I’d walked back home by the clifftop path,
I’d only been gone an hour,
Rounding the point, it came into view
The sight of our Black Stone Tower.
Its ancient mystery suited me then
We’d picked it up for a song,
Nobody else had wanted it,
At the price, we couldn’t go wrong.

They said that a king had built it there
Far back in the mists of time,
And soldiers climbed by the old stone stair,
But now, thank god, it was mine.
A roof to shelter my Evelyn,
Though we supped by candlelight,
And drew our water deep from a well,
Made love when the stars were bright.

But now a breeze blew up from the cliff,
Was chill, and ruffled my hair,
And something about the Black Stone Tower
Was strange, a sense of despair.
For weeds had grown where the weeds were not
When I’d left, an hour before,
And someone had painted a bright red cross
On the Baltic Pine of the door.

It was only when I had got close up
That I saw that the red was blood,
And the door was half off its hinges,where
It was splintering, as I stood,
Then shapes began to appear to me,
Of soldiers, battering in
The Baltic Pine of this ancient door
To slay the soldiers within.

There wasn’t a single sound to hear,
There should have been clash and roar,
A mighty battle was raging in
The Black Stone Tower of war.
I called and I called for Evelyn
But there wasn’t a single trace
Of the love that I’d left alone in there,
That now, most terrible place.

I ran outside to the edge of the cliff
And stared down into the bay,
And there was the foulest, evil ship
Sails set, for sailing away.
And Evelyn strode down on the beach
While a soldier pulled at her hair,
Dragging her into a longboat as
She fought and struggled down there.

But this was a different Evelyn
To the one that I’d left at home,
The ******* the beach was dressed in peach,
My Evelyn dressed in bone,
And not in a full length courtly dress
Like you see from the days of yore,
As her ghostly shadow stepped in the boat
And sailed away from the shore.

I turned again to the Black Stone Tower
And the door was back in its frame,
There wasn’t a sign of the ****** cross
That had been there, just as I came.
And Evelyn staggered from out the door
As I cried out, ‘Where have you been?’
And she said sleepily, ‘Don’t be cross,
I’ve had an incredible dream!’

David Lewis Paget

I’d always thought that books were the same,
There wasn’t a lot to choose,
They each seep slowly into your brain
With knowledge you can’t refuse,
But then a book I found on a shelf
All ***** and dark and dank,
I’d read so far, then turning the page
I’d find every page was blank.

The print will stay till I drop my eyes
And the book slips from my grasp,
Then every page that’s ahead is blank
As the book escapes my clasp.
The villain smirks as I lose the plot
And he changes what’s to be,
He struggles up from the printed page
In an effort to be free.

I read the book on a cliff top verge
Looking down along the coast,
The day was calm like a soothing balm
And I felt as warm as toast,
My eyelids, heavy as lead dropped down
Preparatory to sleep,
When someone scaling the cliff ahead
Called out, began to weep.

‘God help me, sir, or I’ll fall below,
On that pile of jagged rocks,
Reach out for me and don’t let me go,
You don’t look the type that mocks.’
I noticed then that I’d dropped the book
In a pool of mud, and rank,
It fell agape with a broken back
The following pages blank.

‘I have to ask how your tale will end,
It’s unfinished in the book,
Your villainous deeds go on, and then
Disappear each time I look.’
‘It ends any way you want it to,
It’s the tale without an end,
For you are the villain in the book
You can do what you intend.’

I stood up straight and I kicked on out
At the figure on the cliff,
And he fell back with a scream, a shout
To the rocks along the reef,
I turned to pick up the broken book
Wiped the pages free from mud,
There wasn’t a single page left blank
Each page was stained with blood.

David Lewis Paget

This page is white as a white can be
Til I lift my pen and trace
A scrawl of black from an inky sac,
A tale of the human race.
I pick and choose, who wins, who lose
Their brief duet with fate,
Who twist and turn as they live and learn
To dance at my garden gate.

I paint in the cliffs and the sky above,
The shingle, down on the shore,
A tiny cottage that’s full of love
With a garden of herbs, and more,
A man who walks on the winding path,
He’s a difficult man to gauge,
Will he be happy, or sad, or what
When I get to the end of the page?

I’ll call him Clive, for he’s so alive
When he gets to the cottage gate,
His eyes are bright in the fading light
As he looks for his darling, Kate.
She hears the creak of the hinges greet
The one who captured her heart,
And races out through the cottage door,
Who am I, to keep them apart?

But the world is cruel and there’s always gruel
To add to a perfect tale,
I should be telling this up at the pub,
Over a pint of ale.
But I’d have to muddy my story up
To make my listeners tense,
And what does it take but a big brown snake
To add to the tale’s suspense.

The snake came slithering out of the herbs
And reared it’s head up high,
I could be mean with the following scene
As the snake bites Kate in the thigh.
But I’m only here to fill the page
Not to lay a ****** trail,
So Clive, alive to the danger leaps
To seize the snake by the tail.

Our hero takes the snake by the tail
And cracks it like a whip,
Shatters its spinal cord and so,
That was the end of it.
There’s a smiling face and a swift embrace
And a tale untold, for sure,
When Clive and Kate shut the creaky gate
And enter the cottage door.

I only wanted to tell a tale
To banish this page of white,
The page that mocks like a sly old fox
When I stare at it each night.
So take the story of Clive and Kate
Who live on top of the cliff,
And dream sweet dreams if your own life seems
Too bland, and think, ‘What if?’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

By a stream of running water,
Underneath a moonless sky,
Like a nightmare of a slaughter
The blood-spattered train goes by.
Where the rails have long been rusted
All along the valley plain,
There the train, so blood encrusted
Will repeat its run again.

I can hear the rails humming
To the rhythm of its wheels,
As the train, it keeps on coming,
As the driver’s mind, it reels,
And he stares out through the darkness
With each glaring, bloodshot eye,
He will have to face the horror
When he stops the train, or die.

There’s a skull smashed on the boiler,
There’s an arm caught on a ledge,
There is blood and guts and gore all spattered,
On the front, and wedged,
When the train ploughed through the gangers who
Were working on the track,
Then their blood sprayed through his cabin
And he didn’t dare look back.

Then the fireman had to ***** as
Their blood sprayed in his face,
But he heaped the coals upon it just
To keep their frantic pace,
And now both their eyes are crazy at
The slaughter they have done,
They are bound for hell, not heaven
On this final ghostly run.

It’s been sixty seven years now since
That train raced down that track,
And those seven men were slaughtered,
But they keep on coming back,
By a stream of running water,
Underneath a moonless sky,
Like a nightmare of a slaughter
The blood-spattered train goes by.

David Lewis Paget

It’s thirty years since I travelled back
To wander my childhood home,
To check out the trees I used to climb
And the fields where I used to roam,
I remembered the friends that used to play,
Wendy and Paul and Mark,
And the local bully that had his way
Back then, in the Boating Park.

We’d go up there on a Sunday, pay
Our money and hire a boat,
That fourpence each to the gatekeeper
Saw the three of us afloat,
Each boat had paddlewheels either side
You could turn, and stop or start,
Or spin around in a circle, just
For fun, at the Boating Park.

The Park, laid out in a rectangle
Took an hour to paddle round,
Once out of sight of the gatekeeper
The banks would muffle the sound,
We’d scream and shriek and laugh and beam
As we rammed each other’s boats,
I often thought it a wonder that
We didn’t puncture the floats.

Then over beyond the halfway mark
We lay in the shade of trees,
The sun would sink, it was getting dark
And we’d hear the murmur of bees,
We had to pass there under a bridge
And duck, for the bridge was low,
And that’s where the bully McPherson stood
On the bridge, those years ago.

He’d jeer, throw stones and catcall as we
Tried to get under the span,
Then climb and drop into Wendy’s boat
He wouldn’t have tried with a man.
He’d paddle over the further side
And make her get out of the boat,
Then paddle it back the way we came
Get out, and leave it afloat.

One Sunday I sat under the bridge
With Paul and Mark beside,
While Wendy came along on her own
As if on a solo ride,
The bully tried the very same thing
But we each pulled on his coat,
And when he came up, he couldn’t scream
For the water lodged in his throat.

He splashed about and he tried to grab
The boat, but his clothes, like lead,
Were trying to drag him down, while Paul
And Mark, they stood on his head.
Wendy had clambered up on the bank
Controlled, and well in command,
For every time he tried to get out,
She’d stamp and stomp on his hand.

The paper said it was very strange
That he must have put up a fight,
But hadn’t the strength to pull himself
Up out of the cut that night.
His hands and fingers were shredded, where
He’d tried to climb up the bank,
But the weight of his heavy, sodden clothes
Were the demons he had to thank.

I went to visit the Boating Park
It was just the way I feared,
I met up there with an older Mark,
A man with a greying beard,
He told me Wendy and Paul were dead
Weighed down with a sense of sin,
And the gatekeeper at the Boating Park
Had gone, when they filled it in.

David Lewis Paget

My uncle lived in a big old house
At the end of Mayfair Drive,
With thirteen rooms and a library,
Whilst he was still alive.
But he jumped one day from the second floor
And he hit the ground so hard
That his blood spread out like a pair of horns,
There in his own front yard.

We didn’t know why he had to jump,
It wasn’t a lack of cash,
His health was good, but before he jumped
He’d broken out in a rash,
The maid had brought him his morning tea
Had watched him put back a book,
Up on the topmost shelf it went
And he’d said to her, ‘Don’t look!’

The rash spread quickly under his arms
With pustules down in the groin,
The doctor said at the autopsy
That one was shaped like a coin.
‘You’d swear that there was a devil’s head
Imprinted there in his blood,
I’ve never seen anything like it since
And I hope that I never should.’

But my father moved us into the house
Now, with his brother gone,
He locked us out of the library
But went in there on his own.
There were shelves and shelves of books in there
And one on the topmost shelf,
The maid had whispered, ‘You’d best beware!’
But he took it down himself.

I noticed he wore his patent gloves
Whenever he went in there,
I peeped in through a crack in the door
And saw him stand on a chair,
The book was old, had a mouldy look
For the leather was turning green,
It looked like a fungus, taken root,
And the whole thing looked unclean.

As days went by I began to hear
Some babble behind the door,
And incense came in a steady stream
Out from a crack by the floor,
My father didn’t come out for meals
His voice was becoming hoarse,
He’d take a tray at about midday
But never a second course.

The maid resigned on the first of June
She said that she saw his face,
Was shivering uncontrollably
And muttering, ‘Loss of grace!’
The cook took both of us under her wing
And swore that she’d see us fed,
But wouldn’t come out of her tiny room
At dusk, she’d ‘rather be dead!’

The fire broke out in the library
On a Sunday, after Mass,
I caught a glimpse of my father then,
His face was as green as grass,
The shelves and the books had grown a mould
And it spread all over the floor,
I knew I had to get out of there
And ran right out of the door.

