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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

How on earth did I arrive here
In this dark and dismal place,
When it all began with love, but
Of that love there’s not a trace,
When you first began to spell me
I was helpless in your clutch,
Like an oak, you tried to fell me,
One who didn’t matter much.

You would praise me up and raise me
When it suited you to play
With my juvenile emotions
You could have had me any day,
Though you never looked much further
Than the day that you would tire
Of your plaything, or the way things
Would consume me in your fire.

I was not more than a bangle or
A bracelet for your wrist,
You would get me so entangled that
I never could resist,
Then you tossed me in your tempests
Left me battling your storms,
Till you had me question love and
What it was, in all its forms.

Then you plunged me into darkness
Black as pitch, without a light,
And I wondered at this starkness
When you failed to say goodnight,
I have stumbled on your pathway
In my folly, now it seems,
But have missed the open gateway
In my search for love and dreams.

David Lewis Paget

I’d seen the widow walk back and forth
The length of the village street,
Her veil so black and her dress so long
You’d see neither face nor feet,
She never would speak to anyone
But would simply seem to glide
Within the folds of that mourning dress
Like a slowly ebbing tide.

At first she’d walk at the early dawn
But then she’d be gone by noon,
The light of day would spirit away
Her wandering sense of gloom,
She’d not be seen till the sun went down
When you’d hear the swish of lace,
Catching along the sea wall stone
And whipping around her face.

She never would miss the evening tide
That would bring the fleet back in,
Check every boat that was still afloat
If its catch was full, or thin,
Her only love had gone out one day
With his sails set high to roam,
His boat had floated out in the bay
But he had not come home.

It took a week for the widows weeds
To start to march on the shore,
And no-one dared to look in her face
So deep was the grief she wore,
‘I never knew pain like this exists,’
She’d cry, when she was alone,
But over the next few painful weeks
She knew that he’d not be home.

Then she slowly tore off the widow’s veil,
She gave up the mourning dress,
I watched her enter the world again
Just as beautiful, no less.
It took me months but I won her round,
I’d kept my scheme afloat,
By hiding away the tools I’d used
To sink her husband’s boat.

David Lewis Paget

It’s four o’clock, and I’m wide awake
Too early for pre-dawn light,
Thinking about the night before
And the reason we had that fight.
You never listen to what I say,
And it makes me feel so mad,
Whenever you get that cauldron out,
Your recipes smell so bad.

I’d told you there was a comet due
And I even wore my hat,
Trying to mask that smell of stew
When you crucified the bat,
You kept on adding ingredients
When I told you, ‘that will do.’
I used the peg when the dead dog’s leg
Went flying into the stew.

I knew when you wore your pointy hat
And your cape with the flowing hood,
Whatever you cooked up there last night
Was something you never should.
You always try to get back at me
When I talk about the stars,
And say, ‘So what,’ that the art you’ve got
You picked up yourself, on Mars.

I knew the spell that you wove last night
Was something that wasn’t good,
You even opened our one skylight
To draw in the neighbourhood.
Not everyone wants a witches curse
To dangle from every tree,
But you don’t care, do it for a dare,
But mainly to get at me.

I saw the trail in the midnight sky
And tried to put out the fire,
But you were fey, and pushed me away,
Then tossed on a bicycle tyre.
I ran out into the garden then,
Into the dark of night,
And watched as the tiny comet came
To crash through our own skylight.

There’s nothing that you can blame me for
It’s not as if you forgot,
It flew on in to your spell of sin
And dropped in your cooking ***,
It flashed and blazed and sizzled in there
And now, you are looking weird,
You wore your recipe in your hair,
And where did you get that beard?

David Lewis Paget

He hadn’t been home a day before
He found that his wife had died,
The doctor said it was sudden, that
There was something wrong inside.
He couldn’t be more specific till
The autopsy was done,
He’d have to wait for a week for that,
‘It’s the same for everyone.’

He went on back to an empty home
And then he gave way to grief,
It wasn’t as if he had a friend
To offer him some relief,
He’d been away on the ocean swell
On a ***** from Amsterdam,
For six months out of eleven when
He should have been home, with Pam.

A sailor’s life is a lonely life
He had known that from the start,
He possibly shouldn’t have taken a wife
When they’d be so far apart,
For seven years they had worked it out
And his wife had said she’d cope,
But loneliness is a dreadful thing
When you’re living your life in hope.

He’d loved her well and she loved him too
In their sentimental way,
She’d managed to hide her tears each time
That his ship had sailed away,
But once he had seen the autopsy
It had torn him quite apart.
It seems his wife had despaired of dreams
And died of a broken heart.

He didn’t go back to sea at once
But he hung around in bars
And managed to get himself so drunk
That all he could see was stars,
He thought his grief would diminish as
The days had turned into years,
But love for him didn’t finish, it
Just seemed to work in reverse.

He even took down her pictures, and
He locked them all in a drawer,
He didn’t want the reminder of
What he had lost before,
But life is a game of chances and
It never will be denied,
He met a nurse when he found her purse
And something lit up inside.

It seemed her job was a lot like his
She was always working shifts,
They met whenever they could, and he
Found he was buying gifts,
He went away on a ***** again
But just one month at a time,
And she was waiting when he returned
Like a welcome carafe of wine.

He spent some time at the cemetery
To honour his wife, his Pam,
And she asked if she could come along
To which he had said, ‘You can.’
He wed the girl in the early Spring
And he found a job ashore,
And swore he’d never go back to sea,
She couldn’t have loved him more.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

‘We must have entered the Latter Days
For the Moon has broken in two,’
Said Paul Maresh in the month of May
Of Twenty Twenty-two,
‘I said they shouldn’t be mining it
And drilling through to its core,
For now the Russians claim half of it
And the States have gone to war.’

‘That nuclear bomb on Ohio left
A crater, big as a lake,
And I heard that Lake Ontario
Has flooded New York State,
The world is shifting allegiances
So we don’t know where we are,
Since the Internet has crashed and burned
With my friends, both near and far.’

He went to the old style UHF
That he kept in his father’s shed,
Checked that the aerials were up
And the generator fed,
For the power had gone for the second time
And they said, it won’t be back,
With the power station the target in
That first, but brief attack.

He switched on channel 11 then,
Hoping to hear her voice,
Through shifting, drifting frequencies
He sat there, calling Joyce,
But all he got was a wailing call
To prayer, from a Dervish man,
Sent out to all of the faithful from
Some place in Pakistan.

He checked through all of the channels that
They’d used, back there in the past,
But mostly got a cracklng sound
From the swirling, nuclear ash,
His sister Joyce, having flown on out
To the States in the month before,
He thought was missing in Florida,
In the first week of the war.

Then a voice came through on channel three
That was lost, and fraught with pain,
‘Is that the Paul Maresh I met
In June, on the Sydney train?’
His mind went back to the smiling girl
With the drawn out Texas drawl,
Who’d chatted, stolen his heart away
With her laughed, ‘Be seein’ Y’all!’

They’d kept in touch on the Internet
And she said she was coming back,
Preparing to give their love a fling
On some great Australian track.
But then the world had shuddered with
That first American bomb,
So now, as frequencies swirled, he said,
‘Where are you calling from?’

He thought that she said from ‘Boston’, though
A crackle had interfered,
Maybe the word was ‘Austin’ back
In Texas, that he’d heard,
But then her voice was carried away
In a trans-pacific hum,
And the last few words he heard, she said
‘I really love you, ***!’

