Somebody said it was Halloween
I hadn’t a clue till then,
But the street was full of pumpkin heads
Carved out, with the candles in,
And the kids kept saying ‘trick or treat’
Though I didn’t know what for,
They must have thought I was pretty dumb
As I shooed them away from my door.

Then Mandy came out dressed as a witch
With a cloak and a pointy hat,
And waving a broom they call a ‘swish’,
‘So what is the point of that?’
‘Tonight the witches fly to their mass,
Under a harvest moon,
Shut your eyes as the broomsticks pass
Or they’ll put you to sleep, till noon.’

I thought I’d better prepare myself
So broke out my scatter gun,
The moment a witch would show herself
I swore that I’d have some fun,
With Jack O’ Lanterns the only light
As the night grew evil and dark,
I almost forgot that we lived next door
To the Mountainous Ski-Lift Park.

There wasn’t a Moon that eerie night,
It must have been hid by a cloud,
I could hear the chatter of witches, laughing,
How could they be so loud?
At midnight all of the chatter stopped
And everything went so still,
Just as the Moon popped out of the cloud
And the witches flew over the hill.

I saw their shapes up against the sky
Riding their broomsticks there,
With warty noses and pointy hats
And horrible tangled hair,
I didn’t think, I just raised my gun
And I blasted a spray of shot,
And watched each witch as she fell to earth
Whether they would, or not.

Mandy screamed and she seized the gun,
Ripped it out of my hands,
‘Have you gone crazy, what have you done?’
She wouldn’t cease her demands.
‘I saw them flying, up on their brooms,
I blew them out of the air.’
‘They didn’t fly, they just held on tight
Under the Ski-Lift chair.’

Whenever Halloween comes around
I tend to stay in my room,
And woe betide any witch that tries
Approaching me with a broom,
While Mandy locks up my scatter gun,
(That’s the one thing that will chafe),
Then goes to the witches at the door,
‘Yes, the Ski-Lift chair is safe!’

David Lewis Paget

That brief interlude between
Sleeping and waking,
I pass through each day like
Some dark undertaking,
Where nothing is real, where
I’ve been to or going,
My mind is disordered,
My heartbeat is slowing.

And even the room that I
Enter is swaying,
My eyes are distended my
Brain is nay-saying,
While legs stagger sideways
And crablike in function
Like some leaden corpse treated
To extreme unction.

The wars were all won, or
Were lost in the sleeping,
While everything worthwhile
Would seem to be weeping,
The slate should be cleared by
Each act of purgation,
But I wake each day to
Some strange dissipation.

I often forget simple
Words in our language,
That drive to distraction
And cause me more anguish,
But calm will return when
The evening is making
That brief interlude between
Sleeping and Waking.

David Lewis Paget

There lives a poet beyond the trees
But all that he writes is pain,
He spends his evenings down on his knees
Regretting the way he came,
He thinks of the path he should have trod
And the path that he really took,
Then writes regrets in a verse to God
And places them all in a book.

A single book on an altar there
That nobody else will see,
He won’t let anyone read his verse
For, ‘That’s between God, and me!’
But he reads and writes them over again
And his tears will stain his cheek,
‘They’re only the faults of mortal men,’
He thinks, but they make him weep.

He weeps for the loss of an innocence
That he barely remembers now,
It seems so long since his world went wrong
Yet he cannot imagine how.
He tried so hard to be godly then
But the good in his deeds went sour,
And hurt so many he knew back when,
He lies in his bed, to cower.

His heart had leapt on the wings of love
It brought him a purer truth,
He thought she came from the lord above
But all that she had was youth,
And time and fortune had withered that
As the tone in her voice went harsh,
It went from roses and sweet perfume
To the croak you hear in the marsh.

Would nothing pleasant inspire his verse,
Would nothing brighten his day?
He’d sit and chew on his feather quill
And search for something to say.
There must be more to a life than this
For others were doing well,
While he would brood on the sadder bits,
Imagining life as hell.

A girl went wandering though the trees
Carolling loud and clear,
It brought the poet up from his knees
And straining so he could hear,
She sang the song of a trilling bird
And the poet’s eyes were bright,
His heart leapt higher the more he heard
And he took her home that night.

His verses now hold the sweet refrain
Of a birdsong, light and free,
He wields his quill with an inner thrill,
‘How could this happen to me?’
The book of pain on the altar’s stained
With neglect, and barely a nod,
‘I’ll take this life with my darling wife
And I’ll leave the rest to God!’

David Lewis Paget

The night was dark, in a brooding pall
With thunderheads at its core,
But only the sound of heaving swells
Were heard to break on the shore.
The headland dark where the Lighthouse stood
With not a glimmer of light,
It hadn’t been lit for a hundred years
But a beam would stream that night.

The sea was grumbling in its deeps
Cast heaps of **** on the sand,
Much like a drunken Cornishman
Disgorging his contraband,
The swell, built up as the squalls came in
Made the sea erupt from its depths,
Casting an age old Barquentine
Up high, on an angry crest.

Shook free from its hundred year old bed
Untangled from miles of ****,
The Barquentine with its forty dead
Had finally now been freed,
A flag that carried the fleur-de-lis
Hung limply down from the mast,
And tangled up in the rigging was
The body of Captain Jacques.

An aura shone round the Barquentine
In a pale, blue ghostly light,
Caught in a time warp, in-between
They rose as a man that night.
They gathered up on the rotting deck
Each cannon, covered in rust,
And glared at the lighthouse on the hill,
A light that they couldn’t trust.

A wraith of a woman, stood that night
By the keeper, looking down,
The face of a woman, creased in fear
As the Barque had come aground,
She had been the wife of Captain Jacques
Had been left ashore, and fled,
Up to the keeper of the light
Where she shared his meagre bed.

‘I didn’t think he’d be back so soon,’
She’d stood by the light, and cried,
‘If he finds us both alone up here
It’s better that we had died.’
The keeper held her trembling form
As the storm built up that night,
‘I’d never allow him to bring you harm,’
He said, as he struck the light.

The crew looked up at the Lighthouse
And they heard a woman scream,
From up on the headland, deep in fright
As the keeper lit the beam,
And Jacques looked up, and he saw his wife
Lit up by the sudden light,
‘My God,’ he cried, ‘that’s Jacqueline,
There was infamy that night!’

The pair looked down as the men had leapt
To shore, with their swords held high,
They’d waited over a hundred years
But knew that their time was nigh.
He’d struck the light when he saw their ship
Head in to threaten his *****,
And watched as the ship had broken up
In Eighteen fifty-four.

There are nights when the light of former wrongs
Returns to visit the shame,
To balance eternal justice for
The centuries, left in pain,
The ghostly sailors dragged them down
To the Barquentine, at last,
And as the sea had reclaimed the ship
They hung them both from the mast.

David Lewis Paget

He kept them locked in a tower,
And I’ll let you guess the score,
The thirteen women that disappeared
To leave not a sign before.
We thought we would never find them,
There wasn’t a clue or trace,
They’d simply gone for a gentle stroll
And walked off the planet’s face.

And mine was the thirteenth woman,
To date, who had disappeared,
At first, I thought she had left me,
Or that was the thing I feared,
But I heard her voice coming back to me
As an echo, alone at night,
‘My love for you is a love that’s true,
Rolled up in a ball, and tight.’

She had such a way of smiling,
Of reaching, cuddling in,
She said we had such a special love,
A personal kind of sin.
So I knew she must have been kidnapped,
Was snatched as she crossed the street,
As all those others had gone before,
They hadn’t been indiscreet.

I haunted the railway station,
Went roaming abroad most nights,
I peeked in each cottage window
From valley to village heights,
When out on the edge of woodland
I came on the black stone tower,
A padlock bolt on a door of oak
I found at the midnight hour.

I hid in the trees and bushes,
Then waited and held my breath,
A figure came in from the rushes
Crept in, at the hour of death.
For they say at three in the morning
That our hearts will beat the least,
But mine was pounding and roaring
As I leapt, and captured the beast.

The women were chained to a railing,
To links in the cold, stone wall,
They shivered, without any clothing,
And cried, when they heard me call,
For some had been physically altered,
Each one for a different kink,
I chained the beast as their cries increased,
And then I undid each link.

I wrapped my girl in my shirt, then sent
The beast to his ****** fate,
I heard him scream as his manhood went,
For him, it was getting late.
He lay in pieces, spread through the trees
And no-one was ever charged,
The police in their wisdom wrote their screed,
‘There must be a wolf at large…’

David Lewis Paget

He only appears in the pouring rain
When all the gutters are clogged,
I asked if anyone knew his name
They said, but my ears were blocked.
There wasn’t a thing you could hear out there
For the water, bubbling through,
The rain’s refrain in a noisy drain,
The thunder and lightning too.

You’d see his shadow on distant walls
Thrown there by a gaslight flare,
And catch the shape of his stovepipe hat
Flitting both here and there,
They say he’s waiting for dollymops
Just as they’re starting to run,
As night is chasing the day away
And rain’s blotting out the sun.

Then rumour has it, the Ripper’s back
We’re waiting for blood and gore,
We’re tense, awaiting the first attack,
For that’s what the Ripper’s for.
They say he chews on his victim’s bones
Then eats their liver and all,
The streets will fill with their awful groans
As blood will spatter a wall.

And then the sound of a horses hooves
Pulling a Landau coach,
Its wheels a-rattle on cobblestones
Just as he cuts their throats,
Perhaps he’ll lure them to take a ride
In that black, square box on wheels,
Then all that slashing goes on inside,
God knows how a razor feels.

We sit and muse in the Hemlock Inn
A dollymop on our laps,
And feed the terror they feel within
Filling in most of the gaps.
They turn to us for protection then
So we gain their favours cheap,
And keep on telling those same old tales
Til the bawds curl up, and weep.

Whenever the fog and the mist are thick
And the lamplight’s just a glow,
We make our way to the Hemlock Inn
Where the skirts are raised, you know,
Then say his shadow’s been seen again
Just to make the bawds all shriek,
‘He’s getting ready to pounce, and then…’
He’ll be there again, next week.

David Lewis Paget

He’d only just raised the dustbin lid
When he saw the woman’s head,
And what had impressed him most was that
It felt as heavy as lead,
It looked on up with its open eyes
With a stare that couldn’t see,
Which made him fumble the lid and cry,
‘It certainly wasn’t me!’

He thought of the woman the head had been
Before they’d parted ways,
An older woman, but shorter now
Than he’d seen in former days,
He was on a nodding acquaintanceship
With the husband known as Jim,
And thought of him as a friendly bloke
But they’d still be hanging him.

He’d been on the ******* round for years
So he knew most everyone,
But never a severed head before
Had been found on the ******* run,
He hadn’t an axe to grind with Jim
It was just Jim’s lousy luck,
A man should allow for one mistake
So he tipped the head in the truck.

Then Jim came out and he waved at him
And he smiled, ‘Good morning, Joe.’
While Joe smiled back, and he gave a grin
And said, ‘How’s the missis, Flo?’
‘She’s gone a little bit flighty, Joe,
Gone off for a spell,’ he said,
‘That tongue of hers, it was getting worse,
I’ll swear she was off her head.’

