I’d taken my friends way off the shore
In my small, glass-bottomed boat,
The weather was clear, the sea was calm
For the sturdiest boat afloat,
I wanted to scan the hidden depths
Watch all that lived on the reef,
But Peter my friend, just wanted to fish,
And so did his brother, Keith.

They busied themselves with their fishing rods,
Were bent on baiting their hooks,
When suddenly something beneath the boat
Made me take a second look,
It only appeared a shadow at first
Came on with a sinuous glide,
It wasn’t a fish I had seen before,
‘Hey, just look at this,’ I cried.

They both turned around and peered below
But then the shadow had gone,
‘What did you see,’ said Peter P.
‘It must have been twenty feet long!’
‘Oh *******,’ said Keith, ‘beyond belief,
There isn’t a fish of that size,
Not even the great White Pointer Shark,
You must have mud in your eyes.’

‘I know what I saw,’ I said again,
‘It had the most horrible teeth,
It seemed to be looking for prey down there
Across the top of the reef.’
‘I’ve fished these waters for twenty years,
I think I’d have seen it by now,’
Said Peter P. with a smirk at me,
‘Watch us, and we’ll show you how.’

They knew I wasn’t a fisherman,
I wouldn’t know Cod from a shark,
I just liked to watch the fishes swim
Through the glass-bottomed boat in the dark,
I’d rigged up floodlights to light below
That eerie, mysterious deep,
Where seaweed swayed in the land they played
With the rest of the world asleep.

The guys continued and cast their lines,
While I sat reading a book,
We’d be there hours, and that was fine
I took the occasional look,
We drifted over a patch of blue
The sand was clear below,
When back there came that sinuous shape
I said to the guys, ‘HeLLO!’

This time it headed up for the boat,
Less like a fish than a snake,
A massive head with reptilian teeth
And suddenly I was awake.
It shot straight up, right over the boat
Snapping its massive jaw,
And took Keith’s arm from his shoulder blades
Right into its mighty maw.

We just couldn’t stop the flow of blood
It filled the boat as he died,
And Peter P. was distraught as he
Sat helplessly, and he cried.
‘That must be some prehistoric beast
That lived on the ocean floor,
I’ll never go fishing again,’ said he
As we headed back to the shore.

David Lewis Paget

I haven’t the pocket to buy antiques
But often I like to go,
To sit at the antique auctions,
See who’s there, who’s in the know,
The men with yen and the businessmen
The Lords and the Ladies too,
Still with the loot their forebears stole
In 1642.

So guys like me can only watch
As the bids creep up each time,
Some of the things they’re bidding for,
It’s like white-collar crime,
There’s better stuff in a garage sale
Or found in a pile of junk,
I come away and I often say:
‘Well, that was a load of bunk!’

But sometimes, at the end of the day
When the bids and the deals are done,
There are items that are cast away
Not even a bid, not one,
And they sit forlorn, out there on the lawn
Where everyone passed them by,
Waiting for owners to pick them up
Under a threatening sky.

That’s where I found the Georgian desk,
Beaten, battered and worn,
The side was scuffed and the top was chipped
With one side panel gone,
Someone had found it, out in a barn,
Under a pile of hay,
And brought it along on spec, they said,
They hoped it would go away.

I said, ‘Well what do you want for it,
I’ll cart it off in the truck,’
He said, ‘I’m happy with forty quid!’
I couldn’t believe my luck.
I got it home and I cleaned it up
And polished the ancient stain,
I’ll swear that the desk had smiled at me
With faith in itself, again.

And then I replaced the panel that
Was missing from times before,
But not before I’d inspected it,
Discovered a secret drawer,
And tucked in there was a parchment
Faded yet, and next to a quill,
It said, ‘Dear Margaret, hearken to me,
This love has made me ill!’

A chill ran suddenly down my spine
The hairs rose up on my neck,
The room went dark as I placed the parchment
Down, face up on the desk.
I felt my heart beginning to pound
As I read what he had to say:
‘I came, my love, at the time you said,
But the soldiers took you away!’

That was the day that changed my life
For the weather ‘til then was fine,
A cloud had come, and covered the sun
As I got to his final line,
Then thunder cracked and rattled the roof
While lightning shattered the birch,
He wrote, ‘Your father and his dragoons
Are out there, guarding the church.’

My mind was set in a turmoil, and
I paced for that afternoon,
Wondering who these people were
That had cast my life in gloom,
The only clue was the cursive date
And the name that he’d finely wrought,
For that was 1768
And his name was Jeremy Thorpe.

It seems they’d planned to elope and wed
In the church at Medlin Tort,
But the father said that he’d strike him dead
Despite what his daughter thought,
For Jeremy was a colonist,
And would take his daughter there,
To the Massachusetts colony,
Revolution in the air!

The nights that I couldn’t sleep, I paced
And wandered from room to room,
The study was faintly lighted by
A waning, rising Moon,
One night a young man sat at the desk
With a powdered wig and quill,
And wrote, ‘My Heart, all hope has fled,
But for me, I love you still.’

I went there looking for answers in
The local reading room,
I searched the shelves of the library
And I found an ancient tome,
A Margaret Evancourt had died
Imprisoned in a mill,
And left a note, ‘My Jeremy,
This heart bleeds for you still.’

That night I sat at the Georgian desk
Picked up the quill and I wrote,
Nothing of great import, but just
A simple, one line note,
I left it there on the desk, and laid
It underneath the quill,
It said, ‘Your love is imprisoned,
You will find her down at the mill!’

I never saw him again, my note
Had gone when I arose,
I couldn’t wait to be off, in haste
I struggled with my clothes,
Then down at the little church I’d found
Still there, at Medlin Tort,
Were written the wedding lines I’d sought
Of Margaret Evancourt.

David Lewis Paget

When Alison left the bath to run
It ruined the parquet floor,
It spilled on out like a waterspout
And ran right under the door,
She’d gone back into the bedroom, so
The spill continued to run,
Across the landing and down the stair,
‘Now look what our daughter’s done!’

We couldn’t dry out the parquetry
It swelled, and loosened the glue,
Then bits would lift and would come adrift,
I didn’t know what to do.
Then Barbara said, ‘It’s coming up,
We shouldn’t have laid it down,
I’ll go and choose some ceramic tiles
At that tiling place in town.’

I said that I’d lay the tiles myself
But Barbara would insist,
‘We really need a professional
For a job as big as this.’
I shrugged, and let her get on with it
I never could win a trick,
So the tiler that she employed was one
Ahab Nathaniel Frick.

I’d seen this tiler about the town
All hunched, and wizened and old,
His wrinkled skin was like parchment in
Some leathery paperfold.
He wore a hat with a drooping brim
So the sun never touched his face,
A puff of wind would have blown him in
To leave not a hint, or trace.

‘Are you sure that he’s up to this,’ I said,
‘He isn’t the best of men,
He’ll probably get on his knees all right
But never get up again.’
But Barbara shushed me out of there
Was keeping me well at bay,
She wanted to prove what she could do
In laying the tiles her way.

I didn’t get in to see them then
‘Til the tiles were laid, with grout,
Nor see Nathaniel Frick again,
I supposed that he’d gone out.
I stood and stared at the new laid tiles,
Their pattern was in the floor,
And Barbara, waiting proudly said,
‘What are you staring for?’

‘There’s something a-swirl in those tiles,’ I said,
‘Some pattern you didn’t mean,
The way that he’s put them together, well
There’s a sense of something unclean!’
I said the tiles made an evil face
And showed her the curving jaw,
The squinting eyes that could hypnotise
And the cheeks, so sallow and raw.

She said that she couldn’t see it then,
That I must have twisted eyes,
I wasn’t wanting to hurt her so
I tried to sympathise,
But the monster’s face was set in space
And it wouldn’t go away,
I dreamt about that face by night
And I saw it, every day.

At night, the face seemed to snarl at me
When I passed it in the gloom,
And I worried that it was set right there
Outside our daughter’s room,
Then Barbara thought she heard a noise,
An intruder in the house,
And tipped me out of the bed to chase
The night intruder out.

The moans began in the early hours
And the groans came just at dawn,
Then Alison came into our room,
‘There’s a shadow on my wall!
A man with a broad-brimmed, floppy hat
And with squinting eyes that gleamed,’
I said, ‘That’s it,’ when she had a fit
And our darling daughter screamed!

I went on out to the lumber shed
And I brought a mattock in,
While Alison jumped in the double bed
As the tiles set up a din,
A wailing, groaning, squealing sound
That would raise the peaceful dead,
I raised the mattock and smashed the tiles
Just above the monster’s head.

The tiles rose up with a mighty roar
And shattered, scattered around,
As a shadow from underneath the floor
Rose up with a dreadful sound,
It hissed, and made for the stairway, leapt
And it almost made me sick,
For fleeing out of the open door
Was Ahab Nathaniel Frick!

David Lewis Paget

She said, ‘Let’s go to the Devil Park,’
At noon, on a summer’s day,
I said, ‘We’d better go after dark,
They hide themselves away.
They only come out to feed at night
So that’s when you see them best,
By day, they never come out to play,
That’s when they get to rest.’

We packed the car and we took a torch,
A powerful, bright spotlight,
The only way we would see them there
On a dark and gloomy night,
We waited till it was just on dusk
Then finally hit the road,
The Park was seventy miles away
Or an hour, I’d been told.

The gate of the park was locked and barred
But we scaled and climbed across,
That’s when Giselle had torn her dress,
It was old, so no great loss,
We could hear the scrabbling and the screech
Of the small marsupials,
Grubbing around the park for food
And giving out grunts and squeals.

The torch lit up in a long wide arc
As we scanned across the ground,
The first one that we saw had roared
When it knew it had been found,
Its jaw was wide and its evil teeth
Could give you a nasty bite,
I wasn’t going to get too close
On that warm and sultry night.

We’d wandered round for an hour out there
Had seen groups of two’s and three’s,
And some that were more adventurous
We could see were climbing trees,
When out of the darkness came a voice
That was grating, cold and hard,
‘What do you think, by coming here
To spy in my own backyard?’

It made me start, for the torch wheeled round
To illuminate a stump,
And there a figure in shiny black
Was sat, and it made us jump,
The face was narrow and pointed, leered,
Was capped with a pair of horns,
While a long black tail with snake-like scales
Flicked up, like it meant to warn.

‘We came to see the marsupials,’
I stuttered, in my distress,
‘We meant no harm, but you just alarmed
Us both, in your fancy dress.’
‘You broke in here, but I see the fear
That I cause you, out in the dark,
What did you think you’d find out here,
You’ve come to the Devil’s Park.’

The Devil slowly uncurled himself
And he stood up, ten feet tall,
I saw his claws and his evil jaws
And his goat-like legs, and all,
‘You both may need to redeem yourselves
By paying your court to me,
I’ll make you the lord and lady of
All of the land you see.’

And suddenly all the park was lit
In a ghostly, evil glow,
He said, ‘I can give you all of it,
I have the power, you know.’
‘I think that you’ve tried that line before,’
I said, in a sudden shot,
‘And “get thee behind me Satan” was
The answer that you got.’

A flame curled out of the Devil’s mouth
As he opened up his jaw,
And fixed me with a piercing glare
As he beat his chest, to roar,
‘You’ll not escape, for I’ll cast my cape
To capture your sinful souls,
And when we meet, it will be a treat
In your seat of glowing coals.’

He threw his cape in a whirl until
It covered him like a shroud,
And then went up in a puff of smoke,
As Giselle cried out, aloud,
We raced on back and we scaled the gate
In a massive leap in the dark,
I said, ‘Don’t ever suggest again
We visit the Devil Park!’

David Lewis Paget

They ‘pressed me on His Majesty’s frigate
The H.M.S. Carew,
It only took me a day to find
I was lodged with the Devils’s crew,
The Captain, ‘Black Jack’ Hawkins
Was a gentleman by name,
But on the ship he used the whip
To his undying shame.

I slipped and fell from the foremast arm
When I caught my foot in a stay,
And though a net kept me safe from harm
That wasn’t the Captain’s way,
He said I’d swim for my mortal sin
Told the crew to rope me through,
Then dragged me over the side and said,
‘We’re going to keel-haul you.’

The barnacles on the Carew’s hull
Nearly tore my back to shreds,
My lungs were so close to bursting that
I thought that I was dead.
They hauled me over the side again
The deck was red from my back,
At least I knew I was safe again
From a sudden shark attack.

They rubbed raw salt in my many wounds
Till I thought I was in hell,
While some of the crew had mocked and jeered
The Devil’s own cartel,
They wore tattoos of the skull and bones
It was strange for a Royal crew,
But they themselves had been Impressed
So they hated Hawkins too.

He used to stand on the quarter-deck
Quite close to the starboard rail,
Where he could see any slacking off
While we were under sail,
He’d tie the men to the nearest mast
And would whip, before the crew,
Till every man was inflamed and raw
And would plot what they would do.

It fell to me to devise a plan
That everyone agreed,
We had to get rid of this Devil man
It became our only creed,
So I took a rope when I climbed the mast
That was fixed above his head,
Then swung and booted him over the rail
So we thought that he was dead.

The crew then dashed to the starboard side
And they all looked down and cursed,
For Hawkins floated upon the tide,'
It couldn’t be much worse,
He shouted up, ‘This is mutiny!
I’ll flay that man to the bone.’
But all he got were the jeers of the crew
As the Captain sank like a stone.

David Lewis Paget

The Inn he kept at the crossroads shone
A lantern, out on the street,
The only sign it was still alive
To the few its doors would greet,
Its passageway was in shadow once
You entered and closed the door,
And that was the way he wanted it,
The owner, Titus Claw.

For Titus was a hideous man
With a face like a railway wreck,
A scar cut deep with the fleshy burn
From a rope around his neck,
They said he’d cheated the hangman twice
With a neck like a coiled spring,
They’d hung on each of his legs in vain
For he never felt a thing.

The rope had broken under the strain
And dropped them all on the floor,
And he was the first to rise again
As he croaked, ‘I’m Titus Claw!’
They backed away as his form had swayed
With the hood still over his head,
‘There isn’t a rope can cope with me,
If there was, then I’d be dead!’

They tried again, he began to spin
As the rope became undone,
The strands unravelling faster than
The ropemaker had spun,
The hangman turned and he crossed himself
As he said, ‘I’m done with him!
If you want to hang this miserable wretch
Go find the Brothers Grimm!’

The Warden suffered a heart attack,
The jailers fled when they saw,
The Judge hid under the drop and cried,
‘He’s surely the Devil’s spore!
Release him now so our souls are safe
From the reach of the evil one,
It’s not his time for an early grave,
But God help everyone!’

So Titus went to manage the place
He called ‘The Devil’s Drop Inn’,
That sat way out on the crossroads
With a sign that creaked in the wind,
Whole families would avert their eyes
As they passed, and cross themselves,
For the only patrons came by night
And they called them, ‘Satan’s Elves’.

They came with their hats pulled over their eyes,
Their collars hiding their cheeks,
Then slide on into the passageway
And wouldn’t come out for weeks,
No lights were seen through the pebble glass
For the insides lay in gloom,
No drunken revellers came outside
It was silent as the tomb.

But once a month when the Moon was full
And the wind soughed up in the eaves,
A passer-by might hear a cry
Or a howl on the midnight breeze,
But nobody thought to check inside
They’d wear their hood like a cowl,
Then turn and suddenly rush away
When they heard an animal growl.

The storms would come and rattle the tiles,
As the sign would swing and creak,
And hail would shatter the window panes,
Three times in a week,
Til one dark shuddering winter’s night
With the good folk in their cots,
The lightning struck on the Devil’s peak
And shattered the chimney pots.

The fire began in the topmost room
And it raced on down the stair,
Gobbling up the dry rot that
It found most everywhere.
It made its way to the basement ‘til
The whole Inn was ablaze,
The pebble glass was exploding
And the walls themselves were razed.

A couple of passers-by have sworn
That all they saw were cats,
Rushing out of the passageway
And followed by tawny rats,
But in the glow of the embers, heading
Over the hill, they saw,
A shadowy figure, slinking away
The image of Titus Claw!

David Lewis Paget

I didn’t see anything strange that day
When I first drove into the town,
If anything it was normal, though
I was breaking ****** ground.
I’d never been into this countryside
Before, with its mounds and mines,
A patchwork town with its mullock heaps
And its sad, neglected grime.

But the people there, they would stand and stare
As I drove my motor through,
They’d stop and stand on the corners there
With nothing better to do.
The mines had closed when the ore ran out
Though most of the miners stayed,
They didn’t seem glad to see me drive
Or wave on their Grand Parade.

But I thought I’d stay in their tiny town
I was bushed, too tired to drive,
So parked the car by their only pub
And I ventured deep inside.
A man came out with a surly look
And he said, ‘You’re passing through?
I hope you’re not a believer, son,
Or this town will do for you!’

I shook my head at the things he said,
I only wanted to sleep,
His questions rattled around my head,
But then seemed far too deep.
I paid for a room and locked the door
Then went to sleep for a spell,
But then discovered a woman there
By the name of Jezebel.

‘Please help to smuggle me out of here,’
She said, ‘in the back of your car.’
She whispered this with her ruby lips
Too close to my own, by far.
‘Why don’t you just get up and leave,
And walk right out of the town?’
‘Nobody gets to leave this place,
If you try, he’ll cut you down.’

I said that she wasn’t making sense,
She was just confusing my head,
How could I concentrate, when she
Was sprawling over my bed?
‘They thought they’d taken his power away
When they tied him up in chain,
But he only waits at his evil gate
For his thousand years of pain.’

‘This town is under an evil spell
Since the miners found the rift,
If I said that my name was Jezebel
Then I think you’d get my drift.
He needs someone who believes in him
With a kind and gentle heart,
And that will help him to break his chains
Then he’ll tear this town apart.’

I asked her where I could see the man
And she said she’d take me there,
But only if I could promise her
Not to believe, or care.
‘He’ll use his wiles, and his gracious smiles
To get at the heart that’s true,
You have to reject, be circumspect,
Or he’ll take the soul from you.’

That night I followed her down a mine
That was cold, and dark and damp,
The only light we could use that night
Was a feeble miners lamp,
But then we came to a giant rift
In that ground, of ash and slate,
And there was a dark and evil glint
From a wrought iron double gate.

A man was chained to that evil gate
On the other side of sin,
Unless we opened that Devil’s Gate
There was no way he’d get in.
I stood surprised, for I saw his eyes
That were wise, before his fall,
‘Have you brought me a true believer, Jez?’
For a moment, he stood tall.

‘I brought you a non-believer, who
Will help me away from you,
I’ve wasted time on your promises,
For nothing you said was true.’
‘Alas for me, will I never be
Set free to challenge The One?’
‘No-one believes in the Devil now
So your power is all undone!’

There’s a town that’s tame, it has a name
But I’ll not be telling you,
I don’t want to see a believer there
To give the Devil his due.
For the fires that we all feared have gone
Since we learned we’re not to hate,
It would only take one bended knee
To open the Devil’s Gate.

David Lewis Paget

Down at the end of Kilmartin Street
Where nobody seems to go,
A widow lives in an ancient mill
Where the river will overflow,
The mill race turns the mighty wheel
Though it grinds no wheat or corn,
It’s not been used as a working mill
Since before we both were born.

And the widow there is a mystery,
For we don’t know where she’s been,
She doesn’t give out her history
Though we know her name’s Christine,
She’s rarely seen in the street outside
But the gown she wears is black,
And those that visit and go inside
Are rarely seen to come back.

And I’ve watched myself, that paddle wheel,
It seems to go in reverse,
Whenever she has a visitor there
It’s as if the mill is cursed,
For then the water flows uphill
It’s against all laws, I know,
Whoever heard of the water going
Back to the overflow?

There’s a warning sign on the portico
And a warning sign within,
‘Don’t think to enter the Devil’s Mill
If your life is filled with sin,
For it may get rid of the things you want
And delete the good things too,
You may uncover a life within,
But of course, that’s up to you.’

I went one day to the portico
And beat on the old front door,
Then heard her footsteps begin to echo
Across the flagstone floor,
The door flung wide and she stood aside
And I walked into the mill,
But heard the grind of the wheel rewind
Outside, I can hear it still.

I felt my head beginning to spin
As I travelled back in time,
Undoing every single action
That once I’d thought were mine,
Then once outside, I stood and cried
For my world was not the same,
I’d lost my only love, my bride
And forgotten our baby’s name.

I thought I’d possibly get them back
If I went again to the mill,
And stood just cautiously inside
While the wheel went forward still,
But the widow blocked the door to me
And she said, ‘Don’t come again,
You only get but a single chance
Or the end result is pain.’

David Lewis Paget

The yacht swept up in the dunes had been
Abandoned the year before,
I came across it, quite by chance
Some miles away on the shore.
The bow was buried, the mast had gone
I climbed and I peered inside,
And there in the cabin, it seemed to me
That somebody must have died.

There were stains of blood on the cabin floor,
Stains of blood on the sink,
Handprint stains on a cupboard door,
I took me outside to think.
Without a body the boat felt right,
I needed somewhere to stay,
And this was cosy and out of sight,
As free as the livelong day.

I used seawater to clean it up,
I got the cupboard to shine,
Whoever had bled in there before
This cabin would do just fine.
I found some blankets under the bunk
To set up a makeshift bed,
I felt like a proud new owner there
And the feeling went to my head.

I caught some fish in the darkening light
And cooked it there on the beach,
The flames had flickered and showed the mark
As high as the tide could reach.
A breeze blew up and I crept inside
Protected from wind and rain,
And sat, and pondered a lazy pipe
In there, where a corpse had lain.

It must have been after the Moon went down
I first heard the woman’s cries,
Up from the shore, through the cabin door,
‘You’re always telling me lies!’
The wind was howling about the dunes
And the waves beat loud on the shore,
And over it all, the woman’s wail,
‘We’ve been through all this before.’

Then something clambered up on the deck
A thing with an ominous tread,
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck
As the woman wailed, ‘You’re dead!’
The thing jumped down to the cabin floor
In a shapeless gown of black,
All I could see were two red eyes
As it moved on in to attack.

The blade of a knife flashed by my face,
It gleamed in the light of the stars,
I tried to cry, ‘Whoever you think
I am, I’m not, I’m Lars!’
But the blade sank home in my shoulder then
And I reached for it in pain,
I cut my hand on its sharpened blade
As it tried to strike me again.

That shapeless thing had let out a shriek,
Had glared with its two red eyes,
‘Why do you hide on the Devil’s yacht
If you’re not a part of his lies?’
I tried to answer but nothing came
The pain swept me like a wave,
And blood was seeping from cuts and wounds
I was trying in vain to stave.

The figure turned and it left the yacht,
I staggered up to the deck,
And watched as it entered the breaking waves,
A sight I try to forget.
There were stains of blood on the cabin floor,
Stains of blood on the sink,
Handprint stains on a cupboard door,
They were always mine, I think.

For the woman that I’d been hiding from
Had sworn with her final breath,
‘I’ll seek you out, wherever you’ve gone,
It won’t be a peaceful death.
I shall loose the demons from the hell
That you gave me, ready or not.’
How could I know that they’d find me where
I’d hid, on the Devil’s Yacht?

David Lewis Paget

‘Why do you stay by the window, Jill,
Why do you stand and stare?
There’s nothing to see but the sentinels,
The names of the dead out there.
There’s more to life than the cemetery
That ranges over the hill,
I’ll close the shutters and pull the blinds
If the sight disturbs you, Jill!’

She sighed and turned then, back to the room
But she wouldn’t meet my eye,
She’d been morose since the last full Moon
But wouldn’t be telling me why,
I thought it might be our child that bloomed
And blossomed under her gown,
But every time that I questioned her
She’d put me off with a frown.

She’d been along to the doctor’s, and
Since then, she hadn’t smiled,
I asked her, ‘What has he told you, then,
Is something wrong with the child?’
She shook her head and she told me, ‘No!’
But she wouldn’t meet my gaze,
She was always a terrible liar,
Women lie in a number of ways.

I caught her scribbling out her Will
On a parchment page, or two,
I said, ‘Why now?’ And she looked at me,
‘I needed something to do!
I thought it time that we wrote them out,
It wouldn’t hurt you as well,
We have to think of the baby now
As my belly begins to swell.’

I sat beside her and wrote it out
If only to calm her down,
She seemed so close to the edge of tears
That I wrote of the love we’d found,
And all I had would belong to her
Who’d saved me from the abyss,
She’d turned this drunken head around
And given a life of bliss.

She squeezed my hand as I signed my name
And the tears rolled down her cheeks,
Her hormones must have been pulling her down,
She’d be like this for weeks,
‘You’ll feel all right when the baby’s born,
We’ll sit in the sun, outside,
And get some colour into your cheeks,’
But Jill broke down, and cried.

A week went by, I was far from well
So she made me stay in bed,
‘I’m going down with a flu of sorts,
I feel so thick in the head.’
She brought me soup and she tended me
Like a mother hen with a chick,
She cried a lot and she lied a lot
While I lay there, feeling sick.

I staggered out of my bed one day
And stood, looked over the hill,
The snow had feathered the headstones white
I shivered there in the chill,
She came, was standing beside me, then
Reached down, and felt for my hand,
‘You know I’ll love you forever, Ben,
There won’t be another man.’

I looked at her in alarm, I thought
She might be going away,
‘What did the doctor diagnose
On that distant day, in May?’
‘I knew it would have to come to this,
He gave me results, it’s true,
Though not of the tests he did on me,
But the ones that he did on you!’

I write this on the side of the bed
For I find it hard to stand,
My heart is feeble, my body weak
With its cargo of contraband,
But still Jill stands by the window there
And she weeps, and bows her head,
I say, ‘Why stare at the sentinels,
Engraved with the names of the dead?’

David Lewis Paget

He picked up the faded diary
That had lain in his mother’s chest,
Along with a host of her recipes
That she’d saved in her little nest,
He’d just come straight from her fading eyes
When she’d, fraught, reached out for his hand,
‘Don’t ever believe, for the eyes deceive
What a moment of madness penned.’

‘There are things you never should read, my son,
There are things that you shouldn’t know,
For life is a series of scenes and dreams
Like you see in a picture show,
There is love, distress, and bitterness
That has nothing to do with you,
So promise me that you’ll burn the book,
That you won’t read a page or two.’

He nodded his head at the coming grief
As the tears welled up at his eyes,
And her hand went slack, with pure relief
At the last of her offspring’s lies.
She stared intent for a moment then
To capture the much loved face,
Then breathed her last as the moment passed
And lay in a state of grace.

His grief burst out in a torrent, as
He sat by his mother’s bed,
His shoulders heaved as he tried to cleave
To the last that his mother said:
‘Be sure to burn all the papers that
I’ve hidden in drawer and nook,
I’ll never rest ‘til you’ve passed the test,
Be certain to burn the book!’

He paced the floor when he got back home
He paced on into the gloom,
The night came down as he stumbled round
In the house, as still as a tomb.
He spared a thought for his father, gone
And the thought had trembled his lip,
With just the occasional birthday card
Kept under his pillow-slip.

He’d never known why his father left,
Or why his mother was grim,
She’d weep at night with him tucked up tight,
It was nothing to do with him.
He’d reach on out, she’d push him away
On the nights when her grief was worst,
So he’d curl up under the blankets, thought
His life and his love were cursed.

He’d watched her pull out her diary
And fill up her pen with ink,
He never knew what she was writing there
But it gave him pause to think,
In the morning it was hidden away
Far from his prying eyes,
When he’d ask her what she’d written there
She would snap, ‘Just words and lies!’

And now he held the very same book
In the palm of his shaking hand,
He knew that he shouldn’t open it
But his conscience said, ‘I can!’
There were reams and reams of terrible scrawl
Of torment, deep despair,
In a wild, embittered, sad harangue
Like claws in her windswept hair.

There were pleas to her absent husband, saying
‘How could you ever go?
It only happened the once, I swear,
You know that I love you so!’
He flicked through pages, further along
Where the writing was underlined,
‘How could a single fall from grace
See love being so unkind!’

He took the diary out to the bin
And he put a match to the page,
He shouldn’t have read his mother’s sin
Not now that he’d come of age,
As the pages blackened and curled away
He regretted all that he’d done,
For the final page revealed her rage,
She’d written: ‘I hate my son!’

David Lewis Paget

He sat in the Bell & Lantern with
His pipe and with his beer,
The streets were wet on a misty night
With the pub, the only cheer,
He’d only married the month before
To a girl, not half his age,
And laid it out like a written law,
‘You must make a living wage.’

He said that he’d been disabled by
A burst of cannon shot,
Unleashed by one of the Frenchmen
On his sloop, ‘The Camelot’
He said that he’d done his duty by
His country and the King,
So she would have to support them both
By doing anything.

She wondered what he had meant at first
But soon was disabused,
When he ripped open her bodice, saying
‘What you’ve got, you’ll use.
There’s sailors down at the docks each night
Who’ve been at sea too long,
They’ll pay for a bit of comfort, girl,
I want you to be strong.’

He chose the most of her wardrobe and
He threw away her drawers,
He said, ‘Whenever you greet one, you say,
‘What is mine, is yours.’
He chose a long cotton dress, he said
Was much more like a shift,
‘You have to be more than available,
It’s easier to lift.’

He wouldn’t be moved by the tears she shed,
How much she would implore,
His eyes were hard as her feelings bled,
His word would be the law,
He sent her out as the moon rose up
With its faint reflected light,
‘Make sure you bring all the money back
When you’re finished for the night.’

She wandered along dark alleyways
And she saw their shadow shapes,
Standing by darkened buildings, some
With caps and some with capes,
Their eyes would follow her down the lanes
Until just one would shout,
‘Now there’s the prettiest dolly bird,
What are you doing out?’

She’d soon get used to the smell of them,
Tobacco, gin and beer,
They’d come in close for a feel of her,
She’d try to hide her fear,
They’d ask how much for a little touch
She would say a shilling down,
If they were more of a gentleman
She would ask for half a crown.

Most of them took her standing up
With her dress up to her waist,
Or bent her over a barrel, it
Depended all on taste,
She’d work right through to the midnight hour
It depended on the trade,
He’d ask in the Bell & Lantern just
How often she’d been laid.

A good night, often she’d bring a pound
That he’d put down on the bar,
And pay for a round of drinks for mates
And for her, a *** or jar,
She’d blush and sit in the corner while
They’d leer and peer and joke,
The bolder ones would approach him, ask
‘How much for a friendly poke?’

He’d say, ‘She’s my little money box,
It will cost you half a quid,
But you must be nice, she’s sugar and spice
And she’ll tell me what you did.’
Then one might lay his money down, say
I’m feeling like a ride,
While he would laugh at his other half,
‘You can take the girl outside.’

One night when out on the dockyard she
Looked bleakly up at the stars,
And saw the Moon through the mist and gloom
Sitting right next to Mars,
So back at the Bell & Lantern she
Picked up and shattered a glass,
Lunged up, and ****** it into his face,
With Mars in her eyes, at last.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

They say that I came up screaming when
I surfaced, near the boat,
Distraught, they said, eyes gleaming
Thrashing around, could barely float,
They pulled me in with a boat hook, thought
I might be down with the bends,
Then decompressed in a chamber, that
Was where this story ends.

The start was out on a dive boat near
The Isle of Tora Lee,
One of a cluster of smaller isles
Down in the southern sea,
It lay out wide on the outer edge
Of the continental shelf,
‘It’s one of the greatest dives,’ they said,
‘But check it out for yourself.’

It fell away on the eastern side
A thousand fathoms or more,
Nobody knew how deep it was -
And who was keeping score?
The first three did their shallow dives,
No more than 100 feet,
While I stayed back in the boat to wait,
I had to be more discreet.

The record dive was a thousand feet
With our scuba type of gear,
I knew they wouldn’t be happy if
I tried the record here,
I cooked a fish on the after deck
While the rest were down below,
And ate it while I was waiting there
For their heads to finally show.

I checked the depth as I went on down
At a slow and measured pace,
I had to adjust to the pressure as
The fish swam past my face,
I checked the gauge, 600 feet
And I kept on going down,
Til I came to the inlet of a cave
That brought me up with a frown.

For jammed in the entrance to the cave
The remains of a sailing ship,
Just the prow and the forward deck
With the mast collapsed on it,
The stern had broken away and gone
To the seabed down below,
But up at the front, the ‘Black Revenge’
Was painted along the prow.

I swam on into the cave, and lit
My way in through the dark,
Hoping to hell I wouldn’t swim
In the path of a roving shark,
But fifty metres inside the cave
Was a tiny glow of light,
Flickering up above me like
The stars on a pitch black night.

Then suddenly I had surfaced,
There was air inside the cave,
Pulled myself on the ledge and found
I stood by an open grave,
A line of skeletons in a row
That had once been fifteen men,
They must have known they would never roam
Or take to the seas again.

I sensed in the corner of my eye
A movement in the dark,
Then spun around and I saw her there
A woman, standing, stark,
She wore the rag of a printed dress
And she crossed herself, and hissed,
‘Would the good Lord please preserve me!
Be you man, or be you fish?’

I must have looked quite a sight to her
In my rubber scuba gear,
I took off my mask to calm her down
As she backed away in fear,
‘How long have you lived down in this cave,
And how did you arrive?’
‘I eat of the good Lord’s fish down here
And they’ve helped me to survive.’

She said she’d come on the ‘Black Revenge’
As the moll of Captain Tull,
He’d kidnapped her from the ‘Bell and Bar’
And had locked her in the hull,
She’d sailed the seven seas with him
Til the storm that set her free,
Swept her into this cave with him
In seventeen sixty-three.

‘His bones lie there at the head of the line,
I cut his scurvy throat,
Just as he crawled up on the ledge
When he said he couldn’t float.
My name is Mary Parkinson
And I’ve hoped, and dreamed and cried.
To see my own dear home again,
Before my mother died.’

I didn’t tell her the year it was
It would be too cruel to say,
Two hundred and fifty years had gone
But to her, a year and a day,
I told her I’d fetch some scuba gear
And I’d be back down, and soon,
And that was the day I lost my way
On that autumn afternoon.

They said I shouldn’t have eaten it,
That fish with the broad green stripe,
The fish had made me hallucinate,
I said that it wasn’t right!
‘I’ve seen the woman, deep in the cave,’
They patted my hand, and that,
But I’m fretting that Mary Parkinson
Still waits for me to come back.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Nightingale was a hunting lodge
At the time of Baron Blood,
He was holed up there for a month or so
While the Tamar was in flood,
His knights went after a suckling pig
That they brought back to the Hall,
‘We’d best be merry and feast, my Lord,
Or there’ll be no fun at all.’

The waters rose and it cut them off
By the monastery at Bede,
So they made to raid the Monk’s own stocks
And they carried back the mead,
The hounds lay panting around the hearth
And the knights caroused ‘til dawn,
But the waters of the Tamar lay
Close round them every morn.

A cottage lay on the old floodway
By the side of a river wharf,
The waters drove a yeoman out
And his wife, a pretty dwarf,
They made their way to the hunting lodge
And begged that they might come in,
‘I’m Olaf, you are my liege, my Lord
And my wife is Tamerlin.’

‘And what do you bring?’ said Baron Blood,
Who looked for a little sport,
‘We’re all entombed ‘til the waters fall,
‘So what do you bring to court?’
‘I’m simply a yeoman, with one hide
That’s drowned in the river mud,
Along with my only ploughshare…’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Baron Blood.

‘What of the geld you owe to me,
And how do you think you’ll pay?’
‘I throw myself on your mercy, Lord,
To pay you another day.
The river flooded the pasture, and
My crop lies under the mud,’
‘Perhaps your wife has a way to pay,’
Said the musing Baron Blood.

‘You’ll wait at table and serve the mead
And carve the suckling pig,
And feed the hounds at the hearth tonight
While your wife can show a leg,
We’ll have her dancing from dusk to dawn
Each knight can take his turn,
For Tamerlin pays your geld tonight
If she lasts from dusk ‘til dawn.’

Then Olaf looked at his Tamerlin
And he brushed away a tear,
But she looked bold at the Baron Blood,
‘I will stand the test, no fear!’
They helped to set up the feast that night
And they whispered soft and low,
‘If one should harm a hair of your head
I will ****, before I go!’

She put one finger up to her lips
And she whispered, ‘I’ll be true!
I’ll not be whirled off my feet by one
Who is half the man as you.’
She took a skewer and she stuck the pig
Right through to the other side,
‘I may be small but my heart is big
And I’m still your darling bride.’

The sun went down and the mead came out
As he went to feed the hounds,
The Baron called on a lute to play
From a doorway to the grounds,
Then Tamerlin had begun to dance
And sway as she said she would,
Her dress had swished on the earthen floor,
Out where the Baron stood.

The knights were steadily getting drunk
And the Baron stood and swayed,
‘Now hitch that dress to your waist,’ he said,
‘If you want your geld to be paid.’
She dropped her eyes and she blushed, and cried
But she lifted up her dress,
To show the legs that were short, deformed
And the Baron laughed, no less!

The Baron laughed and the knights had laughed
At the legs of Tamerlin,
She dropped the dress and she burst in tears
And she cried, ‘You’ve seen my sin!’
They didn’t ask her to dance again
But they drank until the morn,
Then fell about in a drunken swoon
As she lay apart, forlorn.

A silence fell as the sun came up
When she rose and took a skewer,
Walked to the sleeping Baron, and
She ****** it in his ear,
She ****** it in til it came on out
All blood on the other side,
‘You won’t be laughing again,’ she said,
‘Or shaming Olaf’s bride!’

They took a skewer to every knight
And they did the same to them,
In, and out at the other side,
A Hall of skewered men,
The waters, they were receding as
Her head, in pride upheld,
Remarked, ‘It’s time we were leaving,
We have truly paid the geld!’

Nightingale was a hunting lodge
That sank in a sea of mud,
You’d have to dig right down to find
The body of Baron Blood,
The woods grew up in the pasture fields
And covered the grisly tale,
Where lovers walk and will cease their talk
At the song of a Nightingale.

David Lewis Paget

I’d thought that they were extinct until
I found one in the coop,
A genuine Jersey Giant, strutting
Up on the henhouse roof,
Twice the size of the other hens
As I said to my sister, Faye,
‘Where did it come from?’ She replied,
‘Not there yesterday!’

‘I go to collect the eggs each day,
Do you think that could be missed?
That bird is a giant,’ she declared,
‘So don’t blame me, desist!’
I calmed her down, for she used to flare
At the slightest hint of crit.,
‘Whatever it is, it’s here to stay,
Perhaps we can breed from it?’

There wasn’t a cockerel near the size
Of this random Jersey Black,
‘It must have come visiting overnight,
I joked, ‘from a neighbour’s shack.’
She wandered into the henhouse and
From behind an empty keg,
She said, ‘You’d better come look at this,’
And showed me a giant egg.

An egg so big that you wouldn’t think
That a chicken could let it pass,
Tall and brown with a pointed crown
And a shell as thick as glass,
‘Are we going to let it hatch it out,’
Said Faye, ‘or crack it yet?
I wonder how many that would feed
As a giant omelette?’

‘We’ll leave her be, and we’ll wait and see
If a monster’s there inside,
We might as well, if a cockerel
It can be the henhouse pride.’
So we let her sit on the giant egg
For a week, or maybe more,
Then Faye came running inside one day,
‘You’ve not seen this before!’

The egg emitted a humming noise
And rocked a bit on its base,
While through the shell there were coloured lights
That would fade then grow apace,
And as we stood it began to crack
Then pieces would fall away,
It almost gave me a heart attack
For what I saw that day.

For spinning inside the egg we saw
A tiny universe,
With a sun-like star at the centre and
Our planets, in reverse,
And as we watched it began to grow
To float out the henhouse door,
Swelling constantly as it rose
To the skies, with a mighty roar.

I don’t know what it has done to us,
The sky doesn’t look the same,
There are three moons now in the evening sky
Since the Jersey rooster came,
I lopped the chicken that laid the egg
And I wait for the slightest sight,
With an axe for the Jersey cockerel
That Faye prays to at night.

David Lewis Paget

‘Be waiting up at the window,’ said
The note he sent by hand,
‘I’ll come and collect you at midnight,’
Said the note, ‘the way we planned.’
She heard the clatter of hoofbeats in
The courtyard down below,
And waved to him from the window
As she seized her portmanteau.

She quickly skipped down the staircase
Holding both her shoes in hand,
Trying to avoid the clatter as
She raced down to her man,
It only took but a moment then
To seat her on his horse,
And gallop out of the courtyard on
Their way to the watercourse.

A light appeared in an upper room
And they heard her father roar,
‘By God, you’ll pay for your insolence,
I told you once before.’
He’d promised her to a Banker’s clerk
Who had paid him for her hand,
Though she had said that it wouldn’t work,
She had bowed to his command.

But then the couple had plotted,
He was sworn to break her free,
‘If anyone is to marry, it
Will just be you to me.’
They headed down to the water where
The sloop, ‘The Esperance’,
Was waiting for their arrival
Before sailing off to France.

It took an hour to set the sails
And wait for the tide to turn,
They hid themselves below the deck
In a cabin at the stern,
But soon the thunder of hoofbeats said
They must have been found out,
For then they heard her father’s call,
‘It’s best that you come out,’

He ventured slowly out on the deck
To reason with the man,
Then saw the flash of the powder that
Was loaded in the pan,
The ball cut straight through his windpipe,
Left him sprawling on the deck,
While she was dragged from below, and screamed
‘All curses on your neck.’

He locked her into an attic room
And he wouldn’t let her out,
Though she would wail, and would scream at him,
And curse and yell, and shout,
She waited up till the early hours
Then she set her room alight,
The fire spread till they all were dead
From that single candlelight.

It sits as a blackened ruin now
With soot on the standing walls,
A testament to a daughter who
Refused to be overruled,
And still some nights when the moon is bright
There’s a whisper, close at hand,
‘I’ll come and collect you at midnight,
And we’ll leave, the way we planned.’

David Lewis Paget

The Georgian Manor in Ripon Town
Had seen far better days,
The chimney pots had fallen down
And the windows, scarred and crazed,
The paint had peeled from the cedar door
And the ivy climbed untamed,
From the days of the aristocracy
The house was re-arranged.

There were flats and a communal kitchen
But no carpets on the floor,
The walls were damp and the paper peeled
In strips, from the old décor,
When Jennifer took an upstairs flat
She shuddered, ‘It won’t be long.’
But things in her life had taken a turn
With everything going wrong.

She lay on the iron poster bed
And she cried herself to sleep,
Ever since her engagement went
All she could do was weep,
The future, bleak and forbidding now
Held nothing but fear and tears,
It yawned ahead in her misery,
An aeon of wasted years.

At night, the gloom would descend, a pall
Would settle upon her room,
She’d lie awake to the mutterings
That seemed to come from the tomb,
The manor had once been bright and gay
With Lords and Earls, and Dames
Plucking at hammered dulcimers
While playing their wooing games.

And standing off in the corner was
A wardrobe, made of teak,
The doors were locked, there wasn’t a key
It was just some old antique,
Or that was what she had thought at first
‘Til her interest fired her mind,
And she levered open the doors one night
To see what there was to find.

She found there what was a treasure trove
Of gowns and hoods and capes,
Of silken skirts with their bustles,
Party masques for their escapades,
Muslin dresses and bodices
That Jennifer gaped to see,
That ladies wore all those years before,
And whalebone corsetry.

She felt a hidden excitement while
Surveying the gorgeous past,
And then an ineffable sadness that
Such grandeur didn’t last,
The woman that wore these party gowns
Was laid in an ancient grave,
Along with her beaus and suitors all,
The clothes alone were saved.

One night she weakened, and tried them on,
They seemed like a perfect fit,
Over the laced up corsets when
She donned a satin slip,
She chose a gown with a turquoise hue
With a bustle of ribbon and lace,
While the gas lamp that had never worked
Lit up, to reflect her face.

Then music wafted under her door
From a dulcimer and lute,
A wistful song from an old spinette
And a Love song from a flute,
She thrilled to enter the passage where
The gas lamps, in a row,
Played their light on the central stair
And the dancing, down below.

She floated to the head of the stair
As her gown trailed on behind,
And wondered as she descended what
Enchantment she would find,
The dancers stopped, and they looked at her
As she joined them on the floor,
And one said, ‘Here is the Faery Queene,
We’d best make fast the door.’

A fine young man in a tailcoat came
And he bent to kiss her hand,
From white cravat to his doeskin boots
He was quickly in command,
He whirled her breathless, into the throng
As the dancers wheeled and spun,
Risen up for this one enchant
That her dressing had begun.

But after one in the morning she
Began to fear and doubt,
The tapers happened to flicker and
The gas lamps all went out,
The dancers started to fade away
To return to where they came,
‘Til only she and the young man stood
In the glare of a single flame.

‘They’re happy now that you brought them back
Though the hours were swiftly spent,
They sleep again in their graves where they
Have aeons to repent.’
‘But what of you, must you join them there,’
As she clung to him the more,
‘Not I,’ he said, ‘for I’m not yet dead,
I live in the flat next door!’

David Lewis Paget

The wind grew chill on a summer’s day
And the clouds built up outside,
‘It looks like a storm is coming our way,’
Said the folk of Ezra’s Pride,
The sea rose up in a mighty swirl
And it swamped their coastal town,
‘I think there’s something wrong with the world,’
Said the blacksmith, Helmut Brown.

He left the forge as the fire went out
Under the tidal surge,
And looked to heaven as folk would shout
‘The sea and the sky have merged.’
For the clouds above were purple and gold
The horizon coloured the same,
The ground beneath had rumbled and groaned
As it came, the pelting rain.

He went to look for his Isabelle
In the cottage down by the shore,
The water there was draining away
Then it hit the eaves once more,
And she clung onto the cottage roof
Where it swept her there in fright,
She cried to Helmut, ‘Just get me down,
I fear for my life tonight.’

So he took her down in his brawny arms
And he waded through the flood,
‘I’ll keep you safe from the world’s alarms,’
As he walked through seas of mud,
He walked her up to the higher ground
As the lightning lit the sky,
‘I’ll not let anything happen to you
For in truth, I’d rather die.’

But then the ground had opened up
In a crevice, ten feet deep,
And he was parted from Isabelle,
Who stood on the side more steep,
‘How can I come on back to you,’
The love of his life had cried,
As he stood still as the crevice grew
So wide, on the other side.

‘The world is trying to tell us things,
It’s tearing us all apart,
Perhaps we haven’t been kind to it,
It’s punishing us, sweetheart.’
And she had moaned, his Isabelle,
Stood out in the pouring rain,
‘Well what have I ever done to it?
The planet is going insane.’

Then the thunder growled up overhead,
As if to refute a lie,
‘It’s you who are insane,’ it said,
‘Get ready to say goodbye.’
And a lava flow came down the hill
In a stream, and glowing red,
‘Don’t let it come near you, Isabelle,
Just a touch, and you’ll be dead.’

We’ll leave them there on that distant hill
Where the world keeps them apart,
‘Why should you be untouched,’ it said,
‘When you folk have broken my heart.
You have drilled through me, and spilled on me,
And have fouled my lakes and seas,
Why should I leave your perfect love
When I’m filled with your disease?’

David Lewis Paget

They had said that he was dying but
He might as well be home,
He was taking up an empty bed
At the hospital, in Rome,
And no amount of medicaments would
Bring him back to life,
So they threw him in an ambulance
And sent him to his wife.

And she, poor girl, was mystified
She didn’t need the stress,
Of tending to a cadaver while
She wore her party dress.
He saw the world through greying eyes
But he never made a sound,
He’d married her through thick and thin
But on thin, she’d let him down.

His days were grey and mist-like as
He looked around his room,
She’d kept the curtains pulled across
So he lay there in the gloom,
And shadows of her sister would
Stand pensive at his bed,
He’d loved, and he really missed her
But the sister long was dead.

Perhaps he should have married Grace
As the younger of the two,
But that would have left the elder one
Not knowing what to do.
The eldest must be married first
Or so the father said,
So Raymond Royce was given no choice
He’d married Gwen instead.

It seemed as if he woke sometimes
And he went to greet the day,
Out in the broader sunshine where
His pains had gone away.
But Gwen was never there with him
As she’d never been in life,
While Grace had sat and talked with him
As if she were alive.

And when Grace reached and held his hand
He thought that his heart would burst,
The tears he shed from his lonely bed
Said he had loved her first.
He asked why Grace had died on him
And she gave him his reply,
‘My sister Gwen had put poison in
That gift of an apple pie.’

‘She knew I only had eyes for you,
And she thought that you would leave,
She saw the way that you looked at me
And her heart began to grieve.
It wasn’t as if she wanted you
But she knew that if you left,
The world would see it as scandal
And would leave her quite bereft.’

And so he lay there, day by day
While his wife brought boyfriends home,
They lay there in the adjoining room
In that little flat in Rome.
While he could not decide between
Reality and dream,
The grey days were his night, he thought
And the brighter days his cream.

He knew just where he would rather be
In the day-like days with Grace,
But Gwen would settle beside his bed
And would mutter to his face.
He saw her dimly through the mist
And repeat beneath her breath,
‘How long, how long will you resist
When the end for you is death?’

The day came that the sun was bright,
It was time that he was fed,
While Grace looked on as her sister sat
Beside her husband’s bed.
And Grace had whispered between her tears
‘Don’t you even wonder why…’
While her sister, with a face so grim
Sat and fed him apple pie.

David Lewis Paget

Garth lay still in the gilded cage
Unable to move a thing,
The bars were merely spiders’ webs
Of a faery’s magicking.
He’d wandered into the Faery Ring
Where he’d seen the mushrooms spread,
And now was caught in a faery spell
With the rest of the living dead.

With Tom, the Candlestick Maker’s son
And a barrel of candlewax,
He’d dawdled home from the marketplace
And lay in the beckoning grass.
He woke to find he was tightly bound
With a faery up on his chest,
She said, ‘Lock him in the cage as well,
Along with all of the rest.’

And Madge, the maid with a milking pail
Who was sent to milk the cow,
She’d wandered off on her way; she thought,
She needed to feed the sow.
She woke to mushrooms, ten feet tall
All towering over her head,
The stalks were bars, set under the stars
And her limbs, they felt like lead.

While Tim the Tinker was there as well
With his knives and sharpening tools,
His grindstone lay in a pile of hay
And the bonds on him were cruel.
The beggar lay in his filthy rags
While the rich man muttered, ‘Shame!’
He’d soiled his boots and his Regency suit,
Was bound with his watch and chain.

They lie not far from the caravans
Of a gypsy camping ground,
So Faeries say: ‘Let’s take them away
Before they’re seen and found!’
But dancing into the faery ring
Is the Gypsy, Mavourneen,
Who stumbles over the gilded cage
And steps on the Faery Queen.

The top flies off from the gilded cage,
The webs of the bars are torn,
And Garth crawls over the mushroom heads
To swear, ‘I feel reborn!’
The faeries weep as they carry their Queen
In death, to their Faery Dell,
There’s mushrooms still in that Faery Ring,
But now, Toadstools as well!

David Lewis Paget

We were friends of a sort, when we were young
When we grew, I thought he was weak,
Jumping at shadows in shady lanes,
At jokes that were tongue-in-cheek.
He thought that life was a trap for him
And looked for someone to blame,
He could have been so much more, I thought,
Than he was, and that was a shame.

His soul was timorous, that was true
But he seemed to attract the girls,
They’d give him a shoulder to cry on, when
He was feeling at odds with the world.
They called him ‘Bobby’, that said it all
When he should have been known as Bob,
He never grew to be Bob, I knew
But won their hearts with a sob.

He brought out the motherly instincts in
The girls that he got to know,
They would pet his hair, and say, ‘There there…’
And motion for me to go.
My sweetheart, Carolyn Ainsworth said
That he’d won a place in her heart,
I couldn’t believe she could be so dumb
But her interest tore us apart.

I watched as she moved on into his life
And catered for every whim,
He told me not to approach her then,
She was only there for him.
They moved on into a haunted house
On a plot, with a dog outside,
A wooden house with a creaky gate
Where her grandfather had died.

They married, out on their own front lawn
Then scurried away inside,
He wouldn’t let her out of his sight
But clung to his captive bride.
I never saw her out on her own
He was always there, like a freak,
And pulled her in, like a dog on a leash
Whenever she tried to speak.

I got a note in the mail one day
That was signed by Carolyn,
‘Please come and take me away,’ it said,
‘Oh, what a fool I’ve been!’
I drove on out to the haunted house
But the gate and the doors were barred,
Then she came out to the balcony,
I could tell she was more than scared.

Her eye was blackened and bruised, I saw,
Her lip was swollen and split,
I called ‘Come down!’ and I waved to her,
‘I’ll take you away, my sweet!’
But Bobby came to the balcony
And he dragged her in by the hair,
The doors had slammed and I heard them lock,
And a terrible scream up there.

I vaulted over the creaky gate
And I kicked the front door in,
Then made for the central stair, but fate
Was putting paid to his sin.
A shadowy figure had seized him there
And ****** him against the wall,
Then sent him tumbling down the stairs,
He broke his neck in the fall.

It stood there, glaring down from the top
Then slowly faded away,
I’d never have met her grandfather
If I hadn’t been there that day.
I took her home and I patched her up
But knew that my love had flown,
I see her now and again, she lives
With him in her haunted home.

David Lewis Paget

He caught my eye as he stared to sea,
I noticed his shoulders heave,
And tears were flowing so fast and free
More than you would believe,
He wasn’t young, but was not too old
To be caught in the pangs of love,
I thought I’d see what his fortune told
So I called to him from above.

I leant right over the balcony
Looked down at the old sea wall,
And called out ‘Friend, would your heartache mend,
Is there much I can do at all?’
He turned and twisted his face to me
And I saw the pain in his eyes,
And round his mouth was the misery
He’d caught from all of her lies.

‘I wish I’d never believed her spin,
She swore that she loved me true,
She opened her heart and she asked me in,
What was a man to do?
She taught me things that I didn’t know
She let me into her world,
A world of stockings and petticoats
And the sweet perfume of a girl.’

I thought that I was a lucky man
To have a wife such as mine,
Who’d wait at home and would hold my hand
And smile with a look divine.
We’d sworn our vows in the little church
That sat way back on the hill,
‘Do you take Annie-gelina now?’
She said that she would take Will.

‘So what is it turned your world about,’
I asked the man down below,
I thought to get all the story straight
As he was turning to go.
‘She said she was married, I’d have to go
Though she’d never said it before,
I couldn’t believe that my Annie-gelina
Was simply a painted *****.’

David Lewis Paget

There isn’t much left of The Grange today,
There isn’t much left at all,
Only a charred left wing, I think,
And the odd, still standing wall,
The central Hall is a pile of ash
As it was, the day I left,
Sat on the back of the doc’s grey mare
As the Lady Mary wept.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this
On the day of the wedding ball,
Balloons and streamers hung from the roof
As the marriage carriage called,
Annette stepped out like a fairy queen
In her ****** white, and lace,
While Reece, the Groom, in the wedding room
Had a smile on his handsome face.

And I led the Lady Mary in
To the mother’s pride of place,
I only had eyes for her that day
As she walked with a widow’s grace,
It wasn’t a secret, I yearned for her
But this was her daughter’s day,
So I was content with the hand she lent
For she squeezed, along the way.

The priest stood up by a lectern as
The guests all prayed and knelt,
To bless their way on this wedding day
I’m sure it was truly felt,
But Mary’s brother-in-law was there
With an evil look in his eye,
He’d wanted to claim the Grange from her
Since the day her husband died.

‘The Grange belonged to my family,’
He’d say, ‘and I want it back,
You only married into the place
When you wed my brother, Jack.’
He made an offer, but she said no,
The Grange had become her home,
‘You sold your part to Jack at the start
Before you went off to roam.’

But Douglas, he had an evil mind
And his countenance was stern,
He said if he couldn’t have The Grange
Then he’d rather see it burn.
He’d brought three barrels of gunpowder
Unseen, but out in the yard,
He chose this day to make Mary pay,
We should have been on our guard.

The guests were all engaged at the front
When he wheeled the barrels in,
It takes a mind of evil intent
To imagine this kind of sin,
Annette had lifted her wedding veil
And raised her lips to the groom,
When all hell suddenly came to play
In the depths of that wedding room.

The hall was full of the screams and cries
Of those who lay on the floor,
While I picked the Lady Mary up
And carried her out to the door,
It was there we saw the bride, Annette
Who’d made it out to the porch,
The groom was dead, but the bride had fled
As her dress went up like a torch.

There isn’t much left of The Grange today,
There isn’t much left at all,
Only a charred left wing, I think,
And the odd, still standing wall.
But the Lady Mary married me
In the wake of all the strife,
Her daughter’s gone, but our love is strong,
And Douglas is serving life.

David Lewis Paget

The weather was starting to worry me,
The days were hot and the nights like ice,
The winds were gusting and hailstones
Were battering down on the roof, like rice.
Marie was listless and wandered about
She wouldn’t get dressed until way past noon,
She’d toss and turn in her sleep, and shout:
‘The man with the beard will be coming soon!’

I didn’t know what she had meant by that
I couldn’t be bothered to ask her why,
She said she soon had a sense of doom
The way of the world was passing by.
We stood outside on a starless night
And she pointed up to a cloud on high,
‘I saw a hand in the dawning light
That plucked each star from the morning sky!’

I slept but fitfully after that
My dreams were troubled by what she’d said,
They’d taken the blue from the morning sky
Had withered and rolled up the garden bed.
He’d come to ruin the countryside
Put all the trees in a cardboard box,
Took all the daisies and all the weeds
And ripped them out with the hollyhocks.

While strange marauders wandered the land
And one-eyed women disturbed my head,
They bred like rabbits and grains of sand,
‘We’re here to do what our masters said!’
The seas were suddenly drained and gone
All was that was left was a dusty plain
‘The earth is finished,’ a voice then said,
All I could see was a Moon terrain.

Then lightning crackled over our heads
And thunder rolled like a toll of doom,
I lay awake in my narrow bed
And watched Marie, who stood in the gloom.
‘A new Dark Age has begun tonight,
He said that he’d given us all he had,
Would try again when the time was right,
But packed the Moon in his travelling bag.’

David Lewis Paget

I was strolling around the cemetery
On a Sunday afternoon,
When the crumbling earth had opened up
And I fell in a werewolf’s tomb,
I wouldn’t have thought it possible
Were it not for the werewolf’s teeth,
That grazed my arm, and cut my hand,
It was way beyond belief.

But there it was with a canine head
And a slack and open jaw,
Just half a man and half a beast
With a mouth like the devil’s maw,
Its teeth were sharp, serrated as
The blood ran down my arm,
Went mingling with the ancient fur
That had kept the creature warm.

I must have shrieked in the ancient grave
For they came to pull me out,
But once they noticed the wooden stake
Leapt back, with many a shout,
They all shrank back away from me
As if I was unclean,
And left me shivering by the grave
Like a ***** in a dream.

And so I slunk back home again
Bent over in my shame,
I padded swiftly through the weeds
Like a dog that’s going lame,
The blood had clotted along my arm
Had soaked right through my shirt,
So I thought that I’d better hide it then
By rolling in the dirt.

My spectacles were cracked by then
So I cast them off, aside,
I couldn’t believe my vision, with
My eyes, so open wide,
I saw with pin-point clarity,
Not like I’d seen before,
When everything, both near and far
Was seen through a hazy blur.

My wife was sitting and waiting in
Her old and comfy chair,
And though she greeted me cheerily
I could only smell her hair,
But just one thing had startled me
And it’s worthy now to note,
My eyes had sought out her jugular
Soft pulsing at her throat.

It didn’t take me long to tell her
Why I felt unclean,
She bathed and smeared my hand and arm
With some white unguent cream,
Then in the kitchen, later on
Just as the Moon would rise,
She waved a jar of bright red blood
Right before my eyes.

‘Now drink,’ she said, ‘drink every drop,
I know this ancient cure,
And I don’t want to see you stop
Before I have you pure,’
And so I did, this cloying drink,
A foul and horrid taste,
And later on I found she’d made it
From tomato paste.

‘There’s lots of other condiments
I mixed into this crud,
I had to make you think that you
Were drinking human blood.’
‘I’m cured of drinking blood for life
I said, ‘how did you know?’
‘My father was a werewolf too,
Some many years ago.’

David Lewis Paget

The old man came in the wintertime,
The mist was cold and grey,
She thought he’d been in a distant time
But then he went away.
She only caught but a fleeting glimpse
Through the hedgerow to the street,
But felt a chill as the memory spilled
From her head down to her feet.

He wore a common fedora hat
And a houndstooth overcoat,
The collar was turned up high, so she
Saw neither cheek, nor throat,
But just for a moment, as he turned
And beneath the brim of his hat,
She caught a glimpse of his piercing eyes
And his eyes were dull, and black.

She told her brother about the man
And she tried to laugh it off,
She said it gave her a sudden fright
And she thought that he would scoff.
Her brother turned with a furrowed brow
And his face was white as sin,
‘If ever he comes to your door, you know
You never must let him in.’

‘What do you know about this man?’
She cried, in a sudden fit,
‘I only mentioned his passing, so
That you’d scoff, make light of it!’
A chill ran down to her fingertips
And tightness grew at her throat,
‘Be sure to lock all your windows
And the door, please draw the bolt.’

He stood there facing the window, and
He stared long out at the lawn,
No matter how much she pressed him, he
Was firm, would not be drawn.
‘There’s no point letting the nightmares in
That will make you feel aghast,
The man you’ve seen is a walking sin
That we left behind in the past.’

She’d always trusted her brother John
Who was older, solemn, grey,
He’d always tried to protect her from
What hurtful people say,
Their mother had died, with her a child
While he was just sixteen,
They’d moved away to the countryside,
Had avoided kith and kin.

But John was working away at night
So it left her on her own,
Huddling over the fireplace
In their quaint and rustic home.
The mist swirled over the window panes
When she saw the face peer in,
And tap at last on the frosted glass
As he called out, ‘Carolyn!’

‘Carolyn, won’t you hear me now
I have such a tale to tell,’
She stared back into the dull black eyes
Of a soul who’d been through hell.
She shook her head and she bit her hand
And she waved the man away,
‘I need to talk to you, Carolyn,
Please hear what I have to say.’

She edged on up to the window
And she whispered, ‘Please to go!
You know that you have me terrified
But for what, I just don’t know.’
‘They put me away for twenty years,
In jail, for killing my wife,
That woman you called your Momma, girl,
They sent me down for life!’

Carolyn shrieked, and held her ears
From the face in the frosted pane,
And distant memories flooded back
From her childhood, once again,
She saw them dragging her father off
But they never brought him home,
And John had gone to the funeral
Of their mother, all alone.

‘They said I poisoned your mother,’ cried
The voice through the frosted glass,
‘I swear, my girl, that it wasn’t me
But your brother John, alas.
I turned my back when your brother poured
That powder into her tea…’
Then Carolyn sobbed, and choked, and said,
‘Please God. No! That was me!’

David Lewis Paget

He’d always thought there was somebody
Who could make his life complete,
Among all the faceless people that
He passed in the city street,
But not one ever attracted him
For the faces there were blank,
Lost in their daily routine, at the Mall
And the City Bank.

A city is full of strangers with
No time to smile or greet,
They come in out of the suburbs, and
They jostle, but never meet,
Their lives are hidden from everyone
If they even have a life,
‘The girls are married to drones,’ he thought,
‘And the men to a restless wife.’

‘And mine is just as monotonous,’
He thought, as he caught the train,
Hurrying through the sliding doors,
Each morning was just the same.
He caught a glimpse of the human tide
On each station they passed by,
He caught the only Express each day
And that was the reason why.

It hurried away past Ovingham,
It slowed but it didn’t stop,
It passed the station at Orly Rue
Raced past the folk at Klop,
It slowed right down to a walking pace
As it sauntered past Beauclaire,
And as it did, his eyes had lit
On a girl that was standing there.

It must have been only seconds that
He could focus on her face,
Her eyes a dazzling blue, her stare
Was arch, but full of grace.
He turned his head as he went on by,
And could swear she stared right back,
Prompting his heart to leap so high
It was like a heart attack.

But the train went on and the girl was gone
As he mopped his fevered brow,
His head said she was the only one
But to find her, it screamed, ‘How?’
He took some days off work, and haunted
The station at Beauclaire,
If ever he was to find her, then
He’d surely find her there!

The days went by, but she didn’t show
And he thought she’d gone for good,
How would he ever find her again
In this massive neighbourhood?
He watched as his own Express went by
In a burst of springtime rain,
And there was her face at the window,
The face in the passing train.

David Lewis Paget

One last night in the dungeon,
One last night to his fall,
The Earl of Grace was chained in place
To the damp of the dungeon wall.
They’d taken him at the tourney,
The knights of the Duke of Beck,
While the King had turned his face away
As they fettered him by the neck.

They’d taken his chain of office,
They’d taken his rings and seal,
The shifting tides of the time had sighed
In showing him what was real,
The King had removed his favour,
The court had looked on askance,
That final fall from a height so high
Was part of the courtly dance.

For no-one survived forever,
In that court of grim intrigue,
He’d been aligned with the prince to find
The prince was brought to his knees.
Grace didn’t have the King’s permit
To marry the Lady Grey,
And that, just one of the sins he wore
Conspired to put him away.

For Beck was stalking the lady,
The wealth and the lands she had,
Her cold response to his needs and wants
Had driven the Duke quite mad.
The prince, confined to his quarters
Was backing the Earl of Grace,
But once the marriage had come to light
The scandal had brought disgrace.

He stood in the dark, and shivered,
In the hour before the dawn,
And watched them setting the gallows up
That would take his quaking form.
Beck had wanted the axe and block
But the King had murmured, ‘No!’
‘I’ll not part him from his noble head,
But I’ll hang him, long and slow!’

The hangman came at the dawning,
Was strapping his hands and feet,
While shuffling him to the drop, he said,
‘Hanging an Earl’s a treat!’
And Beck was there to await him,
To whisper his evil spite,
‘You’ll be deep in the earth, while I
Will be with your wife tonight.’

They took their time with the halter,
Were seeming to draw it out,
When down in the court a clatter
Of knights, and an awful shout:
‘The King is dead, long live the King,’
As they rescued the Earl of Grace,
Shuffled him off the drop, and then
They hung the Duke in his place.

David Lewis Paget

The sky was a smudge-coloured blue up there
When the sailing ship came in,
With full top gallants and spinnaker flared
Full flight from a world of sin,
The mermaid carved on her prow was proud
As she breasted the salt-licked spray,
Her hair a-stream, as the waves she ploughed
And surged to Ascension Bay.

I’d watched her approach from the Sailor’s Rest
That lay way up on the cliff,
‘It isn’t a question of when,’ he’d said,
‘Nor even a question of if!
The ghost of ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’
Comes in with a clear blue sky,
It happens but once a year,’ he’d said
‘On the twenty-fifth of July!’

I’d laughed at him in the ‘Admiral’s Arms’
As he swallowed his seventh ale,
While others listened with frightened eyes
Each face was a shade of pale,
‘You’ll see it best from the Sailor’s Rest,
That ruin, up on the cliff,
But don’t get caught by the devil’s cohort
Swarming up from the ship.’

They’d scaled the cliff to the Sailor’s Rest,
I knew the story of old,
Had slain the crew of the ‘Captain Teck’,
Or so it was always told,
They’d left the ‘Rest’ in a sea of flames
For the sake of an ancient feud,
While ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’ lay wrecked
By the mutineers that crewed.

They’d seized young Molly, the serving girl
Who’d worked at the Sailor’s Rest,
Had pulled her hair and had pinned her down,
Exposed the girl at the breast,
They took their pleasure and dragged her out
To the edge of the cliff, and pale,
Then flung her screaming down to the deck
Of ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’.

And so it was that I lay with the glass
So firmly fixed to my eye,
Up on the cliff by the Sailor’s Rest
On the twenty-fifth of July,
The ghostly ship flew into the shore
Under a mass of sail,
No sign of the crew, no lookout stood
On watch at the forward rail.

The ship ground up on the Daley Rocks
Rose shrieking, up in the air,
Her timbers creaking and groaning with
The mermaid’s look of despair,
The crew poured out of the lower decks
And flung themselves overboard,
These phantoms, straight from the devil’s lair
To put good men to the sword.

I ran some way from the Sailor’s Rest
Lay under a bush, and hid,
I didn’t know what to do for the best
But watched, to see what they did,
They swarmed all over the Sailor’s Rest
Put everyone to the sword,
Then dragged poor Molly out on the grass
And I cried, ‘Please stop them, Lord!’

Then the phantoms stopped as they heard my cry
And they turned, each black as sin,
Molly let out a quivering sigh
And they burst in flames, within,
She stood alone at the edge of the cliff
And she waved, no longer pale,
While the mermaid smiled on the prow of the ship,
‘The Falls of Borrowdale.’

David Lewis Paget

I wish that we’d never found it now,
I wish that we’d stayed away,
Avoided the twisted mansion that
Was fashioned in Cromwell’s day,
But we were just a couple of lads
Out there, and having fun,
We wouldn’t have thought to change the world,
Nor hurt just anyone.

The place sat deep in a bluebell wood
Surrounded by a marsh,
I said, ‘Should we?’ and he said we should,
My friend was a little harsh,
We waded up to our knees out there
Until we reached the porch,
The rooms within were as dark as sin
Till Joe took out his torch.

The house had once been a splendid place
Though the floors were deep in mud,
Of fetes and ***** there was still a trace
Then the fields submerged in flood,
The house sank on its foundations then
No doubt, to cries and tears,
Its noble crew had deserted it
For all of two hundred years.

I raced my friend to the stairway that
Led up from the central hall,
Half of the rail had fallen away,
Was resting against the wall,
When up above in a tiny room
Stood a bureau, finely made,
Inlaid with delicate parquetry
That lay concealed in the shade.

But over the lintel of the door
Was the carving of a man,
His wings spread wide, with the sharpest claw,
He was from some evil clan,
His teeth protruded over his lip
And his eyes were fierce and black,
I caught at Joe and he almost tripped
But he shrugged, and turned his back.

And on the dust of the bureau lay
A long, fine feather quill,
I knew I shouldn’t disturb it there
But I thought, ‘I can, I will!’
And beside the quill was a manuscript
In an old and faded hand,
Calling for the death of a king
That I couldn’t understand.

I knew, I’d read in my history books
That a cruel, evil one,
A man called Oliver Cromwell had
Caused pain for everyone,
He’d raised a citizens’ army and
Had thought to **** the king,
But fell to the King’s Own Cavaliers,
Was beheaded in the spring.

I knew this, yet I still signed my name
With that awesome feather quill,
It seemed to have me so hypnotised
That I quite had lost my will,
So then when a roll of thunder shook
The house right through to the floor,
The man in black that was carved, alack,
Came bursting in through the door.

He snatched at the parchment manuscript
And let out a howl of glee,
Then screamed, ‘I’ve waited forever just
To play with your history.’
I know that you think the civil war
Took the head of a rightful King,
But how could I know the power of a quill
That could upturn everything?

David Lewis Paget

We were way up there on the Ferris Wheel
When it came to a sudden stop,
We’d only got on for the final ride
And it left us up at the top.
‘What are they doing?’ said Imogen,
As we first began to doubt,
Then looking down to the distant ground
The lights of the Fair went out.

‘Surely they know that we’re still up here!’
There was panic in her voice,
I tried to bellow, and then to shout,
They had left us little choice.
The lights of the cars had streamed below
With the last ones, headed away,
The wind up there put a chill in the air
And the Wheel began to sway.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she cried,
And I said, ‘Please, not on me!’
I wrapped her up in my coat and tried
To calm her misery.
‘It’s always the same with you,’ she said,
‘But it keeps on getting worse,
The moment we’re down, and on the ground
I’m going to get a divorce.’

We’d only gone on the Ferris Wheel
For a place to talk things out,
I wanted to get her away from home
To a place where she couldn’t shout.
She’d sworn she’d never divorce me that
She’d make life living hell,
I had to make her want a divorce
As much as me, as well.

‘So I get blamed for the Ferris Wheel,
Did I tell the guy to stop?
How could I know he’d forget us here
And leave us perched at the top?’
‘It always happens, you wired the stove
So the whole **** thing was live,
Then I got thrown when I switched it on,
It’s lucky I’m still alive.’

‘Then out in the boat, we nearly sank
When you put the boat in a spin,
It filled with water when you forgot
To put the drain plug in.’
‘I know, I know, I’m a jinx,’ I said,
It always happens to me,
Perhaps you’d better get a divorce
Then you’ll be finally free.’

We didn’t speak for a solid hour,
Sat as far apart as we could,
And then I lit up a cigarette
To dispel my cold, black mood.
Our marriage had really hit the pits,
It was never going to do,
I’d not been happy since Imogen
Had turned to a carping shrew.

I’d never done anything right for her,
And never could make amends,
She always tried to humiliate me
By telling all of her friends.
She said I was good for nothing, but
To give her my weekly cheque,
At times I barely restrained myself
From seizing her round the neck.

An hour went by, and the Wheel began
To take us down to the ground,
Someone had seen my cigarette
It seemed, said the man from town.
She shrieked and screamed as she stalked away
At the guy that I knew as Nick,
As I slipped him his fifty bucks, and said:
‘It seems to have done the trick!’

David Lewis Paget

‘There’s something amiss with you today,
There’s something that isn’t right,
I heard you weep in your fitful sleep
As you tossed and turned all night,
We’ve been together for forty years
You’ve never been so distressed,
You’ve raised my fears with your silent tears
Why are you sad, my Blessed?’

‘A vision came to me overnight,
An angel with sparkling wings,
His face was glad, though he made me sad,
He said, ‘It’s the end of things!
The end of your careworn duties here,
The end of your struggle and strife,
The end of a long and loyal love
As a true and supportive wife.’’

‘Just what did he mean by that,’ I said,
As I felt my face turn white,
I grasped her hand like a drowning man
And I held her close, and tight.
‘Perhaps it was just a silly dream
Like the one that you had before,
The one about Michael, tapping, tapping
Tapping at our front door.’

‘Maybe it was,’ my wife had sighed
As she languished there in my arms,
‘But maybe again, he’d not have died
If I’d listened to his alarms.
He’d said that he hated swimming then,
And later I felt a fool,
The man at the door was tapping, tapping
To say he’d drowned in the pool.’

I felt the quiver of sadness then
That rattled through to the bone,
Our son was lost, and we paid the cost
In our small, but loving home.
She hadn’t wanted to look at me
For a year, or maybe two,
His picture flat on the mantelpiece
When she said, ‘He looked like you!’

I couldn’t deal with her sadness, for
My grief was hard to atone,
We walked like ghosts through an empty house
We both felt we were alone.
The years went by and our love revived
In a way that showed we cared,
The grief that came like a nightly thief
Was held, ****** down, and shared.

‘Perhaps it’s best that we let it go,
I feel so tired and wan,
I can’t remember the love we shared
Before our boy was gone.’
‘Your love was all that I wanted, Jen,’
My tears began to flow,
‘The angel’s name, it was Michael,
You’ll just have to let me go!’

David Lewis Paget

He put a flint to the lantern once
They’d walked across the crest,
Were lost in a group of headstones that
Lay hidden from the rest,
And down in a slight depression he
Lit up a certain tomb,
Where the name of Elspeth Trelawney
Was reflected in the gloom.

Trelawney held up the lantern high
While Corby held the *****,
And Gordon Bracks with an old pick-axe
Stood back, he was afraid.
‘I fear the spirits are out tonight
In this graveyard of the ******!’
‘Get on, and turn up the sod,’ he said,
Trelawney forced his hand.

The Squire was quiet and ashen-faced
As the two had bent their backs,
Corby tipping the earth aside
Then standing aside for Bracks,
‘The earth is solid, it’s packed right down,
We need to pick it loose,’
‘Just do whatever you have to do,
There’s little time to lose!’

The Squire had buried his Elspeth back
In eighteen twenty-four,
For seven years he had held his grief
But he couldn’t take much more,
‘I have to see her again,’ he said,
To kiss her pale, dead lips,
To stroke the hair on my darling’s head
And caress her fingertips.’

She’d taken the coach and four one day
Way out in the countryside,
The coachman, used to a horse and dray,
Had begun to speed the ride,
He whipped the horses and lost the reins
As the coach began to slide,
Tipped the coach in the watercourse
Where Elspeth drowned and died.

He hadn’t looked at his lover’s face
Before she was interred,
But tried to avoid the loss of grace
In her face that was inferred.
‘I only want to remember her
As she was in the flush of life,
Not in the throes of death,’ he’d said
When talking about his wife.

They’d rushed to hurry the burial,
On the day that she was found,
Popped her into a coffin, then,
Planted her in the ground,
Trelawney later had agonised
That he hadn’t let her lie,
‘I couldn’t bear her to be around,’
He said, with a tearful eye.

But now he wanted to see her face,
They lifted the coffin lid,
While Gordon Bracks had turned his back
To see what Trelawney did,
The horror showed on the Squire’s face
As he gazed into her eyes,
For Elspeth lay in a bleak dismay
As her fate was realized.

Her hands were raised and they looked like claws
They’d scratched at the coffin lid,
The clumps of hair she had torn right out
Was the final thing she did,
And on the lid she had scratched his name
In the torment of the ******,
‘Trelawney, may you be cursed by God!’
She’d scratched, with her dying hand.

David Lewis Paget

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.
The hopes I cherished are in the past,
The dreams all come undone,
I look ahead to the future and
I know, there isn’t one.’

He sat alone on the patio
And stared on out to the bay,
‘There was a time,’ he began again,
Then stopped in his dismay,
For whitecaps out in the ocean still
Were rolling in to the shore,
Just like they had on another day,
Just like they’d done before.

And pictures came to his aging eye
Of the world, how it had been,
When life and love were a world away
When he was just sixteen,
But times and tides had rolled over him
In a restless, reckless ride,
Had torn the very heart out of him
To leave empty space inside.

‘There must be a time,’ he thought aloud
‘When it’s right to call it quits,
When you’ve done the things that you wanted to
And it’s fallen all to bits,
With friends and lovers gone on their way
And with not a glance aside,
While I, stiff-necked, being so correct,
Am caught in the sin of pride.’

And then, the thought of his darling wife
Had finally raised a tear,
The sense he’d not even noticed her
For the time that she was here,
‘We never know what we’ve got,’ he thought,
‘Til it’s well and truly lost,
Just one more line in the ledger that
Adds up to the final cost.’

Then the children, what of the children with
That look of innocent trust,
Who burrowed into that heart you had
When you thought that God was just,
But once they’re grown and you find they’ve flown
To their lives, to stand or fall,
You wait for them to return to you
But you find they never call.

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.’
The only sound was the breaking waves
With the salt-spray and its sting,
He looked about like a man who craves,
But none were listening!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I was driving along the coastal route,
Looking for somewhere to stay,
A Bed and Board that was cheap would suit
In a nice secluded Bay,
But the weather broke on the seaward side
As the clouds came tumbling in,
So I had to pull to the side of the road
Next to a painted Inn.

The swinging sign said, ‘The Final Rest’
And it creaked as the seawind blew,
With a skull emblazed on the painted crest,
Though rain impeded the view,
And what was left of an ancient wreck
Lay caught on the rocky shore,
Only a matter of yards beyond
The road, and the old Inn door.

I waited until the rain had stopped
Then made my way to the bar,
An ugly crone stood there alone
On her face, a terrible scar,
She leered and said, ‘Would you like a bed,
For the storm’s set in for the night,’
My mouth was dry as I wondered why,
That scar was a terrible sight.

I said that I’d stay for just one night,
Then stood, and couldn’t but stare,
She said, ‘I know what you’re looking at,’
Reached up, and patted her hair,
She ran her finger along the scar
With a wizened, frightful hand,
‘There were some once said I was beautiful,
Oh, the wondrous works of man!’

I dropped my eyes and apologised,
While taking the proffered key,
‘I hadn’t meant to be rude,’ I cried,
‘It’s nothing to do with me!’
‘That’s what they always say,’ she said
While leading me up to my room,
Way up there on the topmost floor,
It was dark, and like a tomb.

The room held a large four poster bed
With a canopy up above,
I shut the door and I sighed, ‘There but
For the grace of the Lord above…’
The wind was rattling round the eaves
It was well set in for the night,
And I lay and mused on the woman’s fate,
What a truly, dreadful sight.

I must have fallen asleep just then
For my soul was so depressed,
I didn’t want to be stranded there
But at least I’d get some rest,
Then two o’clock in the morning I
Awoke, as my heart had raced,
The canopy had been winding down
Was pressing down on my face.

I wriggled out from beneath its hold
And struggled to get my breath,
I now knew what was ‘The Final Rest’
It was nothing less than death,
I watched the canopy creep on down
Til it gripped where I had been,
It was nothing less than revenge on men
In a plan that was obscene!

Then nothing happened for half an hour
While I shuddered beside the bed,
I knew, if I had been lying there
The odds are, I’d be dead,
But then the bed had begun to move
To tilt on its side, real slow,
And then the floor, it had opened  up
To reveal a tank below.

And there the bodies of seven men
Lay in a watery grave,
Suffocated in blissful sleep
By a woman that was depraved,
The man that inflicted that dreadful scar
Had taken her life and soul,
Had turned her into a twisted crone
The Devil had in his hold.

She finally entered the deadly room
And her eyes were dull, and blank,
I jumped on out and I seized her then
And threw her into the tank,
She didn’t struggle, she didn’t cry
She knew it would come to this,
But sank and stared from the water tank
As the floor closed, with a hiss.

Whenever I travel around these days
I always sleep in the car,
It’s not so comfortable, that I grant
But it’s safer now, by far,
I hear that ‘The Final Rest’ has gone,
Developers bought the site,
And built a massive hotel just there,
They call it, ‘The Restful Night’.

David Lewis Paget

He was walking along the tramway
On the other side of town,
The lines had shone in the darkness,
There wasn’t a tram around,
The road from the rain was glistening
Reflecting the roadside lights,
Then the man stood still, and listening
On this coldest of winter nights.

It had been so still and silent
Once the shoppers all had fled,
Out of the city centre,
And heading on home to bed,
But he was one of the homeless
Adrift on the city’s streets,
And prey to the wind and weather
That the homeless people meet.

His coat was ragged and weathered,
His boots were holed in the soles,
He hadn’t managed a shave for days
So his beard looked grey and old,
His pants, held up by a piece of string
Were the sorriest in the town,
And his face was racked with misery,
For he looked just beaten down.

But now as the lights of the bedrooms died
On either side of the street,
The dark was becoming palpable
As he dragged his weary feet,
But still he stuck to the tramway lines
As the quickest way to the docks,
Hoping to find a brazier’s heat
To dry out his sodden socks.

But still he stood and he listened
For sounds in that dreadful night,
It seemed that animals snapped and snarled
Beyond the reach of light,
The homeless went with a rumour
There were wolves out there in the dark,
For many a trace of blood was found
By day, out there in the park.

And there in the dark of alleyways
He could see the eyes a-gleam,
Waiting for him to pass them by
Before they would pounce, it seemed,
He shivered under his ragged coat
And pulled the collar up high,
Thinking it might protect his throat
When they came for him, by and by.

The wolves then bayed at the crescent moon
As they watched his figure pass,
They saw him shaking in fear and gloom
Like walking on broken glass,
But suddenly there was a rumbling
And the lights of a late night tram,
He moved aside then as if to ride
When a wolf tore at his hand.

Then suddenly there were three or four
In a fury of rip and snarl,
Tearing apart a bag of bones
Of the man who was known as Carl,
His blood seeped into the tramway tracks
As the tramway driver stopped,
And watched as they tore the man apart
With one of the city cops.

The council workers came out at dawn
To clear up the grisly mess,
They’d had their orders from City Hall
To dispose of homelessness,
The keepers, out from the city zoo
Recaptured the wolves out there,
But ready to let them out again
When a killing was in the air.

‘We have to clean up the city streets,’
The mayor had long opined,
‘Get rid of the homeless, nice and neat,
The residents sure won’t mind.’
The street’s a virtual jungle when
The lights in the streets go out,
And all you’ll hear is the scream of fear
When a homeless person shouts.

David Lewis Paget

It was hard in the Moonta Mines that year
For the miners, down in the pit,
It wasn’t a place for a weak man, but
The Cornish Miners had grit,
They burrowed deeper with every day
Extracting the copper ore,
And the skimps grew high in the heaps that piled
Not far from the Moonta shore.

They wore their helmets deep in the mine
With a candle fixed to the brim,
And worked in the glow of the candlelight
While the pumps pumped out and in,
They pumped for water, they pumped for air
For the air in the mine was rank,
And water seeped at the lowest lode
Where the atmosphere was dank.

They built their cottages out of lime
And mud, with a building board,
On Sundays, that was the only time
Once they had prayed to the Lord,
The Cornish Miners were Methodists
Built numerous churches there,
And Cap’n Hancock had said, ‘Attend!
Or your job is gone – Beware!’

Those men of flint had hearts of gold
And they raised their children fine,
Sons would follow their fathers then
And go to work in the mine,
One Christmas Eve they were gathered there
By their hundreds, on the green,
A candle lit on their helmets each
Like a glittering starlit scene.

The wives and children were there as well
With their voices raised in praise,
The swelling sound of an angel choir
With their humble miners ways,
They called it Carols by Candlelight
And the movement grew apace,
It spread all over the world from this
The Moonta Miners grace.

David Lewis Paget

He walked on up to the cottage from
The cliff, the long way round,
He didn’t want to be seen or heard,
His footsteps made no sound,
He was wearing the same old overcoat
That he’d worn, those years before,
When he’d sauntered out of the cottage,
To take a walk on the shore.

The weather then had been brisk and cold
In the first few days of Spring,
The clouds had been light and fluffy then
He remembered everything,
The gulls were nested along the cliff
And the tide was on the turn,
A single fisherman cast his line
On the far side of the burn.

The pathway down by the cliff had been
Rock strewn and fairly steep,
His steps back then had been tentative,
He had time enough to keep,
He’d told his wife he’d be back by one
From his walk along the shore,
And she had blown him a kiss for fun
As she swept him out the door.

But now he looked at the garden that
Had been so nicely mown,
The privet hedge, the wisteria
Were all now overgrown,
The cottage needed a coat of paint
And the chimney pots were cracked,
He stopped and mused at the garden gate
For the love the cottage lacked.

Then a face appeared at the window that
Was pale, and sad, and drawn,
And he wished the earth would swallow him
From the day that he was born,
The door flew open and out she flew
Like a shrew, with little grace,
A look of scorn as he stood there, torn
And she slapped him round the face.

‘What do you mean by coming here,
Did you hope to see my tears?
You walked away, not a word to say
And you don’t come back for years.’
She screamed and pounded his overcoat
As he took one pace, and stepped,
Folding his arms around her as
She clung to him, and wept.

‘I think I know how the others felt
But it’s all beyond recall,
I only talked to the fisherman,
And I was held in thrall,
He talked and talked of the things to come
It was most distinctly odd,
The world closed in around me till
I felt I was talking to God.’

‘He said so much, and it sounded wise
But I can’t recall a thing,
I wanted to get back home to you
For time was hastening,
But the sun went down and the Moon came up
Which was when he said it, then,
‘I’m not here looking for fish,’ he said,
‘For I’m a fisher of men.’

‘It’s been three years,’ said his tear-stained wife,
‘It has been three years or more,
Since ever you took your leave of me
To wander down on the shore.’
‘That was the time of his ministry,’
He said, ‘and I was to blame,
He  kept on calling me Judas, though
I said that wasn’t my name.’

‘He said that we needed forgiveness, like
I need forgiveness from you,
I honestly don’t know where I’ve been
But I know I’ve always been true.
He packed up his fishing tackle in
A bag he kept on the sand,
Took thirty pieces of silver
And placed them back in my hand.’

David Lewis Paget

They said that the ocean was rising
It would soon overwhelm the land,
While I lived down on the valley floor
Below the sea and the sand,
The only thing that had kept us dry
Was a narrow band of ground,
Between a couple of mountainsides
In a long protective mound.

There were others lived in the valley
It was like an ancient clan,
That had hung on tight to its own birthright
Since before the world began,
While the fathers ruled for the daughters
That they may not look aside,
They could only marry within the clan
If they’d call themselves a bride.

But I was a rank outsider,
I could look, but couldn’t touch,
I tortured myself with Geraldine
Who flaunted herself so much.
Her skin was the texture of silk and cream
And her voice the trill of the thrush,
She’d bare her ******* till she knew I’d seen
Then laugh when she made me blush.

But Geraldine had a father, Roy,
Who was rough, and high in the clan,
He’d single me out and say, ‘You boy,
Your eyes are straying again!
You’d better not look at Geraldine
She’s not intended for you,
I’ll marry her to a real man
That’s what she’d want me to do.’

He’d threaten to beat me with the staff
That kept Geraldine in line,
I thought, she’d never be marked like that
If ever the girl was mine,
But fate lay just round the corner then
With storm clouds tumbling through,
And gale winds whipping the breakers up
In a high tide whirl of a stew.

The mound was breached in the early morn
And carried away like a dam,
Suddenly water was everywhere
I reached for my boots, and ran,
The whole of the ocean seemed to flow
Right down to the valley floor,
With most of the cottages swept away
The clan, it seemed, was no more.

I heard her crying out in the flood
Reached out as she floated by,
And Geraldine had clung onto me,
Her father would drown, and die.
We fought our way to the higher ground
And we saw our homes subside,
Buried forever beneath the flood
But I made the girl my bride.

David Lewis Paget

The phone had only been on a day
When the cranky calls began,
‘Nobody knows we’re on,’ I said,
When at first the **** thing rang.
I had to run up the passageway
To catch it before it stopped,
Then there was just an awesome hush
Like a tree before it’s lopped.

The line dropped out at the first ‘hello’
As if they would wait for me
To run the length of the passageway,
Expend all that energy,
I’m sure they laughed as they cut me off
Though of course, I couldn’t hear,
‘It’s dead again,’ I would rage and froth
‘Though it must be someone near.’

‘It better not be your stupid friend,’
I said to my wife, Diane,
‘The one that’s such a comedienne
Who annoys me when she can.’
‘It isn’t her,’ was Diane’s reply
In her testy, haughty tone,
‘She wouldn’t ring when she knows I’m here,
But wait till you’re home alone.’

But the phone rang every evening,
At the high point of our show,
Just as they named the villain, and
I nodded to her to go.
‘You go,’ she’d say, ‘I’ve worked all day,
And it really is your phone,’
I’d grit my teeth up the passageway
And rage at it on my own.

I finally let it ring and ring
And refused to pick it up,
‘I’ll teach them never to mess with me,’
As I drank a second cup,
A truck arrived in the morning and
It dumped a ton of twine
Blocking all of the driveway while
Some clown said it was mine!

‘I never ordered this blasted twine,
You should have come to the door,
Confirmed the order you say you had,
What would I want it for?’
‘We got the order over the phone
So we rang, with no reply,
Somebody said you don’t pick up
You’re such an eccentric guy.’

I always answered it after that,
And after the pig dung treat,
Fifteen tons, and the smell had hung
The length of our angry street,
We tried to tell them it wasn’t us
We said it must be the phone,
I know that I would have picked it up
If only I had been home.

We never did get a proper call,
One where somebody spoke,
I don’t think anyone likes me, and
That phone’s a pig in a poke,
I went outside and I cut the cord
To the world who scorned our line,
Then went inside where the blasted phone
Still rang, one final time.

I picked it up and I snapped, ‘Who’s that!’
And a voice came on the line,
It wasn’t a voice I knew, it spat
And it gruffly asked the time,
‘You’ve cut us off from the Internet,
I hope you’re feeling spry,
We live in your rhododendrons, and
You’ve made the fairies cry!’

David Lewis Paget

I’ve long been pondering suicide,
My life is such a mess,
I thought to try on the other side,
It couldn’t be worse than this,
I’d always been such a coward though
My pain threshold is low,
I wondered how I could **** myself
With just one simple blow.

I didn’t fancy to cut my throat
There’s such a lot of blood,
And somebody has to clean it up
They’d curse me, as they should,
A gunshot straight to the head would put
My brains all over the wall,
And everything would be grey and red
With a blood-spray in the hall.

So I considered a poison pill
And a quart of Mister Beam,
That might just happen to fit the bill
For a death, both quick and clean,
But where would I get a poison pill
To accelerate my death?
I’d hate to die when I’m feeling ill,
Fighting for every breath.

I’d pondered on it so very long
That it quite obsessed my mind,
And I began to see shapes and figures
From some other time,
The ghosts of others who’d gone ahead
And done the evil deed,
Were poisoned, shot, or their throats were cut
When their own lives were in need.

They seemed to come when the clock struck twelve
Just on the midnight hour,
That’s when the demons that rot in hell
Can demonstrate their power,
They kept on coming to egg me on
To get on that fatal bus,
‘You need to do it, it isn’t wrong,
You can join with all of us!’

They almost had me convinced that I
Could drown myself in the sea,
Or pick my favourite river then,
One that appealed to me,
They said to drown was a pleasant death
I’d drift away in a dream,
And none would know that I’d killed myself,
It’s an ‘accidental’ theme.

The next night there came a stranger to
This ghostly neighbourhood,
Trailing festoons of river ****
And covered in clods of mud,
His face was twisted in anguish and
Such pain, that now I see,
Why I have suddenly changed my mind,
That freak-out ghost, was me!

David Lewis Paget

At midnight, out on the cobblestones
There’s the sound of rolling wheels,
And a shadow cast on a window pane
From the road outside, it steals,
A wagon, black in its livery,
And pulled by a single horse,
As black as the heart of the man that steers,
Whipped up from the watercourse.

From down in a tiny inlet, deep
Enough for a man of war,
A French corvette is lying, waiting,
Just metres away from shore,
It carried a cargo of brandy, wine,
And cases full of tea,
Smuggled into the tiny cove
Its goods all duty free.

Now it’s waiting upon the tide
To turn the ship around,
Its cargo gone in the wagon now,
Headed for higher ground,
And then the galloping hoofbeats echo
Over the cobblestones,
The crack of a couple of pistols and
The air is filled with groans.

The horse breaks free of its halter and
The wagon rolls back down,
It’s shadow passing my window pane
A second time around,
It rolls back into the harbour while
I hear the boom of guns,
Firing from the French Corvette
As it hoists its sail, and runs.

Once a year on the fifth of June
And late into the night,
Whenever the moon is lying low
And casting down its light,
I see the shadows and hear the sounds
From that deadly time of yore,
As the ghostly French Corvette departs
And sails from the ghostly shore.

And glistening out on the cobblestones
There’s a dampness, looks like mud,
That dissipates in an hour or two,
A pool of the smuggler’s blood,
I dare not go to the window, look,
Or even open the door,
In case I’m carried away by them
From two hundred years before.

David Lewis Paget

I’d brought my woman to live with me
In a cottage by Elmsley Wood,
We lived on pure and simple fare
For my wages weren’t that good,
I bagged a hare and a stoat or two
With my ancient .22,
She skinned and cooked, and cleaned and looked
For something better to do.

‘I’m used to the shops and supermart,
The bars, fast cars and fun,
I didn’t know we’d be isolated,
Let’s go back there, ***!’
I hadn’t a job for two full years
And she knew that to be true,
‘I only remember the city tears
When I couldn’t look after you!’

We’d always been such a loving pair
When we lived outside the yoke,
With plenty of time for making love
In a ratty flat, and broke.
But once I became a gamekeeper
I had a feeling of pride,
‘A man has need of his self-respect,’
I said, so Kathy sighed.

I’d do my rounds at the dawning while
The sun was lying low,
While she would sleep every morning
Spring or Summer, heat or snow.
Then I’d go out in the evenings when
The Moon was riding high,
Hoping to catch the poachers on
My patch, and being sly.

So Kathy began to go for walks
Each sunny afternoon,
She wouldn’t stick round for lunch, or talks
And the cottage was filled with gloom.
I’d take my break in the afternoon
Either read, or take a nap,
And hear the crackle of twigs and leaves
As she came walking back.

I warned her not to go walking through
The depths of Elmsley Wood,
‘There’s a couple of shady characters
In there, up to no good.’
She said she’d taken it all on board
Just walked the nearer trees,
Listening to the songs of birds
And the hum of busy bees.

One afternoon she had gone, and I
Was not too tired that day,
So wandered deep in the wood where I
Might meet the rogue, John Gray.
I saw him out in a clearing, and
He had her in his clutch,
I thought that I must be dreaming for
She wasn’t wearing much.

I turned, and hurried back home without
Them knowing I was there,
I had my heart in my throat, but was
Determined not to care.
The rage was building within me
For the woman who was mine,
I thought, ‘How could she deceive me?’
But that evening was sublime.

She said that the larder was empty
Could I go and bag a hare,
I said, ‘Just give me an hour or so,
I’ll bag some thing out there.’
I came in late, and upon the plate
I tossed her John Gray’s head,
‘I couldn’t find you a hare, I swear,
Just pickle that instead!’

David Lewis Paget

The garden at home, from what I recall
Was massive and overgrown,
More like a huge untended park
That was mine to explore and roam.
There were trees and shrubs and flowerbeds
That were all burnt up and dried,
I never saw anyone water it
So most of the garden died.

And my grandfather would wander about
And he’d grumble under his beard,
Mumble about his offspring, as he
Wondered what he’d reared.
‘They all take after their mother’s side,’
He would say, ‘They have no spine,
I’ve searched and searched for an Astrogoth
But I don’t think that they’re mine.’

I doubted they really wanted me,
They’d throw me over the fence,
And say, ‘Go play with your grandfather,
He’s more like you, and dense.’
Then off they’d go to the garden’s end
To sit by the smoking pit,
Whenever I’d ask if I could go
My mother would throw a fit.

‘Don’t go to the end of the garden or
We might just leave you there,
Your cousin fell in the pit of hell
And was burnt beyond compare.’
I watched the smoke pour out of the ground
To see if my parents lied,
But sure as hell, there were flames as well
Right there, where my cousin died.

One day I watched as it opened up
To reveal the son of sin,
My parents ventured a little close
And then they had tumbled in,
He yelled and roared, called on the Lord
That he spared him in his den,
‘Just take your half-wits back,’ he cried,
‘My hell is not for them!’

I haven’t been to the garden now
For years, since my Gramps took off,
So I’m the only descendant now
With the name of Astrogoth,
That smoking pit with a door to it
I have tried for years to sell,
But nobody seems to want to buy
A personal door to hell.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Back in the tiny town of Hamm
In a province best unknown,
Is an ancient sandstone prison tower
Where the grounds are overgrown.
The locals still in the town are few
Were wary of us at first,
But ventured out when they heard me shout
To tell me the tower was cursed.

‘Don’t venture there if you fear despair,’
They said in a foreign tongue,
Then slunk back, each to his rundown lair,
But we were too smart, and young.
‘They’re peasants, what would they know,’ said Kym,
‘They’re superstitious and fools,
We’ll test their funny old tower now.’
We should have played by their rules.

It was built in a grim and Gothic style
But had sadly been run down,
Hundreds of years of standing there
Put a torpor over the town.
The rusty railings, falling apart
Had never been breached by them,
The peasants whispered and looked away
In the manner of Holy men.

We made our way through the bushes, sedge
And weeds that grew in the grounds,
But then up close to the building saw
Some features that astound.
The walls had flying buttresses,
A door with a pointed arch,
And a gargoyle leering from above
Next to soldiers on the march.

We didn’t go in the first time there
But wandered around the site,
It was Kym who had the bright idea
We should go and explore by night.
I wish that we’d known its history
For that might have broken its spell,
I wouldn’t have sought its mystery,
And Kym would still be well.

We noticed an old Teutonic sign
Engraved, and above the door,
We couldn’t translate it at the time
It should have been done before;
Before we entered that cursèd place
And risking our sanity,
For I came out with a twisted face
Though Kym was worse than me.

The moon was casting a yellow glow
As we stood before that door,
Directly under the gargoyle that
Let out a fearful roar,
Then a stream of ectoplasm flowed
From its jaws, and down on Kym,
Covered her in this bluish light
And then, it dragged her in.

I followed, not that I had a choice
I was quite beyond control,
My legs did whatever they wanted to,
I had no choice at all.
Inside was a vaulted ceiling over
An old and blood-stained block,
And Kym was struggling, screaming,
As she was stretched across its top.

She glowed and glowed in this bluish light
Her neck was placed on the block,
And then a shimmering man appeared
I think I went into shock.
He held a shining scimitar sword
And he raised it up to strike,
And still I live that terrible scene,
Each and every night.

I saw it clearly pass right through
The base of Kym’s long neck,
And watched as this bluish head fell off
Went rolling along the deck.
But her head was there, was still in place
As I dragged her screaming out,
It was then I noticed my twisted face
That I can do nothing about.

They say that it’s called Bell’s Palsy, that
I must have suffered a shock,
The right hand side of my face is numb,
My eye and my mouth have dropped,
But Kym just utters the weirdest moans
As if blood was starved from her brain,
Her eyes astare at the horror there
I think she must be insane.

The last I saw of that evil tower
The gargoyle seemed to grin,
As if to say there is hell to pay
For those who might come right in.
And the screed engraved above the door
The letters were filled with lead,
‘You’ve come to the Tower of Grimm von Gore,
Enter, and lose your head!’

David Lewis Paget

The only gas lamp left in the street
Was sitting outside my door,
The rest now lay on a ******* heap
Had been cleared some years before,
But strangely, all of the mist that once
Obscured the street from sight,
Now hung and clung to that gas lamp frame
And darkened my door at night.

I’d stand and stare through my window there
Whenever the mist was high,
Painting the drains and window panes
In the glow of the gas lamp eye,
And those that passed in the street at night
Would flicker and then be gone,
Just like a scene on the silver screen
They would pause, then hurry along.

And that’s when I saw the girl out there
One misty night, about ten,
All dressed up for a late night show
She’d certainly go, but when?
She wore a dress in a style I’d thought
More in Victorian taste,
A woollen shawl and a bonnet, small,
And a bodice of Nottingham lace.

She’d disappear in the swirling mist
Then reappear in the glow,
She’d cling on tight to the gas lamp post,
She wasn’t ready to go,
Perhaps she waited for someone there
I thought, how lucky he’d be,
She looked so beautiful, standing where
I’d wish she was waiting for me.

She seemed to come every friday night
But only during a mist,
If only she would knock at my door
I thought, I couldn’t resist.
One friday night it began to rain,
And she looked in a great distress
Now I could venture to ask her in
If only to save her dress.

I stepped right up and opened the door,
Her image would flicker and fade,
I saw her turn, and stare from the glow
That the old gas lamp had made,
‘So there you are,’ came her breezy voice,
‘I’ve been waiting here, you see,
Every friday at ten o’clock
Since 1893.’

That was the moment the lamp blew out
In a strong and sudden gust,
The glow, the rain and the girl had gone
With the mist remaining, just,
I stand alone by the window pane
And I peer into the mist,
To search forever the girl who came
That I saw, but never kissed.

David Lewis Paget