We had lain back in the meadow
Looking up to see the stars,
They were clustered all together
We were trying to find ours,
For we each had picked a single star
Up in the sky so high,
Then I rolled around to face you
And I found your naked thigh.

They were not among the brightest stars
Up in the sky that night,
But they shone on down upon us
With a pale and pinkish light,
And I wondered why the astral ray
Was pink, and nothing less,
When I realised, reflected was
The tint of naked flesh.

For your dress, it lay unbuttoned,
Was flung open, side to side,
There was nothing left uncovered,
Not your body, nor your pride,
You had never let me see your
Secret places there before,
But you whispered, ‘take me gently,
You may enter at the core.’

Now there wasn’t but a single inch
Of you but gave me bliss,
Not an inch of pulsing womanhood
I felt I couldn't kiss,
From your ankles to your calves and up
Along each silky thigh,
To that tiny sacred wilderness
That opened to the sky.

I have tasted balm from heaven
From your ankles to your breast,
For your love is all encompassing
I’d not expected less,
And I thank the lord for giving joy
When stars above us shine,
For giving life to womanhood,
And for his grand design.

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d made a collection up
Of certain sticks and stones,
To cast a spell in a paper cup
That drank, would break his bones,
She followed him to the mountain top
And down to the pebbled beach,
But every time she got close enough
She found he was out of reach.

He’d seen her sat at her cottage hearth,
He’d watched her casting her spells,
He knew that something quite dreadful was
Heading his way as well,
She’d not been over forgiving when
He’d been well caught in a lie,
And watched the remains of repulsive spells
As they came stumbling by.

He got in the way of avoiding her,
He wouldn’t respond to her call,
That’s when she made her potion up,
No-one would have him at all!
She had a draught that would bring him down
If ever it passed his lips,
She cast her spell from the deepest well
And it only took two sips.’

He turned his collar across his face
You could only see his eyes,
Then swept on up with his cloak in place
When she slept, as the moon would rise,
He seized the potion sat on the hearth
And he poured it down her throat,
And heard the crackle of breaking bones
As she screamed, one long, high note.

She lies awake in the cottage gloom
But she can’t quite make a fist,
Her spells that lie in the darkened room
Are beyond her shattered wrist,
While he will sit, and read them aloud
Though he never will see her smile,
For every spell is part of the shroud
He will torch in a little while.

David Lewis Paget

I had no idea of who she was,
But knew she appealed to me,
All that I knew, her name was Roz,
So I wove her history.
Imagination’s a marvellous thing
But that doesn’t make it real,
I thought I could make the whole thing up
But I only judge by feel.

I had her grow in a miserable home
Where no-one could understand,
A feckless mother and drunken Dad
With no-one to hold her hand.
She’d come to life when she left that home,
Left everything else behind,
And if she wasn’t together yet,
Then everyone else was blind.

I loved the way that her hair curled down
To sit at the nape of her neck,
I loved that serious air she had
To hold everyone in check.
I didn’t know if she noticed me
She never gave me a look,
Whenever she passed my desk, I sat
And buried my head in a book.

We used the stationery storeroom there,
It was big enough for two,
I walked on in and I locked the door,
Said, ‘I’ve been looking at you.’
She seemed surprised and had startled eyes
When I drew her close for a kiss,
But she raised her lips and she moved her hips,
So it didn’t seem too remiss.

She met me down at the local pub
To discuss the feelings she had,
‘It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the kiss,
I don’t want you feeling bad.
But I have a guy and he’s awful shy,
So don’t tell what happened today,
Some things are sacred, stored in the heart,’
And then she had walked away.

David Lewis Paget

We ran aground on an island,
In the eye of a hurricane,
The wind was swirling around us,
As loud as a runaway train,
A dozen people had floated up
****** off the deck of the ship,
Lost forever in giant seas
At the height of our pleasure trip.

The ship was battered and spun around
Like a toy in the hands of a boy,
This giant behemoth of the seas
Tossed round like a tinker toy.
We heard it grind on the outer reef
Then be driven right up to the beach,
It slowly toppled, onto its side
With the lifeboats out of reach.

We hid inside till the storm was spent
Then cautiously went ashore,
There must have been a hundred of us,
But there had been hundreds more,
Some drowned in the lower cabins
When the sides of the ship were breached,
And others died, fell over the side
As the priest of the ship had preached.

But there was no god in the heavens,
Just the mighty god of the storm,
We were soaked, and so dishevelled,
Just trying to keep us warm,
So we sheltered in a grove of trees
That had swayed, but still they stood,
While the men went through the fallen trees
Gathering firewood.

It was night before we knew it,
There had been torrential rain,
The many fires that we had lit
Were lit, and lit again,
We managed a palm frond shelter
To protect us from the breeze,
But people were dying, by the score
With old men on their knees.

If only the ship had stayed upright
We could treat it like a shack,
But once we found we were on the ground
There was no way to climb back,
And then at night we were all in fright
When we heard a roar, so bold,
Like a raging beast in the further trees
That it made our blood run cold.

People were screaming in the dark
On the outskirts of the crowd,
And sounds of ripping, and gnashing teeth
In the darkness were so loud,
The morning showed us the grisly truth
There were pieces everywhere,
Whatever it was, and to our cost
They’d been sounds of rip and tear.

That only leaves a dozen of us
So I cast this into the sea,
A scrawl in a tiny bottle in
The hopes that you’ll set us free.
We take it in turns to keep a watch
For the monster of this shore,
On this tiny little island that
Has never been mapped before.

David Lewis Paget

He was sat in a quaint old country pub
And huddled over the fire,
The logs were blazing, spreading their heat
But the look on his face was dire.
There was only us on that winter’s night
The regulars stayed away,
So I sat beside him to share the heat
And hear what he had to say.

The rain outside, pit-pattering down
Had flooded under the porch,
It was so pitch black in the night outside
That to leave, I’d need a torch.
So I settled in for a lengthy stay,
He said that his name was Jim,
The air of gloom in that empty room
Seemed to be coming from him.

I said, ‘What’s up?’ and he looked at me
As if he was going to cry,
I said, ‘It can’t be as bad as that,’
But he let out an awful sigh.
‘It’s worse, far worse than you’d ever think,’
There followed a drawn-out pause,
But then he thought to confide in me,
‘I’m going to get a divorce.’

‘I see,’ I said, and I let him talk,
He needed to get it out,
A man in pain, while the driving rain
Outside, meant he had to shout.
‘I loved Elaine, and I never strayed,
Not once did I look aside,
For years Elaine was my universe
But now, it’s a question of pride.’

‘She told me she had a sister, who
Had needed a place to stay,
A Rosalyn, and she moved right in,
I thought she would go away.
But no, she stayed, and the sisters played
And I worked while they went to shop,
She came in between the two of us,
So I said that it had to stop.’

‘I didn’t think she would take her part
But she did, and pushed me away,
And that was the first of the arguments
We’d had, since our wedding day.
She’d throw a fit and would put me down,
It was messing with my head,
And then she would turn and leave the room,
And sleep in her sister’s bed.’

‘For months, I tried to ignore it, but
It gradually got me down,
She said I wasn’t much fun these days,
That all that I did was frown,
So just last night in a fit of spite
I thought that I’d take a stand…
I burst on in through their bedroom door,
Her Rosalyn was a man!’

David Lewis Paget

The gardens are laid in rows and lines
Laid out like a colourful maze,
The gates are open from eight ‘til nine,
All week, and Saturdays.
But Sundays they open the gates ‘til ten
They are lit by coloured lights,
I like to wander the strange pathways
But prefer to go by night.

I tell my Sally she ought to come
But she never has, ‘til now,
Her head is always stuck in a book
She’s what you might call highbrow.
One Sunday night, she said she’d come
We got to the gates by eight,
The lights were twinkling in the groves
And the Moon had risen late.

We walked by the beds of petunias,
Snapdragons and daffodils,
The heady perfume was rising up
And strange, but it gave me chills.
We took a fork where the wood was dense
With natives, bushes and trees,
But Sally tripped by a eucalypt,
And ended skinning her knees.

We sat on a garden bench nearby
And mentioned how quiet it was,
The pathway there was a yellow brick
Just like the Wizard of Oz.
We thought, ‘We’re the only ones in here,’
By ten, but she couldn’t walk,
I said, ‘We’ll wait ‘til the gardener comes,
We’ll sit on the bench and talk.’

We sat for over an hour out there,
We sat discussing things,
Mother-of-pearl, the state of the world,
The cost of engagement rings.
But then a shadow had passed us by
Behind a hedge and a tree,
And out there popped the head of a man,
‘Are you two looking for me?’

He couldn’t have been but four foot two,
But hidden behind the trees,
His body never came into view
But he had two pointed ears.
I told him Sally had skinned her knees
And she couldn’t walk just then,
He said he’d send for his volunteers,
‘But beware the Pathways Men!’

An hour went by and the lights went out
We began to fear the dark,
Then three young misses in party dress
Danced up from the outside park.
‘We’ve come to carry your lady home,
Follow us if you may,’
Then plucked poor Sally out of my arms,
And danced down a strange pathway.

I don’t know why it escaped my eye,
It hadn’t been there before,
I tried to follow but found myself
Entangled, both foot and claw.
My path was blocked by three strange men
Linked up, to stand in my way,
‘Don’t think to enter the faery glen
Or your woman will waste away.’

I’ve searched the gardens, I’ve searched the grounds
I’ve searched in the nights and days,
I’ve called for Sally a hundred times
And lost myself in the maze.
But late at night there’s an eerie sound
Like someone playing a lute,
Down at the end of some strange pathway
Where they grow forbidden fruit.

David Lewis Paget

‘I like to wander along the beach,
Meander close to the sea,
To hear the whispering eddies speak,
Refreshing each memory.
When she danced forever along the sand
And she twirled her skirt out wide,
Those were the days that were dear to me
Before the passion died.’

‘For way, way back when our world was young
In the distant days of youth,
We’d laugh and play in the surf by day
And at night, we’d search for the truth.
We’d search for the truth beneath the stars
As we lay on our backs to cry,
Her tears had mingled with mine, as soon
As the Moon rose up in the sky.’

‘‘Why couldn’t it always be like this,’ she said
And I thought it might,
‘The world is turning too soon for us,
And soon may put out the light.’
So we clung together against a world
That would try to tear us apart,
Not knowing time was the enemy
That would age, and harden the heart.’

‘Then days would follow each day before,
And weeks would pass like the rain,
That fell unwanted in every life
Since the days of the brother, Cain,
And slowly love would unravel, we
Were telling each other lies,
We tried to avert the other’s hurt
But the truth lay deep in our eyes.’

He turned to wander along the beach
Alone, with a grim intent,
His youth was scattering like the leaves
Of the storm-tossed trees that bent,
But dancing on and behind him was
The wraith of the girl that lied,
Shedding tears for the long lost years
As she twirled her skirt out wide.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

He came one day to the village green
And rented a cottage there,
The village gossips said, ‘have you seen
That guy with the flame red hair?
We know he’s up to some evil scheme
He wouldn’t be up to good,
He goes inside and he’s rarely seen,
He’s bad for the neighbourhood.’

He never went out to work at a job,
They didn’t know how he lived,
He always had funds at the supermart,
‘He must be a crook,’ they believed.
One of them pushed through his letterbox
A message to curdle his fear,
‘Your kind isn’t wanted,’ the message read,
‘So why do you want to live here?’

They hung a bad omen up over his door,
Threw rocks through a window-pane,
Left his milk bottles smashed on the floor,
And did it again and again,
He never seemed flustered or worried at all,
But wandered abroad with a grin,
They thought he set fire to the village hall,
But never could prove it was him.

Then girls were beginning to knock at his door,
And he began letting them in,
They’d stay there for hours, but none could recall
Why tattoos were found on their skin.
For each had a number, embellished in red
And nobody knew what it meant,
The higher the number the shorter the skirt
The answer, it seemed evident.

The mothers, they gathered then, out in the street
And cried ‘leave our daughters alone!
Stop tattooing numbers on arms and on feet,’
The neighbours would hear them all moan.
But he would ignore them and lock himself in,
The guy with the flame red hair,
He’d not venture out till the dark had set in,
And scattered the women out there.

The night came that fathers, with cudgels and belts,
Came down on the house on the green,
‘Come out, take your medicine, bruises and welts,
We know all your crimes are obscene.’
They tried to set fire to the front of his porch
To drive him out into the street,
But he had escaped by the light of his torch
And the silent pit-pat of his feet.

He should have been able to seek his revenge
On this village of trivial minds,
But he was content in the time he had spent
With the daughters of them at the time.
For long after all had forgotten their angst
At that stranger who’d angered them there,
Some seventeen daughters, the pride of the town
Gave birth to a tribe with red hair.

David Lewis Paget

I’m sitting mute in my wheelchair,
They think that I’m deaf and dumb,
Since ever the stroke that took me out
Emboldened everyone,
The jokes that they told behind my back
They say straight out to my face,
They think I’ll die of a heart attack,
I think they’re a sad disgrace!

It’s always about the money,
It’s always about the gilt,
They think they’re getting a fortune,
They’re all hocked up to the hilt,
They think that my Corporation
Will soon be theirs for the take,
They’ll shunt me out to the sidelines,
I think that’s a big mistake!

If they think that I’m weak and dying,
They really don’t know the man,
I built up a corporation
With the strength of these two hands,
I was out in the streets at fourteen,
I was selling and hustling then,
While they were ******* their mother’s paps
I was out with working men.

Not one of them’s done a hard days work,
They sit there, pushing a pen,
They’ve never raised blisters on their fists
That bled, oh, time and again,
They sit in their pristine offices
With a wall of framed degrees,
But never spent time in a filthy trench
With water, up to their knees.

When I’m left alone in the evenings,
I stagger up out of this chair,
And force myself to walk to the wall
And back, as I fight despair,
But I’m gradually getting stronger,
And my head’s as good as it was,
I’ll show these ignorant jokers
What it takes to be a boss!

I think they’re getting impatient,
They want me out of the way,
I’ve heard them mutter between them,
That they’ll speed my going away,
The one that I used to trust the most
Has sat in my chairman’s chair,
He smirks and shirks all the daily work
While I can but sit and stare.

They’re treating me like an imbecile
They’re treating me like I’m mad,
They’ve draped a blanket over my lap
And don’t realise, I’m glad.
They come at night with a plastic bag
And they place it over my head,
But out from the rug my Magnum looms
And then, Bang Bang, they’re dead!

David Lewis Paget

‘We haven’t the money for bread, my love,
We haven’t the money for tea,
You’d best get dressed in your Sunday best
And go down to the docks for me.
There’s plenty of sailors round the town
Who have just come in from the sea,
They’ll spare five shillings a head, my love,
You only need two or three.’

So Rosalie went to the old wood chest,
To change, as she always did,
Slipped off her shabby old cotton dress
And shook, as she lifted the lid,
Her muslin dress was a shade of grey
That had come third hand from a sale,
Next to a whale-bone corset that
Laced up, made her face go pale.

They’d only been married the year before
When he’d sworn he would care for her,
But most of his money had gone on drink
And the Dollymops at the fair,
He never had kept enough for the rent
When the landlord came, to pay,
‘It’s time that we used what assets we have…’
He’d grinned, in that crooked way.

‘Make sure that you pull your bodice down,’
He said as he tightened her stays,
‘You need to be showing some cleavage, but
Make sure that the blighter pays!
Just leave your drawers on the bedroom floor
You’ll not be needing them there,
The quicker they’re in and out, my love,
The less that you’ll have to bare.’

They walked together along the street,
He to the Wayside Inn,
While she went on to the alleyways
That were always so dark and grim,
He’d wait for her ‘til she’d done the deed
Then she’d meet him back at the bar,
And hand whatever she’d earned out there
In the clutch of many a tar.

She’d steel herself and would go quite numb
At the thought of those clumsy hands,
The leering faces, the coarse remarks
For the rent, and a *** of jam.
The other women would glower at her
If she pitched too close to their stall,
Was pushed in alcoves and spread on bins
And stood, her back to the wall.

She would have left, but her folks were dead
So there wasn’t a place to go,
And he would have thrown her out in the street
If ever she’d whispered ‘No!’
London was full of the fallen ones
Who were shunned, as she would be,
For only a Madam would let her in
To be used, continually.

Her husband sat at the Wayside bar
‘Til it closed, and bundled him out,
With still no sign of his Rosalie
He was mad, and grim at the mouth.
He headed down to the alleyway
When he saw the bobbies there,
They were standing over a pile of rags
And a tangle of auburn hair.

‘You can’t come on, there’s a ****** done,’
Said the sergeant, raising his hand,
A croak came up from the pile of rags,
‘Oh dear, that’s my old man!’
She stirred and murmured before she died
Sunk deep in a bleak distress,
‘Oh John, I’m sorry, the sailor lied,
And the blood has ruined my dress!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Some once called him a Grand Old Man,
Others called him a slime,
You couldn’t get a consensus that
Was even, all the time,
For some kow-towed to his money, while
Others fell by his sword,
His life was overall sunny, while
His victims quailed at his word.

He lorded it over his children,
He ruled their kids with ease,
A sullen look from beneath his brow
Would bring them to their knees,
His will was forever changing
As solicitors came and went,
One day he’d offer a mansion,
And another day, a tent.

When he finally died he was stony broke
And they wondered where it went,
He’d always been abstemious
But the money had been spent.
He left all their lives in ruins with
Their expectations gone,
A couple of ramshackle houses were
The only things they won.

There wasn’t the money to bury him
So they left him where he sat,
Up at the head of the table in
His black, beribboned hat,
He glared at them as he’d glared in life
One hand on the table-top,
Where he used to tap with his finger
As if it would never stop.

Tap-tap-tap on the table-top,
Tap-tap-tap it went,
His eyes bored into the back of your head
As if to say - Repent!
And people scurried, this way and that
To divine what the tartar meant,
The grim old man in his black top hat
Who ruled to their detriment.

They left him sat and they locked the door
Didn’t go back for a year,
Til the eldest, saying ‘let’s know for sure,’
Returned with a tinge of fear.
‘He might have stocks in his waistband there
Or shares hid under his shirt,
Or cash stuffed in his beribboned hat -
He treated us all like dirt!’

He ventured into the dining room
Where the grim old man still sat,
His eyes a-glare in the year long gloom
From under the brim of his hat.
But as the eldest approached him there
The finger began to tap,
A steady rap with a note of doom
That would curdle blood to sap.

So Toby dived to the tinder box
And he leapt up with the axe,
His face as pale as a ghostly tale
But determined to attack.
He raised the axe and he let it fall
Severed the finger there,
It skittered across the table top
As the old man fell from his chair.

The stocks were stuffed in the old man’s hat
The shares were stuffed in his sleeve,
And so much cash in his waistband that
They said, you wouldn’t believe.
But still he’s locked in that grey old house
For they found it wouldn’t stop,
That severed finger that skittered there
Still taps on the table-top!

David Lewis Paget

She wandered down to the rocky beach
On the first Monday in June,
She wore a shawl, and carried a wreath
And sat for the afternoon,
She’d wait til the sun was sinking low
And shadows moved in the caves,
Then stride out into the rising tide
And cast her wreath on the waves.

She didn’t flinch if the waves were high
Or the storm clouds brought her rain,
She gazed out past the horizon while
Her face was creased with pain,
When lightning flickered across the sky
She knew that the gods could see,
And wrung her hands with a terrible cry,
‘Will none of you pity me?’

‘Take me,’ she cried at the rising tide,
‘Take me,’ she groaned at the sky,
‘You’ve taken the only thing I loved
And not even told me why!’
She threw herself at the foam-fleck’d waves
Where the swell would rise and breach,
But ever the tide in its forward ride
Would cast her back on the beach.

She sheltered then in the echoing caves
That dotted the cliff face shore,
And tears had streamed from a source of grace
The gods had preserved once more,
She heard the echoes as waters lapped,
Or thundered in at the cave,
A voice that ever had held her rapt,
‘Be brave, my love, be brave!’

She shut her eyes and she reached on out
For the source of the voice’s charms,
And moaned for a distant memory
That had held her once in his arms,
But the sea was keeping his secrets now,
She could only guess, and pine,
She couldn’t know that he lay below
Near the coast of Palestine.

A stranger came on the woman there,
One of the gypsy folk,
Just as the lightning flickered once
And he wrapped her in his cloak.
He took her up to the top of the cliff
Where the unknown future lies,
As she turned aside to wave goodbye
There was lovelight in his eyes.

David Lewis Paget

There was always an odour of sin around
The nave of that ancient church,
I knew of it as a choirboy,
I didn’t have far to search,
The smell welled up in the vestry,
A sulphur and brimstone tang,
It leached on into our cassocks
When the bell for the matins rang.

The priest, he was old and doddering
And didn’t look ripe for sin,
Old Father Coates may have sowed his oats
With nobody looking in,
But sin was there for a century,
It wasn’t of recent time,
The stories told of a Father Golde
I heard from a friend of mine.

Back in the days when the church was strong
And it ruled the lives of all,
A Father Golde was the priest of old
And preached of the devil’s fall,
When women came to confess their sins
And spoke of their evil deeds,
The priest took them at the altar there
In sin, and down on their knees.

The Nuns attached to the convent were
Obedient to his whim,
And many a cold and frosty night
He would call a sister in,
Her place, he said, was to warm his bed
To deter his chills, and ague,
And many a child was born in dread
To the parish, since the plague.