‘Well, ain’t that just like a woman,’ said
The man with the empty bin,
‘I see you’re light on your *******, are
There other bits to put in?’
‘Plenty of time, I’ll see to it
For the next time you come back,
I haven’t had time to sort it out
But I’ll bring it out in a sack.’

The following week he got two legs
And the feet were fairly strong,
And after he dumped them in the truck
He drove two doors along,
The bin outside held another head
Of a girl he knew as Tweet,
‘It seems to be catching on, ‘ he thought,
As he drove along the street.

He didn’t think to report it
It was no concern to him,
He only collected the ******* that
They placed in a standard bin,
There wasn’t a line in the regulations,
Not one that he’d read,
Of what to do when a bin was due
And it only held a head.

That street was becoming notorious
For the wives that went away,
Off for a spell to Dingley Dell
For a well earned holiday,
And Joe has quite a collection now
That lines his mantelpiece,
While Jane, his beau, says they’ve got to go,
Or she may well call the police.

David Lewis Paget

I once had a special friend at school,
His name was Daniel Hare,
He would dream through maths and geometry
For his mind was never there,
I would nudge him in the ribs each time
That the teacher turned to look,
And slide my hand across, to turn
To the right page, in his book.

He’d get this distant look in his eyes
And slump back into his seat,
And tell me then at the break, he’d been
In Ireland, digging peat,
He’d roam the great Canadian Plains,
Was there at Austerlitz,
And hid in a London cellar with
His mother during the Blitz.

The only subject he really loved
Was the study of history,
And then he’d sit on the edge of his seat
Enthralled at the mystery,
But Physics, Maths and Biology
He said, was leaving him cold,
He’d rather be there with Francis Drake
On a search for Spanish gold.

We went our separate ways, of course,
I didn’t see him for years,
Then came on him in a boarding house
Where he’d suffered some reverse,
His life, he said, was a shambles, he
Could never hold down a job,
His mind had continued to wander
From Berlin, and to Cape Cod.

His eyes were sunken, his skin was grey
I noted his sallow cheeks,
‘I dream too much in the day,’ he said,
‘And I just can’t get to sleep.’
I walked with him in a lonely cove
Where the moonlight shed its beams,
‘I need to find me a ship,’ he said,
‘And sail to the Port of Dreams.’

I asked him why he never had met
And married a local girl,
He said he’d met a girl in his dreams
But she didn’t live in the world.
‘She waits for me on the other side
Of a wide and windswept Bay,
Not in this life of broken dreams,
She leaves at the break of day.

A week went by and a storm came in,
He wasn’t there by the stove,
I made my way in the pouring rain
Where his footsteps led, to the cove,
I found him sat, his back to a rock
With a wild, unseeing stare,
And knew he’d gone to follow a dream
As the sea spray soaked him there.

For out in the bay a Barquentine
Had pitched and tossed in the storm,
A ghostly lantern hung from the mast
As the spars and the timbers groaned,
A figure clung to the foredeck yards
And waved as the wind had screamed,
While the barque turned west where the sun had set
And sailed for the Port of Dreams.

David Lewis Paget

The Lady Mary had locked the door
And called the scullery maid,
The Boots was called and the Footman,
So they thought they were being paid,
She lined them up with the Butler,
The Housemaid, skivvy and Cook,
‘You’re not to go wandering out the door,
Not even to take a look!’

She knew her word, though the very law,
Was never to go down well,
For Alice was sweet on a lawyer’s clerk,
A lockdown seemed like hell.
The Footman needed his racing mates
To place a bet on the book,
So the Lady Mary had made it plain,
‘Not even a peep or a look!’

The grumbling went with the Cook downstairs
As they stood, and waited for tea,
‘It’s all very well for the likes of her,
There’s places I have to be!’
‘Enough of this nonsense,’ the Butler said,
‘We’re lucky to grace her floor,
If you want to leave in a fit of peeve
You’ll never get back in the door.’

They huddled down for a week or more
It was better than paying rent,
But a silence settled on every floor
For nobody came, or went,
The pantry shelves were emptying out
But the tradesmen never came,
‘We’re going to starve,’ was the one lament
When they ate the last of the game.

The Footman called the Scullery Maid
And they huddled up on a pew,
‘If you sneak out for an hour tonight,
Then I will cover for you,
And you can visit your lawyer’s clerk
Then place a bet on the book,
I’ll let you in when it’s nice and dark…’
‘I will, by hook or by crook!’

She slipped on out by the kitchen door
And he turned the key in the lock,
Watched the Butler heading for bed
And sat by the kitchen clock.
At ten o’clock, with a tiny tap
She had made her prescence felt,
And tumbled in as he opened the door,
Went straight to the hearth, and knelt.

He locked the door, then he heard her sob
And saw that her head was bent,
She stared so long and hard at the floor
That he thought his bet was spent.
‘What ails you Alice, now what went wrong,
Don’t give me none of your lies!’
She looked up into his face just then
And he saw blood stream from her eyes!’

‘They’re dead, all dead,’ were the words she said
As her tears had mixed with the blood,
Your racing pals and my lawyers clerk,
And the horses, down at the stud.
The Lady Mary, she should have said…’
But he cut her off right there,
Leapt up, unlocking the kitchen door
He dragged her out by her hair.

He locked the door and he scrubbed his hands
But he’d locked the beast within,
As blood then streamed from his Footman’s eyes
And he earned the wages of sin.
The Lady Mary came down the stair
To find him, dead on the floor,
And said to the Cook, with blood red eyes,
‘You’d best fling open the door!’

David Lewis Paget

He waited until the Moon was high
And its beam shone on the sand,
Telling himself the time was nigh
He could overcome the land,
But everyone slept beneath the Moon,
Their minds were out of reach,
Except for the girl who stayed awake
And wandered along the beach.

Her mind was a well of confusion
There was love and there was pain,
She’d only done it the once, she thought,
But never she would again,
She thought of the sense of boundless joy
It gave when the love was there,
And how it crashed like a broken toy
When it gave way to despair.

And all the while he had watched the girl
From his vantage point on high,
Peering from his coal-black wings
In the dark of the evening sky,
Her thoughts he was carefully sifting
To glean what he could of use,
‘What was this thing called love,’ he thought,
‘It must be a term of abuse!’

And then a panicky wave of pain
Had hit him out of the blue,
How could she feel such love again
When the pain came seeping through,
He tried to stop but he couldn’t block
She was too intense for that,
His wings were quivering, dark and shivering
Like a giant bat.

He tried to impress his mind on her
As often he’d done before,
But found that distress was more or less
What she was looking for,
She dumped her pain in the darkening sky
And thought that she saw some wings,
As he crashed into a raging sea
In wonder at what love brings.

David Lewis Paget

Whenever the sun sinks down in the west
And the stars come out at night,
The birds return to their cosy nests
And a stray dog barks in fright,
I hear the click of the front door lock
And I let the blinds unfold,
Then hear the whisper behind the clock,
That says, ‘New souls for old!’

And down at the end of the darkened street
Is a man with a horse and dray,
He wears thick felt on his padded boots
And his voice seems far away,
The sacks piled up on the cart are new
And they jump about in the cold,
But his voice gets louder on his approach,
He says, ‘New souls for old!’

So nobody opens their door at night
‘Til the man and his dray have passed,
But peer in fright, and put out the light
Then hold their breath to the last,
They hide their children under the stairs
But the voice wafts in from the cold,
It seems to come from under the chairs
And it says, ‘New souls for old!’

The mirror under the hallway clock
Is hard in the dark to see,
But when I head for the door to lock
Reflects a vision of me,
The eyes are evil, the mouth is grim
And the chin is jutting and bold,
The brow is furrowed and creased with sin
As I hear, ‘New souls for old!’

One night as the gas lamps sputtered out
At the farther end of the street,
I heard the clop of his horse’s hooves
As I strode on out to meet,
The man peered out from under his hood
And told me the price, fourfold,
I’d have to be willing to take his place
To get a new soul for old!

So now I wander the streets at night
Wrapped up in a cloak and hood,
I feel the evil leaching away
As I work for the greater good,
The sacks piled up on the cart are new
And they jump about in the cold,
I’m waiting for someone to take my place
As I say, ‘New souls for old!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I am so tired, so tired,’ he said,
‘So tired but cannot sleep,’
He lay there restless in his bed
But could not even weep.
‘I’m all wept out,’ he would have said
If she’d been there to hear,
But he lay in an empty bed
Since she had disappeared.

‘It’s not as if she left a note
To say she’d not be there,’
He watched the light bulb spider weave
A web above his stare,
She’d gone down to the market at
The other end of town,
And though he searched, she’d left his world
She’d turned it upside down.

The stallkeepers had seen her there
She’d gone from stall to stall,
Whenever she’d go shopping she
Would want to see it all,
Her endless curiosity
Had kept him home that day,
His legs would never carry him
The miles she’d walk that way.

‘Go try the stall that sells the scarves,
I’m sure I saw her there,’
She never did do things by halves
Of that he was aware,
‘Go see the stall with rings and things,
She bought an amulet,
A silver chain, all old and stained
And placed it round her neck.’

He’d looked in vain to find the stall
But he had packed and gone,
‘We didn’t really want him here
With such a carry-on,
He dealt in spells and tiny bells
And readings in his tent,
We wondered what was going on
Then he packed up, and went.’

And no-one saw which way he’d gone,
They didn’t even try,
‘We didn’t want to mess with him,
He had the evil eye.
Two other guys have lost their wives
As well, since he came here,
They go into that tent of his
Then seem to disappear.’

‘He kept a cage of spiders, that I know,
I saw them there,
Of many different colours, weaving
Cobwebs in the air,
He said they were his weavers, making
Gossamer, so sad,
He’d sell it in the Faery Dell, he said,
The man was mad!’

‘I am so tired, so tired,’ he said,
‘So tired but cannot sleep,’
He lay there restless in his bed
But could not even weep.
He watched the light bulb spider weave
A web above his stare,
And cried aloud, ‘Where are you, Eve?
I’m lost in my despair!’

David Lewis Paget

I pulled at the oars with Valentine
While Derek sat at the rear,
He’d taken his turn, now I took mine
Our quarry was drawing near,
For up on the bluff, deserted now
The tower stood, gaunt and white,
We’d managed the creaking boat somehow
To get to the Keystone Light.

It hadn’t been manned for fifty years
Its age was a matter of doubt,
The Keeper’s wife, in a fit of tears,
Left the light sputtering out.
Her husband gone in a giant wave
That carried him off from the bluff,
While in the dark was the Barque ‘Enclave’
Settling down in a trough.

And on the steps of the Keystone Light
The widow clung to the rail,
The wave was tugging about her skirt
As the Barque lost its mizzen sail,
A shark, caught up in the mighty swell
Was swept right up to the steps,
And took her leg in a single bite,
Returned with it to the depths.

They found her dead by the Keystone Light
The Barque, smashed up on the shore,
But never a sign of the Keeper, Sam,
Who had guarded the Light before.
They said his ghost ruled the tower top
That it howled in a winter storm,
While she kept swinging the outer door
To try keep the tower warm.

So we climbed up on that winter’s day,
The three of us to the bluff,
We lads let Valentine lead the way
She liked all that ghostly stuff.
The door hung off from its hinges there
From flapping about in the wind,
While Derek muttered, ‘We’d best beware,
There may be ghosts,’ and he grinned.

