‘I’ve never believed in ghosts,’ she said,
So I said, ‘I’ll prove there are.
I’ve seen them at night beside our bed,
I caught one sat in our car.
They wander along the street outside
I’ve seen them down at the beach,
You have to believe to see them, though,
They tend to be out of reach.’

‘You’ll have to produce one here for me
Before I’m going to believe,
It’s easy to say that they exist
If you just want to deceive.’
She effectively threw the gauntlet down
So I just had to respond,
And work on a way to bring one here
From out the back of beyond.

But where do you go to find a ghost?
It’s easier said than done,
I’ve seen so many of them, but most
Won’t answer to anyone.
I thought I’d try to Google one up
When turning my PC on,
Then took a sip from my coffee cup
While typing in ‘Ghost - just one.’

It threw up a series of single ghosts,
The one that walked in the rain,
And one that came with its head cut off,
A ghost in a railway train.
It even mentioned the woman in white
Who came halfway down the stair,
And stood by the bannister and groaned
With blood still thick in her hair.

I liked the thought of a railway train
With its own original ghost,
She didn’t seem to be in much pain
So she appealed to me most.
I sent a message for meeting me where
She could come and meet the wife,
And bring the train, to give her a scare
That would last the rest of her life.

That night we lay in our poster bed
And I heard the shriek of wheels,
The wife rolled over as in it sped
The room was filled with her squeals.
The train pulled up by the bedroom door
And the ghost approached our bed,
She wore a nightdress, down to the floor
With bullet holes in her head.

‘I’ve never believed in ghosts,’ she’d said,
She’d have to believe them now,
The ghost approached with a look of dread,
And it caused a terrible row.
‘Don’t ever bring ghosts in here again
Or you’ll be alone in the bed,’
As the train took off with a clicketty-clack
And the ghost just stood and bled.

I’m never allowed to Google up,
She said to stick to my verse,
They sit in the kitchen, while we sup
And even pass in the hearse,
She says that she never sees them now,
She doesn’t want to believe,
I know it would only cause a row
If I said they tug at her sleeve.

David Lewis Paget

At night I walked in the winter months
By the banks of an old canal,
Where the barges lit their ghostly lamps
Like the wake of a funeral,
They would glide in those silent waters
With their silence like a shroud,
The horse at the end of the towrope
Passed me by, its head unbowed.

They sat so low in the water with
Their tons of pitch black coal,
The coal dust covered their livery
And of course, the paint was old,
A single steersman sat aloft
At the rear, and he looked ahead,
The black cut-out of a silhouette
Of a man that could be dead.

One night ahead of a ****-backed bridge
Where the towpath passed below,
The mist was a thick grey swirling mass
As the horse passed by me, slow,
I saw the glow of the ghostly lamp
And then as the barge appeared,
Just nosing out of the bank of fog
I thought that the bow looked weird.

For glistening under the ghostly lamp
And over the cabin door,
I saw a stream of something damp,
Was it mud, or blood, or gore?
I waited until the barge had passed
With the steersman, in my fright,
And I called out ‘****** ******!
‘You should look to your bow tonight.’

And the steersman muttered ‘Carolyn’,
In a voice both muted, low,
His voice came whispering back to me,
‘She shouldn’t have used me so.’
I saw his cardboard cut-out turn
In the glow of the ghostly lamp,
But then the barge slipped into the mist
Along with its ****** stamp.

I didn’t know where it disappeared
On its voyage into the mist,
Along with its grisly cargo though
Its name was ‘Amethyst’,
But Carolyn lay aboard somewhere
In a pool of her blood as well,
As that barge would nose its way through mist
To enter the gates of hell.

David Lewis Paget

I probably failed to like the man
For he went with my ex-wife,
I hated the way she called him Stan,
As if he was hers for life.
They’d both been playing away from home
For a year, so said his ex,
I only heard from the grapevine bird
In a message of plain text.

‘Your wife’s been seeing my husband for
A year now,’ said the note,
‘If you’d like to know all the details
I can give them, creed and rote.’
I wandered round to the place she said
And she ushered me inside,
She said she wouldn’t have bothered me
But suffered from wounded pride.

It seemed that they had been meeting
Every time I was away,
My job as a travelling salesman
Kept me on the road each day.
I’d be away for a week or more
But I thought that things were fine,
She didn’t say that she’d let him play
With the things I thought were mine.

I couldn’t believe he’d cheat on her,
When I looked at the wife of Stan,
She said that her name was Isabel
As she reached and squeezed my hand,
I thought that her face was beautiful
Though it bore the lines of stress,
She said she wanted revenge on them,
I couldn’t have wanted less.

She said that she knew their routine, they
Would dine at the Globe Hotel,
Then go ahead and they’d book a room
At the neighbouring Motel,
I said I knew what we had to do
And we came up with a plan,
‘I think we’ll go and surprise them,
My wife and your husband Stan.’

We waited until they took their seats
At a table set for two,
Then wandered in and we said:
‘We’ll take this table, next to you.’
I’d never seen such spluttering, and
Each face turned beetroot red,
So then I kissed his wife, and turned
To Jane to say, ‘You’re dead!’

I’d only kissed her for effect
To see what Stan would do,
His face suffused with a jealous rage,
And Jane was jealous too,
It’s since that day we’ve made a match
Both I and Isabel,
Which goes to show that a fair exchange
Can sometimes turn out well.

David Lewis Paget

Wherever I go, I see her face
Reflected in streets and malls,
Wherever I track, in looking back
She’s hiding behind stone walls,
I never manage to pin her down
I turn around and she’s gone,
I don’t know why she’s following me
I ought to be moving on.

That isn’t the way it always was
I’d see her down by the lake,
She’d sit on a bench beneath a tree,
While feeding the ducks and drake,
And I would sit on a nearby bench
And take in her golden hair,
Our eyes would meet, but very discreet,
For neither would want to stare.

She’d lay her hand right across her lap
Just so I could see the ring,
As if to say, ‘I’m not yours today,
So don’t hope for anything.’
But when she saw me looking her way
She’d raise her skirt to the thigh,
A look demure that would say, ‘I’m pure,
I just like teasing your eye.’

And then one day it started to rain,
We sheltered under a tree,
We almost met, I’ll never forget,
We stood as close as could be.
Her perfume wafted into my face
And that’s when I should have said,
‘It’s such a shame, I don’t know your name,
Your perfume’s gone to my head.’

Her cheek was only a glance away
I think she knew my intent,
She glanced just once, and saw my dismay,
Then gave a look of contempt.
Since then she’s been the wraith that I see
Reflected in streets and malls,
But could she have even wanted me?
The sense of my loss appals.

David Lewis Paget

They say it’s been empty for quite some time,
But I’ve seen a flickering torch,
Late at night when the moon is bright
The light is red on the porch.
And shadows move by the hedgerows there
Like spectres that flit in the night,
The door will creak as the seekers seek,
While the blinds are pulled down tight.

And something creaks where the attic peaks
It could be a number of things,
A flutter of leaves, the wind in the eaves
Or the sound of some old bed springs.
The neighbours hide and they stay inside
When the Moon comes up on the rise,
They say no way can the children play,
It would be a blot on their eyes.

For Elspeth comes as the sun goes down
In a skirt as short as can be,
With fishnet tights in both blacks and whites,
They say she’s brewing the tea.
Perhaps they’re playing Canasta there
Or playing for poker chips,
They may be dancing the night away,
She sure has a dancer’s hips.

Whatever it is they do in there
I’ll have to go in to find,
The state of play that they do each day
At Numero sixty-nine.
I’ll stay nonplussed till I get it sussed,
I wonder what it could be?
It’s just my luck, if I go to look,
I’ll catch her brewing the tea.

David Lewis Paget

He sat at the railway station in
The hopes of a passing train,
There hadn’t been one for hours, while he
Was sheltering from the rain,
While over the opposite platform, sat
And sprawled on a wooden bench,
A sight to gladden a jaundiced eye,
A typical old-time *****.

For wenches were few and far between
In that post-industrial time,
As everyone wore both slacks and jeans,
And nothing to tease the mind,
But not this ***** on the wooden bench
For she wore a floral dress,
A petticoat that was made of rope
That rose to her knees, no less.

And could those have been real stockings like
They’d been when he was a lad,
With straightened seams to the land of dreams
From calf to the thigh, well clad,
It put him in mind of the garter belts
That she’d have to wear, no doubt,
He’d seen in his teenage magazines
When he was a gadabout.

She rose and walked up the platform and
She gave her brolly a whirl,
And then he noticed her bodice with
Its buttons, mother of pearl,
Her hair was combed in a bouffant, piled
Up high in an auburn wave,
And dangling from her delicate ears
Were miniature rings of jade.

Two trains pulled into the station,
One each side and they climbed aboard,
Their windows were facing each other,
He faced back, while she faced forward,
Then just for a moment he smiled at her
And she smiled back from her bench,
As he muttered to her six silent words:
‘By God! You’re a beautiful *****!’

David Lewis Paget

The waves came crashing in from the sea
We were caught on a spit of land,
With no way back, not one I could see,
I reached and I held her hand.
‘I’ve never seen the breakers so high,’
She cried, in a fit of fear,
‘You must have known, it’s hard to deny,
So why did you bring me here?’

‘I brought you for a moment of truth,
A moment for you and I,
There’s only you, and me and the sea,
This spit of land and the sky.
We never manage to be alone,
There’s always somebody near,
And every time I open my mouth
There’s somebody else to hear.’

The spray was drenching her beautiful hair,
And running into her eyes,
Her make-up running most everywhere,
It gave her a look of surprise.
‘You might have picked a quieter spot,
We still could have been alone,
You never said what you wanted, or not.’
‘I needed you on your own.’

‘I needed to tell you that I’m in love,
Have been since the day we met,
But you’ve hung out with Derek, the drone,
I hoped that you’d leave him yet.’
‘He’s just a friend, I told you before,
He’s easy to be around,
You do go on! He isn’t my love,
You cover the same old ground.’

I took the ring from my sodden shirt
And held it for her to see,
‘I’d like you to take this diamond ring,
And say you belong to me.’
‘I only belong to myself,’ she said,
‘I’m nobody’s girl in the end,
But if I put on your diamond ring,
I may just give you a lend.’

The breakers crashed, like a waterspout,
And washed us both off the spit,
We laughed so much as we flailed about,
Trying to swim through it.
We headed in to the distant beach
Together, and that was the thing,
For when we got to the sandy breach
I saw she was wearing the ring.

David Lewis Paget