It’s an age since I last picked up this pen,
An age since I scrawled a word,
There once was a time when I’d write it down,
All that I’d seen, or heard,
And still it sits on each scrawling page
A life, that someone may read,
Cut short, when I put away the pen,
When the ink had begun to bleed.

Some things are just too awful to tell,
It’s better they be forgot,
To raise the seventh circle of hell
Is like a forget-me-not.
It shouldn’t be preserved on the page
Reminding of pain and loss,
For sadness, grief, sorrow and rage
Will ever be tempest tossed.

And Geraldine was a case in point
I’d thought that she loved me true,
She seemed to care, and she’d always swear,
‘I’ll never be leaving you.’
For years we seemed to live in a dream
We had what we thought we’d need,
That no-one else could come in-between,
And trust was our common creed.

But then she started staying out late
To work, she said, for the boss,
And I would wait, alone by the gate,
While feeling a sense of loss.
I knew that he was younger than me
Was wealthier then, by far,
And she’d recline, while reeking of wine
Then clamber up out of his car.

‘We only stopped for a drink,’ she’d say,
‘It isn’t a federal crime.’
‘You never go out for a drink with me,
So who are you, his, or mine?’
‘You make too much of a trivial thing,
I’m just keeping in with the boss.’
Then I would say, ‘well have it your way,
But everything comes with a cost.’

We slept that night, each facing away
On opposite sides of the bed,
With Geraldine, as stubborn as hell,
There wasn’t much more to be said.
And that was the start of the end for us,
I couldn’t believe our plight,
It just got worse, when she with a curse,
Just didn’t come home one night.

Some things are just too awful to tell,
It’s murky the deeper you wade,
And she brought home the circle of hell,
She said that he’d given her AIDS.
She cried a torrent and reached for me
But I shrank back, and away,
The years have fled, there’s grief in my head,
For Geraldine died yesterday.

David Lewis Paget

The hands are at eleven o’clock
There’s an hour of life to spend,
I haven’t looked since seven o’clock,
Where did it go, my friend?
We all were out there, having a ball
Or doing what had to be done,
And sleeping, mating, loving and hating,
Thinking that life was fun.

We had no thought of how far we’d come,
We laughed in the sun and rain,
And cried sometimes, we were overcome
With the thought of another’s pain,
We left some friends on a different track
And our loved ones disappeared,
Lost forever, they won’t be back
And the thought brings us to tears.

So what will we do with the days to come
That have dwindled down to a few,
Will we all forget, and despite regret
Keep doing the things we do?
There is just one thing we should mull upon
As we’re drawn to the sky above,
That the maker gives and the maker takes
But the greatest of gifts is love.

So now I look in my lover’s eyes
You’ve been faithful, good and true,
I wouldn’t have got to eleven o’clock
If I hadn’t been loving you.
You baked the bread with your loving hands
And I broke the bread for us,
But once that terrible midnight chimes
I’ll leave on a different bus.

So let’s be thankful for what we’ve got,
And everything that we’ve had,
The toys, the joys, the girls and the boys
And everything good and bad.
There’s a greater plan in the universe
And it waits, beyond despair,
It’s not the end in that tasselled hearse,
I’ll be waiting for you, there!

David Lewis Paget

It hovered above on the ceiling,
It only would come at night,
My sister said she’d a feeling
It was dark, and was full of fright,
The light would glimmer and slowly fade
As the Moon came over the hill,
The globe grew dimmer in light and shade
Than a candle that flickered still.

I’d lie and I’d stare at the corner
Where the cloud had begun to swirl,
It had little form and no meaning
When first it began to unfurl,
But then came the claws in the ceiling
The eyes in the cloud glowing red,
And Clara would scream and be reeling
With her hands pulled over her head.

I thought that if I could disperse it,
It would run on back to its well,
And perhaps the Devil could curse it
Or find it a place in hell,
I beat at it with a baseball bat
But it seized the bat with its teeth,
And wrenched it out of my wretched hands
With a strength beyond belief.

It grew a cloak and a pair of horns
And roared with an orange flame,
It burnt a patch on the ceiling then
And I saw it had written its name,
‘Askarametch’ it had written there
The demon that lived in our well,
I said to Clara, ‘it won’t be long
I’ll be sending the demon to hell.’

In daylight hours I filled up the well
With bracken and poisonous weeds,
Then as the sun was beginning to fade
I’d add Belladonna seeds,
A gallon of petrol damped it all down
Till the Moon had begun to rise,
Then what I struck had it all lit up
To match the red demon’s eyes.

We never see clouds on the ceiling now
It doesn’t seem able to come,
The only thing is the sulphur smell,
It’s potent, I give you the drum.
It drifts on in from the well outside
And hangs in the bedroom air,
Clara will spray Devil’s Nightcap for days,
It’s better than demons in there.

David Lewis Paget

I’m so heartily sick of writing
As I do most every day,
I’m missing that flash of lightning as
I write my life away.
My friends are dead, or went on ahead
As they left me on the page,
And said, ‘You just fill the details in
While we go off to rage.’

I get no sense of achievement from
A page that’s white and blank,
I have to fill in some alphabet
Of scenes that I once drank,
I search around for a storyline
That no-one wrote before,
It’s like a flea on an elephant,
That’s what I’m looking for.

At least I fashion my characters
The way I’d like them be,
The men so brutally strong, and then
The women willowy,
The latter tend to be acrobats
So supple, every night,
And take up a shape impossible
To fill me with delight.

My ladies all are submissive as
They dribble from my pen,
They ask me what I would like to do
And I reply, ‘but then…’
I flip through the Kama Sutra for
The inspiration lacked,
And have them jumping through hoops to prove
How well each one is stacked.

But still I’m lacking a storyline
To put my people through,
So I look out of my window just
To watch what folk will do,
The world out there is a scary place
When I look down from above,
The only theme that is not obscene
Is the fairytale of love.

So in the end you can party folks
Go out to roar and rage,
I’d rather sit here alone and live
Here on the printed page,
It may not be as exciting as
An extra-marital fling,
But I’m content with the themes I’m lent
Because writing is my thing.

David Lewis Paget

He was often at the market
Signing books that no-one read,
If they had, and known the target
Then they’d not be lying dead.
For the mystic glyph inscriptions
Pointed men towards their fate,
He would say, ‘You’d better read them
Or perhaps you’ll be too late.’

But he seemed so insignificant
They wouldn’t heed his words,
Threw his books in their collections
So they wouldn’t be disturbed.
For the few who really read them
Dived right in and turned the page,
Suffered instant palpitations that
Expressed themselves in rage.

Though they didn’t realise, he was
A god from outer space,
Who had come down with his minions
To save the human race,
But the human brain had limits that
Could not absorb much more,
Than the irritants that stimulate
And lead them off to war.

It came to pass that leaders heard,
Surrounded him with trucks,
And trying to suppress the word
They seized, and burned his books.
They didn’t want the people having
Knowledge, at the least,
That could interfere with politics
And might burst out in peace.

The dollar ruled that ammunition,
Bombs that could be lobbed,
And hand grenades, and tank displays
They all came down to jobs.
And so they closed the market down
To end the sale of books,
That warned about conscription, and
Aspiring army cooks.

And so the god from outer space
Climbed back in his machine,
He’d tried to help the human race,
The human race was mean.
He took on board his minions
And said, ‘It’s getting late,’
Engaged the afterburners and
Then left us to our fate.

David Lewis Paget

The windows up on the second floor
Peered out through the mist at dawn,
Through what seemed a couple of eyelids,
Peeping out, when the blinds were drawn,
They scanned to the far horizon
Past the billows and foaming waves,
As if to seek a solution
As they scowled from their architraves.

‘How long, how long,’ was the question that
Had hung in the air for years,
How long to a sure destruction like
A fabric, when it tears?
The sea surged up to its doorstep with
The king tide at its peak,
And whispered its evil mantra, ‘House!
You haven’t another week.’

The House had stood five hundred years,
It had seen them come and go,
The coaches bringing their ministers
Of church and state, below,
Armies had been sequestered there
Beneath the sheltered eaves
Conspiring to hide the redcoats ‘til
The rebels made them leave.

It had sheltered friend and foe in there,
And had made no judgement call,
Its spacious rooms had been welcoming
To anyone there at all,
But now that its greatest enemy
Was surging at the lea,
‘Who will come to my aid at last
To save me from the sea?’

The time was once when the sea lay back
A mile or so from the shore,
But long decades of its slow attack
Saw it conquer, more and more,
Its progress so very gradual
That some generations hence,
Each single lifetime lost just yards
From its seaward farmland fence.

A wall of sticks and boulders rose
That the sea had overcome,
Had buried under its surges while
The work was being done,
A hill of sand and flotsam that
Was bound by bush and tree,
But the sea reclaimed its contraband
Washed the sand back out to sea.

And now, five hundred years had gone
The tide lapped at the brick,
And softened the old foundations as
The window-eyes looked bleak,
The king tide then had abated and
Sank back, to mutter its lack,
‘Have no fear,’ it grated, ‘House!
For I shall be coming back!’

But with the sea lying dormant,
Men approached with great machines,
With bulldozers and graders and
Huge tip-trucks in a stream,
And when the sea had resumed again
With its king tide of assault,
It beat forlorn on a concrete wall
With pathways of asphalt.

The windows up on the second floor
Peered out through the mist at dawn,
Through what seemed a couple of eyelids,
Peeping out, when the blinds were drawn,
The rain had hidden a couple of tears
As the House had heard men say:
‘We have to preserve our history,
And keep the sea in the bay!’

David Lewis Paget

She wore a wig to cover the hair
That was windblown, into her eye,
And topped off that with a raffia hat
To disguise a look so sly,
She sat up there on the balcony
Looking down on the street below,
Watching the heads of the perms and dreads
And noting which way they go.

Her boots were scuffed right up to her knees
Her stockings ragged and torn,
Her linen skirt had dragged in the dirt
From the day it first was worn,
The neighbours called her a demon child
For the savage glare in her eye,
They looked away but they scarce could say
If she’d cursed them, passing by.

She said, ‘Watch out for a matt black car
With its windows tinted and grey,
A single headlight, seen from afar
And the chrome all rusted away,
The driver’s window wound halfway down
To the height of the driver’s eyes,
You’ll best not stare at that wicked frown
He will draw you into his lies.’

The clouds then gathered, the storm came in
From the place that it last had went,
Thunder clashing and lightning flashing
The hail and the sleet it sent,
She pulled her hat down over her head
In hopes that her hair would dry,
Then pointed down to a matt black car,
‘The Devil is driving by!’

David Lewis Paget

I wrote a book called ‘The Afterdeath’
With a thousand gory themes,
Of what takes place at your final breath
When you lie in your swirling dreams,
Your body hung by its fingertips
Between here and the place you go,
When the deed is done, and your race is run
Will there be no afterglow?

Will there be no afterglow, I said
With a place you can lay your head,
Up in the clouds and the stars somewhere
On a downy, cloudy bed?
To wake from the sordid human dream
That you lived, three score and ten,
Trying to make your way between
Your hopes and ambitions then.

But always thwarted, you don’t know why
For nothing would come out right,
And always hanging over your head
Are thoughts of that endless night,
That bright intelligence snuffed right out
That learning lost to the air,
Your body locked in a six foot box
In its final death despair.

I wrote of the ones who wake in dread
To the sound of the shovel’s spray,
Tipping that final dirt on you
As your coffin’s hidden away,
You thump and scream in your final dream
Kicking the bottom out,
With the coffin muffling shrieks and screams
When you want them to let you out!

It’s easy, while I am sitting here
To write of a man’s despair,
When he’s in the dark, can’t see a spark
And fighting for gasps of air,
Or maybe rather the sputtering jets
Of the crematorium,
As the box implodes and your body glows
Round your scared cerebellum?

So now that I’ve made you comfortable
Accepting your sad demise,
And the way that they will dispose of you
(Believe me, everyone lies!)
Take heart in the fact you’re not alone
That final terror will be
There at the end with everyone,
Including the author, Me!’

David Lewis Paget

Wherever I go, whatever I do
He follows me up the street,
I cross the road and he crosses it too,
We never actually meet,
He knows I know, it’s a waiting game
For I know he knows I know,
No matter how often I give him the slip
He’s there, where I get to go.

I have no clue what he wants with me
But he’s going to have to wait,
I often stop, and he walks on by
Or I hide by the garden gate,
Then just when I think the coast is clear
He pops up, out of the blue,
Or reads the paper and catches the bus,
Just as I catch it, too.

I try to pretend that he isn’t there
That I’m sitting quite on my own,
I don’t know whether he’s dark or fair,
I sit and play with my phone,
He seems to know when I’m getting off
He’s the first one off the bus,
And I’ve often thought to stay in my seat
But I don’t like making a fuss.

At work, I see him in offices
That are off the beaten track,
When I’m on my way to the novices
His eyes burn holes in my back,
If I take an early minute he’s there
Propped up by the factory gate,
Deep in a conversation with
A guy I thought was a mate.

I’m not going to let it get to me,
I won’t let him get me down,
I try to pretend he’s a nobody
When really, he’s such a clown.
He wears a million different suits
Is always changing his hat,
He walks a dog and he smokes a pipe
And he changes, just like that!

I thought I’d go to the police one day
To say he was stalking me,
They asked for a brief description, and
I said he was hard to see.
‘Just give the colour of hair and eyes
So that we can put on a trace.’
‘He’s always changing, he lives in lies,
He’s the Man with Another Face!’

I saw the look that he gave the man
Who was slinking down in the hall,
I knew that I’d never be free of him
Surrounding me, wall to wall.
They put me here in a padded cell
Where at least I’m on my own,
But I still feel ill when he opens the grill
And his eyes burn through to the bone.

David Lewis Paget

They said that the Library was full,
Were going to pull it down,
They’d set up a whole new Google School
On the other side of town,
And nobody went there anymore,
It was bulging at the seams,
With every tome that had stood alone,
The source of a writer’s dreams.

‘What can we get from a paper book
That is not beyond a trace,
When just by tapping a couple of keys
We can pull it from cyberspace.’
They’d lost the sense of a cosy nook
On a languid day in June,
When curled up there with a thrilling book
They could drift and dream ‘til noon.

The Library was a silent place
With its soot-stained yellow brick,
It rose a couple of storeys, and
The air in there was thick,
The shelves rose up to the ceilings, more
Than twenty feet in the air,
You had to call a librarian
To climb up a sliding stair.

But up above there were volumes bound
In a red and gold Morroc,
Their wisdom gleaned from the ages in
A perfect printed book,
Though some had never been taken down,
Their pages were pristine,
They waited patiently there for me,
A world that I’d never seen.

They closed the Library down one day
And nobody even cared,
The lights went out for the final time
The cost of the power conserved,
A gloom then settled between the shelves
That had held the stuff of life,
The books, still patiently waiting with
Their sagas of joy and strife.

I broke on into the Library
Through a badly padlocked door,
Made my way with the aid of a torch
On up to the second floor,
The tension there was electric, I
Could sense them asking ‘Why?’
‘Why has the world deserted us,’
And the books let out a sigh.

I looked on up and I saw a book
And it seemed to freeze my gaze,
Glowing softly it shimmered there
In a pale, blue misty haze,
I reached on up and I took it down
Though it tingled in my hands,
My mind lit up like a picture book
Of far and distant lands.

I laid it down and it opened up,
‘The Book of the Universe,’
Then stars and planets poured out from what
I thought was an ancient hearse,
I heard some planetary music from
The deception that Neptune brings,
And floated up from the floor in there
Surrounded by Saturn’s rings.

Knowledge flowed from the book to me
Though I couldn’t catch it all,
It passed me by in a stream, just like
A glittering waterfall,
And then a voice in my head intoned
‘You can pass this message on,
You’ll never be able to smile again
Once all the books are gone!’

David Lewis Paget

Elizabeth Paddington Warrington Ware
I met on a path today,
I knew by the wind that was blowing her hair
She’d not have a lot to say.
I said my hello and she turned then to go
And she stuck her nose up in the air,
Like she didn’t know me, or sought then to throw me
Which I didn’t think very fair.

I said, ‘Aren’t you talking?’ but she just kept walking
So I turned around and caught up.
I caught at her sleeve in a moment of peeve
And in doing, spilt tea from my cup,
She snapped ‘Understand me, young man, and unhand me
You’re showing that you have no couth!’
I thought she was blind or was being unkind
I’m a pensioner, far from a youth.

‘Don’t say you don’t know me, you’re trying to snow me,
Remember, we once had a fling,’
I had her engaged, but she flew in a rage
And said, ‘I don’t recall such a thing!
You’re merely a stranger, I feel I’m in danger,
I’m calling for help in a thrice,’
‘How could you forget me, with all that you let me
Back then, don’t you think it was nice?’

‘I’m Ellen Pengellen O’Fogarty Fair,’
She exclaimed, and I said, ‘then you’re not…
Elizabeth Paddington Warrington Ware,
I’m so sorry, I must have forgot.’
I thought, ‘I’m in trouble, she must have a double,’
Then thought of the tat on her bot,
‘Do you have a sailor?’ She blushed, I had nailed her,
For Fair she was certainly not!

David Lewis Paget

I sit entranced by the silver screen
To watch and wait for your eyes,
To peer on out, as I sit and dream,
Between the clouds in my skies.
I’ve carried you in my heart so long
Without a kiss from your lips,
But sat and sighed till I almost died
For a touch from your fingertips.

I’ve traced the gentle curve of your cheek,
The noble arch of your brow,
The slow spread of the smile that said:
‘I want to be with you, now.’
I’ve watched the tears that we both have shed
For the years that were lost in time,
When you could well have belonged to me,
Or I could have made you mine.

But time and distance are so unfair,
I see you, bright like a star,
One I could wear in my buttonhole
If only it wasn’t so far.
We both reach out and we touch the screen
I trace my fingers on yours,
One day we’ll see, what will be, will be,
But your camera’s set on pause.

David Lewis Paget

They had said that he was dying but
He might as well be home,
He was taking up an empty bed
At the hospital, in Rome,
And no amount of medicaments would
Bring him back to life,
So they threw him in an ambulance
And sent him to his wife.

And she, poor girl, was mystified
She didn’t need the stress,
Of tending to a cadaver while
She wore her party dress.
He saw the world through greying eyes
But he never made a sound,
He’d married her through thick and thin
But on thin, she’d let him down.

His days were grey and mist-like as
He looked around his room,
She’d kept the curtains pulled across
So he lay there in the gloom,
And shadows of her sister would
Stand pensive at his bed,
He’d loved, and he really missed her
But the sister long was dead.

Perhaps he should have married Grace
As the younger of the two,
But that would have left the elder one
Not knowing what to do.
The eldest must be married first
Or so the father said,
So Raymond Royce was given no choice
He’d married Gwen instead.

