The hull was that of a freighter, merchant,
Old, but still under steam,
It rose from off the horizon, distant,
Out of somebody’s dream,
Its livery had been dull and black
But now it flaked and it peeled,
The paint rose up on bubbles of rust
It was once designed to have sealed.

And from its stack there was dark grey smoke
That rose and spread on the sea,
Fouling the air in a narrow track
So they wouldn’t be seen by me,
We put the coastal cutter about
And raised the flag in the sun,
So Sally could see we were headed out
As she went on the Black Dog run.

The day was done it was almost dusk
When we entered that trail of smoke,
The freighter, ‘Emily Greensleeves’ must
Have burnt off a ton of coke,
We only saw her faint through a haze
And never a single crew,
But only Sally up on the bridge
As the dog came rabbiting through.

The dog, as black as a tinker’s ***
Raced back and forth on the deck,
Not so much as a chain restraint
Or a collar stud at its neck,
It stood there slavering down at us
When we got up close with a gun,
And often we thought to pick it off
When out on the Black Dog run.

But then the freighter would slip away
Deep in its trail of smoke,
And we’d be left alone in the bay
Trying to breathe, not choke,
Others have said they will bring her in
This ghostly girl, with a gun,
But nobody’s able to pin her down
When out on the Black Dog run.

David Lewis Paget

The door was ajar to a pokey room
All gloomy and morbid inside,
It gave off an air of despair and gloom
Not joyful, befitting a bride,
The couple arrived as I wandered by,
But she with her eyes on the ground,
While he simply glared as we passed on the stair
As if to say, ‘See what I found!’

I wasn’t that curious back in the day
For couples, they came and they went,
Those pokey apartments so full of decay,
They’d be better off in a tent.
But these two had stayed there much longer than most,
She rarely came out in the light,
And he placed a padlock from door to the doorpost,
Whenever he left in the night.

Whenever he left, and he certainly did,
He’d leave her in there on her own,
Though where he would go, I now think that he hid
For sometimes I heard the girl moan.
I’d feel the floor shudder, and hear the walls creak
While out in the hall it would whine,
And I would go searching, like hide and go seek
To be sure it was nothing of mine.

One night with a rumble behind their front door
I heard someone dragging a case,
That terrible screech on the lino, at least
In that something was dragged out of place,
Could that be a trunk, was he doing a bunk
With her body to sink off the coast?
I called in the cops as I thought she was lost
And they blocked the door off, he was toast.

They opened the trunk, took the padlock away
And that’s where she was, true enough,
When they questioned him why she was locked up inside
‘She’s a penchant for travelling rough.’
They said did she mind and to this she replied
The woman, whose first name was Joyce,
‘He showed me the padlock and said it was wedlock,
I thought that I had little choice.’

David Lewis Paget

Have you crept off into the darkness,
Have you hidden yourself in your spell,
Is your world the world of starkness,
Are you two steps closer to hell?
I felt you throw off the purple quilt
As the night came down as mist,
And take the stairs in a rush, full tilt
As you called out, ‘Please desist!’

Your legs had flashed on the stairwell,
Your thighs stark white in the hall,
When only minutes before I’d had
You pressed tight up by the wall.
I sipped and bit at your lower lip
As I raised your face for a kiss,
But pressed up tight by the hallway light
I could see your eyes resist.

Your spell is the essence of madness,
I find myself at your feet,
Is love this impossible sadness
Like a gourmet meal, replete,
I watch you dance when the Moon is yolk
And your mantle twirls and flares,
At night, in front of the gentle folk
You delight in their naked stares.

You never like to be seen by day
The light of the sun is harsh,
You’re more content to be naked by
The dwindling light of the stars,
I don’t know whether you’ll come to me
It’s much too early to tell,
I asked you once, and you said you’d be
Just two steps closer to hell.

David Lewis Paget

She stood and she watched as the storm came in
With the wreck of the Unicorn,
Its forward cabins under the swell,
Its masts so high and forlorn,
Her sailors dashed on the wicked rocks
To colour the blood-red foam,
‘Oh where, oh where is my sister Kate,’
She cried with a blood-red moan.

I reached on out and I spread the shawl
To cover her auburn hair,
The wind and rain in our faces as
I stood by the wall, with Claire,
The wreck was merely a hundred yards,
Was foundering near the shore,
With not a single man on the spars
Where the sail had billowed before.

We heard the bowsprit grind on the rocks,
The rudder tear from the post,
And Claire gave out the cry of the lost
To call for the customs boat,
The waves came thundering onto the shore
Flung spindrift high in the air,
Its mist obscured what the waves had lured
To drift in a mute despair.