But one day after confessional
He had ***** a Colonel’s wife,
Who came to him with her petty sin
And described what it was like,
The priest, inflamed by her words and deeds
Had her pressed by the vestry door,
And who could know what she had to show
But the flagstones on the floor.

A troop of soldiers had marched on in
To assuage the Colonel’s rage,
The moment the wife had gone back home
And told of the priest’s outrage,
They seized the priest and they ran him through
With a sword right to the hilt,
Then tied him onto the cross outside
Where a sign outlined his guilt.

And every year on the first of June
You can hear the feet outside,
Marching up to the old church door,
The day that the father died.
A sense of sin that is coming in
As the church doors swing apart,
And blood appears on the altar in
The shape of an evil heart.

David Lewis Paget

They said it was only climate change,
It would take a hundred years
To raise the temperature one degree,
It was easy to reverse,
But the weather pattern was changing
We could see that for ourselves,
And the strangest things were happening
But it only came in spells.

Torrential rain in the dryest state,
And flooding over the plain,
Blazing heat in the winter like
We’ll never see again,
The Ozone Layer had opened up
With the use of C.F.C’s,
And the burn effect of the sun increased,
Was causing more disease.

I told Joanne she should cover up
When she sunbathed at the beach,
You can lead a horse to water
But there’s some you just can’t teach,
She cooked herself to a golden brown
And the burn began to tell,
As the melanomas began to form
In her fragile, human cells.

She had a couple cut out, but then
Some more began to form,
But still she went to the nudist beach
When the sun came up at dawn,
‘I want to look brown and healthy
Not a pastey white, like some,’
And shook her head at the zinc cream
And the protection I put on.

The level of radiation was
Increasing with U.V.,
And even the whales in Summer Bay
Got cancers in the sea,
I warned and warned but she tossed her head,
In that stubborn way she had,
I braced myself for the future, for
I knew, it would be bad.

It started off as a scaley lump
On her shoulder, then it grew,
Faster than anything I’ve seen,
An inch, in a day or two,
I told her to get to the hospital
But she said, ‘I’ll use some cream.’
We little knew what was coming through
It seemed like a nightmare scene.

She sat in the sun again next day,
I said, ‘You’re tempting the fates!
Go and have it cut out, Joanne,
Before it gets too late.’
But the clouds rolled up and the sun went in
It was sultry still, not cool,
Then the lightning flashed around our place
And struck, in our garden pool.

It ran along our verandah rail
And it lit up Joanne’s chair,
While static electricity
Was crackling in the air,
Her hair stood out like a *******
Then her skin began to glow,
And that must have been the moment when
The thing began to grow.

The scab fell off in the morning
Leaving a hole, both red and raw,
And later, when she was screaming,
How to describe the thing I saw?
She stood in front of the mirror with
Her eyes so full of dread,
For up and out of the open wound
Had popped a tiny head.

The tiny head of a pygmy thing
That glared, with razor teeth,
With evil, glittering, crimson eyes
It was just beyond belief,
And then it started to babble in
A strange high, whining tone,
The only words I could understand:
‘You’d better leave me alone!’

Joanne collapsed on the bathroom floor
She had gone out like a light,
And I went straight for the cabinet door,
I was petrified with fright,
I pulled out the cut-throat razor and
I sliced it off at the neck,
But not before it had bitten me
As I dropped it on the deck.

I’m writing this final message so
The rest of you will know,
You’re going to have to cremate us
To destroy this so-and-so,
Joanne has five, and is terrified
While I have only three,
But we’ve sliced off more than a dozen heads
So far, God pity me!

David Lewis Paget

He’d worshipped her since Primary School
And through to the later grades,
He’d carried her books at High School,
And envied her escapades,
She was in demand with her Uni friends
And went with more than a few,
But always said, to make amends,
‘I think I’ll end up with you!’

So he waited for an eternity
For that all-committing kiss,
She plagued his dreams with what would seem
A life that would fill with bliss,
But she seemed to like her fun too much
And returned his engagement ring,
‘I don’t think I’m ready for that, as such,
It’s only a freedom thing!’

But he stayed content, he thought she’d relent
When her fun-filled friends all wed,
Until the day she blew him away
And dropped him, right on his head.
She married a wealthy businessman
Had taken a giant leap,
He said, ‘But you were promised to me,’
And she said, ‘Talk is cheap!’

But he bit his tongue, she was still so young,
And he nursed his sad regret,
Her husband, he was a ladies man
So things might work out yet.
He went to all of their parties, and
He ran all her errands too,
So when, of course, it came to divorce,
She said, ‘I’ll end up with you!’

But she won a great big settlement,
And wanted to have some fun,
‘I’ve done that housewife thing to the hilt,
Don’t stress, don’t force me to run!’
‘You know I’d wait for eternity,
I’d walk to the stars for you,
I’d give my life to make you my wife.’
‘Well, do what you have to do!’

He hung about on the fringes while
She played with a whole new set,
She flirted, went on her binges, and
He found he was waiting yet.
He cried all over the invite that
Had seemed to come out of the blue,
‘We’d welcome you at the nuptials,
Of Elspeth and Gordon Drew.’

Gordon drove a fabulous Porsche
Worth over a hundred grand,
And John could only wave as they passed him,
Off to their fairyland.
But he followed along the old coast road
Though they left him in their wake,
At a hundred and twenty miles an hour
A second is all it takes.

He found them, hanging over the edge
Of the cliff at Dead Man’s Tor,
A sudden move would help it to tip,
Crash down to the rocky shore.
‘Please help, you said you’d walk to the stars
For me, this cliff is steep.’
‘Too bad,’ he said, while walking away,
‘You should know that talk is cheap!’

David Lewis Paget

This government’s greed’s cut into my need
By taxing tobacco smoke,
I needed my **** to concentrate,
They’ve turned it into a joke.
So how many lines of poetry
I’ll never be able to write,
All for the sake of the Nanny State
Insisting I quit tonight.

I see it as persecution of
The few of us that are left,
Turning us into a cash cow that
Has left us feeling bereft.
I thought that the days of fascists died
In the bunker with ******’s crew,
We seem to have re-elected them,
They’re telling us what to do.

We should be allowed to live our lives
The way that we always did,
Making our personal choices then
And not be ruled by the quid.
They keep on edging their taxes up
To make us submit by stealth,
By making it unaffordable,
They say it’s all about health.

What will they do when we all give up
And they find all their coffers bare?
What will they find to tax us then
To make up the smoker’s share?
Maybe they’ll tax the pollies perks
That they vote themselves at night,
Whenever the world’s not watching them,
But that never happens - Right?

We seem to be ruled by a den of thieves
Who make up rules as they go,
Their arrogance you would not believe
As they crush the ordinary Joe.
It’s time that we formed a voting block
To target the safest seats,
And toss out the whole corrupted lot
By dumping them out in the streets.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I walked along a cobbled street
That echoed, clattered, at my feet
And thought of many feet before
Who’d walked this way, but nevermore.

Those cobbles always seemed like home
Had been there since the days of Rome,
My father led me first that way
And his as well, before my day.

Then back, as far as we can see
Those cobbles lay through history,
Though worn and scuffed to mark their age
As walkers shuffled off each page.

Each came, eyes bright, a will to win
A glow without, a fire within,
Determined each to make their mark,
Their headstones now loom in some park.

Their needs and deeds, it must be said
Are soon forgotten, now they’re dead,
Though once it seemed their world was won
It shone and shimmered, then was gone.

And love loomed large in every tale
That walked those cobbles, made men pale
And listless, for the love they lost,
While candles lit each Pentecost.

And I think of those years gone by
That wrought from me a whispered sigh
Of love, I thought, that was well spent,
Was there at Christmas, gone at Lent.

And so I walk these cobblestones
That trip my years, and make old bones,
I turned, and lost that dream somehow,
For that was then, and this is now…

David Lewis Paget

They bet me I couldn’t spend the night
Locked up in the Abbot’s loft,
Up where recusants once, in fright
Would wait for the stake at Pentecost.
They’d once piled ******* high in the square
And taunted all night long,
When peasants stood in the firelight
In a massive, cheering throng.

But that was hundreds of years ago
So of course I said I could,
I should have known there was something wrong
When I saw the man in the hood,
The loft was next to the church bell tower
And would creak when they pulled the rope
Of the giant bell that sat in its bower
To wait commands from the Pope.

I climbed the circular, rickety stair
And they came and locked me in,
There wasn’t a spark of light in there
It was dark, as black as sin,
And all there was was a narrow bed
On a hard, old wooden plank,
A single cover to keep me warm
But I knew just who to thank.

They played the silliest games, of course,
They would howl outside the door,
Just as I started to settle down
I would hear this terrible roar,
Somehow the timbers would start to creak
When they put a strain on the rope,
And then the bell with a sound like hell
Would boom, and I’d almost choke.

I lay the night in a fevered sleep
But I swear someone came in,
I felt a breeze from the open door
And that coarse, harsh breath of sin,
But then a gurgling, choking sound
As my hair stood up on end,
I stayed curled up in my dark surround
As the door creaked once, then slammed.

When morning came, a sliver of light
Shone in through a rafter beam,
It fell upon a terrible sight
A nightmare, wrapped in a dream,
A man, whose body lay by the bed
His throat all ragged and torn,
And blood in puddles of horrible dread,
I wished I’d never been born.

They must have rushed on up to my screams
Flung open the padlocked door,
Then stood in silence, staring at me
And what lay dead on the floor,
I saw him then, the man in the hood
He’d wanted someone to blame,
And there I was, all covered in blood
With friends to witness my shame.

They’d bet me I couldn’t spend the night
Locked up in the Abbot’s loft,
Up where recusants once, in fright
Would wait for the stake at Pentecost.
But now my nights are spent in a cell
Dreaming of death and blood,
And why he’d want to send me to hell
That infamous man in the hood.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d only be gone for a week,
I saw her off in the car,
‘It’s not that long,’ she began to speak,
‘It’s not that I’m going far,’
So I waved goodbye and I turned to go,
I wish I could live it again,
For that was the last I saw of Flo
I’m missing her so, Amen.

Her mother phoned on the following day,
‘What have you done with Flo?
She said we’d meet in the market place,
Did she even set out to go?’
I said she had on the previous day,
‘Is she really not there?’ I said,
And then my mind kept racing away,
I thought that she might be dead.

I called the police and the hospital,
And even the Fire Brigade,
No-one had ever heard of her
Or knew where she might have stayed,
Then I saw a clip on the news that night
She was walking along in the rain,
They were filming down at the station as
She was boarding the Melbourne train.

A week went by and I heard no more,
I thought that she might have phoned,
I saw her brother and sister too,
‘I think that she’s left,’ I moaned.
‘They hadn’t heard, not a single word,
Since that man in an overcoat
Had called in, said he was looking for her,
And left her a simple note.

‘Catch the plane at Tullamarine,
I’ll meet you in Istanbul,
Pick up the pack from the man in green,
Make sure that the pack is full.’
‘I thought you were going on holiday,’
Her brother had said to my face,
I said I didn’t know where she was
She’d gone, with never a trace.

