the truth
Would brave it, just to speak.

The whispers gathered and echoed there
At the centre of the curve,
And kept on muttering as you passed,
Trapped in the wall’s reverb,
The Whisperers, long gone, were caught
In their whispers of lies and truth,
‘I will be honest and true,’ became,
‘I’m still messed up with Ruth.’

Corinne stayed safe on the eastern side
While he walked out to the west,
They’d vowed their love to each other, then
Had thought to put it to test.
He passed the muttering echoes where
So many others had been,
The truth was turning to lies out there
With some of it quite obscene.

He stopped and turned on the other side
‘Can you hear me now, Corinne?’
And she had nodded as she had heard
‘Do you fear me, now and then?’
‘I’ve only wanted to be with you,’
Was the whisper she returned,
‘I’m only waiting for someone new,’
He heard, and his ears burned.

‘They say it only whispers the truth,’
He muttered, his eyes cast down,
‘I may be soon returning to Ruth,’
Was the whisper that came round.
He dropped her off at her mother’s place
From their trip to the Whispering Wall,
Then drove at speed to spend time with Ruth
While she caught up with Paul.

David Lewis Paget

She’d come down alone from the house on the hill,
But changed, I could see that too,
‘I can’t, any longer, keep seeing you Phil,
I just don’t believe in you!’
She’d listened too long to the words in her head
That were placed there by somebody else,
A secret agenda misled her, I said:
‘You need to believe in yourself.’

‘I know they sound plausible, up on the hill,
They’re experts at twisting your mind,
They plant their subversion so deep in your will
That you leave your own feelings behind.
But listen instead to the beat of your heart
And the things that you know, these are true,
Don’t let them divert you, confuse you or hurt you,
Hang on to the essence of you.’

‘I need something deep to believe in,’ she said,
‘They offer that, up on the hill!’
‘They offer submission to what they commission,
And part of their creed is to ****.
The secret of living is give and be given
Allow every man his own creed,
For nothing is certain, there’s no iron curtain
Between what you want, or you need.’

‘The rules are laid down in their Holy Book,
They tell me they come straight from God.’
‘In whose estimation, or interpretation,
Which version, don’t you think it’s odd?’
The next time we met she was swallowed in black,
Her head bowed, three paces behind,
Her lips had been sealed, couldn’t answer him back,
It was like the blind leading the blind.

David Lewis Paget

‘I don’t remember a year like this,’
She stood by the window pane,
Staring into the murk and mist,
‘All that it does is rain!
It’s barely stopped for a month or more
And the garden’s all a-flood,
The line is down and the washing’s drowned
And the yard is thick with mud.’

I’d just come down from the nearest town
On the other side of the hill,
‘Strange, it hasn’t been raining there
And the sun is shining still.
The mist is clear, just a mile away
And the hedgerow’s full of life,
I came to see if you’d heard or seen
A glimpse of my darling wife?

She looked confused for a moment there
Then she shook her head, real slow,
‘I don’t recall if I’ve even seen her
Since she got up to go,
She said she needed to find herself
The girl that she used to be,
Before she married and settled down,
Well, that’s what she said to me.’

‘You don’t think she’s had a change of heart,
A tiny hint of regret?
I thought by now she’d have worked it out,
And wouldn’t be so upset.’
‘I doubt if she will be coming back,
She said it wouldn’t be soon,’
I turned away and my face was grey
On that rainy afternoon.

She stood up close to the window-sill
And all she could see was rain,
Despite the fact that the sun shone still
And the skies were clear again,
The nurse came in and she said, ‘It’s time,
We must get your wife to bed.’
And I drove over the hill in pain
Just wishing that I was dead!

David Lewis Paget

She wandered down to the rocky beach
On the first Monday in June,
She wore a shawl, and carried a wreath
And sat for the afternoon,
She’d wait til the sun was sinking low
And shadows moved in the caves,
Then stride out into the rising tide
And cast her wreath on the waves.

She didn’t flinch if the waves were high
Or the storm clouds brought her rain,
She gazed out past the horizon while
Her face was creased with pain,
When lightning flickered across the sky
She knew that the gods could see,
And wrung her hands with a terrible cry,
‘Will none of you pity me?’

‘Take me,’ she cried at the rising tide,
‘Take me,’ she groaned at the sky,
‘You’ve taken the only thing I loved
And not even told me why!’
She threw herself at the foam-fleck’d waves
Where the swell would rise and breach,
But ever the tide in its forward ride
Would cast her back on the beach.

She sheltered then in the echoing caves
That dotted the cliff face shore,
And tears had streamed from a source of grace
The gods had preserved once more,
She heard the echoes as waters lapped,
Or thundered in at the cave,
A voice that ever had held her rapt,
‘Be brave, my love, be brave!’

She shut her eyes and she reached on out
For the source of the voice’s charms,
And moaned for a distant memory
That had held her once in his arms,
But the sea was keeping his secrets now,
She could only guess, and pine,
She couldn’t know that he lay below
Near the coast of Palestine.

