There once was a tiny cupboard, where
We kept our groceries there,
Just enough room for two to squeeze
Inside, and under the stair,
And Karen would beckon me go to her
With just an arch of her brow,
She wouldn’t take no for an answer, but
Would say, ‘Just come to me now.’

Then I would go in and close the door
And feel her close in the gloom,
Her skirt would rustle, I’d feel her thighs
And would smell her sweet perfume,
She had such a sense of urgency
When she pulled me down to her breast,
But I would be telling old secrets to
Reveal what’s happening next.

But that was a million years ago,
It seemed the beginning of time,
When we were young, and I’d taste her tongue
Sweeter than strawberry wine,
Those nights were the nights of passion, but
Then nothing could really compare,
With the times when Karen called to me
To meet her under the stair.

But the years unfolded fatefully,
And Karen began to stray,
Her eyes that once had been more than wise
Would seem to have gone away,
She’d stare out into the distance to
Some place that I’d never been,
And when I’d ask her just where she went
She’d mutter, ‘What do you mean?’

I found her wandering down the road
Just down from St. Michael’s dome,
She looked at me, most piteously,
‘I don’t know how to get home.’
I took her hand and I led her back
Through the early morning frost,
And when we got to our gate, she said,
‘Oh God, I seem to be lost.’

The days ahead were a nightmare, she’d
Forget where she’d put the pans,
Then look at me like a stranger, when
I’d reach out, and hold her hands,
But worst of all, she would bring my tears
When she stood by the cupboard stair,
And say, ‘I seem to remember, but
Just what did we do in there?’

David Lewis Paget

I walked on down to the travelling show
Thinking to take a ride,
When the barker said, in a voice so low
‘There’s a Dancing Girl inside.’
He opened the flap of the crimson tent
And he tried to wave me in,
I said I didn’t know what he meant,
He replied, ‘What price for sin?’

I said I wanted to take a ride
Not look at a Dancing Girl,
There were plenty down at the local club
In my easy, ****** world.
‘There’s not a thing she could teach me now
For I’ve seen it all before.’
He said, ‘This girl is the Jezebel
Who performed for Kings, and more.’

I waved him off and I carried on
In my search for a thrilling ride,
And spent the evening whirling, twirling
Over the countryside,
But as I turned to travel on home
I passed by the crimson tent,
And the barker opened the flap again
To see if I would relent.

It must have been curiosity
For I turned and went inside,
Into its darkened depths I went
To flatter his wounded pride,
There was eastern music playing low
And I heard a woman wail,
Kneeling in front of an altar there
And the name inscribed was ‘Baal.’

She heard me there, and got to her feet,
And danced like an ancient rhyme,
But underneath the paint on her face
Was the ravage of endless time,
Gold and silver glittered and gleamed
From the very little she wore,
With chains and bracelets jangling as
She danced around, like a *****.

She pressed her body against me then
And jabbered some foreign tongue,
The only word that I thought I heard
Was the one on the altar, One!
The barker stood in the entranceway
And she muttered his name, aloud,
She said Ahab, and I thought to run
He stood in the way, and bowed.

She pushed me up to the altar then
And tried to force me to kneel,
I thought of the Bible story, and
My skin had crawled at her feel,
I fought her off, and pushed her away
The man she called Ahab scowled,
And as I left by the flap of the tent
The dogs by the entrance howled.

David Lewis Paget

I sit in the room in my easy chair
And ponder my life in the gloom,
The source of my wonder is where did it go,
While racing me on to the tomb,
I thought that forever was all that I had
Before me, when barely a teen,
But now in my dotage I look back upon
The little that lay in-between.

It used to be easy when I was young
And supple and fit, without care,
I didn’t believe it would come so undone
But that was when I was still there.
The aching of muscles and creaking of bones
Were something that old people had,
And I was determined to die, before moans
Would rack me, and make me feel bad.

But life is deceptive, it sneaks up on one,
By not even making a sound,
It pads up behind you before you can look
And then it starts beating you down.
We cling to our dreams and impossible schemes
And hope that our time will come in,
Just as the ship of our fortunes will stream
In to shore, with the laurels we’ll win.

I never got married, or tied myself down
For why should I borrow a book?
With so many women abroad in the town
And each could be had, with a look.
So that was my folly, and that was my creed,
I bedded each one as they came,
I knew no regret as I scattered my seed,
Nor even the feeling of shame.

I heard people mention that love was the thing
But I didn’t know what they meant,
Was love a new sports car, or masses of bling,
I carried that stuff on my belt.
My friendships were shallow, and selfish I know,
I look back, and measure the past,
If my life were a steamer, they’d take it in tow
And fly all my flags at half mast.

There once was a woman, I’ll call her Karrel,
Who worked her way into my heart,
I almost felt things that I never could spell
And soon we had drifted apart.
But her presence had lingered so long in my mind
That I spent my days, just feeling sad,
She said I was empty, and heartless, unkind,
Till I thought I was quite going mad.

So now I sit here, quite alone in my chair
And I ponder on where it went wrong,
The tears on my cheeks tell me life was unfair
That it got the wrong words to my song.
But deep in the dark of my shrivelled old heart
Where Karrel still resides, fancy free,
I look in my shame for somebody to blame
And the answer comes back, it was me!

David Lewis Paget

The lighthouse at Le Cap de Grace
Was damp and dark at best,
The rain would sweep in from the south,
The wind rage from the west,
But nature’s torments could not match
The storms that formed within,
For deep inside its battered walls
Were palls of mortal sin.

Two lighthouse keepers kept the light,
Both Jon and Jacques De Vaux,
They tended to the light above
While she would wait below,
The dusky, husky buxom witch
With lips of honey dew,
Who loved the lighthouse keepers,
Not just one, but even two.

Below was but a single bed,
She said that they must share,
They watched her eagerly each night
Her tend and brush her hair,
For then she would turn round to them
And indicate her choice,
She’d merely point at one of them,
Not even use her voice.

And then the chosen one would smile
His brother often curse,
For he would share her bed that night
The other fare much worse,
For he would lie inside the store
On coils of hempen rope,
And lie awake and listening,
No sound would give him hope.

But often she would cry aloud
In passion through the night,
While Jon or Jacques would stop his ears
And think, ‘It’s just not right.’
But she ruled this *******
With silken hand and glove,
And they would never question it
While working up above.

She only ever favoured each
For just a single night,
She knew to show a favourite
Would seem to them like spite,
And thus the nightly balance kept
Their tempers both in check,
She fed on their desires, and they
In turn showed her respect.

The winter storms came in to stay,
The waves beat down below,
The wind beat at the lighthouse glass
And one would have to go,
Above to guard that precious light
To keep the ships from harm,
But who would go aloft would cause
The brothers both alarm.

For he who stayed would taste the charms
Of Elspeth for that night,
It might not be his turn, and that
They both thought wasn’t right,
A rising tide of anger fed
By storms and mute dismay,
Turned brother against brother when
One had to go away.

One night the light went out, and Jon
Said, ‘Jacques, go up above,
Your turn it is to light the light
While I stay with our love.’
But Jacques refused his brother’s plea
And said, ‘No, you can go,
You had the bed of love last night,
I’m staying down below.’

The night was dark and moonless and
There wasn’t any light,
While out there in the darkness rode
A freighter in the night,
It drove up on the reef, its bow
Then battered in their door,
And pinned their husky, dusky witch
In blood pools on the floor.

The lighthouse at Le Cap de Grace
Is damp and dark at best,
The rain will sweep in from the south,
The wind rage from the west,
Two lighthouse keepers keep the light
And share the only bed,
The half love that they long for now
Is well and truly dead.

David Lewis Paget

We’d picked up the cottage for peanuts, as
It sat on the edge of a wood,
The air was damp and we used a lamp,
No power in that neighbourhood,
But the sun came filtering in through the leaves
On the pleasant summer days,
It was like we were living a hundred years
In the past, using former ways.

We carried our water in from a well
That sat just outside the door,
We had to lower a wooden pail
And it slopped all over the floor,
But Meredith laughed, and said it was fun,
She felt like a pioneer,
‘I’m getting to know how things were done
In the neck of the woods, round here.’

We fired the stove and the hearth with wood,
Gathered among the trees,
For branches fell, in the storms as well
When the wind was more than a breeze,
I chopped it up on a wooden block
And carted it all inside,
To see it stacked by the kitchen clock
Gave me a sense of pride.

Upstairs was a single bedroom with
An attic room beside,
The walls were covered with wallpaper
From a distant time and tide,
The bedroom was an ocean blue
And the attic was painted green,
I said to Meredith, ‘Shield your eyes,
It’s the brightest thing I’ve seen.’

The damp had got in the attic wall
And the paint had started to rot,
Up in one of the corners you
Could see a slight fungus spot,
But we didn’t need the room just then
So I said, ‘Just let it be.
I’ll find the time to attend to it
When the rest has set me free.’

But Meredith’s sister came to stay
So we had to use the room,
We turned it into a bedroom with
A flick of a whisking broom.
Rhiannon was a beauty, I’ll
Admit that she took my breath,
So young, and with her life unsung
And yet she was close to death.

She’d been and slept in the Green Room
For a week, or maybe more,
When she said, ‘I fell, and I feel unwell,’
Then she coughed up blood on the floor.
So Meredith was distraught, and thought
She’d sleep at her sister’s side,
But early the following morning she
Then told me her sister died.

She stayed with her sister’s body there,
She said it was like a tomb,
And soon my Meredith coughed up blood,
She said ‘It’s an evil room!’
A doctor came with the ambulance
And looked at the flaking mould,
Then said, ‘I think it’s the paint, my dear,
I’ve heard of this stuff of old.’

He scraped it then, and he tested it
And he came back round to see,
‘You know that paint’s full of arsenic,
There’s a well known history.’
And life was never the same for us
When we sat in the cottage gloom,
I could always hear Rhiannon’s cough
Up in that attic room.

While Meredith put the blame on me
Packed up her things and left,
She said that I should have scraped it off,
Then left me, feeling bereft,
She’d lost her sister, and I lost her
So I sit alone in the gloom,
My heart has stopped like a ticking clock,
And the cottage, now, is a tomb.

David Lewis Paget

The wind grew chill on a summer’s day
And the clouds built up outside,
‘It looks like a storm is coming our way,’
Said the folk of Ezra’s Pride,
The sea rose up in a mighty swirl
And it swamped their coastal town,
‘I think there’s something wrong with the world,’
Said the blacksmith, Helmut Brown.

He left the forge as the fire went out
Under the tidal surge,
And looked to heaven as folk would shout
‘The sea and the sky have merged.’
For the clouds above were purple and gold
The horizon coloured the same,
The ground beneath had rumbled and groaned
As it came, the pelting rain.

He went to look for his Isabelle
In the cottage down by the shore,
The water there was draining away
Then it hit the eaves once more,
And she clung onto the cottage roof
Where it swept her there in fright,
She cried to Helmut, ‘Just get me down,
I fear for my life tonight.’

So he took her down in his brawny arms
And he waded through the flood,
‘I’ll keep you safe from the world’s alarms,’
As he walked through seas of mud,
He walked her up to the higher ground
As the lightning lit the sky,
‘I’ll not let anything happen to you
For in truth, I’d rather die.’

But then the ground had opened up
In a crevice, ten feet deep,
And he was parted from Isabelle,
Who stood on the side more steep,
‘How can I come on back to you,’
The love of his life had cried,
As he stood still as the crevice grew
So wide, on the other side.

‘The world is trying to tell us things,
It’s tearing us all apart,
Perhaps we haven’t been kind to it,
It’s punishing us, sweetheart.’
And she had moaned, his Isabelle,
Stood out in the pouring rain,
‘Well what have I ever done to it?
The planet is going insane.’

Then the thunder growled up overhead,
As if to refute a lie,
‘It’s you who are insane,’ it said,
‘Get ready to say goodbye.’
And a lava flow came down the hill
In a stream, and glowing red,
‘Don’t let it come near you, Isabelle,
Just a touch, and you’ll be dead.’

We’ll leave them there on that distant hill
Where the world keeps them apart,
‘Why should you be untouched,’ it said,
‘When you folk have broken my heart.
You have drilled through me, and spilled on me,
And have fouled my lakes and seas,
Why should I leave your perfect love
When I’m filled with your disease?’

David Lewis Paget

The Queen had paid the eunuchs to
Decapitate the King,
And once the deed was done, she thought,
‘I’m Queen of everything.’
She taxed the peasants to the hilt
Took half of every crop,
Her greed was quite rapacious, so
She never thought to stop.

She reigned up in the Castle Bleak
A fortress tall and grim,
That many armies tried to breach
But never could get in,
The only weakness she could see
From top, and looking down,
The trees that grew so tall against
The wall had made her frown.

‘We’ll have to chop those poplar trees
They’re getting rather tall,
An army might climb up one night,
They’re right against the wall,’
Her lover, Lord Chantrell had sighed
And tried to put her off,
‘Those poplar trees are beautiful,
Too beautiful to chop.’

She didn’t raise the point again
But went off to the tower,
Where she had locked the eunuchs to
Prevent them taking power,
She sent her German swordsman in
To do the deed, she said,
‘I want to see you come on out
With every ******’s head.’

The Queen was grim and merciless,
She’d act on every whim,
Her thoughts were dark and tortuous
And even with her kin,
Her cousin liked the mead too much
And slutted round the town,
Was gifted with a barrel of it,
Upside down, to drown.

She even chided Lord Chantrell
For eyeing off her maid,
She said, ‘You two can go to hell,’
She thought the girl was laid.
They built a bonfire in the court
The maid was bound and tied,
And Chantrell watched the flames devour
The beauty he had spied.

One day upon the tower top
Chantrell unsheathed his blade,
And sliced his lover’s head clean off
In payment for the maid,
Her head flew down the tower wall,
Her final thoughts were these:
‘These branches break my fall, I’m glad
I didn’t chop the trees.’

David Lewis Paget