‘How may I save my sister Kate,’ she cried,
But I couldn’t tell,
The Unicorn was coming apart
Was bound on its trip to hell,
And Kate by locking her cabin door
To keep out the surging sea,
Had forged herself a coffin before
The schooner had ceased to be.

We found her there in the flooded room
With the wreck cast up on the shore,
The moment the storm had shed its gloom
And the sun shone bright once more,
With gentle currents making her sway
And seaweed caught in her hair,
She held a locket her sister gave
With the line, ‘Bon voyage, Claire.’

David Lewis Paget

‘We never had much in common,’ said
The man in the sailor hat,
‘He was the father, I was the son,
And that,’ he said, ‘was that!
We had some fun in my younger days
And he seemed to always care,
I grew, and we went our different ways
And I lost him then, out there.’

‘Why would you turn your back on him,’
I asked, and he shook his head,
‘Didn’t you think one day you’d blink
And your father would be dead?’
‘I didn’t believe it would cut me down,’
He said as he wiped a tear,
And leant his back on the headstone,
‘I didn’t know that I’d meet him here.’

‘So what was that final argument
That made you get up and go?
I asked him once what had turned your head
And he said that he didn’t know.’
‘Neither do I, but he must have said
A word, and my temper flared,
A single thing with an inner sting
That said he had never cared.’

‘He always cared, I can tell you that,
From the time you could kick a ball,
He only had eyes for you, his son,
But surely, you can recall.’
I left him sat on the grave while I
Went off to brood on my own,
Then found that he’d scratched ‘I love you Dad,’
Too late, on that old headstone.

David Lewis Paget

He was wearing a coloured waistcoat,
All covered in Moons and stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,
I saw him first in the marketplace
Hid under his pointy hat,
With ribbons and whorls, and pictures of girls
Pinned over the place he sat.

And she was there at his feet that day
In a dress like a gypsy curse,
Her hair was red, and I’ve always said
She was one with the universe.
If ever love had bitten my hand
Tearing the flesh from the bone,
Then I’d have bled like a river, red
While dragging the girl back home.

But there on the table between them
The tickets were piled so high,
And each one said, ‘would you rather dead,
Or up for a place in the sky?’
It looked like a planetary super mart
With pebbles from outer space,
And there I saw an astrology chart
With a sketch reflecting my face.

I’d swear that the gypsy scowled at me
As the Moon Man tapped with his wand,
A sense of dread sweeping over my head
Put me in the sea of despond,
‘You know you have to get out of here,’
He whispered, the Man from Mars,
‘They’re coming to sweep you away this year,
Along with your rusty cars.’

The girl threw open her gypsy dress
The end would play on her screen,
The earth had gone where it once had shone,
It looked like a nightmare scene.
For bits of earth were floating apart
And space glowed green in the night,
While only the Moon still lit up the room
Where once there had been delight.

‘Pick up your ticket for who knows where,’
He said, to lighten the gloom,
The gypsy curse had been getting worse
Since I knew the earth was a tomb.
I thanked them both, then I turned away
As they faded into the stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,

David Lewis Paget

I watched him stalk through the evergreens
In his black top hat and tails,
Just like some figure, lost in dreams
Or a voodoo doll, with wails,
I’d heard that they called him Doctor Bones
And thought that I could see why,
With teeth that gleamed like white tombstones
And a hole for a missing eye.

‘You conjure him up,’ said Marceline,
‘You bring him back from the grave,
His ancestors had laid him down
He was much too bad to save.’
She called Darleen and she told her, ‘go,
Bring a ritual bird to slay,
We have to get rid of Doctor Bones
Or Marc may die today.’

I lay back on the verandah, and
I fell in a tranceful stare,
I looked on out to the evergreens
And knew I could see him there,
He carried a stick and danced about
Then bowed with a sweep of his hat,
‘He’s dancing upon my grave,’ I said,
‘Now what do you think of that?’

Darleen came back with a feathered bird
And she danced and swung it round,
Filling the air with feathers as she
Dashed the bird on the ground,
‘Get back to the grave you came from,’
Marceline screeched out to the wood,
And Doctor Bones responded with moans
Then sank to his knees in mud.

They said that they broke my fever as
The bird had screeched at the last,
They wiped its blood all over my face
Where it seemed to set, like a cast,
I rose up out of my torpor and
Saw Darleen clutching the cat,
While I was stood by the mirror, and
Was wearing his tails and hat!

David Lewis Paget