Down in the grotto we’d go to swim
Whenever the tide was high
And pouring into the basin there,
At low tide it was dry,
I’d go with the Percival sisters
Who would laugh and call and dive,
While bursting out of their suits, it seemed
A time to be alive.

While Carolyn had the bigger *******
Brittany had the thighs,
Carolyn had the sweetest smile
But Brittany had the eyes,
I never could choose between them for
I loved them both the same,
They’d flaunt themselves in the grotto pool
To them it was just a game.

The light would glimmer within the cave
Reflect off the grotto walls,
And from the roof would echo again
The sound of the girls catcalls,
We’d swim, then climb on a ledge of rock
To dry ourselves in the air,
And listen to water lapping in
From the mouth of the cave out there.

They often would try to bully me
To say who I loved the best,
I’d always say that I loved them both
And they’d say I failed the test,
So one day, standing upon the ledge
They both peeled their costumes off,
And said, ‘now tell us the one you love
Or haven’t you seen enough.’

The sisters’ beauty caught at my throat
And took the most of my breath,
I’d never seen them naked before
Nor since, I swear on my death,
I couldn’t answer, so they got mad
And flung me into the pool,
Then swam around me, ******* and legs
Determined to play the fool.

Brittany trapped me between her thighs
While Carolyn pushed me down,
The water swirled at my head so long
I thought I was going to drown,
But finally they’d had enough of me
Holding me down, submersed,
And I shot up to the surface then
Thinking my lungs would burst.

It’s years since ever we went to swim
Together again, all three,
For finally I had to make a choice,
Which one would marry me.
Brittany’s now my loving wife
For I found between her thighs,
In the grotto swim, when she squeezed me in,
The truth in a world of lies.

David Lewis Paget

The gates of the ancient prison creaked
And the chains clanked in the breeze,
When we pulled in with our caravan,
As we camped among the trees,
The kids went off for a quick explore
And were back before nightfall,
They said, ‘There’s all of this nasty stuff
Leaked out from the old stone wall.’

They said it looked like a yellow moss
But it had a putrid smell,
It clung in lumps to the chains, in clumps
That were hung in every cell,
‘Do you think it grew on the prisoners,’
Said Ted, with his eyes a-glare,
‘I’ve got a terrible feeling from
The damp in the cells in there.’

‘It’s only an empty building,’ said
Darnelle, but her eyes were bright,
‘I heard the prisoners whispering
As they must have done, each night,’
She let her imagination reign
Or that’s what we thought she did,
I learnt to listen more carefully
When she said that she had, our kid!

So later, when they were both abed
I took Clare by the hand,
And led her into the ancient Gaol,
To that misery of man,
Our footsteps echoed on cobblestones,
My voice came back like prayer,
Bouncing back from the old stone walls
In tones of a pure despair.

The moon came filtering down that night
And made patterns through the trees,
While beams shone in to the cells where once
Old men prayed on their knees,
And Clare would shiver where candlelight
Was once the only ray,
To keep the spectres away at night
Until the break of day.

I kept on wandering further in
While Clare would turn around,
‘Let’s go,’ she said, ‘it’s a scary thing,
We walk unhallowed ground,’
But no, I walked to the furthest cell
To the meanest cell of all,
And saw the bones, and the yellow moss
In a pile against the wall.

A beam came down from the rising moon
That lit up the pile of bones,
And there for a moment, all we heard
Was the sound of muffled moans,
A shadow rose by the weeping wall
Of a man who cried ‘I’m free!’
Who dropped the chains of his earthly pains
As he strode away, through me.

And all I felt was a deathly chill
As he passed right through my form,
My mind was frozen, my heart was still
And I felt I was unborn,
But then the morning arrived at last
With a terrible sense of loss,
For all one side of my face was gone,
Covered in yellow moss.

David Lewis Paget

She lived in a cottage, made with bones
Her garden, ringed by teeth,
All from the shipwrecked sailors floating
In from the hidden reef,
You couldn’t see when the tide was high
But the rocks lay down, and tore,
Down where the tide swept in the keels
That had sailed too close to shore.

The bodies were floating in for days
When the storm would calm, abate,
Bloodied and torn, their sailor ways
Were left to unfeeling fate,
The crows would gather and crowd the beach
As they ripped each corpse to shreds,
Tearing the flesh regardless, whether
The man was alive, or dead.

The beach turned into a boneyard, under
A blue and perfect sky,
With nobody willing to ask it,
The obvious question, ‘Why?’
But she in the boneyard cottage knew
When she harvested the beach,
For every ship, as her cottage grew
Left the bones, so white and bleached.

And there on the hearth of the kitchen lay
A skull that had been her own,
The one true love of her darling years
Who had promised to build their home,
He denied her plea and had gone to sea,
Was caught in a sudden storm,
Came rolling over the reef one day
With blood on his uniform.

And now, whenever a distant sail
Appears from near or far,
She runs on out to the bluff and screams
To God, ‘Wherever you are.’
She summons up from the depths a storm
With wind and a blinding rain,
And giant rollers that head for shore
That carry her lover’s pain.

It’s then that the skull on the hearth lights up,
A glow from its empty eyes,
And then a terrible screaming from
A mouth, that had once been sighs,
She knows he wants her to save the ship
She’s luring onto the rocks,
But whispers a curse at the fatal rip
‘On all dead men, a pox!’

David Lewis Paget

Way out, on what was a barren plain
A tree has taken root,
Over the spot where a poet’s lain
It bears the strangest fruit,
He wasn’t read while he lived and wrote,
Was neglected till he died,
But scribbled each verse like a private note
That he hugged to him in pride.

He lived in a garret, quite alone
And without a loving mate,
His heart would leap at each lovely girl
As she passed his garden gate,
But far too shy to invite them in
He could only sit and stare,
And think each time of what could have been
If he’d chanced to step out there.

But love still flowed from his poet’s pen
Though he had no-one to care,
He captured it from the universe
And he wrote it everywhere,
He left it piled in his gloomy den
When he took sick of the ride,
Turned his eyes to heaven again,
Gave up the ghost, and died.

They didn’t know what to do with it,
This love from a poet’s pen,
So placed it in the coffin with him
These shallow, heartless men,
Buried him out on a barren plain
Where nothing ever grew,
But marked the spot by planting there
A tree, namely, a Yew.

It’s twenty years since poetry was
Planted there, unread,
Alongside in the coffin with
The poet, newly dead,
But on the tree that proudly stands
With its roots entwined in love,
Each leaf reveals a verse or two
Fluttering from above.

David Lewis Paget

It floated ashore one pitch black night
We hadn’t seen it before,
All covered in barnacles and scale
Cast up from a distant war,
It gently rolled as the tide came in
And hit the rocks with a ‘clang’,
Then settled down as its scuppers cleared
The decks, all covered in sand.

The conning tower was an evil sight
Its paint was peeling away,
Ribbons of black, as camouflage
Peeled off in the light of day,
And there we could see the *******
Look down with an evil leer,
As once it looked on its victims when
It ruled in a sea of fear.

The storm that had brought it to the shore
Took far too long to abate,
It raged and roared for a week before
We’d take the risk on its plate,
But then we found that the rust had hid
All access into its gloom,
We walked the whole of its length but found
No way to enter the tomb.

There must have been twenty men inside
Or what was left of their bones,
But all I’d hear when the night was clear
Was a chorus of shrieks and moans.
We smashed the hatch in the conning tower
And a sailor ventured in,
We hauled him out in a quarter hour
But his mind was wandering.

I saw some movement deep in the hull
And I called out, ‘Who goes there?’
But then a guttural German voice
Had answered, in despair,
‘Stay well away from the conning tower
It’s a type of evil well,
Once within you are caught in sin
And you’ll find yourself in Hell.’

The sea rose up and covered the rocks
And it floated off the sub,
While all the bones in their shrieks and moans
Screamed ‘Mercy’ - there’s the rub,
They called for mercy they never gave
When they sank each helpless crew,
Now roam forever beneath the waves
In a sub, now sunken too.

David Lewis Paget

I followed the leaf-strewn path once more
Where it hugged the cemetery wall,
And made my way through the sandstone gap
Where the howl of the wind was stalled,
While snow still covered the sacred ground
And piled by each headstone lay,
Obscured the lettering, so profound
Of a love, now taken away.

And some of the headstones, cracked and worn
Cried out in their pure neglect,
Where were the ones their love had sworn
Who’d never visited yet?
But then a headstone, polished and new
With a name fresh cut in the stone,
I knelt in awe as my wonder grew
That beauty returned to bone.

My tears were frozen on either cheek,
The frost on my forehead lay,
If she could see from her reverie
She’d see that my face was grey,
But nothing stirred on that tiny mound
That covered her form below,
The wind that howled was the only sound
And I thought it told me to go.

‘Get up and leave, you can only grieve
In this garden of dead desire,
Love in this place may only deceive
It’s as dead as the ash in a fire.’
Sadly I placed the poem I wrote
For the girl, in case she’d need it,
Under a rock by the headstone there
In the hopes that Death might read it.

David Lewis Paget

Standing alone in the bank today
Was an angel in disguise,
I knew by how she had combed her hair
By the sparkle in her eyes,
A dimple nestled in either cheek
And her lips were pink and fine,
They smiled just once when she looked at me
In an echo of God’s design.

We waited to be attended to
But the teller was so slow,
She let us stand in a queue of two
That had nowhere else to go,
My eyes flicked over the angel’s face
As she stood beside me there,
She must have thought I was more than rude
But I couldn’t help but stare.

I don’t go staring at everyone
It isn’t a trait of mine,
To garner up my attention you
Would have to be more than fine,
But here was an angel, true to life
And she’d come to use the bank,
I had no idea who’d sent her there,
I didn’t know who to thank.

I think I must have unsettled her
With my frank and open stare,
She’d shift uneasily on each foot
And pretend I wasn’t there,
I watched as there came a holy glow
Like a rose on either cheek,
And thought that I was unfair to her
It was time for me to speak.

I motioned once as she turned to me
That I had something to say,
She nodded and she acknowledged me
As she waited, looked my way,
‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,
But I couldn’t help but stare,’
And then I said, ‘but you’re beautiful,’
And her smile entranced me there.

After the teller had done with us
And we ended in the street,
I thought that the angel went away
Then I heard her pretty feet,
‘Whatever you do, it’s up to you,
You’re the keeper of the spell,
I only ask that the thing to do
Is please, Oh please don’t tell!’

David Lewis Paget