‘It’s only for over Christmas,’ said
The son to his father there,
And watched as the old man’s shoulders hunched
As he painfully mounted the stair,
‘It’s just for the festive season while
The house will be full of kin,
We’re going to need your bedroom if
We’re going to fit them in.

‘I’ll pick you up when the New Year dawns,
My promise is set in stone,
On the first or second of January
Expect me to bring you home.’
But the old man merely paused and turned,
The set of his mouth was grim,
‘You don’t need to make me promises,
I know I’m not wanted, Tim.’

And Tim would have said that wasn’t true
But he had to heed his wife,
She’d said it was him or her would leave,
And her words cut like a knife,
‘I’m always the one to wash and clean,
To cook, and pick up his mess,
He has to be gone by Christmas John,
I’ll not put up with less.’

So early the morning of Christmas Eve
The son had packed a case,
And helped his father into the car
To head for the old folks place,
‘It’s lucky your mother’s dead, my son,
You’d tear us both apart,
How do you think your Mum would feel,
I think you’d break her heart.’

And tears had run down the father’s cheek,
And also down the son’s,
Tim said, ‘Look Dad, I am sorry but
There’s nothing to be done.
I’ve said I’m coming to pick you up
So what more can I say?’
‘I thought to be spending my Christmas
With my son, on Christmas Day.’

The car pulled up at the iron gate
And the son had forced a smile,
‘It won’t be long and with Christmas gone
It will just be a little while,’
He carried his case inside for him
And he turned to say goodbye,
When muttering ‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’
The old man answered ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

They ‘pressed me on His Majesty’s frigate
The H.M.S. Carew,
It only took me a day to find
I was lodged with the Devils’s crew,
The Captain, ‘Black Jack’ Hawkins
Was a gentleman by name,
But on the ship he used the whip
To his undying shame.

I slipped and fell from the foremast arm
When I caught my foot in a stay,
And though a net kept me safe from harm
That wasn’t the Captain’s way,
He said I’d swim for my mortal sin
Told the crew to rope me through,
Then dragged me over the side and said,
‘We’re going to keel-haul you.’

The barnacles on the Carew’s hull
Nearly tore my back to shreds,
My lungs were so close to bursting that
I thought that I was dead.
They hauled me over the side again
The deck was red from my back,
At least I knew I was safe again
From a sudden shark attack.

They rubbed raw salt in my many wounds
Till I thought I was in hell,
While some of the crew had mocked and jeered
The Devil’s own cartel,
They wore tattoos of the skull and bones
It was strange for a Royal crew,
But they themselves had been Impressed
So they hated Hawkins too.

He used to stand on the quarter-deck
Quite close to the starboard rail,
Where he could see any slacking off
While we were under sail,
He’d tie the men to the nearest mast
And would whip, before the crew,
Till every man was inflamed and raw
And would plot what they would do.

It fell to me to devise a plan
That everyone agreed,
We had to get rid of this Devil man
It became our only creed,
So I took a rope when I climbed the mast
That was fixed above his head,
Then swung and booted him over the rail
So we thought that he was dead.

The crew then dashed to the starboard side
And they all looked down and cursed,
For Hawkins floated upon the tide,'
It couldn’t be much worse,
He shouted up, ‘This is mutiny!
I’ll flay that man to the bone.’
But all he got were the jeers of the crew
As the Captain sank like a stone.

David Lewis Paget

‘It won’t be much of a Christmas,’
I said to his woman, Kate,
As she met me in the garden,
And opened the garden gate,
I asked how well he was faring
And she answered, ‘Not too well,’
Her eyes were blackened for lack of sleep
She looked like she’d been through hell.

While George lay out on a camper
Trying to get some air,
His lungs were riddled with cancer,
He said that he didn’t care.
‘I’ve had enough of this rotten life
It threw me a sucker punch,
I’ll just be glad when it’s over, mate,
Just think of me out to lunch.’

I couldn’t say he’d get over it,
He’d catch me out in a lie,
The one thing both of us knew right then
Was George was about to die,
They’d given him just a week or so
Till his organs began to fail,
He might just make it to Christmas, but
That was the end of the tale.

But Kate was doing just what she could
To comfort his final days,
She’d come across to his neighbourhood,
When Kate decides, she stays,
They hadn’t ever been love’s young dream
Had parted the year before,
For George was always intolerable
Living with him was war.

And I would try to avert my eyes,
Whenever Kate was around,
I didn’t want her to see me blush
So kept my eyes to the ground,
If only I had got to her first
I’d say to my mirror glass,
But far too late, she was with my mate,
He was way beneath her class.

And even though they had parted,
I couldn’t begin to tell,
My feelings, how they were started
By being within her spell,
For she’d always been his woman,
Been his lover and his mate,
And even now they were parted,
I thought it a little late.

But he called me into the garden
To sit by his camper bed,
And said that he begged my pardon,
He knew he would soon be dead.
‘But I have a gift to give you,
It might be a little late,
But at Christmas time I wish you
Would take care of my darling Kate.’

‘I know that you care about her,
For I’ve seen you blushing and stare,
It’s a year I’ve been without her,
Due to my lack of care,
But I think she’ll come to love you,
You can ask yourself instead,’
For Kate was there in the garden,
And stood there, nodding her head.

David Lewis Paget

We knew that the plane was going to crash,
We plunged through the air, on high,
We probably had five minutes to grieve
A minute to say goodbye,
She clung to me from her window seat
And cried, ‘It’s starting to fray.’
And through the port I could see the wing
As it tore, and twisted away.

‘Why did you make me take this flight?’
She cried, as the others screamed,
‘I could have been happily safe at home
If not for your stupid dream.’
She meant the holiday we had planned
Forever, to take in Rome,
The Coliseum, it still would stand
When they ferried our bodies home.

I felt quite peeved, for I didn’t want
To take in those ancient piles,
But she’d insisted that Rome it was,
I wanted the Grecian Isles.
This wasn’t the time for an argument
So I patted her crying cheek,
I needed to hear her ‘I love you’,
But that would have taken a week.

The plane was spinning, with just one wing
Was heading nose down to the ground,
And all the passengers screamed and cursed,
Stood up, were lurching around.
‘Just get me my bag from the overhead,
It holds all our holiday cash,’
It didn’t dawn on her she’d be dead,
To mention it would have been rash.

‘At least we’re together, Cheryl my love,’
I said, in calming her down.
We’d passed right through the cumulus cloud
So close we were to the ground.
The engine was screaming, the one we had
The emergency door flew wide,
And suddenly Cheryl was torn from her seat,
****** out of the aircraft, and died.

I sat in the blast from the open door,
My heart had stopped in my chest,
I cried, ‘My God! Just let it be quick,
My lover has gone to her rest.’
‘What lover’s that?’ said my Cheryl’s voice,
From the foot of our bed, at home.
‘You mean we’re saved, that we have a choice?
There’s no way we’re going to Rome!’

David Lewis Paget

The sisters Newell were a shining jewel
That would pass my understanding,
We met at night when the moon was white
Out on the communal landing,
One was blonde, was a demi monde
The other brunette to the shoulder,
The legs of the blonde were lean and long
The brunette a little bit older.

I fell in love with them both at once
I think it was what they wanted,
For both, well versed in extravagance
Their ego’s, each were undaunted,
The blonde would stalk in her Baby Doll
Next to her window, extended,
The other, naked, would read a book
Sprawling in view and bed-ended.

The blonde was the first to invite me in,
The other said she felt stranded,
We sat together like kith and kin
It’s lucky that I am left handed,
They asked which one did I like the best,
I said, ‘Now that would be telling.’
And kissed them both on the lips, to test
As the tears in their eyes were welling.

I had the choice, there were two to choose
The blonde had said she was willing,
The brunette said she was mine to lose,
I tossed for them with a shilling.
The blonde, I knew her as Flirty Anne
Picked heads, and lost in the tossing,
The other, I knew as ***** Pam
Was out in the bathroom, flossing.

David Lewis Paget

That brief interlude between
Sleeping and waking,
I pass through each day like
Some dark undertaking,
Where nothing is real, where
I’ve been to or going,
My mind is disordered,
My heartbeat is slowing.

And even the room that I
Enter is swaying,
My eyes are distended my
Brain is nay-saying,
While legs stagger sideways
And crablike in function
Like some leaden corpse treated
To extreme unction.

The wars were all won, or
Were lost in the sleeping,
While everything worthwhile
Would seem to be weeping,
The slate should be cleared by
Each act of purgation,
But I wake each day to
Some strange dissipation.

I often forget simple
Words in our language,
That drive to distraction
And cause me more anguish,
But calm will return when
The evening is making
That brief interlude between
Sleeping and Waking.

David Lewis Paget

It hovered above on the ceiling,
It only would come at night,
My sister said she’d a feeling
It was dark, and was full of fright,
The light would glimmer and slowly fade
As the Moon came over the hill,
The globe grew dimmer in light and shade
Than a candle that flickered still.

I’d lie and I’d stare at the corner
Where the cloud had begun to swirl,
It had little form and no meaning
When first it began to unfurl,
But then came the claws in the ceiling
The eyes in the cloud glowing red,
And Clara would scream and be reeling
With her hands pulled over her head.

I thought that if I could disperse it,
It would run on back to its well,
And perhaps the Devil could curse it
Or find it a place in hell,
I beat at it with a baseball bat
But it seized the bat with its teeth,
And wrenched it out of my wretched hands
With a strength beyond belief.

It grew a cloak and a pair of horns
And roared with an orange flame,
It burnt a patch on the ceiling then
And I saw it had written its name,
‘Askarametch’ it had written there
The demon that lived in our well,
I said to Clara, ‘it won’t be long
I’ll be sending the demon to hell.’

In daylight hours I filled up the well
With bracken and poisonous weeds,
Then as the sun was beginning to fade
I’d add Belladonna seeds,
A gallon of petrol damped it all down
Till the Moon had begun to rise,
Then what I struck had it all lit up
To match the red demon’s eyes.

We never see clouds on the ceiling now
It doesn’t seem able to come,
The only thing is the sulphur smell,
It’s potent, I give you the drum.
It drifts on in from the well outside
And hangs in the bedroom air,
Clara will spray Devil’s Nightcap for days,
It’s better than demons in there.

David Lewis Paget