She walked the cobblestone streets at night,
Everyone thought her a pro,
Her skirt was short and her blouse was tight
And her eyes moved to and fro,
She never answered a mocking call
For a price to rest her head,
And wouldn’t stop till the Moon went down
When at last she went to her bed.

She’d roamed the alleyways and the streets
For a year, or maybe two,
Whenever a stranger stayed her feet
She’d say, ‘Not looking for you!’
But still she’d roam till she turned for home
Each night, it went to a plan,
She’d check each face for a sign of grace,
Each night, she’d look for a man.

Sometimes she’d stop at a village Inn
And she’d sidle up to the bar,
The barman said, ‘No, you can’t come in,’
Then she’d say, ‘I’ve come so far.
I need to know if you’ve seen a man
With a head of bright red hair,
A lazy eye, with a look quite sly,
I’ve been searching here and there.’

But no-one knew of the lazy eye
Though they’d seen the carrot head,
‘He used to drink at ‘The King and I’
But I think that fellow’s dead.’
She wandered out to the cemetery
To look for the name they gave,
But the headstone said it was Henry,
When the name that she sought was Dave.’

She’d go back home and she’d cry at night
When the stranger came in her dream,
She’d only seen him the once before
But his face was burnt on her brain.
‘I’ll not be rid of him, nevermore,
And I’ll spend my life in pain,
I need to see him, if just once more,’
It drove her out in the rain.

One night she walked through an alleyway
In shadows, deep in the gloom,
Hiding a figure standing there
Who stared, like a figure of doom.
He faced her there in the only light,
The Moon, that beamed through the trees,
And she took note of the lazy eye
And the hair, like a red disease.

‘I think I’ve seen you before,’ he said,
I just can’t remember when.’
‘You did, while I was lying in bed,
You came through my window then.
I’ve searched for you for a year or more
And now is your time to pay,
You won’t be getting away this time,
So down on your knees, and pray.’

She pulled a pistol out of her bag
To point it at straight at his head,
The stranger’s knees had begun to sag,
‘I should have left you for dead!’
‘I’m glad that your hair is red, blood red,
For the sight won’t make me cry,’
Then fired a bullet, straight through his head
By way of his lazy eye.

David Lewis Paget

He laid no claim to a perfect life,
Nor looked to a higher power,
‘He lived his life,’ said his seventh wife
‘At a hundred miles an hour.’
And those he bruised as he hurtled by
Were the first in defending him,
‘He didn’t live by our man-made rules
But those he defined within.’

There were some that said he was selfish,
And some that said he was cruel,
Those with the backward collar he
Devoured, and used as fuel.
He couldn’t stomach the hypocrite,
The ones that would have you pray,
‘If there is a god, I’ll give you the nod,
You wouldn’t be here today.’

There wasn’t a woman could tame him down
Not a concubine, nor a wife,
He wore out many an eiderdown
In living a lustful life.
He lived as the rest of us should live
In a type of joyful surge,
And carried us all along with him
With our inhibitions purged.

He set a pace that would burn him out
As his strength and youth declined,
But railed and ranted against the force
That made him a prey to time.
‘I’ll not give in, it would be a sin
To deny in my final breath,
A life that’s sailed too close to the rail,
That’s an ignominious death.’

He swore that he’d find a way to show
That death only set you free,
As he laid his head on that final bed,
Here’s what he said to me:
‘Just watch that picture over the hearth
Of me, when the world was young,
I’ll make it fall from the chimney wall
If the sting of my death’s undone.’

And so he died in his earthly pride
Then went to his funeral pyre,
I told my wife, ‘there’s another life
Devoured in the flames and fire.’
I didn’t believe that he could survive
On the strength of his will alone,
But went away to the wake that day
They held in his childhood home.

His friends were milling about the house
And drinking his cellar dry,
While I stood pensive before the hearth
And asking the question, why?
When a sudden crash on the cobbled hearth
Saw his picture fall from the wall,
The shattered glass from his grinning face
Went showering over all.

It must have been a coincidence
I said, and the wife agreed,
‘We’ll have to go to the cemetery
To prove that he’s there, indeed.’
We waited just on a week to go,
It rained, and the grave was soaked,
But pouring out from his headstone there
Was a plume of Holy Smoke!

David Lewis Paget

The mirror was there when we moved in,
Full length, and stood in the hall,
Right where the lounge room opened up
Against the opposite wall.
Yvette was startled at first, she said,
‘That mirror gave me a fright,
To see a figure suddenly there
Stare back in the dead of night.’

‘You’ll soon get used to it there, Yvette,
There’s nowhere else it can go,
Once you have moved your chattels in
And filled up the house below.’
‘It’s strange though, isn’t it,’ said Yvette,
‘It reflects the wrong way round,
My right is left and my left is right
Like an opposite me it’s found.’

‘You’d better tell her you’re not impressed,
That she’s taken half your face,
And moved it to the opposite side
In a sign of twisted grace.’
For Yvette had one green eye, the right,
And a pale blue eye, the left,
So what stared back from that mirror there
Was a back to front Yvette.

She’d stand in front of that mirror there
And would pose, and raise her hand,
‘I raise my right, and it seems to me
I’m reversed in mirror land.’
I said, ‘It’s the same for everyone
But you seem to be obsessed,’
‘It isn’t me,’ said Yvette, ‘you’ll see
When she steps out through the glass.’