My father leapt from the window then
Came crashing down in the drive,
I knew before I got close to him
He couldn’t have been alive.
Two horns spread out from the place his head
Had crumpled into the ground,
But these were horns of a green fungi
Like the book on the shelf he’d found.

They quarantined us around that house
And came with chemical sprays,
‘This fungus seems to be hard to ****,
It’s going to take us days!’
They checked the wreck of the library,
I even went in myself,
With everything burnt to a crisp, still lay
A book on the topmost shelf!

David Lewis Paget

The little boy with the shining eyes
Was skipping along the street,
They said that he was autistic, that
He never would learn to speak,
He laughed and played in the open air
And he chattered away inside,
But he couldn’t utter a single word
That anyone recognised.

His mind was cluttered with happy thoughts
Of colours and sounds and things,
He couldn’t make sense of the what-they-were
Or anyone’s utterings,
He thought they spoke in a special tongue
That nobody understood,
They kept on saying the same old thing,
‘Now Oliver, you be good!’

He thought that ‘Ubble ee yuli dood,’
Was the sound of a creaking chair,
Or maybe the voice of a ‘Wotsigot’
When his mother was tearing her hair,
His father would just say ‘Geepimin’
When he wanted to go out late,
And she’d say, ‘Wotdid yalass slayv dyeov?’
Locking the garden gate.

He’d learned to scale the iron fence
That was built to keep him in,
And he took his chattering Umblevorks
That were gambolling within,
He filled the street with his Landyplatts
Where they lay on every lawn,
Waiting to play with the neighbour’s cats
That he knew as Gratzendorn.

But down the road was a nasty man
With a name like Hubbrygast,
Who would grab the lad by the scruff of the neck
And drag him home at last,
‘Keep your idiot son at home,
Away from my place, at least,
If I catch him out on the road again
I’ll be calling the local police.’

The day was Doodly Wangle with
The Flubber up in the Guy,
When Hubbrygast saw a Landyplatt
From the corner of his eye,
The boy was singing a Wollygong
To a two-tone Grindlepick,
When Hubbrygast poked the Landyplatt
With the sharp point of a stick.

The Landyplatt gave a gorble that
Had enraged the Umblevorks,
And Hubbrygast was surrounded by
His own sharp garden forks,
They poked and prodded and brought him down
‘Til the nasty man had bled,
While a bright red volluping Corple
With a *****, took off his head.

The people hide in their houses when
The boy comes out to play,
And nobody tries to speak to him,
They wouldn’t know what to say,
They weave their way through the Landyplatts
That have taken over the street,
And try to avoid the Umblevorks
That chatter, under their feet.

David Lewis Paget

‘I don’t remember a year like this,’
She stood by the window pane,
Staring into the murk and mist,
‘All that it does is rain!
It’s barely stopped for a month or more
And the garden’s all a-flood,
The line is down and the washing’s drowned
And the yard is thick with mud.’

I’d just come down from the nearest town
On the other side of the hill,
‘Strange, it hasn’t been raining there
And the sun is shining still.
The mist is clear, just a mile away
And the hedgerow’s full of life,
I came to see if you’d heard or seen
A glimpse of my darling wife?

She looked confused for a moment there
Then she shook her head, real slow,
‘I don’t recall if I’ve even seen her
Since she got up to go,
She said she needed to find herself
The girl that she used to be,
Before she married and settled down,
Well, that’s what she said to me.’

‘You don’t think she’s had a change of heart,
A tiny hint of regret?
I thought by now she’d have worked it out,
And wouldn’t be so upset.’
‘I doubt if she will be coming back,
She said it wouldn’t be soon,’
I turned away and my face was grey
On that rainy afternoon.

She stood up close to the window-sill
And all she could see was rain,
Despite the fact that the sun shone still
And the skies were clear again,
The nurse came in and she said, ‘It’s time,
We must get your wife to bed.’
And I drove over the hill in pain
Just wishing that I was dead!

David Lewis Paget

The storm was raging within, he thought,
Not out in the trees and fields,
It must have strayed in his mouth, and caught
His throat, for the breath it yields,
He sat himself on a wayward bench
Composed his thunderous sighs,
And caught a glimpse of a passing *****
With slumbering, lustrous eyes.

She had auburn hair, and a face so fair
She had dimples set in her cheeks,
She walked the snow in an afterglow
Of the first snowfall for weeks.
He’d sat so long and the storm was strong
As he waited the snow to melt,
She kicked the flurries of snow along
In the inward storm he felt.

Her eyes were a vivid lightning flash
That lit up his restless mind,
Her footsteps, more of a thunder crash
At his heart, but more unkind,
Her smile revealed her perfect teeth
Like a line of pure white stones,
Or headstones, laid in a cemetery
Like some bleached and ageing bones.

Her auburn hair was a-twist out there
All twirled like a plaited bun,
It seemed to fly in his storm-wracked sky
Blotting the morning sun,
Then as she passed, she looked in his eyes
And she saw the hail and sleet,
And caught her breath like a glimpse of death
Or the end of life, complete.

He stood, and held out his hand to her
And she halted in her stride,
Opened her mouth, and thunder clapped
And he felt it crash inside,
‘Nothing you say will draw me in
It would only do me harm,
If I should wed, it wouldn’t be
To you, as the Bride of Storm.’

David Lewis Paget

The building had to be as it was
Before, when it first was built,
So the Inspector said to me,
I was mortgaged up to the hilt,
We’d already changed some minor things
They’d stand, he said, in the way,
We couldn’t move in till they were changed
Reversed, to our mute dismay.

He ******* the permit into his hat
And clamped it down on his head,
‘Where are we going to sleep tonight?’
‘That’s not my fault,’ he said.
He’d locked us out of our only home
With it only half rebuilt,
Then driven off as he sneered and coughed,
‘Are you trying to feed me guilt?’

We’d lodged our plans seven months before
To rebuild a nest of rooms,
The Council never got round to it
So they left us mired in gloom,
We couldn’t wait for their paperwork
So we just got on, and ‘did’,
We toiled by night in the after light,
In the day, just lay and hid.

Then when the paperwork finally came
It covered a room too short,
They charged full odds for their office clods
But for plans, their worth was nought.
Back he came on a day of shame
To demand we tear it down,
That extra room that had fed our gloom
So I said, ‘You go to town!’

I handed over a hefty pick
And I said, ‘It’s up to you.
I wouldn’t touch it myself,’ I said,
‘But you do what you must do.’
I didn’t tell him of Cranston Leigh,
The ghost of that room out there,
I should have said, but then Cranston’s dead
So the end result was fair.

He laid about him with pick and axe
And he tumbled half a wall,
Before first hearing the screech from Hell
That was Cranston’s warning call.
I saw the Inspector’s hair rise up
Like an early crop of rye,
And that was even before the ghost
Screeched out, ‘You’re gonna die!’

I’ll never forget the scene that night
The Inspector burst in flames,
While Cranston, from the unholy dead
Leapt in and out of our drains,
That room still stands, it’s unfinished still
The Inspector will not call,
We left a poster of Cranston Leigh
As a Welcome, out on the wall.

David Lewis Paget

We’d travelled more than a hundred miles
From the nearest outback town,
The sun was roasting the plains out there
And the heat was getting us down,
We’d left all the eucalypts behind
And there wasn’t a patch of green,
Only a scrubby saltbush there
Where the natives used to dream.

We halted just as the sun went down
And Miranda let out a sigh,
‘Have ever you seen such stars as these?’
And pointed up at the sky,
The heavens shone with a mighty glow
From the stars that glittered, proud,
Each was lighting the earth below
From the inky black of its shroud.

But underneath us the ground was hot
And the track it lay, bone dry,
There’d not been even a single drop
Of rain, since the last July,
We huddled up in the four wheel drive
As the air began to chill,
I pulled a blanket across our knees
And we slept for a little while.

Miranda had some Arunta blood
From her great-grandmother’s side,
She’d learned of some of their culture, and
She had the Arunta pride,
We woke to a distant whirring sound
And Miranda sat up straight,
And murmured, ‘That’s a Tjurunga
Trying to open heaven’s gate.’

‘The white men call it a Bull Roarer,’
She said, with a hint of fear,
‘And I’m forbidden to hear it, for
It’s not for a woman’s ear.
They’ll **** me if they should find me here
For breaking their sacred law,’
She slid down over her seat, and sat
Her head down, close to the floor.

I climbed on out of the cab, and stood
Surveying the dark surround,
The whirring seemed to be closer now,
And the pitch went up and down,
An icy chill ran along my spine
As I saw a movement there,
Something slithering over the ground
Not far from where we were.

I froze in shock, and I held my breath
When I saw a pair of eyes,
Both the colour of rubies, and
Of quite enormous size,
And then I saw the head of the snake
As it ploughed a furrow, deep,
Its body the colours of rainbows, then
Miranda took a peep.

She said, ‘It’s the Rainbow Serpent,’
As the whirring sound went on,
Covered her ears and shut her eyes
And said, ‘It’ll soon be gone.’
I climbed back into the cab and locked
The door, and lay down flat,
Trembled in fear, I’d never seen
A snake as big as that.

The dawn was gradually breaking as
I took a look outside,
And there, where the ground had been quite flat
Was a creek, ten metres wide,
And water, straight from the Queensland rains
Was pouring over the land,
Sluicing along the new creek bed
Where before, there was only sand.

I’d never believed in the Dreamtime
Or the tales that the natives tell,
But somewhere the Rainbow Serpent roams
With eyes from heaven or hell,
We turned the nose of the jeep around,
Drove back to the town once more,
I’ll never return to the desert, where
You can hear the Bull Roarer’s roar!

David Lewis Paget

The sky was dark, it was overcast
When the hearse rolled into town,
The people stopped in its passing,
And stood, with their eyes cast down,
Four black, high stepping, friesian mares
Stepped proud, ahead of the hearse,
While a man was following close behind
But sat on his horse, reversed.

His wrists were bound with a length of twine
Were tethered behind his back,
His eyes were well blindfolded,
Under his black top hat,
His leather boots had glistened and shone
And they rode right up to the knee,
There was something about his stately mien
That said, ‘Aristocracy’.

The horses were decked with ostrich plumes
Fine harness and plaited tails,
The coach shellacked in a shiny black
And fitted with silver rails,
The coffin lay on a satin tray
In the hearse, was covered in lace,
Inscribed with scrolls from the honour rolls
Of a noble house, disgraced.

And far at the rear of the slow cortege
Was a line of women in black,
Carrying jewellery fashioned in jet
As black as the coach shellac.
There wasn’t a tear amongst them all
Nor a smile for the ruined man,
The blindfold merciful, like a pall
In front of his ruined clan.