Part of the Moon has crashed to earth
In the Gulf of Mexico,
With Texas drowned in a sea of mud
And the earth’s rotation slowed,
But Paul Maresh in the Aussie Bush
Is clamped to the UHF,
Looking for Joyce and Linda if
It takes him his final breath.

David Lewis Paget

The Moon was rising, over the hill
Along with the evening star,
They lit the lane he was walking, ‘til
He could see the lights of a car,
They were headed up in the narrow lane
So he had to jump out wide,
Then it hurtled over the flowing rill,
Rolled, and lay on its side.

He stood in shock for a moment there
Then ran to do what he could,
But flames burst out of the tangled wreck
At the edge of McNalty’s Wood.
He heard a woman, screaming in pain
Who was trapped inside the car,
But the tank blew up, as he knew it would
So he watched it, from afar.

The door on top of the wreck flew up
As the air began to scorch,
The woman climbed from the burning wreck
But was lit like a flaming torch,
She stood engulfed for a moment there
As the flames devoured her hair,
And screamed, ‘I’m coming to get you, John,
In the dead of the night, beware!’

Then all he saw was a staring skull
As the flesh peeled off the bone,
The body shuddered, and then collapsed
As he turned, and ran for home.
His heart was pounding a steady beat
As he ran, and stumbled there,
The voice that rang in his ears was shrill,
‘In the dead of the night, beware!’

He knew the woman, he knew the car
And a terror entered his soul,
He’d left her stood at the altar, while
He hid in his coward’s hole,
He’d packed his bag, and travelling things
While her father stood at the door,
Loading a pair of cartridges
And sworn to even the score.

He’d left the town in the dead of night
Had driven a hundred miles,
Buried himself in the countryside
In a shack called ‘Seven Dials’.
There were seven clocks in the tiny shack
That would tick and tock in turn,
They each were named for a crying shame
And the seventh clock was ‘Burn.’

The first was named ‘Disloyalty’
And the second ‘Coward’s Toll’,
The third had hands but a vacant face
And its name was ‘Empty Soul.’
The fourth had written across its face
A single wording, ‘Scare!’
The fifth was draped in a veil of lace
With the only word, ‘Despair.’

He thought of stopping the ticking clocks
But they ticked on through the night,
He’d wake up drenched in a sweat, and when
He rose, his face was white,
The sixth clock hung in the kitchen, was
The only clock to chime,
But then would lock, the ticking stop
While the name said, ‘Out of time!’

He lay low after the burning car
Would not go out for a week,
He locked the doors and the windows,
Every night, but took a peek,
The world outside by the darkened wood
Was a place to chill and scare,
The wind would whisper among the trees,
‘In the dead of the night, beware!’

A month went by, they buried the corpse
That they found by the burnt out car,
He thought he’d beaten the woman’s curse
So he left the door ajar,
A gale blew up and it swung the door
Out wide in the dead of night,
And a shape appeared in the doorway
As he woke in a sudden fright.

She seemed to shimmer while standing there
In a charred silk wedding dress,
‘You didn’t think you’d escape me now
That you’ve left me such a mess,’
A breeze had lifted her veil by then
There was just a moment’s lull,
Then he stared at her and she stared right back
From a charred and blackened skull.

He screamed as only a man can scream
When the terror eats his soul,
A flame burst out of the wedding dress
And devoured the woman whole,
The shack went up and the ticking stopped
Of the first six dials in turn,
But above the crackle of flames he heard
That last clock ticking, ‘Burn!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Gretchen wept in her easy chair
And called for her husband, Karl,
They’d been together for sixty years,
Though both were worn and frail.
They’d met in the ruins of München, when
The ***** collapsed and fell,
Escaped to live in Australia
From their own idea of hell.

For Karl had served in the Wehrmacht,
In a Tank Corps at Dieppe,
Had served in the Panzergruppe von Kleist
Had roamed the Russian steppes,
His tank had taken him through Ukraine
They’d taken the plains by force,
But found their pain when the Russians came,
In their huge T-34’s.

But that was the world of way back when,
For Karl was old and grey,
He slept a lot in his tidy home,
The nurse came every day,
His wife developed dementia, she’d
Forget where she used to roam,
So she was parted from husband Karl,
Was sent to a Nursing Home!

He walked with the aid of a walking frame,
He couldn’t quite get around,
But listened for echoes of Gretchen’s voice
In the house that made no sound,
And all he thought was to rescue her,
To bring his girl back home,
But the powers that be said: ‘Wait and see!’
She was lost to him - Alone!

He went to visit her, once a week,
They held each other's hand,
She cried so much when he had to leave,
She never could understand,
And he was desolate every time,
He’d cling to her so tight,
That they had to prise his hand away
When they sent him away at night.

The nurses were harsh and businesslike,
To them it was just a job,
With no compassion for patients, they
Would leave all that to God.
Demented souls ran over his feet
With trolleys and walking frames,
When Karl grew angry, they shrugged and said:
‘Well - Everyone complains!’

One Sunday, standing outside the doors,
He saw his Tiger Tank,
It growled, and pulled up beside him there
And the diesel fumes, they stank.
He climbed aboard with his comrades there,
And ‘Schnell!’ they called, to a man,
Then lumbered straight through the double doors,
The nurses turned and ran!

The Tiger reared and it turned about
Tore carpet up from the floor,
The tracks ran over the matron’s feet,
Let out a fearful roar,
The patients cheered as the Iron Cross
Raced past their common room,
And smashed the glass in the office door,
And crushed the sister’s urn!

Then Gretchen laughed as he came in sight,
‘Here comes my husband, Karl!
He'll break us out of this prison ward,
Can you hear his Tiger snarl?’
He stopped and reached for his Gretchen then
Looked deep in her eyes, and swore:
‘I’ll not be parted from you again
Though hell should bar the door!’

They found them lying together there,
He held her safe in his arms,
They'd gone together where lovers go
Away from the world's alarms.
‘He went quite crazy,’ the Matron said,
‘He must have been insane!’
For lying outside her shattered door
Was his twisted walking frame!

David Lewis Paget

There’s a blank sheet of paper before me,
It’s as blank as our lives have become,
But nothing’s been said, though the passion is dead,
We still make believe we are one.
And the days seem to drift on forever
In this mist that I call ‘No Man’s Land,’
Whatever I say, you’ll be looking away
And you never reach out for my hand.

We eat all our meals in a silence
And pretend we enjoy it that way,
I reach for the newspaper, you for a book
So our eyes never meet in dismay.
Where there once was a ripple of laughter
As your foot rubbed inside of my leg,
Your lips are now pursed in a silence that’s cursed
And I feel that you want me to beg.

We shop, as if we are together,
And we smile when we see our old friends,
But friendship is rare, as our friends couldn’t bear
To watch as this partnership ends.
They can sense all that distance between us,
And note that our smiles are grim,
We never accept invitations,
Unless they’re for ‘her’ or for ‘him’.

Now you’re suddenly working long hours
At the bookshop, when you feel disposed,
Though I’ve wandered at night in the market,
And noticed, the bookshop is closed.
Then you wander back in about midnight,
And go on straight up to your room,
You’re taking your showers at the strangest of hours
While I sit downstairs in the gloom.

So now that I’ve put it on paper,
I shall leave this brief note by your bed,
It might shine a light on our silences,
The issues that should have been said.
I know you’ll be happier once I’ve gone
So I’m catching the midnight train,
I want you to know that I loved you once,
But that love has now turned, to pain!

David Lewis Paget

His parents had both been gone so long
He’d forgotten how they looked,
So gathered up all the photographs
And pasted them in a book,
Then hid the book until once a year
He would bring it out in the light,
And ruffle through all of its pages in
A memorial delight.