We’d gone, expecting to stay the night
So carried our candles and gear,
The bottom floor with the open door
Was a little too breezy, I fear.
I followed Valentine up to the Light
And carried the blankets there,
The view was truly a marvellous sight
But the wind gave us all a scare.

It hummed and soughed at the outer rail,
It groaned, and whispered and growled,
They’d warned, ‘It sounds like the Keeper’s wail,’
And true, at times it had howled.
It even seemed to have called her name,
The widow, crying in pain,
‘Caroline, I’ll be coming for you,’
Was the sound of the wind’s refrain.

We slept that night, or we tried to sleep
All huddled up on the floor,
But Derek rose, and before the dawn
His body lay down on the shore.
He must have fallen over the rail
While both of us were asleep,
But now the sound of the wind in its wail
Said, ‘Catch the wave at its peak!’

We hurried on down the spiral stair,
As the dawn came up like a trick,
We couldn’t bear to be caught up there
With both of us feeling sick.
But Valentine went out on the steps
Where the widow had stood before.
A sudden gust caught the door and just
Knocked Valentine to the floor.

I saw she’d never get up again
With the wound it gave to her head,
So much blood, like Caroline,
I knew she had to be dead.
I heave away at the oars, and pray
That their sacrifices will be
Enough to bring back my Caroline
For the Lighthouse Keeper was me!

David Lewis Paget

I’ve often received weird messages,
Nothing to do with me,
They come through the cyber passages
So called, that would set you free,
But then came one with an evil turn
It scuttled on out, then hid,
Accusingly, it appeared to me
And said, ‘I know what you did!’

Just that, ‘I know what you did,’ it said,
And nothing much more than that,
I had no idea just what it meant
It had just popped up, in chat.
There wasn’t a name, there wasn’t a face
To tell me who it was from,
I tried at first to ignore it, but
It dropped on me like a bomb.

In short, my friends had received the note
And saw it addressed to me,
It seems it had gone my contacts round
And roused curiosity,
For over the next few days they all
Called in, just one by one,
Asking the same thing, overall,
‘Just what was it that you’ve done?’

Of course, I replied in every case
‘I really haven’t a clue,
People make accusations but
It doesn’t mean they are true.’
It was then that the evil jokes began
For some of them like to kid,
To me, it wasn’t so funny when
They asked, ‘Where’s the body hid?’

I snapped on back, ‘Get serious!’
I wasn’t at all impressed,
‘How would you feel if this was you,
Do you think you’d be distressed?’
For some of my so-called ‘friends’ it seems
My answer raised their ire,
For more than one called a smoking gun,
And ‘There’s no smoke without fire!’

I felt determined to let it go,
To ignore the joke, at least,
But then appeared on my Facebook page
The Internet Police.
They said, ‘We need to investigate,
A complaint’s been made of you,’
I sent them back, ‘It’s a veiled attack
And it certainly isn’t true.’

But the police came round, kicked in my door,
And started to search the place,
Acting like thugs, they tore apart
What little I had of grace.
They packed my only computer up
To cart it out to their van,
That stood outside on the pavement like
I was a wanted man.

‘What do you want my computer for,
I need it to use for work.’
‘You’ll get it back when we’ve checked it out
If you’re not a total ****.
You might be a dangerous *******,
It’s evidence that we seek,
If not, then after we search your files
You’ll get it back next week.’

The neighbours were gathered around the van
With a scandal in their sights,
They knew that something was going down
That I must have been got to rights.
They pointed fingers and muttered low
In delight, this was a treat,
And for days they stared, and I despaired
When they spat at me in the street.

It matters not if you’re innocent,
It matters not if you cry,
Nobody listens to what you say
They mutter, ‘Deny, deny.’
Your name is suddenly tainted when
A finger points at you,
Forever you will be painted with
The words, ‘What did you do?’

I finally got my PC back
And it didn’t take a week,
But not a word of apology
Though I found that revenge is sweet.
They sacked the Police Commissioner
And I’m sure that it wasn’t fun,
When someone wrote on his Facebook page
‘I know just what you’ve done!’

David Lewis Paget

There was always something strange about
The tree by the clifftop farm,
It hadn’t been there when I was young
Till the storm blew down the barn,
Then once the land was cleared it grew
At a pace I’d never seen,
A raggedy, twisted wreck of a tree
That my wife said was obscene.

‘Why don’t we cut it down,’ she said,
‘Why do you let it grow?’
‘It doesn’t do any harm,’ I said,
‘It’s there for the winter blow.
It stands where it will protect the house
From the fiercest winter storm,
It may be ugly to see,’ I said
‘But it helps to shelter our home.’

The roots were massive and twisted, and
They spread, all over the place,
They tunneled under the house and then
Came up by the fireplace,
I chopped them off and I poisoned those
That tried to come through the floor,
And then I found there were other roots
Jamming our old front door.

The winter came in a rush that year
And we were buried in snow,
We hoped that there’d be an early thaw
But it didn’t hurry to go.
We stayed inside and we stoked the fire
With the roots I’d cut from the tree,
The food went down in the larder, but
The fire burned merrily.

I hadn’t so much as glanced outside
For a month, or maybe more,
The wind would howl at the chimney pots
But to go outside, what for?
Then Spring shone over the windowsill
And the snow began to melt,
So finally we could venture out,
I can’t tell how we felt.

For out there at the side of the house
The tree had grown grotesque,
It seems it had continued to grow
Beneath its snow-clad vest,
For branches snaked across to the roof
And clung to the chimney pots,
To hold itself upright and aloof
Where I’d chopped the roots right off.

But what had disturbed and frightened me
Was the tree had grown in height,
Its gnarled and twisted trunk so high
It was almost out of sight,
It disappeared in a darkening cloud
That seemed to hover and stay,
While other clouds were adrift up there
It was still there, day by day.

At night, with terrible grinding sounds
The branches moved on the roof,
They tumbled off the chimney pots,
Believe me, that’s the truth!
The wife said, ‘We should have cut it down
When we had the chance, last Spring,
But now it’ll probably take the house
So we can’t do anything.’

I know you’ll never believe me now,
It all seems so absurd,
But I broke out the elephant gun
At the sound of just one word,
We lay abed with it overhead
And the tree began to hum,
It woke me as I listened, and then
The word I heard was, ‘Fum!’

I aimed the gun up the tree that night
At those penetrating sounds,
I couldn’t have fired enough if I
Had had a thousand rounds.
And something hurtled on past me then
To land right down in the bay,
The tree was silent, it ceased to hum
And I chopped it down next day.

David Lewis Paget

Rosalyn stood in the castle tower
And gazed out over the plain,
It wasn’t exactly a sumptuous bower
For the drapes were old, and stained,
The furniture had seen better times
In the days of the knights of old,
But the cracked and broken window panes
Had made the bower cold.

She’d shivered as she had got undressed
And donned a filmy gown,
She pined for the sight she hoped to see
As she stood there, looking down,
Three knights stood guard at the outer moat
Their armour was dull and black,
They couldn’t be seen on a moonless night
But were there to ward off attack.

Attack from the southern Baron’s men,
Attack from the western marsh,
They came to rescue fair Rosalyn
For her sentence had been harsh,
Confined for life in that wintry tower
For her love for the Duke of Spur,
Who’d not been seen since the winter green,
Nor asked what became of her.

The rain came down in a sudden squall
He shivered, and scratched his head,
What could he do with the Duke of Spur
If the man had turned up dead?
He pushed his seat away from the desk
And he rose, and stretched, and yawned,
The cursor blinked on the final line
As the moon beamed in through the storm.

How could he save fair Rosalyn,
That was the question here,
He opened the door of the old bar fridge
And knocked the head off a beer,
He sat again at the keyboard then
And stared and stared at the screen,
He didn’t know where to go from there
But found himself in a dream.

He woke in the damp and windswept tower
Where Rosalyn lay asleep,
He thought that he must be crazy, that
His mind made a giant leap,
He saw the screen in the corner where
He sat, as if in a trance,
But here on the other side of the screen
He was caught, by some mischance.

Rosalyn woke from her slumber then
And she held her arms out wide,
‘I wondered when you would join me in
This tale from the other side.
I’ve seen you sitting and watching me,
You watched as I got undressed,
And I know it’s only a story but
In truth, I wasn’t impressed.’

‘I must be asleep and dreaming,’
He replied, ‘but you can’t be real,
I haven’t finished the story yet
But in here I can see and feel,
And there I am on the other side,
I’m sat in front of the screen.’
‘If you don’t shut up and make love to me,’
She said, ‘then I’m going to scream!’

He spent an hour in a wilful daze,
She held him close in her arms,
He kissed her eyes and her silken thighs
Revealed much more of her charms,
And when they were finally done, she said
‘Will you rescue me, or not?’
He lay as dead as he scratched his head,
‘I think I’ve lost the plot!’

He woke as the sun came slowly up
Stiff and cold in his room,
The cursor was dim and blinking as
The only light in the gloom,
He typed that a coil of rope was hid
On the other side of a drape,
Thinking that she could use it then
To make a swift escape.

She saw the rope and she tied it firm
To the leg of the solid bed,
The thought he was going to rescue her
Was the only thought in his head,
She dropped the rope so the Duke of Spur
Could climb and clamber in,
But when he climbed to the window ledge
The Duke of Spur was him!

David Lewis Paget

When Kelvin threatened to cut my throat
I thought him a little stressed,
We’d known each other for twenty years
The first ten were the best,
But I was married to Jill back then
Way back before the divorce,
Then Kelvin lunged, and married her when
Our marriage had run its course.

He seemed to think I was jealous then,
He thought he had hurt my pride,
I thought that our friendship might be saved
Despite his second-hand bride,
‘Why would I want her back,’ I said,
Hoping to reassure,
But he obsessed and was quite distressed
Each time I came to his door.

‘Keep well away from my wife,’ he said,
As if I’d not had enough,
‘What do you think a divorce is, Kel?
I’m finished with all that stuff.’
‘You had your time, you should keep away,
I know that you want her still…’
‘As much as I’d want a hole in the head,
You have to believe me, Kel.’

But he just circled the wagons round
Trying to keep her from me,
I’d been quite happy to put her down
Then live my life and be free,
He’d never heard the old saw that said
That to make her yours, let her go,
If she comes back home, then she’s yours my friend,
But if not, she wasn’t you know.

I saw Jill out in the supermart
And her face was lined and drawn,
I tried to hide by the Brussel Sprouts
But she caught me up by the lawn.
She seemed determined to seek me out,
To see if I looked like hell,
Was disappointed when I looked round
And said I was doing well.

‘I’m not,’ she said, and a tiny tear
Appeared, to roll down her cheek,
‘He never leaves me alone, I fear,
I’ve been locked in for a week.’
I waved my hand, tried to get away
‘Your life is not my concern,’
Then she clung onto my arm and cried,
‘I don’t know which way to turn!’

And that’s when Kelvin himself appeared
And threatened to cut my throat,
It looked as if I had interfered
‘And that,’ I said, ‘is a joke!’
But Jill still clung to my arm beside
The beans, and packets of stew,
‘I wish we hadn’t divorced,’ she said,
‘It was so much better with you.’

You’d think a friendship of twenty years
Could overcome such a jest,
But Kelvin suddenly burst in tears
And beat a riff on my chest.
I’ll soon get over the broken ribs
And the eye, with a lump of steak,
But Kel’s still married to Jill, thank god,
That’s the icing on the cake.

