The painting sat in an old junk shop
At the far end of The Strand,
It caught my eye and it made me stop
Though the subject wasn’t grand.
A woman stood in a window frame
And she stared out at the street,
The pavement there was of cobblestones
And the whole thing was, well, neat!

The basic thing that had caught my eye
Was the woman’s face, I know,
I didn’t think she had sat for it
But it looked like Billie Jo.
The likeness there was remarkable
In the lips, that sullen pout,
The hooded eyes that had looked so wise,
Overall, it knocked me out.

I bought the painting and took it home
And I showed my Billie Jo,
She couldn’t believe the likeness, and
I said, ‘I told you so.’
‘You’re sure that you didn’t sit for this,
I find it rather strange?’
The look on her face said something else,
Like guilt, but rearranged.

‘I don’t want to talk about the thing,
You shouldn’t have brought it home,
The look of that woman’s creepy,
I’d have left it well alone.’
‘It’s almost as if you have a twin,’
I said to Billie Jo,
‘There may be some things about you, girl,
You don’t want me to know.’

She shrugged, and she walked away just then
So I hung it on the wall,
She made me pull it down and hang it
Somewhere in the hall,
She didn’t care just where, she said
But she didn’t want to see,
The face of that strange woman, she said,
‘Looking back at me.’

The footsteps came on that very night
And they padded in the hall,
We woke and we lay awake in dread
And Billie began to bawl.
‘She’s come, I know that she's come for me,
When I thought I’d put her down,
The day that she rode that coal black hearse,
And was buried in the ground.’

I said that she’d best come clean with me
And she told about her twin,
‘I didn’t tell you before, because she
Frightened me out of my skin.
She used to say that she hated me
And would somehow bring me harm,
I caught her poisoning fizzy drinks
When we lived down on the farm.’

‘We had a fight in the cattle yard
That was one of her designs,
She kicked at me and she fell back hard,
Impaled on the baler tines.
She coughed up blood and she looked at me
And she spat, with her final breath,
‘You’ll not escape, I’ll open the gates
Of hell, to do you death.’’

‘She must have posed for that picture
In the week before she died,
And you have brought her on home to me,
I could swear that the picture sighed.’
I took it away the following day
And I burnt it in the well,
As the fire devoured the woman’s face,
It shrieked, from the gates of hell.

David Lewis Paget

She said she wanted to **** herself
Since her life was empty now,
I couldn’t figure it out myself
And called her a silly cow,
‘Your Barry isn’t the only one,
There’s more fish in the sea,’
But she just said that her love was dead,
‘He’s the only one for me.’

I wanted to tell her nonsense, that
She should take stock of me,
I’d be her friend to the living end,
I’d known, since she was three.
I told her once that I’d marry her
When we were both eight or nine,
But what I’d said must have left her head,
Lost in the mists of time.

It’s hard to be friends and lovers, both,
Though our friendship was sublime,
The love was buried in friendship, was
Invisible, undermined,
She missed the sparkle in both my eyes
Whenever she came my way,
I always wanted to tell her but
I didn’t have words to say.

Then Barry captured her from me when
She just turned seventeen,
He must have had something on me, though
I’d not see what she’d seen.
I should have known there was something on
When she turned from me out there,
And he came wandering in one day
With ribbons for her hair.

And that was the end of hopes and dreams
That I’d held from childhood days,
For Barry was full of exciting schemes,
She was thrilled in many ways,
She’d say, ‘I’ve never known anyone
Who excites me like he can,’
And from then on she was truly gone
And refused to hold my hand.

It only lasted a year or two
Until Barry lost the plot,
He found more interesting girls out there
Who’d got what she hadn’t got.
‘I don’t know what has gone wrong with us,’
She cried, all out of breath,
‘I won’t be sticking around, I know,
This life now seems like death.’

We went out walking along the cliff
She strayed too close to the top,
And said, ‘I think to myself, what if
I should suddenly drop,’
I pulled her down as she stepped too close
And pinned her onto to the ground,
‘What would my life be worth if you
Were suddenly not around?’

She looked at me in amazement as
She suddenly saw me there,
I kissed her once and she kissed me back,
‘I didn’t know that you’d care.’
‘You fool, I’ve loved you forever, but
I didn’t think it would show,’
‘My life is suddenly full,’ she said,
‘But I just needed to know.’