The bomb in the old Ramada Hotel
Went off, I saw on the news
The old city part of Istanbul,
They published a set of views,
And Flo was running from smoke and flames,
I saw her, clear as a bell,
And right behind was a man in green
In front of the old hotel.

They said a woman with auburn hair
Had dropped a pack at the desk,
And then had run, she carried a gun,
Was currently under arrest.
The following day, she got away,
Squeezed out through the window bars,
Then jumped in a waiting limousine,
One of the Russian cars.

I heard she went to Saint Petersburg,
Had asked for asylum there,
They’d said, ‘No way,’ that she couldn’t stay,
She replied, ‘It isn’t fair!’
Nobody wanted to charge her so
They flew her on out to Wales,
And that’s when I met her in Cardiff
Where we sat, with a couple of ales.

She said she had won an adventure
All hush hush, in an online quiz,
But had to deliver a package first,
‘I should have asked what it is.’
She said she was sorry not telling me,
I reached out and held her hand,
‘Where did you think you were going then?’
She said, ‘to Disneyland!’

David Lewis Paget

The news spread over the countryside
As a clatter from iron rails,
The ominous sound of clacketty-clack
From their intersecting trails,
The plodding Goods of the 0-4-0
To the proud Express from Cheam,
It muttered as it was going past,
‘They’re going to get rid of Steam!’

The sudden shock brought an answering hoot
From the stack of the proud Express,
That whispered by on its 4-6-2
But shuddered to draw its breath.
‘And what will they pull their Pullmans with?’
As it passed through an April shower,
A 4-6-0 on another track:
‘They’re moving to diesel power!’

The steam from the Earl of Erin laid
A trail through the valley floor,
Its coals glowed red from the firebox grid
As the fireman shovelled more,
A Day Excursion that quietly sat
To wait for the train to pass,
Had whispered, ‘Sorry to see you go,
You’re King of the Master Class.’

The smoke that billowed from out the stack
Had turned from white to black,
The footplate shuddered, the furnace roared
As it raced along the track,
‘They say they’re moving to diesel power
And they’re getting rid of steam,’
The Earl of Erin had hurtled by
As a Tank Engine had screamed!

The driver, checking the frantic pace
Was trying to slow it down,
But nothing worked, not even the brakes,
‘We’re headed for Hampton Town!
We shouldn’t be doing sixty-five
We’re twenty over the top,
He slammed the door of the firebox shut
And the fireman’s shovel dropped.

The tender’s couplings opened up
And the Pullmans fell away,
The Earl of Erin had surged ahead
With a new found power that day,
It passed a struggling 0-4-0
As it headed toward the sea,
Gave one long blast on its whistle then
To say, ‘I’m finally free!’

The fireman jumped at the water tower,
The glass was going down,
The driver jumped when it hurtled through
The Halt at Hampton Town,
The Earl of Erin went racing on
When the sea came into view,
But locked the brakes at the water’s edge
Just as the boiler blew.

The Earl of Erin’s a rusted wreck
That still sits there on the line,
And children crawl on its footplate there
And dream of another time,
A time of dragons, a time of trains
A time they can only dream,
The age of romance, gone at last,
It died with the age of steam!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Standing alone in the bank today
Was an angel in disguise,
I knew by how she had combed her hair
By the sparkle in her eyes,
A dimple nestled in either cheek
And her lips were pink and fine,
They smiled just once when she looked at me
In an echo of God’s design.

We waited to be attended to
But the teller was so slow,
She let us stand in a queue of two
That had nowhere else to go,
My eyes flicked over the angel’s face
As she stood beside me there,
She must have thought I was more than rude
But I couldn’t help but stare.

I don’t go staring at everyone
It isn’t a trait of mine,
To garner up my attention you
Would have to be more than fine,
But here was an angel, true to life
And she’d come to use the bank,
I had no idea who’d sent her there,
I didn’t know who to thank.

I think I must have unsettled her
With my frank and open stare,
She’d shift uneasily on each foot
And pretend I wasn’t there,
I watched as there came a holy glow
Like a rose on either cheek,
And thought that I was unfair to her
It was time for me to speak.

I motioned once as she turned to me
That I had something to say,
She nodded and she acknowledged me
As she waited, looked my way,
‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,
But I couldn’t help but stare,’
And then I said, ‘but you’re beautiful,’
And her smile entranced me there.

After the teller had done with us
And we ended in the street,
I thought that the angel went away
Then I heard her pretty feet,
‘Whatever you do, it’s up to you,
You’re the keeper of the spell,
I only ask that the thing to do
Is please, Oh please don’t tell!’

David Lewis Paget

Back in the days of the old gas lamps
When the streets were lit, but dim,
A young lamplighter would tour the streets
And the houses, looking in,
The flickering flame of each lamp would light
The windows in the dark,
He’d see what he wasn’t meant to see
In the light of each flickering spark.

He saw what he thought was an angel
Through a window in Lygon Street,
Sitting in front of a mirror,
Looking down, and washing her feet.
Her hair trailed over her shoulders like
Some golden ears of corn,
Then she looked up, and her bright blue eyes
Made him feel he was new-born.

Her lips were set in a steady pout
And were red and ripe to kiss,
Her brows were raised as she looked his way
And his heart felt instant bliss,
While she looked through her window pane
At the face of an angel boy,
Who, breathing mist on her window glass
Had scribbled his name there, ‘Roy’.

Their eyes had locked with each other when
He framed his lips in a kiss,
And she stood up and approached him,
Then she put her lips to his,
They stayed so long that the glass had warmed
But the mist spread round about,
Till neither could see the other it
Had blotted each vision out.

Then every night he had lingered there
With his taper to her lamp,
And shivered out on the footpath for
The nights were getting damp,
He hoped that she would be sitting where
She had sat, before the kiss,
But nothing had moved within that room
From that day until this.

He didn’t know but she’d had to go
To stay on her uncle’s farm,
To breathe the purer air out there
Than the fog that did her harm,
She still spat blood in her handkerchief
But she thought about the boy,
Who’d kissed her once through a window pane
And the thought still brought her joy.

David Lewis Paget

Down at the end of Charters Street
In a dim-lit part of town,
There stands the old Alhambra and
They’re going to pull it down.
We warned them up at the council, but
They said it’s a waste of space,
There’s not been a film for twenty years
Since the Carol Ransome case.

Carol was found in a pool of blood
By the curtains, up on the stage,
Somebody took a knife to her
In a crazed, death-dealing rage,
They never discovered just who it was
But the cinema closed right down,
Nobody wanted to go again
In this hick, one hotel town.

That was the end of our childhood fun
Our own theatre of dreams,
No more Saturday Matinées
Or milk shakes or ice creams,
Nothing to do in this one horse town
But to chase the girls in the park,
And get some serious kissing done
When the day was getting dark.

So Al and Joe and Mary Ann
And me, I must admit,
Broke on into the cinema
And found ourselves in the pit,
Right in front of the dusty stage
Where the curtains hung in shreds,
Barely hiding the giant screen
That was covered in old cobwebs.

We’d played in there for an hour or so
Running between the rows,
Making the Hammond ***** screech
Like a fat man touching his toes,
When suddenly there was a swishing sound
And the curtains began to part,
And something flickered up on the screen
As if it was going to start.

We stood stock still and we held our breath
When the speakers grumbled and groaned,
‘It looks like we’ve got an audience!’
A voice on the speakers moaned.
Then faces peered from the ancient screen
From the days of black and white,
But there wasn’t a single projection beam
From the room where it used to light.

A shimmering glow from the screen fell on
The first few rows of seats,
And one dimensional girls appeared
With ice creams and with treats,
The figures spilled from the silver screen
And onto the wooden stage,
Dracula, framed in black and white
And Frankenstein in a rage.

We were all of us petrified by blood
And Al was thinking to run,
But ‘Don’t you move!’ said an ugly hood
On the screen, and pointing a gun.
They made us sit in the second row
And paraded their long-gone fame,
Bela Lugosi’s fangs and cloak
And the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Then as they faded a woman walked
From the wings, and out on the stage,
And a man that we knew as Grocer George
Flew suddenly into a rage.
He knifed the woman a dozen times
And he beat her down to the floor,
And over the screams of Mary Ann
We made a break for the door.

The screen went dark and the stage was bare
And the curtains hung like shrouds,
We said that we’d never go back in there
As we lay, looked up at the clouds,
But we each went in to the grocery store
And we whispered, ‘Carol’s back!’
‘We know what you did,’ said Mary Ann
And George’s eyes went black.

He chased us out of his grocery
And he closed the store for good,
Then policeman Andy found him hanging
Down in the Maple wood.
They’d better not take the Alhambra down
Or the ghosts of the silver screen,
Will all get out, and they’ll roam about
Without a theatre of dreams!

David Lewis Paget

I’d decided that I’d drown myself
And waded from the shore,
If I had to live without you
I would want to live no more,
For you’d shouted that you’d done with me,
There was no second chance,
Though I’d loved and thought you needed me
You ended our romance.

They had said it was more pleasant than
A gunshot to the chest,
That you’d slowly drift away, and
Wouldn’t leave quite such a mess,
And I didn’t fancy dying from
A bullet in the head,
It would spoil the later viewing
Even though I would be dead.

I could always cut my throat, I thought,
To make you scream and shout,
For my blood would stain your carpet
You would never get it out,
But I thought it might be painful for
That thirty second bleed,
And at best, I’m quite the coward,
It was pain I didn’t need.

So I came in my depression to
The shingle on the shore,
And I watched the massive breakers
As the tide came in once more,
Then it struck me, it was easy
All I had to do was wade,
Way on out to deeper water where
My body could be laid.

I’d be caught by undercurrents,
Taken right out by the rip,
Would be ****** right down and drowned on this
My final deadly trip,
So I pushed on out and waded there,
And pushed against the tide,
Though I wouldn’t be quite honest if
I didn’t say I cried.

Every time I made a hundred yards
The breakers took me in,
As if the white capped rollers wouldn’t
Help me in my sin,
They were thrusting me back shoreward
Every time I tried to turn,
Until I was exhausted
And I found I couldn’t drown.

Then I staggered from the water and
I fell upon my face,
And I thought your voice was calling
Till I looked and saw you, Grace,
You were holding out a towel while
You stood and caught your breath,
Then you said, ‘Get dry, and come back home,
It’s cold, you’ll catch your death.’

David Lewis Paget

‘There were noises up in the attic
When I arose today, Maureen,
Have you been storing your batik
Up on the shelves, for the shelves aren’t clean!
I said you shouldn’t go prying there,
There is nothing up there to see,
Just things I cast from a hazy past
Before your marriage to me.’

