Hello poetry,
Have you come to whisk me away into another fantasy
Float me down the river of another memory
Guide me into an abyss, searching for my sanity
Remove me from this place, drifting from gravity

I shut my eyes, let out my hand and let poetry do away with me.

There Was A Dare Dog In This Town
That often ventured the wild and returned at dawn
He treasured the jungle floor he could lie on
till the night he lay on the tail of a Lion
and never lived to tell of the Lion's frown.

‘It’s only for over Christmas,’ said
The son to his father there,
And watched as the old man’s shoulders hunched
As he painfully mounted the stair,
‘It’s just for the festive season while
The house will be full of kin,
We’re going to need your bedroom if
We’re going to fit them in.

‘I’ll pick you up when the New Year dawns,
My promise is set in stone,
On the first or second of January
Expect me to bring you home.’
But the old man merely paused and turned,
The set of his mouth was grim,
‘You don’t need to make me promises,
I know I’m not wanted, Tim.’

And Tim would have said that wasn’t true
But he had to heed his wife,
She’d said it was him or her would leave,
And her words cut like a knife,
‘I’m always the one to wash and clean,
To cook, and pick up his mess,
He has to be gone by Christmas John,
I’ll not put up with less.’

So early the morning of Christmas Eve
The son had packed a case,
And helped his father into the car
To head for the old folks place,
‘It’s lucky your mother’s dead, my son,
You’d tear us both apart,
How do you think your Mum would feel,
I think you’d break her heart.’

And tears had run down the father’s cheek,
And also down the son’s,
Tim said, ‘Look Dad, I am sorry but
There’s nothing to be done.
I’ve said I’m coming to pick you up
So what more can I say?’
‘I thought to be spending my Christmas
With my son, on Christmas Day.’

The car pulled up at the iron gate
And the son had forced a smile,
‘It won’t be long and with Christmas gone
It will just be a little while,’
He carried his case inside for him
And he turned to say goodbye,
When muttering ‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’
The old man answered ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You went outside in the storming,
The lightning flashed and it struck you dumb,
You couldn’t get up this morning.
I tried to give you a sweet caress
But you discharged on my finger,
I fear your voltage grows more, not less,
There’s no good reason to linger.

I wrapped a cable around your toe
Ran it to earth in the garden,
Your toe as well as the cable glowed,
I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.
There’s lightning flashes behind your eyes,
Your tongue is all of a sizzle,
The storm has gone but the rain keeps on
Although it’s only a drizzle.

I took you out to our ******* bin
The neighbours thought I was fooling,
And sat you down on the surface tin,
I thought that it would be cooling.
But soon the bin was a glowing red
I hauled you off from the garbage,
As flames and smoke took the garden shed
And put an end to our garage.

I thought that I’d better hose you down
When water hit, it was frightening,
The bolt ran over the garden hedge
And burnt it down with its lightning.
What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You know that I love you dearly,
But I’ll never sleep in our bed again,
Till you are discharged, and feely.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget