‘We never had much in common,’ said
The man in the sailor hat,
‘He was the father, I was the son,
And that,’ he said, ‘was that!
We had some fun in my younger days
And he seemed to always care,
I grew, and we went our different ways
And I lost him then, out there.’

‘Why would you turn your back on him,’
I asked, and he shook his head,
‘Didn’t you think one day you’d blink
And your father would be dead?’
‘I didn’t believe it would cut me down,’
He said as he wiped a tear,
And leant his back on the headstone,
‘I didn’t know that I’d meet him here.’

‘So what was that final argument
That made you get up and go?
I asked him once what had turned your head
And he said that he didn’t know.’
‘Neither do I, but he must have said
A word, and my temper flared,
A single thing with an inner sting
That said he had never cared.’

‘He always cared, I can tell you that,
From the time you could kick a ball,
He only had eyes for you, his son,
But surely, you can recall.’
I left him sat on the grave while I
Went off to brood on my own,
Then found that he’d scratched ‘I love you Dad,’
Too late, on that old headstone.

David Lewis Paget

The rambling house was all run down,
Well, what you could even see of it,
It sat in extensive, weedy grounds
And a hawthorn hedge surrounded it.
The windows hadn’t been cleaned for years
The door was weathered, and boarded in,
They said that a hermit lived in there
Well hidden away from a world of sin.

And Sally was more than curious
Each time that we wandered by that way,
‘How could he live so close to us
And never be seen,’ she’d often say.
‘He must be lonely, or maybe mad,
I’d love to wander the rooms in there,’
But I said nothing, I thought it sad
And bad that Sally could even care.

‘I heard that he had a woman once
Before, when the house was nice and neat,
She worked in the garden there for months
And the house was visible from the street.
But that was before the hedgerow grew
And something happened, she went inside,
And never came out, not that I knew,
The rumours spread that the woman died.’

The weeks went by, she became obsessed,
‘What if she’s been imprisoned there?
Didn’t they ask, or go and check?’
‘Nobody knew, or even cared!
It happened so many years ago
And the garden overgrew with weeds,
Nobody wanted to even know,
Or interfere with a stranger’s deeds.’

Sally would stand by the broken gate
And peer on in at the jungle there,
‘Whatever you think, it’s far too late,
They’ll think you’re mad if you stand and stare.’
‘Somebody has to show they care,
I’m going into that house one night,
I want to know if she’s still in there
And so should you, if your head is right.’

I said I wouldn’t become involved,
So she went off on her crazy scheme,
Into the dark she sauntered forth
While I was asleep, and lost in dream.
She wasn’t there when I woke at dawn,
I searched the house and I went outside,
Took in the rambling house’s form
Then knew she’d gone, and I almost died.

I battled my way in through the weeds
And got to the house, the door ajar,
I called out, ‘Sally, just come on out,
I need you back, wherever you are.’
The house lay still as an ancient tomb,
The air was chill and the rooms were bare,
The dust was thick in the morning gloom
For nobody had been living there.

And Sally sat on a tiny mound
Out back, and near the wooded copse,
The grave I’d dug, with a stone surround
And covered with blue forget-me-nots.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ I shook my head,
‘What’s done was done, and it can’t be changed,
She left for a share of my brother’s bed,
I would that it could be rearranged.’

But Sally sat with an empty stare
And I knew that I’d lost her then for good,
She didn’t know of that other mound
That my brother made in that tiny wood.
‘So this is the end of love that’s lost,’
She said, with the merest wave of her hand,
‘I’ll leave you alone to count the cost,’
Then leapt to her feet, and turned, and ran.

David Lewis Paget

I’ve kept a journal of sorts for years
And I enter it in ink,
Not with a ball-point biro, it’s
Designed to make me think.
I form the letters with loving care
And I use an italic pen,
And keep it safe on a shelf up where
I can read it, over again.

The journal contains my deepest thoughts,
My secrets, hidden away,
Not to be seen by the eyes of men
Till I’m under the earth one day,
For all the wrongs that I didn’t right
And the rights that I failed to do,
Are hidden within its pages in
A sort of italic stew.

So when I received a letter from
A woman called Columbine,
Who said after reading my journal
She could never, ever be mine,
She mentioned a certain entry that
Had made up her mind, she said,
But the time and the stamp on the envelope
Was dated a year ahead.

I never had heard of a Columbine,
I didn’t know who she was,
But the fact that she’d read my journal
Made me more than a little cross.
I went to the shelf that held my book
To see what I had to thank,
But the page that she had quoted from
Was an empty page, a blank.

I went one day to the library
To look for a book of mine,
And the girl behind the counter there
Had a name tag, Columbine.
I looked deep into her stark black eyes
At the fall of her lustrous hair,
At her pouting lips and her fingertips,
And all I could do was stare.

She stamped my book and she stared at me
And she saw me staring back,
‘Is there anything else that I can do?’
She said, and called me Jack.
‘How do you know my name?’ I said,
‘Well that’s not super hard!’
And then she handed my book to me,
‘It’s on your library card!’

I asked her out for a meal, and then
The rest is history,
We were just engaged when I got to the page
That she’d written about to me.
I raised the pen, and decided then
That I had too much to thank,
Put the cap on my pen, and then
Left all the pages blank.

David Lewis Paget

My father married a scheming witch
The month that my mother died,
He barely waited her final twitch
And it killed something inside,
I suddenly found myself alone
Apart from my brother, Liam,
But my heart inside had turned to stone
And the house was a mausoleum.

I’d hear her wandering round the house
When my father was away,
And something about the air in there
Made me feel some blank dismay,
For Liam was little help to me
He fell to the witch’s charm,
I tried to warn, but he looked in scorn
While I only felt alarm.

My father became a wealthy man
When my mother left him all,
She’d been the heir to a ladyship
And the deeds to Woolhampton Hall,
A wooden chest with the whole bequest
Was locked in a basement room,
And giant rocks in a jewel box
Would flash, they said, in the gloom.

But Lara never could find the key
Though she searched, both high and low,
My father never let on he knew
For he’d promised my mother so,
When she had said, with her final breath
‘I know all about the witch,
Don’t let her near my jewel box
Or you’ll end in a pauper’s ditch.’

He carried the key most everywhere
In his waistcoat, or his cuff,
He fastened it to his horse’s hair
And once to my choirboy’s ruff,
So Lara stormed while he was away,
I could hear her scream and curse,
And beat her feet on the basement door,
I didn’t know which was worse.

She asked Liam if he’d help her find
The key, and she’d see him right,
I heard him lurking about the house
To our father’s room, at night.
I asked him, ‘Where is your loyalty,
To your father or the witch?’
But he cursed and said flamboyantly,
‘Well, the witch will make me rich!’

‘I wouldn’t go in that basement room,’
I said, in a word of warning,
Remembering something my mother said
To her mirror, one dark morning,
‘I’ve made it plain in my will,’ she said,
‘And it’s there in the many riders,
Whoever thinks they can steal from me,
Must deal with a world of spiders.’

And so it passed, when Liam at last,
Found out where the key was hiding,
Was taking her to the basement stair
While my father was out, and riding,
I heard the screams in the basement room,
That sounded much like a riot,
By the time that I went to lock them in,
Both he and the witch were quiet!

David Lewis Paget

The clattering wind came back again
In the cold, dark hours of the morn,
There must have been such a mighty wind
In the hour that I was born.
For I went outside to savour it,
I love the wind in the trees,
Anything from a sultry blow
To an ice cold winter breeze.

And Miriam always chided me
I should keep the door pulled to,
‘You may delight in the wind at night
I don’t share in that with you.’
‘Doesn’t it tell you the earth’s alive
When it’s breathing, Oh so hard?’
‘That may be so, but just keep the blow
Trapped in our own backyard.’

It rattles around the chimney pots,
It lifts the tin on the roof,
And drives the rain to the window pane
As if to say, ‘Here’s proof!’
Proof that the world’s alive and well
When it howls and plucks at the eaves,
And swaying each branch so you can tell
By filling the air with leaves.

‘I don’t see the purpose that it serves,’
Miriam used to shout,
The wind replied and she almost died
When it blew the hearth fire out.
Hurtling down the chimney flue
Like a gale she’d made inside,
I said, ‘Just watch what you say and do,
Even the wind has pride!’

I’d say that the two were enemies
From the time she opened her mouth,
‘It’s wrecking my pink anemones
When it blows from the freezing south.’
I told her to hold her anger in,
She was weak, the wind was strong,
She hadn’t the power to save her bower
While it knew not right from wrong.

It came to a head when she slammed the door
On an innocent springtime breeze,
And sealed her fate when she muttered hate,
She was brought down to her knees.
Walking along the clifftop path
As she did, and both of us must,
A sudden blow sent her over, though
It was merely a random gust.

I go each week to the cemetery
And I leave anemones,
While lurking around the headstones there
Is her ancient enemy,
If only she’d kept her tongue in check
She would still be here with me,
Not lying beneath a howling gale
In the local cemetery.

David Lewis Paget

My father told us the story of
The time of his greatest pain,
Back in the year of ninety-nine,
During Victoria’s reign,
He lived in a two-bed terrace,
With a brother and sisters two,
With gas lamps out in the cobbled street
And nothing you’d call a view.

‘The windows were of a pebble glass
That distorted all you’d see,
And when it rained and the clouds were grained
All these shades appeared to me,
The lamps would cast a flickering beam
On the movement in the street,
To paint in shadows the local scene
Of that place they called ‘The Fleet’.’

‘I thought these shadows were passing ghosts
Who had died and lost their way,
Their shadows, caught in the pouring rain
Coming back and forth all day,
I little knew that my brother too
Would be claimed before too long,
Would add his tiny, flickering soul
To the heart of that heaving throng.’

‘For down below, a river would flow
Underneath the Coach and Horse,
The mighty sewers of the Fleet
Followed that watercourse,
The entrances were underground
And the water in it foul,
But floating bodies were often found
And the sewer men would howl.’

‘And Toby, our little Toby, he
Would be sent along the street,
He’d clatter along the cobblestones
For a loaf of bread, a treat,
He’d fetch a plug of tobacco for
Our father’s pipe, of course,
Collecting it from the barman there,
Down at the Coach and Horse.’

‘He’d toddle away, in light or dark,
He’d go in the sun or rain,
Whatever my father asked him do
He saw no need to explain,
And Toby went in the drizzling rain
One day, for a quart of beer,
I watched for him through the pebble glass
But the lad quite disappeared.’

‘All I could see were the moving shapes
Of the shadows in the rain,
Of ghosts, all huddled in coats and capes
As they passed my way, again,
But never a sight of our Toby, nor
The quart of my father’s beer,
We sent out a searching party, but
He wasn’t to reappear.’

‘We got in touch with the sewer men
Who said they would search the Fleet,
And try to find him before he flowed
To the Thames on New Bridge Street,
But all they found were a dozen dogs
Along with a monster pig,
Who all had drowned before they were found
And Toby was half as big.’

‘My father stood at the open door
At the same time every day,
Come rain or shine, he couldn’t divine
Why Toby had gone away,
But I can see, as if in a fit,
A thing that should count the least,
My father’s pipe, forever unlit,
Still gracing the mantelpiece.’

David Lewis Paget

I recall I lay at the top of the hill
A toboggan, all set to go,
My friend behind, and urging me on
We’d had a good fall of snow,
I was lying flat, head first on that
When we hurtled on down the hill,
My friend was dragging his feet to steer,
He steered to a certain spill.

A clump of trees in the valley below,
I told him to steer out wide,
But he dragged his foot with his hob-nailed boot,
I knew we were going to collide,
The tree came up like a railway train
There were stars and I lay there still
A piece of branch was lodged in my brain
From the tree at the base of the hill.

They said I’d never survive, I know,
They said I’d surely be dead,
With a length of fir tree, covered in blood
And sticking right out of my head.
I was out of it for a month or more,
A coma of long lost time,
But finally woke in the hospital
To find I was almost blind.

All I could see were shadows, shades
That drifted in silent space,
These shadows all were as black as coal
And none of them had a face,
As if I was seeing a different world
To the one I’d always been in,
And one of them sidled on up to me,
‘You’re seeing the world of sin!’

I couldn’t see when the nurses came
But I heard them when they spoke,
A doctor came, said ‘it’s such a shame,
So sad for the little bloke!’
Three shadows were hanging on every word
As they lounged near the further wall,
And then I knew that they stuck like glue
For the Doc had done for them all!

They sent me home to recuperate
Sat out in an easy chair,
The garden looked like a negative
Of a black and white picture there,
My parents slowly came into view
But the shades stood out by the fence,
I’d always thought they were both sin free
But their sins were there, past tense.

My friend from the great toboggan spill
Came to visit me there to see
If I’d suspect that he’d steered direct,
Deliberately into the tree,
But a shadow hung at his shoulder there
And it gave his game away,
The shadow was mine, and over time
Will be there ‘til his dying day.

We’re all of us shadow makers when
We’re sinned against, done wrong,
We don’t have to be earth shakers, but
That sin will never be gone.
My sight has slowly recovered now
But I wonder, now I am back,
How many shadows are following me,
And when are they going to attack?

David Lewis Paget

We’d been at sea on a cruise ship,
Some days to Paradise,
An island in the pacific
Of beaches, trees and spice,
But storms, they were foregathering
Not just for the ship at sea,
For frost with us was travelling
Inside Caitlin and me.

With eyes averted we rarely spoke
There were demons in my head,
For she would flutter about at night
Not join me in our bed.
The ship ploughed on through a restless sea,
While the clouds outside were grey,
And I began to regret that we
Had chosen this holiday.

I woke each morning before the dawn
And not a word was said,
For Caitlin lay, facing away
On the far side of our bed.
I’d roam around in the early hours
The silent, deserted ship,
But a life aboard alone, it sours
By the fifth day of a trip.

The clouds grew dark, enveloped the ship
And mist lay deep on the decks,
While down beneath the fathomless sea
Lay a thousand sunken wrecks.
A thousand wrecks of hopes and dreams
That started away like this,
Lost forever beneath the sea
At the lack of a touch, or kiss.

We sailed, we sailed, by God we sailed
With our heartsick contraband,
For days we sailed as the storm winds railed
But we caught no sight of land,
We caught no sight of the what-we-were
Before, when our world was new,
For love was blind in the mist and wind
That sailed with the cruise ship too.

Surely there was a meeting point
Between the land and the sea,
But the ship sailed on with our tempers gone,
We sailed in misery,
A day beyond our arrival point
The Captain came to say,
‘The land has gone, there’s something wrong
We were due there yesterday.’

Wherever we looked about to see
The sea was all we saw,
I’d turn and spin, keep my hopes within,
All hope had flown before.
We cruise around in an endless sea
With never a sight of land,
And nothing is left of what was ‘we’
It’s buried in sea and sand.

Buried alive in the sea and sand
With a frost that shatters the eye,
Gone with the hope of sighting land
Between the sea and the sky.
We’re drifting now, for we’re out of fuel
In a world of liquid pride,
With she content at the prow of the ship
And I with the wake that died.

David Lewis Paget

The phone had only been on a day
When the cranky calls began,
‘Nobody knows we’re on,’ I said,
When at first the **** thing rang.
I had to run up the passageway
To catch it before it stopped,
Then there was just an awesome hush
Like a tree before it’s lopped.

The line dropped out at the first ‘hello’
As if they would wait for me
To run the length of the passageway,
Expend all that energy,
I’m sure they laughed as they cut me off
Though of course, I couldn’t hear,
‘It’s dead again,’ I would rage and froth
‘Though it must be someone near.’

‘It better not be your stupid friend,’
I said to my wife, Diane,
‘The one that’s such a comedienne
Who annoys me when she can.’
‘It isn’t her,’ was Diane’s reply
In her testy, haughty tone,
‘She wouldn’t ring when she knows I’m here,
But wait till you’re home alone.’

But the phone rang every evening,
At the high point of our show,
Just as they named the villain, and
I nodded to her to go.
‘You go,’ she’d say, ‘I’ve worked all day,
And it really is your phone,’
I’d grit my teeth up the passageway
And rage at it on my own.

I finally let it ring and ring
And refused to pick it up,
‘I’ll teach them never to mess with me,’
As I drank a second cup,
A truck arrived in the morning and
It dumped a ton of twine
Blocking all of the driveway while
Some clown said it was mine!

‘I never ordered this blasted twine,
You should have come to the door,
Confirmed the order you say you had,
What would I want it for?’
‘We got the order over the phone
So we rang, with no reply,
Somebody said you don’t pick up
You’re such an eccentric guy.’

I always answered it after that,
And after the pig dung treat,
Fifteen tons, and the smell had hung
The length of our angry street,
We tried to tell them it wasn’t us
We said it must be the phone,
I know that I would have picked it up
If only I had been home.

We never did get a proper call,
One where somebody spoke,
I don’t think anyone likes me, and
That phone’s a pig in a poke,
I went outside and I cut the cord
To the world who scorned our line,
Then went inside where the blasted phone
Still rang, one final time.

I picked it up and I snapped, ‘Who’s that!’
And a voice came on the line,
It wasn’t a voice I knew, it spat
And it gruffly asked the time,
‘You’ve cut us off from the Internet,
I hope you’re feeling spry,
We live in your rhododendrons, and
You’ve made the fairies cry!’

David Lewis Paget

We never forget the ones we loved
If the feeling was strong and true,
No matter what happened, the push and shove
That separates me from you,
And those who came after, who took your place
Will never extinguish the spark,
That sits in the memory’s starkest place
After making new love in the dark.

For an old love’s more than a pretty face,
It’s more than a bunch of sighs,
It’s more than a fragile cobweb’s grace
That recalls the look in your eyes,
It sits together with faded youth
We recall on our darkest nights,
The pain, obsession, the laughter too
As the mirror of memory lights.

The further down we push it away
It comes when we least expect,
Bustling in from our salad days
With a feeling of sad neglect,
How did it stutter and how did it fail
Is the question that meets our eyes,
And then we remember the truth of it,
Our false and our feeble lies.

Whatever possessed us to stray back then
We made up the perfect two,
But you would get angry with me, my love,
And I would get angry with you,
So our footsteps strayed and we lost the way
To find our way home again,
I’d be with girls that I didn’t know
And you’d be with other men.

But we’re still back there in the years that fled
And we’ll be together again,
When people talk of the life we led
In that time of way back when,
There are certain times in my history
That I see as a strange purview,
When I was entranced by your mystery,
And you were just simply you.

David Lewis Paget

The lighthouse at Le Cap de Grace
Was damp and dark at best,
The rain would sweep in from the south,
The wind rage from the west,
But nature’s torments could not match
The storms that formed within,
For deep inside its battered walls
Were palls of mortal sin.

Two lighthouse keepers kept the light,
Both Jon and Jacques De Vaux,
They tended to the light above
While she would wait below,
The dusky, husky buxom witch
With lips of honey dew,
Who loved the lighthouse keepers,
Not just one, but even two.

Below was but a single bed,
She said that they must share,
They watched her eagerly each night
Her tend and brush her hair,
For then she would turn round to them
And indicate her choice,
She’d merely point at one of them,
Not even use her voice.

And then the chosen one would smile
His brother often curse,
For he would share her bed that night
The other fare much worse,
For he would lie inside the store
On coils of hempen rope,
And lie awake and listening,
No sound would give him hope.

But often she would cry aloud
In passion through the night,
While Jon or Jacques would stop his ears
And think, ‘It’s just not right.’
But she ruled this *******
With silken hand and glove,
And they would never question it
While working up above.

She only ever favoured each
For just a single night,
She knew to show a favourite
Would seem to them like spite,
And thus the nightly balance kept
Their tempers both in check,
She fed on their desires, and they
In turn showed her respect.

The winter storms came in to stay,
The waves beat down below,
The wind beat at the lighthouse glass
And one would have to go,
Above to guard that precious light
To keep the ships from harm,
But who would go aloft would cause
The brothers both alarm.

For he who stayed would taste the charms
Of Elspeth for that night,
It might not be his turn, and that
They both thought wasn’t right,
A rising tide of anger fed
By storms and mute dismay,
Turned brother against brother when
One had to go away.

One night the light went out, and Jon
Said, ‘Jacques, go up above,
Your turn it is to light the light
While I stay with our love.’
But Jacques refused his brother’s plea
And said, ‘No, you can go,
You had the bed of love last night,
I’m staying down below.’

The night was dark and moonless and
There wasn’t any light,
While out there in the darkness rode
A freighter in the night,
It drove up on the reef, its bow
Then battered in their door,
And pinned their husky, dusky witch
In blood pools on the floor.

The lighthouse at Le Cap de Grace
Is damp and dark at best,
The rain will sweep in from the south,
The wind rage from the west,
Two lighthouse keepers keep the light
And share the only bed,
The half love that they long for now
Is well and truly dead.

David Lewis Paget

A panic would settle all over her face
Each night as she pulled the blinds,
‘The world outside is a scarier place
Whenever the day unwinds.
I’ve seen the changes that darkness brings
When the lights in the street go out,
There are screams and cries, and animal things,
Can you say what it’s all about?’

I said I couldn’t, it wasn’t the same
For me as it was for her,
‘The night is merely a lack of light
But nothing has changed out there.
The lamposts stand, they may not be lit
But they’re still upright in the dark,
And as for sounds, and animal things
These are merely dogs in the park.’

‘Dogs don’t howl, or bay at the moon,
They don’t have a Lion’s roar,
And what sits tearing, out in the gloom
Just out from our own front door?
A line of vultures sit on our fence,
Flapping their wings for prey,
While howls and grunts are making me tense
The moment the day’s away.’

‘I’ll take you out and I’ll prove you’re wrong,
There’s nothing to fear outside,
It may be dark but the world goes on
There’s just a turn in the tide.’
‘I wouldn’t dare, there’s a sickly moon
That beams on down from a height,
It has a sheen, and the sheen is green
Whenever I put out the light.’

‘And who is the man at night who roams
Out there on the cobblestones,
You said it’s the window cleaner man
But the window cleaner’s Jones.
And Jones is tucked in his tiny bed
By the time the clock strikes nine,
I know it’s true, for his wife has said,
And his wife’s a friend of mine.’

‘It’s only some ragged, passing *****
Or a gypsy, out for the air,
They park their vans on the common land
Where the village holds its fair.’
‘He jingles coins as he walks on by,
And hums, but it’s out of tune,
You’d see, if ever you part the blinds
Him walking under the moon.’

I’d had enough, and opened the door,
And took her out to the porch,
I felt so confident I was right
I didn’t carry a torch.
We walked a way out into the street
She shivered and gripped my arm,
I waved my hand in a calming sweep,
‘You see? No cause for alarm.’

The air was suddenly filled with bats,
And some were caught in her hair,
While round our feet, a scurry of rats
Brought screams to the street out there.
The vultures sat there flapping their wings,
And launched themselves from our fence,
A man was jingling coins, walked past
Then I knew why my wife was tense.

I dragged her back through the open door,
All bleeding and cut and hurt,
Pulled the bats from her tangled hair
And the ones attached to her skirt,
We never venture outside at night
Not after we pull the blinds,
But leave the world of the after dark
To the man who jingles the coins.

David Lewis Paget

Caroline called from the balcony
To join her and check out the bay,
‘You wouldn’t believe, there’s a barquentine,
You never see them today.’
I looked and I scanned the horizon there
But all I could see was the pier,
There wasn’t a sign of a barquentine
And all the horizon was clear.

‘I can see nothing,’ I told her then,
‘The sea is as calm as a pond,’
‘I’ll give you a hint, just make your eyes squint,
Then look to the pier and beyond.’
And suddenly there was a shadow shape,
That looked like a barquentine,
But out where it lay, it was old and grey,
And something about it obscene.

‘It makes me uneasy,’ I said to her,
‘There’s something transparent and cold,’
‘I think it’s romantic,’ was her reply,
‘It must be two hundred years old.’
It gave me the shivers, I went inside,
As rain pelted in at our door,
Though Caroline wouldn’t come in, but sighed,
And stayed where she’d stood before.

That night I woke up in the early hours
To find she had gone from our bed,
I followed her footsteps down to the pier
And saw her just walking ahead.
But Caroline wasn’t alone out there
She walked with a man I could see,
And holding his hand, she kissed him, and,
Was as transparent as he.

Then back in the cottage I found her there,
All restless, and tumbled in bed,
She suddenly woke, and gasped as she spoke,
‘I’ve had a strange dream in my head.
I’d been making love in that barquentine
To someone that I never knew,
He said we should go, but I told him ‘No’,
And then I came looking for you.'

We got up at dawn as the sun came up,
Walked out to the balcony,
We squinted our eyes, but to our surprise,
All we could see was the sea.
There wasn’t a sign of that barquentine
But only an empty pier,
And Caroline sighed, stood at my side,
‘Some things are much more than queer.’

David Lewis Paget

The Albert Mall was a narrow street
Named after the dying prince,
Where Queen Victoria donned the rags
Of a widow, ever since.
She’d sat outside in her royal Coach
And been heard to mutter, ‘Why?’
While Albert did what he had to do,
What he had to do was die!

And we came by when the Queen was dead
When the Mall was quite forgot,
To rent a room where the prince had died
If we’d known, we’d rather not.
The Mall was grubby and cheap by then
So we thought we’d make it do,
I asked Marie if she didn’t mind
And she said, ‘It’s up to you.’

It seems the room had been empty then
By the choking layers of dust,
I said, ‘Shall I let it blow outside?’
And Marie said, ‘If you must.’
It took us days just to clear the air
And to have a look around,
In some of the ancient furniture
You can imagine what we found.

The robe held some of the smartest clothes
I think, that we’d ever seen,
I said as much to Marie, ‘that dress
You’d swear, was fit for a queen,
And there, a suit for a gentleman
With a full blown grey Top Hat,
I said to Marie, ‘Shall we try them on,’
And she said, ‘Let’s do just that.’

So then on the eve of Michaelmas
We stood by the mirror there,
Arrayed in the best of formal gear
They called Victorian wear,
And music drifted up through the floor
From the ballroom down below,
While I, in a moment of madness
Blurted out, ‘Well, shall we go?’

We made our way to the music by
Descending a curving stair,
And finding a throng of dancers who
Were dressed the way we were,
Then someone called out ‘Her Majesty,’
And the music stayed and died,
While they all stared at Marie and bowed,
Made me feel queer inside.

I swear that they only saw the clothes,
They didn’t see us two,
And they were a shade ephemeral,
I could see right through them, too,
They went right back to their dancing
While we sat on an ottoman,
Whispering what were our chances if
We just got up, and ran.

But then they gradually faded, and
The music died away,
And we were left in an empty room
Before the light of day,
The clothes went back in the dusty robe
And we found another flat,
For just one night we were Prince and Queen
And we’re both in awe of that.

David Lewis Paget

We were swept up onto this rocky coast
By a storm in ’93,
There were thirteen passengers and crew
And a stowaway, that’s me!
The ship was holed on the jagged rocks
And it sits still out in the bay,
We’ve never been able to fix the hole
So it looks like here we’ll stay.

It sits forlorn when the tide is low
But is covered when it’s high,
As the breakers beat on the after decks
Though the ship is never dry.
The water pours from the cabins, and
Lies deep in the forward hold,
While the rust is eating the hull away
And the cargo’s turned to mould.

We thought that we’d soon be rescued
By a ship just passing by,
But all we saw for a month or more
Was the lonely sea and the sky,
We made our camp on the beach where we
Could watch for a passing light,
And cook our fish on the signal fires,
But the trouble came at night.

The crew of seven were restless and
The passengers were few,
For only five of us men were there
And the women, only two.
One, the wife of a clergyman
The other a girl called Gail,
And she was sweet on a man called Deet
That she’d met before we sailed.

But Deet had fought with the bosun
Over the fish he said were his,
They moved away, went around the bay
To seek their Island bliss.
That left the clergyman’s wife with us
Who was praying we’d be found,
But late one night, in another fight
The clergyman was drowned.

The bosun dragged her away from us
With Froggat, Jones and Lees,
They took the struggling woman with them
Deep into the trees,
There wasn’t a thing we could do for her
So we went out to the ship,
And armed ourselves with iron bars
While we told ourselves: ‘They’ll keep!’

We moved our camp from the other crew
For the feeling there was mean,
The three the bosun had left behind
Hid out where they’d not be seen,
But then, at just about midnight we
Were hearing an eerie wail,
For down at the beach they’d murdered Deet
And dragged off the weeping Gail.

From deep in the trees we saw that Lees
Was trying to reach our spot,
His head was covered in blood, but then
He fell from a single shot,
The bosun was dragging Marie, the wife
To the open, by her hair,
Her dress was soiled and her face was spoiled
With the tears of a deep despair.

We didn’t see Froggat and Jones again,
They’d fallen to the knife,
But I had to run from the bosun’s gun
In order to stay alive,
Then under the cover of darkness we
Went after the weeping Gail,
And beneath the stars with our iron bars
We left a bloodied trail.

We caught the bosun asleep one night
And we beat him with our bars,
He didn’t have time to wake before
We dispatched him to the stars,
That left just Jeremy Leach and I
And the women that we’d saved,
For Gordon died of a fever then
And we dug his sandy grave.

It looks as if we’ll be here for good
So I’ll sign this bloodied screed,
Place it safe in a bottle then
And commit it to the seas,
We won’t fight over the women for
Marie is now with Leach,
And Gail has a tiny stowaway
As she wanders along the beach.

David Lewis Paget

The carts rolled out of the warehouses
And trawled each single street,
Each drawn by a giant Clydesdale with
Those massive hooves and feet,
They creaked along, and they struck a gong
That excited furtive looks,
While the men that day, who rode the dray
Called out, ‘Bring out your books.’

They watched the shimmer of curtains as
The people peeked outside,
For many were loth to show themselves,
All they had left was pride,
The law brought in by the ****** left
Trapped all but the pastrycooks,
For they could retain their recipes
At the cry, ‘Bring out your books.’

They said they were saving forests from
The pulp mill on the bay,
There wouldn’t need to be paper with
The pads we have today,
And too many things were incorrect
Had been printed on a tree,
Were sitting on people’s shelves, defunct
In ideology.

The people set up resistance, they
Had loved their tattered tomes,
And many a shelf was burdened in
The meanest of their homes,
‘The government’s trying to dumb us down,’
Was the universal cry,
‘Go out and save the forests, but
If they’re already printed, why?’

The spread of ideas is dangerous
They could rot you to the core,
And too many things on liberty
Have been printed, long before,
Perhaps it would have been better if
The people couldn’t read,
Taking away the books at last
Might take away the need.

The drays that rumbled along each street
They had stacked the books up high,
But there was the odd revisionist
Who complained, and grumbled, ‘Why?’
A squad broke into each suspect house
Where the owner locked the door,
And tore the books from his fevered grasp
While screaming, ‘It’s the law!’

But mine, I hid in the garden shed
And buried the others deep,
They wouldn’t be getting their hands on them
The ones that I wished to keep,
There’s so many fake and useless things
That they’re legislating for,
But to take our books and our liberty
Would be like declaring war.

David Lewis Paget

The mirror was there when we moved in,
Full length, and stood in the hall,
Right where the lounge room opened up
Against the opposite wall.
Yvette was startled at first, she said,
‘That mirror gave me a fright,
To see a figure suddenly there
Stare back in the dead of night.’

‘You’ll soon get used to it there, Yvette,
There’s nowhere else it can go,
Once you have moved your chattels in
And filled up the house below.’
‘It’s strange though, isn’t it,’ said Yvette,
‘It reflects the wrong way round,
My right is left and my left is right
Like an opposite me it’s found.’

‘You’d better tell her you’re not impressed,
That she’s taken half your face,
And moved it to the opposite side
In a sign of twisted grace.’
For Yvette had one green eye, the right,
And a pale blue eye, the left,
So what stared back from that mirror there
Was a back to front Yvette.

She’d stand in front of that mirror there
And would pose, and raise her hand,
‘I raise my right, and it seems to me
I’m reversed in mirror land.’
I said, ‘It’s the same for everyone
But you seem to be obsessed,’
‘It isn’t me,’ said Yvette, ‘you’ll see
When she steps out through the glass.’

I woke at night, in the early light
And Yvette was not in bed,
I found her down by the mirror there
Where the morning light was shed.
I crept up slowly behind her there
And saw what Yvette could see,
That figure, facing away from her,
But never a sign of me.

‘I told the woman to turn around
And she did, I see my back!’
But so did I, it was such a shock
Like a brought-on heart attack,
Yvette went missing the following day
Though I searched both high and low,
But didn’t stare at the mirror there
Just in case she was… you know!

I called her name when the evening came
And she crawled right into bed,
‘You scared me out of my mind,’ I cried,
‘But I don’t know why,’ she said.
She gave me a long, fulfilling kiss
When I stared, as one bereft,
For this Yvette had a blue eye, right
And a green one on the left.

David Lewis Paget

The castle was smaller than I’d thought
In the Scottish countryside,
It sat in a hollow called Claymore Court
Where all the defenders died,
The signs of cannon, pounding the towers
Were there in the crumbled walls,
And shrubs grew out of the rubbled bowers
While trees took root in the halls.

I sensed a touch of hostility
The moment I reached the gate,
For Angus’s friendability
Came on just a little late,
We’d both attended the Priory School
But that had been way back then,
And I, in parting, called him a fool,
He wouldn’t remember when.

But he did us proud with a suckling pig
And a quart of ‘**** o’ the North’,
Marie, who knew him, was ever so big
And sat with me, holding forth.
I had no mind that he felt so strong,
I’d have left the woman at home,
He had this feeling I’d done him wrong
When I coaxed Marie to roam.

And there she sat with a month to go
Way out in front with our bairn,
I didn’t know it would crease him so
But there, you live and you learn.
He coaxed her drink, with a dreadful leer
Pressed on her **** o’ the North,
It wasn’t as if she was drinking beer
Or water, for all that it’s worth.

We went to bed in a tower room
When the moon rose over the glen,
It felt to me like a Highland tomb
As it was to my clan back then,
Marie began to moan in the night
That the bairn was coming forth,
It had a skinful, thanks to Marie
Of that liquor, **** o’ the North.

And Angus heard and he came to gloat
When he heard that she couldn’t hold,
I dropped him there, head first in the moat
To a grave both wet and cold.
Marie and I, we sit in the barn
And the blame swings back and forth,
What price my friend, and a helpless bairn
To a jar of **** o’ the North?

David Lewis Paget

I’m hot on the tail of a poem’s trail
To discover what makes it tick,
For the ones I receive in the daily mail
Are always giving me stick.
I don’t want the ones with a ******-probe
That go ravelling into my brain,
Or a moody muse with a too short fuse
They only generate pain.

When I spot one bearing a carefree lilt,
A rhythm that echoes my heart,
Or a rhyme scheme pairing a seem with dream,
We’re off to a flying start.
It gallops ahead of me, feeling its way
Through words that it finds by chance,
And makes it plain that it wants to play
In the meadows of assonance.

So I chase it over a babbling brook
On a cliché, rhyme or hook,
And still the breeze that will rhyme with trees
Turns the pages of my book.
I search for characters, sweet young girls
And for ladies, fair of face,
Who dance along with the poem, twirl
In the aftermath of grace.

While men, the heroes of quests and seas
Marooned on a distant shore,
Will take the poem to where they please,
You’ve never been there before.
And they meet the girls with the hair like corn,
Are trapped in their sparkling eyes,
They come together in winter storm
And all that you hear are sighs.

For the poem gives, and the poem takes
It will lull you, thrill you, dance,
From its wedding bells to its funeral wakes
It will still you, fill, entrance!
Its magic lies in its rhyme and scheme
As it weaves a recurring spell,
It nestles into your heart and dreams
Like an Olde Tyme Wishing Well.

And when it finally comes to stand
On the shore of a timeless lake,
As the book slips out of your listless hand
It whispers, ‘Are you awake?’
Then I spring to life and I seize it then,
And give to its tail a twist,
‘I’m still the poet, I hold the pen,’
I write, in the evening mist!

David Lewis Paget

The Lord High Constable’s men came down
To Camberwell’s village square,
They asked the Crier to call Oyez
To gather the villagers there,
He rang his bell and the people came
Agog, when they heard him say,
A rogue they sought was abroad, they thought,
Was last seen heading their way.

‘Beware this man, he’s an evil rogue,
He battered his wife to death,
The woman lay in a blind dismay
Breathing her final breath,
If anyone sees a stranger here
Who looks like a feral lout,
Be sure to alert the magistrates
By calling the footpad out.’

The people scattered, went to their homes
And locked and bolted each door,
Then stood there parting the curtains,
Just to be safe and sure,
Most of the men were still at work
But not for the widow Hayes,
She’d not long buried the husband
She’d loved in her salad days.

So when she turned the key in the lock
She couldn’t resist a tear,
She missed the man who would hold her hand
And quieten every fear,
She was much too young for a widow,
Or that’s what everyone said,
And so was Tom, but he’d travelled on,
Had left to lie with the dead.

She turned, was suddenly listening
When she heard an alien note,
And there stood a man in her kitchen
Holding a knife at her throat,
‘I mean no harm, don’t be alarmed
I just need a place to stay,
And please don’t weep, for I just need sleep,
But don’t give the game away.’

He made her lie on her narrow bed
And he cuddled up behind,
One of his arms around her waist
Though he asked if she didn’t mind,
She lay there, feeling his body warmth
And it made her think of Tom,
Would ever she feel like this again,
How long, Oh Lord, how long?

She didn’t know how it happened, but
She felt when he raised her shift,
Deep in the dark, dead pit of night
Her skirt had begun to lift,
She bit her knuckle and shed the tears
That would soak her pillowcase,
And muttered, when it was over, ‘So,
That’s what they mean by ****!’

She cooked him a meal at breakfast time
And thought, ‘He isn’t so bad.’
Then, ‘What if my folks could see me now,
They’d think I was going mad.
I’m cooking a meal for a murderer
Though he says that it wasn’t him,
He thinks that it was his neighbour
So he says, some guy called Jim.’

He stayed three days and was gone that night,
Under a starless sky,
The widow Hayes had grown fond of him,
It was hard to say goodbye.
But the news came back that they cornered him
Had seen him try to escape,
And questioned what she had done with him,
She didn’t mention the ****.

They sent him down at the old Assize,
And sentenced him for his crime,
They wouldn’t believe that it wasn’t him
‘They say that, all of the time!’
He struggled up on the gallows there
With the face of a man who begs,
While she stood near in the Hanging Square,
Stepped up, and pulled on his legs.

David Lewis Paget

He never came out in the daytime, though
He’d always come out at night,
I’d hear his feet, pass in the street
By the gaslamp’s feeble light,
He’d peer through the frosted window glass
And I swear that he always hissed,
Whenever I opened the trap, he’d gone
A-swirl in the yellow mist.

We huddled under the chimney piece,
We huddled under the stair,
Whenever his steps were echoing
From here to the you-know-where,
I tried to protect my Carolyn
Who would shut her eyes and ears,
He had the power, for over an hour
To bring Carolyn to tears.

He’d come when the frost brought icicles
He’d come when the wind would blow,
He’d come when I left her tricycle
Outside, and covered in snow,
And then when the ice on the window ledge
Began to go crack-crack-crack,
She often hid, right under the lid
Where the firewood lay in a stack.

And then when the door blew open, from
A gust in the wind out there,
We’d lie, with fears unspoken
As the creaking rose up the stair,
Then Carolyn shrieked, while I couldn’t speak
For hearing her cries and moans,
As terror spread, from under the bed
And chattered through teeth and bones.

I swore that he wore a ******* hat
With a brim that covered his eyes,
Carolyn wrote that he wore a cloak
As part of his dread disguise,
But nobody would believe us, ‘til
We heard he was coming back,
His hobnailed boots on the cobblestones
Approached, a-click and a-clack.

They’d slow, and stop by the outer door
Our hearts in our mouths, alas,
And then his shadow would fall right there
He’d peer through the frosted glass,
The knocker had an echoing sound
As he knocked, went rat-tat-tat,
And mother leapt to the door in a bound,
‘Dear God! It’s Uncle Jack!’

David Lewis Paget

He slipped on a set of headphones,
Adjusted a dial or two,
Then introduced his radio show
And the members of his crew,
‘The Horror Tales of the Greats’ he read
Each week to the folk in town,
Just as the Moon was coming up
With the sun then truly down.

And the folk had huddled round speakers
To hear, in a thousand homes,
The tales of Edgar Allan Poe
In the speaker’s crackling tones,
And an eerie mist fell over the town
If they chanced to look outside,
As the ghosts of horror stories past
Rose up from the place they died.

Each tone was sent with a shiver
From the night’s Plutonian shore,
Just as that stately bird of old
Had repeated, ‘Nevermore!’
While the cats had yowled in the alleyways
When he read a tale of sin,
Of walling up the corpse of his wife
When the Black Cat did him in.

The Fall of the House of Usher,
The Masque of the Red Death,
The tales built up in the atmosphere
And made them short of breath,
The Cask of Amontillado,
The Pendulum and the Pit,
Whatever the horror, and most intense
There was always more of it.

The stars that shone in the evening sky
Had gone, though the sky was clear
As the Moon had dropped down, over a hill
While the airwaves dripped with fear,
And the walls back there, in the studio
Were seeming to seep a flood,
As the speaker droned in the microphone
The studio filled with blood.

And suddenly then, a different voice
Was heard all over the town,
Rattling through their radio’s
And shouting the reader down.
‘Shutter your windows and lock your doors
Put children under the bed,
Hide yourselves right under the stairs
Or you may well end up dead!’

‘The very air that you breathe has been
Long saturated with dread,
Has filled your lungs with the ripe unclean
That came from somebody’s head.
The ghostly voice on your radio
That has whispered blood and gore,
Will drown tonight in the studio
So there won’t be any more.’

And right behind that terrible voice
There was choking sounds and screams,
Enough to curdle the very blood
And to give them nightmare dreams,
Then after a long, chilled silence of
The type that terror sates,
A voice said, ‘that was the final of
The Horror Tales of the Greats.’

David Lewis Paget

There’s not much of anything I can recall
From the time that we lived in the lane,
Only the puddles of rainwater eddying
With the wind’s gusting refrain.
Pamela knew, she was older than me
So absorbed all the essence of fear,
And many a time when she’d panic and whine
I would cry out ‘There’s nobody here!’

The trees were too tall and they ruled overall
By keeping the house in their shade,
The garden was cold and the rocks would grow mould
From the damp, in the part that I played.
The wind would come sniffing around from the trees
And shiver the hairs on my spine,
And then in a wheeze like a voice in the breeze,
‘You shouldn’t be here, this is mine!’

Our parents were never around it would seem,
Our time was spent mostly alone,
It’s true that I grew to be sensitive, too,
To the visions and sounds of my own.
But Pamela, she became crazy with fear
At every strange creak in that house,
So then when she’d scream, I’d say, ‘It’s a dream,’
And place a cloth over her mouth.

The house was three storeys, we never went up
To check out the topmost floor,
They said it was storage, and not ours to forage
So kept a stout lock on the door,
But Pamela said she heard noises above,
Like somebody padding around,
It couldn’t have been, or they would have been seen
Between the third floor and the ground.

But out from the garden I’d often look up
To stare at the sole window pane,
The one that was muddy, or could it be ******,
The colour was almost the same.
It was strange they insisted the stairway was locked
Could there be a grim secret to hide,
The darkest of murders, hidden away
And the storeroom above? Well, they lied!

Then Pamela said that she saw someone,
A shadow that fell on the pane,
Strange that the mud had continued in place
In spite of the seasonal rain.
Muddy or ******, it wouldn’t wash off
Though I stared and I stared, and I smiled,
The indistinct face that I saw staring back
Was the face of an evil child.

They say that the rest was over to me
Though I’ll never recall if it’s true,
It’s funny the things that you do in life
That you never thought you could do.
Pamela said I was quite the brat
But then Pamela’s such a liar,
All I recall is the face of a child
As the flames in the window grew higher.

David Lewis Paget

The brook at the end of the garden
Would gurgle and gush through the weeds,
Would ripple and plash in the morning sun
Like a spirit with spiritual needs,
I’d play as a child with my paper boats
As they twisted and twirled on the stream,
Not knowing the danger my sister faced
As she paddled barefoot in a dream.

For under the water and in the weeds
Was the face of a Grindylow,
He’d stare long up at my sister’s legs
From his weedbed, down below,
I should have known and I should have warned
If I’d known he lay down there,
Ruling the brook from his silver throne
But I didn’t, I declare.

I didn’t then, till I saw one day
His face in the willow shade,
Reflected up on the water course
Like a shadow God had made,
He wore a sinister smile that turned
The edge of his mouth to scorn,
And eyes that pierced as Deirdre passed
Her legs quite bare at the dawn.

I said, ‘You walked by the river god
And he stared right up your skirt,’
But Deirdre frowned, stared at the ground
I thought that she must feel hurt.
She kept on paddling in the brook
Walked out by the willow tree,
And two long arms then pulled her down
Rose out of the brook, by me.

I hadn’t the time to scream or cry
Her hair went into the brook,
Quick as a wink, she made no sound
I dashed to the tree to look,
And though the water was inches deep
Its depth had taken the girl,
Down through the weeds where the Dryads weep
With the water starting to whirl.

The brook still bubbles and gurgles there
Will ripple and plash in the weeds,
But I won’t go where I know below
My sister lies in the reeds,
She must have married the Grindylow
For she never came back to see,
If I was there in the morning air,
If anything happened to me?

David Lewis Paget

He was one of the cognoscenti,
She was one of the ‘up-for-sale’,
I knew that I shouldn’t fall for her
That she’d more than  likely bale,
But she came to me as a short-stop
On the way to a better deal,
She wouldn’t have even thought of,
(When she dumped me), how I’d feel.

I know it was my decision
To take her on at the start,
Then I didn’t know the bad effect
She’d have upon my heart,
But she gave to me unstinting,
That was how she really was,
Right to the time the know-all came
And told her what was what.

She’d gaze in a fascination
As he’d run off at the mouth,
Telling us in his wisdom
What he’d learnt, both north and south.
I couldn’t compete with his wallet,
I knew what his gifting cost,
And when he moved to the bedroom,
I knew that my cause was lost.

She shrugged it off in the morning,
She said it was only fair,
That I’d been suddenly just a friend
With benefits, to share,
But her life, it was slowly changing
And she sought stability,
That was the thing she found with him
That she couldn’t find with me.

I saw them off to the movies,
I watched as they went to dine,
I saw him caress her everywhere
In places that were mine,
I thought that I couldn’t stand it
The signs of their outward bliss,
Even though I had always known
In the end it would come to this.

But my love for her had curdled,
And my heart had turned to hate,
Revenge was upmost in my mind
When I planned an awful fate,
They ran around in a speedster,
A car with an open top,
I cut the lines to the power brakes
And I watched them both drive off.

I heard they were doing eighty
When the car didn’t take the curve,
And smashed them into an old oak tree
As it leapt right over the curb,
They both were thrown clean over the hood,
He broke his neck on the tree,
And she was crippled below the waist
But he was dead, you see.

I’d visit her at the hospice
As her health returned to fair,
But nothing would change the fact that she
Would spend her life in a chair.
I’d push her out in the garden
As I felt repentance soar,
And she would cry, ‘I want to die,’
While I fell for her, once more.

And she was happy to take me
At last, as the second best,
While in the guilt my tears were spilt
Though I tried to fake the rest,
I’m stuck with her in a wheelchair
And my life is merely dregs,
There isn’t a single benefit
For a girl with crippled legs.

We can’t make love in the morning,
We’ll never dance at a ball,
I’m tied for life to a crippled wife,
It’s my own fault, after all.
I shouldn’t have given in to hate
For a love that wasn’t mine,
And now I wonder if she loves me
Or just wants to pass the time.