A stranger came on the woman there,
One of the gypsy folk,
Just as the lightning flickered once
And he wrapped her in his cloak.
He took her up to the top of the cliff
Where the unknown future lies,
As she turned aside to wave goodbye
There was lovelight in his eyes.

David Lewis Paget

We knew that the plane was going to crash,
We plunged through the air, on high,
We probably had five minutes to grieve
A minute to say goodbye,
She clung to me from her window seat
And cried, ‘It’s starting to fray.’
And through the port I could see the wing
As it tore, and twisted away.

‘Why did you make me take this flight?’
She cried, as the others screamed,
‘I could have been happily safe at home
If not for your stupid dream.’
She meant the holiday we had planned
Forever, to take in Rome,
The Coliseum, it still would stand
When they ferried our bodies home.

I felt quite peeved, for I didn’t want
To take in those ancient piles,
But she’d insisted that Rome it was,
I wanted the Grecian Isles.
This wasn’t the time for an argument
So I patted her crying cheek,
I needed to hear her ‘I love you’,
But that would have taken a week.

The plane was spinning, with just one wing
Was heading nose down to the ground,
And all the passengers screamed and cursed,
Stood up, were lurching around.
‘Just get me my bag from the overhead,
It holds all our holiday cash,’
It didn’t dawn on her she’d be dead,
To mention it would have been rash.

‘At least we’re together, Cheryl my love,’
I said, in calming her down.
We’d passed right through the cumulus cloud
So close we were to the ground.
The engine was screaming, the one we had
The emergency door flew wide,
And suddenly Cheryl was torn from her seat,
****** out of the aircraft, and died.

I sat in the blast from the open door,
My heart had stopped in my chest,
I cried, ‘My God! Just let it be quick,
My lover has gone to her rest.’
‘What lover’s that?’ said my Cheryl’s voice,
From the foot of our bed, at home.
‘You mean we’re saved, that we have a choice?
There’s no way we’re going to Rome!’

David Lewis Paget

They said that the ocean was rising
It would soon overwhelm the land,
While I lived down on the valley floor
Below the sea and the sand,
The only thing that had kept us dry
Was a narrow band of ground,
Between a couple of mountainsides
In a long protective mound.

There were others lived in the valley
It was like an ancient clan,
That had hung on tight to its own birthright
Since before the world began,
While the fathers ruled for the daughters
That they may not look aside,
They could only marry within the clan
If they’d call themselves a bride.

But I was a rank outsider,
I could look, but couldn’t touch,
I tortured myself with Geraldine
Who flaunted herself so much.
Her skin was the texture of silk and cream
And her voice the trill of the thrush,
She’d bare her ******* till she knew I’d seen
Then laugh when she made me blush.

But Geraldine had a father, Roy,
Who was rough, and high in the clan,
He’d single me out and say, ‘You boy,
Your eyes are straying again!
You’d better not look at Geraldine
She’s not intended for you,
I’ll marry her to a real man
That’s what she’d want me to do.’

He’d threaten to beat me with the staff
That kept Geraldine in line,
I thought, she’d never be marked like that
If ever the girl was mine,
But fate lay just round the corner then
With storm clouds tumbling through,
And gale winds whipping the breakers up
In a high tide whirl of a stew.

The mound was breached in the early morn
And carried away like a dam,
Suddenly water was everywhere
I reached for my boots, and ran,
The whole of the ocean seemed to flow
Right down to the valley floor,
With most of the cottages swept away
The clan, it seemed, was no more.

I heard her crying out in the flood
Reached out as she floated by,
And Geraldine had clung onto me,
Her father would drown, and die.
We fought our way to the higher ground
And we saw our homes subside,
Buried forever beneath the flood
But I made the girl my bride.

David Lewis Paget

We picked up a coal-fired steamer
From a graveyard of ancient ships,
It had lain, beached up in the Philippines,
Sat on the rusted slips,
The ship was covered in surface rust
But it hadn’t gone right through,
So with elbow grease and some paint at least
My friend said, ‘It will do.’

We registered it in Colombia,
And we flew the Colombian flag,
We couldn’t afford to insure it,
And Derek said, ‘That’s a drag.
But we only need a single trip
And a cargo in the hold,
Like tractor tyres and some copper wires,
We’ll be rich when they are sold.’

He brought his girlfriend, Mary Anne,
Which I thought was a mistake,
He said that she’d come in handy when
We had to cook and bake.
‘I hope that she’s not bad luck for us,’
I muttered, when she came,
‘You mean those superstitious tales
That a woman is to blame?’

The bosun hired was a Robert Legg
Who had been at sea for years,
We didn’t know, as the trip would show,
He’d bring my friend to tears.
He helped to paint the rusted hull
In just one colour, black,
But leered when Mary Anne appeared
And behind Derek’s back.

We hired a couple of Lascars
To shovel in the coal,
Then ventured out for a cargo,
And ended up in Seoul,
We picked up a dodgy cargo,
Enough to make a run,
Over to western Africa
With computers, and with guns.

We named the ship the ‘Avant Garde’
And we braved the ocean swell,
It rolled and creaked, and even leaked
Like the cargo ship from hell,
But Derek’s mood was grim and dour
As we fought to hold the wheel,
‘Let’s hope that it doesn’t fall apart,
There’s a buckle in the keel.’