I woke at night, in the early light
And Yvette was not in bed,
I found her down by the mirror there
Where the morning light was shed.
I crept up slowly behind her there
And saw what Yvette could see,
That figure, facing away from her,
But never a sign of me.

‘I told the woman to turn around
And she did, I see my back!’
But so did I, it was such a shock
Like a brought-on heart attack,
Yvette went missing the following day
Though I searched both high and low,
But didn’t stare at the mirror there
Just in case she was… you know!

I called her name when the evening came
And she crawled right into bed,
‘You scared me out of my mind,’ I cried,
‘But I don’t know why,’ she said.
She gave me a long, fulfilling kiss
When I stared, as one bereft,
For this Yvette had a blue eye, right
And a green one on the left.

David Lewis Paget

There must have been seven chimneys
In the great house on the hill,
I never actually counted them
While the house was standing still,
But the years had brought their own neglect
And the house was well run down,
By the time we pulled the place apart
For a new estate in town.

We couldn’t just use a wrecking ball
It was too immense for that,
When we took it brick by brick apart
We could build a hundred flats.
The chimneys were the hardest part
For the flues had twists and turns
As they rose up through three storeys with
Each hearth, soot black and burned.

It had been the home of Dukes and Earls
Back in Victoria’s day,
With gardeners, cooks and pantry maids,
All with a place to stay,
There were ***** and more for the gentlefolk
For the vicar and local squire,
And after the garden parties they would
Huddle, in front of the fire.

We chipped away at the chimney stacks
And gradually brought them down,
Brick by brick to the local tip
As red dust covered the ground,
But then a guy gave a sudden cry
During a working lull,
‘I think I see, what it seems to me,
The top of a human skull.’

The top of a human skull it was
Of a child, no more than six,
Jammed up tight in the chimney there
Imprisoned by old red bricks,
We managed to pry him loose at last
And lifted him from the flue,
But then the horror came home to us
For his legs were missing, too.

We saw the mangling hook they’d used
That lodged in one of his ribs,
That tore the body apart to clear
The chimney, for His Nibs,
The kid was lodged in a twisting flue
They knew that his case was dire,
And tried to make him climb up and through
By lighting a smoking fire.

We couldn’t tell if the sweep was dead
Or simply allowed to choke,
When someone ordered the fire lit
And sent up a cloud of smoke,
Perhaps he screamed as the smoke had streamed
And the fire burned, but slow,
He was just a sweep, his life was cheap
Compared to the guests below.

The little lad’s in the cemetery
He was laid with special care,
With everyone but nobility
Gathered to lay him there,
It’s a page at last from a cruel past
That we turned, but won’t forget,
Great wealth destroys our humanity,
Have we learned that lesson yet?

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

It stood by my uncle’s hatstand for
As long as I can recall,
This ugly wooden carving, leering
Staring out from the wall,
My mother would say, ‘It’s evil,’
That it wasn’t fit to see,
Not for a young impressionable,
By that, she just meant me.

It used to give me the shivers
Every time that I passed its way,
It had a glare of malevolence
I felt, in a mute dismay,
My uncle brought it from Africa
A memento of his time
Seeking out the Azuli tribe
Who lived in a tropic clime.

‘I think his name was Jabuka,’
My uncle said to a friend,
‘One of those baleful spirits that
Was said to torture men,
He’d pluck your eyes from their sockets
If you saw what you shouldn’t see,
And infected men with a virus
That would **** their family.’

For years it sat in abeyance,
Whatever the power it bore,
There was never a hint of impatience
As it sat, and stared by the door,
It wasn’t until my uncle hired
A sultry African maid,
That evil entered the atmosphere
Of the house where I went, and played.

I think it was then that I noticed
There was something strange at large,
My hair rose up as I walked on by,
An electrostatic charge,
It prickled in all my fingers
Ran up the hairs of my arm,
I’d lie if I should deny that day
I felt a sense of alarm.

While little dark skinned Mbutu,
Would bow when she’d dust it off,
Would mumble some words in Zulu
That I could make nothing of,
I saw the fear in her eyes the day
I glanced off it in the hall,
‘Never to touch Jabuka, son
Or him rage is fearful!’

It must have been close on midnight
I heard, when over and done,
My uncle came on Mbutu
Stark naked before ‘the one’,
It must have been some strange African rite
As she danced, she gave weird cries,
But then next day, my uncle lay
And bled from both of his eyes.

My aunt then died of Ebola,
No more than a week from then,
The virus grew, then Mbutu too
Was lost to the world of men,
I sat by my uncle’s bedside
At the hospital by the park,
When he said, ‘Oh Ben, I’m a fool,’ and then,
‘God, but this room is dark!’

He told me to take Jabuka
And carry it out that day,
‘But while you carry that evil thing
Be sure you’re looking away,
There’s petrol out in the potting shed,
Though barely a gallon or two,
Make sure you douse it over the head,
You know what you have to do.’

I watched the flames as they roared and claimed
The wood of that idol’s gaze,
And felt the surge of an evil urge
Attack, in so many ways,
I knew I’d watched what I shouldn’t see
As I felt it rise in my hair,
And lost one eye as it bled bone dry,
It’s lucky I have a spare!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget