We picked up a coal-fired steamer
From a graveyard of ancient ships,
It had lain, beached up in the Philippines,
Sat on the rusted slips,
The ship was covered in surface rust
But it hadn’t gone right through,
So with elbow grease and some paint at least
My friend said, ‘It will do.’

We registered it in Colombia,
And we flew the Colombian flag,
We couldn’t afford to insure it,
And Derek said, ‘That’s a drag.
But we only need a single trip
And a cargo in the hold,
Like tractor tyres and some copper wires,
We’ll be rich when they are sold.’

He brought his girlfriend, Mary Anne,
Which I thought was a mistake,
He said that she’d come in handy when
We had to cook and bake.
‘I hope that she’s not bad luck for us,’
I muttered, when she came,
‘You mean those superstitious tales
That a woman is to blame?’

The bosun hired was a Robert Legg
Who had been at sea for years,
We didn’t know, as the trip would show,
He’d bring my friend to tears.
He helped to paint the rusted hull
In just one colour, black,
But leered when Mary Anne appeared
And behind Derek’s back.

We hired a couple of Lascars
To shovel in the coal,
Then ventured out for a cargo,
And ended up in Seoul,
We picked up a dodgy cargo,
Enough to make a run,
Over to western Africa
With computers, and with guns.

We named the ship the ‘Avant Garde’
And we braved the ocean swell,
It rolled and creaked, and even leaked
Like the cargo ship from hell,
But Derek’s mood was grim and dour
As we fought to hold the wheel,
‘Let’s hope that it doesn’t fall apart,
There’s a buckle in the keel.’

We spent our time up on the bridge
With Mary Anne below,
It doesn’t take a genius
To know how that would go.
For Legg spent too much time down there
Ensconced with Mary Anne,
When Derek questioned her, she said,
‘The bosun’s quite the man.’

He sent Legg down to the engine room
And he said to keep his place,
He wasn’t there for a holiday
Or to chat up a friendly face.
But Legg was sour, and Derek dour
When he caught them down below,
And said Legg’s hand was in contraband
Where he knew it shouldn’t go.

The Avant Garde had then burst a seam
Just above the waterline,
The water had started slopping in
We knew we were short on time,
By then Legg quarrelled with Derek, said
His girl was a free for all,
Was there to satisfy base desires,
Derek pinned him against the wall.

He hit the bosun across the head
With a long steel marlin spike,
Who fell at once and was good and dead,
I was told to take a hike.
I think he carted the body down
To the lascars down below,
Who bundled him into the furnace there,
No corpse, so who’s to know?

He told me later he’d fixed the leak
But he didn’t tell me how,
The ship then shuddered against a rock
That bent and burst the prow,
Before it sank I went down below
To witness a nightmare scene,
The body of Mary Anne was jammed
In tight, where it burst the seam.

David Lewis Paget

There’d been stories about a tunnel
In the old, Victorian house,
We didn’t know where it led to,
But were keen on finding out,
It opened into a passageway
From a library wall of books,
Was dark, and damp and foreboding
If you merely went by looks.

To us it had spelt adventure,
To Jeremy Coates and me,
‘As long as we take a flashlight,’
I’d said to Jeremy,
We waited till after midnight
When the others were asleep,
We didn’t want to involve them all
Till we had taken a peep.

‘What do you think we’ll find there?’
He said as we opened the door,
Pushing aside a shelf of books
To stand on a flagstoned floor,
The passage led down a flight of steps
All green, and covered in moss,
We’d ventured in to this place of sin
On the date of Pentecost.

We should have known what we’d find there
If we’d taken note of the books,
The ones on the sliding bookshelf
And hidden in crannies and nooks,
There was more than a single Grimoire,
And the Oera Linda book,
That was known as Himmler’s Bible,
If we’d only taken a look.

There were copies of the Picatrix,
And the Munich Manual,
The first bore spells in Arabic,
The next strange animals,
There were books on demonology
Black magic spells as well,
And even a long chronology
Of the many circles of hell.

We ventured into that passageway
Not knowing any of this,
No doubt, if only we’d read them all
We wouldn’t be risking this,
But on we marched in the dead of night
To follow the flashlight beam,
Where the walls oozed iridescent streams
And the smell was quite obscene.

We walked a mile through the tunnel
Where it ended in a crypt,
With panels through to the street level
That would keep it dimly lit,
But this was night and the only light
Beamed in through the pillar flutes,
From the gas lamps out on the cobbled street
By the church known as St. Lukes.

And all around there were catafalques
Where the coffins lay in state,
Down in this modern catacomb
Where the devil lay in wait,
For a goat’s head sat on the further wall
By an altar, scarred and scored,
With the shapes of naked women who
Were seen as the devil’s ******.

A cross was stood on the altar but
It was mounted upside down,
Ready to celebrate black mass
In this hidden underground,
Then just as we stood and took this in
A coffin had raised its lid,
And Jeremy screamed a terrible scream
While I ran round and hid.

A shape rose up in a long black cloak
That had eyes of instant fire,
Teeth that could rip a corpse to shreds
In a moment of desire,
For evil never had looked so dark
As the horns on that spectre’s head,
While Jeremy screamed just one last scream
And fell by the coffin, dead.

I don’t remember how I survived
My flight up that passageway,
I’d thrown all caution to the winds
When I heard the spectre say:
‘Who dares to sully my sanctum, and
Disturb my sated sleep,
I’ve roamed abroad for a thousand years
That the seeds I’ve sown will keep.’

I reached the end of that passageway
And I slid the shelves across,
All of those books were glowing now
With the innocence I’d lost,
And then I heard but a mile away
Was the tolling of a bell,
Up in the belfry of St. Lukes
That covered the path to hell.

David Lewis Paget

I wanted to write an amazing piece
That was like a sock on the jaw,
A classical piece like the Golden Fleece
In the Gothic form of yore,
But every time I am caught in rhyme
In the telling of every story,
And then it would have to be dark and bleak
With an ending that was gory.

The heroine would be bludgeoned down
By the boyfriend, who was jealous,
He’d always proclaimed that his love for her
Was pure, and clean, and zealous.
But came the day that she looked the way
Of a ripe and young Adonis,
The boyfriend knew, and his anger grew,
He was violent, to be honest.

The rhyme and rhythm would lead me on
To describe the blood in puddles,
Seeping out of her auburn hair
While his mind was full of muddles.
He saw the blood on the iron bar
That he held, he must have hit her,
But couldn’t remember the fatal strike
And the thought just made him bitter.

Where could you go with a tale like that
Except to the judge and jury?
He put it down to the wine imbibed
And brought on the judge’s fury.
He watched him put on the hanging cap
And he knew just what he’d got,
So pulled the gun from its hiding place
And that’s how the judge was shot.

I’d like to say he was on the run
But a tale like that’s suspicious,
How would he vault the wooden dock
In a place that’s so judicious?
The sergeant actually gunned him down
To lie on the courtroom floor,
A pool would spread as he lay there dead,
Stretched out in his blood and gore.

And that’s where we’ll have to leave it now
For lack of a decent ending,
It wasn’t such an amazing piece
And I know it’s needed mending.
But rhyme and metre has bogged me down
To give a twist to my story,
I’ll try to do better next time around
With a tale that’s not so hoary.

David Lewis Paget

There was someone I detested at
The edges of my dream,
He was sneaky, underhanded and
I thought him quite unclean,
For he knew my life with Candace
Had then almost run its course,
He was waiting in the wings; I said,
‘Don’t take my wife by force.’

And he smiled, but somewhat grimly
In the way he had back then,
As if he would do whatever
To ensnare my wife again,
But I said, ‘Don’t even think it,
Though you had your chance before,
If you even make a move on her
It’s like declaring war.’

He could tell then that I meant it
Just by looking in my eyes,
They were red, and so distended
That he backed off, he was wise,
But it didn’t help my marriage
For her love had run its course,
And she told me in our carriage that
She wanted a divorce.

I had tried my best to please her
But my efforts went unsung,
I’d played hard to get, to tease her
Years before, when we were young,
And I’d won her then, from Anson
Who’d refused to go away,
And had hung around forever
Right up to the present day.

I had said it was unhealthy to have
Ex’s hanging round,
But Candace said, ‘He’s just a friend,
Don’t make him feel put down.’
She didn’t think how I would feel
To always have him there,
At times when we should be alone,
He’d sit awhile, and stare.

So she left me on a Monday and
She barely said goodbye,
I wandered round the empty house
But found I couldn’t cry,
For anger welled up in me when
I saw them walking past,
Arm in arm and laughing and
Together now, at last.

Emotions so intense rise up
To twist a jilted brain,
I swear I wasn’t in control,
I must have been insane,
I traced them to his caravan
And waited till she left,
Then went to get some petrol
I was feeling so bereft.

I waited til the early hours
When he would be alone,
Then poured it underneath the door
Of this, his mobile home,
I thought, ‘I’ll fix his little scheme,’
And stood, and watched it pour,
Then lit it with a single spark,
It went up with a roar.

I had to stand and watch it then
The fruits of my despair,
I heard a scream, as in a dream
The door flung open there,
And Candace stood, encased in flame,
She shrivelled as she stood,
All black and burned, revenge had turned
Destroyed my neighborhood.

They didn’t find too much of him
And she died on the grass,
They found me weeping in the gloom
When once the fire had passed,
And so I stare out blindly now
Through bars of hardened steel,
They wouldn’t need to lock me in,
I’ve ceased to see or feel.