The hearse rolled into the cemetery
And stopped by the gallows tree,
A footman took off his blindfold then,
‘I hope that’s not meant for me!’
They dragged the coffin out of the hearse
And the man looked once, then twice,
‘I’m not your common old peasant, sir,
I’m the Lord of Mecklen Weiss.’

They dragged him ****** off his horse
And lifted the coffin lid,
‘You’re the Lord of six square feet of earth,
And the Lord of all you did!’
They ****** him into the coffin then
Encased his struggling form,
‘He’ll have some time to consider now
It were best he’d never been born!’

They lowered the coffin into the ground
To the sound of shrieks and cries,
But not one woman who watched it fall
Had a need to dry her eyes.
They say that some heard muffled cries
At that grave for a week or more,
But then, the peasantry always lies
For they hold the Lords in awe.

David Lewis Paget

The photos lay in a pile of dust
They’d gathered under the bed,
They’d not seen the light of day for years
Were neglected there, instead,
The wife found them with the first spring clean
And she dumped them in my lap,
‘Who is the ******* the Honda Dream,
And the guy in the leather cap?’

I must have shot her a funny look
As we guys are wont to do,
‘A girl I must have been going with
About twenty before you.’
She picked the photo out of the pile
And she brushed it on her skirt,
I thought, ‘Oh, here we go again,’
Her face said she was hurt.

‘How come I’ve never seen her before,’
She was getting close to tears,
I snatched the photo out of her hand,
‘It must be fifty years!
I can’t recall the time or the place
And I can’t recall her name.’
She punched me once on the shoulder, said:
‘You ought to be ashamed!’

That photo sat on the mantelpiece
And it stared at me for weeks,
A bonny girl with a pouting lip
And the wife gave me no peace.
It was, ‘Just what did you talk about?
What did she used to say?’
I said, ‘I can’t for the life of me
Remember a single day.’

She served the hot-*** up stone cold
And the gravy didn’t move,
I think she mixed it with concrete just
To show she didn’t approve.
I said, ‘I was only twenty then,
That snap was way back when,
We’ve been together for forty years,
Why drag her up again?’

‘You’ve kept her a secret all these years,
That photo, under the bed,
How do I know you’re not in touch?’
I said, ‘She’s probably dead!’
I racked my brains for a memory
But all I could see were thighs,
Pert young ******* and a petticoat
And a twinkle in her eyes.

But still I couldn’t recall her name
Or a single word she’d said,
Only the scent of her sweet young breath
As we rolled in her parents bed,
She’d clung to me on the pillion seat
As her skirt flared out, and streamed,
Down at the back of Fletcher’s Wood
On the back of the Honda Dream.

‘I want to know what you did with her,
Though it doesn’t matter now.’
(I’d fallen for one of those tricks before,
The wife’s a devious cow!)
I thought of the day the fun had gone
When we lay, looked up at the sky,
‘Ah, now I remember what she said,
One word, just one… Goodbye!’

David Lewis Paget

The body lay in a mound of hay
That was all piled up by the forge,
He took one look at the butcher’s hook
And the sick rose up in his gorge,
He peered on down at the bloodied face
There was nothing that could be done,
But held his breath when he saw that death
Had taken the blacksmith’s son.

He looked around for a sign of life
But the shop and the forge were cold,
The blacksmith Kirk hadn’t come to work
Though he’d seen him, out in the fold,
And darling Kate would be calling in,
His fate whirled round in his head,
What would she think when she found him there
With the love of her life stone dead?

The villagers knew no love was lost,
They’d fought at the village fete,
All over the hand of the pretty one,
The hand of their darling Kate,
But George was on an apprenticeship
For his father had owned the forge,
While Faber was a farm labourer,
So Kate had gone off with George.

But now George lay in a pile of hay
And he wouldn’t be dating Kate,
So Faber thought that he shouldn’t stay
Though he’d left it a little late.
He didn’t know if they’d seen him come,
He couldn’t be seen to go,
They’d think that he was the only one
To deliver the killer blow.

He heard a rustle within the store
And the sweat broke out on his head,
He knew if somebody found him there
That he’d be better off dead.
He peered silently through the door
And into the corner gloom,
And Kate was sobbing, there on the floor
In the darkest part of the room.

Her bouffant hair was a tangled mess
Her dress was tattered and frayed,
It didn’t take but a single guess
To see the part that she’d played,
For blood was mingling with her tears
Her bodice was stained deep red,
‘He stole my innocence,’ she exclaimed,
‘I hit him just once,’ she said.

Now Faber sits in a darkened cell
To wait for the hangman’s rope,
The Judge had asked, but he wouldn’t tell
So now he’s bereft of hope.
He’d told the court that he’d stumbled in
On the blacksmith’s son, and ****,
And hit him once with a butcher’s hook
For the sake of the darling Kate.

But Kate was strolling with someone new
On the day that they pinned his hands,
And led him up to the gallows floor
To pay for the court’s demands,
She never gave him a thought that day
Though the blacksmith thought he knew,
And lay in wait with a butcher’s hook
As Kate was passing through.

David Lewis Paget

He wandered along the decks by night,
Stood at the rails by day,
Kept to himself from what I saw
And didn’t have much to say,
He wore a yellow sou’wester when
The weather came in cold,
And a battered and worn old Navy cap
With the legend ‘Merchant Gold’.

He must have been once a ******
In a time quite long ago,
He still had his steady ******’s legs
On the ‘Michaelangelo’,
A crusty and time-worn cruise ship
That had seen much better days,
Pottering round the islands through
The softly lapping waves.

I doubt that it could withstand a storm
It was just a summer cruise,
For a raggedy band of tourists who
Had nothing much to lose,
The fares were cheap and the cabins bare
So I utilised the bar,
While the wife would wander off and say,
‘I’ll know just where you are!’

I got in some serious drinking
There was nothing else to do,
While Helen came back with every name
Of the stewards, and the crew,
For Helen’s a social butterfly
And she loves to gad about,
I’ve never been much of a talker
So I tend to shut her out.

One night I happened to wander out
She was over by the rail,
Listening to the sailor who
Was reading her some tale,
I turned back into the dining room
Until my wife was free,
Then asked her: ‘What was he reading?’
And she said, ‘Some poetry!’

‘A poem called ‘Sea Fever’ that had
Brought a tear to his eye,
It was all about a tall ship
And a star to steer her by,
If only you could have heard him, Ben
He had such a tale to tell,
I could have listened to him for hours,
His soul is like a well.’

‘His life was spent on the water and
He calls it God’s domain,
He said that having to leave it brought
His life’s most constant pain,
He pointed the constellations out
Named every little star,
He gave me a feeling of awe about
The ocean, where we are.’

I know I must have been jealous for
I never took the bait,
I didn’t talk to the sailor,
When I would, it was too late,
A storm blew up and the rising seas
Crashed over the decks and spars,
While he clung onto the outer rails
And gazed on up at the stars.

And then I must have been seeing things
For a man approached him there,
Holding onto a trident with
Coiled seaweed in his hair,
Touched him once with the trident and
The sailor turned his head,
Nodded once, with a gentle smile
Then draped on the rail, was dead.

They gathered the poor old sailor up
And bound him up in a sheet,
Waited until the sea calmed down
Called everyone to meet,
Then after a simple service they
Just slipped him into the sea,
A fitting end for a sailor who
Had left our company.

But Helen was broken hearted she
Was weeping all day long,
While I was irritated, and
I asked her, what was wrong?
She stopped and smiled, and she said, ‘Oh well,
He’s back in the sea he loved,
In a tall ship with a broad sail,
With the sky and the stars above!’

I think of him, and Neptune with
A trident, on his throne,
The sailor reading poetry
But this time, quite alone,
While coral reefs and gentle seas
Pay tribute to his life,
But I couldn’t share it now with him…
He shared it with my wife!


David Lewis Paget

(‘Sea Fever’ by John Masefield)

I said, ‘We’re going to Coffin Cove
For the first weekend in June,
I’ve booked us a seaside caravan,
Under a bloodshot Moon,’
Giselda turned for a moment then
And she looked at me, wide-eyed,
‘I’ve just come out of the hospital,
You know that I nearly died!’

‘Why would you pick on Coffin Cove,
Isn’t that testing fate?’
‘That figure of death is out of breath,
He got to your bed too late.’
She’d had a terrible accident
And they thought she’d not survive,
But for a scar and the wreck of a car,
Here she was back, alive.

Giselda believed in portents and fate,
And something about the stars,
I said whatever the portents were,
She’d been driving the car.
‘We hold our fate in our own two hands,
And yours just slipped on the wheel,
But though you bled, that scar on your head
Has just taken time to heal.’

So off we travelled to Coffin Cove
On the long weekend in June,
The caravan sat there on the sand
While the skies were dark with gloom.
We’d heard a storm was heading our way
Though we’d both be snug inside,
The beach was clear for the time of year
So Giselda swam, and dried.

The wind came up as the clouds rolled in
So we shut and locked the door,
With lightning crackling overhead
She huddled up on the floor,
She hated thunder, and lightning too
Then it rained, and turned to hail,
The noise was deafening there inside
Then the wind began to wail.

The van would rock as the wind would gust
So I held Giselda tight,
The storm just wouldn’t let up, it raged
And roared all through the night,
We could hear the sound of the crashing waves
And they seemed outside our door,
Then the van took off, we could tell as much
By the movement of the floor.

I opened one of the windows just
To take a look outside,
Giselda said, ‘Are we floating off?’
And I must admit, I lied.
The breakers crashed in a sea of foam
And we seemed far from the shore,
I said, ‘Don’t worry, this van is tough,
It could float for evermore.’

As midnight struck on my mantle clock
Giselda jumped, fell back,
‘Who’s that,’ she pointed along the van
To a shape, all dressed in black,
Its hood half covered a grinning skull
And it held a wicked scythe,
Then in a rattling gravel voice,
‘You’ll not long be alive!’

I couldn’t speak for a moment there,
The sight just took my breath,
I said, ‘Just what do you want with us?’
‘I’m here to bring you death!
I reign supreme over Coffin Cove
As you should have known full well,
I waited, knowing you’d wander in
To the seventh circle of Hell!’

The van was tumbling in the waves
And turning round and round,
‘I won’t be using my scythe today,
The two of you will drown.’
But then a thunderous, monster wave
Threw me down on the floor,
And underneath us was solid ground,
We’d landed up on the shore.

The evil figure rose up at that
And turned to a greying mist,
Then suddenly he had gone complete
As she and I had kissed,
We burst on out through the open door
And we cried, ‘We’re still alive!’
‘Don’t bring me again to Coffin Cove,’
Giselda said, ‘Just drive.’

David Lewis Paget

I got a job at the Carnival,
All the fun of the fair,
With its Carousels and its Wishing Wells
And The Ferris wheel up there,
With a Gyro Tower and a Gravitron
You could hear the squeals of glee,
As they whirled about, and one fell out,
Nothing to do with me!

My only job was to strap them in
And I went from ride to ride,
They told me to familiarise
Myself with every side,
I loved the whirling Octopus
And the Swinging Pirate Ship,
But of them all, the Matterhorn
Was the one I found most hip.

I ended up on the Enterprise
At the closing of the night,
‘Just two more rides,’ the man announced,
‘For a journey into fright!’
I strapped them into each Gondola
As the twenty patrons paid,
And heard their screams as they soared aloft,
I could tell they were dismayed.

The ride came down with a grinding halt
And I went to let them out,
But no-one sat in the Gondola’s
Then I heard the Barker shout,
‘Last ride, last ride in the Enterprise,’
And the twenty folk got in,
I said, ‘What happened to all the rest?’
But he cried, ‘Don’t fuss now, Tim.’

The Enterprise had begun to spin
And carry them all aloft,
Then disengaged from its base and floated
Over a farmer’s croft,
The sky was an inky black that night
And dotted with glittering stars,
And I swear today, I heard him say:
‘They’re heading on up to Mars!’

David Lewis Paget

The Queen had paid the eunuchs to
Decapitate the King,
And once the deed was done, she thought,
‘I’m Queen of everything.’
She taxed the peasants to the hilt
Took half of every crop,
Her greed was quite rapacious, so
She never thought to stop.

She reigned up in the Castle Bleak
A fortress tall and grim,
That many armies tried to breach
But never could get in,
The only weakness she could see
From top, and looking down,
The trees that grew so tall against
The wall had made her frown.

‘We’ll have to chop those poplar trees
They’re getting rather tall,
An army might climb up one night,
They’re right against the wall,’
Her lover, Lord Chantrell had sighed
And tried to put her off,
‘Those poplar trees are beautiful,
Too beautiful to chop.’

She didn’t raise the point again
But went off to the tower,
Where she had locked the eunuchs to
Prevent them taking power,
She sent her German swordsman in
To do the deed, she said,
‘I want to see you come on out
With every ******’s head.’

The Queen was grim and merciless,
She’d act on every whim,
Her thoughts were dark and tortuous
And even with her kin,
Her cousin liked the mead too much
And slutted round the town,
Was gifted with a barrel of it,
Upside down, to drown.

She even chided Lord Chantrell
For eyeing off her maid,
She said, ‘You two can go to hell,’
She thought the girl was laid.
They built a bonfire in the court
The maid was bound and tied,
And Chantrell watched the flames devour
The beauty he had spied.

One day upon the tower top
Chantrell unsheathed his blade,
And sliced his lover’s head clean off
In payment for the maid,
Her head flew down the tower wall,
Her final thoughts were these:
‘These branches break my fall, I’m glad
I didn’t chop the trees.’

David Lewis Paget

She saw her friend on the Monday,
At the fountain, by the square,
Her skin had seemed to be glowing
With the sunlight on her hair.
She said, ‘What’s happened to you, my girl,
There’s an incandescent glow
That emanates from your features,’
And her friend said, ‘You should know!’

They met again on the Tuesday,
At a Café near the Strand,
Her friend sat next to a pale-faced guy
Who reached to hold her hand.
‘So this is your little secret,
You’re a deep one, aren’t you, Eve?
You could at least introduce us then!’
She said, ‘Oh, this is Steve!’

She missed her train on the Wednesday,
But she heard from near and far,
‘Eve has got her another guy
And he writes, and plays guitar.
We wonder how long this one will last
For she’s not been true before,
Eve likes a bit of variety,
She’s sure to show him the door.’

They passed in the street on Thursday,
And stopped for a bit of chat,
‘He says he’s writing me summer skies,’
And Steve was this, and that.
‘Everything seems to be brighter now
There’s bluebirds up in the sky,
I feel that I’m tripping on a cloud,
I never felt so high.’

She noticed the breeze on Friday,
Was as soft as featherdown,
When Eve had texted her love for him
From the other side of town.
‘Whatever he writes for me is done
In the twinking of an eye,
But I’m starting to feel so restless, for
At best, he’s a boring guy.’

She happened to see, on Saturday,
Her friend at the local ball,
And looked for the poet Steve, but he
Didn’t appear at all.
Though Eve was dancing with someone new
While thunder rolled in the west,
‘I cast him off, but he’s there for you
If you want him, be my guest!’

The lightning flashed on the Sunday,
And Eve was soaked to the skin,
She beat on the door of Janet’s place,
‘For God’s sake, let me in!’
Her hair was hanging in rats tails and
She cried, ‘I’m really scared.
Steve is writing a storm for me
For he said, he’d really cared.’

The storm had gone on the Monday,
The clouds were fluffy and white,
As Janet walked to the corner store
And Eve came into sight.
Eve said, ‘What’s happened to you, my girl,
There’s an incandescent glow
That emanates from your features,’
And her friend said, ‘You should know!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

A single bullet was all it took
And I needn’t have wasted that,
He sat alone in that dismal cave
In an old Field Marshall’s hat,
His eyes were sunk in that pallid face
A demented cast to his jaw,
He didn’t move as I knelt and aimed
And put an end to the war.

It was getting late, it was ‘68
When I ventured into the cave,
My friends said going spelunking was
A bit like digging your grave.
‘Expect big rats, and giant bats,’
They said, before I’d begun,
So I added that to my haversack,
Just to be sure, a gun.

It wasn’t a normal cave I sought
But one by the autobahn,
Where I’d seen a crevice opening up
That nobody else had done,
It seemed to lead deep down in the earth
Could easily close, if found,
So I took a pick, a dynamite stick
And burrowed into the ground.

I had a lamp on my helmet, like
A miner’s, casting a beam,
And climbed on plenty of rubble
That had collapsed in a steady seam,
It led to a concrete tunnel
Plenty of rock strewn passageways,
A giant work of construction that
Lay hidden in former days.

I seemed to go on forever
Then ran into a barbed wire cone,
Blocking one of the passageways
And a sign, ‘Halt! No Go Zone!’
The wire was rusty and fell apart
As I pushed it away to the side,
But then the sound of scuffling rats
Brought the gun out by my side.

Then finally it had opened up
Into what would appear a cave,
With flags and banners arranged about,
The glory of former days,
A corpse sat propped in an easy chair
In a uniform from then,
And there, attached to the shirt front was
A nameplate, ‘Bormann, M.’

Beyond, and under the banners was
A barely human form,
Who stared at me in the darkness there
As if I’d not been born,
The greatest conqueror of our time
And there’s no disputing that,
Lost in pain in his vast domain
For there der Führer sat.

David Lewis Paget

The sun had set on the mountain top
Before we could get away,
I hadn’t wanted to drive by night
But rather the light of day,
The sky was filled with a ghostly glow
The last few rays of the sun,
When I drove out to the open road,
Our journey had just begun.

I’d promised that I would get her there
I wasn’t going to renege,
She must have asked me a dozen times,
Was even beginning to beg,
I said, ‘They’re going to be waiting there
No matter how late we are,
They won’t be starting without you, girl,
For you are the principle star.’

That calmed her down, she was mollified,
Though she’d been upset for days,
She worried that she’d be there too late,
She’d said, in a blank dismay,
She thought it was such an honour to
Be picked as the chosen one,
‘I’ve never been picked for anything,
Before,’ was the song she sung.

We nosed down into the valley as
The darkness turned to grim,
With only the beam of the headlights
Like a tunnel we were in,
‘It seems to be taking a lifetime,’
Was the only thing she said,
‘I know, but the end of a lifetime is
The time that you are dead.’

She’d paid especial attention to
The dress she had to wear,
Had glossed her lips and had rouged her cheeks
And had tidied up her hair,
I paid her the best of compliments
That I knew she wanted to hear,
And told her that I was proud of her,
On this special night of the year.

We finally came to a grove of trees
And we turned our headlights in,
Throwing fantastic shadows as our
Wheels began to spin,
We stopped just under a giant oak
And I said, ‘We’re here at last.
You’re certain you want to go through with it?’
She said, ‘It will be a blast!’

Then shapes came out of the grove of trees
Wearing hoods and capes of black,
They gathered around the car, and stood
And stared, on that forest track,
When Emily went to join them they
Stood back to let her pass,
And led her into a clearing where
She lay down, on the grass.

It was then they began their chanting
Like a choir in a church,
Rising and falling, lilting, it was fine
And yet a dirge,
For then a man danced into the ring
Who wore the head of a goat,
From under his cape he drew a knife,
Leant down, and cut her throat.

David Lewis Paget

I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget

‘It won’t be much of a Christmas,’
I said to his woman, Kate,
As she met me in the garden,
And opened the garden gate,
I asked how well he was faring
And she answered, ‘Not too well,’
Her eyes were blackened for lack of sleep
She looked like she’d been through hell.

While George lay out on a camper
Trying to get some air,
His lungs were riddled with cancer,
He said that he didn’t care.
‘I’ve had enough of this rotten life
It threw me a sucker punch,
I’ll just be glad when it’s over, mate,
Just think of me out to lunch.’

I couldn’t say he’d get over it,
He’d catch me out in a lie,
The one thing both of us knew right then
Was George was about to die,
They’d given him just a week or so
Till his organs began to fail,
He might just make it to Christmas, but
That was the end of the tale.

But Kate was doing just what she could
To comfort his final days,
She’d come across to his neighbourhood,
When Kate decides, she stays,
They hadn’t ever been love’s young dream
Had parted the year before,
For George was always intolerable
Living with him was war.

And I would try to avert my eyes,
Whenever Kate was around,
I didn’t want her to see me blush
So kept my eyes to the ground,
If only I had got to her first
I’d say to my mirror glass,
But far too late, she was with my mate,
He was way beneath her class.

And even though they had parted,
I couldn’t begin to tell,
My feelings, how they were started
By being within her spell,
For she’d always been his woman,
Been his lover and his mate,
And even now they were parted,
I thought it a little late.

But he called me into the garden
To sit by his camper bed,
And said that he begged my pardon,
He knew he would soon be dead.
‘But I have a gift to give you,
It might be a little late,
But at Christmas time I wish you
Would take care of my darling Kate.’

‘I know that you care about her,
For I’ve seen you blushing and stare,
It’s a year I’ve been without her,
Due to my lack of care,
But I think she’ll come to love you,
You can ask yourself instead,’
For Kate was there in the garden,
And stood there, nodding her head.

David Lewis Paget

I married Rosita back in the Spring
As a new world budded with everything,
She sprang from an ancient family
Its heart in the vineyards of Tuscany.

Her skin was dark and her hair blue-black
From the blood of her father’s, way, way back,
Her family tree lay in mystery
So I thought I’d uncover their history.

Down in the damp of the cells, there lay
A mound of their documents, rotting away,
Down where the Monks had toiled below
In the crypt of the Church of De Angelo.

There I would work, and day by day
Would learn of plots where the skeletons lay,
The grinning skulls kept the plans alight
They had once conspired in the dead of night.