His wife said, ‘Why do you bother, Ken,
It will never bring them back,
It’s surely enough to remember when
You left, on a different track.’
Her own had consciously turned away
When she went and married Ken,
Had spurned her later advances and
She hadn’t seen them again.

‘I gave my family up for you,
But what did you do for me?
You tied me down with your family plan,
Locked me in your family tree!’
‘Was that so bad?’ And he looked quite sad
She revealed what he’d always known,
That she’d always hated his parents and
Would rather they’d lived alone.

‘What did they ever do to you,’ he said
‘To warrant your gall?’
‘They took away from my time with you,
With them, they wanted it all.’
‘They simply wanted the best for us
So they helped us out where they could.’
‘They kept on coming around,’ she said,
‘A great deal more than they should!’

One year, on opening up his book
There was more than a missing page,
With some of the photo’s gone for good
He was flung in a sullen rage.
‘What have you done with the photographs
Of the folks, there, back on the farm?’
‘You must have mislaid the things yourself…’
And he looked at her in alarm.

‘Have you gone really quite mad,’ he said,
‘Have you gone really insane?
Why would you take my memories
And cause me so much pain?’
‘They’re gone, they’re dead,’ she had screamed at him,
‘Yet you never let them be,
As long as you still remember them,
Then I will never be free!’

‘I thought that I’d seen the last of them
When I put your mother away,
And then, with only your father left
I made sure he choked that day!
I needed to get a new life for me
I need to be more than a wife…’
She hurriedly poured his soup for him
As he slowly picked up the knife.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

They took their shovels and digging tools
To the top of Highgate Hill,
They walked in a deadly silence there
In the dusk, in the evening chill,
They picked their way through the deep-laid bones,
The monuments, great and small,
And looked for the plain Rossetti stone
In their search for Elizabeth Siddal.

That red-haired, wraithlike, ghostly girl
Who had charmed the PRB,
She'd sat, at first, for Deverell
Who was doomed, with Bright's Disease,
She'd fallen hard for the artist then
Though her love was never returned,
For Deverell died so suddenly -
It was as if her love was spurned.

She sat for Dante Gabriel,
For Holman Hunt, Millais,
As the model for drowned Ophelia
In an ice cold bath she lay,
She lent her beauty to every brush,
Each stroke laid bare her soul,
When she looked around for herself she found
There was nothing left at all.

Rossetti had kept her close to him
As he slowly became obsessed,
He scribbled a dozen portraits from
Her head to her heaving breast,
He placed her high on a pedestal,
A Madonna in all but name,
But kept his physical love from her
That she might not suffer shame.

He penned the poems he wrote for her
In a small, grey calf-skin book,
He carried the poems everywhere
As a proof of the love it took,
He made no copies, he held them close
They were food for a future muse,
For his art and poetry vied with him -
It was painting he would choose.

But she; who knew what rent her soul,
The cravings she despaired?
She sipped at the potion laudanum
As her heart and her mind were bared,
She scribbled the weary verses that
Spoke love, of a love long-lost,
While Dante frolicked with Annie Hughes
At Elizabeth Siddal's cost.

As Lizzie despaired on laudanum
She had ceased to be of use,
Her visage was sad, and aged and drawn
In the sick room of abuse,
While girls with youth, vitality
And an earthy yen for sin
Like ***** Cornforth, came to sit -
And Rossetti let them in.

They wed, but much as a faded dream
The knot had been tied too late,
As Lizzie, dying a little each day
Succumbed to a morbid fate,
For one dark night she had laid her down
Penned a final note, to whit:
'My life has become so miserable
That I want no more of it.'

She lay by an empty laudanum phial,
Rossetti was quite distraught,
He'd loved her, but with a purer love
Than his lust or his money bought,
His grief was such, as he laid her down
In her coffin, she looked so fair,
That he placed the book of his poems
Between her cheek and her auburn hair.

The years went on and he sank himself
In a pit of despond, unwell,
Withdrew from his friends and dosed himself
With a phial of chloral,
His painting suffered, his income too,
He turned to the ancient muse,
And thought of the poems beyond the grave,
He knew that he'd have to choose!

He wrote to Charles Augustus Howell
A rogue that he'd used before,
To test him; whether to dig her up
Or to lose his poems forever;
Howell replied he should get them back,
Or he'd lose them to death, for good,
'Your works are the works of genius,
Bring them back to the world - You should!'

So Howell, he toiled up Highgate Hill
While Dante hid in his lair,
Too scared to look on his love again,
His muse with the auburn hair,
A fire was lit in the dead of night
The coffin was raised on high,
His love was torn from her deathly stare
They could almost hear her sigh.

The book was caught in her tangled hair
Which had filled the coffin's space,
And she was lovely, and quite serene
As they lifted the book from her face,
They lowered her gently, back in the ground
That had served as her awful tomb,
She lay defiled like a bride, reviled,
But without her lawful groom.

Rossetti published his poems then,
They sold by the thousandfold,
For Howell had leaked the story out
That he hadn't wanted told;
But a fate awaited Augustus Howell
A revenge that would beggar belief,
He was found, throat cut in the gutter -
With a coin, tight clenched in his teeth!

David Lewis Paget

The flowers grew from the craters where
The bombs ripped open the ground,
Back in that terrible time of war
When God in his heavens frowned,
I just remember destruction, piles
Of bricks where houses had stood,
And years along, new growth began
Where Airmen lay in the wood.

Their plane came down in the poplar trees
That had stood in a long, straight line,
Tearing a swathe of destruction through
Where we’d played in a former time,
And just beyond was the surgeon’s house
That had boasted a Roman Spa,
Now flat, and exposing the Roman Tiles
That survived the previous war.

I’d go down there with Priscilla, who
Lived out by the railway track,
We’d play our games in the cellars
That had lain open, since the attack.
I hadn’t taken much notice of
The flowers that grew in the weeds,
That sprang into life like mushrooms, when
The bombs had scattered their seeds.

Priscilla did, she would smell the scent
That had wafted up from the flowers,
And say, ‘I’ve never seen these before,
They’re new, they’re meant to be ours.’
She’d pick the flowers and take them home
And attempt to make them thrive,
But once removed from their sacred ground
They’d rarely stay alive.

I didn’t handle the flowers as much
So I wasn’t quite as ill,
When she went down with a jaundice that
The doctors couldn’t heal.
They tried their best and they traced it to
The flowers she’d taken home,
A level of radioactivity
Was the reason that they’d grown.

The ground has been cordoned off for good
With a special yellow tape,
While she and I are forbidden to go
To the place that was our escape.
They keep her tied to a wheelchair where
They attempt to hide her sores,
While I’m in a sort of cage since I
Grew skin like the dinosaurs.

David Lewis Paget

The North Wind doth blow,

And we shall have snow,

And what will poor Robin do then,
Poor thing…



The house that poor young Robin bought,
You’d scarcely call it a house,
A single room on a farmer’s farm
You’d not swing even a mouse.
But he moved on in, and tidied it up
And asked Rosemary to stay,
She sat in silence, her knees clamped tight,
And her first response, ‘No way!’

‘There isn’t a cupboard to keep a broom,
The kitchen’s there by the wall,
We couldn’t live in this tiny room
To even think, I’m appalled.’
But Robin said, ‘It’s just for a start,
I’m going to build on a wing,
I’m making the bricks from mud and straw
It will all be done by the Spring.’

So Rosemary had unpacked her case,
And hung her clothes on a hook,
Then looked in vain for a tiny shelf,
There wasn’t even a book.
But Robin slaved, out in the yard,
Making his bricks from straw,
The walls went up and the roof went on,
And he laid the wood for the floor.

At first they slept on the floor inside,
And Rosemary kept it clean,
She said, ‘Don’t touch, till I am a bride,’
And pillows went in between.
He put his love all into his wing,
All carpeted now, and swish,
And set it up as a bedroom then,
‘Are you coming to bed?’ ‘You wish!’

She only ever kissed with a peck,
She never opened her lips,
He wanted more, but couldn’t be sure,
As he nibbled her fingertips.
Then one day, down came the winter rain
And the wind it was blowing cold,
Rosemary lay there shivering so
She allowed him just one hold.

His hand had strayed, down where it would
You’ll admit we’d do the same,
But he found down there, in that neighbourhood
Something that changed the game.
He leapt on up, and he washed his hands,
Said, ‘You’re not even a girl!’
‘Didn’t you guess,’ said Rosemary,
‘It’s not the end of the world.’

She chased him all around in that room,
‘I thought you wanted to play,’
While Robin stood, his back to the wall,
While holding her off, ‘No way!’
He fled into his favourite wing,
And hammered and bolted the door,
His bricks were melting out in the rain
And mud flowed over the floor.

She went on back to the troupe ‘Les Girls’,
While Robin stayed on the farm,
You’ll not see him venturing out these days
He lives in a state of alarm.
With just the sight of a petticoat
He’s a shuddering, gibbering wreck,
And ask him if he will leave his wing,
The answer comes back, ‘Like heck!’


He’ll flee to his farm,

To keep him from harm,

And hide his head under his wing,

Poor thing!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

There’s always been something controlling me,
I knew, but I knew not what,
Something diverting and foiling me
Since the days that I lay in my cot,
I thought it was simply a parent thing
As they whispered their rules in my ear,
The things that were right and the things that were wrong
And the things I would most have to fear.

They sent me to school and the teachers, too,
Must have read from the very same book,
They always laid blame and they said it the same
And the cane lent a sting to their hook.
‘You’re coming to learn, not to think for yourself,
You’ll repeat everything that I say,
And maybe just some of these rules will stick
If you dwell on the rules every day!’

Then once in the world my employers unfurled
All the rules and the regs I would keep,
I didn’t last long, I’d seen them before
And told them they put me to sleep.
The government fined and unlicensed me
From a book that they said was the law,
The magistrates sat on a heap of these books
As I shrugged and I said, ‘What for?’

I sat in the jail for contempt of court,
Spent plenty of time in my cell,
The world was consumed with a million rules
Designed to consign you to hell.
I watched all the lawyers and prisoners, cops
As they danced to the rules of the cot,
And sensed they were puppets, and most of them fools
Who would baulk at the words, ‘I will not!’

They’d hate to be questioned, they thought they were right,
If you disagreed you were canned,
They’d lock you away for a hospital stay
There was no going back, it was planned.
You had to be made to agree with their way
So they clamped electrodes on your head,
Then slide up the volts, and it wasn’t their fault
If it happened you ended up dead.

They called it Electro-therapy
And said it was doing you good,
But the thoughts in my brain they were never the same
When I came out from under that hood,
I saw the strings jerking from shoulders and heads
In a vision you couldn’t conceive,
And there were the hands that were pulling their strings
When I called out, ‘I don’t believe!’

‘I’ve never believed and I’ll never believe,’
I called, and they all moved away,
A thunderous cracking of mortar and ceiling,
It all fell apart on that day.
The strings fell away from my shoulders and hands
And I knew I was finally free,
And then I called up to the Puppet Master,
‘You won’t be controlling me!’

People were falling all over the place
As he dropped all the strings from his hands,
The bearded Master could see the disaster,
‘You’ve ruined my world and my plans!’
He paused for a moment and then he was gone
Leaving people to blink in the light,
The rules were the rules of the Puppet Master
Now we can decide what is right!

David Lewis Paget

I’d not seen them out in the open,
They grew in the alleys and lanes,
A purple flower with a sort of power
In the scent from its pores and veins,
I asked Romana the name of it
But she shuddered and turned away,
‘It’s a type of bloom called Purple Doom,
Or that’s what the gypsies say.’

The scent was sickly and sweet out there
I admit, it went to my head,
Romana came to the caravan
And made crazy love in bed.
The scent was an aphrodisiac
That drove normal men insane,
Our clothes were dropped and we couldn’t stop
Till we cried aloud in pain.

The aftermath was a migraine head
That we both endured that night,
And when we woke, she tried to choke me,
All we could do was fight.
At last, we came back down to earth
And surveyed the shattered room,
Romana said that we could be dead
From the scent of that Purple Doom.

I beat the weeds round the caravan,
I poked and prodded and pried,
Found Purple Doom, there in the gloom
So its scent was sweet inside.
I tore the clump right out by the roots
But I cut my hand, it bled,
I burnt the flower, curtailed its power
But with poison in my head.

I don’t remember the next few days
But I almost passed away,
I seemed to be wandering in the dark
Where the sky was always grey,
A castle rose in a fallow field
And I tried to cross the moat,
I called Romana ‘Lady Gay’
And she said, ‘Just stay afloat!’

But flowers assailed on every side
They were purple, pink and red,
Leaning in with their tendrils, seemed
To sip the blood I bled.
A gypsy shook me awake one day
And I slowly came around,
‘Don’t go bringing your caravan
And camping on gypsy ground!’

He’d gripped Romana by the hair
And tried to drag her away,
But she let loose with a gypsy curse
And he turned and fled that day.
We towed away the caravan,
And avoid all lanes and gloom,
But she retains a potpourri to
Make love with that Purple Doom.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The toddler sat in the high chair,
And stared at his tiny hands,
He wondered, where had they come from,
And his name, they said, was Hans,
He seemed to recall another place
Where he’d lived, so long ago,
Before he was part of the human race
Though the words, he didn’t know.

His body felt like an alien
It was hard to make it work,
His legs and his feet were clumsy, and
He’d only just learnt to walk,
He found that his hands could pick up things
He could drop them, or could throw,
And watch the reaction of bigger things
When they’d shout, or tell him ‘No!’

They both were bigger and stronger
But the biggest one was rough,
He’d lift him out of his high chair, and
His voice was deep and gruff,
The other was soft and caring and
Had fed him at the breast,
Would carry him round and cuddle him
But the voice was shrill, at best.

Two spirits sat on his shoulders that
He didn’t know that he had,
One kept muttering, ‘You be good!’
The other said, ‘Be bad!’
‘Don’t listen to him, he’s always grim,’
Said the good one on the right,
The other had said, ‘Remember me?
He’ll make you feel uptight!’

He vaguely remembered the darker one
From the place that he’d always been,
And thoughts went fluttering through his mind,
Like scenes in a distant dream,
He knew, as a thrill spilled over him
That the good one made him sad,
And he couldn’t listen to both at once
But the dark one made him glad.

He’d watch as the bigs lit cigarettes
And the room filled up with smoke,
The haze had returned to comfort him
Though once in a while, he’d choke.
He’d stare and stare at the cigarettes
Intent on that tiny glow,
For it lit a spark in his memory
And he suddenly thought, ‘I know!’

One night while the bigs were fast asleep
He crawled on out of his cot,
Went for the box of matches that
He’d seen them use, a lot.
His tiny fingers had struck a match
And he sat and watched the flame,
As the darker one on his shoulder said,
‘We’re going to play a game!’