‘I keep all my art and craft downstairs
In the cupboard, next to the door,
You’ve watched me folding my batik there
So what would you ask me for?’
‘I only wondered,’ her husband said,
‘Those scrabbles, they could have been rats,
More reason never to venture there…’
‘I’ll bring in the neighbours cats!’

She smiled, and blew him a kiss just then,
They hadn’t been married long,
They’d worked together for six long months
When she only knew him as John.
But after the office party, and
That cupboard, under the stairs,
A half a jug of Bacardi, and
They knew, the future was theirs.

She heard the scrabbling overhead
On a Sunday, lying in,
And what seemed like a rattle of chains
Though she thought, it couldn’t have been.
John Dean was out at the supermart
So she scrambled out of bed,
Pulled down the ladder and mounted it
To the attic, overhead.

The hatch slid back from a faulty catch
And she peered, up into the gloom,
There were spiders webs and rusty beds,
And dust, in that grim old room,
She saw what looked like a cabin trunk,
Padlocked, and covered in chain,
And another trunk with an open lid…
She climbed down the ladder again.

At lunch, she mentioned the sounds she’d heard
And she watched her husband’s face,
He seemed quite distant, then perturbed,
Got up and began to pace.
‘You haven’t been up in the loft, Maureen,
That attic is out of bounds!’
‘Well listen to you, the stern John Dean!
How do you think that sounds?’

They didn’t talk for another day
But her anger was aroused,
While he went up to the attic twice,
Mad at the scene he’d caused.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said,
It’s just that it’s full of dirt.’
But she shrugged off his excuses, she
Was playing at being hurt.

She searched the house for the padlock key
That had locked the trunk in chain,
Then finally found it on his ring,
And slipped it off again.
She waited until the coast was clear
With John Dean not around,
Climbed the ladder and opened the trunk
With the key that she had found.

Just as she went to raise the lid
His head appeared in the hatch,
‘Sorry it’s come to this, our kid,
You’re about to meet your match.’
The lid went up and she looked aghast
At the woman, speared with a knife,
‘Maureen, please meet Deborah Dean,
She was my former wife.’

She pulled the knife from the woman’s throat
And she pointed the blade at him,
‘Don’t think you’ll ever do that to me,’
Her voice was dour and grim.
‘That open trunk is your future home,’
He said as he locked the hatch,
‘You’ll jump right in and you’ll close the lid
When you hear the giant rats!’

David Lewis Paget

My sister Susan had disappeared
At the age of twenty four,
She’d gone on up to the attic room
And she’d locked and barred the door,
We beat, cajoled, and entreated her,
But she never would come out,
I said, ‘We shouldn’t have argued Sue,
I didn’t need to shout.’

My father came with his gravel voice
And demanded ‘Open up!’
He thumped and kicked on the cedar door,
And beat with a metal cup,
But there wasn’t even a whimper
As of somebody inside,
It was like she’d suffered a broken heart
Had crawled in there, and died.

We left her there till the morning,
Thought a night would calm her down,
‘She’ll come out once she is hungry,’
Said my brother, (he’s a clown).
But as the clock struck for dinner time
With not the slightest stir,
My father carried a battering ram
And ran right up the stair.

He stood and battered the cedar door,
He said it gave him pain,
‘I can’t afford to replace it, but,’
Then belted it again,
The door had splintered, the lock fell off
And he burst into the room,
But all that he saw were cobwebs, dust
And an air of deepest gloom.

‘Susan, where can you be,’ he cried,
‘There’s nowhere you can hide,
There isn’t even a window here
So you can’t have got outside,’
His voice rang out through the house and sent
An echo down the stair,
My mother burst into tears to hear
That Susan wasn’t there.

The police came over and climbed the roof,
Dropped into the attic space,
They hunted among the rafters there,
Looked almost every place,
There wasn’t a sign of Susan though
She’d simply disappeared,
‘The same thing happened to Grandma Coe,’
My mother cried, ‘It’s weird!’

‘She locked herself in the attic there
In the fall of forty-eight,
‘They thought that they heard her on the stair
When the hour was getting late,
But never a sign of her came back,
Then her husband, Grandpa died,
We always thought that she must be here
But somehow locked inside.’

We called the local clairvoyant in
And he brought his Tarot pack,
He stared long into his crystal ball
Till we had to call him back,
He chanted into the midnight hour
In a voice both loud and slow,
Till shuffling out of the Attic came
Not Sue, but Grandma Coe!

David Lewis Paget

Elizabeth Warr was the woman next door,
They called her a witch and a hag,
We lived in a lane that was called ‘Little Payne’
Though what there was lived in her bag,
She carried a hammer, a sharp bladed knife
A corkscrew and two leather twists,
The corkscrew she carried for putting out eyes,
The leather for binding of wrists.

She’d been more than sane up until the back lane
Had revealed that her daughter was courting,
Who’d never told anyone who she had met
Till they found her the following morning,
But she had been ravaged, her body was savaged
Her skirt was pulled over her head,
And blood ran in rivulets down to her ankles
Elizabeth’s daughter was dead.

And that’s when she swore that revenge would be hers
As she haunted the back lanes and alleys,
Carting the murderous tools in her bag
And noting who dillies and dallies,
‘He’ll try it again, and I will be there,’
She announced to her friends and her neighbours,
‘They always return to the scene of the crime
And the place of their murderous labours.’

The months had gone by with barely a sign
He’d ever come back to the midden,
With no-one attacked, he hadn't looked back
So guessing the culprit, forbidden.
But then on a line in the communal yard
A scarf fluttered high on the line,
Elizabeth saw it and reached out and caught it
And muttered, ‘I know that, it’s mine!’

Her daughter had borrowed that scarf for one night
The night that she’d thought to go courting,
And then in the horror, the fear and the fright
The scarf wasn’t there in the morning.
Elizabeth watched who collected the scarf
The mother of Alan John Sidden,
Then carried her bag to the rear of the park
While she waited for dark, to be hidden.

They say there were screams and loud howls in the dark
On that night in the early September,
And smoke in the trees that would waft in the breeze
Along with some foul smelling embers,
When Sidden was found, what was left, on the ground
In the morning, his throat cut, it’s true,
They said that his eyes were a gruesome surprise
They’d been taken by some sort of *****.

David Lewis Paget

They’d shovelled her husband into the ground
Before she got to the grave,
She wasn’t able to keep good time
And her husband used to rave:
‘I spend my life, waiting for you,
You’ll be late for your funeral,’
That wasn’t due, but it may come true,
She was late for his, do tell!

He wasn’t a very pleasant man
He was known for his violent moods,
She’d married the guy, then wondered why,
He was often downright rude.
She knew what he was capable of
For he’d often flipped his lid,
And left a trail of destruction then
For that was the thing he did.

If only she had got to the grave
In time for a swift goodbye,
And with a spray, sent him away,
She may have just heard him sigh.
But he must have known she was still at home
When the hearse, with him inside,
Arrived at the local cemetery
On time, but without his bride.

She lay awake in the bed that night
And thought she could hear him breathe,
Just across from her pillowcase
And her breast began to heave.
The wind sough-soughed at the windowsill
And she heard a step on the stair,
She wished for once she had been on time
To know she had left him there.

But she hadn’t seen the coffin drop
And the hole was almost full,
She’d asked that they uncover it
But she didn’t have the pull.
She only hoped he was six feet down
Unable to get back out,
When there was a rattle, out on the porch
And she heard a dead man shout.

‘Late, you’re late, you’re always late,’
It moaned, in an eerie tone,
‘You couldn’t get to the grave on time
So you left me all alone.
You’d not come even to say goodbye
And for that, you’ll pay the price,
For I’ll reach out of the grave tonight
And I promise, it won’t be nice!’

The shutters began to rattle and bang
And the door flew out, ajar,
The wind howled in like a taste of sin
‘I know just where you are!’
She shrieked, and pulled the covers up
And placed them over her head,
‘You just can’t stay, please go away,
You can’t be here, you’re dead!’

The covers were torn from her huddled form
And from what the coroner said,
‘Her face was white, she died of fright,’
Curled up in her lonely bed.
There was just one thing in the autopsy
That was missed, and he made a note,
The thing was botched, for her husbands watch
He found, was lodged in her throat.

David Lewis Paget

On a twisting, winding, rutted track
That weaved from under the pines,
A figure came in a burlap sack
Where the crossroad intertwines,
I could only see the bleeding feet
As they peeped from under the sack,
And the hood hid every feature that
Would deem it a Jill or Jack.

There was purpose in that stolid walk,
And determination fixed,
I thought to offer a helping hand
But my feelings there were mixed,
There were leaves and twigs on the figure’s back
And a slime that looked like mud,
I thought that it might have been attacked
When I saw that the slime was blood.

Nothing could stop its slow advance
As it plodded into the street,
I reached on out but it just walked by
So I thought I’d be discreet,
The day was settling into dusk
As it reached the village square,
And just as the ancient gas lamps lit
It gave a cry of despair.

The cry was that of a woman lost,
Was more of a hell-fire screech,
It echoed up to the steepletop
And I thought of Caroline Beech,
The girl who’d gone to the woods one day
For a picnic of pies and mince,
The basket lay for a week and a day,
She hasn’t been heard of since.

The figure stopped and its arm flew out
To point at the Baker’s door,
I saw his face at the window lace
As pale as a painted *****,
The sweat stood out on his beady brow
As he hurried from room to room,
Locking each door and window now,
And shivering there in the gloom.

A crowd was gathering in the square
Surrounding the baker’s house,
‘You’d better come out and show yourself!’
But he was quiet as a mouse.
The men of the village burst right in
And they ****** him down on his knees,
She put one ****** foot on his head
And he squealed, ‘God help me… Please!’

‘I only wanted some love,’ he said,
‘But you just pushed me away,
I’d never have hurt a hair of your head
If you’d loved me once that day.’
And that was enough for the surly crowd
Who called on Oliver Beech,
To bring a rope from the stableyard
For a lesson they had to teach.

Her father fastened the rope around
The cringing baker’s neck,
Just as the daughter’s burlap sack
Collapsed to a heap on the deck.
There was nothing inside the hood or sack
As it lay there on the street,
Only the footmark stains of blood
From the murdered woman’s feet.

They dragged him down to the wood of pines
And he showed them where she lay,
Under a pile of autumn leaves
He’d covered her with that day,
They left him hanging above the spot
As they bore her gently home,
Now there is no baker in Warley Copse
So the villagers bake their own.

David Lewis Paget

There’s a silence out in the fields tonight
Where the barley sheaves are stooked,
Their shadows stand in a menacing line
While the wives at home are spooked,
They peer from windows, they peer from doors
And they lock their shutters tight,
There isn’t a man in the valley’s span
For they didn’t come home tonight.

They left their cottages there at dawn
As the sun was on the rise,
Wandered out with their ploughman’s lunch
And rubbed the sleep from their eyes,
They carried their sickles across their backs
Their ******* hooks and their flails,
And who could read took a crumpled book
To read with a half of ale.

