He lived in the outer darkness where
You never could see him cry,
With only a lighted candle there
Whenever his eyes were dry,
But I knew him for an evil soul
A troll that waited for you,
To cast me off like a heap of dross
Which is what he’d want you to do.

So you only saw a handsome prince
A hero there in the light,
You told me about the good things that
Your friend had done in your sight,
But you couldn’t see the curling horns
That sprouted out of his head,
Nor even the narrow, squinting eyes
Glowing at night, bright red.

Your image of him was of a lord
Born of a line so high,
While I knew him as a Beelzebub
Who flew in the evening sky.
He often fluttered above my yard
Flinging his barbs at me,
They cut and wounded and hit me hard
With never you there to see.

I felt you slipping away from me
When I saw you huddled with him,
Whispering secret messages
In the hall of the local gym,
I knew that I’d have to take him out
Or risk the loss of your love,
So fashioned a wooden arrow for
One night, when he flew above.

I thought that I’d planned it perfectly
The crossbow hidden outside,
He fluttered over the garden wall
Looking for you, my bride,
I shot him straight through the heart with it,
His chest exploded in light,
I saw, on you, when you bent to him
Your curling horns in the night.

David Lewis Paget

Lavern lived down in the valley
Away from the village folk,
She didn’t want to be seen by them
Playing with eggs and yolk,
And skin of frog, an old dead dog
A toad and the eye of newt,
She only conjured them in the fog
When dressed in her birthday suit.

But I would see her abroad in the woods
From up in the old oak tree,
She flitted naked under a hood
Albeit most carelessly,
She liked to gather her toadstools there
And take her favourite bat,
Clinging onto her long, dark hair
And follow her magical cat.

The mushrooms grown in a Faery Ring
Were an ever present danger,
For goblins gathered them all themselves
For a goblin baby’s manger,
She’d lost an eye in a goblin pie
When he reached on out and plucked it,
She got it back, but the dwarf was sly
In the sauce she’d used, he’d ducked it!

I didn’t mind that she’d got one eye
For her thighs were well developed,
I thought I’d marry her, by and by,
Then she went with Rodney Mellop,
I wandered up to her window-sill
When I heard his sighs and moans,
I thought they must have been making love,
She was hanging up his bones.

I must admit that it calmed me down,
That it put a damper on it,
I’d watched him lie in her *** and drown
As she danced in a pretty bonnet,
His bones she pulled from the boiling stew
And made wind chimes from his femurs,
At night they sound like a xylophone
In a madhouse full of dreamers.

David Lewis Paget

Someone said ‘look to the future
When you have a minute to spare,
For life is a force of nature,’
When I looked, it wasn’t there,
I thought I might see the lights on
But all I could see was dark,
The shutters were on the horizon
There wasn’t a single spark.

But there, back over my shoulder
Was the way that it always was,
When all that I’d ever told her
Was hurrying on to loss,
For love was a broken promise
That followed the same old round,
It failed when I was dishonest
And ended up broken down.

Then time had finally failed me
There wasn’t any to spare,
I’d used up all my allotment
To find there was nothing there,
I stood alone in a corridor
Leading to empty space,
Where far ahead was a mirror for
Reflecting the loss of grace.

There isn’t the time to start again
To mull over gross mistakes,
Making new vows when time allows,
There isn’t the time it takes,
We carry the burden of our fame
If it all amounts to dross,
And all of the failures in each name
Are carved on a headstone cross.

David Lewis Paget

He wandered along the Pullman car
As if he owned the train,
And wore the badge of ‘Conductor’ and
A whistle on a chain,
He carried a block of tickets that
Were printed differently,
With various towns and places from
The inland to the sea.

He’d walk from behind the driver, from
The front up to the back,
His steps in time to the rhythm of
The train, its clicketty-clack,
He wouldn’t look at the passengers
Unless their eyes were strained,
But then would pause with his ticket block
To see which ones remained.

And then, as if he divined the stress
Each passenger went through,
He’d tear off one of the tickets, as
He would, for me or you,
And suddenly they’d be on a beach
Or resting in some town,
And making love to a red-haired *****
Just as the sun went down.

The train continued its journey with
Its steady clicketty-clack,
The passenger sitting limply with
His eyes, empty and black,
While ever the train’s conductor walked
Along the swaying aisle,
Dispensing the tickets on the block
For mile on endless mile.

Then once at their destination he
Would blow a single note,
Using that tiny whistle hanging
Chained down by his throat,
And all of the passengers would wake,
Their eyes no longer black,
Marvelling at the dreams they’d had
While travelling on that track.

If ever you board that certain train
Be sure to be aware,
And look long at the conductor,
As he walks; No, even stare!
Then if he pauses in front of you
Think where you’d like to be,
And watch as he peels your ticket off,
Your ride to ecstasy.

David Lewis Paget

He came one day to the village green
And rented a cottage there,
The village gossips said, ‘have you seen
That guy with the flame red hair?
We know he’s up to some evil scheme
He wouldn’t be up to good,
He goes inside and he’s rarely seen,
He’s bad for the neighbourhood.’

He never went out to work at a job,
They didn’t know how he lived,
He always had funds at the supermart,
‘He must be a crook,’ they believed.
One of them pushed through his letterbox
A message to curdle his fear,
‘Your kind isn’t wanted,’ the message read,
‘So why do you want to live here?’

They hung a bad omen up over his door,
Threw rocks through a window-pane,
Left his milk bottles smashed on the floor,
And did it again and again,
He never seemed flustered or worried at all,
But wandered abroad with a grin,
They thought he set fire to the village hall,
But never could prove it was him.

Then girls were beginning to knock at his door,
And he began letting them in,
They’d stay there for hours, but none could recall
Why tattoos were found on their skin.
For each had a number, embellished in red
And nobody knew what it meant,
The higher the number the shorter the skirt
The answer, it seemed evident.

The mothers, they gathered then, out in the street
And cried ‘leave our daughters alone!
Stop tattooing numbers on arms and on feet,’
The neighbours would hear them all moan.
But he would ignore them and lock himself in,
The guy with the flame red hair,
He’d not venture out till the dark had set in,
And scattered the women out there.

The night came that fathers, with cudgels and belts,
Came down on the house on the green,
‘Come out, take your medicine, bruises and welts,
We know all your crimes are obscene.’
They tried to set fire to the front of his porch
To drive him out into the street,
But he had escaped by the light of his torch
And the silent pit-pat of his feet.

He should have been able to seek his revenge
On this village of trivial minds,
But he was content in the time he had spent
With the daughters of them at the time.
For long after all had forgotten their angst
At that stranger who’d angered them there,
Some seventeen daughters, the pride of the town
Gave birth to a tribe with red hair.

David Lewis Paget

I called her once, then I called again
And I called throughout the night,
There wasn’t a message from Olwen’s pen
Nor the answering ‘ching’ of delight,
I’d begged forever her not to go
But she must have gone and went,
Down to the Fair at Cinders Flo
And into the strongman’s tent.

We’d been together to see the Fair
When the sun was riding high,
And all the rides and the Ferris Wheel
Were reeling up in the sky,
We rolled a ball at the grinning clowns
And we won a Teddy Bear,
The hairy woman and legless man,
All of the freaks were there.

But then we got to the Strongman’s tent
And I saw her eyes go wide,
He picked her up with a single hand
And I’ll swear that Olwen sighed,
I found I couldn’t drag her away,
She paid for a second show,
And after stroking his biceps once
She waved for me to go.

I had to drag her away from there
Or she would have stayed all day,
‘What do you find so interesting?’
I finally had to say.
‘Isn’t he such a mighty man
And his muscles ripple so,
He makes me feel like I want to squeal
Like a Tarzan’s Jane, you know.’

I finally went to Cinders Flo
In the middle of the night,
Thinking the end of me and Olwen
Seemed to be in sight,
I got to his tent, and there she was,
A-stare, a look aghast,
For what she had woken up was slim,
She saw the truth at last.

For there hanging up within the tent
Was the Strongman’s muscle suit,
With every ripple and every bulge
And a chest that was hirsute,
But he sat up in his lonely bed
And was pale and thin and white,
With a certain wiry toughness, though
He could never cause delight.

I think that it cured my Olwen though
She’s never been so still,
She spends her mornings and afternoons
Hung over the window-sill,
I try to get her to walk with me
But she can’t, she says, she hates,
She’s staring down at the guy next door
As he’s working out, with weights.

David Lewis Paget

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