I asked Rosita to join me there
Way down below, at the foot of the stair,
And she came gliding, all dressed in white
Like some grim ghost with her girdle tight.

‘Why do you stir these shades,’ she said,
‘When for hundreds of years they’ve lain here dead,
It’s better we leave their old intrigues
Scattered like bones, and Autumn leaves.’

‘This is your line,’ I then replied,
‘Who lived and schemed, and who loved and died,
As one day soon you may bear a son
Who’ll need to know where he’s coming from.’

And sure enough in the month of June
There were signs that he would be coming soon,
Her forehead burned and the glass she sipped
When she came alone to the darkened crypt.

Then shadows moved in the ancient cells
Where the Monks had worked on their evil spells,
And she began to shiver and glow
In the crypt of the Church of De Angelo.

I said what I should have spoken yet
That all I had was a deep regret,
That ever I asked her to get up and go
To the crypt that lay in the church below.

But still she went on that long descent
She seemed obsessed and would not relent,
Till late one night and a baby cried
Delivered on a cold slab, and died.

I keep Rosita so close to me,
And far from her family history,
Something is creeping, evil and slow
In the crypt of the church of De Angelo.

David Lewis Paget

I’d driven a bus for thirty years
At least, for more than a spell,
But now I was getting on a bit
And I wasn’t feeling well.
I’d taken a couple of sickies off
Well, more than I used to do,
And told the boss I would be okay,
It was just a dose of the flu.

But a note was waiting when I got back
All typed on a letterhead,
The company logo was large and black
And gave me a sense of dread.
I had to report to the man upstairs,
Way up on the twentieth floor,
I’d never been past the tenth for years,
Or called to account before.

I couldn’t afford to lose my job,
Cut off at my time of life,
How would I pay the mortgage, then
Explain myself to the wife?
But I took the lift as I had to do,
And stood at a ******* door,
Shivered there as I felt the chill
In the long, dark corridor.

A voice said ‘Come!’ and I wandered in
To an office of oak and teak,
The air was heavy with sandalwood
And I waited for him to speak.
He shuffled the papers on his desk
And his eyes flashed red, like fire,
‘You’ve been a driver for thirty years,
Perhaps it’s time to retire?’

My heart dropped into my boots at that,
I babbled that I was fine,
I couldn’t retire for ten more years
If it pleased, I’d do my time.
He raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips
And I shook in my shoes with dread,
‘We’ll have to give you an easier route
On The Circle Line, instead.’

I’d heard bad things of the Circle Line
That the drivers didn’t last,
I’d seen so many that came and went
On The Circle Line in the past.
‘That’s it, it’s either The Circle Line
Or…’  (the rest he left unsaid),
I thanked him quickly and turned to leave,
Relieved of my former dread.

The lift shot down to the basement where
There waited a ******* bus,
A tall conductor approached me then:
‘I see that you’re joining us!’
I took my seat and I drove it out,
The conductor pointed the way,
‘There’s only twenty-one stops to make,
Just twenty-one stops today!’

We made a stop at the hospital
And the staff there loaded two,
Then carried on to the city jail
Where a man’s parole was due,
They seemed subdued when they climbed aboard
And nobody even spoke,
Each face was pale as they held the rail,
They seemed to be anxious folk.

The route was finished within the hour
And I said to the man, ‘Now where?’
He pointed out a lake on the map,
‘We’re dropping them all down there.’
I drove us into a quarry that
Was sitting beside the lake,
And found a monstrous entranceway
To a cave, he said, ‘Now brake!’

A light was dancing, there in the cave,
Was flickering light and dark,
I said, ‘Is that a fire in there?’
He answered, ‘Merely a spark!’
He pushed the passengers off the bus
And led them into the cave,
To those that tried to resist, he said,
‘It’s a better place than the grave!’

The panic hit me as panic does
When you get a glimpse of the truth,
I may be old but I catch on fast,
Not like when I was a youth.
The bus I drove had a seven up
In front of the sign, as well,
And then I knew that the Circle Line
Was the Seventh Circle of Hell!’

I took the bus in a squealing turn
And I drove right out of the pit,
I left that tall conductor behind
For he was just part of it.
I dropped the bus in the nearby lake
And I walked back home to the wife,
A job’s a job, but I’d rather take
A little bit more of life.

David Lewis Paget

Down in the village where I grew up
That sat on the eastern shore,
Viking marauders had once shown up
To raze, to pillage and more.
They cut a swathe through the countryside
And the least that they did was ****,
To leave descendants with flame red hair
From Skorn, to the Widnes Cape.

You’ll see the genes they left in our eyes
That startle you when we stare,
A brighter blue than the summer skies
Will follow you everywhere.
Then some had come to settle and thrive
While the local folk would cower,
They left their mark in the village park
By building a Norman Tower.

I don’t know when they added the clock
It must have been later times,
I only know that as I grew up
I lived my life by its chimes.
It boomed on out through the countryside
Would even sound through the night,
We found it safer to stay inside
Than risk a dying in fright.

The strangest things had happened at night
That seem aligned to its chimes,
When ghostly shapes would gather and fight
Drawn back from previous times.
And men were found by the Norman Tower
Their faces twisted in fear,
Their bodies hacked, stabbed in the back
But the swords were never there.

It almost always happened at ten
And just when the chimes rang out,
I’d lie abed, counting the chimes
And hear a desperate shout.
It got so bad that a friend and I
Decided to hide and see,
We climbed at nine to the top of the tower
To check on the mystery.

We hung on over the parapet
That, castellated in stone,
Would let us view, if anything new
Appeared at the final tone.
The vicar rode outside on his bike
Just as the clock struck ten,
And suddenly there, in front and behind,
An army of fighting men.

They knocked the vicar clean off his bike,
And sliced a sword though his head,
Then hacked and ****** through his mortal dust
To leave him lying there, dead.
My friend cried out, on seeing the blood,
He couldn’t disguise his fear,
While I shrank back, with them looking up,
I said, ‘They’re coming up here.’

He made a dash for the tower stair
Intent on getting back down,
They must have met at the halfway mark,
I found him dead on the ground.
The coroner said that he simply fell,
He wouldn’t listen to me,
He ruled the vicar was murdered in
What seemed was a mystery.

But someone must have listened to me
For shortly, up in the clock,
Somebody wedged the workings tight
With a huge old hickory block.
There hasn’t been but a single chime
From the tower clock since then,
Those ancient hands still stand in a line
At just one minute to ten.

David Lewis Paget

He lived in a fine old country house
Befitting a man of means,
With everything a Victorian Squire
Could aspire to, in his dreams.
He owned four-fifths of a colliery
In the days when coal was gold,
And topped that up with a Brewery,
But the mean old man was cold.

For Benjamin John Fortescue ruled
His house like a would-be Earl,
His son had never felt welcome there
Since he’d married a country girl,
The mother had gone some years before
Who protected, in his youth,
But now, the **** of his father’s whims
The lad found out the truth.

He treated them like the servant class
Expected to fetch and bring,
But paid a pittance to keep them there,
His purse on a miser’s string,
‘I keep a fine roof over your heads
And you eat each day for free,’
He’d say, whenever they asked for gilt,
‘What more do you want from me?’

Their toddler Tim wore cast-off clothes
And was made to play outside,
‘I don’t want a ragamuffin’s mess,’
He’d say, till the mother cried.
‘You don’t seem to love your grandson,’ said
His son, his head in a whirl,
‘I would if he had some parentage,
But not from some country girl.’

As time went on there was something wrong
For the father suffered fits,
At first it would start with a seizure,
He would seem to lose his wits.
He’d lie for days in a sort of haze
And would scarcely draw a breath,
And Caroline would look hard it him,
‘It’s as if he’s caught in death!’

It happened enough to make him plan
Should the doctor be deceived,
‘I don’t want the fools to bury me
Alive, so I’m not retrieved.’
He bought a coffin with space inside
And a tube, out to the air,
With a little bell he could ring as well
If he found himself in there.

‘Be sure to follow instructions if
You think that I am dead,
Affix the bell to the tube as well
With a cord down to my head,
Then check the grave for a week or more
To see if the bell should ring,
Then hurry to dig me up, and I
Will give you anything.’

The day came that on the seventh fit
They could swear that he was dead,
‘There isn’t even a breath of air
And his eyes are up in his head.’
Three doctors came, and they all concurred
That his life was now extinct,
‘It had to happen,’ the couple heard,
‘He’s been living on the brink.’

They laid him out in his coffin, and
They fitted the tube to breathe,
Attached the bell, and the cord as well
Before they rose to leave,
But Timothy stayed to play that day
As he did, down in the Dell,
And a week went by till his mother cried:
‘Where did he get that bell?’

David Lewis Paget

He wandered along the Pullman car
As if he owned the train,
And wore the badge of ‘Conductor’ and
A whistle on a chain,
He carried a block of tickets that
Were printed differently,
With various towns and places from
The inland to the sea.

He’d walk from behind the driver, from
The front up to the back,
His steps in time to the rhythm of
The train, its clicketty-clack,
He wouldn’t look at the passengers
Unless their eyes were strained,
But then would pause with his ticket block
To see which ones remained.

And then, as if he divined the stress
Each passenger went through,
He’d tear off one of the tickets, as
He would, for me or you,
And suddenly they’d be on a beach
Or resting in some town,
And making love to a red-haired *****
Just as the sun went down.

The train continued its journey with
Its steady clicketty-clack,
The passenger sitting limply with
His eyes, empty and black,
While ever the train’s conductor walked
Along the swaying aisle,
Dispensing the tickets on the block
For mile on endless mile.

Then once at their destination he
Would blow a single note,
Using that tiny whistle hanging
Chained down by his throat,
And all of the passengers would wake,
Their eyes no longer black,
Marvelling at the dreams they’d had
While travelling on that track.

If ever you board that certain train
Be sure to be aware,
And look long at the conductor,
As he walks; No, even stare!
Then if he pauses in front of you
Think where you’d like to be,
And watch as he peels your ticket off,
Your ride to ecstasy.

David Lewis Paget

Have ever you noticed that liars
Cross their fingers when they lie?
They seem to think it absolves them from
A judgement, up on high,
For fingers crossed means they didn’t mean
The thing they’re telling you,
But if you’re silly, and fall for it
They make you think it’s true.

I knew a terrible liar once
His name was John Coltrane,
He always cried on my shoulder then
As if he was in pain,
He said that life was short-changing him,
That there was nothing fair,
It only took just a minor thing
To drive him to despair.

We both worked then at an auto plant
And used a giant press,
Knocking out doors and bonnets there,
And working under stress,
For time and motion had set a rate
That we could not fulfil,
And truth to tell it had seemed like hell
And was making Coltrane ill.