We spent our time up on the bridge
With Mary Anne below,
It doesn’t take a genius
To know how that would go.
For Legg spent too much time down there
Ensconced with Mary Anne,
When Derek questioned her, she said,
‘The bosun’s quite the man.’

He sent Legg down to the engine room
And he said to keep his place,
He wasn’t there for a holiday
Or to chat up a friendly face.
But Legg was sour, and Derek dour
When he caught them down below,
And said Legg’s hand was in contraband
Where he knew it shouldn’t go.

The Avant Garde had then burst a seam
Just above the waterline,
The water had started slopping in
We knew we were short on time,
By then Legg quarrelled with Derek, said
His girl was a free for all,
Was there to satisfy base desires,
Derek pinned him against the wall.

He hit the bosun across the head
With a long steel marlin spike,
Who fell at once and was good and dead,
I was told to take a hike.
I think he carted the body down
To the lascars down below,
Who bundled him into the furnace there,
No corpse, so who’s to know?

He told me later he’d fixed the leak
But he didn’t tell me how,
The ship then shuddered against a rock
That bent and burst the prow,
Before it sank I went down below
To witness a nightmare scene,
The body of Mary Anne was jammed
In tight, where it burst the seam.

David Lewis Paget

I spend my time in the graveyard of
St. Martin’s in the Fields,
Cleaning the moss off the headstones
Just to read what damp reveals,
The local vicar has let them go
And the graveyard’s overgrown,
As creepers cover the finer points
Of the lives now dead and gone.

And some of the stones have fallen down,
Some of them on their face,
Showing their stories to the ground
That wouldn’t reveal a trace,
I heave and jemmy them back upright
Under the noonday sun,
Then read the inscriptions in the light,
Long hidden from every one.

The work is slow and exhausting but
It gives of its own reward,
They say that it stops the haunting by
The ones that are being ignored,
The graveyard dips down into a dell
And spreads through the willow trees,
With some of the graves so covered up
I get to them on my knees.

And some of them have been there so long
That the tops have fallen in,
Opening up the coffin lids
To the skull’s unholy grin,
I sometimes cover the aging bones,
Then I sometimes leave them be,
It all depends if they made amends
Once I know each history.

But one I found in that shaded dell
Made the hairs crawl up my back,
I raised the stone when I was alone
When I should have called for Jack,
For there on the new raised frontage
Was a scene from a dream of hell,
A demon, wearing a flowing cloak
And with sharpened claws as well.

She stared from the stone of granite
Her horns stood out on her head,
Someone had carved her figure there
To give us a sense of dread,
Her teeth were those of a vampire bat
Protruding out of the mud,
And only once I had wiped them off
Could I see the signs of blood.

And then I read the inscription:
‘Here lies the Lady Vamp,
She lured her victims into the woods
Disguised as a willing *****,
Then once inside she would tear their throats,
It looked like a beast of prey,
So no-one thought to look for her till
She’d given herself away.’

‘A soldier came on her sleeping
While she was covered in blood,
Her victim’s throat was in keeping
With a vampire loose in the wood,
He sharpened a stake from a sapling
And stood for a moment, apart,
Then turned in a burst of fury,
Thrusting the stake through her heart.’

The top of her coffin had fallen in
I saw, with the creeper aside,
And there lay the vampire, staring at me
As if from the day that she died,
The stake was ****** in through the ribcage there
She’d helplessly reached with a claw,
And tried to remove, to seek a reprieve
From what she was dying for.

I’m not superstitious, I should be, I know,
And in that there lies my mistake,
I reached through that rotten, coffin lid so
I’d get a good grip on the stake,
I pulled it out swiftly, and gave it a twist,
A foul wind blew in, like a breeze,
And I was aware of a woman who watched,
Stood silently there by the trees.

David Lewis Paget

I had no idea of who she was,
But knew she appealed to me,
All that I knew, her name was Roz,
So I wove her history.
Imagination’s a marvellous thing
But that doesn’t make it real,
I thought I could make the whole thing up
But I only judge by feel.

I had her grow in a miserable home
Where no-one could understand,
A feckless mother and drunken Dad
With no-one to hold her hand.
She’d come to life when she left that home,
Left everything else behind,
And if she wasn’t together yet,
Then everyone else was blind.

I loved the way that her hair curled down
To sit at the nape of her neck,
I loved that serious air she had
To hold everyone in check.
I didn’t know if she noticed me
She never gave me a look,
Whenever she passed my desk, I sat
And buried my head in a book.

We used the stationery storeroom there,
It was big enough for two,
I walked on in and I locked the door,
Said, ‘I’ve been looking at you.’
She seemed surprised and had startled eyes
When I drew her close for a kiss,
But she raised her lips and she moved her hips,
So it didn’t seem too remiss.

She met me down at the local pub
To discuss the feelings she had,
‘It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the kiss,
I don’t want you feeling bad.
But I have a guy and he’s awful shy,
So don’t tell what happened today,
Some things are sacred, stored in the heart,’
And then she had walked away.

David Lewis Paget