David Lewis Paget

He drove on up to the Nursing Home
For the first time in a year,
He needed to get some papers signed
So he sought his mother there,
The matron pointed him to her room
With a wave of a careless hand,
But sitting next to his mother’s bed
Was the figure of a man.

‘So what the hell is he doing here?’
Said the son, in a burst of rage,
‘He has no right to be visiting,
To be here, at any stage,
They’ve been divorced for eleven years
And I thought he’d gone for good,
He’ll just reduce my mother to tears,
You should ban him, yes, you should.’

The matron halted outside the door
And she went to hold him back,
She said, ‘Oh yes, I know you now,
You’re the son they all call Jack.
She probably doesn’t remember you,
But you see, he comes each noon,
He sits and chats, and he holds her hand
And he feeds her with a spoon.’

‘Her mind has wandered away, you see,’
Said the matron, with a smile,
‘She’s somewhere back where she used to be,
But you, it has been a while.
There’s not the staff to attend to her,
If I institute your ban,
You’ll come each day, and you’ll fend for her?’
He said, ‘I don’t think I can.’

He watched them both from outside the door
And he saw his mother smile,
The man he’d known as a stepfather
Was as gentle as a child,
He stood outside and he caught her eye
But she gave no sign she knew,
He bowed his head and the matron said,
‘I would call that love, would you?’

He put the papers away, he knew
That she wasn’t fit to sign,
Then turned to go as he said, ‘You know,
I’ll come at a better time.’
The matron ushered him to the door
And she said, ‘We’ll see you, Jack,’
But deep inside was a truth that cried
He’d never be coming back.

David Lewis Paget

It’s four o’clock, and I’m wide awake
Too early for pre-dawn light,
Thinking about the night before
And the reason we had that fight.
You never listen to what I say,
And it makes me feel so mad,
Whenever you get that cauldron out,
Your recipes smell so bad.

I’d told you there was a comet due
And I even wore my hat,
Trying to mask that smell of stew
When you crucified the bat,
You kept on adding ingredients
When I told you, ‘that will do.’
I used the peg when the dead dog’s leg
Went flying into the stew.

I knew when you wore your pointy hat
And your cape with the flowing hood,
Whatever you cooked up there last night
Was something you never should.
You always try to get back at me
When I talk about the stars,
And say, ‘So what,’ that the art you’ve got
You picked up yourself, on Mars.

I knew the spell that you wove last night
Was something that wasn’t good,
You even opened our one skylight
To draw in the neighbourhood.
Not everyone wants a witches curse
To dangle from every tree,
But you don’t care, do it for a dare,
But mainly to get at me.

I saw the trail in the midnight sky
And tried to put out the fire,
But you were fey, and pushed me away,
Then tossed on a bicycle tyre.
I ran out into the garden then,
Into the dark of night,
And watched as the tiny comet came
To crash through our own skylight.

There’s nothing that you can blame me for
It’s not as if you forgot,
It flew on in to your spell of sin
And dropped in your cooking ***,
It flashed and blazed and sizzled in there
And now, you are looking weird,
You wore your recipe in your hair,
And where did you get that beard?

David Lewis Paget

I had no idea of who she was,
But knew she appealed to me,
All that I knew, her name was Roz,
So I wove her history.
Imagination’s a marvellous thing
But that doesn’t make it real,
I thought I could make the whole thing up
But I only judge by feel.

I had her grow in a miserable home
Where no-one could understand,
A feckless mother and drunken Dad
With no-one to hold her hand.
She’d come to life when she left that home,
Left everything else behind,
And if she wasn’t together yet,
Then everyone else was blind.

I loved the way that her hair curled down
To sit at the nape of her neck,
I loved that serious air she had
To hold everyone in check.
I didn’t know if she noticed me
She never gave me a look,
Whenever she passed my desk, I sat
And buried my head in a book.

We used the stationery storeroom there,
It was big enough for two,
I walked on in and I locked the door,
Said, ‘I’ve been looking at you.’
She seemed surprised and had startled eyes
When I drew her close for a kiss,
But she raised her lips and she moved her hips,
So it didn’t seem too remiss.

She met me down at the local pub
To discuss the feelings she had,
‘It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the kiss,
I don’t want you feeling bad.
But I have a guy and he’s awful shy,
So don’t tell what happened today,
Some things are sacred, stored in the heart,’
And then she had walked away.

