You said that you came from Angel Dust
When I saw you emerge from mist,
Your hair was covered with spangles, and
Gold bangles dangled each wrist,
Your bare feet trampled the Autumn leaves
Whose gold reflected on high,
The rest of you, like some ancient rust,
That’s when I knew you’d die.

And then I awoke and saw you there
Asleep in our giant bed,
All thoughts of a gold goddess were fairly
Skittering from my head,
Your breath, it was long and laboured, and
Your hair, it was falling out,
With tufts of it on the pillow there
The chemo had left no doubt.

And all the love that I had for you
Poured out of my aching heart,
At least I knew that you loved me too,
You’d said we would never part,
But nobody told this grim disease
That came to you in a flood,
To desecrate your perfection, then
To end with you coughing blood.

You begged to me that I end it, that
I put out the final light,
That thing I loved, that I rend it, that
You wouldn’t put up a fight,
I wept as I kissed you one last time
Held on till I stopped your breath,
And felt you fall from me, after all
Through the final stages of death.

And then in the early morning as
I stood distraught by the bed,
I thought that I saw you rise again
Though I knew you were surely dead,
And I thought that you came from Angel Dust
When you wandered into the mist,
For your hair was covered with spangles, and
Gold bangles dangled each wrist.

David Lewis Paget

I was staring at the horizon on
A clear and balmy day,
The sky was blue and the sea a type
Of aquamarine in the bay,
There wasn’t a sign of storm or squall
Till the sunset turned dull red,
And then the sky, of a sudden turned
From blue to the grey of lead.

And you were stood there, Geraldine
With your collar turned up high,
You shivered once, then looked around
Took note of the darkening sky,
‘Is that a barque or a barquentine
I see ******* to the pier?’
And slowly, filtering into my view
Was a ship that wasn’t there.

It hadn’t been there all afternoon
It hadn’t sailed into the bay,
I’m sure that I would have noticed if
It was fifteen miles away,
But there it sat with its stays and sails
Reefed in and sitting becalmed,
But dark and ever so threatening
I was right to feel alarmed.

Then Geraldine ran along the pier,
I was trying to call her back,
When lightning lit the sky above
With a sudden tumultuous crack,
She turned just once and she called to me:
‘Don’t follow, it’s my fate!
The ship’s the Admiral Benbow,
I’m a hundred years too late.’

She ran, and her coat flew out behind
Like an ancient type of cape,
And on the deck of the barquentine
Were men, with mouths agape,
A single plank lay across the pier
And up to the wooden bow,
Which Geraldine clambered up to board
While I stood, and wondered how?

No sooner was she aboard, than then
The men gave up a cheer,
And she I saw in the arms of one,
A brigand privateer,
She waved just once, then she went below
To my ever present pain,
The love of my life, my Geraldine,
I never saw again.

The wind blew up and the rain came down
And the barque then raised its sails,
Was cast adrift in a heaving sea
In that coastal port of Wales,
And then I swear, the Captain came
To the bow, and then he leered,
And by the time that I turned around
That barque had disappeared.

David Lewis Paget

We went to sit at the front of the train
In seeking that extra thrill,
Marlene and me, and a guy called Kane
Who came from Mulberry Hill,
I hadn’t known him at all till then
He said that he knew Marlene,
And she had smirked when he said he knew,
She didn’t know that I’d seen.

Now this was one of those super trains
And we knew how fast it could go,
Over two hundred clicks, they said,
They certainly put on a show,
We sat in the very front window seat
Could see where the driver sat,
He wore a coat of orange and green,
A ridiculous pork pie hat.

Well, finally someone had signalled ‘Go’
And we rumbled off down the line,
To start, the engine was going slow
The driver had plenty of time,
But then, once out in the countryside
He must have been feeling the heat,
For it went so fast, down the track at last
It threw us back into the seat.

The trees and the meadows were flashing by,
No sooner there, they were gone
The little farms and the rustic barns
Like the gardens of Babylon,
Marlene was pale, I looked at her face
And Kane he was almost white,
‘I think we’d better move back,’ he said,
‘I’d like to get home tonight.’

I said I’d stay, when they both got up
And moved to the back of the car,
I didn’t want to give in to fright
We wouldn’t be travelling far,
But we missed a stop, went roaring through
And I looked where the driver sat,
He was slumped on over the speed controls
With his pork pie hat in his lap.

When the speedo said a hundred and ten
I first thought of throwing up,
It reached a hundred and ninety when
I did, in a paper cup,
The driver lay there, dead on the stick
As far as anyone knew,
We couldn’t get into his cab to check
And as for the train, it flew.

I joined the others, up at the back
And wrapped myself round a pole,
So when the rescuers got to me
At least they would find me whole.
The others stood, and clung to a rail
That passed up over their heads,
I said, ‘Get down, that metal will fail
And both of you end up dead.’

They wouldn’t budge in their deadly funk
Their eyes were popping and white,
We hit the buffers at General Trunk
And both took off in their flight.
Kane headfirst like an arrow flew,
Marlene went more like a ball,
So where Kane went through the windscreen first
The hole was narrow and small.