He struck a match for the curtains, and
He struck a match for the couch,
He then set fire to the tablecloth
And burnt his thumb, said ‘Ouch!’
An ancient memory stirred within
That would make his face perspire,
Caught in the middle of Dresden once,
And sat in a lake of fire.

The big ones woke, began to choke
And rushed on out to their fate,
They tried to rescue the baby Hans
But for all of them, too late!
He sat and chuckled within the flames
Felt nothing inside his pyre,
The dark one said, ‘So much for games,
You’ve had your play in the fire!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The sun went down on a Sunday night
And didn’t come up again,
The clouds above were crimson and bright
And they shed life-giving rain,
The news came on at seven o’clock
In the morning, in the dark,
And said, ‘No sign of the morning sun,
The view from here is stark.’

I bounded up and got out of bed
And I hit the ceiling fan,
My arms and legs and my head were light
So I turned about and ran,
With every step, when I floated up,
I hit my head on the door,
And when I tried to jump, I hovered,
Six feet off the floor.

The news came on for a second time,
A comet had hit the earth,
And halted the rotation of
The planet that gave us birth,
It seemed that one side would overheat
And the people there would roast,
While we would freeze on the dark side,
When the sea iced at the coast.

The temperature dropped down through the floor
And it soon began to snow,
The wife lay huddling up, and said:
‘Now where are we going to go?’
But then the news had come through again
That a second comet hit,
Deep in the Russian tundra, and
The ground had shook with it.

It seems the earth had begun to turn
Once more, from the aftershock,
With everything back to normal then,
Whether it would or not,
But when the sun had come up again
We saw it rise in the west,
The week is reversed from Saturday,
What will they think of next?

David Lewis Paget

I saw the note on the mantelpiece
When I got home, rather late,
I knew that something was wrong when I
First saw the open gate,
The house was still and the air was chill
As I called her name, Lorraine,
The note said, ‘Don’t try to follow me,
I’ve caught the evening train.’

I stood for more than a minute
Staring down at her tidy scrawl,
And didn’t breathe for a minute more
‘Til I thought that I would fall,
She’d often threatened to leave me but
I’d put that down to pique,
I stood there now with a furrowed brow
And a future, looking bleak!

I studied the train timetable
Was she going West or North?
The West Express would have left, I guessed,
She’d head for the Firth of Forth,
I backed the car from the garage
Dipped the lights and stepped on the gas,
And headed on up the Great North Road
Beside the railway tracks.

The train was fully a mile ahead
It was lit like a silver snake,
Winding in and out of the bends
And easy to overtake,
I pulled abreast by a hillside crest
To a carriage, just on the rise,
With a single female passenger,
Who sat there, dabbing her eyes.

I knew that the train would stop at York
So I raced on there instead,
Jumped out and ran to the station
While the blood had rushed to my head,
I caught the train as it pulled on out
And I found her on her own,
Weeping free, with her back to me,
She thought she was all alone.

She jumped when I sat in front of her,
And I reached on out, in vain,
‘Why did you even follow me,
I thought that I’d made it plain!’
‘You know I never could let you go,
You mean all the world to me!’
She turned and looked out the window
So I knelt there, down on one knee.

I fumbled deep in my pockets, felt
For the only helpful thing,
Slipped it onto her finger, then
A big brass curtain ring,
She laughed and said, ‘You don’t mean it!’
But her eyes were bright with tears,
And I said after I’d kissed her
That I’d meant to ask, for years!

‘You know that you’ll have to come on home
At five, or six at the most,
No more of your office parties where
I burn and spoil the roast!’
I put my hand on my heart right there
And I quelled her, with a look,
It has to be pretty special when
The master marries the cook!

David Lewis Paget

The ground had rumbled for quite some time
It was only a minor quake,
The people grumbled, it came and went
But it kept them all awake,
‘They say there was a volcano here
A billion years ago,
But it’s long since dead, the geologists said,
And there’ll be no lava flow.’

They’d built the suburb on rising ground,
And roads, right up to the peak,
The ground was rocky and unforgiving
The soil was grey and weak,
So little grew on that rising crest
Just the odd saltbush or so,
They couldn’t drill through the rock beneath
To help their bushes grow.

I would venture out and would take the air
When the house cooled down at night,
But always felt there was something there
That would make me feel uptight,
I felt the rumble, under my feet
It was like a muffled roar,
And I thought a whimsical thought one night,
It was like an old man’s snore.

One night I wandered up to the crest
And I saw two bushes move,
They seemed to tremble and flutter there
Just above a ball shaped groove,
The rumble stopped as I stood and watched
From under the starlit skies,
The bushes opened to crystal orbs,
Just like a pair of eyes.

They fixed me there in their crystal stare
And I didn’t dare to breathe,
The summit started to shake and move,
And then it began to heave,
The houses built on the crest fell down
It was like a huge hiccup,
And I fell tumbling to the ground
As the Mountain God stood up!

David Lewis Paget

The Queen stepped ahead of the gun carriage
That bore the country’s king,
He’d died, they said, in the early hours
In the palace’s east wing,
And now he rode in a state of grace
As the people lined his way,
His coffin high on the gun carriage
Pulled by a pair of greys.

The Queen was hid by a widow’s veil
That covered the sovereign’s face,
It stopped them seeing the evil smile
Hidden behind the lace,
For way behind in a carriage, mad
With power, and bedecked with rings,
And wearing the crown his father had
He was now, ‘Long live the King!’

The Horse Guards led the procession with
Their sabres raised to the sky,
Then came the Dukes and Duchesses
And never an eye was dry,
The King who died was a pleasant king
And beloved of the people’s grace,
So thousands of flags were waved for him
As he travelled along that place.

Then as they reached Horse Guards Parade
The gun carriage gave a lurch,
It hadn’t been fixed too firmly when
They set it up at the church,
The coffin came flying off the top
Flew open and hit the ground,
That’s when a pile of pale white bones
Were scattered about and around.

And rising up from a mutter, there
Was a roar from the waiting crowd,
It started off with a stutter, then
With a bellowing rage, aloud,
A pile of bones from a new dead king
Just what were they trying to prove?
The Queen was seized by the angry crowd
And her widow’s veil removed.

The Queen with platitudes, tried to speak
But her words were heard in vain,
The people wanted their funeral
There was no way to explain,
They set the coffin back where it was
And ignored her screams and cries,
A single nail in the coffin lid
And a royal to despise.

Then all the way to the cemetery
The people pulled the Queen,
Safe on top of the gun carriage
And only a muffled scream,
The King, arrested, was buried first
In a hole, a deeper drop,
And then his mother, as would beseem
In her coffin, on the top.

And all the while the old king sat
On a terrace in Tuscany,
Sampling all the local wines
And savouring to be free,
Never again to hear the whine
Of that dreadful troll, the Queen,
Or kissing another baby’s head,
Life was but a dream!

David Lewis Paget

‘Where are you going, Sally Ann
Now the nights have become so dark,
Why do you get so restless, say
You want to walk in the park?’
I thought to sit by the fireside
Each time that she ventured out,
It’s cold and damp by the streetlight lamp,
So what was it all about?

‘I need to go where the wind will blow,
Feel the damp caressing my cheek,
The bracing air is a tonic there,
While you sit, and you never speak.
It gets so terribly warm in here,
I feel I can barely breathe,
You sit and enjoy your fireside chair
But me, I just have to leave.’

So I’d go and stare out the window
Just as she left, my Sally Ann,
The thought was crossing my mind just then
Was she meeting some other man?
The question sat on my lips at times
But I thought I’d better not say,
If once I questioned my Sally Ann
It might just drive her away.