David Lewis Paget

They’d built too close to the cliffside edge
And the winters grew so cold,
The ocean seemed to be rising with
The waves, as in they rolled,
They tore away the base of the cliff
And swept it out to sea,
The house was poised on the cliffside edge
And would soon be history.

Two brothers lived in the fated house
That had once comprised of three,
For one of the brothers had a wife
Who was called Penelope,
But something funny was going on
The folks around there said,
For Penny was always seen with John
But had been the wife of Fred.

They both had courted the girl before
And each had bought a ring,
Then asked Penelope could she choose
Between them, there’s the thing,
She told the brothers she loved them both,
The choice was hard, she said,
‘A half of me would marry with John,
But I have to go with Fred.’

The rumours started around the town
That she had the best of two,
She’d sleep for half a week with Fred
And the rest, with you know who.
They’d say that voices were raised in there
It wasn’t going well,
What should have been a heaven on earth
Would seem some kind of hell.

For just on a year she went to town
And shopped just like the rest,
She smiled that bright Penelope smile
Was always nicely dressed,
But then she stopped, and she wasn’t seen
As the brothers did the shop,
Then they would glower at everything
And they wouldn’t talk, or stop.

But still the sound of their voices raised
Would echo from that house,
Til Fred stopped going around with John,
There was no sign of his spouse,
The storm that came at the midnight hour
Then washed away the cliff,
The house plunged into the water and
The rumours said, ‘What if?’

The house was shattered as in it plunged
Each piece was washed away,
And morning had seen the strangest sight,
A coffin, out in the bay,
The rescue boat had dragged it in
And dumped it up on the shore,
Along with a drenched Penelope
So they wondered, more and more.

They found a body, washed on the beach,
It was hard to recognise,
They asked Penelope could she view them
Once she’d dried her eyes,
They opened the coffin for her first
And in there lay her Fred,
His throat was ****** and torn apart
And Penelope bowed her head.

‘I got so sick of the arguments,
It was like being wed to two,
They raved and ranted most every day
I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You say John murdered his brother then?’
But the police were being kind,
Penelope shook her head, and said,
‘I suddenly changed my mind.’

David Lewis Paget

Down in the lower farmer’s field
Was an old style gypsy camp,
The wagons drawn in a circle,
Each one lit with a paraffin lamp,
And there in the centre of them all
A bonfire burned all night,
The flames would leap and the shadows creep
In a sort of mystic flight.

I’d watch from a grove of elder trees
As the gypsies sang and danced,
The girls would swirl their skirts to tease
As they whirled around and pranced,
Their arms were covered with bangles and
Their fingers, bright with rings,
Would flash at night in the firelight
As the shadows gave them wings.

Most of the girls were young, but there
Was a single one, my age,
Who danced with grace in an open space
She was on a separate page,
Her hair was black as a raven, and
Her lips the colour of blood,
My heart was stilled, it was almost chilled
By the view, from where I stood.

Her eyes were dark, they were almost black
Her hue the colour of sand,
I thought that it might be natural
Or perhaps her skin was tanned,
But as if she read my thoughts one day
She had twirled her dress up high,
And that same bright golden colour rose,
Ran up each fabulous thigh.

Then I saw her at the village fair
In the Fortune Teller’s booth,
I paid my money to go in there
And I found her name was Ruth,
She gazed deep into her crystal ball
And I saw her start to flush,
I said, ‘and what can you see in there,’
When the flush became a blush.

‘I’ve never seen such a thing before,’
She said, her eyes cast low,
‘I cannot tell you your fortune now,
So sir, you will have to go.’
She rose and pushed me out of the tent
But I gazed into her eyes,
And saw the future of my intent
In her look of blank surprise.

I went again and she read the cards
Wouldn’t touch the crystal ball,
She said, ‘there’s something very strange
In the way the cards will fall.’
I blurted out that I loved her hair
That I’d watched her from afar,
She smiled and said, I would turn her head,
‘I had wondered who you are.’

Then we stood together in that booth
And I stole a single kiss,
She fell into my arms, and cried,
‘I could not imagine this.
But the crystal ball, it never lies
And the cards have joined us too,’
She gave me one of her gypsy sighs,
Said, ‘What are we going to do?’

David Lewis Paget