The Little Withering Rep. had met
To rehearse their pantomime,
They’d left it a little late for Christmas,
Could it be done in time?
‘We have a choice, we can do Snow White,
Or Peter Pan would be good,
But we have the sets for another play,
‘The Wicked Witch of the Wood!’

Their hands went up for ‘The Wicked Witch,’
They thought it would be the best,
For Meryl Rose had a wart on her nose
And another one on her chest.
‘Meryl can play the wicked witch
As I think it’s understood!’
But Meryl pouted, she wanted to play
Little Red Riding Hood.

‘I’m always cast as the ugly *****,’
She cried, ‘But what about her?
She always gets the plummiest parts,
The ones with a bit of flair.’
But Helen stuck her nose in the air
And sniffed, ‘I’m younger than you.
You get to play the character parts,
I’m sweet, and innocent too.’

‘Now let’s not fight, it’s a Gala Night,’
The Director said, ‘Let’s cast!
Norman, you’ll be the noble prince,
And Fred can be Gormenghast.
Julia, you can be the Page
But you’ll have to improvise,
We’ll have you girt with the shortest skirt
For you have the longest thighs.’

‘We’ll have to steal from the other tales
For the script is not yet writ,
Helen, you get the sleeping part
For the apple that you’ve bit,
The littlest ones can play the dwarves
And run around on their knees,
Don’t worry, Matt, you can play a bat
And hang from one of the trees.’

They all got into their costumes,
Fancy cloaks with a funny hat,
But Albert Hook had been overlooked,
He dressed as a giant rat.
‘We’ll write in a part for everyone,’
For some had been looking glum,
‘You can be Jack and the Beanstalk, Mac,
And Tim can be ‘Fi-Fo-Fum!’

The curtain raised on the opening night
To reveal a darkened wood,
A giant bat fell out of a tree
To land where the Page was stood,
She shrieked, and clung to the wicked witch
Who was straddling broom and stick,
It knocked the apple out of her hand
That rolled in the orchestra pit.

‘Please can I have my apple back?’
She whispered over the lights,
The cellist was shaking his head at that,
He’d already taken a bite!
The sleeping beauty was not asleep,
The dwarves were looking dumb,
And Jack had shaken the beanstalk then
To the sound, ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum!’

Nobody seemed to know what to do
The rat ran over the floor,
The cellist in the orchestra pit
Then flung back the apple core,
The Witch ran over to Helen then
Who screamed in a long, high note,
‘You’re mad if you think I’m eating that!’
But the Witch rammed it down her throat.

After they’d called the ambulance
And carted Helen away,
The police came in for the errant Witch
And said, ‘You will have to pay!
A joke’s a joke, but you tried to choke
The lead with an apple core!’
While the dwarves were rolling around in fits
As the audience fled for the door.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The Inn sat down in a hollow,
Deep in a grove of trees,
It sat so far from the road, the yard
Was two feet deep in leaves,
It looked to be well deserted,
Except for a single light,
That poured its glow on the porch below
Late on that fateful night.

I’d looked since I found the Grimoire
Sat up on that dusty shelf,
Written in faded longhand
I couldn’t decipher myself,
The ancient scribe in the library
Had helped to decode each line,
And said it spoke of an ancestor
With a similar name to mine.

It mentioned the Seventh Circle Inn
And where it could still be seen,
It lay astray by a country way
Deep in a copse of green,
And Agnes Drue was a name I knew
Though I heard she’d not been found,
After the Mass they held that day
On consecrated ground.

Her coven had raised a spectre
Beside the Inn, in the woods
Near to a marble altar where
An ancient church had stood,
But then it demanded a sacrifice
To give the Devil his due,
And everyone formed a circle then
Apart from my Agnes Drue.

I entered the Inn to find who kept
The Seventh Circle of sin,
I needed to find what happened to
The one who was lost within,
An ancient crone kept the bar in there
Who croaked, ‘I know why you’re here,
You’re far too late for she’s at Hell’s Gate,
Has been, for many a year.’

I thought that I’d find a clue in there
On the fate of Agnes Drue,
And asked the crone was she on her own,
Would she rather there were two?’
A screech came up from the cellar then
Like the wail of a troglodyte,
The crone went down with a worried frown,
‘She only does that at night!’

Then right in the midst of the cellar floor
Was a ******’s wooden chest,
With iron hasps and rusted clasps
And a chain wound round the rest,
I burst it open to shrieks and cries
That seemed to come from within,
And there was the corpse of Agnes Drue
Where the Devil had locked her in.

The staring eyes in her skull had gone
But they seemed to stare the same,
There was no flesh but the woman’s dress
Was torn in a rage of pain,
And held in her frightful bony hand
Was a book that she’d scribbled on,
Deep in the dark of her awful tomb,
‘I knew! One day you’d come!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

He was nothing if not successful,
Grant Overman with his pen,
Everything that he seemed to write
Was well received back then,
The publishers fought for his stories,
And women swooned at his tales,
The only negative feeling then
Was coming from jealous males.

Was coming from jealous writers,
Who never quite got it right,
Their work returned from the publishers
To give it a ‘second sight.’
‘I don’t see how he can churn them out
So fast, with never a flaw,’
Said Ernest Benn to his leaky pen
While blotting his tale once more.

‘I think he’s in league with the devil,
He’s scribbled a pact in blood,
Or how could he twist my heartstrings so,
My tears come in a flood.’
His wife had sniffled through seven books
Of the hated Overman,
But never wailed at her husband’s tales,
He’d not yet published one.

‘I have to discover his secret,
There’s something we just don’t know,
If only you can get close to him
To see how his stories flow.
He needs a helper to clean his house,
Apply for the job, and then,
Rummage around what can be found
And watch him, using his pen.’

She used her charm at the interview
And was taken on to sweep,
To wash the dishes and scour the pans
To clean, three days a week,
While Grant would sit in his study there
And sit, bowed over his desk,
Then fall asleep in his padded chair
While he thought of tales burlesque.

Marie came back on the second day
And she said, ‘I think I know,
The thing he’s got and that you have not
That makes his stories flow.
He keeps it locked in a bureau drawer
Till he starts to write, and then,
It dances over the page, I swear,
He slept through chapter ten!’

‘You say the pen does the writing?
I see,’ said Ernest Benn,
His eyes aglow, ‘so at last we know,
He has a Magic Pen!
We need to get it away from him
So that I can find success,
The chances of getting caught are slim
If we do this with finesse.’

Marie left open the kitchen door
On an afternoon in June,
While Ernest, unobtrusively
Sneaked in, and hid in the gloom.
Though Grant was falling asleep, his hand
Had begun to race again,
So Ernest battered him from behind
While Marie took hold of the pen.

But Grant sat up, and he tried to rise,
He cried a hollow note,
Marie hung onto the pen, and then
She stabbed him in the throat,
And blood was suddenly everywhere
The desk, the floor, their shoes,
Said Ernest, ‘better get out of here
Before we make the News!’

After he’d washed and filled the pen
With a nice new brand of ink.
He held it over the paper, said
‘Do I even have to think?’
The pen began on its sudden scrawl
But was making quite a mess
By writing a line in blood, not ink,
‘I, Ernest Benn, confess!’

David Lewis Paget

Who would have thought the storm would come
So soon, from a pale blue sky,
When the weather man said, ‘Fine til noon,
And the afternoon, quite dry.’
But moisture fell in a feathery squall
On the morning of that day,
Blown from the top of an anvil cloud
Some twenty miles away.

By two o’clock, the cumulonimbus
Cloud had drifted in,
Its anvil top like a dreadful shroud
As black as the darkest sin,
And lightning crackled within that cloud
Before it was given birth,
And loosed in chains with the driving rains
As it found its way to earth.

We pulled the blanket off the beach
And we closed the hamper top,
As the wind picked the umbrella up
And bowled it, til it dropped,
While Helen stood with her hands on hips,
Stared balefully at the sky,
‘Thanks, you ruined our picnic,
With never a warning, why?’

As if in answer to Helen’s taunt
The lightning struck her tongue,
Her face lit up in a brilliant glow
As bright as the morning sun,
She stood for a moment, paralysed
Then she toppled onto her face,
I’d never seen anyone crash to earth
Face down, with such little grace.

I rolled her over the sand, face up
And I gave her mouth to mouth,
Her head was facing magnetic north
And her feet were pointing south,
Her lips were black as the weirdest Goth
And her cheeks were pale and white,
I managed to get her breathing then
But something wasn’t right.

She stared at me with her purple eyes
That before, I’m sure were blue,
And lightning sparked in her retina
As she said, ‘Thank God for you!’
She wouldn’t go to the hospital,
She staggered back to the car,
And said, ‘I’m needing a drink, for sure,
Let’s find the nearest bar.’

I took her home in an hour or two
And I put her straight to bed,
She said her stomach was rumbling,
There was lightning in her head,
She slept right though to the early hours
And got up before the dawn,
She stood and stared out the window, then,
‘I think I’ve just been born!’

I heard her go to the kitchen then,
Where she said that coffee called,
Then heard the clatter of cutlery
Went down, and was appalled,
For spoons were sliding along the bench
Each time that she waved her hand,
When the coffee *** spun off its top
She said, ‘Now ain’t this grand!’

‘That lightning’s made you magnetic,
I don’t know what we’re going to do,
For all things loose and metallic now
Are turning to follow you.’
I called a friend who was trained in this,
I thought he was more than wise,
‘We’ll have to construct a Growler, but
It has to be oversize.’

A Growler’s simply an A/C coil
That you drop the magnet in,
It only takes a moment or so
To reverse that power within,
It took him over a day to make,
We stood her inside the coil,
I turned my back when he switched it on
And listened to Midnight Oil.

She blew every circuit in that thing
The coil was glowing red,
And lightning was flashing in her eyes
While thunder burst from her head,
She was twice as strong as she’d been before
And everything metal stuck,
We peeled the spanners off at the door
While Helen just ran amuck.

She went to live on a mountain top
Away from the bustle and pace
She said she couldn’t come back to me,
Nor even the human race,
There’s nothing metallic up there, she says
So lives up close to the sky,
And hopes to be struck by lightning, once,
She says that it’s worth a try!

David Lewis Paget

He was standing out on the balcony
While the party raged inside,
I’d had enough of the trivial talk,
Boosting each other’s pride,
I went and I stood some feet away
As he stared up at the stars,
‘Your sky is rather ordinary,
Not in the least like ours!’

I managed a double take at that
I’d noticed him once before,
He seemed to be on his own, and lonely
Sad, and a bit unsure,
He watched the girls in their party clothes
As they laughed, and talked and sighed,
‘Our Evrons never would dress like that
The colours would hurt their eyes.’

I laughed, thought he was having me on
But he didn’t even smile,
‘I shouldn’t have jumped the Interspace
But stuck with the Stellar Mile,
They said to avoid the Milky Way
But me, I jumped the gun,
The only reason they’d come this way
Is to dump, on the Garbage Run.’

‘I think you’re a little eccentric, and
You’re maybe a little drunk,
You don’t look much like an alien,
And aliens, well, they’re bunk!
But now you’re going to tell me you’re
A little green man from Mars!’
‘Oh, much, much further than that,’ he said
‘I come from a distant star.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, just to humour him
But a chill crept up my spine,
He seemed so positive, standing there
A man from another time.
‘So tell me, what is so different to
The place that you call your home.’
He offered the piece de resistance then,
‘We live in an Astrodome.’

‘The air surrounding planet Vair
Has become too thin to breathe,
Since ever the trees and lipids died
And we found that we couldn’t leave.
The planet was ***** and plundered
For a million years or so,
And now it’s a dying shell we need
To find some planet to go.’

‘I think that I may have found it, though
Your culture’s such a bore,
You worship all material things
And your planet’s still at war,
We’ll have to thin out your people and
Improve your planet’s race,
You’re going to have to move over when
We come from outer space.’

‘How many of you are here right now?’
I tried to sound surprised,
He said, ‘I’m travelling on my own,’
And I looked into his eyes,
‘So none of your people know we’re here
Until you decide to tell!’
He turned to me, and he shook his head,
I said, ‘That’s just as well.’

I walked him around the garden and
I picked his brains for hours,
He told me about their laser rays
And their telepathic powers,
Then finally when he asked my leave
And buttoned up his coat,
I stabbed him with some garden shears
Leant down, and cut his throat!

David Lewis Paget

There must have been seven chimneys
In the great house on the hill,
I never actually counted them
While the house was standing still,
But the years had brought their own neglect
And the house was well run down,
By the time we pulled the place apart
For a new estate in town.

We couldn’t just use a wrecking ball
It was too immense for that,
When we took it brick by brick apart
We could build a hundred flats.
The chimneys were the hardest part
For the flues had twists and turns
As they rose up through three storeys with
Each hearth, soot black and burned.

It had been the home of Dukes and Earls
Back in Victoria’s day,
With gardeners, cooks and pantry maids,
All with a place to stay,
There were ***** and more for the gentlefolk
For the vicar and local squire,
And after the garden parties they would
Huddle, in front of the fire.

We chipped away at the chimney stacks
And gradually brought them down,
Brick by brick to the local tip
As red dust covered the ground,
But then a guy gave a sudden cry
During a working lull,
‘I think I see, what it seems to me,
The top of a human skull.’

The top of a human skull it was
Of a child, no more than six,
Jammed up tight in the chimney there
Imprisoned by old red bricks,
We managed to pry him loose at last
And lifted him from the flue,
But then the horror came home to us
For his legs were missing, too.

We saw the mangling hook they’d used
That lodged in one of his ribs,
That tore the body apart to clear
The chimney, for His Nibs,
The kid was lodged in a twisting flue
They knew that his case was dire,
And tried to make him climb up and through
By lighting a smoking fire.

We couldn’t tell if the sweep was dead
Or simply allowed to choke,
When someone ordered the fire lit
And sent up a cloud of smoke,
Perhaps he screamed as the smoke had streamed
And the fire burned, but slow,
He was just a sweep, his life was cheap
Compared to the guests below.

The little lad’s in the cemetery
He was laid with special care,
With everyone but nobility
Gathered to lay him there,
It’s a page at last from a cruel past
That we turned, but won’t forget,
Great wealth destroys our humanity,
Have we learned that lesson yet?

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I found I was left a mantle clock
The type that you wind by key,
It had stood upon my father’s shelf,
Now it came down to me.
Inside the clock I had found a note
Scrawled in my father’s hand,
‘You never must overwind the clock
For time is a shifting sand.’

That’s all that it said, that tiny note
And I’d wondered what he meant,
Surely he could have talked to me
And made it more evident.
But my father had been secretive
And never would say too much,
Just that his life had raced away
And left him behind, and such.

The end of his life had come too soon,
It certainly was a shock,
I found him sat alone in his chair
And pointing up at the clock,
It wasn’t until the afternoon
I noticed the clock had stopped,
Just as his heart had ceased to beat,
There wasn’t a tick, or tock.

I took it home and I placed it up
In pride of place on the shelf,
Over the wooden mantlepiece
And wound the thing up myself.
I just didn’t know how many times
I was meant to turn the key,
So probably over wound it then,
Not knowing what was to be.

Over the following week I found
The clock had been gaining time,
And thought, that’s probably what he meant,
Never to over wind,
I tried to adjust it back a bit
To change the rate of the pawl,
But found the cog was racing away
And speeding up overall.

No matter what I did to that clock
Its speed just wouldn’t be tamed,
I’d slow it down and it speeded up,
I felt I was being gamed,
But then I woke on a Wednesday and
I thought there was something strange,
The man on the news said ‘Thursday’,
Like the days had been rearranged.

The weeks and the months went flying by,
I still kept winding that clock,
Remembering how my father died,
I wouldn’t have dared to stop.
But then one day I forgot to wind
And it slowed, and took me aback,
I held the key, was about to wind
When I had my heart attack.

Luckily Joyce was in the room
Thank god for my lovely wife,
She seized the key and she wound it up
And probably saved my life.
I never forget to wind it now
That clock’s in sync with my heart,
But now my life is racing away
With the clock still playing its part.

David Lewis Paget

He lived in a tiny attic, set
Way up on the second floor,
I’d never have known he lived there, but
He left his shoes by the door,
A note tucked into the left shoe said
‘They’re yours if I don’t return!’
The right said, ‘Put on a dead man’s shoes,
And know that you’re going to burn!’

The boarding house was for down-and-outs
So you know where my life was at,
The final link in an endless chain
Since they threw me out of my flat,
I had no job, I had no friends
My family moved away,
They hadn’t left an address for me
So here’s where I had to stay.

I heard him shuffling past my door
With a walk like bone on bone,
His eyes were dim and his face was grim
And his skin as grey as stone,
I chanced to be in the hallway once
But he just stared straight ahead,
I said ‘Hello,’ but he rattled back,
‘I’ve just returned from the dead!’

He’d sit awhile on the balcony,
In the fading rays of the sun,
Trying to tan the greyness out
But the pallor was not undone,
I grabbed a chair and I sat by him
And he finally looked my way,
His eye delved into my very soul,
‘What did you want to say?’

‘You look like a man of secrets,’
Were the first words that I thought,
‘Maybe you have an insight into
Things that I might be taught?’
‘There’s nothing here in your life, it’s clear,
That would help,’ he gave a sigh,
‘I only know of the deathly fear
That is yours, when once you die.’

‘Nobody knows what happens then,’
I said, ‘for it’s understood,
Once you have left this mortal coil
You’re dead, and you’re dead for good!’
The old man shivered and shook his head
‘I’m the only one who knows,
For I die nightly in my bed
And return when the first **** crows!’

I didn’t believe him way back then,
I hardly believe him now,
But I crept into his midnight room
And I put my hand on his brow.
His flesh was icy cold to the touch,
He had no pulse or breath,
His eyes were pointed up in his head
And I knew he was caught in death.

But still he came on shuffling out
In the first grey light of dawn,
After the **** had crowed, he said,
When his body began to warm,
I asked him what he had seen out there
While caught in the clasp of death,
And he spoke of the chambers of despair
When he finally caught his breath.

‘The chambers are lit with a flickering light
From a million candle’s glow,
A million tubs of candlewax
That light up the rooms below,
And set in deep in the candlewax
Is the shape of a human form,
The head protruding just like a wick
Who wish they’d never been born.’

‘The flames are burning the tortured flesh
The heads are trying to scream,
I pass along them on right and left
As if it’s a nightmare dream,
But this is the fate of terrorists
And suicide bombers there,
Their one reward for the cause they fought
An eternity of despair.’

I turned away and I felt quite sick
At the things death held in store,
And all the other horrors he’d seen
When he’d nightly passed death’s door.
‘How long must you go on suffering this,’
I said, as I turned my head,
But the old man sat in his rocking chair
Quite still, and finally dead!

David Lewis Paget

We’d moved on in to a clifftop house
When our babe was very young,
I had to ***** a barbed wire fence
To keep our darling at home,
For Ellen was a precocious child
With a beautiful, smiling face,
But for all our efforts to tame her down
It was hard to keep her in place.

She would bounce about, would run on out
The moment we turned our backs,
Many a time I would see her climb
And she’d give us heart attacks.
‘She’s halfway up the chimney, John,
She’s climbed right up to the thatch,’
The wife would cry, and I’d almost die
In bringing our daughter back.

She’d stand awhile by the cottage gate
That led on out to the track,
That wound its way right down to the bay
On a narrow, winding path,
I wired the gate, and I thought it held
Till the day she broke on through,
And made her little way to the bay
Before we even knew.

I found her at the mouth of a cave
That sat just up from the shore,
And breathed a sigh of relief as we
Embraced, like never before,
But she pointed in to the darkened cave
With her tiny little hand,
‘I want to go in the cave with him,
That funny old sailor man!’

‘There isn’t a man in the cave,’ I said,
‘You must have been seeing things.’
‘Oh no! He asked me to follow him
And he showed me lots of rings.
He had a black patch over his eye,
And a ponytail in his hair,
I want to go where the sailor goes,
Will you let me go in there?’

I carried her back up the winding path
Though she clung to me and cried,
‘That cave is simply an eerie place
And it’s cold and damp inside.’
I should have taken more notice then,
I thought it was just a rave,
For days, young Ellen would speak of him,
The man who lived in the cave.

I went to check at the library,
The history of the town,
And read that smugglers used that cave
When nobody was around,
And long before there were buildings there
A smuggler on the run,
Had sheltered there in that dismal cave
With his daughter, Ellen Gunn.

I raced on home to the clifftop house
To find young Ellen gone,
The wife was having hysterics there
And I was overcome.
I ran, pell mell down the clifftop path
It was such a deathly scare,
And searched to the end of that awful cave
And I found her Teddy Bear.

A fisherman on the beach had seen
Young Ellen on the sand,
Then watched as a sailor took her in
To the cave there, hand in hand.
‘I thought that he was her father,’ said
The rustic fisherman,
‘She seemed quite happy to go with him
And he looked a kindly man.’

I must have searched it a dozen times
And I called, and cursed, and cried,
And prayed to god that I’d find my girl
Hid somewhere deep inside,
When out of the depths, she toddled out
Stood still, turned back to the cave,
And that’s when I glimpsed that sailor man,
Who stood at the back, and waved.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

When the sun sank low in the midday sky
And the clouds came in from the south,
He knew that the winter was coming in
And it made him down in the mouth.
With a hint of rain in the morning dew
The breeze cut in like a knife,
And he went to fetch the firewood in
For the sake of his invalid wife.

She sat and shivered before the hearth
When he opened the outer door,
As the wind whipped icily round her legs
A trail of leaves on the floor,
‘My love, be still, I’m lighting the fire
And you’ll soon be warm by the hearth.’
‘I fear it’s settling into my bones
And I’ll soon be deep in the earth.’

‘You’ll not get away so easily,’
He said, and gave her a smile,
‘We’ll settle this ague with bark and tea,
I’ll heat your bath in a while.’
‘I’d rather not leave the fireplace
While my thoughts are making me brood,
So put your spill to the wood fire, Will,
Then sit, and lighten my mood.’

He lit the fire and he made it roar
And he checked each draught, at last,
Jammed the rug right under the door
And he made the windows fast,
Then he sat and held his Helen’s hand
That was freezing to the touch,
And said, ‘Now winter’s sat on the land
I needn’t go out so much!’

She smiled, and ran a hand through his hair
And said that she loved him so,
‘Tell me a tale of foreign lands,
It will help the time to go.’
So he plucked a single hair from his head
And he said, ‘Each hair’s a tale!’
Then he told of sailors swinging the lead,
Of mariners under sail.

He told of pirates, walking the plank
Of treasure chests in the deep,
And saw that she was slumbering there,
Was slowly going to sleep,
He sat beside her all through the night,
Was piling wood on the fire,
And nodded off in the broad daylight
Right next to his heart’s desire.

The squalls came in, it began to rain
And the rain then turned to snow,
He only went out to chop some wood
And to make the cabin glow.
Each night he’d sit there, holding her hand
And he’d pluck a hair from his head,
‘Now here’s a tale from a northern land
Where the snow lies deep,’ he said.

He thought that she’d get better in time
And he brought her gruel and soup,
Fed her a tincture of laudanum
Made from the ***** group.
But she still sat listless, pale and wan
And she slept more than she woke,
Though he plucked a hair from his head each night
And he whispered as he spoke.

He spoke of the place that lovers go
Away from the world of cares,
Of bubbling springs, and diamond rings
And a love that everyone shares,
But the snow outside was packed in a drift
Right up and over the door,
He couldn’t get out for the firewood
But shivered, asleep on the floor.

He woke next day when the sky was grey
With the cold set deep in his bones,
And looked at his wife in a mute dismay
For he knew that he was alone.
The undertaker was there by ten
With a coffin as cold as ice,
And he wept as he plucked a hair from his head
And wished her in paradise.

They buried her down in the cemetery
Not far from their cabin home,
And every day he would make his way
To her headstone, on his own.
The snow had finally melted when
They found he was there, stone dead,
Draped all over her headstone, but
There wasn’t a hair on his head.

David Lewis Paget

I met him first in a darkened room
Of the Club called Heaven’s Lair,
You wouldn’t look at him twice, in fact
You’d swear that he wasn’t there,
He’d sunk right into a corner lounge
And you’d think it rather odd,
He sat there facing the wall, and stared,
The Man with the Eyes of God.

I’d drank at the bar a dozen times
But I’d never seen him round,
A patron pointed him out to me
His lips not making a sound,
He turned a beer mat over, then
He nudged, and gave me the nod,
Scribbled a note that said, ‘That’s him!
The Man with the Eyes of God.’

I smirked, and carried my drink across
Though the patron said, ‘Beware!’
Approached the back of the lounge to see
When the man just said, ‘Stop there!
Don’t venture into my vision, or
You will see what you should not,
Your blood will curdle within your veins
And your heart will surely stop.’

I stopped, and sat to the rear of him
Behind, and off to his right,
‘They tell me you have a precious gift
To do with the Maker’s sight.’
‘It’s not a gift, it’s a curse,’ he said
‘That I’ve laboured with for years,
For God sent me for your history,
And lent me his eyes and ears.’

‘He wanted to know what you had done
Since he last went past this way,
And scattered the Tower of Babel by
Confusing your tongues that day,
He hadn’t wanted to interfere
For he gave you all free will,
So sent me as his emissary
To report both good and ill.’

‘And what have you told almighty God,
The truth, or a pack of lies?’
‘I haven’t needed to tell, he sees
The truth through both of his eyes,
I feel the sense of his discontent
At you breaking all his laws,
Polluting his beautiful planet
With the scourge of your endless wars.’

‘So what does he plan to do with us,’
I whispered there in the gloom,
‘Does he plan to come and punish us,
Will our God be calling soon?’
‘His spirit has always been right here,
It’s embedded in the earth,
In every tree and the mighty sea
In rain, and the gift of birth.’

‘You’ll feel the wrath of his discontent
In a thousand days of drought,
In ice that clings to your window-sills
In floods that you can’t keep out,’
He turned his head and he looked at me
And I cringed at his vacant nod,
For blood lay thick on each cheek, where he
Had put out the Eyes of God!

David Lewis Paget

I’d never felt comfortable in that house
Not once, since we’d moved on in,
A rambling, derelict, barn of a house,
Three storeys of age-old sin.
Nobody said there’d been murders there,
Or told of the gypsy’s curse,
Three hundred years of discarded junk
And I don’t know which was worse.

The air was dank, and creepy and cold
So I opened the windows wide,
Trying to get some airflow through
To clear the smell inside.
It was musty, dusty, smelt like a tomb
With a corpse, decayed and grey,
We cleaned and scrubbed it room by room
And the smell went slowly away.

We tackled the ground floor first, we thought
We could leave upstairs til last,
The stairs were blocked with a French chaise longue
From some distant time in the past,
It was jammed hard up by the bannister rails
So it wouldn’t go up or down,
I said I’d have to pull it apart
And that sparked a Hartley frown.

Hartley was the love of my life
Who tackled that house as well,
She said it was a pig in a poke
That its real name was ‘Hell!’
But we finally cleared a space to live
And she worked out a way to shift
That French chaise longue from the stairway by
Trying a twist and lift.

The second floor was a nice surprise
There was none of the junk and grime,
The bedrooms still remained as they’d been
Laid out in another time,
So Hartley dealt with the dust in there
While I went up for a look,
The room above was an attic room
And that’s where I saw the book.

It lay on a dusty table with
Its pages ragged and torn,
The paper a sort of parchment and
The ink, quite faded and brown.
The cover was ancient leather, cracked
And worn, as if by an age,
‘The Many Lyves of this House’ it had
Embossed, as a title page.

I cautiously opened the cover, read
The words on the parchment page,
The light in the room then turned to gloom
And a storm began to rage.
I raced on down to the ground to find
A man outside, who said,
‘For those inside, don’t seek to hide,
I say, bring out your dead!’

And a cart stood out in the street outside
A pile of the dead in place,
The street was cobbled, not like before,
But of bitumen, no trace.
And on my door was a huge red cross
With a white and painted scrawl,
‘God, have mercy on us,’ it read,
‘Have mercy on us all.’

And there on the floor, inside the door
Was a corpse wrapped in a sheet,
I dragged it out by the feet, no doubt,
And I left it in the street.
On climbing back to the topmost floor
I leapt and pounced on the book,
But the page had turned, and the fire burned
Before I had time to look.

London burned in the distance and
Lit up the night like day,
I didn’t know of it then, but it
Was burning the plague away,
And every page in that cursèd book
Brought a different time to bear,
‘The Many Lyves’ that this house had lived
Were all inscribed in there.

I slammed that leather cover shut
And I laid it on its face,
Then swore that I’d never open it
While the Lord would lend me grace.
And Hartley, dragged from her cleaning chores
She never could understand,
Why I put a torch to that ancient house
And burnt it to the ground.

David Lewis Paget

Deep in the village of Darkling
Where the Squires and their Ladies rule,
No-one comes out in the eventime
Unless they’re a brazen fool,
The Hunt is rallied for after dark
And they wear the hood and the cowl,
Roam far and wide through the countryside
While the ravening hounds just howl.

They say that they’re hunting foxes,
But I know, that just isn’t true,
That blood they seek at the end of the week,
They may be looking for you,
They take their cues from the Magistrate
Who leads the Hunt through the grounds,
His word is law, and he sets the score,
They call him the Master of Hounds.

Sir Roland Bear has an awful stare
As he glares at you from the bench,
The lawyers do what they’re told to do
And offer little defence,
If you poach a hare from a Squire’s land
Or take a fish from his stream,
And you see him add your name to a list,
You know it’s your final scene!

For once outside in the courtyard there
The peasants will stare in dread,
They cross themselves as they pass you by
For nobody speaks to the dead!
You can’t go hide in your cottage,
If it still has a window or door,
Though you’re locked right in, the hounds of sin
Will come up through a hole in your floor.

The light of my life, Evangeline,
Was married to Percival Shroud,
He beat her once with a riding crop
To keep her bullied and cowed,
She worked all day in the Dairy,
In a barn on Percival’s Farm,
And I said one day that he’d have to pay,
I’d not see her come to harm.

She stared at me with her worried eyes
And she let me believe she cared,
We’d hide together beneath the hay
At the height of our love affair,
But one day soon, her burly groom
Had seen us going to ground,
And hauled us before the Magistrate
While our legs and our hands were bound.

‘There isn’t a place in Darkling here
For the likes of a pair like you!’
Sir Roland Bear, his pen in the air
Considered what he would do.
‘You’ve wandered outside the marriage bounds
Brought shame on the vows you swore,
While you have sullied her decency,
And turned a wife to a *****!’

He put his pen to the fabled list
And he wrote two names in there,
Then ****** us into the courtyard so
The folk could shame and stare.
They cut our bonds and we heard the hounds
As they howled and yapped for blood,
So we went trembling, hand in hand
To hide ourselves in the wood.

The Squires were grim and remorseless when
The Hunt pursued its fare,
Their Ladies thought it a festival
When they rubbed warm blood in their hair,
I’d said I’d not let her come to harm
But Evangeline had cried,
I broke a branch and I sharpened it
To defend my shattered pride.

They came at us like the hounds of hell
In their cloaks, and hoods and cowls,
Along with a pack of hunting dogs,
We could hear their approaching howls,
Evangeline was safe in a tree
While I stood guard below,
My fear was clear in my trembling hands
But I stood so it wouldn’t show.

A rider burst on out through the trees
And he roared, ‘Now pay for your crime!’
I waited until he rode up close
Then I ****** my stake in his eye,
He screamed just once, and fell from his horse
And his cowl, it floated wide,
I saw I’d killed the Master of Hounds
As the dogs tore at his hide.

The Squires looked down with little remorse
At the corpse that lay in the mud,
While the ladies leapt from their jittery mounts
To dip their hands in his blood,
We made our way unseen through the woods
Escaped from the killing grounds,
And Darkling now is free from the spell
Of the evil Master of Hounds!

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

His wife was due on the midnight plane
That was coming from Beijing,
He got to the airport early so
He wouldn’t miss the thing,
There wasn’t a seat at Wenzhou so
He found that he had to stand,
It’s always tough when you’re sleeping rough
Away, in a foreign land.

He settled down in a corner, set
His back up next to the wall,
Pulled out the pic of his own Mei Ling
In front of a waterfall,
Her eyes smiled into the camera when
He’d taken the snap that day,
But that was before they married,
Now it seemed an age away.

They’d both had to fight her parents when
They saw he was from the west,
They called him a foreign devil, a
Yang wei, and all the rest,
They wanted her wed to a Han, they said,
Mei Ling had answered ‘No!’
She’d made her mind up herself, she said,
And would be his own lӑo pό.

She said she was flying China Air
And that gave him cause for thought,
He knew that their safety record was
The worst in any port,
But he waited patiently by the clock
Til it gave the midnight chime,
Then wandered into reception where
She’d be, most any time.

The Chinese waiting beside him
Milled and jabbered as they stood,
He never could understand a word
But he smiled as if he could,
And then he found they were friendly
Though they nudged each other now,
And some had even approached him with
Their greeting, their Ni Hao.

By half past twelve, there wasn’t a plane
And the people looked upset,
He thought there’d be an announcement,
Someone said, ‘there’s nothing yet.’
At one o’clock there were tears and fears
That the plane would never show,
And then he heard that the plane had ditched
In the waters off Ningbo.

His heart had sunk and he almost cried
But he thought to grieve with grace,
And everyone else was struggling
They were scared of ‘losing face’,
But they all broke down when a man came round
And he said, ‘there’s little hope,’
There wasn’t a single survivor,
Then he cried, he couldn’t cope.

He’d lost the love of his life, Mei Ling
With her beaming almond eyes,
Her jet black hair and her loving stare
But he got a quick surprise,
A man led him to a phone where they
Had called for him in vain,
And from Beijing he heard Mei Ling
Who sobbed, ‘I missed the plane!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

What will I miss the most, I thought,
Now that she’s not around,
I walked back slowly to the Port
With my face turned to the ground,
Would I miss the incessant chatter that
Would drive St. Peter mad?
Or sit with a sigh of pure relief
At the absence of it… Sad!

And what of the silly songs she sang
When I often used to curse,
Telling her that she’d got it wrong,
Forgotten the second verse,
For then she would just ignore me
And go out and feed the birds,
Singing the same old song again
But making up the words.

I’d ask her to wear the blue dress
So she’d go and wear the green,
The one that had such a diving top
That her cleavage was obscene,
She’d only do it to thwart we when
We’d visit with my kin,
Annoying my strait-laced mother,
‘How on earth do you keep them in?’

She was just the size of a hobbit, or
A tiny little sprite,
Would lie with her back towards me
When we cuddled up at night,
Those were the things that I would miss
I thought, with just a tear,
Why did she have to leave me at
The turning of the year?

Christmas never would be the same,
She’d decorate the tree,
Getting the lights a-blinking which
Was more than they did for me,
I entered the door at home, and listened,
Nary a single sound,
And never would be again, now she
Was planted in the ground.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She lived there still, in the house on the hill
Though she hadn’t been seen for years,
The Lady Margaret Hermanville
She’d lived in a mist of tears,
Her wedding day had been bright and gay
When her groom arrived at the door,
The devious Baron Wűrrtenberg
With his soldiers, back from the war.

The wedding service was short and sweet
Was held by a priest defrocked,
Was hurried through from the point of view
Of all that the Baron mocked,
He’d only wanted her dowry then
But claimed he wanted her hand,
And with it the House of Hermanville
With a thousand acres of land.

She’d gone alone to her wedding bed
While the Baron caroused ‘til dawn,
And lay awake with a constant ache,
What had she done, so wrong?
He made his quarters down with his men
While she languished up in her room,
But sought an audience then with him
On the following afternoon.

‘Where is the love you promised me
When you came and begged for my hand?
I may be wed but I’m now in dread
That you wanted me for my land!
Prove to me you’ve a noble heart
That there’s more to you than a gun,
And take your bride, for my barren womb
Should be stirring now with your son.’

The Baron laughed, and waved her away
‘It’s enough that you have my ring,
You have the title of Wűrrtenberg,
Of my heart, not even a thing.
I have a frau in Bavaria
Will be coming to live here soon,
So get you away to the Servants Hall,
You and your barren womb.’

The Lady Margaret stood in shock,
A tear had formed at her eye,
Her face as pale as the clouds that formed
Above on an azure sky,
‘I’ll go and petition the Cardinal,
I’ll have this wedding annulled.’
‘You’ll not be leaving this house again,’
He said, and her eyes had dulled.

A year went by and she sought some peace
Below in the Servants Hall,
While he went riding to fox and hounds
And didn’t see her at all,
His Gretchen came, to lord it above
At the feasts for his Men-at-Arms,
A flashy, rude, Bavarian trull
Who was loose with all of her charms.

The Baron watched her flirt with his men,
Grew angrier by the day,
He had her locked in an old sow’s pen
And sent all his men away,
He said, ‘You want to live like a pig
Then I’ll give you your heart’s desire,
He fed her truffles and day-old slop
And she slept on hay from the byre.

Back in the hall, he paced and paced
His echoing feet alone,
Began to think about Margaret
And thought that he might atone,
He heard the merriment down below
Drift up from the Servants Hall,
Went down the cavernous limestone steps
Where his wife was sat by the wall.

‘What’s this?’ he said, as he wandered in,
His wife was seven months gone,
The servants gathered around her there
And her face, it fairly shone.
‘You’ll never guess who the father is,
It could have been one of two,
You sent me off with a barren womb
But the only Barren is you!’

‘So pack your bags, you can leave us now,
You should have been more aware,
The deed of settlement that you signed
For my dowry said, ‘Beware!’
The house and land wouldn’t pass to you
But devolve to my first born son,
It could have been yours, but now, you see
It belongs to my little one.’

My mother never married again,
I’m lord of all I can see,
A thousand acres of farming land
My mother bequeathed to me,
I’ve watched her cry and I’ve watched her mourn
That I’m not the son of a Lord,
I’m proudly the son of a working man
With a mother that I adored!

David Lewis Paget

I’d swear a monster lived in the hall
Of the house when I was young,
Just like the tiger under the bed
I could see when they were gone,
For I could hear him climbing the stair
When the house was fast asleep,
I knew he roamed around and about
When the stairs began to creak.

And then he’d enter my bedroom and
He’d re-arrange my toys,
That’s how I knew he disliked me, he
Kept all his tricks for boys.
He never bothered my sister, or
Disturbed her dolls and things,
Her bedroom was like a sanctuary
For her necklaces and rings.

He’d hide in all of the daylight hours
So he’d not be seen by them,
The others, who would make fun of me
When I warned them all again:
‘You wait, he’s going to take you out
He will catch you unawares,
You won’t be able to scream or shout
When he comes, and climbs the stairs.’

The winter months were both damp and cold
And the woodwork creaked and groaned,
It shrunk and stretched, it was getting old
And it hid the monster’s moans.
So I hid down by the bannister
And I tied a string across,
To trip him when he would climb the stairs,
I would teach the monster loss!

A storm was raging outside that night
And the wind howled through the trees,
The back door opened and flapped a lot
And let in a winter breeze,
I heard my father run down the stairs
And an awful cry and crash,
Then silence settled and fed my fears
Where the bannister was smashed.

I thought the monster was gone for good
With the service come and gone,
I thought he couldn’t survive that crash
And the crematorium,
But barely a week had passed us by
And the stairs began to creak,
So I placed a candle under the stair
And the place burned for a week.

David Lewis Paget

That wild energy that’s the muse of the sea
When I loiter the beach in a storm,
Will always reflect all your features to me
As I dwell on the shape of your form.

I think of you striding knee deep in the swell
As the foam swirls and leaps at your thighs,
Above you the stars that will add to your spell
And reflect in the depth of your eyes.

For nature has laid some perfection on you
From the curl of your hair to your heels,
While I am caught up with an outsider’s view
Of what nature’s perfection reveals.

You’re way beyond beauty, and way beyond touch
As your hair reflects acres of corn,
Your skin has a fragrance that’s almost too much
From the moment perfection was born.

Your smile has a radiance hard to describe
As it peers down on me from above,
Its essence the finest of wines to imbibe
In its warmth, and the presence of love.

Beware of the man who has death in his soul
And the winter set deep in his eyes,
He’ll court and he’ll chaff you, until he can have you
Then tear you apart with his lies.

If I could but charm you, I’d never alarm you
But gaze on you rapt from afar,
Your love would be taken, but never forsaken
I’d worship you just as you are.

David Lewis Paget

Down in the grotto we’d go to swim
Whenever the tide was high
And pouring into the basin there,
At low tide it was dry,
I’d go with the Percival sisters
Who would laugh and call and dive,
While bursting out of their suits, it seemed
A time to be alive.

While Carolyn had the bigger *******
Brittany had the thighs,
Carolyn had the sweetest smile
But Brittany had the eyes,
I never could choose between them for
I loved them both the same,
They’d flaunt themselves in the grotto pool
To them it was just a game.

The light would glimmer within the cave
Reflect off the grotto walls,
And from the roof would echo again
The sound of the girls catcalls,
We’d swim, then climb on a ledge of rock
To dry ourselves in the air,
And listen to water lapping in
From the mouth of the cave out there.

They often would try to bully me
To say who I loved the best,
I’d always say that I loved them both
And they’d say I failed the test,
So one day, standing upon the ledge
They both peeled their costumes off,
And said, ‘now tell us the one you love
Or haven’t you seen enough.’

The sisters’ beauty caught at my throat
And took the most of my breath,
I’d never seen them naked before
Nor since, I swear on my death,
I couldn’t answer, so they got mad
And flung me into the pool,
Then swam around me, ******* and legs
Determined to play the fool.

Brittany trapped me between her thighs
While Carolyn pushed me down,
The water swirled at my head so long
I thought I was going to drown,
But finally they’d had enough of me
Holding me down, submersed,
And I shot up to the surface then
Thinking my lungs would burst.

It’s years since ever we went to swim
Together again, all three,
For finally I had to make a choice,
Which one would marry me.
Brittany’s now my loving wife
For I found between her thighs,
In the grotto swim, when she squeezed me in,
The truth in a world of lies.

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

She thought that she woke in the morning
To a world that was filled with dread,
Though nothing was changed, or rearranged
Her lover was surely dead.
He’d gone to drive in a shady lane
And said he’d be back by three,
A phone call brought her a wealth of pain,
His car crashed into a tree.

And all the lights in the world went out
For even the sun was dim,
Her love was grey, for a day away
Her life had revolved round him.
Never again would she see him smile,
Or feel the thrill of his touch,
Or roll and play in the barnyard hay
When she cried and sighed, ‘Too much!’

But there in the darkness of her room
His phantom seemed to appear,
His face showed care as he stroked her hair,
‘You know that I love you, dear.’
Her tears were like a river that flows
As she tossed and turned in the gloom,
‘I never thought you would leave me here
To seek your rest in a tomb.’

And then she heard the jangle of keys
As she woke, and her eyes were wide,
He said, ‘I thought I would let you sleep
While I went out for a ride.’
She leapt on him and she pulled him down
To the warm, soft quilt on the bed,
‘The only ride you can take, is me,
My God! I dreamt you were dead!’

David Lewis Paget

We decided to offer a non-event
For it hadn’t been done before,
We ordered a super, over-sized tent
And the grass to grow on the floor,
But the tent was cancelled the day it came
And the grass returned to the man,
For who ever heard of a non-event
That ever ran strictly to plan?

There are music events, and party events,
And horsey events, equine,
Racing events and crazy events
And lazy events, sublime.
There’s events to do most anything
Which is why I thought it true,
That the most exciting event of the year
Would be one with nothing to do.

We’d offer an awesome Rock event
With a band who wouldn’t be there,
And a totally gratis haircut, meant
For the men without any hair.
A skin tattoo for the motley crew
That we know as **** and tatts,
Then tell them the ink was really glue
For manufacturing hats.

The roads would be blocked for an hour or less
With the cars that never came,
We’d put the non-event posters up
They could read them all in vain.
I hear we’re up for a Nobel Prize
For giving it up on Lent,
That one and only, never to come see
World Class Non-Event!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Right at the top of the mountain
Stood an obelisk in stone,
It pointed up to the heavens
Was inscribed with a runic poem,
It wasn’t known who had put it there
Or when, though it made no odds,
For men had seen it had always been
From the time of the ancient gods.

It had seemed to have strange properties
It changed, when the stone was wet,
Deep in the midst of a thunderstorm
It went from grey to jet,
The stone would glisten and glow at night
In a way that seemed most odd,
And when the lightning came forking down
Would act as a lightning rod.

It stood in a pleasant clearing
No tree would grow too near,
Though trees grew all up the mountainside,
I thought that fact was queer.
We’d take a picnic basket there
And settle on the *****,
Lie in the shade of the obelisk
Just me and my girlfriend, Hope.

And she would recline and rest there,
She was pleasing to the eye,
She looked like a Grecian Goddess
For her eyes would match the sky,
Her hair the colour of yellow straw,
She turned, and she sighed at me,
Then said, ‘I feel I’ve been here before
In some ancient mystery.’

She couldn’t explain just what she meant
So we lay awhile, and kissed,
Up on the sun drenched mountain top
In the shade of the obelisk,
Then she got restless and wandered up
To the face that held the runes,
And traced her fingers across the script
On that sunny afternoon.

I started up when I heard her scream
And I saw the arm and fist,
That slid on out of the solid stone
And seized her by the wrist,
The lettering of the runes lit up
And they glowed a scarlet red,
While I grabbed hold of her other arm,
Held onto her, in dread.

She couldn’t manage to free herself
The hand held her so tight,
I strained and heaved, I could not believe,
But she turned pale, and white,
Her eyes went up in her head, then she
Fell fainting to the ground,
The hand still holding her by the wrist
But now there was no sound.

A shape rose out of her body there
Of mist, I couldn’t hold,
And slid right into the solid stone,
It must have been her soul,
For then the hand, it had disappeared
And left an empty shell,
It left her body behind, but Hope,
I knew, had gone to hell.

She sits in a sanatorium
By the window, every day,
And looks unknowingly through the pane
While my pain won’t go away.
I copied the rune and translated it
And it said, ‘The God of Life,
Is trapped in stone in this Obelisk,
And he needs to find a wife…’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

The cards had been falling badly for
The man that they knew as Jack,
He’d entered through the scullery door
In a faded, stained old Mac,
He didn’t look like he had a buck
Til he reached into his coat,
And pulled a roll of hundreds out
That would choke a Nanny Goat.

They said he could play a hundred down
And a hundred for each raise,
It didn’t appear to faze him then,
He said, ‘Well, loser pays!’
He fooled them all with his poker face
And he bluffed at first to win,
But by the time that the clock struck eight
His roll was getting thin.

When Diamond Jim played a Royal Flush
And took his final note,
Jack stood up and he shook his head
And reached out for his coat,
‘I thought that you’d try to win it back,
You must have more to spare,
I’ll wager it all for what you’ve got
In your pocket, double dare!’

Jack then sat, and his eyes had glowed
As he scowled at Diamond Jim,
Pulled out a tarnished silver coin
And he said, ‘Well let’s begin!’
They eyed the coin on the table-top
Its head like a man with horns,
‘You can’t look now at the tails of it
Til you own it, then it’s yours.’

‘What would you say that coin is worth,
I’ve never seen its like.’
‘There isn’t enough in all the earth
To purchase it, by right,
It must be won in a game of chance
As I won it, long ago,
From a man like a Turkish Sultan that
I met in a travelling show.

Diamond Jim dealt a single hand
And he said, ‘What if I win?’
‘Then you can look at the coin’s reverse
And the chaos will begin!’
‘I think that you’d better show me now
Before we play this hand,
I’m not so sure that I want this coin
With its evil Goats Head Man.

Jack reached out and he tossed the coin
Which spun for a while up there,
As each man suddenly felt the pain
Of a deep and a dark despair,
It took forever to clatter down
And rest on the table top,
The sign of a Spider facing up,
They thought that their hearts would stop.

For up from the coin the spirits came
Of the ones that they’d loved and lost,
And all of them seemed to be in pain
As the wailing came across,
They lurched away from the table, and
They stood and they shook in fear,
‘By God, there’s Marilyn Ampersand
Who drowned in June last year.’

The walls of the room then fell away
They stood on a stony beach,
A woman was drowning out in the surf
But totally out of reach,
And Diamond Jim gave an awful cry
From the depths of his shattered soul,
‘I’d give the world as a ransom, dear,
To bring you back safe, and whole.’

Then Jack had snatched at the tarnished coin
And flipped it up on its head,
The room returned, they were standing there,
‘You can bring her back from the dead!
You only have to possess the coin
Are you willing to play the hand?’
But Jim had wiped at his fevered brow
And shook, he could barely stand.

He took his winnings, all in a roll
And he pushed them back at Jack,
‘Just take your coin and your money too
And leave, don’t ever come back!
I like my world as it is, my friend,
Though grief lies deep in the groin,
But Marilyn won’t be coming back
From the other side of the coin!’

David Lewis Paget

The phone rang almost off the hook
But I got to it in time,
‘You’d better come here and take a look!’
Said the voice of Esther Clyne.
I shook my head, rolled over in bed,
And said, ‘It’s after one!
It’s after one in the morning, Ess!’
She said, ‘You’d better come!’

Ess was an ornithologist
And she lived in Chandler’s Wood,
She’d never been an apologist
But demanded, when she could,
‘It’s pretty late,’ I tried to state,
‘Can it wait until I’m free?’
Her voice came rattling down the line,
‘Not now, just come and see!’

I dropped the phone with a silent curse
As I scrambled out of bed,
And wondered which of her feathered friends
Had disturbed the woman’s head.
She’d called me out for a frigatebird
That she’d spotted from her snug,
And many a rare and crested tern,
And even a vagrant dove.

I wore a hat and a leather coat
It was getting cold outside,
Grabbed me a pair of driving gloves
And I took the four wheel drive,
The track was sticky in Chandler’s Wood
It had rained the day before,
And headed in through the Maple trees
To the house she called ‘Jackdaw’.

I pulled up by her verandah, she
Had been waiting there for me,
Handed over a walking stick,
‘To beat them off, you’ll see!’
We walked together towards the lake
And there we saw old Jack,
The poor old guy was about to die,
Was lying flat on his back.

He seemed to have lost a lot of blood
It was streaked all over his face,
His shirt was tattered his trousers torn
There was blood all over the place,
And round him gathered the strangest group
That  ever I’ve seen, no lies!
For there was a couple of hundred owls
And one had pecked out his eyes.

I started to raise the walking stick
‘Shall I beat them off with this?’
She said she didn’t know what to do,
The ornithologist!
‘The stick is just to protect yourself
Should they suddenly attack,
Owls are nocturnal hunting birds,
We don’t want to end like Jack!’

There were Tawny Owls and scrawny owls
And a Snowy Owl or two,
A couple of hundred Barn Owls
Up in the trees for a better view,
The Moon was reflected in their eyes
As they sat and stared us down,
Perched in the trees around us and
A-blink, not making a sound.

Esther motioned to come away,
‘We can’t do anything here,
We’ll come again in the morning when
The ground and the trees are clear.’
So we edged away and we got to pray
But neither would turn our back,
We knew if we tried to run away
We’d end up as dead as Jack.

No sooner back at the house, ‘Jackdaw’
We locked the shutters in place,
Bolted the front and laundry doors
And blocked the chimney piece,
Esther put on the kettle, thinking
To make a *** of tea,
But outside there was a whirring sound
So we both looked out to see.

The owls were perched on the hand rail
On the verandah, all in a line,
They stared at the house unblinking
Being so patient, biding their time,
They pecked their way through the telephone line,
We couldn’t call out by phone,
And then they set up a screeching that
Sent chills through me to the bone.

I knew all about the Hoot Owl
But I’d never have heard them screech,
If Esther hadn’t have called me up
When I should have been asleep.
The screeching rattled the window panes
Then Esther let out a howl,
And suddenly they all flew away,
There wasn’t a single owl!

They found her out in the woods today
I can’t say I was surprised,
They said it must be a bird of prey
Attacked, and pecked out her eyes.
I’ve never been back to Chandler’s Wood
Since I got that late night call,
But don’t want to end like Esther, so
I keep a gun on the wall.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

From the time the land had fallen away
He could only see the sea,
And the billowing sails, the wooden rails
And the halyards, struggling free,
While a silence gathered beyond the creak
Of the masts, that seemed quite odd,
As up in the crows nest he could see
The massive domain of God.

For out to the far horizon, there
Was nothing to catch the eye,
But the heaving swell that he knew full well
And the vast expanse of the sky,
They merged in a distant thin blue line
On the curvature of the earth,
That disappeared as the evening fell
And the stars were given birth.

And there in the glow of the hanging lamp
He heard the bells of the watch,
As they hauled on the final moonraker
Above the sky sail, top,
The bow bit in to the salty swell
As the frigate picked up speed,
And dipped and sprayed on the carronade
In a race for a monarch’s need.

For down below was a courier
Locked in by a cabin door,
Who carried a secret parchment scroll
God speed to a distant shore.
Dressed as a pale midshipman, but
In truth, and without a lie,
The courier was a fretful girl
And the crew would have wondered, ‘Why?’

Why take a ******* a Naval ship
Who would bring bad luck to the crew?
Nobody was supposed to know,
But he in the crows nest knew.
He’d seen her shower in a secret place
He could see from the top of the mast,
But kept his lip, for he knew the ship
Would be wrecked if the crew had guessed.

She came on out for a breath of air
Just after he came off watch,
Deep in the dark of the after deck
With the gun deck all awash,
A giant wave swept her to the rail
So he seized, and held her tight,
As the water dripped from her frightened face
And her hair shook out in the night.

‘Pray sir, don’t let them discover me,
I am only here for the King,’
He smiled at her in the darkness, said
‘You must grant me just one thing,
A tender kiss from your perfect lips
And I swear, I’ll let you be.’
She said, ‘You swear?’ and she kissed him then,
But a grumble rose from the sea.

And thunder off in the distance rolled
As the girl then turned and fled,
Back to her locked in cabin then,
Back to her cabin bed.
But lightning flashed, and a thunderbolt
Crashed over the masts and stays,
While the lightning flash destroyed the mast
Where he’d spent so many days.

The crew were cutting the mast away
And cast it over the side,
While he hung on to a rail and stay
As the ship tossed in the tide,
A shadow rose from the deep that night
A demon known to the crew,
‘There must be a woman here on board,’
They screamed, ‘but nobody knew!’

The ****** went to her cabin door
Then knocked, and she let him in,
‘Your secret’s out, you’ll have to leave
If you want to save your skin.
I’m going to let out the painter now,
And set you out in a boat,
I’ll join you there if I can, I swear
For this ship won’t stay afloat.’

And somewhere out in that great domain
That God has kept for his own,
There floats a tiny clinker boat
With a couple, all alone.
The frigate lies in the heaving deep
On the bed of a fretful sea,
One kiss had cost a King his throne
And the loss of a colony.

David Lewis Paget

There isn’t a sign, there isn’t a trace
Of Isabel Groom on the planet’s face,
She stalked from the room in a great distress
With a foot long tear in her party dress.

‘I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have stayed,’
She said to the Under Parlourmaid,
‘I should have remembered, Elizabeth Krank
Is fond, too fond of the Party Prank.’

‘She came in a dress, with tassels in blue,
The same as the ones I was wearing, too,
I saw the glare that she gave me there
With the self-same comb in her party hair.’

Elizabeth went to the party cake
Staring, like someone barely awake,
She seized the knife from the cutting board,
Turned to Isabel Groom, and roared:

‘How dare you wear that comb in your hair,
And a dress that no-one was meant to share!’
She flared, and slashed in that candle-lit room,
And tore the dress of Isabel Groom.

While Isabel spun, and grabbed at her wrist,
And bent it back in a sudden twist,
They say that she bent it more than she should,
And Elizabeth Krank was sputtering blood.

The knife was embedded, deep in her throat
And Elizabeth screamed, a long high note,
‘I knew your party would be a mistake,
And now you’ve bled on the party cake!’

There isn’t a sign, there isn’t a trace
Of Isabel Groom on the planet’s face,
She stalked from the room in a great distress
With a foot long tear in her party dress.

David Lewis Paget

It was not a salubrious neighborhood
As the townsfolk there would tell,
But you often found a gem of a pearl
In an ugly oyster shell,
And Derek thought that he’d found his pearl
In those mean and dismal streets,
A girl by the name of Jennifer Searle
Who would make his life complete.

He’d met her at a charity ball
On a short term holiday,
From where she sat, at the end of the hall
She’d taken his breath away,
Her eyes were such a delicate blue
And they held him in their stare,
He was like her prize, and hypnotised
As he stumbled to her there.

And she bade him sit beside her then
And she let him hold her hand,
And she hushed him when he tried to say
What he didn’t understand,
Her smile was brittle, her hand was cool
And her skin as white as snow,
Her form was frail, but he felt her nails
Dig in, as he rose to go.

And a woman came to claim her then
Who dismissed him out of hand,
They waited until he’d turned to go
In a way that was pre-planned,
The woman gave him a printed card
With the girl’s address at home,
And scribbled there, ‘you may call on me
Just once, if you come alone.’

So he walked the damp and dismal street
And his heart began to sing,
He knew one call would be enough,
He would give her everything,
He found her door in a portico
With its number shaped in lead,
And rapped the brass of the knocker there
With its atavistic head.

Then the door swung slowly open and
He was standing in the hall,
Following tamely where she led,
The woman he’d met at the ball,
Jennifer sat at a table and
She smiled as he wandered in,
He stood and stared at her wheelchair
And his look was questioning.

‘You get but a single chance with me
That’s all that I ever give,
I’ve seen the lies in a hundred eyes
So rather than lie, just leave.
My legs have been useless now for years
But I’m whole, and full of love,
If you’d like to take a chance with me
Speak now, for I’ve grieved enough.’

‘I fell in love with your eyes,’ he said
‘From the other side of the hall,
I didn’t know that you couldn’t walk
And it doesn’t matter at all.
I wanted to offer you everything
If you’ll have me, well and good…’
Then Jennifer blinked back tears, as she
Reached out for him, and stood.

David Lewis Paget

My first wife went with a guy called Bob,
The carpet cleaning guy,
The second left with a man called Rob,
She said I was far too shy,
The third, an exotic dancer, I
Had met dancing round a pole,
And she took off with a guy called Sly
With a band called ‘Rock ‘n Roll.’

I never seemed able to keep them
Once I’d signed on the dotted line,
For everything in my bank account
Would suddenly be, ‘That’s mine!’
They’d take the house and they’d take the car
And they’d take my only suit,
The one that I had married them in,
(I’ve never been that astute!).

So I swore off women and wedding bells,
And lived in a boarding house,
I thought I’d keep myself to myself,
Was quiet as any mouse,
The landlady was a tall ash-blonde
Who would prowl outside my door,
At ten each night she would want to fight,
‘Come wrestle me on the floor!’

She’d married a German Wrestler,
Whose name was ‘Attack-Me Karl’,
He’d watch for tenants, flirting his wife,
And then you would hear him snarl,
So I’d keep the lock on my door up-tight
When his wife tapped on my door,
‘I’m not going to let you in tonight
While Attack-Me Karl’s abroad!’

I met Elaine in the common room
Where she made me toast and tea,
She’d wait ‘til it was quiet as a tomb,
Come over and sit by me,
She said that I fascinated her,
For I’d not even made a pass,
And Sundays, she would follow me out
Sprawl next to me on the grass.

She told me she was free as a bird,
Was anyone’s there to choose,
She’d drop her top while sunning herself
While I stayed lost in my muse.
She said divorce was a terrible thing
That marriage was sanctified,
I told her I’d not marry again
And she lay on the grass, and cried.

I moved to live in a river flat
And she moved right in with me,
I said, ‘You come and go as you please,’
And gave her a duplicate key.
We’ve lived together for twenty years
And she’s never looked at a man,
But marriage has never been on the cards,
It’s not been part of the plan.

She stays because she can walk away,
She stays because she is free,
She says she’d love to be married again,
While I say, ‘Not to me!’
I think that women are too perverse
To be held to an altar vow,
She has no genuine hold on me
Though I love her, even now!’

David Lewis Paget

‘Time is a perfect circle
Where it ends, it curves back in,
Starting a whole new cycle
Where the other one begins,
We cannot escape our futures, nor
Much less, escape our past,
The things that we’ve run away from
Will be waiting there, at last.’

That’s what he said to Jennifer
As she packed her final case,
And carried it out to the taxi,
‘I don’t want to leave a trace!
I’m parcelling up the memories
That I shared so long with you,
And dropping them off at the station,
Locked forever, on platform two.’

And Derek had looked forsaken as
She passed out through the door,
She’d said their love was mistaken
It had gone, forevermore.
‘Don’t look, enquire, or ask for me
Or you’ll still be waiting yet,
The one thing that will stay with me
Is that I wish we’d never met.’

And so she passed on out of his life
A marriage of thirteen years,
A time of strife with a testy wife
And a basketful of tears,
He tried to cling to the better times
That were fading in his head,
He only knew that he loved her still,
Though he wished that he was dead.

When Jennifer rode away that day
She had thought, ‘At last, I’m free!
I’m going to live my life the way
That I hoped my life would be.’
She thought of her husband’s final words
As his heart began to rend,
‘Just know that I love you, Jennifer,
I’ll be with you in the end.’

She moved to a whole new neighborhood
And she spurned her former friends,
Went with a whole new clique of folk
Who had never made amends,
There wasn’t a single married pair,
They were all divorced, or spent,
Adrift in the dim-lit bars like her
In search of what life meant.

But when the news of his passing came
She was pensive for a while,
She planned to go to his funeral
And forgot for a day to smile,
He hadn’t been able to countenance
A life where his love had gone,
And left a note with a single quote,
‘I’d best be moving on!’

She drifted on for a few more years
In her false, gay party hat,
With nobody there to wipe her tears
As he’d done, when times were flat,
When time brought on some dread disease
And she knew that her time was spent,
Whose hand would pay for her funeral,
Not one, and nobody went.

They had to open her husband’s grave
That he’d paid in the years before,
When life for him had been content
‘Til death do us part,’ he swore,
And as her coffin was laid on his
In that dismal outback track,
It was then I heard but a whispered word,
‘I knew you’d be coming back!’

David Lewis Paget

While wandering on a local beach
Half buried in **** and sand,
The sparkle of something caught my eye
The shape of an old tin can.
I kicked it loose from entangling ****
And saw there was something within,
A colourful creature there indeed,
An octopus in a tin.

I thought it cute so I took it home
To put in the garden pond,
Then added salt for a briny mix
So it wouldn’t think to abscond.
It swam on out of the tin to feed
And seized on a goldfish there,
I said to Diane, ‘He has a need,’
While she just tore at her hair.

‘What were you thinking?’ Diane said,
‘It’ll eat all the fish we’ve got,’
‘They’re only a couple of bucks,’ I said,
‘I’ll get some more at the shop.’
He settled right in, our strangest pet,
And cost us to feed the least,
I said that I’d name the tinker, ‘Jet’,
Diane just called him ‘The Beast’.

He started to grow, outgrew his can,
So settled down in the depths,
He couldn’t be seen for thick pondweed,
Diane said,’It’s for the best.’
The dog would bark when The Beast came up,
Would stand there, wagging his tail.
We loved that dog, though barely a pup,
Then Diane began to wail.

‘It’s eaten the effing dog,’ she said,
Her language was more than coarse,
And Rin-Tin-Tin in the pond was skin,
She said, ‘Keep it away from my horse!’
I poked around in the pool for him
Just trying to make him rise,
He bit the end of my pole clean off,
He must have grown to a size.

She said I had to stop feeding him
But that only made it worse,
He looked for food, and he got the cat
As it chased a couple of birds.
Diane was walking down by the pond
When I suddenly heard her scream,
A tentacle wrapped around her leg
It looked like a nightmare scene.

I tried my best to peel it away
The octopus was too strong,
Diane went struggling over the edge
And fell right into the pond,
It took her down to the lower depths
And ate her, clean to the bone,
I tell this tale, so you won’t forget,
Don’t take an octopus home.

David Lewis Paget

She didn’t look awfully well that day
Though she never would make a fuss,
I said we should get to the hospital
That I’d travel with her on the bus.
The weather was terrible, snow on the road
And a seaborne yellow mist,
So I wrapped her well in a scarf and coat
And did my best to assist.

She leant on me, walked out to the stop
And we sat on the ice cold bench,
I thought for a moment she’d faint or drop
So taking the bus made sense.
The car would be hard to manage that night
For the roads were covered with ice,
I couldn’t hold her while driving the car,
But we needed a doctor’s advice.

The cough had got worse as the day went on
And her hanky was spattered with blood,
I prayed it was just a vessel that burst,
Not that I thought it should,
But consumption sat at the back of my mind
It was rare, but still around,
I was praying a lot, but still my head
Would cover the same old ground.

We watched as the lights of the bus rolled up
So dim in the mist to see,
A double-decker, we climbed aboard
It was number twenty-three.
The passengers all were grey and drab
And some of them seemed asleep,
A skeleton sat hunched up at the rear
And Kathie began to weep.

‘It’s only a medical student’s thing,’
I said, ‘there’s nothing to fear.’
But Kathie flinched as we walked on past,
‘Then why did he leave it here?’
She settled down in a window seat
While I sat next to the aisle,
And the bus rolled into the swirling mist
So we sat quite still for a while.

The lights in the bus were more than dim
And Kathie was looking grey,
While I got up at the hospital stop
Kathie was looking away.
Then suddenly I was out on the road
As the bus took off in the mist,
While Kathie stared through the window pane,
It was like she didn’t exist.

I ran and I ran, and chased the bus,
But I ran and ran in vain,
For the bus veered off, went over the cliffs
And vanished into the rain,
I found her there on the bus stop bench
Where we’d sat, all grey and still,
And I wept, and thought of the phantom bus
That had taken her over the hill.

I could swear we’d stood, and climbed on the bus,
My love, my Kathie and me,
But they said there never was such a bus
As a number twenty-three,
And I see her now in my dreams at night
As she stares through the window pane,
Of a phantom bus that takes her away,
Over the cliffs in the rain.

Over the cliffs on a freezing night
When she died, ice cold on the bench,
What was I thinking, I ask myself,
Where was my common sense?
Then I take some comfort to think that I
Had once been a part of us,
And travelled some of the way with her
Where she’d gone, on the phantom bus.

David Lewis Paget

He was sitting alone by the window
In hopes that the phone would ring,
Just as he’d sat there every day
Since she’d disappeared last Spring,
But snow now lay in the gutter,
Was glistening up in the trees,
And his thoughts would stray fom the words he’d pray,
‘Won’t you please come home, Louise!’

The phone lay stubbornly silent,
The snow untouched in the street,
There wasn’t a cart or a tyremark,
Nor even a sign of feet.
The sky was louring grey outside
As it was, the day she went,
He wished he knew, but hadn’t a clue
There had been no argument.

He’d thought perhaps she’d been taken,
Had struggled, against her will,
But there’d been no sign of a ransom,
The phone had stayed silent still.
He’d asked her friends in the neighborhood
What she’d said, could they recall?
But all of them said Louise was good,
That nothing stood out at all.

Her clothes still hung in the wardrobe,
And gave off their faint perfume,
As days went by he would sit and cry
Could barely go in the room,
The Police were as good as useless,
Inferred she’d taken a walk,
‘She’s probably got a new boyfriend,
If only your walls could talk.’

The only clue that he’d ever found
Was a script in a bag she’d left,
He found the word unpronounceable
But strange that the script was kept,
She wasn’t a one for keeping things
She said there were bins for that,
She’d thrown out even a friendship ring
And an old and beaten hat.

One day there were footsteps through the snow
Wound up at his own front door,
He raced to open the doorway up
But the footsteps stopped at the floor,
There wasn’t a sign they’d gone away,
There wasn’t a sign of retreat,
Whoever had come to his front door
Was still out there in the street.

He went back into the study then
And gazed through the sudden rain,
He never knew when the phone rang through
It would cause him so much pain.
A voice intoned, ‘If you’re on your own,
Sit down, are you Brian Drew?’
And then went on with its dismal song
‘I’ve a message to pass to you.’

‘This is the Somerhill Hospice, with
A body, ready to claim,
It’s up to you, but it’s Louise Drew
She left a note with your name.
She finally died this morning from
That tumour, found on her lung,
We didn’t know she was married, though,
That note was under her tongue.’

‘She didn’t want you to suffer, it
Was better she went away,
She wrote she hadn’t told anyone
But came in as Louise Grey.’
Brian’s face became bloodless at
The wet footsteps in the hall,
Then took in the silent nothingness,
And threw the phone at the wall.

David Lewis Paget

Elijah worked at the further end
Of the Port McDonald pier,
His job was simply to keep the light
Bright burning through the year,
All he’d see were the seagulls who
Would swoop and dive in the spray,
As the sea beat up on the jetty piles
On a cold, dark winter’s day.

His mother had died of a broken heart
Long after his father fled,
Had loosed the chains of his fatherhood
For a life on the sea instead,
They’d put him into an orphanage
Where he learned to abide the rod,
And found that his supplications and
His prayers fell short of God.

The universe was an empty space,
A vast, unseeing sky,
There wasn’t a presence watching him
As they’d said, in the days gone by,
He ached for a revelation that
Would show he was not alone,
A single soul in the firmament
In front of an empty throne.

He’d never managed to make a friend
In the long, sad years of life,
And women, though they avoided him
He longed for a sweet young wife,
His isolation was made complete
When he walked back to his room,
After a night on the lonely pier
In the early morning gloom.

One night a waif from the city streets
Sought shelter from the storm,
Huddled against the cabin wall
Where he sat, both safe and warm,
He heard her shuffle and took her in
And gave her tea from the urn,
And fell in love with her sad, grey eyes,
A waif from the city, spurned.

She came again, and again each night,
They talked until the dawn,
And weaved their dreams and their fantasies
Of a world they’d neither known,
But then one night the Inspector came,
A grim, ungiving man,
Who frowned, and he told the girl to leave,
He said that she was banned.

She waited, shivering in the cold
In the lee of the old sea wall,
Til he came hurrying from his shift
As the dawn spread over all,
He wrapped her up in his coat, and cried
He could do no more than this,
But she clung on to his lonely form
And she gave him his first kiss.

He took her back to his room to stay
And he watched her as she slept,
If she had opened her eyes that day
She would see Elijah wept,
‘I won’t go back to those lonely nights,’
Was the thought that gripped his mind,
To lose his midnight companion now
He thought, was most unkind.

That night, he told her to meet him there
At the far end of the pier,
‘Just as the clock strikes one!’ She said,
‘I’ll be there, never fear.’
He’d soaked the pier in kerosene
Just twenty yards from the end,
And when she arrived, he said, ‘You’ll see,
They won’t part us, my friend.’

At two in the morning, up it went
In a blaze of fire and smoke,
The centre part of the pier ablaze
As they watched it, neither spoke,
A gap appeared as it all fell in
Was extinguished by the sea,
But the end stood tall like a sailing ship
That had set the couple free.

The storm that ravaged the coast that night
Kept the lifeboat on the shore,
They wanted to go and rescue him,
The Inspector said, ‘What for?’
While they looked out at the raging sea
Made plans for the world they’d won,
And when the light of the dawn approached
The end of the pier had gone.

David Lewis Paget

I was part of the crew of a Sloop-of-War
That had sailed in the Caribbean,
We were caught asleep in the port one night
By the crew of a Brigantine.
They loosed a broadside, seven guns
As the Skull and the Bones flew high,
And I was dragged to the pirate ship
Where they said, ‘You’ll serve, or die!’

There wasn’t a choice to be had back then,
So I climbed aloft on the mast,
Setting the rig of the fore topsail
And making the halyards fast,
They made me stay in the Crows Nest then
To be swept by the wind and rain,
With only a couple of tots of ***
To deal with my aches, and pain.

I kept lookout on the pirate brig
For His Majesty’s ships, and land,
They knew we wouldn’t stand much of a chance
As a Privateer Brigand,
We sought to shelter within a cove
In an island, not on a chart,
And rowed ashore in a longboat there
With the bosun, Jacob Harte.

Captain Keague had stayed on the ship
With the bloodiest of his crew,
The rest of us had been pressed to sea
To do what we had to do.
We filled our barrels with water from
A rill that flowed from the hill,
And gathered fruit that we’d never seen
From trees with an earthy feel.

The trees had tendrils that waved about,
And trunks that were black and charred,
Just like a fire had raged there once
And left them, battle-scarred.
A voice rang out in a clearing there,
‘Hey mates, head back to the sea,
Don’t let the tendrils fasten on you
Or you’ll all end up like me.’

And deep in the trunk was a human face
With its skin all burnt and black,
The pain was etched on his weathered skin,
‘Look out, these trees attack!
We tried to burn them away, but they
Caught every one of the crew,
That fruit you carry is poison, mates,
They’ll be the end of you!’

The tendrils whipped and the tendrils slashed
And they wrapped round Jacob Harte,
He hadn’t much time to scream before
They seemed to tear him apart,
And each of the crew was tangled there,
Was absorbed into a tree,
I made it back to the beach that day
Though I’m anything but free.

The roots of the trees had reached on out
To the Brigantine in the bay,
Curled like manacles round its decks
And torn its masts away,
They dragged it up on the sandy beach
And they crushed it to a shell,
Caught the crew in their tendrils too
And Captain Keague as well.

I’ll put this note in a bottle, send it
Floating off in the sea,
Hoping that someone picks it up,
It’s the last you’ll hear from me.
Don’t let them seed in the world out there
These tendril trees are cursed,
And keep this Island from off the map,
If not, I fear the worst!

David Lewis Paget

The Poetry Barn wasn’t really a barn
It was merely an old farm house,
It sat on the acres of Eddington’s Farm,
Surrounded by sheep and by cows.
But Poets came over from Stuttersby Dell,
Drove over from Scatabout Wood,
To write in the air of the Poetry Barn
About things, when they ought and they should.

They came from Great Orton, they came from Rams Well,
They came from Glenn Wheatley and Grey,
The best and the worst of the poets you’d find
At the Poetry Barn, every day,
The rooms had been empty for many a year
So they all sat on bundles of straw,
And when they ran out they would send up a shout,
So some would go out and get more.

The mornings would see all the Elegies worked,
The Epics, the Odes and Quatrains,
The Poetry Barn would then grumble and groan
As the Dirges would enter the drains.
By noon the fair Sonnets came into their own
With just the odd wanton Lament,
When poets would seek out the culprit to find
One grinding his verse in a tent.

By evening they’d work on the Pastoral,
The Sestet, the Roundel as well,
And those at a loss after losing the toss
Would be stuck with the old Villanelle,
They’d all settle down when the Moon came up round,
And the stars twinkled boldly in rhyme,
When one asked the other, ‘pray, what rhymes with brother,’
And he’d say, ‘your Mom, all the time.’

The poems would stick to the inside walls,
Would tear at each other like knaves,
They’d fill up the aisles and lie flat on the tiles
And would damage the old architraves.
At night you could hear all the horses hooves
As they carried the good news to Aix,
And in came the wedding guest, him with the albatross
Counting his many mistakes.

I saw that they’d burned down the Poetry Barn
With one sad, incendiary rhyme,
A poet called Glover who wrote to his lover
‘My candle, you light all the time.’
The straw caught alight in his lover’s delight
And they fled from that bastion of verse,
I just penned this missal for someone to whistle,
The one that he’d written was worse.

David Lewis Paget