Whenever the rain comes falling,
It rearranges our town,
Whatever before was dry and up
Is suddenly wet and down,
They say it’s the fault of Widow Krupp
Who saved her tears in a tub,
And splashes them out with a scream and shout
As rain fills the gutters up.

And the streets lie under the waterways
For the river will burst its banks,
Flooding the gardens, and pathways,
There’s nobody else to thank.
We lose all sense of the North and South
As the East and West drift by,
And watch as the town goes spinning round
By gazing up at the sky.

People go drifting out in boats
To look for the supermart,
But all they find are the floating goats
That litter the flooded park,
The wooden houses meander by
As they leave their place in the street,
And neighbours wake in a different place
To the one where they fell asleep.

No wonder they call it ‘Waterdown’
It could have been ‘Waterup’,
For Waterdown is a drifting town
Thanks to the Widow Krupp,
The townsfolk threaten to duck the witch
As soon as they find the pond,
That lies bewitched by a flooded ditch
Out there, the back of beyond.

The pub has been anchored down with ropes
To stop it drifting away,
They towed it down from the heart of town
To give them somewhere to play,
While Madame Loy is the local toy
Who hangs her shingle outside,
‘Come in and play, if you’re bored today,
Entrée, and come for a ride.’

They finally got to the Widow Krupp
And drowned the witch in her tears,
Ducked her well in her wooden tub
Now it hasn’t rained for years.
The ground is dry and they wonder why
The river is just a stream,
And for those few who are newly new,
The past was a fitful dream.

David Lewis Paget

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