I’d watch her stand at the kerbside edge
And ponder which way to go,
She’d walk by the village of Kirby Ledge
Or left, round the bungalow,
It happened often she’d cross the road
And wander off to the mill,
I knew she’d get to the park that way
The other side of the hill.

One night, the rain it came pelting down
I knew she’d be good and wet,
I went to the old umbrella stand
And thought I could catch her yet,
The wind was gusting, the rain blew in,
In flurries under my hood,
I barely could see the way she’d been,
In passing by Farley Wood.

I saw the light of a dim-lit torch
Flashing under the trees,
And wandered over to take a look
Though feeling weak in the knees,
A woman lay on a groundsheet there
Though he had covered her face,
I still could see that her limbs were bare
And thrashing all over the place.

‘Oh Sally Ann,’ I had sobbed, and ran,
While making my way back home,
I cursed the folly of coming out,
It was better I hadn’t known.
Then Sally Ann had opened the door
Said ‘Come in out of the rain.
I went to walk but I cut it short.’
I flew to her arms again.

David Lewis Paget

The first time he came into the light
He thought that his eyes had gone,
The sun was shining, ever so bright
With nothing to focus on,
They led him out to sit on a rock
And hacked off his ball and chain,
It took a week of his ticket of leave
Before he could see again.

Richard Dawson, a broken man
Had finally done his time,
He’d spent three years in shovelling coal
In the colony’s first coal mine,
They said it was only his just desserts
For a pocket, picked in the Strand,
And sent him out on a convict ship
To the hell of Van Diemen’s Land.

At first they set him to breaking rocks
For laying the first rough roads,
He worked while tethered in iron chains
That chafed his skin and his bones,
He wasn’t allowed to take a rest
From swinging the pick or axe,
For the guards would follow the line of men
And lay the whip on their backs.

He lost his God and he lost his soul
Or he thought that he had, out there,
Where men were hung as a matter of fact
And nobody seemed to care,
He slaved four years with the other men
But his future was looking bleak,
When he hit a man who was guarding them
He was sent to Saltwater Creek.

If ever there was a hell on earth
It was called Saltwater Creek,
The devil had got in the minds of men
And they formed a barbaric clique.
The cells were buried, were underground,
There wasn’t a spark of light,
And the men were taken out of the mine
When it was dark, at night.

They started before the sun was up,
They finished when it was gone,
Were locked and chained in their pitch dark cells
In a terror that just went on,
And while they were buried and mining coal
They’d think of the old country,
While their judge sat cool in his stately robes
And finished his morning tea.

A man turns into a surly brute
When he’s kicked and cursed, and beat,
But take the sun from his daily run
And his soul admits defeat.
Richard Dawson, later in life
At night, would take to the street,
And never could quite explain to his wife
The Hell of Saltwater Creek.

David Lewis Paget

I got the call at eleven o’clock,
‘They want you to dig a grave!’
It wasn’t such a terrible shock,
The message came by a knave.
A serving man from the House of Gull,
That mansion up on the hill,
Where Baron Downz kept his hunting hounds
And the beautiful Grace de Ville.

They often sent me a midnight call
To dig them a grave or two,
Whenever there was a duel fought,
For graves, well, that’s what I do!
I dig them deep in the dead of night
At the edge of the Forest Clare,
They pay me a hundred and fifty crowns
You wouldn’t know they were there.

For only I know the resting place
Of the Lords that fell by his sword,
Of every man that has tried his will
Each one that questioned his word.
The Baron’s known for his ****** mind
And revenge is his only skill,
He gets them drunk on his German wine
And then moves in for the ****.

He murdered the father of Grace de Ville
Then kept her there as his prize,
The night that he tried to have his will
She almost scratched out his eyes,
He keeps her bound by a silver chain
With a lock that tethers her wrist,
And swears she’ll only be free again
When her maidenhead is his.

The servants told me he paced the hall
With his patience growing thin,
He’d rage and roar when she locked the door
To prevent him getting in,
There was tumult up in the hall that night
So I knew that there may be blood,
I took my shovel and lantern out
And began to dig by the wood.

At three o’clock in the morning they
Arrived in the horse-drawn hearse,
Slid a coffin out of the back
And laid it down on the turf.
The Baron Downz rode his horse around
And peered in the empty grave,
‘A fitting place for the maidenhead
Milady’s so keen to save!’

I felt the chill running up my spine,
It raised the hairs on my neck,
Surely he couldn’t be so unkind,
But the coffin lay on the deck,
The Baron motioned them all away
And they left with the coal black hearse,
He watched me lower the coffin in
Then turned away with a curse.

‘Be sure to cover that coffin well,’
He snarled as he turned to go,
Tossed me a hundred and fifty crowns
Then ambled off, real slow.
I heard a thump in the coffin then
And my heart jumped into my throat,
A muffled whimper, down in the ground
And a scream on a rising note.

I knew my life would hang by a thread
If the Baron came back around,
But still I thought, I’d rather be dead
Than bury de Ville in the ground.
I clambered into that terrible grave
And prised off the coffin lid,
She gasped, and thanked the lord she was saved,
But then came a note of dread.

‘You play me false, you’ll pay with your life,’
The Baron stood looking down,
And then he began to unsheathe his sword,
The shovel was still in the ground,
I turned the shovel blade side up
And ****** it under his chin
We clambered out of that open grave
And swiftly tumbled him in.

I work for the Lady Grace de Ville
In her livery, red and gold,
I’ve not been asked for a single grave,
Nor ever will be, I’m told,
I take her out in the coach and four
To ride by the Forest Clare,
And run right over the Baron’s grave
Whenever we’re passing there.

David Lewis Paget

‘I used to work for the council here,’
Said ‘Ripper’ Jones at the bar,
Fortified with a Beam or two
And a pint of the best, Three Star,
Trelawney winked at the barman and
The barman, he winked back,
‘We’re in for another ripper yarn,’
Said the bearded Cousin Jack.

‘They always gave me the ***** jobs,
It was always just my luck,
They’d point to me, say, ‘Ripper’s free,
Break out the tipper truck!
You know, that beast with seven gears
But only three of them worked,
The brakes were non-existent, and
The Foreman, he was a ****!’

‘We used to call him Father Time
He was always on the prowl,
Calling time to the Smoko breaks
With an ever present scowl.’
He said, ‘Pick up that giant rock
In the Commer Tipper Truck,
The ocean’s sprung a giant leak
And we have to seal it up!’

‘It took us a crane to lift this rock
It was seven feet across,
‘This mother has to be fifteen tons,’
Said my mate, crane driver Ross.
‘What did he say you need it for?’
He yelled, in a sort of screech,
‘I have to drive it down to the shore,
There’s a great big hole in the beach!’

‘The Commer sank right down on its springs,
This rock, a hell of a load,
I had to drive it in second gear
With the tyres flat on the road,
I finally made it down to the shore
And thought, ‘I must be a mug!’
The sea was circling round the hole
Like a bath when you pull out the plug.

I had to wait for an hour or two
‘Til it emptied out the bay,
All you could see was a dry seabed
For a mile or so, each way,
Then I drove the truck right up to the hole,
Thinking to tip it in,
When a giant geyser of steam shot up,
The sea was turning to steam.’

‘You know what the brakes on that truck were like,
They hadn’t been fixed for years,
I thought I’d better get out of there
Or it all would end in tears.
But the truck rolled forward, over the hole
And began to sink right in,
While I climbed out of the window there
Determined to save my skin.’