They bent their backs to the task ahead
Of reaping the sheaves of grain,
The clouds were billowing overhead
And they said, ‘It looks like rain!’
The sun went in and the sun came out
As the shadows flitted across,
They stooked the sheaves at an angle so
The rain would drain from the crops.

The rain held off ‘til the afternoon
When the men were streaked with sweat,
They sheltered under the Sycamores,
Laid down their tools in the wet,
The wives were busily cleaning homes,
Preparing the worker’s tea,
They didn’t look out to the barley field
‘Til the sun dipped into the sea.

They didn’t look, it was almost dusk
When they noticed something wrong,
The men would usually come back home,
They’d hear them, singing a song,
A silence settled upon the land
And the wives came out to stare,
But nothing moved in the barley field,
The men were just not there.

Their faces white in the pale moonlight
The wives sat still, and stared,
The stooks were seeming to move about
And the women, they were scared,
The stooks lined up in the barley field
Like a pack of hooded ghouls,
And lying right in the midst of them
Was a heap of reaping tools.

There’s a silence out in the fields tonight
Where the barley sheaves are stooked,
Their shadows stand in a menacing line
While the wives at home are spooked,
They peer from windows, they peer from doors
And they lock their shutters tight,
There isn’t a man in the valley’s span
For they didn’t come home tonight.

David Lewis Paget

I was staring at the horizon on
A clear and balmy day,
The sky was blue and the sea a type
Of aquamarine in the bay,
There wasn’t a sign of storm or squall
Till the sunset turned dull red,
And then the sky, of a sudden turned
From blue to the grey of lead.

And you were stood there, Geraldine
With your collar turned up high,
You shivered once, then looked around
Took note of the darkening sky,
‘Is that a barque or a barquentine
I see ******* to the pier?’
And slowly, filtering into my view
Was a ship that wasn’t there.

It hadn’t been there all afternoon
It hadn’t sailed into the bay,
I’m sure that I would have noticed if
It was fifteen miles away,
But there it sat with its stays and sails
Reefed in and sitting becalmed,
But dark and ever so threatening
I was right to feel alarmed.

Then Geraldine ran along the pier,
I was trying to call her back,
When lightning lit the sky above
With a sudden tumultuous crack,
She turned just once and she called to me:
‘Don’t follow, it’s my fate!
The ship’s the Admiral Benbow,
I’m a hundred years too late.’

She ran, and her coat flew out behind
Like an ancient type of cape,
And on the deck of the barquentine
Were men, with mouths agape,
A single plank lay across the pier
And up to the wooden bow,
Which Geraldine clambered up to board
While I stood, and wondered how?

No sooner was she aboard, than then
The men gave up a cheer,
And she I saw in the arms of one,
A brigand privateer,
She waved just once, then she went below
To my ever present pain,
The love of my life, my Geraldine,
I never saw again.

The wind blew up and the rain came down
And the barque then raised its sails,
Was cast adrift in a heaving sea
In that coastal port of Wales,
And then I swear, the Captain came
To the bow, and then he leered,
And by the time that I turned around
That barque had disappeared.

David Lewis Paget

I’d rented out the basement  of
A house I used to own,
I hated renting places
I preferred to live alone,
I wasn’t good at choosing all
The tenants I would get,
And this guy was a doozy
The most eccentric of them yet.

But I must admit, the money
Paid the mortgage, right on time,
And I looked toward the future
When the house, it would be mine,
So I put up with his foibles
And his funny little ways,
He would sit down in his basement
And would disappear for days.

He had a little doctors bag
He wouldn’t be without,
With signs both astrological
And Druid runes, no doubt,
He always took it with him
When he wandered down the street,
Come skulking back, and talk about
The ******’s that he’d meet.

I knew something was going on,
I heard both screams and moans,
Seep up from out the basement
With the creak of drying bones,
At night they used to wake me up
And I’d lie there in dread,
And wonder what that movement was
Beneath my poster bed.

One night I crept on down and stood
Outside the basement door,
And heard strange voices muttering
Not one, but three or four,
I heard him raise his voice and say
In tones both harsh and grim,
‘I didn’t say you’d have your way,
But you can enter him!’

A peal of ghoulish laughter then
Rang out behind that door,
I bounded up those steps, ran like
I’d never run before,
Then lowered down the steel trapdoor
That sealed off that stair,
And laid the carpet over it,
You’d not know it was there.

I put up with a week of thumps
And cries of ‘let me out!’
But put my face close to the floor
And whispered, ‘Hey, don’t shout!
You keep those demons that you raised
Locked in your doctor’s bag,
Or maybe they will enter you,
And then, if so, that’s sad!’

I waited for those sounds to die
For upwards of a year,
Then poured a ton of concrete in
To seal that basement stair,
The house has sold, a Mr. Bould
Paid not enough, no doubt,
But said, ‘there’s not a basement there,
I’ll have to dig one out!’

David Lewis Paget

They’d never got on before the dance
And they certainly wouldn’t now,
For Geoffrey Raise had showered praise
On the Fireman’s girl, somehow,
And she, Charlene, was impressed, it seems
With the Engine driver’s call,
And changed her date, though it seemed too late
To the Fireman, at the ball.

They stood on the plate of the Duke of Kent
With the fireman raising steam,
Shovelling coal to the firebox
In a movement swift and clean,
He scattered the coals on the glowing bed
With a practised twist of his wrist,
While the driver kept his eyes ahead
As the steam built up, and hissed.

‘Why did you jump on Charlene then,’
Said the Fireman, Henry Rice,
During a break, his back was bent
With sweat, but his eyes were ice,
‘I don’t have to answer to you,’ said Raise,
‘Charlene was anyone’s girl,
I liked the way that she held herself
And she sure knew how to twirl.’

The train pulled out of the station with
A puff and a cloud of steam,
And clattered along the track from Klifft
On its way to Essingdean,
Pulling a dozen coaches and
A Guards van at the rear,
And a hundred and twenty passengers
At the high time of the year.

‘What would you say if I did to you
What you did to me, back then,
Cutting in on your date that night,
What was her name, that Gwen?’
‘She wouldn’t have looked at you,’ said Raise,
As he pulled the chord to toot,
‘And as far as your feelings go, old chum,
I really don’t give a hoot.’

The train was rocketing down the line,
And flew past the water tower,
While Raise had opened the ***** right up
To give the Express more power,
The gauge was inching at sixty five
As they flew past Barton Dale,
While Rice was shovelling coal once more
Though his face was pinched and pale.

He took Raise down with the shovel as
They raced through Weston Town,
Who lay, half stunned on the footplate
Hanging off and looking down.
He kicked on out at the Fireman with
His size twelve steel-capped boots,
Who reached and hung on the chord that gave
The Duke of Kent its *****.

The train was racking up seventy five
As they kicked and punched and swore
Totally out of control it passed
The Halt at Elsinore,
They narrowly missed a rumbling freight
As the points took it aside,
While Raise had yelled, ‘You can go to hell,
But control your wounded pride.’

The Fireman opened the firebox
Spraying hot coals on the plate,
‘Now dance again as you danced Charlene,
If you think that you’re oh so great.’
‘Just let me get to my feet,’ said Raise
‘Or you’re going to wreck the train.’
‘It might be time,’ said the Fireman,
‘For your life to fill with pain.’

They hit the buffers at Essingdean
And the engine left the track,
It leapt up over the platform as
The roof ripped off the stack.
Raise was told when they went to court
That he’d never be re-hired,
And Rice, for want of the girl he sought,
The Fireman was fired.

David Lewis Paget

‘You have to come up to the house,’ she said,
‘I hate to be there at night,
I have two ghosts in the old bedposts
And each of them wants to fight,
They make their way to the kitchen there
And clatter the pots and pans,
The woman ghost is a Gretel, and
The masculine ghost is Hans.’

I said, ‘You must be imagining,
There’s not a ghost you can see,’
‘Well, I’ve got two and I’m telling you
I see, believe you me!
The guy is a cranky, violent fool,
He must have been bad in life,
While she defends herself with a stool
Each time that he beats his wife.’

The house was Gothic and Romanesque
And leaned out over the street,
It had an arch like a gothic church
With an overhead retreat.
And that’s where she kept the poster bed
Where the ghosts, she said, reside,
‘They can’t come out in the light of day
So they go in there to hide.’

We spent the evening playing cards
To wait for the witching hour,
Sat in our coats to await the ghosts
And their ectoplasmic shower,
‘It often gets messy,’ Cassandra said,
‘At the point they first appear,
They give out this vapour in the air,
A bit like the froth on beer.’

It must have been eleven o’clock
When Cassandra fell asleep,
I thought I could see her nodding off
Though her eyes began to peep,
Each nostril gave out a pale white smoke
And it formed on left and right,
One was Gretel and one was Hans
And it gave me quite a fright.

It didn’t take them a moment then,
She screamed and he would bawl,
He beat her with a broom handle and
Then pinned her against the wall,
She kicked him fair in the shins and ran
Right out of the room in there,
I watched him yell as he followed her
Down by the kitchen stair.

And then there was a clatter of pans
A noise like you’ve never heard,
They threw them around the kitchen
Until Gretel was calling ‘Merde!’
I tried to rouse Cassandra, who
Was groggy, but still awake,
I said, ‘You’ll have to be exorcised,’
And watched her begin to shake.

‘They may have been in the bedposts when
You came, I’m sure that’s true,
But maybe they found a better place
For now they live in you.’
I told her the ectoplasm formed
From her, and from whence it came,
She covered her mouth and nose and said,
‘They’ll never get back again!’

When daylight dawned in that gothic house
And the sun came shining in,
The ghosts came back to the bedroom and
They paid for their ghostly sin,
Cassandra fended them off until
They both were shouting, ‘Merde!’
Until the light had destroyed them with
A scream that you should have heard.

There’s not been a ghost in that gothic house
From then until this day,
I’m visiting still with Cassandra and
We’ve found a game to play,
It has to do with that poster bed
With its polished, wooden posts,
But the one thing that we’re certain of,
We’ll never be seen by ghosts.

David Lewis Paget

It started when he had brought a box
He’d bought, back home from the fair,
The size of an average tinder box
In brass, and embossed with care,
The scene was the site of a battlefield
Where the redcoats marched as one,
In the face of the French artillery
Looking down the mouth of a gun.

And on the right was a drummer boy
Who drummed to the marching feet,
He gazed ahead but his eyes were dead
As he kept up a steady beat,
A moment of peril embossed in time
When nations ruled by the gun,
The redcoats all in a staggered line
With the battle not yet won.

‘And how did you come by that,’ she said,
His wife, when he brought it home,
‘I should know better than let you out
With a pound, when you’re on your own.
The gypsies see you abroad, my lad
And they say, ‘Now there’s our mark!
They’d pick you out of a thousand folk
Out there, a-stroll in the park.’

‘It wasn’t a gypsy, Jen,’ he said,
‘But an old, sad military man,
Struggling on a pension for
His bread, as best he can.’
‘You’re just as soft as the next one, Bill,
They’d steal a beggar’s cup,
But now that you’ve got your tinder box
Let’s see, just open it up.’

‘I can’t, it’s locked with a type of lock
That I’ve never seen before,
It’s rusted on, and there is no key,
It’s a work of art for sure.’
He set it down by their rustic hearth
Where it looked so very fine,
A piece from their ancient history
Where the soldiers stood in line.

That night they woke to the distant sound
Of a battle, lost and won,
The sound of cheers, of clashes, tears
To the beat of a distant drum,
And Jen was lying there frozen as
She clung to her husband’s arm,
‘What have you brought on home to us?’
She cried, in her alarm.

The morning saw her attack the lock
With a hammer to no avail,
The lock, it might have been rusty but
Was solid, strong and hale,
And Bill said ‘Stop! You will ruin it,
There’s nothing there to hide,
I bought it more for the picture than
What might there be inside.’

Each night the sound of a battle filtered
Out of that tinder box,
The sounds of the muskets firing, of
Whizz-bangs and battle shocks,
And through it all was the steady sound
Of the little drummer’s beat,
It rose up out of the battleground
With the sound of marching feet.

They finally cut the lock away
With a coarse old hacksaw blade,
It took a couple of hours that day
So sturdy was it made.
Then Bill said ‘Your curiosity
Has made me wreck the lock,
So now, there’s nothing to stop you, Jen,
Just open up the box.’

The lid flew up and the sight she saw
Was enough to make her faint,
For there, the skull of the drummer boy
Lay with its coat of paint,
And blood, red blood was the skull in there
Though the teeth were pearly white,
A bullet hole in the frontal lobe
That had kissed the boy goodnight.

And folded there, but beneath the skull
Was the skin of the drummer’s drum,
Blackened, torn and beyond repair
It had sounded for everyone.
It’s buried now with the drummer’s skull,
It’s resting beneath a tree,
And never sounds, for its war is won,
It’s where it was meant to be.

David Lewis Paget

I had an Indian Fakir come
To stay, from Uttar Pradesh,
I was doing a friend a favour,
I don’t, as a rule, have guests,
I couldn’t make out a single word
He said, and so my friend
Provided a written commentary
To guide me, in the end.

It seems he was naming my furniture
It’s something that they do,
In places that are incongruous
Like the depths of Kalamazoo,
And he wanted to give them English names
So he asked my friend’s advice,
In case I couldn’t pronounce them,
Well, at least the thought was nice.

My armchair became Albert
And my settee Gunga Din,
I suppose he thought it would be okay
As it was from Kipling.
The tallboy was called Gerald
And the wardrobe, simply Joe,
The polished table Cheryl
And the kitchen one was Flo.

I’m glad that he wrote them down because
I can’t remember names,
Just that the bed was Susan
And the kitchen sink was James,
Some of them were portentous like
Ignatius, for the desk,
While each of the kitchen chairs was given
A name that ends with -este.

Celeste, Impreste, Doneste and Geste
And then of course, Ingeste,
I couldn’t remember which was which,
My friend was not impressed.
We bade farewell to the Fakir
And the Wardrobe flapped its doors,
And rumbled out a ‘Goodbye my friend’
From between its mighty jaws.

Then voices rose in a chorus from
Each part of my tidy home,
The names had given them each a voice,
It was rowdier than Rome,
The voices were accusatory
Trying to lay some guilt,
And Susan said of the Wardrobe, Joe,
‘He’s looking up my quilt!’

‘How could I help it,’ Joe replied,
‘I’m at the foot of the bed,
You’re flashing me with your silken sheets,
It’s doing in my head!’
While Albert grumbled in voice so deep,
‘Do I have to be a chair?
Each time you plonk on my tender seat
I’m gasping out for air!’

Then the kitchen chairs were out of place
And James was choked with suds,
The carpet, name of Emily
Was sick of traipsing mud.
It seemed that the polished table top
Was scratched, and she was mad,
The desk disliked my keyboard so
To each, I answered ‘Sad!’

‘You’re going to have to get along
I won’t put up with this,
Until that Fakir came along
This house was perfect bliss.’
I did away with their English names,
Replaced them with Chinese,
But they couldn’t speak a word of it
So I brought them to their knees!

And peace returned to Grissom Place
Just as I thought it would,
I made it plain to Wardrobe Joe
‘You’re just a lump of wood.’
While Susan smooths her quilt right down
And tucks her sheets right in,
And James just blubs, he’s full of suds
As I nap on Gunga Din!

David Lewis Paget

They’d gone to live in an old stone house
On the further side of a hill,
‘You’ll come to enjoy the countryside.’
She said, ‘I never will!
I’ll miss my friends and the city streets,
And where will I go to shop?’
‘You shop too much as it is,’ he said,
‘Perhaps it’s the time to stop.’

He’d taken a job on a local farm,
He wanted to get away,
Away from her supercilious friends,
The ones that had made her stray.
He’d caught her necking with Edward Jones
At the Carlton, out for a drink,
The ***** was seeping into her bones,
She needed to stop, and think.

She said it was only harmless fun,
He didn’t mean much to her,
‘He’s just a friend that I’ve known since when,
It was just a peck, I swear.’
‘Your friend’s been after your skirt too long,
He drinks you into a fog,
He’ll take advantage, so you beware,
I’ve heard that he’s called ‘Black Dog!’

She wandered around the house alone
When he went to work at the farm,
Scoured the house for a bottle of gin,
Or something to keep her warm.
She looked out over the countryside,
Was suddenly on her guard,
For bounding over the garden stile
Was a ******* dog in the yard.

His coat was sleek, and his body lean
And his tongue lolled out of his jaw,
She took a slug of the Gilbey’s Gin
Found hidden behind a door.
The dog lay panting, and stared at her
With its eyes of grim intent,
While she stared back through the window pane,
And trembled until it went.

A week went by, and it came each day,
And stared at her from the yard,
She couldn’t move while the dog was there
But she kept the windows barred.
When Ben came home from his daily toil
He could see she was most upset,
‘You’re pale and shivering, Gail,’ he said,
‘What seems to be wrong, my pet?’

‘I can’t go into the garden, Ben,
I’m stuck in this house all day,
It’s cold and lonely within these walls
Each time that you go away.’
‘You need to open the doors,’ he said,
‘And open the windows too,
You should be letting the sun shine in
With the fresh air blowing through.’

She didn’t tell him about the dog,
She thought that he’d think her mad,
‘It’s only a dog,’ she thought he’d say,
And suddenly felt quite sad.
‘I’ll try,’ she muttered, but shook inside
At the thought of an open door,
With a ******* dog come wandering in,
And slavering at the jaw.

It came each day for another week
Then she threw the window wide,
The breeze rushed in and it calmed her down
With the scent of the countryside.
The dog came up to the window then
And it placed its paws on the sill,
Its eyes had gleamed, turned red it seemed
And it almost broke her will.

She seemed to hear in her inner ear
What the dog, in its gruff, low tones,
Was beaming into her mind, so clear,
‘Come back to Edward Jones!
He’ll keep you clear of the countryside
And you’ll have your friends as well,’
But reflected back from the black dog’s eyes
Was a scene from the depths of Hell!

That night, she spoke of the dog to Ben,
But he laughed, and shrugged it away,
‘It’s probably just a farmer’s dog
That comes over here to play.’
‘It’s more than that, I’m afraid of it,
For its eyes are cruel and hard,’
Then Ben leaned over the window-sill,
The black dog stood in the yard.

It stayed a moment and then was gone,
It leapt back over the stile,
Then disappeared in a darkened field
While Ben just stood for a while.
His face was pale when he turned to Gail
And he said, ‘I’ll buy a gun.
He won’t come worrying you again,
By God, I’ll make him run!’

He came back home the following day
To a house, so cold and still,
He placed the gun on the table, then
Looked over the window-sill.
The black dog stared, and its eyes were red
As it sneered its disregard,
For a ***** went following on behind
As they both took off from the yard.

David Lewis Paget

The rain swiftly flowed down the gutters,
The thunder roared out overhead,
The wind whistled in through the falling leaves
Of the trees that were thought to be dead,
And Annie stared out of the window
Was trapped at the height of the storm,
She should have been down at the hospital,
Her baby was soon to be born.

But she saw that the driveway was empty,
For Tom had gone out with the car,
She hoped and she prayed that he’d reappear
For surely he hadn’t gone far.
Contractions were now just a minute apart
That she timed on the clock on the wall,
And let out a moan when the clock chimed a tone
She knew she was weak, and might fall.

She’d not really wanted this baby,
Had argued with Tom when he came,
The shadow that climbed through her window that night
Had brought her perpetual shame,
It wasn’t as if she had known him,
He came under cover of night,
Then planted within her his darkness,
She felt there was something not right.

And now there was no-one to help her,
No nurse or midwife at her bed,
The doctor expected a troubled birth
To go by the things that he said,
And now the involuntary pushing
That ****** her down onto the floor,
Three fingers dilated, the birth that she hated
Would leave her both chastened and sore.

The child started coming despite her,
She screamed as the head became free,
Then felt as if claws and the ripping of jaws
Were tearing her clear to the knee,
But then it lay out on the carpet,
Its little dark face creased with joy,
And Tom, looking down, had said with a frown,
‘It has horns, but at least, it’s boy!’

David Lewis Paget

The truck pulled up at the crack of dawn
On a Sunday morn in June,
I could hear the men unloading from
The darkness of my room,
‘What a strange time to deliver,’ I thought,
As I rose, pulled on my socks,
For there on the porch outside I found
They’d left a ******* box.

There wasn’t a mark on this gleaming box
But the scrawl of my own address,
Nothing to say who it was from
Just a silent emptiness,
I left it there til the sun came up
Then I pulled it through the door,
And there in a tiny script was writ
The legend, ‘from Zhongguo’.

Why would the Chinese send a box,
I hadn’t been there for years,
Maybe the Tong I’d tangled with
Back then, for black was a curse.
I looked for a way to open it
But there wasn’t a flap or seam,
It wasn’t tin and it wasn’t steel
But a substance in-between.

I dragged it out in the garden then,
Outside of the door, at back,
And thought that I would figure it out,
Then the box began to crack.
It heated up in the morning sun
And began to peel away,
Opening up the inside to
Be seen by the light of day.

And there inside was a giant egg,
The biggest I’d ever seen,
All sorts of curious markings on
The shell, in Mandarin.
I went inside and I locked the door
And I sat myself to think,
Why would they send a giant egg?
My mind was on the blink!

It only took a couple of hours
In the sun, that day in June,
And the shell began to break apart,
To hatch in the afternoon,
And a thing crawled out of that empty shell
That I never thought I’d see,
A tiny Chinese Dragon hatched
Came out, was suddenly free!