Marlene, there wasn’t a piece intact,
A rescuer known as Krips,
Said he had just been checking around
And found her child-bearing hips.
I got a terrible rupture where
The pole almost cut me in half,
Since then, I don’t ever travel by train
But stick to a horse and cart.

David Lewis Paget

I sit in the silence of my room
And stare at the stucco walls,
From morning glare to the evening gloom
The coming despair appals,
For I know that it’s sneaking up on me
That memory of your face,
So cold and still in the evening chill
And pale, once you’d run your race.

You always gave me a joyful wave
And said you’d be there for me,
But what you gave from a shallow grave
Was only more misery.
You couldn’t reach out to hold my hand
As you did in the days before,
When once a kiss was the source of bliss
But of kissing, there was no more.

Your skin was an alabaster white
Once your blood had ceased to flow,
Where was the warmth when I held you tight
On those nights, so long ago?
And where the spark that shone at your eyes
From the recess of your soul?
It leaves the eyes when a lover dies
And the touch of the skin is cold.

But now you form on the stucco wall
And wave, like you waved to me,
Before you ran from the narrow hall
And out by the willow tree,
A car came leaping into the room
As it did, and it knocked you down,
It’s then I cradled you in my arms
Like a man who’s about to drown.

I see these visions, day after day
When I stare too long at the wall,
I cry and weep, and I get no sleep
When I dream of your funeral,
I reach right into the plaster where
I think I can touch your face,
But only can feel the stone cold wall
Of another time and place.

David Lewis Paget

I said that there only were ninety steps
To the drop at the edge of the cliff,
As long as she didn’t take ninety one,
She wouldn’t end up as a stiff.
She’d only been blind since the accident
When the car got away from me,
Went rolling, gambolling on down the hill
And ending up flat by a tree.

And Cindy went straight through the windscreen
She shattered the glass she went through,
She screamed out to me that she couldn’t see,
She cried, ‘I’m just looking for you!’
But I was sat pinned by the steering wheel
I couldn’t get out if I tried,
I said, ‘Don’t distress, they’ll fix you up yet,’
One look at her eyes said I lied.

We came up to move in to ‘Ocean View’,
The house overlooking the sea,
I thought that the air would be good for us,
And the view would be okay for me.
I paced out the steps to the edge of the cliff
And reported to Cindy as such,
As long as she kept to her boundary
She wouldn’t fall over - (Not much!)

It isn’t much fun when your partner is blind
When everything has to be done,
She took it for granted that I wouldn’t mind
So sat on the porch in the sun.
I washed and I cooked and I tidied the house,
While she took her lessons in braille,
My life wasn’t funny, but she had the money,
I felt I was living in jail.

I walked with her right to the edge of the cliff
But always stopped seven steps short,
I said, ‘When you venture away from the house,
Remember the cliff is due North.’
I tried to impress it was safer to stay
Within ninety steps from the edge,
What I hadn’t told, as my blood had run cold
It was Eighty Eight steps to the ledge.

They’d say it was ******, I’d say it was fate
If she finally fell from the cliff,
I would say, ‘what the odds, it was up to the gods,’
And ‘life, it was full of ‘what if?’
My plans came to nothing, she drowned in the bath
But I still felt as guilty as sin,
I knew I’d had ****** there deep in my heart
And that evil is doing me in!

David Lewis Paget

Why did I fall in love with you,
There’s thousands more would have loved me too,
But love like yours is an evil brew,
While mine is true, and a man thing.

How could I see your lovely face
And think it harboured a state of grace
When all it hid was a can of mace
That drove me mad in decanting.

I should have sought your history
That kept you hidden in mystery,
For though I followed you wistfully
I never uncovered the bantling.

What is the hold you have on me
That keeps me wanting you wretchedly
Long after your love has done with me
And lost itself in your canting.

You may have coined a gypsy curse
That got to my heart, and hurt it first,
But you’re without love, and what is worse
Love’s without you in your ranting.

David Lewis Paget

The old man sat in a musty room
And his eyes peered on outside,
Where trees were lost in the evening gloom
With the rest of the countryside,
He watched the woman, tied to a tree
As she shook her golden hair,
And cried again, so piteously
In the essence of despair.

There weren’t so many, roaming and free
He thought, in the cruel world,
Not more than a few in captivity
And some, they called them ‘a girl’,
He thought of his faded mother then
Before they took her away,
And told him then, he was only ten
That they needed her for ‘play’.

He’d caught this one in a rabbit trap
As she crept in the depth of the wood,
Her hair was gold but her eyes were black
And she’d fought him, well and good,
He bound her wrists and shackled her feet
Before he could let her be,
Then carried her back to his tiny shack
And tied her fast to a tree.

He didn’t know what to do with her
He’d never had one alone,
Maybe she’d make good eating when
He stripped her down to the bone,
Out in the night he tore her dress
When taking her clothing down,
Then stood amazed with his eyebrows raised
At the extra flesh he found.

She couldn’t speak in his language then
But only could scream and cry,
He hadn’t hurt or abused her, when
She glared, and spat in his eye,
So he filled up the ancient cooking ***
And he brought her slow to the boil,
Then when she was dead, he took her head
In hopes that her meat not spoil.

David Lewis Paget