David Lewis Paget

The day the devil came down to earth
And lodged in Katrina’s heart,
It took me suddenly by surprise
When she shot his poisoned dart,
I’d known he was out to get me since
I’d got wised up to his tricks,
But I didn’t think that he’d use my girl
To blow my world to bits.

She’d always been such a loving girl
With her pure and slothful eyes,
I didn’t know that behind that smile
Was a cesspool full of lies,
He’d burrowed deep in her afterglow
And had twisted her inside,
I didn’t know it was him not her,
For her purity had died.

The day she opened her mouth I saw
That her tongue was hard and black,
The words she uttered were never hers
But a blatant, harsh attack,
I sat there stunned for a moment with
My face as white as a sheet,
‘Where on earth is that coming from,’
I said to her, ‘my sweet?’

She said that she’d never loved me and
That love was just a crock,
She felt that she was above me, well,
I stared at her in shock,
She said she’d lain with another man
On just the night before,
I’d thought that I was a lover, but
She said he was so much more.

She pressed all my tender buttons and
She made me feel quite sick,
She knew how to disarray me and
Her poison acted quick,
I asked her if I had done something
To spawn this stream of stuff,
She said that I didn’t need to,
Being me was quite enough.

I said that I’d better leave then, if
That’s all that I meant to her,
She called me a craven coward, and
A crawling, slinking cur,
Her tongue rolled back and it blocked her throat
She began to gasp and choke,
So I reached inside and I grabbed her tongue
As she screamed in a long, high note.

The tongue came out like an evil snake
It was long, and black as ink,
It came away in my hand and left
A small one, that was pink,
It wriggled over the floor and I
Then stamped it into a pulp,
While Katrina drew a massive breath,
All she could do was gulp.

She couldn’t remember a thing she’d said
So I said, it’s up to us,
Whatever it was, that blackened tongue
Was the devil’s incubus,
She cried and said that she loved me
It would be just as it was before,
But I look out for that incubus,
A seed from the devil’s spore.

David Lewis Paget

The Judge came into the village with
A troop of the finest horse,
The sunshine gleamed on their breastplates
And their guns and their swords, of course,
He wasn’t there to be friendly, but
To make the rebels aware,
And carried the King’s own warrant to
Set up his courthouse there.

The troop took over the Mason’s Hall
The Judge took over the church,
And set up a bench down in the nave
As the troops set out to search,
They looked for the signs of weaponry
In the homes of the poorest men,
Tearing apart the hovels in
The search for the rebels, then.

To root out the roughshod army that
Had marched to defy the king,
Who tore up the standard prayer book
That the king was offering,
They forced the priests to reverse the mass
To the way it was done before,
Laying a siege to Exeter
In the way of a civil war.

Now the troops rode into the villages
And they held the men in chains,
Sworn to see that they paid in blood
For their temper, and their pains,
The women were wailing in the streets
As their men were taken in,
To answer to a black-hooded Judge
For their crimes against the King.

There wasn’t a gallows large enough
For the men that he meant to hang,
But plenty of trees around the leas
That the cattle grazed upon,
And plenty of boughs and branches that
Would groan with the weight of men,
Whose only fault was this one revolt
When their faith was changed again.

They hung like fruit from the saplings,
They choked their lives from a limb,
They swung on ropes from the mighty oaks
In an **** of suffering,
The farms lay waste in the country,
The crops lay waste in the fields,
There wasn’t an army of labourers
Just troops, with their swords and shields.

The Judge climbed into his black teak coach
Rode out of the village grounds,
While children wailed and the women paled
In cutting their husbands down.
The horror lay in the children’s genes
For generations, it’s said,
Till years along they would right the wrong
By taking a bad king’s head.

David Lewis Paget

He found a little frequented cove
As he sailed the Southern Seas,
An island, not on a current map,
But one bereft of trees,
I only know, for he left a note
In that cave, way up in the cliff,
And it’s had me wondering ever since
Not how, or why, but if?

What was left of his boat was there
Washed high, out there on the shore,
Battered and beaten by storm and tide
Ten years, or maybe more,
The Isle was barren and treeless, not
One thing would pleasure the eye,
Except the cave in the towering cliff
Well up in the face, and high.

I anchored there and I rowed ashore
Then I walked around to the face,
Somebody else had been there before,
A rope was still in place,
I’d never been much of a climber, but
I scaled that rope all right,
Just as the sun was going down
So I had to spend the night.

The face of the cave was sheltered, and
The weather, it wasn’t cold,
I curled up deep in a corner ‘til
The dark had entered my soul,
I dreamt of many a sailing ship
And men of a stately mien,
Who stalked grim-faced through a whirlpool race
In a land that I’d never seen.

And up above was a starlit sky
That had seemed to spin and curve,
Taking the glow of the Pole Star south
With the curvature of the earth,
I woke when the first few beams of dawn
Shone in from a blighted sea,
Where my boat had tugged at its moorings
In an effort to cast it free.

The cave led into a passageway
That was dimly lit in the dawn,
I ventured along it gingerly
Over moss, as green as lawn,
Then I came on a line of candles, set
In the rock to light the way,
Into the heart of a grotto there
Where a pool of water lay.

The pool was glowing an azure blue
From a light reflected below,
That shone back down from the ceiling rock
In a shifting, glittering show,
And beyond the pool was an altar there
That hadn’t been made by man,
Of shining stars and a crescent moon
And a figure that looked like Pan.

I tip-toed cautiously round the edge
Of the pool til I came to stand
Right in front of the altar there,
Half covered with silt and sand,
And lying crouched at the side of it
Was a huddle of ancient bones,
That lone seafarer who’d left his yacht
And followed these stepping stones.

The bones lay there in a deep despair
As of one who’d given up hope,
He must have come with the boat out there
And climbed with that length of rope,
But the bones were grey, looked terribly old
Too old for that boat, it’s true,
With the fingers gripping a note, half ripped,
The one that I’ll read to you.

‘You’ve come to an Isle where there is no time,
So take this note and be gone,
I came, like you, from out of the blue
When I woke, time travelled on.
The stars spin crazily every night
And they ****** me into the past,
I woke to find that my boat had gone
And the cove was covered in grass.’

‘It could be a million years ago
It could be a future time,
The sea has receded, that I know
And the year, it isn’t mine.
The altar glows with the crescent moon
When a major shift occurs,
And the devil man that looks like Pan,
I think that his seed is cursed.’

I took the note and I stumbled out
Of the cave, and slid the rope,
Then ran back over the beach, and rowed
Back out to my world, my boat.
I hadn’t been more than an hour away
When the heavens went black, and weird,
I looked behind and I feared to find
The Island had disappeared!

David Lewis Paget

I knew she was Scandinavian
With those plaits in her flaxen hair,
And her eyes were such a brilliant blue
They were quite beyond compare,
I’d watch her make her way to the beach
Down the stony clifftop way,
But didn’t know she was waiting for him
Till I saw them come that day.

I doubt if she understood our tongue
Though trapped on an English shore,
I’d greet her as I’d greet anyone
With a wave and a smile, for sure,
But she’d bow her head, and hurry away
Determined we shouldn’t meet,
I little knew where her secret lay
Though I’d pass her along the street.

She seemed to live in a cottage that
Had been tumbling down for years,
Up on a tuft of poverty grass
That time had dismayed, and cursed,
Her clothes, designed in a northern clime
Must have been hand-sewn with twine,
The colours faded, the patterns run
But to me, she was more than fine.

I watched her all through the Autumn as
She wandered along the beach,
She always stopped at the same old spot
Where the rocks had formed a breach,
The waves would part as they hit the rocks
And a plume sprayed in the air,
Forming a mist of droplets that would
Glisten, all through her hair.

Then winter came in a fury with
Its grey and its fretful skies,
And storms were lashing the seafront
Keeping us home, those who were wise,
But she still ventured abroad some days
Though the wind would take her breath,
And make her stagger along the path
Till I thought she’d catch her death.

Something drove her along that path
For she seemed to be obsessed,
The days were dark, you could barely see,
You’d think that those rocks were blessed,
She’d come back up in an hour or so
With her clothes so soaked and wet,
That once I called, and she came right in,
The first time that we’d met.

She couldn’t answer my questions though,
She spoke in a foreign tongue,
One that was heard in northern climes
Back when the world was young,
And when she dried, she walked away
But pointed out to the sea,
And mouthed a single word, a name,
‘Brynjar’, it had seemed to me.

That night a terrible storm began,
A storm like I’d never seen,
With dense black rolling thunder clouds
That lightning lit, between,
I watched as she wandered out once more
And I looked down to the shore
And noticed a strange old sailing ship
Like I’d seen in a book, before.

The prow was high, and a dragon’s head
Stared snarling out through the hail,
A huge square sail was fluttering,
Torn in the raging gale,
And at the prow a warrior, who
Clung onto an oar and spar,
While from the shore, a sudden scream
Had cut through the air, ‘Brynjar!’

The ship was swept on the jagged rocks
That had formed a solid breach,
And shattered, as it had broken its back,
To spill its men on the beach,
But Brynjar, lost on the self-same rocks
Caused her to scream, at last,
Just as that scene had faded out
A long lost scene from the past.

I never once saw that girl again,
It’s now that I think I know,
How desperate things return sometimes
In a sort of afterglow,
For Brynjar’s ship was a Dragon ship
From a thousand years before,
Whose Viking crew came for who knows who,
Trapped on the English shore.

David Lewis Paget

She came back home from a morning class
And she thought to find him there,
She called for him in the morning room
And she climbed the wooden stair,
She called him up on her mobile phone
And she said, ‘Where are you, Sam?’
His voice came nervously, in reply:
‘I don’t know where I am!’

The signal crackled, then faded out
And it came back in again,
She heard him mutter and try to shout,
His words reflected pain,
‘I don’t know how to get back,’ he cried,
‘That door down by the stair,
It opened up and it shut me out,
When I looked, it wasn’t there!’

‘There isn’t a door by the stair,’ she said,
‘There isn’t a door at all,
You must have fallen and hit your head,
There’s blood on the stairway wall.’
‘It’s true that I must have cut myself
When the door had swung ajar,
But the house has gone, I’ve moved along,
And I don’t know where you are.’

‘Well tell me how I can find you, and
I’ll get some help to search,
I might have to call an ambulance
If you’ve fallen off your perch.’
‘This isn’t a joke, I’m not insane,
But my world has turned about,
I tell you the door just disappeared
When it closed, and shut me out.’

‘I’m out in the woods, beside a stream
With a girl that looks like you,
I know she’s not, but she says she is,
And her name is Mary, too!
She swears that she’s the original
And that you must be a clone,
She told me about the guy you meet
When you’re safely on your own.’

Then Mary shook and she went quite pale
And she said, ‘It isn’t true!
There was a fellow that came my way
But I swear, he looked like you.
He had me fooled for a moment there
But I knew it when we kissed,
And then I ****** him away, and said
‘Your lips don’t taste like this!’’

He breathed a sigh as she wiped her eye
And he heard her cry on the phone,
‘I shouldn’t have doubted you, my dear,
But I’ve been so long alone.
Our lives had drifted apart, so much
That I wondered if you cared,
We allowed ourselves to be led, instead of
The love that we should have shared.’

‘Look for the door by the bottom stair,
When it opens, come to me,
Then we can be together again
As good as it used to be,
We’ll live the life that we should have lived
Before, when our love was true!’
‘Don’t ever question my love,’ she said,
My only love is you!’

A door came shimmering into view
At the bottom of the stair,
And swung out wide, on the other side
Was her twin, she would declare,
She pushed on through, and into the house
As Mary went through the door,
And turned to look, as the building shook
And sank to the forest floor.

Then Sam had taken her in his arms
As he had, when they were young,
And spun her dancing between the trees
As she laughed, her eyes had shone,
While up in the house, the clones had stared
For their love had been a sham,
‘We’re not going to make it now,’ he said,
‘I don’t know where I am!’

David Lewis Paget

There’s a time at night when the moon is full
And the breakers pound the beach,
The world is dark and asleep, the gull
Lies nesting at the breach,
It’s then that the stirrings from the depths
Reach out, like a dead man’s hand,
And shortly, out of the rivulets
There are footprints on the sand.

They come ashore and they stand awhile
And they point, this way and that,
Considering well which way to go
As the waves erase their tracks,
Then a breeze picks up and it parts the grass
In a line up from the shore,
And the shape of feet on a farmer’s stile
Are left, till they dry once more.

While up on the rise, a cottage sits
With a single faint night-light,
Its simple beam like a beacon streams
Through the tar-black pitch of night,
While deep inside in a cosy room
Sleeps a girl called Carolyn,
Who tosses fretfully in the gloom
As she dreams the words, ‘Come in!’

The footsteps up from the field below
Stand still at the old front door,
The lock is rusty, the hinges swing
For an inch, or maybe more,
The wind is moaning and soughing now
And the door is soon ajar,
As the footsteps enter that sacred place
Under the evening star.

And Carolyn lies and moans aloud
As his death invades her sleep,
Since ever the depths had formed his shroud
All she had done was weep,
The footprints stood, facing her bed
For an age it seemed, they kept
A silent vigil, there by her head
When she woke, the sheets were wet.

David Lewis Paget

‘I begged you not to go to the lake
For I knew that he’d be there,
Whenever we’d go to the lake before
He would come out, sit and stare,
He lived in a cabin, made of wood,
Was a woodsman, through and through,
But the hairs rose up on the back of my neck
Each time that he stared at you.’

‘You wore that little bikini top
And the g-string pulled up tight,
I said that you’d catch your death out there,
It was cold, and nearly night,
But I saw you bridle at every glance
As he sat on his porch out there,
Then you swayed on down to the waters edge:
‘To get a fresh breath of air.’’

‘If only you could have seen yourself,
You looked like a sad man’s dream,
While he would twitch on his garden seat
Like a cat that had choked on cream.
I’d call you in, but you wouldn’t come
Though I’d watch through the window pane,
And you would titter, and he would laugh
As you wiggled his way again.’

‘What makes you fall for these burly men,
Could it be that they’re so uncouth?
Their manners say they haven’t a brain
So could it be faded youth?
You’ll never be twenty-one again,
Nor even remember when,
And if they knew what you’d want to do
They’d hide in the fields and fen.’

‘I begged you not to go to the lake
I can’t trust you on your own,
The police have got your description now
We’ll have to be moving home.
His jugular was punctured they said,
There wasn’t a drop in his veins,
And yes, you’re ten years younger again
But a hundred and ten remains!’

David Lewis Paget

Often I sit at the soul’s soft reach
Where the tide sweeps in to a lonely beach,
Where the rollers roll and the breakers break
To tug at the strings of an old heartache.

Where the swell will rise till it reaches the sky
When it breaks with the spume, so white and high,
To race to the shore with a fume and a roar
Then retreats to the sea as it will, once more.

And then comes the girl I see in my dreams
As she wades in the tide to the waist, it seems,
I watch as she walks, her hair flying free
Her shawl dripping wet with the spray from the sea.

And each time I see her, down at the shore
I think of some maiden from old folk lore,
Her skirt in the water right up to the knee
She leans at the wind, but she never sees me.

One day he rose from the spume and the spray
A man grim-faced with his hair so grey,
He lurched from the water and reached for her wrist,
And when she resisted, he gave it a twist.

Then she called out with a voice like a bell
A sound, if you like, like a cockleshell,
I heard her cry he should let her be,
Not plague her with love, she’d like to be free.

I knew I should help, but the tide was high,
And where I was sat it was warm and dry,
He dragged her through rollers that covered her head
As far as I know, that girl must be dead.

So often I sit at the soul’s soft reach
Where the tide sweeps in to a lonely beach,
Where the rollers roll and the breakers break
To tug at the strings of an old heartache.

David Lewis Paget

‘I always wanted to see your face,’ she said,
She was teasing me,
I’d gone along to our twentieth wake
Since we’d been divorced, and free.
We got on better than ever we had
When chained together in time,
That piece of paper had choked us both
But being apart, sublime!

I looked across at the massive cake
They had wheeled across the floor,
‘Now that’s what I call a giant bake,’
I said. She said, ‘There’s more!’
There were twenty candles around the top
And seven around the lip,
The twenty since we had been divorced
And seven for when we flipped.

The seven year itch was what it was
When we ended up in court,
We really should have got over it
But we’d given it little thought,
For the plumber lasted a month or two
She confessed, in one of her gripes,
For she got bored with him on the floor
Checking her taps and pipes.

And I got sick of the Dolly Bird
Who had lisped, she would be mine,
Who liked to strip to the Beatles hits
When her head was full of wine,
It all fell flat when the passion died
And we stopped to get our breath,
There was nothing she had to say inside
So she bored me half to death.

We came together just once a year
As a mark of our mistake,
And every year with the slightest tear
We would share a Parting Cake.
I’d never seen one as big as this
It was white, and frilled with lace,
And that’s when Jennifer said to me,
‘I wanted to see your face!’

The lid flipped up and the stripper rose
As I dropped my jaw, and gaped,
She stood a moment and struck a pose,
‘That’s my present for you, Jake!
It’s a bit too late to apologise
For making that awful scene,
But I think we’re older now, and wise,
And you get to lick off the cream!’

The girl was covered in cream all right
On her thighs and hips and breast,
‘You get to lick what you want tonight
And I’ll scrape off the rest.’
She laughed, I laughed, and I saw her then
As the face of one I’d missed,
There was little thought of the stripper then
As we both leaned in, and kissed.

David Lewis Paget

I should not have said I loved you
When at first you pressed me to,
For I carried too much baggage
From the past, and overdue,
It was bedded deep within me when
I woke each day at dawn,
And I found it crying in me for
A love, both dead and gone.

But your bright eyes had waylaid me,
And the heart upon your sleeve,
They would tempt me and would stay me
Every time I tried to leave,
You were sweet and loved me only
Which was what I couldn’t do,
Though you soothed me and you played me
I’d not give myself to you.

Though I know I was a fool to care
For what had gone before,
I was anxious to reclaim it
So I pushed you out the door,
Though you persevered and held me
In the love that you had found,
I betrayed your finer feelings
When I covered that old ground.

Then the years piled up upon me
With the ‘we’ becoming ‘us’,
It was like a fateful journey
On an old and wayward bus,
And I came around to love you then
But not enough it seems,
For you saw me as unfaithful
And it shattered all your dreams.

The stronger that my love grew, yours
Would fade and disappear,
And the end of our love story was
To drown in bitter tears,
For in truth, I don’t deserve you
As I now succumb to fate,
Though I love you more than ever
It’s too little, and too late!

David Lewis Paget

It started late on a Sunday night,
The sudden rattle of pans,
With nobody in the kitchen then,
‘What’s happening, Dianne?’
Dianne went pale and she looked at me
‘You’d better go down and see,
Maybe we have an intruder there,
Just keep him away from me.’

I went, but nobody there of course,
I didn’t think there was,
But two large knives on the cupboard were
Arranged in a sort of cross,
‘Didn’t you put the knives away,’
I called, but she was there,
Looking over my shoulder and
I saw that she was scared.

‘But I haven’t used those knives for days,
There’s something going on,
Somebody must have sneaked in here,
I tell you, this is wrong!’
I turned and I tried to comfort her,
‘There’s no-one in here now,
Just someone playing a crazy trick,
I’ll catch them out, somehow.’

But late that night, in the early hours
The bed began to shake,
Dianne woke up and she grabbed at me,
‘I think it’s a real earthquake.’
I tumbled onto the floor at that,
But the floor was still and sound,
Only the bed was shaking, quaking,
Just above the ground.

And that was only the start of it,
Strange things went on for weeks,
For things would fly off the table and
Plates off the mantlepiece.
A carving knife pinned me to the wall
By the collar of my shirt,
‘I don’t think somebody likes you,’ said
Dianne, ‘you might get hurt.’

Dianne had an ancient father who
Was mean as the day was young,
He hated me, and I used to say,
‘How did he stay unhung?’
We rarely went off to visit him
As he acted like a skunk,
But Dianne dragged me along at times
To show a united front.

Doors were slamming and windows cracking
So Dianne had to shout,
‘We have to visit my father, Dean,
It’s time that we went out.’
I ventured cautiously through his room
And called the old boy’s name,
But it was quieter than the tomb
And Dianne said the same.

We found him out in the laundry then,
He’d fallen in the tub,
Had gone a couple of spin cycles,
Oh yes, and here’s the rub,
One bony arm and a hand were out
And pointed, looking mean,
We knew then who was the poltergeist,
But boy, his bones were clean.

David Lewis Paget

I’d known of the cave beneath the cliff
For a year, or maybe more,
And I’d often said to Jill, ‘What if…’
But we’d not been there before.
It was only at the lowest tide
That the entrance could be seen,
We’d have to dive, to swim inside
And for that, Jill wasn’t keen.

For the cave lay in a tiny cove
With towering cliffs above,
‘So how are we going to get down there,
To swim,’ said Jill, ‘my love,’
We’ll hire a boat and we’ll cruise around
With our gear, from Canning Bay,
Which is what we did with our scuba tanks
On a fresh, mid-winter day.

It took a couple of hours or more
To get to the favoured spot,
The sea was calm, we secured the boat
Next to a giant rock,
Then over the side we went, and swam
Toward that narrow gap,
Then dived below with the tidal flow
There was just the one mishap.

Jill caught her tank on the overhang
And it nicked her feeder hose,
She still had air, but I had to stare
As a stream of bubbles rose,
We swam right into the inner cave
Where the roof gave us more height,
So up we came to the air again
And I lit my small flashlight.

The walls reflected the sudden beam
In a thousand different ways,
There were reds and greens, and even cream
In a host of coloured sprays,
Then further on as we swam along
Was a ledge we clambered on,’
And there the bones of a longboat lay
From a time, both dead and gone.

And further in was a pile of bones
Of some poor, benighted soul,
Caught in hell in this prison cell
When the tide began to roll,
He must have come when the tide was low
And sailed in through the gap,
Then stayed too late, there was no escape
Once the tide had closed the trap.

And close by him lay an iron chest
With its bands all rusted through,
Full of coins, of gold Moidores
And Spanish Dollars too.
But Jill became so excited by
The glitter of the stuff,
That she’d forgotten the fractured hose,
Or to turn her Oxy off.