It seemed as if he woke sometimes
And he went to greet the day,
Out in the broader sunshine where
His pains had gone away.
But Gwen was never there with him
As she’d never been in life,
While Grace had sat and talked with him
As if she were alive.

And when Grace reached and held his hand
He thought that his heart would burst,
The tears he shed from his lonely bed
Said he had loved her first.
He asked why Grace had died on him
And she gave him his reply,
‘My sister Gwen had put poison in
That gift of an apple pie.’

‘She knew I only had eyes for you,
And she thought that you would leave,
She saw the way that you looked at me
And her heart began to grieve.
It wasn’t as if she wanted you
But she knew that if you left,
The world would see it as scandal
And would leave her quite bereft.’

And so he lay there, day by day
While his wife brought boyfriends home,
They lay there in the adjoining room
In that little flat in Rome.
While he could not decide between
Reality and dream,
The grey days were his night, he thought
And the brighter days his cream.

He knew just where he would rather be
In the day-like days with Grace,
But Gwen would settle beside his bed
And would mutter to his face.
He saw her dimly through the mist
And repeat beneath her breath,
‘How long, how long will you resist
When the end for you is death?’

The day came that the sun was bright,
It was time that he was fed,
While Grace looked on as her sister sat
Beside her husband’s bed.
And Grace had whispered between her tears
‘Don’t you even wonder why…’
While her sister, with a face so grim
Sat and fed him apple pie.

David Lewis Paget

He lived in the outer darkness where
You never could see him cry,
With only a lighted candle there
Whenever his eyes were dry,
But I knew him for an evil soul
A troll that waited for you,
To cast me off like a heap of dross
Which is what he’d want you to do.

So you only saw a handsome prince
A hero there in the light,
You told me about the good things that
Your friend had done in your sight,
But you couldn’t see the curling horns
That sprouted out of his head,
Nor even the narrow, squinting eyes
Glowing at night, bright red.

Your image of him was of a lord
Born of a line so high,
While I knew him as a Beelzebub
Who flew in the evening sky.
He often fluttered above my yard
Flinging his barbs at me,
They cut and wounded and hit me hard
With never you there to see.

I felt you slipping away from me
When I saw you huddled with him,
Whispering secret messages
In the hall of the local gym,
I knew that I’d have to take him out
Or risk the loss of your love,
So fashioned a wooden arrow for
One night, when he flew above.

I thought that I’d planned it perfectly
The crossbow hidden outside,
He fluttered over the garden wall
Looking for you, my bride,
I shot him straight through the heart with it,
His chest exploded in light,
I saw, on you, when you bent to him
Your curling horns in the night.

David Lewis Paget

She left without any warning,
Not even saying goodbye,
I turned around and she’d gone to ground
And I always wondered why.
It’s not that I didn’t love her,
And not that I showed no care,
But I got up in the morning
And I found she wasn’t there.

I didn’t know where to find her
There wasn’t even a note,
The only thing that she’d said to me
About leaving was, I quote:
‘I can’t see a long-term future,
I can’t see an always ‘us’,
There’ll come a day when I want away
And I’d hate to make a fuss.’

I noticed her empty wardrobe
For the door she left ajar,
She’d taken the quilt, her drawers were spilt
And she took our second car,
I drove around to her friend’s address
And I asked where she had gone,
But she accused me of carelessness
For losing her friend, Yvonne.

The house is suddenly cold and dark
For she failed to pay the bill,
A dreadful silence is on my heart
For I love the woman still,
And clouds have gathered since she has gone
There’s rain upon the step,
I didn’t think I would feel the chill
But I find my eyes are wet.

It’s not as if I can plead my case
For I don’t know where she is,
The world’s a cruel and empty place
When you lose a goodnight kiss,
Perhaps she’s gone to another love
Is the thought that drives my fear,
Then what I offered was not enough
At the turning of the year.

David Lewis Paget

I’d known him since we were boys at school
So I let him in to the flat,
He wasn’t known for playing the fool,
I knew him better than that,
But he carried a canvas under his arm
And he propped it up on a chair,
And said I needed to help him out
Could I keep the picture there?

I stood well back and surveyed the paint
It was oil, laid on with a knife,
Of a naked woman, with auburn hair
He said it was somebody’s wife,
She lay at rest on a purple lounge
Had shaken her hair quite loose,
And all she wore on her wonderful form
Was a pair of ballet shoes.

‘Why do I need to keep it here?’ I said,
But I didn’t mind,
Something about the woman’s eyes
Said she was one of a kind.
‘Her husband visits me all the time
I wouldn’t want him to see,
He doesn’t know that she had it done
Or passed the picture to me.’

Marcus gave me a fleeting look
But still had the grace to blush,
I didn’t want to embarrass him
Put fingers to lips, said ‘Hush!’
He left, but said that she might pop in
She’d want to inspect the place,
To find it suitable, that her skin
Was hanging in naked grace.

It took a week till she showed her face,
Came hurrying in at the door,
Her head was covered in widow’s lace,
Announced herself as ‘Lenore’,
I doubted that was her real name
But took her through to my den,
The **** hung high on the picture wall,
She stood and she said, ‘Amen’.

And then she turned and she looked at me
And she smiled as if approved,
Something about that smile, her eyes,
And I felt strangely moved,
‘Would you care to see the original,’
She said, and began to strip,
I couldn’t mumble a word, my tongue
Was tied and set to trip.

She told me to look away until
Quite ready for my gaze,
I couldn’t imagine what she did
It seemed to take for days,
I heard her shake out her auburn hair
Until well and truly loose,
And when I looked, she was naked but
For a pair of ballet shoes.

David Lewis Paget

The storm outside was abating, or
He thought that it was, at first,
He’d only gone to the pub with Joe
To slake a raging thirst.
They’d both been out on the landfill
And it was humid through the day,
So Joe said, ‘Bet I can race you there
And put two pints away!’

But the storm had built as they drank in there
And the rain came down in sheets,
Then hailstones peppered the windows and
Joe said, ‘It’s turned to sleet!
I think we’re not going anywhere
‘Til the storm has passed and gone,
We might as well have another..
And it’s your shout,’ he said to John.

They’d known each other forever, and
Had married two sisters, late,
They’d both been into their thirties,
Sister Jean and sister Kate.
While one of them was a loving match,
The other one was mean,
And Joe said, ‘would you consider a swap,
My Kate for her sister, Jean?’

So John had laughed, but he looked away
For he knew that Joe was sore,
For Kate was never the bargain that
His mate was looking for,
Her tongue was sharp, though he knew her bark
Was worse that her fabled bite,
For John was meeting Kate in the dark
When they both were alone at night.

He’d kick himself, for he knew that Jean
Was the love match of the pair,
But she tended to work at night so much
That she often wasn’t there,
And Joe would stay at the pub so late
That they had to throw him out,
He didn’t have cause to go back home
So he stayed until last shout.

The storm continued to rage outside
So they both got worse for drink,
And the talk died down as they sat and frowned,
They both had time to think.
‘We’re always going to be mates,’ said John,
‘I hope that you think so too.’
‘We’re side by side where we both belong
No matter what we might do.’

But the ***** brought on a maudlin state
And it seemed to get to John,
‘It may be time to confess,’ he thought,
‘This deception can’t go on.’
‘I’ve something I have to tell you, Joe,
It’s time I was coming clean.’
But Joe stayed him, and he said, ‘Me first!
Old mate, I’ve been seeing Jean!’

David Lewis Paget

The photos lay in a pile of dust
They’d gathered under the bed,
They’d not seen the light of day for years
Were neglected there, instead,
The wife found them with the first spring clean
And she dumped them in my lap,
‘Who is the ******* the Honda Dream,
And the guy in the leather cap?’

I must have shot her a funny look
As we guys are wont to do,
‘A girl I must have been going with
About twenty before you.’
She picked the photo out of the pile
And she brushed it on her skirt,
I thought, ‘Oh, here we go again,’
Her face said she was hurt.

‘How come I’ve never seen her before,’
She was getting close to tears,
I snatched the photo out of her hand,
‘It must be fifty years!
I can’t recall the time or the place
And I can’t recall her name.’
She punched me once on the shoulder, said:
‘You ought to be ashamed!’

That photo sat on the mantelpiece
And it stared at me for weeks,
A bonny girl with a pouting lip
And the wife gave me no peace.
It was, ‘Just what did you talk about?
What did she used to say?’
I said, ‘I can’t for the life of me
Remember a single day.’

She served the hot-*** up stone cold
And the gravy didn’t move,
I think she mixed it with concrete just
To show she didn’t approve.
I said, ‘I was only twenty then,
That snap was way back when,
We’ve been together for forty years,
Why drag her up again?’

‘You’ve kept her a secret all these years,
That photo, under the bed,
How do I know you’re not in touch?’
I said, ‘She’s probably dead!’
I racked my brains for a memory
But all I could see were thighs,
Pert young ******* and a petticoat
And a twinkle in her eyes.

But still I couldn’t recall her name
Or a single word she’d said,
Only the scent of her sweet young breath
As we rolled in her parents bed,
She’d clung to me on the pillion seat
As her skirt flared out, and streamed,
Down at the back of Fletcher’s Wood
On the back of the Honda Dream.

‘I want to know what you did with her,
Though it doesn’t matter now.’
(I’d fallen for one of those tricks before,
The wife’s a devious cow!)
I thought of the day the fun had gone
When we lay, looked up at the sky,
‘Ah, now I remember what she said,
One word, just one… Goodbye!’

David Lewis Paget

You wake on a bitter morning,
To find that your love is lost,
You turn your head to an empty bed
On the eve of Pentecost.
You reach on out to feel the warmth
That was there in the days of old,
But now, in that empty space you find
That the sheets and the bed are cold.

And then you remember the night before
And that terrible tête à tête,
When you both dug deep for the love you lost
But all you could feel was hate.
You’d always sworn you would make it up
Before you went off to bed,
That chance was lost, now you count the cost
As demons roam in your head.

You think that your partner must recall
All the love that you’ve made till now,
On searching your head, that love is dead,
So how to remember… How?
The eyes that used to adore you, now
Have narrowed down to slits,
The mouth turned down at the corners that
Would pout, as you kissed those lips.

Love is a short term happiness
That doesn’t transpire for long,
For love will frown as it’s beaten down
And comes to the end of the song.
You wait in vain by the open door
In hopes that it reappears,
But time moves on, and you know they’ve gone,
The end of the tale is tears.

David Lewis Paget

The Queen had paid the eunuchs to
Decapitate the King,
And once the deed was done, she thought,
‘I’m Queen of everything.’
She taxed the peasants to the hilt
Took half of every crop,
Her greed was quite rapacious, so
She never thought to stop.

She reigned up in the Castle Bleak
A fortress tall and grim,
That many armies tried to breach
But never could get in,
The only weakness she could see
From top, and looking down,
The trees that grew so tall against
The wall had made her frown.

‘We’ll have to chop those poplar trees
They’re getting rather tall,
An army might climb up one night,
They’re right against the wall,’
Her lover, Lord Chantrell had sighed
And tried to put her off,
‘Those poplar trees are beautiful,
Too beautiful to chop.’

She didn’t raise the point again
But went off to the tower,
Where she had locked the eunuchs to
Prevent them taking power,
She sent her German swordsman in
To do the deed, she said,
‘I want to see you come on out
With every ******’s head.’

The Queen was grim and merciless,
She’d act on every whim,
Her thoughts were dark and tortuous
And even with her kin,
Her cousin liked the mead too much
And slutted round the town,
Was gifted with a barrel of it,
Upside down, to drown.

She even chided Lord Chantrell
For eyeing off her maid,
She said, ‘You two can go to hell,’
She thought the girl was laid.
They built a bonfire in the court
The maid was bound and tied,
And Chantrell watched the flames devour
The beauty he had spied.

One day upon the tower top
Chantrell unsheathed his blade,
And sliced his lover’s head clean off
In payment for the maid,
Her head flew down the tower wall,
Her final thoughts were these:
‘These branches break my fall, I’m glad
I didn’t chop the trees.’

David Lewis Paget

I heard the ring of the ambulance
As it barrelled down from E,
But wasn’t really awake, so didn’t
Know that it came for me.
They had me strapped on a stretcher
In the twinkling of an eye,
And only when we arrived, did I
Believe I was going to die.

The pain had been unrelenting since
I’d eaten the evening meal,
It started up in my shoulder, and
My hands, I couldn’t feel,
I felt my head become groggy, till
I finally passed out,
It must have been when I hit the floor
That I heard your sudden shout.

They said it must be a heart attack
So they’d have to run a test,
But while I lay in the hospital
I’d better get some rest.
I kept on coming and going while
The questions filled my head,
I wondered if I’d been poisoned,
Did you really want me dead?

I’d thought that it tasted funny, at
The time, as I said to you,
The meat had had a consistency
As if it was cooked in glue,
And then some of those vegetables
I couldn’t recognise,
You said I’d not know the difference
Between casseroles and pies.

And then, it must be about the time
That my forehead became damp,
You said whatever I knew of food
You could write on a postage stamp,
But you had been acting strangely since
That boarder came to stay,
Spending your time in drinking wine
That he’d brought from Bordelais.

I knew to look for the danger signs
In your long retreat from me,
I knew at once that he had designs
When his hand had touched your knee,
And every time that I left you two
Alone on a sultry day,
I had to wonder what you would do
To while the time away.

Your friend, Margot, has visited me
Alone in my hospital bed,
She said you were picking mushrooms,
Which has left my mind in dread.
She always seems to have favoured me,
And she sat and held my hand,
She said I shouldn’t have married you,
This is what you would have planned.

My mind was full of suspicion when
You came to visit me,
But you had cried, said I almost died,
And that brought you misery.
‘You know that I’ve always loved you,
But that love has brought me pain,
Whenever you look at Margot, it’s
Like losing you again.’

I asked her about the boarder and
She said that he’d gone before,
‘I only ever played up to him
To make you want me more.’
We’re both a prey to suspicions
And the heartache that they lend,
We’re over that, and we made a pact,
Our love is on the mend.

David Lewis Paget

It was Black Dog Night at the station,
With a Black Dog caught in my hair,
There were too many owls, there were shrieks and howls
There was too much intolerance there.

There were tales floating out and forgotten,
There were stories that claimed to be hype
There were nightmare things with handfuls of rings
There were things too awful to type.

There were nasties a-float in the darkness,
There were Gorgons, that looked for a fight,
There were these and more, and Griffins of yore
That gave any sentence respite.

In the dark, I could hear the farmer scream
He’d just cut the throat of his wife,
But the low of the cattle had masked her death rattle
And the slash-slash-slash of his knife.

There were monsters that sat on my keyboard,
They were growling, and screamed ‘Let me in!’
But I pushed them away, and I cried ‘Not today,’
They were creeping right under my skin.

Then a voice echoed up from the valley
Where the darkest of dreams lay at rest,
‘You may type in the grail at the end of my tale
If you’re sure that Milady is dressed.’

The night came and flew in the window,
To block all the plots I had kept,
It’s the Black Dog way, no story today
For the rest of the night, barely slept.

It was Black Dog Night at the station
With the rails outside rusted through,
But the Ghost Train came in the mist and the rain
With a story, at last, that was true!

David Lewis Paget

I knew that something was going on
When she went to walk each night,
Just on dusk when the tide swept in
With the blue moon of delight,
She never asked me to tag along
Though at times I thought she must,
We’d once been close, but the time was wrong
And our closeness turned to dust.

I stayed back up in the dunes while she
Took on the darkening shore,
It triggered memories held when we
Had walked it once before,
That gentle rise where the sand had dried
And we sat awhile and kissed,
Now I sat lonely and cold aside
Bemoaning what I’d missed.

I didn’t follow along the beach
Too scared what I might find,
A lovers tryst in the dark I feared
That might upset my mind,
I knew my temper was short and so
I feared what might be done,
Out there, and under a hasty moon
Might see me overcome.

The moon was skirting the ocean’s rim
The stars were riding high,
My only thought as she disappeared,
In a single word, was ‘Why?’
I wondered what the attraction was
That would take her away each night,
Would leave me sat alone in the gloom
Like a pensive troglodyte.

It had to come to an end, I knew
So I strode along the beach,
Followed the trail of footprints where
The tide had failed to reach,
Till sudden, there was the sweetest song
On the wind, I ever knew,
And there was Isobel, sitting rapt
While the notes came fast and few.

And on a rock set above the tide
Sat the singer of the song,
The perfect form of a sweet mermaid
With her tail, so curved and long,
But then she gave out a sudden cry
When she saw my shadow fall,
And slithered back off the rock, to swim
Below to the mermaids’ hall.

‘Why did you come,’ said Isobel,
‘Why did you have to pry,
She’ll never come to the shore again
To sing to the empty sky.’
I turned and ran from her angry gaze
But at least I now know why,
She sits at night in the moon’s half light
And I often hear her cry.

David Lewis Paget

I have nothing left to say
All my thoughts have blown away,
And I dread the sun that rises in the morning,
For my wife will look at me
Knowing all my history,
While my emptiness is all that I was born in.

For the world has bled me dry
Took the tears I meant to cry,
And corrupted everything that I believed in,
All the things I thought were right
Disappeared overnight,
Leaving only false ideals that were deceiving.

All I see is greed and hate
Love that tends to dissipate,
And the friends that turn away when you are needing,
All the former friends before
Who came knocking at your door,
But don’t want to know the score when you are bleeding.

Life is much too long alone
When your family has grown
Leaving just the faintest essence of their passing,
When they find the world out there
They have little left to share
But the faded photographs you lived your past in.

I was young, but now I’m old
So the story has been told
And there’s little in the future I’ll be keeping,
But a faded, caring wife
Who stood by me in this life,
And will still be by my side when we are sleeping.

David Lewis Paget

They’d built too close to the cliffside edge
And the winters grew so cold,
The ocean seemed to be rising with
The waves, as in they rolled,
They tore away the base of the cliff
And swept it out to sea,
The house was poised on the cliffside edge
And would soon be history.

Two brothers lived in the fated house
That had once comprised of three,
For one of the brothers had a wife
Who was called Penelope,
But something funny was going on
The folks around there said,
For Penny was always seen with John
But had been the wife of Fred.

They both had courted the girl before
And each had bought a ring,
Then asked Penelope could she choose
Between them, there’s the thing,
She told the brothers she loved them both,
The choice was hard, she said,
‘A half of me would marry with John,
But I have to go with Fred.’

The rumours started around the town
That she had the best of two,
She’d sleep for half a week with Fred
And the rest, with you know who.
They’d say that voices were raised in there
It wasn’t going well,
What should have been a heaven on earth
Would seem some kind of hell.

For just on a year she went to town
And shopped just like the rest,
She smiled that bright Penelope smile
Was always nicely dressed,
But then she stopped, and she wasn’t seen
As the brothers did the shop,
Then they would glower at everything
And they wouldn’t talk, or stop.

But still the sound of their voices raised
Would echo from that house,
Til Fred stopped going around with John,
There was no sign of his spouse,
The storm that came at the midnight hour
Then washed away the cliff,
The house plunged into the water and
The rumours said, ‘What if?’

The house was shattered as in it plunged
Each piece was washed away,
And morning had seen the strangest sight,
A coffin, out in the bay,
The rescue boat had dragged it in
And dumped it up on the shore,
Along with a drenched Penelope
So they wondered, more and more.

They found a body, washed on the beach,
It was hard to recognise,
They asked Penelope could she view them
Once she’d dried her eyes,
They opened the coffin for her first
And in there lay her Fred,
His throat was ****** and torn apart
And Penelope bowed her head.

‘I got so sick of the arguments,
It was like being wed to two,
They raved and ranted most every day
I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You say John murdered his brother then?’
But the police were being kind,
Penelope shook her head, and said,
‘I suddenly changed my mind.’

David Lewis Paget

The sun sat up on the mountain top
And started to sink from view,
A shadow, spread on the valley floor
Was creeping over you,
You’d just told me that you’d had enough
In the shade of a chestnut tree,
And then I saw in your shrouded smile
That you meant you were through with me.

I didn’t know what I’d done to you,
I thought it was only love,
But then the shadow had covered you
From the mountain top above,
You pulled your hood up over your hair
And wrapped yourself in your cloak,
Said you were going to leave me there
Go off with some other folk.

Your words were cruel, and pierced my heart
I wasn’t aware I’d erred,
You acted as if we’d strayed apart,
There was someone you preferred,
We’d been together so long I thought
That no-one could take my place,
But since you’ve shown that I’m on my own
I’m afraid of losing face.

And so I lie in the Mulberry bush
And I wait to see him here,
His first embrace with the one I love
Will become his last, I fear,
I took the knife from the kitchen drawer
With a view to bring his end,
But now I see as he ventures near
That the cheating one’s my friend.

How could you take my friend from me
As you take yourself away,
It isn’t enough that I’m losing you
But my friend as well, today,
I’ll not be spilling his blood tonight
As I thought I’d surely do,
But all the anger and hurt I feel
Has turned the knife on you.

David Lewis Paget

I’ve been looking in the mirror
Every day since I was three,
Till a week ago I looked again
And saw it wasn’t me.
For this haggard face with wrinkles
And grey hair that should be black,
Took my place within the mirror,
And it stood there, staring back.

Sure, it registered surprise and seemed
To stare, and be in shock,
And behind me in the mirror stood
Our old grandfather clock,
It was ticking off the moments,
All that I had left of life,
So in case it was an omen, then
I thought I’d call the wife.

‘Can you see that ancient visage
In the glass, Penelope?
It’s supposed to be my image
But I think it isn’t me,’
And Penelope had stood and stared
Then shook her greying hair,
‘Yes, that scar was on your left cheek, dear,
But now it isn’t there.’

I was staring at the visage and
It gave me quite a fright,
For that scar upon my left cheek now
Showed firmly on the right.
And the parting in my hair was not
Just where it used to be,
For most everything was back to front,
So who the hell was he?

‘There’s a demon in the mirror,’
I exclaimed, ‘it has my mole,
And it’s come here from the devil just
To claim my mortal soul,’
So I seized a ball pein hammer and
Attacked the mirror glass,
Till it shattered into tiny shards,
That’s seven years, alas!

We’ve not allowed a mirror in
The house, from then to now,
We won’t invite a demon in,
We’ll keep him out, somehow.
We know we both are ageing, but
We’re not as bad as that,
Penelope will paint her face,
While I just wear a hat.

David Lewis Paget

We came into this life alone
A long, long time ago,
With each of us to each unknown
It gave us time to grow,
Then season after season passed
Our lives would open yet,
When my eyes lit on you at last
Upon the day we met.

And since that day, just like a dream
We’ve never been apart,
You’re everything that love would seem
To this, my bursting heart.
And so today we tie the knot
That binds us both for life,
When I call you my husband, dear,
And you call me your wife.

David Lewis Paget

He’d ventured out with his fishing gear
Before the breaking dawn,
Packed the bait in his four wheel drive
And backed it across the lawn,
He knew that he’d be the only one
At that time on the beach,
And maybe catch, with the early worm,
From the rocks along the breach.

He’d parked the Ranger, doused the lights
Before he looked to see,
The miles and miles of sand out there,
But no sign of the sea.
It must have been one of those funny tides
That receded out of sight,
There wasn’t a billow or breaking crest
Though the sea was there last night.

He climbed back into the Ranger then
And drove, while it was firm,
Way, way out, where the winter spray
Would freeze the air, in turn,
He must have driven a mile or more
But the sea was out of sight,
There were only deepening rock pools that
Were uncovered, overnight.

He stopped and parked by a monster pool
In the hopes there’d be a catch,
Long and deep where the fish would keep
Till the tide came rolling back.
He tossed his line with a baited hook
And it sank into the depths,
Until a flurry of water caught
His eye, and snagged his nets.

And then there rose to the surface such
A sight he’d never seen,
A pale and struggling girl with eyes
Of blue, and hair of green,
He hauled her in with his net until
Her strength began to fail,
And then he noticed that from her waist
Was a silver, fishes tail.

‘My god, you must be a mermaid,’ he
Exclaimed, but more in shock,
And she lay still and she stared at him
From a seaweed ledge of rock,
She didn’t struggle, she didn’t fight
But she held her arms up high,
As he gently lifted the mermaid up
And he swore he heard her sigh.

That was more than a year ago
And the sea’s back, as before,
But he is more of a stay-at-home
Won’t go fishing anymore.
He sits and plays by his covered pool
So the contents can’t be seen,
And frolics there with the tiny fish,
And all of their hair is green.

David Lewis Paget

Have you crept off into the darkness,
Have you hidden yourself in your spell,
Is your world the world of starkness,
Are you two steps closer to hell?
I felt you throw off the purple quilt
As the night came down as mist,
And take the stairs in a rush, full tilt
As you called out, ‘Please desist!’

Your legs had flashed on the stairwell,
Your thighs stark white in the hall,
When only minutes before I’d had
You pressed tight up by the wall.
I sipped and bit at your lower lip
As I raised your face for a kiss,
But pressed up tight by the hallway light
I could see your eyes resist.

Your spell is the essence of madness,
I find myself at your feet,
Is love this impossible sadness
Like a gourmet meal, replete,
I watch you dance when the Moon is yolk
And your mantle twirls and flares,
At night, in front of the gentle folk
You delight in their naked stares.

You never like to be seen by day
The light of the sun is harsh,
You’re more content to be naked by
The dwindling light of the stars,
I don’t know whether you’ll come to me
It’s much too early to tell,
I asked you once, and you said you’d be
Just two steps closer to hell.

David Lewis Paget

The place was a crumbling ruin,
It sat on the top of a hill,
If we hadn’t been travelling tired that day
We may have been travelling still,
But you said we ought to seek shelter there
From a sudden deluge of rain,
So I parked outside its terraces
And entered the palace of pain.

You were the first to say ‘It’s strange,
The feeling within these halls,’
While all I could hear were the scraping sounds
That came from the whispering walls.
It must have been long deserted, it
Was just like a pile of bones,
That someone left when its throat was cleft
And lay fading into its moans.

The night came down with a vengeance once
We’d made our camp on the floor,
And rain poured in at the windows that
Were probably there before,
You said we’d leave when the morning came
Once the sun was up, and bright,
We didn’t know that an age of shame
Wrapped that place in an endless night.

I tried to sleep but you’d wake me up
Each time that I dropped my head,
‘Didn’t you hear that dreadful scream?’
I seem to remember you said.
But all I heard were the awful groans
That echoed around the halls,
I couldn’t explain the sense of dread
That came from the whispering walls.

I thought that the rain poured down on us
I thought that we lay in mud,
I lit a match in the early hours
To see you covered in blood.
I said, ‘We’d better go back to sleep
Till the nightmare hour is past,
But then you noticed the blood on me
And you screamed, and lay aghast.

I wish that we’d never gone near the place
I wish we’d stayed in the car,
Then you’d still be who you used to be
And I would know where you are!
But you ran screaming into the night
When they came with their hoods and gowns,
With their bloodied hands and their burning brands
To burn the place to the ground.

David Lewis Paget

She raked through the hearth fire ashes,
And scattered the chicken bones,
Then turned a page in a silent rage
And added some pebble stones,
She searched for a spell to end in hell
For the man who had told her ‘No,’
A spell of hate from her hearth fire grate
To follow wherever he’d go.

While he stood out on the roadway
Considering where he’d been,
He’d fled out there from the witches lair
Where she’d lured him, sight unseen.
At first she seemed to be beautiful
When first he entered her lair,
But then his eyes grew wide in surprise,
Got used to the dark in there.

She’d sat on a velvet cushion
And raised her skirt to the knee,
He thought he saw what she wanted him for
As she smiled unpleasantly,
He turned in a mild confusion,
His women were never so bold,
He sat and stared, got out of his chair,
Said ‘Sorry, you’re just too old.’

He looked at the streets about him,
And noticed the cobblestones,
They crissed and crossed, he was more than lost
In a muddle of chicken bones.
He couldn’t figure which way to go,
As they’d twist and turn out there,
And every time he would cross the road
He’d end back at the witches lair.

His mouth was a pile of ashes,
His mind full of pebble stones,
He found himself at the same front door
Spitting out chicken bones.
He burst back into the witches lair
And he saw her crouched by the hearth,
She stared at him with an awful grin,
Let out a terrible laugh.