No matter how fast we put them through
The steel kept banking up,
Thanks to the other press’s crew
Who’d stop, and have a cup,
While we were struggling then to clear
The backlog, piled up high,
And John was constantly in my ear,
‘I think I want to die.’

I said that he didn’t mean it,
It was just a lousy job,
But he just kept on repeating it
And even began to sob,
To tell the truth, it got on my nerves,
It really began to grate,
I lost my cool, and I said the fool
Was really tempting fate.

He seemed to go a bit crazy then,
Lay backwards on the dye,
I tried to pull him away, but he
Lay staring at the sky,
The press came down with a mighty thump
And it flattened out his head,
Two hundred and fifty tons per inch
Said John Coltrane was dead.

We all of us stood around in shock
When the press released him there,
All that was left was a headless corpse
With blood and brains to spare,
His corpse let out a terrible sigh
At the judgement he had lost,
For though he said he would want to die,
He lay with his fingers crossed.

David Lewis Paget

When once we dived on the San Miguel
Off the coast of old Peru,
We little knew that under the swell
Was an Aztec treasure, too.
I scuba’d down, and the vessel lay
Tipped onto its starboard side,
And mostly covered in silt that day
That buried its Spanish pride.

The wreck had never been seen before
So my heart began to pound,
We’d found the ship we’d been looking for
Submerged, and under a mound,
While whisking some of the silt away
My eyes had caught a gleam,
The helmet of a Conquistador
Lay trapped, and under a beam.

But as the silt was dispersed I saw
That the helmet still was full,
For glaring out from beneath its brim
Was a fearsome human skull,
The skeleton was intact, and lay
Still trapped, where once he fell,
His legs were caught in a cannon bay
Of the fated San Miguel.

I had no time for the niceties
That I should have shown to him,
But seized the helmet from off his head
And I left him, looking grim,
I took it up to the surface as
The first of our spoils that day,
And told the crew that I claimed it,
It was mine, so come what may!

The treasure trove was incredible
Of jewels and gold moidores,
I didn’t think that my helmet would
Be missed, once taken ashore,
But in my mind was a picture that
I’d seen on the ocean bed,
Of that struggling, drowned Conquistador
And that helmet on his head.

I sat that helmet in pride of place
As a conversation piece,
Tricked it up with a piece of lace
Thanks to a helpful niece,
But then the sounds had begun at night
The clashing of steel on steel,
And shadows, moving in passageways
From something that wasn’t real.

One night, the door with a mighty crash
Fell into the passageway,
I must have been feeling more than rash
To venture toward the fray,
For standing there in the open door
Was a skeleton, with a sword,
Who slipped the helmet onto its head
Not saying a single word.

I watched it wade back into the sea
This pile of ancient bones,
And think I know where it’s sure to be
Back where it lay, alone,
It seeks its brother Conquistadors
Where each had perished as well,
Guarding the store of gold moidores
In the hold of the San Miguel.

David Lewis Paget

Why did I fall in love with you,
There’s thousands more would have loved me too,
But love like yours is an evil brew,
While mine is true, and a man thing.

How could I see your lovely face
And think it harboured a state of grace
When all it hid was a can of mace
That drove me mad in decanting.

I should have sought your history
That kept you hidden in mystery,
For though I followed you wistfully
I never uncovered the bantling.

What is the hold you have on me
That keeps me wanting you wretchedly
Long after your love has done with me
And lost itself in your canting.

You may have coined a gypsy curse
That got to my heart, and hurt it first,
But you’re without love, and what is worse
Love’s without you in your ranting.

David Lewis Paget

The Convent at Le Cap Fureur
Lies empty, by the sea,
Its ancient walls a grim despair
Of anonymity,
No more the chants of singing Nuns
To vespers, weave their way,
A thousand years of heartfelt prayers
In silence, drift away.

The Sisterhood of Sainte Bernice
Is cloistered there no more,
The end came in a fury from
The world outside, at war,
The Nuns were fasting, deep in Lent,
When soldiers came across
To find each sister worshipping
The Stations of the Cross.

No godly men were in their ranks
No thoughts of sin or Christ,
The Nuns were ***** and beaten in
Some pagan sacrifice,
The Abbess stood with arms outstretched
And prayed, ‘Forgive them not!’
Was taken to the courtyard where
The sergeant had her shot.

There’s blood still on those convent walls
It leaches out at Lent,
Runs down the walls of dim-lit halls
And stains the grey cement,
We lodged there late one April night
Myself, Joylene and Drew,
Lay staring at the stars above
As round us, silence grew.

We slept within those hallowed walls
Until I woke in fright,
And roused the others, ‘Come and see
This strange and fearful sight!’
For out there in the entrance hall
We heard a weird chant,
And two long lines of Nuns approached
To keep their covenant.

Two lines of candles in the dark,
The Nuns wore hoods and cowls,
And as each candle flickered out
Their chant gave way to howls.
Screams and pleas then filled the air,
The sound of steel-capped boots,
A pagan army from the east
Of rough and raw recruits.

Joylene was in hysterics by
The time this vision went,
And Drew was praying loudly on
That final day of Lent,
We grabbed our things, rushed out and then
We heard a single shot,
The blood-stained Abbess blocked our way
And cried: ‘Forgive them not!’

David Lewis Paget

She’d come down alone from the house on the hill,
But changed, I could see that too,
‘I can’t, any longer, keep seeing you Phil,
I just don’t believe in you!’
She’d listened too long to the words in her head
That were placed there by somebody else,
A secret agenda misled her, I said:
‘You need to believe in yourself.’

‘I know they sound plausible, up on the hill,
They’re experts at twisting your mind,
They plant their subversion so deep in your will
That you leave your own feelings behind.
But listen instead to the beat of your heart
And the things that you know, these are true,
Don’t let them divert you, confuse you or hurt you,
Hang on to the essence of you.’

‘I need something deep to believe in,’ she said,
‘They offer that, up on the hill!’
‘They offer submission to what they commission,
And part of their creed is to ****.
The secret of living is give and be given
Allow every man his own creed,
For nothing is certain, there’s no iron curtain
Between what you want, or you need.’

‘The rules are laid down in their Holy Book,
They tell me they come straight from God.’
‘In whose estimation, or interpretation,
Which version, don’t you think it’s odd?’
The next time we met she was swallowed in black,
Her head bowed, three paces behind,
Her lips had been sealed, couldn’t answer him back,
It was like the blind leading the blind.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

It was only a tiny village then
Away from the thoroughfare,
Had existed since I don’t know when
With a grassy village square,
There were only seven ancient cars
In the narrow village streets,
And none of them travelled very far
For the shop stocked milk, and treats.

It hadn’t seen much of progress since
The days of old King John,
Who’d lost his jewels in The Wash, by Mintz
Near the town of Oberon,
The villagers there were set in ways
That caused nobody harm,
But when Lars came from Oberon
There was cause to feel alarm.

For Lars was the local planner for
The town of Oberon,
He’d dragged it kicking and screaming
Into the century just gone,
He’d widened streets, and cancelled Meets
In the old stone Mason’s Hall,
By bulldozing their building, leaving
Folk with a low stone wall.

He’d passed it all with an ordinance
That had given him total power,
The council caved to his arrogance,
All that he did was glower,
He put street lights on the corners, and
He acted like a prince,
And when he was done with Oberon
He set his sights on Mintz.

He drove on down to their village square
And he said it wouldn’t do,
He’d turn the square to a thoroughfare
So the cars could drive right through,
He didn’t care when the people there
Said ‘Leave our square alone!’
He said, ‘I’m passing an ordinance,
So you might as well go home.’

The local hall was agog that night
There’d never been such a crowd,
The villagers all were up in arms,
‘This fool shouldn’t be allowed!’
‘This calls for a special meeting,’ said
The spokesman, Rupert Bragg,
‘We’ll have to call on the village witch,
The widow, Nancy Stag!’

They all poured out of the village hall
And they went to see the witch,
Who was busily mixing potions in
A cauldron and a dish,
‘You’ll not be needing my magic,’ said
Old Nancy, with a smile,
‘If you all agree with my plan, you’ll see,
That Lars will run a mile.’

She asked the women to stay behind
While the men went on their way,
‘I mean the ones over seventy,
The rest can go or stay,’
They huddled up with the village witch
And applauded Nancy’s plan,
‘We’ll send him scuttling off from Mintz,
You’ll see, he’s only a man!’

When Lars came down in his private car
They met him in the square,
Holding banners and placards, but
That’s not what made him stare,
‘You’d better get back to Oberon
Or we’ll march there, for our rights,’
He turned, and hurriedly left the square,
They all were dressed in tights!’

David Lewis Paget

There wasn’t a lot of love to lose
Between Joe Brown and Brent,
Their farms lay either side of a creek
That now lay dry, and spent,
They used to talk in the early days
When they had no axe to grind,
But Brent came back with a bride one day
Who had been on Joe Brown’s mind.

But Joe was slow in the love-me stakes
While Brent was a bit more flash,
He’d cut on in at the Farmer’s Ball
To the girl with the bright blue sash,
While Joe walked off to sit on his own
And wait for a second chance,
But Brent hung on and dazzled the girl
Right through to the final dance.

The courtship took a matter of weeks
Then they came new-wed to the farm,
And Joe was down inspecting the creek
As Brent showed Jill round the barn,
There wasn’t a fence between the two
They used the creek as a line,
‘The land to the west is yours,’ said Joe,
‘The land to the east is mine.’

The balance wasn’t so equal now
With a new bride over the way,
Joe would have married the girl himself
But hadn’t been game to say.
He soon withdrew to his farmhouse, sat
And wallowed in his despair,
He’d been so set on marrying Jill
There was nobody else out there.

The Autumn rains came on with a flood
And the creek had begun to flow,
Brent stayed at home with his new found love
Not even a thought of Joe,
While Joe lay plotting to get him back
He’d teach him to be so flash,
And walked on up to the top of the creek
With a shovel and old pick-axe.

He felled a tree, and shovelled some stone
To block off the old creek line,
Watched the water form in a lake
Then rested, taking his time.
He chopped a hole in the old creek bank
The water washed it away,
And formed a new creek bed to the west,
And wondered what Brent would say.

When Jill got up at two in the morn
The tide was flooding on through,
In through the back door of their house
And cutting the house in two,
Brent went roaring up to the hill
Astride of his old half-track,
‘Have you gone crazy, Joe,’ he cried,
‘You’d better be putting it back!’

‘Too late, too late,’ said his surly mate
‘The creek is forming a bed,
And anything to the east of it
Is mine, the agreement said!
So move your things to the west of the place
For the east of the house is mine,
The creek that’s flowing right through the house
Will be the dividing line.’

Brent went muttering back to the house
And divided the house in two,
He shored up all the rooms to the west
As the water came tumbling through,
While Joe sealed off the east of the hall
Made sure that his rooms were dry,
While Jill looked over the barricade
At Joe, and started to cry.