David Lewis Paget

The end was nigh, he scanned the sky
For portents, dark and deep,
He’d sensed some troubled signs within
While tossing in his sleep.
He told his wife to pack some things,
The least that they would need,
But she said, ‘You must leave alone,
I’m staying here, God speed!’

He found he couldn’t change her mind,
No matter that he tried,
He told her of the darker times
That he had sensed, inside.
But she was quite content, she said,
‘In fact I’m quite serene,
I shall not run before the tide,
It may be but a dream!’

The Castle walls with hallowed halls
Held shadows grim and bleak,
Where muttered shades from former days
Would flit from moat to keep,
From tower, to hall, to bedchamber,
He cast his nervous eyes,
Where even in the flagstoned floors
He thought, ‘There evil lies!’

The evening skies were tinctured with
A weird orange glow,
And then the Moon rose up above,
A baneful, blood-red show,
While winds that howled like none before
Now clattered at the eaves,
And whispered down the chimney’s core,
‘God help the one that leaves!’

He wandered round the halls at night
And shook in some dread fear,
At sounds of chains, and distant pains
Deep in his inner ear.
He stood up at the battlements
And scanned the dark surround,
Where gargoyles leered, to spout their cheer
All on the hallowed ground.

‘But surely you must hear them, Maud,
They’re plain, so plain to me!’
‘I only hear the chirping bird
That flits in yonder tree.
Perhaps your mind has been disturbed,
You need to rest at night,
I’ll lock you in the Castle Keep
Until your dreams take flight.’

That night, asleep, but fitfully
He heard a horse’s hooves,
That clattered in the courtyard, echoed
With its iron shoes.
And then he heard his wife, who whispered
Like some painted *****,
‘He’s almost driven mad, I’ve locked
Him in, and barred the door.’

Then like a charm that runs its course
And sets its victim free,
He knew that she’d been feeding him
With Belladonna tea.
He waited for an hour, and then
Burst hinges on the door,
And sought his wife’s bedchamber
Where her lover felt secure.

‘I told you I’d sensed darker times,
Such darker times, for you!’
He said as he approached the bed
And ran her lover through.
He raised the sword that dripped with blood
Then stood with drooping head,
While she went pale, to no avail,
In moments, she was dead!

David Lewis Paget

They’d all been swept to the beach and left
Like flotsam, after the storm,
Some were alive and some were dead
In that tragic scene, at dawn,
Their ship was lying submerged out there
While its mast still graced the sky,
Its time was brief on that unmarked reef,
Out where its bones would lie.

While those who had been swept overboard
Into a foam-fleck’d sea,
Were helpless, dashed by the giant waves
On rocks that they couldn’t see,
They tore the flesh from the living bone
And  crushed the skull as they hit,
The sea was turning a muddy red
With blood that was lost in it.

Then when the tide had come churning in
With its charnel bodies and bones,
Above the roar of the rabid shore
You could hear the first few moans,
A sailor lay with a broken arm
Another nursing his head,
And there a woman, so frail of form,
Who certainly should be dead.

She lay with her skirt around her waist,
Her legs were a mass of blood,
Dragged and tossed on a needle rock
She’d suffered more than she should,
But though she moaned she had looked around
As the bodies came floating in,
‘Where are you Alan A-Dell,’ she cried,
‘To lose you now is a sin.’

But Alan A-Dell was still out there
The waves would pummel and pound,
He had no thought of the girl that called
As he floated there, face down,
The love they’d shared was a mystery
That had held them wrapt in awe,
But now had passed into history
As he floated in, to the shore.

And Carmel cried as the rising tide
Kept sweeping the bodies in,
For Alan A-Dell now lay beside
The lover that once had been,
She thought of the final words he’d said
As they both jumped into the waves,
‘I pray, if there is a God above,
That you are the one he saves.’

And so she wept as she beat his chest
And railed at the living God,
‘Why take half of a love away
When a love takes two, that’s odd.’
The sun burst suddenly through the clouds
And it made the water gleam,
As Alan A-Dell had spluttered once
His body and life redeemed.

They clutched each other that livelong day
Alone on that charnel beach,
Everyone else had died, they lay
Where living was out of reach,
The night came down on that lonely shore
With no-one to help or care,
So shivered into the early hours
When suddenly, God was there.

He hadn’t taken a single love
She’d said that a love takes two,
So looking down from his place above
He knew what he had to do,
And when they died in each others arms
With their hearts within them stilled,
A love was taken, not one, but two,
With his grace, their love was sealed.

David Lewis Paget

We’ve navigated the old canals
Since the roads were blocked with cars,
And we were stuck when the highway truck
Rolled over the top of ours,
They poured a layer of bitumen
Across the roofs of them all,
Then crushed them under a steam roller
Until they were flat, and small.

They didn’t bother to pull them out
The ones who were trapped inside,
Just wrote them off the accounting books
And made a note that they’d died,
They needed to halve the ones who lived
Or the earth would sputter in space,
Spinning across that great divide
With the death of the human race.

But we got out, and we made a break
For the fields and the old canals,
And found a deserted barge afloat
Thanks to the help of pals,
We got some paint and we cleaned it up,
Made it all right to roam,
Then once inside it was quite a ride
And started to feel like home.

Most of the waterways were clear
With some of them overgrown,
I’d send Gwen Darling back to the rear
To steer while the weeds were mown,
I’d scythe them out of the way ahead
And steer the barge through the gap,
Then rest at night by a harvest moon
With Darling Gwen on my lap.

I’d bag a hare on a winter’s night
And steal the milk from a cow,
The earth was dying, but we survived
And Gwen kept asking me how?
‘We’re going back to the way it was
Before computers and such,
Before the Banks had us by the throat
When love was lived by a touch.’

So still we wander across the land
As they did in the days of old,
Those ancient barges, covered in dust
But laden, carrying coal,
There’s a merry fire on a metal hearth
And an oven, full of a goose,
And a woman’s wiles, to gladden my heart
As her stays are coming loose.

David Lewis Paget

There’s an angel down in my garden plot
But she’s overgrown with weeds,
She looms up out of the sassafras
Set back in among the trees.
I don’t know how long she’s stood out there
But her wings are green with moss,
And her tired face is a study in grace,
Reflecting a sense of loss.

‘Your flesh was an alabaster white
But it’s almost faded to grey,
You’re weather-worn, and you look forlorn
As if you’ve been cast away.
The days when you were a centrepiece
Of a garden, laid and fine,
Have now passed on, with the garden gone
But I’ve found you now, you’re mine.’

‘I promise I’ll clear the weeds away,
I’ll scrub the moss from your wings,
I’ll light that tender smile on your face
With the glow a spotlight brings,
I’ll bring you back to the glory you
Reflect from heaven’s spell,
And people will come adoring you
When I put in a wishing well.’

‘A wishing well for your hopes and dreams
And the hopes and dreams of them,
They’ll touch your gown and they’ll toss a coin
When they leave, they’ll wish you well.
I’ll sleep with you looking over me
And dream of the King of Kings,
And see his crown as he’s looking down
We’ll see what the future brings!’

I worked to see my promises kept
‘Til the angel gleamed and shone,
But one day there in the garden wept
For the angel there had gone.
She’d fluttered off from her plinth one night
With her feathered wings reborn,
And through my tears, and despite my fears
I rejoiced at the Crimson Dawn!

David Lewis Paget

The barge slid on through the rushes,
Where once was a major road,
And pushed its way through the bushes
Where the ocean had overflowed,
The draught of the barge was shallow,
We could navigate by the shore,
Or over the swampy marshland to
The remains of the Foodland Store.

‘The place is probably empty,’
Said Rob, who sat at the prow,
Hugging the **** of the .22
That we’d need for protection now,
‘We’ll wait till the stroke of midnight,’
Said Penny, who managed the food,
And nobody thought to argue,
Or put the girl in a mood.

But then, as we rounded the Plaza
Another barge came in view,
‘That beast is called ‘The Marauder’,
Said Rob, who claimed that he knew.
Then lead slammed into our wooden prow
Their method for warning us off,
So Rob fired back with our .22
To show that we weren’t so soft.

But that was the end of the stand-off,
They’d loaded their barge and were gone,
Slipping away before ten o’clock
With the tide rising over the lawn.
‘We’d better get moving,’ our Penny said,
And headed off into the store,
There wasn’t much left on the shelves in there,
Some tins, but there wasn’t much more.

‘I never believed Global Warming,’
Said Rob, as he checked through his list,
‘Who would believe that the seas would rise
Or the end of the world be like this?’
‘It came on us suddenly,’ I replied,
‘Too sudden to sandbag the shore,
And everyone fled, unless they were dead,
Up into each mountain and tor.’

‘The cities are all under water,
The water is flooding the plain,
We’re lucky that Rob found this drifting barge,
It’s *****, but keeping us sane.’
‘We’re not going to last on the food we have,’
Said Penny, ‘we have to find more,’
‘We’ll chase that ‘Marauder’, it may come to ******,
But they’d do the same, that’s for sure!’

It took us a week to catch their old barge,
They’d run out of fuel, were adrift,
And Rob shot the wretch who’d slept on his watch,
Their barge was half jammed in a ditch.
We transhipped the food while the tide was out,
And left with provisions to spare,
‘It’s a harsh, cruel world,’ we said to their girl,
As we sank their ‘Marauder’ right there.

Our lives will be fraught as we pass back and forth
On the waters that cover the towns,
We’ll have to go diving in Supermarts
For treasures of food that have drowned.
But other survivors are living afloat
Who will try to take over our barge,
The world of the future, a perilous sea,
While there are still others at large.

David Lewis Paget

We were way up there on the Ferris Wheel
When it came to a sudden stop,
We’d only got on for the final ride
And it left us up at the top.
‘What are they doing?’ said Imogen,
As we first began to doubt,
Then looking down to the distant ground
The lights of the Fair went out.

‘Surely they know that we’re still up here!’
There was panic in her voice,
I tried to bellow, and then to shout,
They had left us little choice.
The lights of the cars had streamed below
With the last ones, headed away,
The wind up there put a chill in the air
And the Wheel began to sway.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she cried,
And I said, ‘Please, not on me!’
I wrapped her up in my coat and tried
To calm her misery.
‘It’s always the same with you,’ she said,
‘But it keeps on getting worse,
The moment we’re down, and on the ground
I’m going to get a divorce.’

We’d only gone on the Ferris Wheel
For a place to talk things out,
I wanted to get her away from home
To a place where she couldn’t shout.
She’d sworn she’d never divorce me that
She’d make life living hell,
I had to make her want a divorce
As much as me, as well.

‘So I get blamed for the Ferris Wheel,
Did I tell the guy to stop?
How could I know he’d forget us here
And leave us perched at the top?’
‘It always happens, you wired the stove
So the whole **** thing was live,
Then I got thrown when I switched it on,
It’s lucky I’m still alive.’

‘Then out in the boat, we nearly sank
When you put the boat in a spin,
It filled with water when you forgot
To put the drain plug in.’
‘I know, I know, I’m a jinx,’ I said,
It always happens to me,
Perhaps you’d better get a divorce
Then you’ll be finally free.’

We didn’t speak for a solid hour,
Sat as far apart as we could,
And then I lit up a cigarette
To dispel my cold, black mood.
Our marriage had really hit the pits,
It was never going to do,
I’d not been happy since Imogen
Had turned to a carping shrew.

I’d never done anything right for her,
And never could make amends,
She always tried to humiliate me
By telling all of her friends.
She said I was good for nothing, but
To give her my weekly cheque,
At times I barely restrained myself
From seizing her round the neck.

An hour went by, and the Wheel began
To take us down to the ground,
Someone had seen my cigarette
It seemed, said the man from town.
She shrieked and screamed as she stalked away
At the guy that I knew as Nick,
As I slipped him his fifty bucks, and said:
‘It seems to have done the trick!’

David Lewis Paget

I met myself on a winding path
With the beach ten yards away,
Walking slowly towards me then
By the pounding breakers spray,
The path was narrow, I stepped aside
As I felt a twinge of fear,
We both were startled, I heard us say,
‘What are you doing here?’