I couldn’t believe how fast it grew
As it fluttered out its wings,
It ate the cat and my bowler hat
And a host of other things,
Then it wandered down to the goldfish pool
Slid in, and began to swim,
There isn’t a single goldfish left
And the pool is sizzling.

Its head comes up and it gives a roar
And it sets the reeds on fire,
The flame is almost ten feet long
And my future’s looking dire.
Will someone get in touch with the zoo
They can have the beast for free,
Oh no! It’s wandering up the path,
No doubt, it’s looking for me!

David Lewis Paget

Zhongguo – ****. Jong gwar – China

The bus rolled up, and parked on the green
It was painted black outside,
With just one sign, up over the door,
‘Come in for a hell of a ride.’
So the neighbours gathered around the bus
And the wife went up to the door,
She said, ‘Come on, stop making a fuss,
What are you waiting for?’

My Dawn has always been quick to jump
She’ll do most things for a fling,
She gets herself in trouble enough
By trying most everything,
She once got stuck on the Ferris Wheel
When she got right up to the top,
Then the lights went out, and they all went home
And the seat began to rock.

You’d think that that would have cured her when
She spent the night in the air,
Freezing her **** in the darkness and
Tied to a swinging chair,
When the wind blew up and the rain came down
And the lights in the fair went out,
She swears that she almost lost her voice
For the times that she tried to shout.

Now here she was at the door of a bus
That was black, and dim inside,
You couldn’t see through the tinted glass
I know, for we all had tried,
The neighbours stood there, egging her on
Though they stood well back in fear,
While Dawn rapped ******* the bus’s door,
Nobody else went near.

The door slid back with an evil swish
And revealed a dim red glow,
She said ‘Come on,’ and I said ‘You wish,’
She called me a so-and-so,
But climbed the step and the door slid shut
Locking us all outside,
The diesel roared as it started up,
Drove into the countryside.

That said it might have been Martians or
Some pinhead freaks from the Moon,
We didn’t know what they came here for
But we all would find out soon,
I hate to think what they did to her
In the glow of that evil bus,
Or if there was only the driver, but
He sure wasn’t one of us!

They found her out in a country lane
Or at least, what there was left,
I went quite crazy with grief, for I
Had never felt so bereft,
They’d taken her heart, and her kidneys, lungs
And even the ***** of her eyes,
So now we knew what that sign had meant,
‘Come in for a hell of a ride.’

If ever you see a ******* bus
Roll up and park on the green,
Stay well away from the door, or pay
The price that my Dawn has seen,
It’s there to collect the organs from
Unwary ones, and it steals
Whatever it can from mortal man,
It’s really a hell on wheels!

David Lewis Paget

The hull was that of a freighter, merchant,
Old, but still under steam,
It rose from off the horizon, distant,
Out of somebody’s dream,
Its livery had been dull and black
But now it flaked and it peeled,
The paint rose up on bubbles of rust
It was once designed to have sealed.

And from its stack there was dark grey smoke
That rose and spread on the sea,
Fouling the air in a narrow track
So they wouldn’t be seen by me,
We put the coastal cutter about
And raised the flag in the sun,
So Sally could see we were headed out
As she went on the Black Dog run.

The day was done it was almost dusk
When we entered that trail of smoke,
The freighter, ‘Emily Greensleeves’ must
Have burnt off a ton of coke,
We only saw her faint through a haze
And never a single crew,
But only Sally up on the bridge
As the dog came rabbiting through.

The dog, as black as a tinker’s ***
Raced back and forth on the deck,
Not so much as a chain restraint
Or a collar stud at its neck,
It stood there slavering down at us
When we got up close with a gun,
And often we thought to pick it off
When out on the Black Dog run.

But then the freighter would slip away
Deep in its trail of smoke,
And we’d be left alone in the bay
Trying to breathe, not choke,
Others have said they will bring her in
This ghostly girl, with a gun,
But nobody’s able to pin her down
When out on the Black Dog run.

David Lewis Paget

The Cormorant was the darkest ship,
As dark as a ship could be,
Not only the paint was pitted black
From the funnels to the sea,
But deep inside in its rusted gloom
In the echoes from its shell,
It was like a monster roamed abroad
Released from the depths of hell.

It roared and echoed by day and night
As the boilers turned the *****,
Lurching across every wave that might
Try to break its hull in two,
It was laden down with a thousand tons
Of a cargo that made it groan,
While breakers slapped its quivering sides
As it made its way back home.

The Captain stood on the shuddering bridge,
A man with a heart of steel,
He tried to control this raging beast
As he lashed himself to the wheel,
He gave no quarter to any man
Who would shirk, avoid his task,
But called the crew to witness his due
As the man was soundly lashed.

Down in the depths of the engine room
The firemen shovelled coal,
Each shovel sprayed like a black dismay
In the light of that glowing hole,
And steam built up on the pressure gauge
Of each boiler, one and two,
As men would fret, while running in sweat,
To do what they had to do.

The seas built up and the rain came down
As the Cormorant rolled and swayed,
Then lightning flashed and it ran to ground
Like an imp in a masquerade,
It left three dead on the afterdeck,
They hurried to help them there,
But the captain roared, ‘Throw them overboard,
We’ve more than enough to spare.’

A mutter grew up among the crew
As dark as the bosun’s hat,
I never knew what the crew would do
So I wasn’t in on that.
But the Captain disappeared from the bridge
And the wheel was swinging free,
With the Cormorant broadside to the waves
At mercy of wind and sea.

They said it must be a miracle
When we finally entered port,
The bilge half full of water, they said,
And the Captain fell overboard.
But the ship was done, had made its last run
As the fires went out in the hull,
Then raking through the mountain of ash
I found the late Captain’s skull.

David Lewis Paget

I’d met Helga at the ******’s Rest
Where I said that I’d be her mate,
Sailing her ancient Freighter for her
Down to the River Plate.
But then, I’d never set eyes on it
I was more concerned with her lips,
This Helga, who had bought the wreck
From the old graveyard of ships.

Then down at the dock, I saw it then
Coal fired, and full of rust,
And wondered if it could make it there
But she turned, and said, ‘It must!’
She’d spent the coin from a bad divorce
From the head of a shipping line,
‘I helped him to build that business up,
In truth, it ought to be mine!’

It was then that I saw the hatred there
Set deep in her flashing eyes,
‘My husband said he was going broke,
It was just a pack of lies.
He’s bought another great tanker since
That he calls Madrid Maru,
And sails it under a foreign flag
So there’s nothing that I can do.’

We threw some paint on the freighter then
And piled the coal in a stack,
Painted the name as Helga Jane
But the only paint was black.
She hired some Lascars, stoking coal,
An engineer for the crew,
And loaded the hold with tractor tyres
And aircraft engines, too.

We left the port with a head of steam
And nosed our way from the dock,
The pistons rumbled beneath the deck
In their first reprieve, in shock.
‘It’s been a while, it will settle down,’
Said the engineer, old Sam,
So slowly, out to the open sea
We sailed from Amsterdam.

The stars were bright on that first full night
With Helga stood at the wheel,
Heading into the darkness there
As if she could see and feel.
The Freighter seemed to respond to her
At the slightest touch of her hand,
And I took over the wheel once we
Were out of sight of the land.

I’d thought she might have been lonely
Once we had been some days at sea,
And hoped she’d open her cabin door
But her door stayed closed to me.
She seemed to brood, in an evil mood
When she joined me at the wheel,
‘I gave him years of my life,’ she said,
‘Then all that he does is steal!’

And even the freighter seemed to feel
The sense of her own despair,
It rose and fell with the ocean swell
And groaned as if steel could care.
In black of night, with a single light
There were sounds deep in its bowels,
The hull would shake as I lay awake,
And moan, like a demon’s howls.

A storm blew up on the seventh day
And it tossed our craft about,
We turned it into the crashing waves
As we tried to ride it out,
But the rudder snapped from the rudder post
So we couldn’t turn or steer,
And all this little black freighter gave
The crew was a sense of fear.

Then out of the mist of the driving rain
Came a hull she thought she knew,
And Helga screamed, and the freighter seemed
To know it, Madrid Maru,
The pistons started to race below
And the bow rose out of the swell,
Racing towards the starboard now
Like an arrow released from hell.

Though Helga clung to the useless wheel
To try to steer it away,
All the hatred she’d ever felt
Reposed in the ship that day.
We threw the lifeboat over the side
And the engineer jumped free,
I called to Helga, and she replied,
‘It’s fate! It’s coming for me!’

One of the Lascars made the boat,
The others were down below,
We watched as the Freighter raced ahead
While the tanker was long, and slow.
It punched a hole in the tanker’s side
And was rushed by the water in,
With Helga fighting the useless wheel,
I never saw her again.

It took an hour for the ships to sink
Still lodged together with force,
Even while drowning in the depths
They couldn’t get a divorce.
I’ll never forget that Freighter though,
It took on a woman’s pain,
They lie as one, now their day is done
Since we christened her Helga Jane.

David Lewis Paget

The birds are twittering in the trees
That stand outside my door,
There’s only a pale grey dawning light
‘Til the sun comes up once more,
The clouds are scudding across the sky
In an early sign of rain,
While the one I love went out last night
And never came back again.

She said she’d only be gone an hour
That she had to see the priest,
Her husband’s funeral’s coming up
And she owes him that, at least,
She went to purchase a single plot
So she took my leather purse,
To see what coffins the maker’s got
And arrange a horse-drawn hearse.

She only married a year ago
And her heart is fit to break,
She cried all night when she told me how
It was all a huge mistake,
‘I should have married for love,’ she said,
‘Then I would have married you,
But I let his money go to my head,
So what is a girl to do?’

We talked and talked through the early hours,
We talked and talked for a week,
She came unbid to my poster bed
Lay naked under the sheet,
She said she never had tasted love
As sweet as the love I gave,
But I was thinking her husband dead
And soon to go to his grave.

‘You really shouldn’t be seen with me
‘Til he’s safely in the ground,
It wouldn’t be right, the folks would say,’
But Elizabeth just frowned.
‘A love like this could never be wrong,
Let the gossip-mongers sneer,
I haven’t felt so much love as this
For the best part of a year.’

I said, ‘It must have been terrible
To be losing him so young,’
And caught a glimpse of a glistening tear
As she put her make-up on,
‘It goes to show how life can go
In the twinkling of an eye,’
She held my hands, gazed into my eyes,
And let out a heartfelt sigh.

She came back late in the afternoon
With a bundle of receipts,
‘It’s all arranged, we can get engaged
In a month from Tuesday week.
I told him that you had slept with me
And you should have heard him roar,
You’d better wait in the hallway while
He’s beating down your door!’

My jaw had dropped and my face was white
As I tried to take it in,
‘I thought you told me that he was dead,
Before we indulged in sin!’
‘He will be soon if you stand and wait
And you want me in your bed,
I borrowed the blacksmith’s hammer for you
To hit him across the head!’

David Lewis Paget