‘The truck sank down, under the rock
And it plugged that head of steam,
You could barely see the tip of the tray
When the tide came rolling in,
And that’s the rock you go fishing off,
You can say it was down to me,
While you were throwing your schooners back
I was out there, saving the sea!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I followed her over the countryside,
I followed her near and far,
She said that she had to live her life
Alone, as a shooting star.
‘The world began when I came to be
Will be gone,’ she began to shout,
‘When I leave my trail, a silvery tail
And the Moon and the stars go out.’

‘But what about love,’ I called to her
As she shimmied by in the breeze,
Her eyes were fixed on the future as
I settled down on my knees.
‘I haven’t got time for love,’ she said
‘It fades, and swallows my life,
There’s more to living what I’ve been given
Than being somebody’s wife.’

‘The world out there is a lonely place
When you wander its wilds alone,
You’ll need somebody to hold your hand
In the dark, when you’re on your own.’
‘I don’t need someone to tie me down
I shall steer my course for me,
No man shall tug at my either hand
Or change my trajectory.’

‘My heart is full of my love for you,’
I said, but she didn’t care,
She laughed, and hurried away to find
What life had in store for her.
I caught a sight of her now and then
As she lived her life to the full,
With greedy lips at the brimming cup
As she drained the life from her soul.

The years were cruel as she partied on,
Her hair became iron grey,
Her skin was losing that youthful bloom
With the drugs that she took each day,
The money lenders were out in force
So she had to swallow her pride,
And sell herself when she had to pay,
But then she shrivelled inside.

She landed up on my doorstep only
Once, and I thought she’d fall,
She looked so ill that my heart went out
But my skin began to crawl,
‘So what became of the shooting star?’
I said - She began to pout,
Then tears welled up at her eyelids as
Her Moon and her stars went out.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The news came rustling through the trees
As I tethered the horse’s head,
It came with a gentle sigh on the breeze,
‘The Lady Mulcrave is dead!
She waits for you to attend her now,’
I shook in a craven fear,
‘Her arms are crossed in eternal rest
As she lies on her oak wood bier.’

I stared in horror about me then
For the voice I heard in the glade,
Though nothing moved in the gloom out there
But the shadows the fire made.
‘You lie,’ I cried, as I saddled the horse,
Buckled and fastened the bit,
Then spun around by the river’s course,
‘I’ll not hear a word of it!’

We galloped over the rickety bridge
And the hoofbeats rang in the air,
They seemed to echo the one refrain
That desperate word, ‘Despair!’
The moon hung over the distant hill
With the Motte and Bailey Hall,
Where I’d left Milady an hour before
At Sir John FitzAlan’s Ball.

She’d said, ‘Be certain to call for me
When it strikes the midnight hour,
I wouldn’t like to be left in there
Bereft, in FitzAlan’s power,
I’ve fended off the proposals that
He’s made, in the times before,
Be sure to wait at the Bailey’s gate
With my father’s coach and four.’

I’d left her there with a merry throng
In their masques and gowns and lace,
The gentlemen with their tricorn hats
And coats, cut high at the waist,
I’d ridden off to the distant wood
To sit out the time before
I’d ride alone to her father’s home
And collect the coach and four.

But now, I hurried on back in fear
That Milady was taken ill,
I prayed to God on my foam fleck’d ride
As we crested, over the hill.
The Motte and Bailey was dark outside,
Not a lantern at the door,
And not a guest to be seen out there
Where they’d thronged, an hour before.

I rode on into the courtyard where
The coaches had wedged in tight,
There wasn’t a single coach or horse
To be seen in the pale moonlight,
I called, ‘Is anyone left in there
I’ve come for Lady Mulcrave!’
There wasn’t a sound in the silence there,
A silence, deep as the grave.

I beat on the heavy oaken door
It echoed on through the hall,
I thought that I heard some breathing, breathing
Whispering through the wall,
‘Open the door and let me in,
I know you were here before,’
The hinges creaked and the door gave way,
Into an empty hall.

The air was rank and the walls were damp
And a moss grew on the floor,
There hadn’t been anyone living there
For fifty years or more,
And standing near the ancient hearth
Was a shape that brought a tear,
For stood in the gloom of that ancient room
The remains of an oak wood bier.

I sit in my cabin, deep in the woods
And avoid the world outside,
Something that happened late that night
Disturbed my time and tide,
The Lady Mulcrave died that day
In that Motte and Bailey Hall,
On the same day I was born, they say
As Sir John FitzAlan’s Ball.

David Lewis Paget

She stared at him out of the paper
And he recognised her eyes,
He knew he’d seen them before, somewhere,
But her face was a different size,
There wasn’t a dimple in the cheek
And her lips were rather thin,
It said that she was her sister, so
He sat, remembering.

The girl that he’d met in the nightclub
Who had stared across the room,
Their eyes had met in a brief vignette
And held, in the smoke-filled gloom,
They’d danced at the end of the evening
And he’d said he’d take her home,
The thought of a kiss from those ruby lips
Had driven his hands to roam.

She’d slapped his face, he remembered that,
But the rest was just a blur,
But now, from out of the newspaper
He was quite entranced by her,
He’d not read much of the article
For his reading skills were slight,
But he made his way to the same lane way
Where he’d held her sister tight.

The house was an old Victorian
With a gable above her room,
He saw the light on that winter’s night
That lit the surrounding gloom,
Her shape appeared in the window frame
As she stared down at the ground,
He thought he knew she would want him to
So he stayed, and hung around.

He stood right under a lamp post and
Was lit by a single beam,
While she stared down from the window, and
He knew that he’d been seen,
The door had creaked as it opened up
And she walked into the lane,
While he, now full of bravado, said,
‘It’s nice to see you, Jane.’

She paused, just inches away from him,
And she said, ‘my name is Joan,
You must have been with my sister
On that night she was alone.’
He looked confused, and then quite amused
At the harshness in her voice,
Then said, ‘I’d rather have been with you
If I’d only had the choice.’

‘I knew that you would come back one day,
Though I knew you’d take your time,
The killer always comes back, they say
To the place they did the crime.’
He stared right into her eyes just then
And he saw the eyes of Jane,
His fingers wrapping around her neck
As she stared at him in pain.

‘She really shouldn’t have slapped my face,’
He said, ‘it wasn’t right,
All that I did was touch her breast
Before a kiss goodnight.’
But then he staggered in shock and pain
To feel what her sister did,
As the kitchen knife slid in between
His first and his second rib.

David Lewis Paget

Annette, she was a Worthingham
And Karen, she was a Lee,
But both of them were adopted
In the war, in ’43.
They pulled them out of a rubbled house
But their folks, they couldn’t save,
And so they grew as the sisters two
With the common name, Palgrave.

As sisters, they were like chalk and cheese
Though the neighbours didn’t know,
They said that one was the milkman’s
And the other, Lord Mulrow’s.
For Annette, she was a saucy ****,
Was the wilder of the two,
While Karen, she had a stately mien
With a haughty, grand purview.

They fought like cats through their teenage years
Would curse and swear, conspire,
Annette destroyed Karen’s underwear
While Karen burned hers in the fire.
The mother was pale, and frail and ill
When she asked them both to go,
‘I don’t have to keep you anymore,
I adopted you both, you know!’

The news hit home like a thunderbolt,
They looked in each other’s eyes,
‘You mean, we’re not really sisters, Hell!’
It came as a great surprise.
Karen went to her room to brood
Annette was flooded with tears,
‘Why weren’t we told, it seems so cold,
We should have known that for years.’

So Annette got a cold water flat
While Karen lived on the Square,
Then Annette got herself pregnant, but
Nobody seemed to care.
The boyfriend didn’t appear one day
And she knew that he was gone,
She drifted into a deep despair
As time went travelling on.

She got so big that she couldn’t cope
And she thought to take her life,
And then there came a knock at the door
Just as she raised the knife.
She groaned and whispered to go away
As she lay flat out on the cot,
‘It’s Karen here, it’s your sister, dear,
I’m the only one you’ve got!’

She’d brought a parcel of food with her
And a daffodil layette,
‘I couldn’t choose between pink or blue,
Not knowing it’s gender yet.’
They hugged each other and burst in tears
For a love they hadn’t shown,
While caught in an unknown falsehood, but
Their sisterhood had grown.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

They often walked in the garden, though
The garden was such a mess,
It was overgrown with Ivy, and
Choked up with watercress,
The pond was overflowing its banks
At the wet time of the year,
But no-one tended the garden then
It was much too hard to clear.

The house was old and the walls were damp
It had been a fine estate,
Built up from scratch by the pioneers
Then left to my schoolboy mate,
And now he was nearing twenty-five
And he had Germaine in tow,
I’d thought I could win her heart from him
But I had no place to go.

We lived, we three, in the house where we
Could each survive on our own,
While keeping the others company
Though not quite living alone,
So Paul lived up on the West Wing floor,
Germaine set up in the East,
While I had a couple of rooms downstairs,
In truth, I counted the least.

I stayed away from the garden when
I saw a snake in the pond,
More of a giant serpent that was
Six foot long, and beyond,
I didn’t caution the other two
For some strange quirk of my own,
For Paul would walk on the pondward side
While she would wander alone.

I heard her scream as the serpent came
Slithering up from the pool,
My blood ran cold as it struck at Paul,
He was much too close, the fool.
It bit, he said, on the hand and leg
It struck so fast, and had flown,
Then he called out in a chilling shout,
‘Its fangs went through to the bone!’

We carried him up in a faint that day
The venom was coursing his veins,
I must admit I was glad of it
For I only thought of Germaine.
She saw me stare at her auburn hair
And she must have known, before,
I’d been so very obsessed with her
But she only thought of Paul.

He lay in a fever there for days,
I thought that he might just die,
But felt ashamed of the thoughts that came,
My friendship caught in a lie,
If only she could have come to me
I could truly call him friend,
But she was true, and it seemed I knew
She would nurse him to the end.

One day she came, he was not the same,
She said, in a tortured tone,
‘His skin is starting to scale,’ she said,
‘He wants to be left alone.
His eyes have turned into tiny slits
And he seems to slither in bed,
His fangs are longer and sharper now
Than ever I’ve seen,’ she said.

I had to go, to see for myself,
I noticed his skin was grey,
His eyes were shifty, flickered about,
I didn’t know what to say,
He licked his lips but his tongue was forked
As if he’d split it in two,
His lips drew back and his fangs slid out,
‘What do I want with you?’

‘I’ve never seen such a change,’ I said,
‘How much of what’s left is Paul?’
He reared up in the bed at that
And flattened against the wall,
I felt that he was about to strike
So I left the room in a rush,
And told Germaine, ‘We had better leave,
Or it might mean the end of us.’

She stuck with Paul to the very end
I think that I knew she would,
They found her lying beside the pond
With her face suffused with blood.
Her skin looked just like a dragon’s scales
Her eyes pinpoints, if at all,
They killed two snakes in the garden pond,
There was nobody there called Paul.

David Lewis Paget

So many years have passed us by,
So many great events,
Sometimes I smile, or sit and cry
At some of the incidents.
Those were the days when we were young
And love an affair of the heart,
But love came and went, remained unsung
By tearing us all apart.

All we have left are photographs
And many are stained by tears,
Where did they go, those joyous laughs
Echoing through the years?
The love that was made has disappeared
Swallowed by Father Time,
And even the children that we reared
Have left for another clime.

Where are the friends that brought us joy,
Where is the merriment,
Where are the girls who acted coy
We thought they were heaven sent.
Scattered to where the four winds blow
And lost to each chilling breeze,
A fading memory, fluttering by
Like the scatter of Autumn leaves.

And those we lost loom large in the dark
When we lie on the verge of sleep,
They flit on by like the vital spark
They lost, when the mere was deep,
For those that died will never return,
They left on the final bus,
That grim old hearse, pulled by a horse
That now is waiting for us.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

One minute she’s standing before me,
Is stridently screaming her claims,
And then in a moment of horror,
I watch as she bursts into flames.
There isn’t a fire around her,
Not even a spark to begin,
But then she erupts in a moment,
The fire bursts out from within.

I’ve heard that it’s happened to others
They burn with a spiritual flame,
Some essence of horror within them
Devouring their body the same,
But nothing will char things around them
It only destroys skin and bone,
Their chairs and their rooms are protected,
It doesn’t set fire to their home.

I try to remember what caused it,
What happened to scramble her brain,
What started the turmoil and forced it,
To burst out and drive her insane,
The flames started under her eyelids
Then roared in a burst from her throat
It seemed to be something that I did,
It may have been something I wrote.

I don’t dare to start a new friendship,
With women I knew from before,
There’s always some thing that might end it
With her flaming out on the floor.      
She always said I was controlling,
Was cold and was hard, and I am,
But maybe that’s why; she’s a woman,
And I, thank my stars, am a man.

David Lewis Paget

They didn’t tell when we bought the place
Of the ghost in the attic room,
They knew that they’d have to drop the price
If the ***** jumped out in the gloom.
So we’d signed the papers and paid the fees,
There wasn’t really an out,
We’d had a couple of days of peace
Then it came jumping about.

It started with a terrible crash
That roused us out of our bed,
I said, ‘that sounded like breaking glass
And it came from overhead.’
But overhead was the attic room
And that was an empty space,
So I went up with a whisking broom,
Found glass, all over the place.

And worse than that, it was mirror shards
It was seven years bad luck,
So just like an irritated Bard
I yelled out, ‘***?’
I got to work with the whisking broom
And was cursing, fit to toss,
When the *****, in the corner of the room
Appeared with a blazing cross.

I noticed he held it upside down
Raised up, to cover his face,
I must admit that I threw a fit,
I acted with little grace,
‘What the hell are you doing here,
You’ve given us quite a fright,
Don’t you know, we were trying to sleep,
It’s an hour past midnight.’

It waved the blazing cross in the air
And gave out a dreadful groan,
Then flames from the floor devoured him
And left me standing alone.
I went back down to the bedroom to
The woman I loved the most,
Who said, ‘Well, what did you find up there?’
‘We’ve got us a Holy Ghost!’

From that night on, it was every night
It was boom and crash and groan,
While Jenny in fright, would curl up tight,
‘Won’t he ever leave us alone?’
I said, “It’s only at night he comes,
He must sleep during the day,
I have an idea, don’t worry dear,
He won’t have it all his way.’

I rigged up a speaker system there
And fed it all through an amp,
Then during the day, I’d blast away
And light the room with a lamp,
A blinding lamp of a thousand watts
To strobe, at a hundred clicks,
And blasted him with Metallica,
I knew it would make him sick.

The ***** came out on the seventh day
Stood trembling on the stair,
The flames on his cross had all gone out,
He stood there, tearing his hair.
He dashed on out through the open door
I thought he was going to puke,
And that was the last of the Ghost we saw,
So that’s how you ***** a *****!

David Lewis Paget