David Lewis Paget

Whenever the wind is blustery
And buffets the chamber door,
I find Elaine, curling in fear
Down on the hallway floor.
She cries, calls suddenly out to me,
‘Do you hear the shades of sin?
I know that it’s got it in for me,
You’re never to let it in.’

‘Never to let what in?’ I say,
‘It’s only the southern wind,
Blowing in turgid sudden gusts,
To rattle the panelling.’
‘It’s ever much more,’ Elaine replied,
‘I’ve seen it up in the trees,
Just like a flight of monster bats
To beat me down to my knees.’

As if in reply, a mighty gust
Blew in the chamber door,
In came a flurry of autumn leaves
That settled, down on the floor.
But with it a cold and clammy darkness
Seemed to enter the room,
An awesome sight in the fading light
It huddled there in the gloom.

It came in the shape of a giant cape,
A hood of enormous size,
And peering out from the hood, no doubt,
A pairing of bloodshot eyes.
I heard a bubbling in its throat
A babble of rasping sounds,
‘It’s time to come for the deed you’ve done,
You’re due in the devil’s grounds.’

Elaine lay whimpering in the hall,
She lay there, hiding her eyes,
‘I didn’t think you would find me out,’
She muttered, to my surprise.
‘What was the awful thing you did,
You never told me before.’
‘I poisoned her drink, then ran and hid,
When she fell down on the floor.’

A bony hand reached out from the cape
And seized Elaine by the throat,
She fought and struggled, tried to escape
Then screamed, in a long, high note.
‘You can’t be late for your nuptials,’
The beast had growled in return,
‘You’ll soon be wed to a demon, who
Will take you to hell, to burn.’

I watched it pull Elaine to her feet,
Then drag her out through the door,
The monster bats were up in the trees,
But she lay dead on the floor.
Whenever I hear the southern wind
Come beat on the door outside,
I think of the times that I have sinned,
And shudder, how Elaine died.

David Lewis Paget

I need a woman to ride with me,
To prove that she loves me too,
A woman to sit astride of me,
When one together makes two,
It’s ever been the way of the world
To come together as one,
For one together may not forever
Be taken apart, undone.

Whenever I find myself alone
And missing her vital spark,
I look for somebody, complementary
All alone in the dark.
For she may be there looking for me
As I am looking for her,
We’ll always know by the eyes that glow
If love is the only spur.

I’ll know by the velvet touch of her hand
The rosy blush on her cheek,
I’ll know when we come across each other
Far more than once in a week,
For fate has the strangest tricks to play
It leads us all on a dance,
By throwing the me and you together
It’s never coincidence.

So woman, come from the shadows now
To meet, wherever you are,
A pad of feet on a lonely street
Or locked in a passing car.
We need each other to be together
If only to say we live,
Come be a part of this lonely heart,
I only have love to give.

David Lewis Paget

It’s an age since I last picked up this pen,
An age since I scrawled a word,
There once was a time when I’d write it down,
All that I’d seen, or heard,
And still it sits on each scrawling page
A life, that someone may read,
Cut short, when I put away the pen,
When the ink had begun to bleed.

Some things are just too awful to tell,
It’s better they be forgot,
To raise the seventh circle of hell
Is like a forget-me-not.
It shouldn’t be preserved on the page
Reminding of pain and loss,
For sadness, grief, sorrow and rage
Will ever be tempest tossed.

And Geraldine was a case in point
I’d thought that she loved me true,
She seemed to care, and she’d always swear,
‘I’ll never be leaving you.’
For years we seemed to live in a dream
We had what we thought we’d need,
That no-one else could come in-between,
And trust was our common creed.

But then she started staying out late
To work, she said, for the boss,
And I would wait, alone by the gate,
While feeling a sense of loss.
I knew that he was younger than me
Was wealthier then, by far,
And she’d recline, while reeking of wine
Then clamber up out of his car.

‘We only stopped for a drink,’ she’d say,
‘It isn’t a federal crime.’
‘You never go out for a drink with me,
So who are you, his, or mine?’
‘You make too much of a trivial thing,
I’m just keeping in with the boss.’
Then I would say, ‘well have it your way,
But everything comes with a cost.’

We slept that night, each facing away
On opposite sides of the bed,
With Geraldine, as stubborn as hell,
There wasn’t much more to be said.
And that was the start of the end for us,
I couldn’t believe our plight,
It just got worse, when she with a curse,
Just didn’t come home one night.

Some things are just too awful to tell,
It’s murky the deeper you wade,
And she brought home the circle of hell,
She said that he’d given her AIDS.
She cried a torrent and reached for me
But I shrank back, and away,
The years have fled, there’s grief in my head,
For Geraldine died yesterday.

David Lewis Paget