‘Have you come again to reject me,
To tell me I’m just too old?
You’ll never recover your other lover,’
She said, and his heart turned cold.
He snatched at her faded Grimoire,
And turned to another page,
Then read a spell from a demon of hell
That was said, would make her age.

He muttered the words of the ritual
And her face grew taut with fear,
Her hair turned grey at the words he’d say
At the spell she’d not want to hear.
Her skin grew slack, and fell from her bones
As it said in that ancient tome,
Then his head had cleared as she disappeared,
And he went wandering home.

David Lewis Paget

I walked on down to the travelling show
Thinking to take a ride,
When the barker said, in a voice so low
‘There’s a Dancing Girl inside.’
He opened the flap of the crimson tent
And he tried to wave me in,
I said I didn’t know what he meant,
He replied, ‘What price for sin?’

I said I wanted to take a ride
Not look at a Dancing Girl,
There were plenty down at the local club
In my easy, ****** world.
‘There’s not a thing she could teach me now
For I’ve seen it all before.’
He said, ‘This girl is the Jezebel
Who performed for Kings, and more.’

I waved him off and I carried on
In my search for a thrilling ride,
And spent the evening whirling, twirling
Over the countryside,
But as I turned to travel on home
I passed by the crimson tent,
And the barker opened the flap again
To see if I would relent.

It must have been curiosity
For I turned and went inside,
Into its darkened depths I went
To flatter his wounded pride,
There was eastern music playing low
And I heard a woman wail,
Kneeling in front of an altar there
And the name inscribed was ‘Baal.’

She heard me there, and got to her feet,
And danced like an ancient rhyme,
But underneath the paint on her face
Was the ravage of endless time,
Gold and silver glittered and gleamed
From the very little she wore,
With chains and bracelets jangling as
She danced around, like a *****.

She pressed her body against me then
And jabbered some foreign tongue,
The only word that I thought I heard
Was the one on the altar, One!
The barker stood in the entranceway
And she muttered his name, aloud,
She said Ahab, and I thought to run
He stood in the way, and bowed.

She pushed me up to the altar then
And tried to force me to kneel,
I thought of the Bible story, and
My skin had crawled at her feel,
I fought her off, and pushed her away
The man she called Ahab scowled,
And as I left by the flap of the tent
The dogs by the entrance howled.

David Lewis Paget

I watched her dance with her bright red crop
At a party of Do or Dare,
Strutting her stuff on a table top
I knew I could have her there.
For she mouthed at me, ‘You’re the only one,’
As she stripped right down to the buff,
I mouthed, ‘You’re on,’ but she still danced on
I’d never have seen enough.

While all the others would reach and *****
I stood well back and I stared,
She tipped champagne all over their heads
All over the ones that dared,
She fell down into my open arms
Once she had finished her dance,
While Emma Lou took her place up there,
But I’d found a new romance.

I’d gone to the party for Emma Lou
Who’d wanted to meet me there,
She’d said, ‘I feel like taking a chance,
The party’s a Do or Dare.’
We’d only dated a month or two
But that hadn’t got too far,
We’d gone for drinks at the Seven Links
And necked in the back of the car.

But Carla Deane was a ginger dream
For flames had danced in her hair,
The prettiest body I’d ever seen,
I knew she wanted to share,
For in my arms I could feel her charms
And she raised her lips for a kiss,
Her silken skin promised treats within
And who was I to resist?

She dressed again, it was almost ten
When she took me home to her flat,
And poured a couple of highballs, then
She suddenly said, ‘That’s that!’
It seems her wager with Emma Lou
Said she could steal me away,
If she could, anyone else could too,
She didn’t intend to play.

I felt like the dog with a juicy bone
Stood staring into a stream,
And seeing my own reflection there
I’d dropped the bone for a dream.
For Emma Lou never came to call
The bone I’d managed to drop
For one swept over a waterfall
Who’d danced on a table top.

David Lewis Paget

Her picture was in ‘The Courier’,
A beauty with auburn hair,
I must admit I was taken in
As I sat alone, to stare.
Her eyes met mine with a knowing look
For her gaze was so intense,
Only a print in a newspaper,
I was making little sense.

I ******* the paper and tossed it out,
At least, it hit the bin,
But later I would scrabble about
For the piece that she was in.
I smoothed the paper and put the pic
Where it would be safe, and keep,
But found I still was thinking of her
At the sharp end of the week.

She showed again on the social page
Of that dreary rag, ‘The Sun’,
Was standing there in the background of
Some wedding that was on,
Again I scissored the picture out
And I put it with its mate,
But hadn’t a clue just what to do
It began to feel like fate!

I asked around at ‘The Courier’,
I asked about at ‘The Sun’,
But nobody seemed to know where she
Could be, though she seemed like fun.
‘She’s always there in the background where
The photo’s all get shot,
Then after the shoot is over, first
She’s there, and then she’s not.’

I started to hang about in clubs
And the places she might be,
I needed to salt her tail so I
At least, could set me free,
Her image was always staring, glaring
Stuck in my mind each day,
And then, I couldn’t get off to sleep
So I’d curse the night away.

Her face popped out of a magazine,
A poster, there in the hall,
Standing behind some advertising
Blurb, on the old sea wall,
I went along to the ******’s Rest
Thinking to have a drink,
And not too far, but along the bar
I saw… Well, who do you think?

I walked up behind her, shaking, quaking,
Tapped, and spun her around,
‘You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through,
I’ve finally run you to ground!’
She smiled, and patted her auburn hair
‘Well, would you believe, it’s true!
Since I saw you staring into the page
I’ve been looking for you!’

David Lewis Paget

It’s only a week since I raised my head
From the depths of my favourite book,
The final tale in my library
And my basic foundations shook.
It had been so long since the world went wrong
And I fled from the things I heard,
To hide my head with the living dead,
And lose myself in The Word.

For the printed word is a friend of mine
Its sentiments never change,
It’s comforting when you read a rhyme
That no-one can rearrange.
No matter how many have read it once
The story will still suffice,
You know that the ending will be the same
When you come back to read it twice.

But the world outside, it seems had died
With its people all grown cold,
There was nothing left I could recognise
From the world that I’d left of old.
There wasn’t a smile on a single face
Or a humorous moment left,
There seemed a general loss of grace
With everything so correct.

The money hangs from the tallest tree,
Too high for us all to climb,
This world is new, belongs to the few
It certainly isn’t mine.
Another stabbing, another death
Is all that I read out here,
And populations take to the boats
As millions live in fear.

Small wonder then, I wander the streets
To look for a library,
In the search for a book I’ve never read
On the way that it used to be.
A former time when the world was mine
I’ll find it, by hook or crook,
For distant smiles and a woman’s wiles
I’ll bury my head in a book.

David Lewis Paget

The garden at home, from what I recall
Was massive and overgrown,
More like a huge untended park
That was mine to explore and roam.
There were trees and shrubs and flowerbeds
That were all burnt up and dried,
I never saw anyone water it
So most of the garden died.

And my grandfather would wander about
And he’d grumble under his beard,
Mumble about his offspring, as he
Wondered what he’d reared.
‘They all take after their mother’s side,’
He would say, ‘They have no spine,
I’ve searched and searched for an Astrogoth
But I don’t think that they’re mine.’

I doubted they really wanted me,
They’d throw me over the fence,
And say, ‘Go play with your grandfather,
He’s more like you, and dense.’
Then off they’d go to the garden’s end
To sit by the smoking pit,
Whenever I’d ask if I could go
My mother would throw a fit.

‘Don’t go to the end of the garden or
We might just leave you there,
Your cousin fell in the pit of hell
And was burnt beyond compare.’
I watched the smoke pour out of the ground
To see if my parents lied,
But sure as hell, there were flames as well
Right there, where my cousin died.

One day I watched as it opened up
To reveal the son of sin,
My parents ventured a little close
And then they had tumbled in,
He yelled and roared, called on the Lord
That he spared him in his den,
‘Just take your half-wits back,’ he cried,
‘My hell is not for them!’

I haven’t been to the garden now
For years, since my Gramps took off,
So I’m the only descendant now
With the name of Astrogoth,
That smoking pit with a door to it
I have tried for years to sell,
But nobody seems to want to buy
A personal door to hell.

David Lewis Paget

We were out on a training mission
Up in a Neptune, hunting a sub,
The pilot was Captain Grissom
Taking a nap, aye, that was the rub,
The plane was on auto-pilot
Left in the hands of Lieutenant Free,
While I was down in the nose cone
Keeping a watch, beneath us the sea.

The skies were a starlit wonder
Never a cloud to temper the view,
The Moon, it had barely risen
Casting its light with a purple hue,
We’d dropped right down to a thousand feet
As the sonar checked the bay,
Then Free had said, ‘There’s a flock of birds,
Just a couple of miles away.’

The plotters gave out a chatter
Picking the signals up from the buoys,
The Snifter, it didn’t matter
It was detecting diesel oils,
But up on the pilot’s radar screen
Was a mass of darkened rows,
I heard Free say on the intercom:
‘It’s a swarm of migrant crows.’

We knew we’d better not hit them
They could be ****** into the pods,
And then if they clogged the jets our fate
Would be in the hands of gods,
I peered on out through the perspex cone
It was much too dark to see
A couple of thousand crows out there
With feathers as black as could be.

Free said we should duck beneath them
So he took us down real low,
The shapes had massed on the radar screen
There couldn’t be far to go,
And then I had caught a sight of them
The first of these flying things,
My voice croaked into the intercom,
‘None of these crows have wings.’

They flew on the straight and level
Bunched in groups of two or three,
I knew they were something nasty,
Then I heard Lieutenant Free,
He seemed to choke, he’s a rational bloke
And couldn't believe his eyes,
‘If you can see what they are, tell me,
Don’t give me a bunch of lies.’

But who’d be the first to say it,
I was pensive, down in the cone,
Nothing I’d say would mend it
If I was first to say on my own,
‘It looks like a flight of witches
All in black, and each on a broom,’
The crew back there were in stitches
Thinking that I was a ****** Toon.

The coven dived on an island
Covered in trees, and out in the bay,
I thought that we might collect one
But we gave them the right of way,
‘We’ll tell them, when we get back,’ said Free,
That it was a flight of crows,
Don’t anyone talk about witches, for
It’s best if nobody knows.’

David Lewis Paget

I knew that I shouldn’t be driving,
I’d had one more for the road,
So Jean and me were half cut, you see,
Were carrying quite a load.
We’d tried the Tequila slammers,
I’d even swallowed the worm,
I wish to hell I had lost the key
Then we’d both be home, and warm.

The road was most uninviting,
Was glistening in the dark,
We climbed on into the Beamer,
And headed out of the park.
The rain was a constant drizzle
As the Moon peeked over the trees,
I know that I should have listened
When Jean would entreat me, ‘Please!’

She always said that I drove too fast
And she was probably right,
I slammed my foot down flat to the boards
And sped away through the night.
The headlights cut a swathe through the trees
And lit the road in an arc,
I thought that we were invincible,
Speeding home in the dark.

It must have been a tyre that blew,
The Beamer suddenly veered,
The car careened off the road, it seemed,
No matter how I had steered.
It seemed to leap at a grove of trees
And hit the oak at a lean,
I was safe with my seatbelt on,
But Jean had flown through the screen.

She’d been sat quietly, holding my hand,
Her warmth was all that I felt,
She’d whispered softly her words of love,
Forgotten to put on her belt.
Now she lay spread on the bonnet there
Her head crushed into the tree,
I hoped and prayed, but I didn’t dare
Step out of the wreck, to see.

And then I heard her whispering words
Float back through the shattered screen,
‘If only you had listened to me…’
I said, ‘I know what you mean.’
‘You know our love was a special love,’
She seemed to whisper afar,
‘Just know my love will always be there,
I’ll beam it down from a star.’

My life is cold, and empty as well,
Since ever my love was lost,
I carry around my private hell
In a heart that is tempest tossed.
For now I know that I have no choice
When it all comes back to me,
If ever I need to hear her voice
I go to the whispering tree.

David Lewis Paget

They laid her out on a plastic sheet
Where she stared unseeingly,
With nothing to cover her naked form
When they said, ‘Come in and see.’
I thought how she would be mortified
To be naked under their gaze,
But she was laid in the mortuary
For this was her end of  days.

That final humiliation is saved
To be served at the end of life,
They saw her just as an empty shell,
But I, as my loving wife.
She still looked stunning, and had the form
That would peak any man’s desire,
But all of life had been ripped and torn
Before she entered the fire.

They’d taken her kidneys, liver too,
And had left some ugly scars,
But her gorgeous *******, and that little nest
Were left, for they had been ours.
I’d not have shared her with anyone,
We’d ****** at each other’s breath,
But she had signed for her organs, so
I had to share her with death.

I heard the crackle of flames behind
The grim steel plate of the door,
That they would open, and ****** her in
Just like a victim of war,
The horror tales of the holocaust
Came flitting across my brain,
That final test that would scorch the flesh
And all I could feel was pain.

She’s sitting up on the mantlepiece
In an urn of marble and stone,
A red ribbon sash, surrounding her ash,
I couldn’t leave her alone.
I hear her sigh in the early hours
As she did, whenever we sinned,
And wander around our lonely house,
Perhaps, it’s only the wind.

David Lewis Paget

He came on down from the mountain like
An ancient prophet of old,
His hair was long, and fine and white
And his neck was chained with gold,
He carried a staff as he limped on in
To the farm, and asked for a bed,
I said, ‘We live in the farmhouse here,
But there’s hay in the cattle shed.’

He thanked me then and he stayed the night
I thought he’d be gone at dawn,
But the sun was high on the mountainside
When I saw him stand in the corn,
‘Your Lord provides and is bountiful,
You must have kept his commands,
My people wandered for forty years
In the drift of the desert sands.’

I asked him if I could know his name
For the strangers here were few,
He looked askance, but he shook my hand,
‘It’s Moses, here, to you.
I’m on my way to the Canaanites
Who possess my promised lands,
But I need to know where I have to go
I’m a stranger in your hands.’

I thought he must have been wandering,
Some defect of the mind,
I said, ‘You’re not on the continent
That you want so hard to find,
That mountain there isn’t Sinai,
We’re far too south to gauge,
This farm’s in Eastern Australia
By the Great Dividing Range.

He shook his head and his eyes went dead
And he turned towards the creek,
It was riding high with a swollen tide
For the best part of a week,
I thought, he’ll never get over that,
The current is far too strong,
But he beat his staff on the bank, three times,
How could I be so wrong?

The water parted, it ceased to flow,
But it raised in two tall towers,
Then he set off in the midst of it,
I sat in shock for hours,
The last I saw he was marching off
As the creek collapsed to flow,
I thought, ‘and the best of British luck,
You’ve a helluva way to go!’

David Lewis Paget

She used to walk in the woods at night,
She said she needed the air,
But didn’t want me to go with her,
She said that it’s cold out there.
‘Well, cold for me would be cold for you,’
I said, but she didn’t mind,
‘I need to go on my own,’ she said,
Made out she was being kind.

Though what it was I would find, who knew?
It raised suspicions in me,
For what do you meet in a darkened wood
But only the occasional tree?
Perhaps she wasn’t the only one
Who wandered into the sward,
Maybe another lonely one,
But no, she gave me her word.

Not that her word was worth too much
As I’d caught her out before,
Meeting a man delinquently,
But never again, she swore.
I had no reason to doubt her then
She said she would play it square,
‘It’s only an empty wood,’ she said,
‘There’s nothing but trees out there.’

I followed her into the woods one night,
Kept quietly out of sight,
And watched as she entered a clearing,
Deep in the dead of night.
She walked straight up to an old ash tree
And knelt before it, and prayed,
While fronds from the tree encircled her,
Like some strange masquerade.

And then as I watched, a shape appeared
Embedded within the tree,
The form of a man, the god named Pan
As clear as it could be.
Patricia advanced, embraced him now
And the form sprang into life,
Doing the things you wouldn’t do
Except with a much loved wife.

He looked like a goat that stood *****,
His horns swept back from his head,
Balancing on his cloven hoofs
While I hid myself in dread.
He raised a set of pipes to his lips
And played an enchanting tune,
That swept the glade as Patricia played
And cavorted in the gloom.

Then suddenly I was back at home,
Woke up in my easy chair,
I rubbed my eyes to the sound of sighs
And Patricia was standing there.
‘I just had the strangest dream,’ I said,
‘Of you in a woodland glade.’
And she just smiled for a little while
As I sat in my chair, dismayed.

‘I think I know why you wander now,
Though you never will with me,
There’s something about a clearing there
And a most remarkable tree.’
She turned, and pierced me with a look
That said that she didn’t care,
‘It’s true, I have a favourite nook
Where I go… I saw you there!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.
The hopes I cherished are in the past,
The dreams all come undone,
I look ahead to the future and
I know, there isn’t one.’

He sat alone on the patio
And stared on out to the bay,
‘There was a time,’ he began again,
Then stopped in his dismay,
For whitecaps out in the ocean still
Were rolling in to the shore,
Just like they had on another day,
Just like they’d done before.

And pictures came to his aging eye
Of the world, how it had been,
When life and love were a world away
When he was just sixteen,
But times and tides had rolled over him
In a restless, reckless ride,
Had torn the very heart out of him
To leave empty space inside.

‘There must be a time,’ he thought aloud
‘When it’s right to call it quits,
When you’ve done the things that you wanted to
And it’s fallen all to bits,
With friends and lovers gone on their way
And with not a glance aside,
While I, stiff-necked, being so correct,
Am caught in the sin of pride.’

And then, the thought of his darling wife
Had finally raised a tear,
The sense he’d not even noticed her
For the time that she was here,
‘We never know what we’ve got,’ he thought,
‘Til it’s well and truly lost,
Just one more line in the ledger that
Adds up to the final cost.’

Then the children, what of the children with
That look of innocent trust,
Who burrowed into that heart you had
When you thought that God was just,
But once they’re grown and you find they’ve flown
To their lives, to stand or fall,
You wait for them to return to you
But you find they never call.

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.’
The only sound was the breaking waves
With the salt-spray and its sting,
He looked about like a man who craves,
But none were listening!

David Lewis Paget

The parents of Valentine Ogilby should
Be stood by a wall, and be shot,
They gave him a label that he was unable
To change, were he willing or not.
The girls always clustered around him at school,
The boys shooed him off with contempt,
He’d act as if flustered, but always could muster
A kiss for a girl in a tent.

His kisses were infamous, hugs were immense,
We thought his behaviour was odd,
He grew to believe that each woman conceived
That he was a gift from God.
He wouldn’t stay faithful for even a day,
Was caught kissing everyone’s girl,
But nothing would stay them, they’d cry and would pray them,
He’d set every heart in a whirl.

We threatened to cool him off once in a stream,
We threatened to chop off his hair,
His giant libido had fashioned his credo
He taunted us then, ‘Wouldn’t dare!’
The girls in our town became suddenly plump,
Were waddling up street and down,
There was almost a riot, they said it was diet,
We thought, ‘It’s that Valentine clown.’

I heard that he’d died of a heart attack
When just coming up twenty nine,
It’s lucky he did, for the child support kid
Would be bankrupt by now, doing time.
I’d watched as he’d hurried from Angel to Zara,
His creed was a creed that’s sublime,
For once in his passing he gasped at the asking:
‘Too many women,
Not enough time!’

David Lewis Paget

I like to dive on a sunken wreck
If the sea is not too rough,
The seabed’s littered with carcasses
I never can get enough,
They range from the Roman caravel,
With the huge, high mounted prow,
To the dinosaurs of steel, from wars,
Still roaming the oceans now.

Some of them lie not far offshore
So the water’s not too deep,
I can trail an oxy line down there
Up to a hundred feet,
But a scuba tank I would have to thank
For the freedom to explore,
Deep in the bowels of a sunken ship
In the search for gold moidores.

I dived one blustery Autumn day
In a well known coastal rip,
The sea rose up and carried me off
Away from my chosen ship,
But through the gloom of that Autumn storm
There loomed an exciting shape,
The remains of a Spanish Galleon,
Blown way off course by the Cape.

All I could see was the galleon stern
With the Bon-Adventure mast,
Broken off and above the mud
It had settled in, at last,
I wriggled in through a window frame
And I found the Captain’s den,
Complete with the Captain’s skull and bones
Back from I don’t know when.

The figure sat at a writing desk
Sprawled in an ancient chair,
The wood of each was well preserved
And so was the Captain’s hair,
A flintlock pistol lay on the desk
Next to the dead man’s hand,
A bullet hole in the bleached white skull
As the ship sank into the sand.

I knew that gold lay under the mud,
I’d have to come back and search,
But just as the storm was blowing up
The galleon gave a lurch,
It freed itself from its clinging grave
And started to float away,
And I swam out as it disappeared,
Lost to this very day.

For somewhere under the heaving sea
It sails, but under the swell,
Back where its sailors sailed before
When they were consigned to hell.
It roams abroad with its hoard of gold
And may well settle again,
Along with its phantom Captain, but
Will never be seen by men.

David Lewis Paget

I just got home in the past half hour
From a great weekend at the lake,
I can’t remember how I got home,
I think I’m about to flake.
The driveway’s empty, I lost the car,
The house, as quiet as a tomb,
And where the wife and the kiddies are?
Must be in another room.

The air round here had been highly charged
For weeks, till we got away,
So I suggested a trip from home
If only just for a day.
I thought we could sort our problems out
Just for our marriage’s sake,
I thought that we might find love again
Together, up at the lake.

The kids took buckets and floaties too,
They said that it would be fun,
And Jen took some of her own home brew,
She’s legless, after just one.
We packed them all in the four wheel drive
And headed up for the shack,
It’s on a reach that they call the beach,
It took an hour to unpack.

But Jen got drunk, as she always does
And spoiled the night of the first,
Her mood was black, while on the attack,
I said our marriage was cursed.
I saw no love in her eyes that night,
And even her smile was forced,
So stone cold sober the second day
She said, ‘I want a divorce.’

I thought that she might get over it,
I said, ‘We’re here to have fun.
Let’s call a truce for the kids at least,
Be happy, for everyone.’
She said she would, but she wouldn’t talk,
Just glowered, down at the beach,
While I and the kids would take a walk,
Have fun in the sun, at least.

Now in the drive, I can see a car,
A man has come to the door,
He says, ‘We pulled out your four wheel drive,
What did you do it for?’
I look bemused as he says to me,
‘Your children, for heaven’s sake!’
My heart stops for an infinity,
‘You drowned them all in the lake.’

David Lewis Paget

Wherever I go, I see her face
Reflected in streets and malls,
Wherever I track, in looking back
She’s hiding behind stone walls,
I never manage to pin her down
I turn around and she’s gone,
I don’t know why she’s following me
I ought to be moving on.

That isn’t the way it always was
I’d see her down by the lake,
She’d sit on a bench beneath a tree,
While feeding the ducks and drake,
And I would sit on a nearby bench
And take in her golden hair,
Our eyes would meet, but very discreet,
For neither would want to stare.

She’d lay her hand right across her lap
Just so I could see the ring,
As if to say, ‘I’m not yours today,
So don’t hope for anything.’
But when she saw me looking her way
She’d raise her skirt to the thigh,
A look demure that would say, ‘I’m pure,
I just like teasing your eye.’

And then one day it started to rain,
We sheltered under a tree,
We almost met, I’ll never forget,
We stood as close as could be.
Her perfume wafted into my face
And that’s when I should have said,
‘It’s such a shame, I don’t know your name,
Your perfume’s gone to my head.’

Her cheek was only a glance away
I think she knew my intent,
She glanced just once, and saw my dismay,
Then gave a look of contempt.
Since then she’s been the wraith that I see
Reflected in streets and malls,
But could she have even wanted me?
The sense of my loss appals.

David Lewis Paget

The sisters Newell were a shining jewel
That would pass my understanding,
We met at night when the moon was white
Out on the communal landing,
One was blonde, was a demi monde
The other brunette to the shoulder,
The legs of the blonde were lean and long
The brunette a little bit older.

I fell in love with them both at once
I think it was what they wanted,
For both, well versed in extravagance
Their ego’s, each were undaunted,
The blonde would stalk in her Baby Doll
Next to her window, extended,
The other, naked, would read a book
Sprawling in view and bed-ended.

The blonde was the first to invite me in,
The other said she felt stranded,
We sat together like kith and kin
It’s lucky that I am left handed,
They asked which one did I like the best,
I said, ‘Now that would be telling.’
And kissed them both on the lips, to test
As the tears in their eyes were welling.

I had the choice, there were two to choose
The blonde had said she was willing,
The brunette said she was mine to lose,
I tossed for them with a shilling.
The blonde, I knew her as Flirty Anne
Picked heads, and lost in the tossing,
The other, I knew as ***** Pam
Was out in the bathroom, flossing.

David Lewis Paget

I pass my time with the living dead
As I sit in my home, alone,
As spectres range through my fevered head,
I don’t have a telephone,
I tend to avoid the world out there
And the folk who pass in the street,
So only go out in the night to roam
And hope that we’ll never meet.

The world, to me, is an empty place
By the light of the gas-lamp glow,
I only roam historical streets
Of a hundred years or so,
My people walked in the streets and lanes
Where I drink my fill of the past,
The lives they lived, though over and done
Are the only ones that last.

I bury my head in ancient books
That tell of their living deeds,
The interactions and social factions
That answered most of their needs,
They come alive on the page to me
As I share their highs and lows,
Like Oscar Wilde with his sense of style
And the Edgar Allan Poes.

So many lives that were lived, then lost
That wouldn’t have left a trace,
If someone hadn’t written of them,
Had tried to capture each face,
Their words are part of our culture now
As some writer set them down,
And these, the writers are dead themselves
But their books are their renown.

A life is only ever complete
With the last and final breath,
We cease to be the man in the street
The end of the book is death.
But life is there on the printed page
To entrance with what they said,
And I’m content to enrich my life,
To walk with the living dead.

David Lewis Paget

I wasn’t impressed with the spiked black railings
Keeping the residents in,
They swept around to the padlocked gates
Like a prison for mortal sin,
But the signs said ‘Happiness Reigns Within –
The end of their lives secure,’
‘The Five Star Capital Home for Nursing,
Bring your old to our door.’

I’d only gone to be shown around,
I’d said my aunt wasn’t safe,
She wouldn’t stay in her cottage grounds
But wandered all over the place.
She needed care, ‘which is why I’m here,’
I said, but really I lied,
Some friends had asked I embrace the task
To get a good look inside.

I got to wander around the grounds,
I even shook off the guide,
I settled down in their dim-lit lounge
And watched for the ones that cried.
A woman, clad in a shawl was there,
Who wept, so no-one could see,
Who dabbed her eyes, then in some surprise
She sat there, staring at me.

I didn’t think she’d remember me
We were friends some years before,
But she’d succumbed to dementia then
While scrubbing the kitchen floor,
She’d wandered out in a busy street
Was almost hit by a bus,
The ambulance driver said, ‘Who’s she?’
And I said, ‘She’s one of us.’

I noticed then, she never came home
And her husband said, ‘She’s gone!’
He wasn’t too stable then himself
And he went, before too long.
I sat with her in the Nursing Home
And I held her trembling hand,
She said she didn’t remember me
But she asked me, where was Sam?

The question came as a shock to me
For her husband, Sam, was there,
From where she sat she could surely see
Him straight across, in a chair,
They’d seen each other each day, it seems
He’d not remembered a trace,
Their marriage lost in swirl of dreams
And she’d forgotten his face.

I tried to trigger their memories
Remind them that they had loved,
Had lived together for fifty years
Whenever he’d pushed, she shoved.
But Jennifer took one look at Sam
And twisted her gaze away,
‘I’m certain he couldn’t be my man,
He has so little to say.’

When next I heard, she had gone back home,
Her mind as clear as a bell,
My friends said I must have shaken her up,
They’d never seen her so well.
But still she wept for her Sam at night,
Said where on earth could he be,
So I went back to that house of hell,
Brought Sam back out on a ‘Free’.

Some places hold their own loving spell,
The very air is bewitched,
And Jennifer’s house was enchanted with
A spell from the house to the ditch.
When she saw Sam on the bluebell path
Uncertain of what to do,
She rushed straight into his arms and cried,
‘My love, I’ve been waiting for you!’

David Lewis Paget