‘Why have you done this thing to us,
What did we even do?’
‘He cut me off at the Farmers Ball
In the course of a dance with you.
You never gave me another chance,
I was waiting to propose.’
‘But I would never have married you,
Brent was the man I chose!’

Brent went over and burnt the house
On the other side of the creek,
There wasn’t water to fight the flames
So it smouldered there for a week,
The farms are empty and vacant now
Two creek beds, dry as a bone,
With Brent and Jill now living in Nhill
And Joe in the scrub, alone!

David Lewis Paget

‘Where are the spirits of those who went
Before, do they still survive?’
I said to Alice who pitched our tent
Outside, in the cottage drive.
We couldn’t sleep in the cottage then
There was still a mess to repair,
And rubble lay in the dining room
With dust, most everywhere.

We thought that we were so lucky then
For the cottage and grounds were free,
An ancient Aunt, called Emily Sahnt
Had left in her will, to me.
I’d never met her, the dear old thing
But I raised a glass to her now,
Despite the fact that her neighbours thought
That she was a right old cow!

They said that she was a witch of sorts,
Had given the evil eye,
Had grumbled all round the neighborhood
Had killed some pigs in a sty.
And out in back was a wishing well
Uncovered, that somebody found,
And that’s where Emily met her end,
She fell in the well, and drowned.

I said, ‘I’ll clear it away some day,
The rubble that hid the well,
You never know what it might conceal
A tunnel that leads to Hell!’
And Alice shuddered as Alice does
Whenever I freak her out,
I love to tease her as well as please,
She knows what it’s all about.

There wasn’t time for the well just then,
The cottage was coming first,
We cleared a couple of rooms inside
Moved in, and Alice had cursed,
The paint peeled off from the ceiling and
It dropped in chips to the bed,
We woke, with bits in our mouths and ears
And Alice felt strange in the head.

She felt quite ill for a day or two
Was sick, confused for a spell,
I left her sleeping it off and went
To work in clearing the well,
I dropped a bucket into its depths
For the water, clear and chilled,
And used it up in the cottage then,
And kept the bucket filled.

The groaning started that very night
And a grumbling in the eaves,
I said to Alice, ‘Is that you, Pet?’
Then I heard the crunch of leaves.
There were footsteps round about the place
And I lay, tensed up with fright,
I wasn’t game to be venturing out
In the middle of that dark night.

Alice said she was hearing things
And I tried to calm her down,
We’d burned our boats in moving there
And couldn’t go back to town,
She seemed to be sleeping a lot by day
And plagued with fears at night,
I wanted to do the best for her
What I did, it wasn’t right.

We were using the water from the well
To wash, to cook, for tea,
I suffered from blinding headaches then,
I found, and so did she.
The pigment in her nails had changed
She convulsed, not once, but twice,
I said I’d bring in the doctor just
To get some sound advice.

Alice died in the morning, she
Lay still on the side of the bed,
I shook her a couple of times, she was
So cold, I knew she was dead,
The doctor sent for forensics, and
They checked the place, the well,
There was arsenic in the water there
And the ceiling paint that fell.

I’m lying here in the hospital
But I’m chained, and under guard,
The police think they have a ****** case
And they say I might be charged.
But I had a dream of a rustic crone
Who was clutching Alice hard,
Who said, ‘I don’t want to be alone,
You can walk with me in the yard!’

David Lewis Paget

I’d only been home for a week or two
And Jeanine was acting queer,
Each time she’d pass the mirror she’d stare
And I heard her say, ‘Oh dear!’
I’d been away for five long years
But she hadn’t changed a bit,
Each time I’d ask, she’d cover her ears:
‘I have to go to The Crypt!’

I thought that she meant the local club
Where they drank and danced all night,
‘Aren’t you a little too old for that,’
I’d say, and her face turned white.
‘You’re only as old as you feel,’ she snapped,
‘If only,’ was my reply,
‘Whether we like it or not, we age,
And then, we finally die.’

She put her hands to her ears, and shrieked,
‘Don’t ever say that to me!
You can die, but I’ll still go on,
I’ll be what I want to be.’
I stood quite shocked as she raved, she cried
And turned and ran from the room,
I didn’t know what to make of her,
So sat, half stunned in the gloom.

She’d always worried about her looks
Had made up her face for hours,
I’d said, ‘You’re really compulsive, Sis,’
She’d take innumerable showers.
I said, ‘You’re washing yourself away,
There’ll be no oil in your skin.’
‘But don’t you think that I’m beautiful,’
She’d say, with an evil grin.

She’d never married, but dated men
Who would compliment on her looks,
‘He said I’m like Cleopatra,’ or,
‘Like Helen of Troy in the books!’
‘Words are cheap,’ I would say to her
And she’d fly right into a rage,
‘You’re always trying to put me down!’
‘You’re like a bird in a cage!

Always fluffing your feathers up
To say, ‘Hey look at me!’
Don’t you care for the things in life
That are not complimentary?’
But she would shrug and ignore me then
She was vain beyond compare,
I didn’t know that she’d signed a pact
With the Devil, in her despair.

The weeks went by and her mood got worse,
She was nervous, I could see,
Her hands would tremble and she would curse
Applying her toiletry.
The wrinkles set in around her eyes
‘So much for that cream I bought!
I’ll have to go to The Crypt,’ she cried,
And burst in tears at the thought.

One day I spied her out in the street
Down by a ruined church,
She forced her way past the battened door
And disappeared with a lurch.
I waited hours, out there in the street
To see when she’d reappear,
Then realised she’d gone to the crypt
In the bowels of that church, in there.

She came out walking, as in a trance,
So beautiful, redefined,
I couldn’t believe the change in her,
I thought that I’d lost my mind.
The girl I saw was only a shell
Of the woman who once was whole,
Whoever she’d met in that evil crypt
Had walked away with her soul!

David Lewis Paget

They lived in a farm on the lower slopes
Of a place called Gresty Hill,
Three sisters, Emily Jane and Hope
And the younger one called Jill,
My father said to avoid those girls
And my mother echoed him,
‘They’re plain and nasty and not for you,
My son, my darling Jim.’

Like everything that’s denied to you
My interest was aroused,
I’d watch them swilling the pigs below
And milking the Jersey cows,
They went barefoot and they slopped through mud,
When they laughed, I heard their cries,
And watched from up on the hill above
Till I caught their laughing eyes.

Then they’d point at me, and they’d strut and flounce
And would shake their tangled hair,
A blonde, brunette and an auburn girl
They would stand below, and stare,
And sometimes, when they were feeling bold
They would hitch their skirts up high,
Put one foot on a water cask
And show me a muddy thigh.

‘Don’t never go down to that Gresty Farm,’
My parents made me swear,
‘For once they get you they’ll use their charm
And will likely keep you there.’
But the girl called Jill had a butter churn
And she made it soft as silk,
And came with Hope to our rustic barn,
Selling the sisters’ milk.

They smiled and giggled when I came out
And they ****** their wares at me,
‘I don’t know whether the folks will want,’
I said, ‘I’ll go and see.’
But my father came and shooed them off,
‘We don’t want the likes of you!
You keep yourselves to your Gresty Farm
And do what you have to do.’

I asked my mother what they had done
And she shed a whispy tear,
‘Some things cannot be undone, my son,
I try not to interfere.’
My father turned to me, stony, grim
Said sleeping dogs should lie,
‘The likes of them are forbidden, Jim,
But you’ll not know the reason why.’

The day came after my father fell
From the tractor, over the hill,
Was crushed, and after the funeral
All of his secrets spilled.
My mother took me aside to say
That my father wasn’t a saint,
‘You know how a cuckoo drops its egg
In another’s nest… Don’t faint!’

‘Two of the three at Gresty Farm
Were his, but I don’t know which,
Their widowed mother would put about
Before they were born, the *****!
It well could be the first and the third,
The second, I couldn’t tell,
All I know is your father made my
Life, like a living hell!’

Jim went down to the Gresty Farm
For the first time in his life,
He lined up three of the Gresty girls
And said, ‘I need me a wife.
I’m told that two of the three of you
Are my sisters, is it true?
I need to know what your mother knows
For I sure can’t marry two.’

Their mother Gail gave a fearsome wail
When confronted by the four,
The daughters said, ‘Well we never knew,
Why didn’t you tell us before?’
‘Emily Jane and Hope were his,
I never was going to tell,
But Jill was William Parson’s girl,
Your father should burn in hell!’

He took Jill back to his hillside farm
And he called his mother out,
‘This is Jill, and her father’s Bill,
I’ve been told that, without doubt.’
Then he said to Jill, ‘Will you marry me?’
She was coy, and answered slow,
‘You’ll have to prove you can carry me,
If you can, you never know!’

David Lewis Paget

There once was a tiny cupboard, where
We kept our groceries there,
Just enough room for two to squeeze
Inside, and under the stair,
And Karen would beckon me go to her
With just an arch of her brow,
She wouldn’t take no for an answer, but
Would say, ‘Just come to me now.’

Then I would go in and close the door
And feel her close in the gloom,
Her skirt would rustle, I’d feel her thighs
And would smell her sweet perfume,
She had such a sense of urgency
When she pulled me down to her breast,
But I would be telling old secrets to
Reveal what’s happening next.

But that was a million years ago,
It seemed the beginning of time,
When we were young, and I’d taste her tongue
Sweeter than strawberry wine,
Those nights were the nights of passion, but
Then nothing could really compare,
With the times when Karen called to me
To meet her under the stair.

But the years unfolded fatefully,
And Karen began to stray,
Her eyes that once had been more than wise
Would seem to have gone away,
She’d stare out into the distance to
Some place that I’d never been,
And when I’d ask her just where she went
She’d mutter, ‘What do you mean?’

I found her wandering down the road
Just down from St. Michael’s dome,
She looked at me, most piteously,
‘I don’t know how to get home.’
I took her hand and I led her back
Through the early morning frost,
And when we got to our gate, she said,
‘Oh God, I seem to be lost.’

The days ahead were a nightmare, she’d
Forget where she’d put the pans,
Then look at me like a stranger, when
I’d reach out, and hold her hands,
But worst of all, she would bring my tears
When she stood by the cupboard stair,
And say, ‘I seem to remember, but
Just what did we do in there?’

David Lewis Paget

He wandered at night the streets that might
Be busy, during the day,
The empty squares and the thoroughfares
To search for a come-what-may,
He’d never appear in the light of day
And shrank at a distant shout,
His way was always a lonely way,
Watching the lights go out.

He’d always avoid the gaze of men
Who would stare at him, then die,
Nor would he seek a mirror then,
He was born with a single eye.
His mother took him away at birth
So his father wouldn’t see,
That she had lain with a cyclops once
And then paid the penalty.

She had kept him locked in a cellar, till
He had grown too strong and bold,
He’d strained and torn at his chains until
His jail had failed to hold.
He couldn’t leave in the daylight, for
He had only known the dark,
So left one night in the pale moonlight
And escaped across the park.

He’d roam at night when the stars were bright
For the food and drink he’d need,
Padding the cobbled pavements there
In search of a missing creed.
What was the purpose of his life,
Could he exist alone?
Was there a female Cyclops somewhere
Willing to take him home?

One winter’s night when the time was right
And the streets were damp and drear,
He saw her walking a way ahead
And quaked in a sudden fear.
What if she turned and gazed on him
Drawn in by his single eye,
What if she died? He shook and sighed,
‘If she does, then so will I.’

She heard his footsteps behind her then
So he said, ‘you’re walking late!’
And her reply was a thankful sigh,
‘I can’t find my garden gate.’
He took her arm and they walked along
As she tried describing it,
His heart was full, he could do no wrong
As she tapped with a long white stick.

David Lewis Paget

She always seemed to run on ahead,
Skipping, prancing and dancing,
All the way to the Goblin’s Wood
While I followed on, romancing.
She never seemed to see me at all
Though she was my only vision,
The only feature that filled my world
Right through to the intermission.

She wore her hair in a plaited braid
That jiggled along behind her,
And left a trail like a dragon’s tail
So bright that the light would blind her,
But I was mesmerised by the legs
That danced in a crazy pattern,
They moved too fast for the man who begs
Or the girl that they call a slattern.

I’d see her shadow between the trees
As it weaved and it side-slipped gladly,
Whipping the pale white flight of the breeze
As the leaves whirled around her, madly,
Then all the denizens of the wood
Would come to the sight entrancing,
Dressed in the garb of the neighborhood
I’d leave them behind me, dancing.

‘Come out, come out,’ would the Goblins shout
But she’d leave them behind her, whirling,
The old ones suffered from reams of gout
And would sit with their hair there, curling,
I live in hopes that she’ll turn to me
When her dance has become more mellow,
Entwined around the mystery tree
Her dress fading green to yellow.

They call her Summer, but Autumn shades
Seem they’re a long time coming,
The leaves are skittering down like blades
In a part of the year that’s slumming,
The breeze is cool as I call her in
From the dance that she’s in the making,
While I, contented, await the sin
She keeps in the oven, baking.

David Lewis Paget

I walked on down to the travelling show
Thinking to take a ride,
When the barker said, in a voice so low
‘There’s a Dancing Girl inside.’
He opened the flap of the crimson tent
And he tried to wave me in,
I said I didn’t know what he meant,
He replied, ‘What price for sin?’

I said I wanted to take a ride
Not look at a Dancing Girl,
There were plenty down at the local club
In my easy, ****** world.
‘There’s not a thing she could teach me now
For I’ve seen it all before.’
He said, ‘This girl is the Jezebel
Who performed for Kings, and more.’

I waved him off and I carried on
In my search for a thrilling ride,
And spent the evening whirling, twirling
Over the countryside,
But as I turned to travel on home
I passed by the crimson tent,
And the barker opened the flap again
To see if I would relent.

It must have been curiosity
For I turned and went inside,
Into its darkened depths I went
To flatter his wounded pride,
There was eastern music playing low
And I heard a woman wail,
Kneeling in front of an altar there
And the name inscribed was ‘Baal.’

She heard me there, and got to her feet,
And danced like an ancient rhyme,
But underneath the paint on her face
Was the ravage of endless time,
Gold and silver glittered and gleamed
From the very little she wore,
With chains and bracelets jangling as
She danced around, like a *****.

She pressed her body against me then
And jabbered some foreign tongue,
The only word that I thought I heard
Was the one on the altar, One!
The barker stood in the entranceway
And she muttered his name, aloud,
She said Ahab, and I thought to run
He stood in the way, and bowed.

She pushed me up to the altar then
And tried to force me to kneel,
I thought of the Bible story, and
My skin had crawled at her feel,
I fought her off, and pushed her away
The man she called Ahab scowled,
And as I left by the flap of the tent
The dogs by the entrance howled.

David Lewis Paget

It was only the shape of the mushroom cloud
That gave the game away,
It’s not that we weren’t expecting it,
It could happen any day,
But when it came on a Sunday as
We all trooped out of church,
We wondered, where was the Saviour,
Had he left us in the lurch?

By chance, the missile had missed the town
Fell thirty miles away,
Up in the distant ranges
In the vineyards of Cathay,
So much for the vintage of Semillon
I thought, with barely a frown,
Will anyone miss it once we’ve gone
And scorched that fertile ground?

It’s strange, with imminent death you feel
So suddenly detached,
Go in, and shelter from scorching heat
And shards of broken glass,
That’s all there was with the Cathay bomb
It fell so far away,
I looked at Jean and she looked at me
Was this our final day?

The sound came rumbling over the hill,
In a long, unbroken sigh,
I clung to her and she clung to me,
There wasn’t time to cry,
A moment passed and a moment more
And still we stood our ground,
I thought we might get to live some more
While God was looking down.

We’d lost our friends in the vineyards
They’d been vaporised to dust,
Jean said we’d better not think of it,
But I replied we must.
We both were seized with a single urge
As we clawed our way to bed,
And thought we couldn’t be doing this
If both of us were dead.

An eerie glow in the sky that night
Kept all of us awake,
We didn’t know where the bomb was from
Or what more we could take.
A second cloud in a mushroom stew
Rose up, there would be more,
From somewhere else where the evil grew,
The day of the mushroom spore.

David Lewis Paget

There’s a man been hung at the old crossroads
In the village of Little Deeping,
And in his pockets a couple of toads
That were there when they caught him, creeping,
They bound his arms and they hung him high
On the bough of a mystic rowan,
And filled his stuttering mouth with straw
To quell the spell of his going.

The village is set in a mystery
That was old when the world was growing,
Three thousand years of its history
Is lost to the world, unknowing,
The valley’s not in the land of them
Who are yet to stumble upon it,
For men live now as they once lived then
With their wives in a primrose bonnet.

And superstition is rife down there
In the village of Little Deeping,
Where women never reveal their hair
With men in the meadow, reaping,
They take their water deep from a well
And light each cottage with lamplight,
Using a primitive type of oil
That seeps from the soil, in moonlight.

Their brides leap over a witches broom
When the harvest grain is swelling,
Under the beams of a crescent moon
With a bonfire near their dwelling,
They change their partners every year
If their bellies haven’t swollen,
Or hang their charms up over the door
So their offspring won’t be stolen.

They live their lives by the Druid gods
Who would bring about the seasons,
And never question the rights and wrongs
For nature has its reasons,
Their days began at the break of dawn
To the sound of the cockerel crowing,
An ancient bird with its comb and spurs
That would bring the sun up, showing.

But Tam Eilann was a surly man
Who would often lie in, sleeping,
Dreaming away the early day
While the rest were out there, reaping,
He hated hearing the cockerel crow
As it bid the sun, its rising,
When he said, ‘that cockerel has to go,’
He was more than just surmising.

One autumn night, he snuffed his light
Went out in the darkness, creeping,
And caught the only cockerel left
In the village of Little Deeping,
His knife flashed once in the cold moonlight
And left the cockerel dying,
His neighbours hurried to see the sight
Of their only cockerel, lying.

‘You’ve shamed the gods and must pay the odds,’
They said as they bound him, crying,
Then hung him high on the rowan tree
And cursed, as they watched him dying.
The cattle low in the byre still
And the bees, they stay in the hive,
For there’s not been a single sunrise there
Since the day the cockerel died.

David Lewis Paget

The trees are dry, have a withered look
And the wheat has gone to seed,
The skies are grey on a summer’s day
And the river’s filled with ****,
The brook that babbled is sad and still
And the sea lies flat beside,
A lonely shore that had offered more
Till the day the poet died.

Gone is the sound of merriment
And the party jokes fall flat,
The folk just wander aimlessly
As they turn to this and that,
The traffic’s down to a sullen crawl
As the lights turn red beside,
And silence falls like a dreadful pall
Since the day the poet died.

The colours leach from the neon signs
And they turn a pavement grey,
There is no yellow or green chartreuse
To be seen since that dreadful day,
The liquor’s flat as a pieman’s hat
And you can’t get drunk, they sighed,
The children say they will run away
Now they know that the poet died.

And love has curdled in every heart
It was captured in his verse,
The sweet young bride has been left outside
Where no bells ring, which is worse,
The Moon at night is without its light
That it once would shine outside,
And lovers look for its beam in vain
Since the day that the poet died.

There is no poetry left in life
That was back in another time,
When the poet cursed as he wove his verse
And he sprinkled it well with rhyme,
But it’s sad to say, now he’s gone away
We must learn to feel inside,
And colour our world a different way,
Now that the poet’s died.

David Lewis Paget

The spirit of Christmas was here again
As they rocked on up to my door,
The aunts and uncles and cousins, all
I’d not even seen before,
They’d smelt the turkey, they’d seen the tree
With its lights, red yellow and green,
They’d even come with their knives and forks
In case that my own weren’t clean.

They came in a rush at twelve o’clock,
‘Now we’re not too late, we trust?
We got caught up at Aunt Mary’s, then
We missed the eleven-ten bus,
She says she’ll not be cooking this year
So we didn’t have time to lose,
She’ll hurry along with a minute to spare
As soon as she puts on her shoes.’

I said, ‘Oh good!’ as they filed on in
To wash their hands in the sink,
Then counted heads and I gulped and saw
The turkey begin to shrink,
A single bird for eleven heads
Or twelve if you counted me,
I might just get a wing and a prayer
When feeding this family.

They found the chest with the beer in ice
But there wasn’t enough for all,
So they corked and drank the fine Rosé
That I’d had displayed on the wall,
They ground the peanuts into the rug
And they spilled Chablis on the couch,
Then kept on stumbling over my feet
And all I could say was ‘Ouch!’

They sat around with an hour to wait
While the turkey started to brown,
And talked of family members that
They thought were coming on down,
But then the topic they all enjoyed
Was raising its ugly head,
‘You’d never believe,’ said Cousin Steve
But Auntie Caroline’s dead!’

‘I heard she fell from the Pepper Tree
With the pruning shears in her grasp,
Into a deadly swarm of bees!’
You could hear the others gasp.
‘And George, remember George, he was
Your Uncle’s cousin’s son,
He fell right under a train; they said
He had a blindfold on.’

Then Gustave from the German branch
And Heidi from the Swiss,
Had both expired in some dread fire,
I’d not heard any of this!
‘Delaney died in Ottawa
When he fell dead off his horse,
And Orson choked on a bottle of coke
That was really chilli sauce!’

I cleared my throat before I spoke
‘I would hate to interrupt,
But listening to your Death Watch List
Has made my mind right up.
I don’t know a single one of you,
You've not been here before,
But you’ll find who you are related to
If you’d like to try next door.’

David Lewis Paget