I looked at me as I must have been
At the age of thirty-one,
And I was visibly shaken, seeing
Just how the years had gone,
‘I’m not quite how I envisaged me,
Were the years ahead so hard?’
I felt a chill and replied to me,
‘I was hoist on my own petard.’

‘What has become of our hopes and dreams,
The ones that we must have shared?’
‘I let them slip through my fingers, once
I noticed that no-one cared.’
‘I always said that I’d have to fight
For the things that I held dear,’
‘But the years have changed, and rearranged
For none of those things are here.’

With one last look at each other, we
Then parted and turned away,
I to a desperate future,
And me to my dying day,
The I then turned that was thirty-one
‘Can you tell what happened to She?’
I couldn’t remember the one I meant,
‘She’s certainly not with me!’

David Lewis Paget

The old man came in the wintertime,
The mist was cold and grey,
She thought he’d been in a distant time
But then he went away.
She only caught but a fleeting glimpse
Through the hedgerow to the street,
But felt a chill as the memory spilled
From her head down to her feet.

He wore a common fedora hat
And a houndstooth overcoat,
The collar was turned up high, so she
Saw neither cheek, nor throat,
But just for a moment, as he turned
And beneath the brim of his hat,
She caught a glimpse of his piercing eyes
And his eyes were dull, and black.

She told her brother about the man
And she tried to laugh it off,
She said it gave her a sudden fright
And she thought that he would scoff.
Her brother turned with a furrowed brow
And his face was white as sin,
‘If ever he comes to your door, you know
You never must let him in.’

‘What do you know about this man?’
She cried, in a sudden fit,
‘I only mentioned his passing, so
That you’d scoff, make light of it!’
A chill ran down to her fingertips
And tightness grew at her throat,
‘Be sure to lock all your windows
And the door, please draw the bolt.’

He stood there facing the window, and
He stared long out at the lawn,
No matter how much she pressed him, he
Was firm, would not be drawn.
‘There’s no point letting the nightmares in
That will make you feel aghast,
The man you’ve seen is a walking sin
That we left behind in the past.’

She’d always trusted her brother John
Who was older, solemn, grey,
He’d always tried to protect her from
What hurtful people say,
Their mother had died, with her a child
While he was just sixteen,
They’d moved away to the countryside,
Had avoided kith and kin.

But John was working away at night
So it left her on her own,
Huddling over the fireplace
In their quaint and rustic home.
The mist swirled over the window panes
When she saw the face peer in,
And tap at last on the frosted glass
As he called out, ‘Carolyn!’

‘Carolyn, won’t you hear me now
I have such a tale to tell,’
She stared back into the dull black eyes
Of a soul who’d been through hell.
She shook her head and she bit her hand
And she waved the man away,
‘I need to talk to you, Carolyn,
Please hear what I have to say.’

She edged on up to the window
And she whispered, ‘Please to go!
You know that you have me terrified
But for what, I just don’t know.’
‘They put me away for twenty years,
In jail, for killing my wife,
That woman you called your Momma, girl,
They sent me down for life!’

Carolyn shrieked, and held her ears
From the face in the frosted pane,
And distant memories flooded back
From her childhood, once again,
She saw them dragging her father off
But they never brought him home,
And John had gone to the funeral
Of their mother, all alone.

‘They said I poisoned your mother,’ cried
The voice through the frosted glass,
‘I swear, my girl, that it wasn’t me
But your brother John, alas.
I turned my back when your brother poured
That powder into her tea…’
Then Carolyn sobbed, and choked, and said,
‘Please God. No! That was me!’

David Lewis Paget

I’d taken my friends way off the shore
In my small, glass-bottomed boat,
The weather was clear, the sea was calm
For the sturdiest boat afloat,
I wanted to scan the hidden depths
Watch all that lived on the reef,
But Peter my friend, just wanted to fish,
And so did his brother, Keith.

They busied themselves with their fishing rods,
Were bent on baiting their hooks,
When suddenly something beneath the boat
Made me take a second look,
It only appeared a shadow at first
Came on with a sinuous glide,
It wasn’t a fish I had seen before,
‘Hey, just look at this,’ I cried.

They both turned around and peered below
But then the shadow had gone,
‘What did you see,’ said Peter P.
‘It must have been twenty feet long!’
‘Oh *******,’ said Keith, ‘beyond belief,
There isn’t a fish of that size,
Not even the great White Pointer Shark,
You must have mud in your eyes.’

‘I know what I saw,’ I said again,
‘It had the most horrible teeth,
It seemed to be looking for prey down there
Across the top of the reef.’
‘I’ve fished these waters for twenty years,
I think I’d have seen it by now,’
Said Peter P. with a smirk at me,
‘Watch us, and we’ll show you how.’

They knew I wasn’t a fisherman,
I wouldn’t know Cod from a shark,
I just liked to watch the fishes swim
Through the glass-bottomed boat in the dark,
I’d rigged up floodlights to light below
That eerie, mysterious deep,
Where seaweed swayed in the land they played
With the rest of the world asleep.

The guys continued and cast their lines,
While I sat reading a book,
We’d be there hours, and that was fine
I took the occasional look,
We drifted over a patch of blue
The sand was clear below,
When back there came that sinuous shape
I said to the guys, ‘HeLLO!’

This time it headed up for the boat,
Less like a fish than a snake,
A massive head with reptilian teeth
And suddenly I was awake.
It shot straight up, right over the boat
Snapping its massive jaw,
And took Keith’s arm from his shoulder blades
Right into its mighty maw.

We just couldn’t stop the flow of blood
It filled the boat as he died,
And Peter P. was distraught as he
Sat helplessly, and he cried.
‘That must be some prehistoric beast
That lived on the ocean floor,
I’ll never go fishing again,’ said he
As we headed back to the shore.

David Lewis Paget

She walked the cobblestone streets at night,
Everyone thought her a pro,
Her skirt was short and her blouse was tight
And her eyes moved to and fro,
She never answered a mocking call
For a price to rest her head,
And wouldn’t stop till the Moon went down
When at last she went to her bed.

She’d roamed the alleyways and the streets
For a year, or maybe two,
Whenever a stranger stayed her feet
She’d say, ‘Not looking for you!’
But still she’d roam till she turned for home
Each night, it went to a plan,
She’d check each face for a sign of grace,
Each night, she’d look for a man.

Sometimes she’d stop at a village Inn
And she’d sidle up to the bar,
The barman said, ‘No, you can’t come in,’
Then she’d say, ‘I’ve come so far.
I need to know if you’ve seen a man
With a head of bright red hair,
A lazy eye, with a look quite sly,
I’ve been searching here and there.’

But no-one knew of the lazy eye
Though they’d seen the carrot head,
‘He used to drink at ‘The King and I’
But I think that fellow’s dead.’
She wandered out to the cemetery
To look for the name they gave,
But the headstone said it was Henry,
When the name that she sought was Dave.’

She’d go back home and she’d cry at night
When the stranger came in her dream,
She’d only seen him the once before
But his face was burnt on her brain.
‘I’ll not be rid of him, nevermore,
And I’ll spend my life in pain,
I need to see him, if just once more,’
It drove her out in the rain.

One night she walked through an alleyway
In shadows, deep in the gloom,
Hiding a figure standing there
Who stared, like a figure of doom.
He faced her there in the only light,
The Moon, that beamed through the trees,
And she took note of the lazy eye
And the hair, like a red disease.

‘I think I’ve seen you before,’ he said,
I just can’t remember when.’
‘You did, while I was lying in bed,
You came through my window then.
I’ve searched for you for a year or more
And now is your time to pay,
You won’t be getting away this time,
So down on your knees, and pray.’

She pulled a pistol out of her bag
To point it at straight at his head,
The stranger’s knees had begun to sag,
‘I should have left you for dead!’
‘I’m glad that your hair is red, blood red,
For the sight won’t make me cry,’
Then fired a bullet, straight through his head
By way of his lazy eye.

David Lewis Paget

‘She was always a bit of an actress,
I remember how she was,
Back in the days of the village plays
When she changed her name to Roz,
She wouldn’t respond to Eileen since
The day that she made the switch,
In print, the head of the programme said:
‘Roz plays the Wicked Witch!’’

‘She always got into the parts she played
And would practice night and day,
Try to get into the head, she said
Of the character she’d play,
She’d wander round in a velvet gown
Or strip right down for the beach,
There wasn’t a beach for twenty miles
But she’d towel herself in the street.’

‘It must have become a way of life,
A habit, hard to break,
And went on after I’d married her
Though it brought its own heartache,
She had affairs with her leading men
But she saw no fault in this,
She said, ‘It has to be genuine,
To portray authentic bliss!’’

‘The years went on and the parts she played
They became more grim and dour,
She’d often play the neglected wife
And her mood at home was sour,
She’d even try to attack me with
The words from her latest play,
And I would have to remind her that:
‘My name’s not Robin Day!’’

‘She rarely thought to apologise,
She said that she saw no need,
For after all, she was following
The muse of the artist’s creed,
I tried to ignore the worst of it
When she flung both pots and pans,
But had to go off to the hospital
When she stomped on one of my hands.’

‘She asked me to drive her out one night
To the cliffs at Beachy Head,
And play the part of a kidnapper
Who was holding a maid in dread,
She played her part, hung over the cliff,
And begged, and screamed, and stomped,
While I just said the word in the script
And the word in the script was ‘Jump!’’

‘I didn’t think she would jump, My Lord,
To me it was just a play,
To her it was the way that she lived,
Authentic in every way.
She screamed the most blood-curdling scream
That ever I heard, I know,
A scream that would bring the curtain down
On any top London show!’

David Lewis Paget

‘The world has left me behind,’ he said,
‘I live my life in the past,
None of the things that I came to love
Survived, they just couldn’t last.
The rails that I rode are overgrown,
The music I loved has gone,
The friends that I made are left in the shade,
Though most of them travelled on.’

The woman who’d answered his ad was sat
Beside him out on the porch,
She’d heard this tale a million times
So she never carried a torch.
She bent her head as she listened to him
And she smiled, her hair was grey,
The years of care were visible there
As her beauty faded away.

‘But wasn’t it all a wonderful ride,’
She sighed, as she thought of him,
The man who’d always been at her side
‘Til he died, his end was grim.
But that was a dozen years ago
And life carried on, though sad,
She wanted to meet a gentle soul
Which was why she’d answered the ad.

‘Why would you want to live in the past
When the past is done and gone,
I tip my hat to the past,’ she said,
‘But the future lures me on.
There’s conversation and love to share
As long as there’s life and breath,
The future’s only a day away,
The end of it all is death.’

He sat up straight and he stared at her
Transfixed by her gentle voice,
The things that stirred in his hardened heart
He’d buried them there by choice.
Behind her eyes was an inner glow
That he hadn’t noticed before,
‘Could you really bring me to life again?’
He said, and his voice was raw.

‘We can take it just one step at a time,’
She said, ‘as we did when young,
The world was such a marvellous place
To explore, like a song unsung,
We’ll bless the sun coming up each day,
To spread its light through our land…’
Then watched the roll of a single tear
As she reached on out for his hand.

David Lewis Paget

The old man sat on the long park bench
Where the children used to play,
He seemed to be harmless, sitting there
Though he’d be there every day.
His pockets were always full of sweets
And he’d smile a kindly smile,
But mothers would huddle nervously,
They suspected him of guile.

‘What do you think he’s up to,’ said
One mother to her friend,
‘I’ve read some terrible things about
Young children and old men.’
‘Can’t you see that he’s harmless,
He’s so old, and frail and sick,
He’s just like a kindly grandfather
Who walks with a walking stick.’

‘He shouldn’t be handing out those sweets,
We don’t know what’s inside,
What if it’s something horrible
And one of the children died?’
‘You need to become more trusting,
He’s out here in the light of day,
I hope that he didn’t hear you,
That’s a terrible thing to say!’

He smiled and nodded, and fell asleep
Sat back on the wooden seat,
His overcoat had seen better days
And so, the shoes on his feet,
He woke when the children whooped about,
Swung high on the rusty swings,
Tempted the children with his sweets
And to some, he muttered things.

‘What did the old man say to you?’
One whispered to her son,
“He asked if I wanted knowledge, if
I did, then he’d give me some.’
‘You’re not to speak to him anymore,’
The woman cried, in fear,
It isn’t right that he fills your head,
By rights, he shouldn’t be here.’

She went to sit on the wooden seat
And she grabbed him by the sleeve,
‘What do you mean by ‘knowledge’ then,
I think you ought to leave!’
‘I mean no harm, I’m a kindly man
And I love those children dear,
I’d give my all to be young again
And I feel young when they’re near.’

She nodded, said that she felt ashamed,
And patted him on the arm,
Then got up, leaving her son to play
She’d lost all sense of alarm.
The boy was tempted again by sweets
And the old man grabbed his hand,
‘Just stare right into my eyes, my boy,
I’ll take you to fairyland.’

The old man’s eyes were hypnotic when
He stared, and soon glowed red,
And then the little boy trembled as
A lifetime flowed in his head,
The old man smiled, and his hand relaxed
As the young boy turned to go,
‘At last,’ he capered, and danced about,
And the old man sank back, slow.

The mother came to collect her son,
He was nowhere on the green,
She went to the old man on the bench,
‘Where’s John? You must have seen!’
The old man struggled to sit upright
And held out a trembling hand,
‘I’ve waited ever so long for you,
But I don’t think I can stand!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I would if I could but I can’t,’ he said,
‘Though I know it would be sublime,
I’m spoken for, and it does my head
To think that you could be mine.
I made a vow, and I don’t know how
I could break it, and feel right,
But though I’m true, I’m thinking of you
As I do, each sleepless night.’

He shook his head and he walked away
As she clutched the verandah rail,
She turned her face away when the trace
Of her tears had left a trail.
‘I don’t know what the attraction is,’
She said, as she wiped her eyes,
‘But it must be true what I say to you,
Anything else is lies!’

He walked back into his hotel room
And held his head in his hands,
And as he did the temptation grew
For a taste of contraband.
She’d met him there as she always did
For she serviced all the rooms,
His monthly trip, and her heart would flip
As the day of his coming loomed.

And he would think of her sparkling eyes
The set of her moist, pink lips,
Her flaxen hair and her pointed stare
And the sway of her ****** hips.
Her image was burnt upon his brain
Though he still loved his woman too,
It left him sore and confused, he thought,
What was a man to do?

He fell at last in a deep, deep sleep
And Rhianna entered his room,
She saw him peacefully lying there
Quite unaware in the gloom,
She lay down quiet beside him, just
To see how it felt to lie
Next to the one that her love was on,
He woke, his hand on her thigh.

The silken feel of Rhianna’s thigh
Had put him into a trance,
He thought that a dream had come to life
Til he opened his eyes, by chance,
Her lips were hovering over his brow
Her flaxen hair in his face,
Her strange perfume permeated the room,
He rolled off the bed in haste.

‘I would if I could but I can’t,’ he said,
‘I need you to understand,
If I were free, with just you and me
But I’m not, and this wasn’t planned.’
He left, drove home in the early dawn
To arrive unexpectedly,
And saw the light in the bedroom on,
His woman had company.

She wept as the man had gathered his clothes,
And made poste haste for the door,
While he just stood as if turned to wood,
His feet fast glued to the floor,
‘Well, you’re always off on your travels, John,
You must consider my plight!’
‘That may be so,’ as he turned to go,
‘But I know where I’ll sleep tonight!’

David Lewis Paget

She’d gone on her own to the party,
But sadly, for she was alone,
Her partner had left her in limbo,
Had not even said he was going.
A month had gone by, with never a word
And nothing to say why he’d gone,
She looked in the mirror for why she was spurned
But life, as it does, carries on.

Nothing had changed in her that she could see,
She still had her beautiful hair,
Her lips were as full as they ever could be,
Her eyes had that hypnotic stare.
Her figure was slim, and as firm as it was
When her partner decided to leave,
If there was a problem, it had to be him,
Which left her no reason to grieve.

The party she went to was stranger than strange,
With Bogans, Goth make-up and Greens,
She guessed that their ages for most of them ranged
From middle-aged matrons to teens.
A pair of Goth sisters were eyeing her off
And flattering her, to deceive,
‘My, there is a beauty, the best of the lot,
I’d fit her, I think, with a squeeze.’

They twittered and tittered between them, the two,
Whose beauty had long gone to seed,
Whatever they’d had, it was plain that it flew
When excess took over from need.
They fed her with drinks and exotic confects
That she hardly liked to refuse,
Her hold on the present was slight, I reflect,
Her sadness was yesterday’s news.

The ugliest sister, whose name was July,
Rolled in like a mist to her brain,
The cunning of eyes and a whispered surprise
Made her think she was going insane.
She felt herself ebbing, and losing control
As July held her hands in her own,
And then somehow gelling with tissues and cells in
Some fatness that she’d never known.

She watched through a mist as the girl she had been
Laughed loudly, and then turned away,
Embracing the sister, that other unclean,
‘We’ll get you one, some other day!’
Her body felt loose, like an oversize suit
And her lips could but slobber and cry,
‘What have they done to my beautiful youth,’
As she turned to a mirror, to cry.

David Lewis Paget

There’s something wrong, for I see it now
Burn brightly in my brain,
A simple spark and a flash of light
That becomes a roaring flame,
It happens just about every night
As I rest my weary head,
And burns my eyes from the insides, when
I’m lying still in bed.

The doctors say it’s a trick of light
At the corner of my eyes,
Perhaps it’s only a lightning flash
That catches, by surprise,
But there’s no light in my darkened room
And the blinds are pulled down tight,
It comes so suddenly, then it goes
Like a spark of some insight.

Could it be something that’s been and gone
Though I’ve blacked the memory out,
Something terrible, that went wrong
And scared me, without doubt?
Could it be something that’s still to come
Said the gypsy in the hall,
While crossing her palm with silver, as
She peered in her crystal ball.

‘It could be a warning from the gods,
It could be a sign of fate,
Some sort of a premonition that
You attended to, too late,
The crystal ball has a fiery glow
In its depths, that I never saw,
And many’s the time I’ve gazed in it
Not seeing such glow before.’

I never would worry Christabel
With my tale of the nightly flame,
I wouldn’t have wanted her to think
There was something wrong with my brain,
So she went and ordered her wedding dress
A vision in silk and lace,
And yards and yards of a satin trail
With net all over her face.

We took our vows in the Baptist church
She’d attended since a child,
Keeping her mother happy, though
In fact, she was meek and mild,
Then later at the reception we
Arrived at the old church hall,
And Christabel was a vision as
She stood by the entrance wall.

There’s no way I could foresee it
Though I later thought that I should,
A guest came in with a cigarette,
I’d have stopped him if I could,
He flicked the **** and a single spark
Flew onto my darling's train,
The silk and satin went up at once
And Christabel was aflame.

The flames went up like a giant torch
And engulfed the yards of net,
There wasn’t time for a single word
If there was, then I forget,
She stood there blackened, her skin peeled off
And she swayed against the wall,
Then slowly toppled to earth before
I reached, to stay her fall.

Now every night there’s a single spark
And a sudden flash of light,
As flames are dancing behind my eyes
In that awful nightmare sight,
The tears that roll down my cheeks are hot
As if roasted in the fire,
They might as well, for I dwell in hell
Since I lost my one desire.

David Lewis Paget

Hieronymus Bosch, who was only four,
Had toddled right out of my life,
I didn’t know whether he’d gone on his own
Or left with the trouble and strife.
She’d rave and she’d threaten to fly the coop
As she said that my ways were strange,
But whether she’d bother to take him too
Would have meant a remarkable change.

‘Why did you pick such a horrible name,’
She’d say, as she ladled the stew,
‘You gave him the name of a painter insane,’
(As he baited the bears at the zoo).
‘How can he live a commonplace life
With a moniker he can’t spell?
You’ve sentenced your son to eternal strife
Like that panel, a painting of hell.’

Hieronymus, he didn’t care about this,
He wanted to picture his world,
He’d flop and he’d slop in the mud, in his bliss,
And paint, till his toes had curled.
I knew that he’d be a surrealist when
He played with his mash, and was cute,
He swished it around on his palette to look
Like a man with a nose like a flute.

‘That kid is so gruesome,’ the wife had exclaimed,
‘He’s set on a roadway to hell.’
He’d crayoned a picture of me and her sister
Entwined on her favourite bell.
‘He isn’t like others,’ I used to exclaim,
‘He sees what he sees inside out,
He doesn’t like others, like hair-splitting mothers,’
And that’s when she started to shout.

I’ve searched and I’ve searched for Heironymus Bosch,
I’m trying to follow his trail,
The long line of beetles he captured in treacle,
The dead dog that’s eating its tail.
I know that he’s not with the trouble and strife
For she went into hiding in Greece,
He should be called Chester, the lad’s such a jester,
I guess I’ll be calling the Police.

David Lewis Paget

Way out, on what was a barren plain
A tree has taken root,
Over the spot where a poet’s lain
It bears the strangest fruit,
He wasn’t read while he lived and wrote,
Was neglected till he died,
But scribbled each verse like a private note
That he hugged to him in pride.

He lived in a garret, quite alone
And without a loving mate,
His heart would leap at each lovely girl
As she passed his garden gate,
But far too shy to invite them in
He could only sit and stare,
And think each time of what could have been
If he’d chanced to step out there.

But love still flowed from his poet’s pen
Though he had no-one to care,
He captured it from the universe
And he wrote it everywhere,
He left it piled in his gloomy den
When he took sick of the ride,
Turned his eyes to heaven again,
Gave up the ghost, and died.

They didn’t know what to do with it,
This love from a poet’s pen,
So placed it in the coffin with him
These shallow, heartless men,
Buried him out on a barren plain
Where nothing ever grew,
But marked the spot by planting there
A tree, namely, a Yew.

It’s twenty years since poetry was
Planted there, unread,
Alongside in the coffin with
The poet, newly dead,
But on the tree that proudly stands
With its roots entwined in love,
Each leaf reveals a verse or two
Fluttering from above.

David Lewis Paget

The house, an aristocratic pile
Sat nestled into the hill,
Hidden by trees and bushes, while
It harboured its silence, still.
No outward sign of its infamy,
No clue to the years before,
When men had described it, clinically
As being, itself, at war.

Designed and built by my grandfather
In a late Victorian style,
It had all the trappings of balconies
And of lacework in wrought iron,
The tiles were Italian marble
And the pathways local stone,
My Grandma, Jenny McArdle,
She gave it a heightened tone.

The gentry came for the parties,
They came for the dress-up *****,
I don’t remember a time they weren’t
Wandering through the halls,
It fretted Jenny McArdle
Who wanted a little peace,
But **** was a hunting sporting man
And he wanted peace the least.

He’d take his chums to the library
Where they’d play their six card stud,
There were threats and there was bribery
And before too long there, blood,
Then finally, on an ill starred night
That would hit my grandma hard,
Her husband wagered the house she loved
Just once, on a single card.

The moment she heard the house was gone
She flew at their deck of cards,
Split open the heads of more than one
Left acres of glass in shards,
‘You’ll not be taking my home from me,’
She screamed at the Earl of Vane,
Before she fell from the balcony,
Cursing her husband’s name.

And **** was never the same again
He had to vacate his home,
While Jenny McArdle’s blood was still
Staining the local stone,
They say her ghost wouldn’t leave the place
And that’s why it caught alight,
Once when her shape had leapt in space
From the balcony one night.

And now I sit in the clearing where
That once great house had sat,
Amidst the trees and the sounds of bees
When I’m feeling low, and flat,
That house, it should have been left to me,
I’m the only downward line,
But still I hear when the weather’s clear
My grandma’s voice, ‘It’s mine!’

David Lewis Paget

The only gas lamp left in the street
Was sitting outside my door,
The rest now lay on a ******* heap
Had been cleared some years before,
But strangely, all of the mist that once
Obscured the street from sight,
Now hung and clung to that gas lamp frame
And darkened my door at night.

I’d stand and stare through my window there
Whenever the mist was high,
Painting the drains and window panes
In the glow of the gas lamp eye,
And those that passed in the street at night
Would flicker and then be gone,
Just like a scene on the silver screen
They would pause, then hurry along.

And that’s when I saw the girl out there
One misty night, about ten,
All dressed up for a late night show
She’d certainly go, but when?
She wore a dress in a style I’d thought
More in Victorian taste,
A woollen shawl and a bonnet, small,
And a bodice of Nottingham lace.

She’d disappear in the swirling mist
Then reappear in the glow,
She’d cling on tight to the gas lamp post,
She wasn’t ready to go,
Perhaps she waited for someone there
I thought, how lucky he’d be,
She looked so beautiful, standing where
I’d wish she was waiting for me.

She seemed to come every friday night
But only during a mist,
If only she would knock at my door
I thought, I couldn’t resist.
One friday night it began to rain,
And she looked in a great distress
Now I could venture to ask her in
If only to save her dress.

I stepped right up and opened the door,
Her image would flicker and fade,
I saw her turn, and stare from the glow
That the old gas lamp had made,
‘So there you are,’ came her breezy voice,
‘I’ve been waiting here, you see,
Every friday at ten o’clock
Since 1893.’

That was the moment the lamp blew out
In a strong and sudden gust,
The glow, the rain and the girl had gone
With the mist remaining, just,
I stand alone by the window pane
And I peer into the mist,
To search forever the girl who came
That I saw, but never kissed.

David Lewis Paget

I came home to an empty house
To find that you were out,
That you’d be home much later, then
I hadn’t any doubt,
But the day stretched into evening
Without a sight of you,
And you didn’t even call me
Like you always used to do.

When you’d not returned by midnight
I was worried, and was stressed,
I’d thought to call the police, but didn’t
Know just what was best,
You might have been embarrassed if
I’d simply jumped the gun,
And you came home unharmed to say:
‘I went out, having fun.’

The day stretched into weeks and still
You never came back home,
Though everyone was looking, saying
‘Jen’s gone off to roam.’
I couldn’t quite believe it for
We’d never had a spat,
Some evil had befallen you,
I was so sure of that.

A year went by of heartache but
I hadn’t given up,
The house became so lonely when
I had to bite or sup,
To say I cried a river for
A year would understate,
That desolation feeling that
I’d lost my only mate.

And then down on the jetty of
A distant coastal town,
I thought I saw your figure, with
A man, and looking round,
I followed you and caught you
As you got into his car,
But you had simply stared at me,
‘I don’t know who you are.’

The man was quite aggressive, said
‘You’re talking to my girl.
You’d better not annoy us, I’ll
Reorganise your world,’
I cried, ‘Don’t you remember me?’
And called her name out, ‘Jen,’
She simply stood and stared at me
And said, ‘My name is Gwen.’

He dropped you at a hospital,
I’d followed in the rain,
And saw you go inside alone,
While all I felt was pain,
I waited till the man had left
And went in through the door,
Sought out the doctor tending you
Up on the second floor.

He said you had amnesia
Were picked up in the street,
That you had wandered aimlessly
He thought, about a week,
I told him how you’d left one day
And walked out of my life,
And that your name was Jenny, you
Were certainly my wife.

There wasn’t much that he could do,
I’d visit every day,
And talk about my life with you,
You’d stare in your dismay,
‘My life was just a blank,’ you said,
‘Before you came along,
But if I can’t remember you,
To love you would be wrong.’

I left you there and went back home
But gave you our address,
And hoped that you would call one day,
I couldn’t ask for less,
And when you did, your eyes lit up,
‘I do remember now,
I’d fallen out of love with you,
And had to leave somehow.’

David Lewis Paget

I was strolling around the cemetery
On a Sunday afternoon,
When the crumbling earth had opened up
And I fell in a werewolf’s tomb,
I wouldn’t have thought it possible
Were it not for the werewolf’s teeth,
That grazed my arm, and cut my hand,
It was way beyond belief.

But there it was with a canine head
And a slack and open jaw,
Just half a man and half a beast
With a mouth like the devil’s maw,
Its teeth were sharp, serrated as
The blood ran down my arm,
Went mingling with the ancient fur
That had kept the creature warm.

I must have shrieked in the ancient grave
For they came to pull me out,
But once they noticed the wooden stake
Leapt back, with many a shout,
They all shrank back away from me
As if I was unclean,
And left me shivering by the grave
Like a ***** in a dream.

And so I slunk back home again
Bent over in my shame,
I padded swiftly through the weeds
Like a dog that’s going lame,
The blood had clotted along my arm
Had soaked right through my shirt,
So I thought that I’d better hide it then
By rolling in the dirt.

My spectacles were cracked by then
So I cast them off, aside,
I couldn’t believe my vision, with
My eyes, so open wide,
I saw with pin-point clarity,
Not like I’d seen before,
When everything, both near and far
Was seen through a hazy blur.

My wife was sitting and waiting in
Her old and comfy chair,
And though she greeted me cheerily
I could only smell her hair,
But just one thing had startled me
And it’s worthy now to note,
My eyes had sought out her jugular
Soft pulsing at her throat.

It didn’t take me long to tell her
Why I felt unclean,
She bathed and smeared my hand and arm
With some white unguent cream,
Then in the kitchen, later on
Just as the Moon would rise,
She waved a jar of bright red blood
Right before my eyes.

‘Now drink,’ she said, ‘drink every drop,
I know this ancient cure,
And I don’t want to see you stop
Before I have you pure,’
And so I did, this cloying drink,
A foul and horrid taste,
And later on I found she’d made it
From tomato paste.

‘There’s lots of other condiments
I mixed into this crud,
I had to make you think that you
Were drinking human blood.’
‘I’m cured of drinking blood for life
I said, ‘how did you know?’
‘My father was a werewolf too,
Some many years ago.’

David Lewis Paget

‘I’m coming to get you now,’ he said,
‘I’m coming to get you tonight!’
Derek sat with his headset on,
His face was white with fright.
‘I think you have the wrong guy,’ he said,
‘It couldn’t be me you mean!’
‘Oh yes, I’m coming to get you now,
I know you, Derek McLean.’

He sat there silent as eerie chills
Spread up and along his spine,
A face came on his computer screen
That rang some bell in his mind.
‘This better not be a joke,’ he said,
‘You’d better not mess with me!’
The voice in the headset chuckled low
In some evil deviltry.

‘It’s taken a while to track you down,
But track you down I did,
You should have stayed off the Internet,
Covered your head, and hid.’
‘I’ve nothing to hide from,’ Derek said,
But his voice broke high in alarm,
‘You’ll never be able to block it out,
That day on Emerson’s Farm.’

At the very mention of Emerson’s Farm
The listener held his breath,
For years he’d struggled to block it out,
The site of that childhood death.
They’d played together in sodden fields
And had ventured into the marsh,
Thinking to pick the bluebells there
But the end of that was harsh.

‘I’d like to know who you are,’ he said,
But his words came out in a whine,
‘You know full well, do I have to tell,
I’m here for the second time.
You left me there and you ran on home
As I sank in there to my neck,
You had no care for my tiny life
But tonight, I’ll teach you respect.’

Derek shuddered and hit the switch
To turn the computer off,
But nothing flickered, the screen stayed on
And Derek began to cough.
‘Have you any idea what it’s like to drown
In a sludge of grass and mud?
It isn’t pleasant, I’ll tell you that
You should try it once, you should!’

Derek coughed and began to choke
In a fit of remorse, and fear,
He’d tried to forget the little bloke
Who had haunted him, year by year.
The doctor, when he examined him
Said, ‘Heart attack, and he choked.
His eyes are staring, as if in fear
But there’s mud in the back of his throat!’

David Lewis Paget

The sun had not even risen when
Delaney opened his eyes,
To colours, bent through a prism, and
Rotating there in the skies.
He thought it might be the Northern Lights
But they’re not seen that far south,
And with them came a crackling sound
To sow the first seeds of doubt.

He rose and walked to the window,
To stand by the sliding door
That led to his private balcony
On the hundred and twentieth floor,
The world below was in darkness and
In shock, he began to shout:
‘Hey Mary, get up and look at this,
The lights of the city are out!’

The lights of the city were out, all right,
There wasn’t a glimmer of light,
In all the teeming metropolis
Not even a car’s headlight.
Mary sleepily rose from bed
And joined him there by the door,
‘It isn’t the dark that does my head,
What’s that on the balcony floor?’

And there in the shade of the balcony
Was standing a monstrous beast,
Its talons several inches long,
Its beak was a foot, at least,
It suddenly opened enormous wings
Then steadily folded them back,
With eyes that promised a thousand things
And one, the threat of attack.

It saw them there through the plated glass
And rushed across for its prey,
Hit the glass and it looked surprised
The two were backing away.
‘Call the firemen, call the police,
That thing will need to be shot.’
‘The signal seems to have gone astray,
And the cell phone’s all we’ve got!’

The sun came up through the morning mist
And it lit the city square,
Delaney got his binoculars,
Nothing was moving there.
The power was out, so there was no doubt
They were locked in their flat, for sure,
The door to the stairwell wouldn’t budge
On the hundred and twentieth floor.

No light, no heat, and down in the street
No cars that streamed that day,
It was just as if electricity
Had suddenly gone away.
Their door had a pin, and powered lock
As did every door below,
A hundred and twenty floors locked in
With nowhere they could go.

The day wore on in the morning sun
And the birds had multiplied,
Looking like pterodactyls they
Swooped over the countryside,
And five came down on the balcony
Of Delaney and Mary’s flat,
The food in the fridge was spoiling as
The ice dripped out on the mat.

They couldn’t cook, they couldn’t eat,
They couldn’t open a can,
The electric opener wouldn’t work
Nor the cleverer works of man,
And the pterodactyls sat in a row
Out on the balcony floor,
With eyes of hate they would sit and wait
Til someone slid open the door!

David Lewis Paget

There were sisters three, and they all were free
In a town called Tavistock,
Freer than they would want to be
As they stared at the Town Hall Clock.
‘Our time is running ahead of us
They will soon call us ‘Old Maid’,
Said sister Jill to the younger Phil,
And the eldest one, called Jade.

‘So why don’t the menfolk look at us,
We’re not that ******* the eye,
Certainly better than Betty Watts
Who married the stable guy.’
‘I danced with him, did you know?’ said Phil,
‘By God, he’s a clumsy oaf,
He kept on tripping over his boots,
And stamped on all of my toes.’

‘I had a line on the fisherman,’
Said Jill, ‘and I thought I’d win,
I’d give it a month or two to set,
And then I would reel him in.
But Nancy Croft got her hooks in him
And I see they’ve tied the knot,
I said, ‘but you were going with me!’
He said, ‘Oh! I’d forgot.’

Then Jade had turned with a waspish look
And she said, ‘Well, look at me!
I’m the eldest and should be wed
By rights, the first of three.
There’s only a single guy in town,
He’s the only one that’s left,
I heard him say he’s going away,
He’s an army boy, called Jeff.’

But Jill and Phil said, ‘He’s not yours,
It’s the one that gets there first,’
They were in favour of drawing straws,
But Jade had stamped and cursed.
They said they’d ask him around to tea
They’d cook up muffins and toast,
And then they’d see what they all would see,
By whom he talked to most!

He came attired in his uniform
His scabard by his side,
Placed his sword on the mantelpiece
Where Jade stroked it with pride.
‘My, but you’re a fine gentleman
And I see you play the fife,
How sad, you’ll march to a battle cry
Without a beautiful wife.’

He sat perturbed, and he looked at them,
At each one in their turn,
‘If only there were three of me,’
He said, but his cheeks had burned.
The sisters jostled to catch his eye,
Were heated and dismayed,
‘I know a way we can settle this!’
And Jill had reached for the blade.

She swung the sword and before they knew,
The soldier lay in halves,
She’d cleft him, clean through the waist, and then
She’d cut off both his arms.
To Jade the head and the torso went,
To Phil, arms worn like a shawl,
Which left Jill what was below the waist,
(She had the most fun of all!)

David Lewis Paget