I played the light up above the bones
Where a script was scratched in the wall,
‘God help me, I was cast in here
By the crew of the ‘One for All,’
They told me to hide the treasure here
And would pick me up at eleven,
But then the entrance disappeared,’
It was ‘1797.’

Jill’s tank was empty when we looked,
So I said I’d leave her there,
Go back and pick up another tank
But her face was filled with fear.
It’s been a week since I left her there
For the sea’s blown up, as well,
And the entrance to the cave has gone
Under a ten foot swell.

I’d give all the coin, and gold doubloons
Just to get my woman back,
But there’s been a great white pointer there,
I’m afraid of a shark attack.
If she just can last till the sea goes down
I shall go to that awful cave,
But the thought I’ve fought since I left her there,
‘It may be my woman’s grave.’

David Lewis Paget

He was wearing a coloured waistcoat,
All covered in Moons and stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,
I saw him first in the marketplace
Hid under his pointy hat,
With ribbons and whorls, and pictures of girls
Pinned over the place he sat.

And she was there at his feet that day
In a dress like a gypsy curse,
Her hair was red, and I’ve always said
She was one with the universe.
If ever love had bitten my hand
Tearing the flesh from the bone,
Then I’d have bled like a river, red
While dragging the girl back home.

But there on the table between them
The tickets were piled so high,
And each one said, ‘would you rather dead,
Or up for a place in the sky?’
It looked like a planetary super mart
With pebbles from outer space,
And there I saw an astrology chart
With a sketch reflecting my face.

I’d swear that the gypsy scowled at me
As the Moon Man tapped with his wand,
A sense of dread sweeping over my head
Put me in the sea of despond,
‘You know you have to get out of here,’
He whispered, the Man from Mars,
‘They’re coming to sweep you away this year,
Along with your rusty cars.’

The girl threw open her gypsy dress
The end would play on her screen,
The earth had gone where it once had shone,
It looked like a nightmare scene.
For bits of earth were floating apart
And space glowed green in the night,
While only the Moon still lit up the room
Where once there had been delight.

‘Pick up your ticket for who knows where,’
He said, to lighten the gloom,
The gypsy curse had been getting worse
Since I knew the earth was a tomb.
I thanked them both, then I turned away
As they faded into the stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,

David Lewis Paget

I stare at you and you stare at me,
That picture of me before,
You looked so young in your pedigree
Before we both went to war,
But life has left its mark on the face
That was captured, back in time,
And now there’s little left of your grace,
There’s nothing that’s left of mine.

For you’re a constant reminder of
The man that I thought was fine,
I look in awe at your forehead where
There isn’t a single line,
Not one of the cracks and crevices
That now will litter my brow,
I wonder how you would feel, if you
Were able to see me now?

If only I had been painted like
The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Then you would possibly look like me
And I’d be like you today,
My faults and pleasures you’d never know
Except on your painted face,
And you would never be put on show,
While I would retain your grace.

But time and life are a cruel pair,
For age to them is a joke,
They both conspire to grey your hair
From the time you enter their yoke,
They run their tractors over your face
Emasculate skin and bone,
And when you look, there isn’t a trace
Whatever you were, has flown.

No sweet young thing will look at you now,
If so, she’s telling you lies,
The only sign of the love you’ve known
Will still reside in your eyes,
And so you look at your lady now
Who stuck by you, thick and thin,
And praise the Lord that she’s aged like you,
As you’re falling in love again.

David Lewis Paget

The horseman rode up over the hill
Astride of his coal black steed,
His blood had dried on its withers, till
He may have been dead, indeed,
His battered buckler hung at his side
And his chain mail coat was rust,
He’d left so many behind who died
Of his comrades, turned to dust.

The scars crept over his forehead where
The enemy slashed at his helm,
He’d beaten off so many before
Their numbers had overwhelmed,
He’d planted pikemen deep in the ditch
As they thought they’d pulled him down,
A final ****** in their mortal dust
Saw them set, deep set in the ground.

And now, but one chased him down the hill
His sword raised clear to the sky,
He seemed determined to cleft his pate
Though one might question, ‘Why?’
The battle done on the battlefield
There had just remained these two,
As up there twirled a funnel of smoke
From a single chimney flue.

And out there burst from the cottage door
A woman who’d lain in wait,
For two long years she had hoped and prayed
He’d return to his estate,
He didn’t know about Fontainebleau
Who had offered up his hand,
And swore that when he returned from war
She would take the better man.

But now she stood with her father’s bow
And an arrow from his quiver,
Determined only to greet her man
And the other horseman, never!
They galloped down from the mountainside
In line with her shaking bow,
With him so suddenly unaware
Why the arrow, why the bow?

The second rider had gained the ground
He needed for his charge,
And swung his sword above and around
To clatter his helm, at large,
The rider fell from his forward horse
As his woman raised her bow,
And saw the arrow fly fleet and fast
To the eye of Fontainebleau.

David Lewis Paget

The storm had unleashed its fury,
In gales, on the night before,
Had scribbled its bitter story
All over a battered shore,
For there lay the yacht ‘Imagine’,
Cast up on the outer reef,
Its sails and its stays were sagging,
And shredded beyond belief.

I scrambled over the rocks out there
When the tide left it high and dry,
In hopes that I’d find my friend, Jo Bère,
Unhurt, though I don’t know why.
Jo Bère was such a mountainous man
And so much larger than life,
He’d sailed through many a perfect storm
On board, with his restless wife.

So when I clambered aboard that day
I heard her calling my name,
And something about her pitiful cry
Said nothing would be the same.
I found her down on the cabin floor
All bruised, and somewhat distressed,
The storm had shattered the cabin door
And left the cabin a wreck.

I said to Dawn, ‘you outlived the storm,
But where is my friend, Jo Bère?’
She said, ‘He fell overboard last night,
I looked for him everywhere.’
Though she was bruised, there wasn’t a cut,
Just thrown around in the flood,
So what was the smear on the locker there,
The ominous sign of blood?

‘He must have fallen and hit his head,
I can’t remember, I swear,
The yacht was tossed and my husband lost,
He must be floating out there.’
I knew that she was a restless wife
She’d often give me the eye,
I knew their marriage had been in strife,
Could never figure out why.

But now she reached and she held my hand
And gave it a gentle squeeze,
‘My husband’s gone, but my life goes on,
I’ll always be here to please.
You must know, I’ve always cared for you,’
I said, ‘Don’t ever go there,
Because, to me, you will always be
The wife of my friend, Jo Bère.’

Her face grew dark, and I saw the spark
Of an anger, much like a storm,
She didn’t take to rejection well,
And I should have been forewarned.
I turned to leave so that I could grieve
The loss of my friend, Jo Bère,
Then saw on the floor the bloodstained axe,
With clumps of my old friend’s hair.

She leapt for it, but I got there first,
And I stamped it, down on the floor,
Then Dawn was wild, like a crazy child,
She came at me, tooth and claw.
‘I never thought you would ****** him,’
I cried, while beating her off,
She screamed, ‘You’re not going to put me in,’
And then she started to laugh.

A high pitched laugh that was like a scream
As I clambered over the side,
Just as the sea was flooding in,
Right at the turn of the tide.
She must have known that she’d have to pay
When I told them, creed and rote,
For I heard them say, the following day,
‘That woman has cut her throat.’

David Lewis Paget

He spoke of the stream that flowed uphill
In a grotto, long forgot,
Then said the stream would be flowing still,
And I could believe, or not.
I thought he was strange, with a twisted mind
For the concept was insane,
He said that he came from another time
In a land of eternal rain.

I’d met him at Janet’s party where
He drifted from room to room,
Where everyone else was hearty but
He gave off an air of gloom.
I noticed one of his eyes was blue
The other was green, I’d say,
Whenever he stared they both were red
And his face became slate grey.

I’ll never know why he spoke to me
I hadn’t met him before,
He had this prominent artery
That ran the length of his jaw,
His voice was flat and unmusical
Though it said the strangest things,
The bones of knuckles were beautiful
He said, when covered in rings.

I followed him to the verandah where
I found him gazing at stars,
He said they seemed to be back to front
I said, ‘Well at least, they’re ours.’
‘The grass I knew was a deeper blue,’
He said, ‘and the sky was green,’
I said, ‘You must be from out of town,
We would think that was obscene.’

He said ‘You’re not very friendly,’ when
I thought we were doing fine,
He asked me to show him the number six
But I showed him the number nine.
The bus would take him to Goblin Dell
By the longest way around,
I said to myself, it’s just as well
He’ll end in the Lost and Found.

I still regret that I didn’t go
To the grotto, long forgot,
He said he was willing to take me there
Whether I would, or not,
I’d like to have seen the fabled stream
That he said had flowed uphill,
And where it led to the source of dream
Where the rain is raining still.

David Lewis Paget

I hated to pass the talking tree,
It made me feel all undone,
Raveling on in its revery
Like a racquet, coming unstrung,
What made it worse was the silken voice
Not matching a stringybark’s,
If I’d been offered a simple choice
I’d rather the voice was harsh.

It tried to attract my attention there
Each time I ventured to pass,
‘What are you going to do, just stare?’
It said, ‘Well, kiss my ***!’
It always tried to embarrass me
By being uncouth, and loose,
I said, ‘You’re surely the rudest tree,
We haven’t been introduced.’

It quoted Coleridge by the ream
Whenever I wore my hat,
‘A painted ship on a painted sea,
Now what do you think of that?’
‘I don’t know where you borrowed that line
I said, I have no notion, it’s
“As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean!”’

It used to sulk when it got it wrong
To wave its trunk with a clatter,
‘Who’d believe,’ it would say to me,
‘That getting it right would matter?’
‘I think He would, old S.T.C.
Would listen, hear, and note it,
Nor be impressed that a talking tree
Would get it wrong, and quote it.’

I turned up there with a saw one day
And the talking tree had cried,
‘I say, I’m not going to cut you down,’
I said, but it knew I lied.
For ‘April is the cruellest month,’
I said, and I wasn’t kidding,
I saw through its Eliot, silence its Pound
And cut off its Little Gidding.

David Lewis Paget

When I was a child, at Halloween
I’d go out to trick or treat,
With Pam, and Sam, and Wriggly Ann
Just us in the dark, cold street,
We’d knock on the doors of folk we knew
And they’d give us a sweet, or cake,
But those who wouldn’t come to the door,
We thought they were cruel, or fake.

We’d look for a gnome, or garden tool,
We’d sneak right into their shed,
Stand up a rake, and play the fool
Stick a pumpkin there for its head,
And then we’d giggle and run away,
Go to the house next door,
And sometimes,  eating the proffered cake
We’d laugh at the neighbour’s roar.

We’d finished the street one night, and turned
To a place called Shady Lane,
It wasn’t a place we’d often go
For the folk there were insane.
They hated children, they hated pets,
We thought that they’d ate our dog,
Had lured it off on a misty night
When the town was covered in smog.

‘Let’s trick or treat the Lavorsky’s,’ said
The pipsqueak, Wriggly Ann,
‘Only if you will knock on the door
While we stand back,’ said Sam.
The house was dark, there wasn’t a light
And the Moon was hid in a cloud,
It loomed up there in the darkness like
A monster, wrapped in a shroud.

She knocked three times and we all stood back
Were getting ready to run,
With only Ann on the welcome mat
We thought he might have a gun.
The door had creaked and a hand shot out,
Grabbed Wriggly Ann by the scruff,
Then hauled her in and the door slammed shut
And Pamela screamed, took off.

I looked at Sam and he looked at me
As we both stood still, in shock,
‘Maybe they’re going to have her for tea
Like they did with our poodle, ****!’
We skirted round on the garden path
Til we came to their rustic shed,
Opened the door, and there on the floor
Was Mrs. Lavorsky, dead!

Her eyes were wide, and shone in the dark
Her jaw sagged open and slack,
Her hands in a rigor mortis claw
Were raised, as if to attack.
And Sam had screamed like a little girl
(He never could live that down),
He fainted, fell right there on his back
On Mrs. Lavorsky’s gown.

Her husband didn’t know she was dead
Til the police came round that night,
But then he left her, there in the shed
For the hearse to collect, first light.
While Wriggly Ann was safe inside
Was stuffing her face with cake,
That Mr. Lavorsky’d laid on out,
The last that his wife would bake.

David Lewis Paget

‘It’s only for over Christmas,’ said
The son to his father there,
And watched as the old man’s shoulders hunched
As he painfully mounted the stair,
‘It’s just for the festive season while
The house will be full of kin,
We’re going to need your bedroom if
We’re going to fit them in.

‘I’ll pick you up when the New Year dawns,
My promise is set in stone,
On the first or second of January
Expect me to bring you home.’
But the old man merely paused and turned,
The set of his mouth was grim,
‘You don’t need to make me promises,
I know I’m not wanted, Tim.’

And Tim would have said that wasn’t true
But he had to heed his wife,
She’d said it was him or her would leave,
And her words cut like a knife,
‘I’m always the one to wash and clean,
To cook, and pick up his mess,
He has to be gone by Christmas John,
I’ll not put up with less.’

So early the morning of Christmas Eve
The son had packed a case,
And helped his father into the car
To head for the old folks place,
‘It’s lucky your mother’s dead, my son,
You’d tear us both apart,
How do you think your Mum would feel,
I think you’d break her heart.’

And tears had run down the father’s cheek,
And also down the son’s,
Tim said, ‘Look Dad, I am sorry but
There’s nothing to be done.
I’ve said I’m coming to pick you up
So what more can I say?’
‘I thought to be spending my Christmas
With my son, on Christmas Day.’

The car pulled up at the iron gate
And the son had forced a smile,
‘It won’t be long and with Christmas gone
It will just be a little while,’
He carried his case inside for him
And he turned to say goodbye,
When muttering ‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’
The old man answered ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

The first time that I noticed them
I passed them on the stair,
She wore an amulet love-charm then
He was much too old for her.
I should have hurried and looked away
But I caught her smouldering eye,
And my heart had leapt within my breast
To this day, I wonder why?

Her hair, a tangle of lovers knots,
Her lips, a definite pout,
Her figure light and her legs were white
And I saw her look about.
She peeked behind as she passed me by
And I caught her knowing look,
The moment passed with the slightest sigh
I was firmly on her hook.

I didn’t go out of my way for her,
She seemed so firmly fixed,
The man beside her glowered at me
And gripped her by the wrist,
I saw him leading her often then
As our paths began to cross,
And smiled at her as she came my way
But her eyes looked vague, and lost.

The man came up and he gripped my arm,
‘You’d better leave her be.
Don’t think to fall for her fateful charm,
Giselle belongs to me!’
He pushed me then, and he walked away
And he gripped her arm so tight,
He stopped the blood where his fingers lay
And her hand went stark and white.

I asked a friend who had known her once,
He said, ‘Just keep away.
She labours under a curse, that one,
She only brings dismay.
You see the man who escorts her now
And you think he’s far too old,
A year ago he was twenty-two
But he aged once in her hold.’

I didn’t think it was possible
But he aged as time went on,
His hair and his beard went pale and grey
And his features, pale and wan,
Though she gained colour in both her cheeks
And her eyes would sparkle blue,
While he would stumble, but still cling on
Till she said, ‘I’m looking at you!’

As soon as she uttered those fateful words
His hand released its grip,
And she walked on, not looking back
As if on a different trip.
She came to face me and say the words
That had snared good men before,
But I turned into my passageway
Grey faced, and I locked the door.

David Lewis Paget

He’d lain in the septic, hospital bed,
Was terminal, slipping away,
‘He won’t last forever,’ the nurses said,
‘Will probably go today.’
So they put him on a morphine drip
To ease the man of his plight,
‘He looks so grey, and is on his way,
I think he’ll be dead tonight.’

But deep in the slumbering fellow’s head
There wasn’t a shred of gloom,
A party was raging within his bed,
And filling that hospital room,
There were friends and folk he’d always known,
A neighbour he knew as Jim,
And there in a party dress, on her own,
That wonderful girl called Kim.

Would she even give him a second glance
He’d thought, in a sort of dread,
He’d seen her first at the village dance,
And now she was deep in his head.
Her lips were full and her eyes were brown
And her teeth were even and white,
He thought that his courage might let him down
Then swore, ‘she’ll be mine tonight.’

He nodded his head to a favourite tune
As tremors invaded his pillow,
Balloons were popping all through the room,
He stood by a favourite willow,
And Kim was paddling in the brook
That bubbled and babbled, madly,
He took a breath and a long last look,
He knew that he wanted her badly.

She turned and smiled, and walked to his bed,
And gave her lips to be kissed there,
She shimmered and swayed as his vision fled
And he stood alone by her grave there,
His smile was soft as the lights went out
And a nurse looked over him gravely,
‘At last he’s gone, I knew him as John,
He went to the other side bravely.’

They stripped his bed and they laid him out,
‘I remember his wife,’ one sighed,
‘Her name was Kim, and she doted on him,
It must be a year since she died.’
‘Who knows what happens to those who pass,’
A nurse said, folding the sheeting,
‘I’d like to think they’re together at last,
If just for a moment, fleeting…’

David Lewis Paget

The change in his habits was hard to define,
He thought, getting older, had shortened his time,
Less time to waste sleeping, for rest or respite,
From eight hours to six hours, to four hours at night.

He’d sit up late working, and not watch the clock
At midnight he’d vaguely hear something tick-tock,
But still would sit up with his eyes full of rue
And not get to bed until one, maybe two.

Awake before dawn he would feel some relief,
That death had not squandered his life in his sleep,
And though he was tiring, he wouldn’t give in,
Began to see sleeping as some kind of sin.

Then down to an hour, and then to a half
He ended up napping short time by the hearth,
Five minutes would pass, he’d be fully awake
When under his chair he would feel the earth quake.

And when his eyes opened and looked to the skies
He’d see giant gimbals above the sunrise,
That held the earth spinning in place like a top
A gyroscope, seeming it never would stop.

Then in the dark hours when all were asleep,
He’d see all the monsters come out for a peep,
Come out from their hidings in forest and glen
Whenever they hadn’t to fear meeting men.

They’d play in the shallows, they’d play in the streams,
They’d dash in and out of the sleeping mens dreams,
They’d laugh and they’d frolic up high in the trees,
And wave in the branches with every slight breeze.

And sometimes they’d argue, and sometimes they’d fight,
Hip-hopping from one to the other all night,
They’d not see the watcher, awake in his den
For monsters see horrors in all kinds of men.

The world would return to the way it had been
Before men came begging, and made it unclean,
With meadows and grotto’s and magical spells,
And hedgerows and sedge rows and woods of bluebells.

He sat there in wonder, and watched the full flight
Of worlds unimagined that came out each night,
And suddenly death was the least he would fear
If death would come dreaming and carry him here.

The watcher relaxed and he fell sound asleep
He slept for eight hours with never a peep,
And when he awoke with the rise of the sun,
He wept in his sorrow, what sleep had undone.

David Lewis Paget

What happens to love that’s neglected,
What happens with absence of care,
When only the shrug of indifference
Is left for you both to share.
What happens when neither will reach on out
To touch, or caress or to hold,
Or eyes never meet when you pass in the street
There’s a shrivelling up of the soul.

And the taste of the past is like ashes,
While the memories gone are like dust,
Growing deeper with time as it passes
To bury attraction and lust.
And you wonder about the excitement
That you felt at the moment you met,
Was that a mirage, is the desert so large
That your heart remains lost in it yet?

When the days stretch ahead, and are endless
That you fear there will be no respite,
Are you under a curse, could it be any worse
With your tears on the pillow at night?
When you put a brave face on each morning,
And you nod to each other, then go,
But pray life will not be extended,
What happens? I think that you know!

David Lewis Paget

Raglan Roc was a Warlock, and
He lived up on Mandrake Hill,
Up where the witches gathered
Once a month, for a coven spell,
He tended his herbal garden, growing
Mugwort, sage and ash,
Supplying the monthly coven, though
He never would deal in cash.

They paid him in philtres, magic charms,
And the odd love potion or two,
For some of the witches were younger ones,
He’d say, ‘Let’s try it on you.’
And they would giggle and ride their brooms
Right into the witching Dell,
To check out the Warlock’s magic wand
As he put them under his spell.

He didn’t believe in favourites
But welcomed more than a few,
Till half the coven had buns in the oven
And didn’t know what to do.
They got too heavy to ride their brooms
Back down to the village street,
But waddled along the cobblestones,
Tripping over their feet.

And husband’s, down in the village square
Would mutter and moan, nonplussed,
‘Here comes another, a magic mother,
It should have been one of us.
The place will be full of ankle biters
If this don’t come to a stop,
All with a set of tiny horns
And looking like Raglan Roc.’

They followed the witches up the hill
On a coven day in June,
And each one carried a baseball bat
On that sunny afternoon,
They played a tinkling game that day
On his ribs and his Warlock form,
And by the time that they went away
They’d chopped off his favourite horn.

The witches no longer go up the hill
They say it isn’t much fun,
Not since the Warlock lost his pants
And his flirting days are done.
They get their herbs from the corner shop
And they weave their spells ad hoc,
While ankle biters still roam the streets
To remind them of Raglan Roc.

David Lewis Paget

The day was grey when it came my way
With a clatter of wheels and hooves,
Echoing off the cobblestones
And under the red tile roofs,
The rain was glistening in the road
And I was confused at first,
For what I’d thought was a coach and four
Went by as a horse drawn hearse.

The horse went stepping by, high and proud
With a coat like shining mail,
And ostrich plumes adorned its harness
Right down to its plaited tail.
Then in the hearse, a polished coffin
With silver plate inscribed,
The name of him, who encased within
Had clutched at his heart, and died.

I watched the hearse as it rolled away
And thought that it could be me,
When one day off in a future time
I departed my history,
The wheels had creaked like a ticking clock
Or a dripping tap, each turn,
Rolling along to the day we stopped,
Went home in a funeral urn.

The months slipped by with barely a sigh
Till I saw that hearse again,
It passed my way when the day was grey
And the clouds had threatened rain.
I read the name on the silver plate
As the hearse had passed on by,
And held my breath in the face of death
For I certainly knew that guy.

We’d been together at school back when
Though he was younger than me,
He’d been successful in all he’d done
And married Penelope.
The only woman I’d ever loved
But he’d snatched her heart away,
And now she plodded behind the hearse
Looking faded, old and grey.

Her eyes met mine and a bitter smile
Had flickered around her eyes,
I hadn’t seen her for years, and yet
Her look had the look of surprise.
I never saw her again until
She passed me by in the hearse,
Her name engraved on the silver plate,
I thought I was being cursed.

So now I wait by the garden gate
For the clatter of wheels and hooves,
Whenever the day is clouded and grey
And the sound echoes off the roofs.
All I can hear are the wheels of time
That pass like a ticking clock,
And wait for the hearse to halt outside,
Whether I know it, or not.

David Lewis Paget

Whenever I ride in the countryside
On the further side of the hill,
I can see the new church steeple, rising
Over the fields and rills,
Then I venture down to the valley, on
The Little Newhampton side,
And see the wreck of the ancient church
And remember the day it died.

Its blackened stone lies wide to the sky,
Its rafters lie in the nave,
If God was passing that fateful day
He thought it too late to save,
The lightning bolt that shattered his cross
Went on to set it on fire,
The lectern, pews, of Reverend Buse
Conspired to burn on his pyre.

They found his skull, all covered in ash
But the rest of him had gone,
Had flown his soul with its blackened wings
To a feast on the Eve of John,
He was known to hold a Satanic Mass
On the night of the Witches Moon,
But the Bishop’s men were ******* his track
And would have defrocked him soon.

His congregation was always sparse,
For the good folk stayed away,
They’d heard strange rumours of what went on
With the Squire, and the Widow Hay,
They locked themselves behind cedar doors
And called on the god of wrath,
With lighted candles, inverted cross,
Laid out on the altar cloth.

The evening of the lightning strike
The leadlight flickered and flashed,
And screams rang out in the early hours
As a black cat hurried past,
For then the windows had glowed bright red
To herald a presence there,
While a deep, loud gutteral voice rang out
To foul and corrupt the air.

‘Where are my churls and underlings,
My troglodytes and my trolls?
Tonight is the night of sundering
Each evil heart from its soul!’
The Squire burst out, made a run for it
And tried to leap on his horse,
But the old black mare took him back in there,
And somebody slammed the doors.

And that was when the lightning struck,
It flashed, and shattered the cross,
The blazing roof came tumbling down
And the Widow Hay was lost.
They never found the Squire or his horse,
But I think that’s just as well,
They’re probably roasting chestnuts, down
In the seventh circle of Hell!

David Lewis Paget

She wasn’t a striking beauty, but
I loved her with all my heart,
I know that I always meant to tell,
I should have done from the start,
But her presence had overwhelmed me
Every time that I saw her face,
I was far too shy as she passed me by
For she moved with a gliding grace.

She wasn’t a social butterfly
But was always circumspect,
Was rather solemn and thoughtful but
Was all that I liked, direct.
I doubt if she even noticed me
Beyond becoming her friend,
I’d hoped for more, but I wasn’t sure
It would turn out in the end.

And then a man had moved in next door,
With the moniker Richard Pace,
He had all the bling, was covered in rings
With assets all over the place.
He drove a mauve Lamborghini that
Spoke volumes about the man,
And it wasn’t too long, he seemed to belong
For Esther was holding his hand.

I withered, retreated inside myself,
Retracted back in my shell,
My hopes and dreams, and my forward schemes
Were lost, and my heart as well,
I watched them drive in that magic car
While knowing that all was lost,
For all I had was a beat up Ford
At a fraction of the cost.

They say that money’s not everything
But it’s sure much better than none,
There wasn’t much I was offering
But a heart, quite overcome.
I went for a while then I wandered out
While Esther was there on her own,
‘Where have you been, I haven’t seen you,
Have you been there on your own?’

I managed to mutter, my eyes cast down,
‘I’ve watched you all over the place,
You seem to be settled, and riding round
With your new friend, Richard Pace.’
‘Oh, him,’ she chuckled, ‘Old Diamond Rick,
He’s full of himself for sure,
He thinks he’s a gift to the ladies, but,
Me, I’m looking for more.’

My heart beat once, and it came to life,
I saw the spark in her eye,
‘Now here’s your chance,’ said a tiny voice,
‘All you can do is try.’
But my tongue was tied in its usual way
I never could blurt it out,
Then Esther said, ‘I wish it were you,
You love me I know, no doubt!’

David Lewis Paget

She went with a friend for the evening,
But she wouldn’t tell me where to,
Just turned as the two began leaving,
Said, ‘Where I go’s nothing to you.’
She liked to be so independent,
Go off, and leave me on the spot,
Then tried to make me feel repentant
For asking her why, where or what?

I sat up and waited till midnight,
Expecting that she would be home,
She must have known I would be uptight
Not knowing where she’d gone to roam.
I knew that her friend never liked me,
Would glory in turning the *****,
Encourage Darlene to defy me,
She’d tell her, ‘So what can he do?’

She hadn’t returned the next morning,
Nor even when it became noon,
The sun towards eve began falling,
So surely she must return soon.
I passed the time on the computer,
Watched Facebook alive on the screen,
When Darlene popped up using FaceTime
Then suddenly started to scream.

‘You’ll have to come in here and get me,
I seem to be inside my phone,
I tried leaving, it wouldn’t let me,
And Marge went and left me alone.’
The face on the screen began fraying,
And she was hysterical now,
Her face in the picture was greying,
‘I’ll come for you, just tell me how.’

‘Just follow me through all the windows,
The frames are all breeding like spores,
My mind’s in a haze, I’m caught in a maze,
There’s many more windows than doors.’
I looked for her picture in Instagram,
And searched for her trace in What’s App,
Then Googled her name, she ran through a frame,
But all that I caught was her back.

The high tension wires running overhead
Were humming and whining all night,
I lay in my bed, convinced she was dead,
Then heard her voice moaning in fright.
The Darlene I knew never came back home,
She travels by churches and spires,
A crackle in time and a hum in the line
Tells me she is the Wind in the Wires.

David Lewis Paget

They have me chained in this noisome cell
With its smells, its moans and shrieks,
No wonder they call it Bedlam for
I haven’t slept in weeks,
They brought me here from the Bridewell,
For they said I was raving mad,
I swapped a cell for a place in hell
And the food in here is bad.

We’re chained and beaten by loutish guards
And starved and purged as well,
Unless we ***** and take the cure
They bleed us in the cell,
I see the others who beat their heads
On posts, and the old stone wall,
Hoping to join the peaceful dead
When they have no blood at all.

The rats will nibble at hands and feet
If we sleep too deep, and soon
You’ll hear the patter as hundreds scatter
About the cell in the gloom,
There are chains and shackles around my neck
My waist and my ankles too,
The only part is my beating heart
Where they can’t chain me from you.

I live with the shrieks and moans and groans
Of the most demented souls,
The prostitutes in their open cells
Who squat on the sewer holes,
A guard says he will take care of you
And I know just what he means,
Be true my love, he’ll take hold of you
And I know the man’s unclean.

I should have minded my temper when
I was walking in the yard,
Was cursed by the devil’s tempter, then
I hit the Bridewell guard,
I hang on tight to my sanity
For I never scream or shout,
And hope for the governor’s lenity
That they come and let me out.

The visitors come and they poke their fun
At the lunatics in here,
They hold their noses and spit at us
And they make their feelings clear,
We’re only **** in the world they’re from
If the fools could only see,
That our putrid state could be their fate
In seventeen sixty-three!

David Lewis Paget

Lavern lived down in the valley
Away from the village folk,
She didn’t want to be seen by them
Playing with eggs and yolk,
And skin of frog, an old dead dog
A toad and the eye of newt,
She only conjured them in the fog
When dressed in her birthday suit.

But I would see her abroad in the woods
From up in the old oak tree,
She flitted naked under a hood
Albeit most carelessly,
She liked to gather her toadstools there
And take her favourite bat,
Clinging onto her long, dark hair
And follow her magical cat.

The mushrooms grown in a Faery Ring
Were an ever present danger,
For goblins gathered them all themselves
For a goblin baby’s manger,
She’d lost an eye in a goblin pie
When he reached on out and plucked it,
She got it back, but the dwarf was sly
In the sauce she’d used, he’d ducked it!

I didn’t mind that she’d got one eye
For her thighs were well developed,
I thought I’d marry her, by and by,
Then she went with Rodney Mellop,
I wandered up to her window-sill
When I heard his sighs and moans,
I thought they must have been making love,
She was hanging up his bones.

I must admit that it calmed me down,
That it put a damper on it,
I’d watched him lie in her *** and drown
As she danced in a pretty bonnet,
His bones she pulled from the boiling stew
And made wind chimes from his femurs,
At night they sound like a xylophone
In a madhouse full of dreamers.

David Lewis Paget

Houghton Hall had been derelict
Since the Roundheads came and went,
They said that it couldn’t be restored
No matter how much you spent,
But I loved that place and its spacious grounds
So I went against advice,
I paid a pittance and thought I’d get
A part of it looking nice.

It still had the stately central stair,
It still had the marble floors,
It needed a bit of the lead replaced
But still had the cedar doors.
The windows needed a scrub and clean
Were original pebble glass,
It soon was done though my Bank was lean
And I moved right in, at last.

There wasn’t much furniture at first
To muffle its ancient walls,
My footsteps echoed around the floors
Of its entry, rooms and halls,
It was only then that I saw her walk
In the gloom of a winter’s night,
And found I’d bought, along with the Hall
A ghostly woman in white!

She glided along the balustrade
Came steadily down the stair,
I stood well back in the entryway
Pretended I wasn’t there.
Then she stopped and grabbed at the bannister
And let out a dreadful wail,
It seemed to swell from the hounds of hell
And I felt myself grow pale.

She seemed to fade on the stairway there
And her wailing went as well,
The hair stood up on the back of my neck
For I felt she’d come from hell.
So I asked around with the village folk
If they knew, they said they might,
And for a bribe of a drink or two
Described the woman in white.

It seems she had been Lord Houghton’s bride
When the Roundheads came to call,
And Ireton’s men had shot the Lord,
He told them to **** them all.
She died on the central stairway there
She died from a single shot,
While the Roundheads plundered the ancient hall
With her corpse left there to rot.

I felt for her, yes, I really did
It was such a gory tale,
But it got too much when at night I hid
For she came each night to wail.
My eyes were haggard, I couldn’t sleep
I was feeling so uptight,
And then I came across the cupboard
That clothed the woman in white.

The cupboard stood in an upstairs room
That I hadn’t quite restored,
I hadn’t bothered for in the gloom
The damp had swollen the door,
And in a drawer was a pile of clothes
So old, that she kept for best,
And there preserved with a bullet hole
Was the very same woman’s dress.

I took the dress and I hid it well,
Then waited for her that night,
Till she came stumbling down the stair,
She did, the woman in white.
But there was no sign of the dress on her
Just camiknickers in silk,
And pain and sadness were in her wail
Though her skin was white as milk.

A week went by and she still came down
That stairway to keen and wail,
So I went back with my sleepless frown
And I hid it, without fail,
The camiknickers, the stockings, shoes
And I left that cupboard bare,
Invited a crowd from the local hunt
To come, to stand and stare.

And she came just once on that fateful night
She was naked and serene,
Then she saw us all in the entryway
And the woman stood and screamed.
If you need to get rid of a troublesome ghost
You must cause some slight mishap,
She never came back down the stairs again
Once we all just stood, and clapped.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget