I’d seen her wander along the street
A number of times, or more,
And know I should have approached her then
But she might have said, ‘what for?’
I could have asked for a date, but then
I left it much too late,
And saw her then with a guy called Ben,
But he looked like spider bait.

He had a straggly beard and hair
That stood up straight in spikes,
I don’t know what she could see in him
For my first response was ‘Yikes!’
His frame was thin and all caving in
And his clothes were contrabands,
But he clutched at her with a bony paw,
With hair on the back of his hands.

She went to stay at his cottage, which
Was set at the edge of the wood,
More of a tumbledown shack, I thought,
Not right for that neighbourhood,
It lay half-hidden between the trees
With their foliage hanging down,
You had to push past the bushes that
Enclosed the whole surround.

She’d sit out on the verandah with
The sun about to set,
While I would creep in around there
For a glimpse of her, Colette.
I thought, perhaps if she saw me there
She might come out to see,
And once I’d managed to talk to her
She’d fall in love with me.

But Ben would never let go of her
Nor let her out of his sight,
He kept her there by the spiders that
Would weave their webs each night,
From every dangling branch there hung
An orb web in the breeze,
And in each centre a spider that
Would make Colette’s blood freeze.

I think he must have been breeding them
He seemed to take delight,
In pointing out how the thousands seemed
To weave there every night,
Then she began to withdraw from him
And refuse his coarse demands,
Whenever he went to reach for her
With his scrawny, hairy hands.

The webs ballooned and they hit the roof
Formed a blanket from the trees,
They covered the little cottage and
I heard her frightened pleas,
She couldn’t leave the verandah though
She said she’d have to go,
He said that he was a spider man,
And that’s when I heard his ‘No!’

She didn’t come out again for days
And I heard her cry at night,
‘I hate this place, and I hate your face,’
But he said, ‘You’re my delight.’
A week went by and I heard her sigh,
The last sound that she made,
So I burst through all the gossamer webs
With an old and rusty blade.

He was knelt beside her form supine
In the corner of the room,
While she was wrapped in gossamer fine
And looked like a large cocoon,
I lashed out with the rusty blade
And cut off his evil head,
When thousands of spiders scurried out
From his neck, and over the bed.

I cut her out of the tight cocoon
And peeled it back from her face,
She hugged me in the gathering gloom
And said, ‘Let’s leave this place.’
I’d like to say that she went with me
But I’d left my run too late,
‘I’ll never look at a man again
Since he made me spider bait.’

David Lewis Paget

I always knew there was something strange
About that farmer’s stile,
For no-one ever climbed over it
And I’d watched it for a while.
The field beyond it was out of sight
Behind a hawthorn hedge,
I didn’t know till I tried to go
It was perched along the edge.

The edge of history, edge of time,
It may have been the gate,
That hell was hidden behind in that
It saved us from our fate,
I threw a stray dog over it first
To see what would transpire,
It came back ravening, racked with thirst
And it set the hedge on fire.

I wasn’t going to risk my health
Nor even my sanity,
But somebody else would have to go
For my curiosity.
I passed young Ann in the marketplace
And I thought she’d be no loss,
I talked her into crossing the stile,
She did, at Pentecost.

Now Ann had been unattractive when
I sent her over the stile,
I didn’t hear from her straight away
But hung around for a while,
Then out from behind the hawthorn hedge
She suddenly poked her head,
A ravishing beauty Ann was now
When I’d thought she might be dead.

‘Could that be possibly you?’ I said
When I saw her pouting lips,
Her stylish sash and fluttering lash
And her painted fingertips,
I hadn’t noticed her dimples when
I’d looked at her before,
But now she was drop dead gorgeous,
And the word was, ‘I adore.’

I tried to get her over the stile
But she said to me, ‘No fear,
For everything is so beautiful
I think I’ll be staying here.’
And then if I really wanted her
I would have to cross myself,
She said there was gold and rubies there
Amid signs of untold wealth.

I conquered my inner demons and
I took the step at a run,
Leapt over the farmer’s stile to Ann,
There in the midday sun,
But all I found was a battleground
Littered with heads and hands,
The ******* of seven centuries
And a pile of old tin cans.

While Ann was dressed in a peasant gown
And had lost her pouting lips,
Her stylish sash that had turned to ash
And her coarsened fingertips,
‘What did you really expect,’ she said
As she pinned me to the ground,
‘Now you’ll be mine, though it seems unkind,
As long as the earth turns round.’

I’ve tried to escape for seven years
But I cannot find the stile,
The one that I jumped up over once
In response to her woman’s wiles.
I really thought I had played the girl
When she wasn’t much to see,
But she found me in the marketplace
And she ended playing me…

David Lewis Paget

I sit entranced by the silver screen
To watch and wait for your eyes,
To peer on out, as I sit and dream,
Between the clouds in my skies.
I’ve carried you in my heart so long
Without a kiss from your lips,
But sat and sighed till I almost died
For a touch from your fingertips.

I’ve traced the gentle curve of your cheek,
The noble arch of your brow,
The slow spread of the smile that said:
‘I want to be with you, now.’
I’ve watched the tears that we both have shed
For the years that were lost in time,
When you could well have belonged to me,
Or I could have made you mine.

But time and distance are so unfair,
I see you, bright like a star,
One I could wear in my buttonhole
If only it wasn’t so far.
We both reach out and we touch the screen
I trace my fingers on yours,
One day we’ll see, what will be, will be,
But your camera’s set on pause.

David Lewis Paget

He kept them locked in a tower,
And I’ll let you guess the score,
The thirteen women that disappeared
To leave not a sign before.
We thought we would never find them,
There wasn’t a clue or trace,
They’d simply gone for a gentle stroll
And walked off the planet’s face.

And mine was the thirteenth woman,
To date, who had disappeared,
At first, I thought she had left me,
Or that was the thing I feared,
But I heard her voice coming back to me
As an echo, alone at night,
‘My love for you is a love that’s true,
Rolled up in a ball, and tight.’

She had such a way of smiling,
Of reaching, cuddling in,
She said we had such a special love,
A personal kind of sin.
So I knew she must have been kidnapped,
Was snatched as she crossed the street,
As all those others had gone before,
They hadn’t been indiscreet.

I haunted the railway station,
Went roaming abroad most nights,
I peeked in each cottage window
From valley to village heights,
When out on the edge of woodland
I came on the black stone tower,
A padlock bolt on a door of oak
I found at the midnight hour.

I hid in the trees and bushes,
Then waited and held my breath,
A figure came in from the rushes
Crept in, at the hour of death.
For they say at three in the morning
That our hearts will beat the least,
But mine was pounding and roaring
As I leapt, and captured the beast.

The women were chained to a railing,
To links in the cold, stone wall,
They shivered, without any clothing,
And cried, when they heard me call,
For some had been physically altered,
Each one for a different kink,
I chained the beast as their cries increased,
And then I undid each link.

I wrapped my girl in my shirt, then sent
The beast to his ****** fate,
I heard him scream as his manhood went,
For him, it was getting late.
He lay in pieces, spread through the trees
And no-one was ever charged,
The police in their wisdom wrote their screed,
‘There must be a wolf at large…’

David Lewis Paget

She shouldn’t have been on the platform
On that fateful day in June,
The train she needed to catch would leave
Later that afternoon,
But I would never have met her then
If I hadn’t heard her cough,
And was offering her a cold flu pill
Just as the bomb went off.

I don’t think we actually heard it,
It came as a sort of ‘whoosh’,
The air was suddenly filled with nails
And bits of flesh, in a hush,
I felt her calf as it hit my leg,
Was blown clean off at the knee,
As she collapsed with a sort of gasp
And lay there, looking at me.

I think I must have been stupefied
For hours after the blast,
I only came to my senses, down
At the hospital, at last,
The girl lay flat on a trolley there
In the hospital corridor,
While I just sat and I held her hand,
My feet on the bloodstained floor.

I had some cuts and contusions but
She’d sheltered me from the blast,
And bodies lay in confusion as
They prayed, while breathing their last,
The surgeons tried to attach her leg
But too much damage was done,
The leg was dropped in a basket where
It never would walk, or run.

I found her name was Andromeda
After some distant star,
I told her that mine was Tim, she said,
‘I was wondering who you are.’
It was then I knew I’d look after her,
Would be at her beck and call,
For fate had pushed us together when
Disaster had come to call.

She didn’t take much persuading when
It came to me moving in,
For everyone else had backed right off
To see the state she was in,
‘They’ll never be tied to a *******,’
She said with a bitter smile,
I stroked her hair as I pushed her chair,
‘I’ll be around for a while.’

I don’t know whether she loved me back,
But I had fallen for her,
And thanked the lord for her missing leg
When I carried her up the stair,
She acquiesced with my every need
She knew I had to be fed,
And paid me back for each caring deed
By leading me to her bed.

She tried to cover her bitterness
To those who planted the bomb,
But still she seemed to be curious
Like who, and where were they from?
‘What would you do?’ I’d say to her,
‘If I stood them here in a line?’
Her brow grew black, as the words she spat,
‘Vengeance would be mine.’

And then the police had arrested them,
Two men from an evil cell,
Andromeda said she’d see them when
I’d take her to court, as well,
We took our place in the gallery
And could see them, looking down,
An evil pair, a defiant stare,
She pulled the gun from her gown.

I didn’t know that she’d got a gun,
She must have hidden it well,
With just one thought, and a loud retort,
She blew them away to hell.
She didn’t care what they did to her,
She said, ‘I’m not going to beg!’
Then pulling her dress up round her waist
She showed the judge her leg.

David Lewis Paget

This government’s greed’s cut into my need
By taxing tobacco smoke,
I needed my **** to concentrate,
They’ve turned it into a joke.
So how many lines of poetry
I’ll never be able to write,
All for the sake of the Nanny State
Insisting I quit tonight.

I see it as persecution of
The few of us that are left,
Turning us into a cash cow that
Has left us feeling bereft.
I thought that the days of fascists died
In the bunker with ******’s crew,
We seem to have re-elected them,
They’re telling us what to do.

We should be allowed to live our lives
The way that we always did,
Making our personal choices then
And not be ruled by the quid.
They keep on edging their taxes up
To make us submit by stealth,
By making it unaffordable,
They say it’s all about health.

What will they do when we all give up
And they find all their coffers bare?
What will they find to tax us then
To make up the smoker’s share?
Maybe they’ll tax the pollies perks
That they vote themselves at night,
Whenever the world’s not watching them,
But that never happens - Right?

We seem to be ruled by a den of thieves
Who make up rules as they go,
Their arrogance you would not believe
As they crush the ordinary Joe.
It’s time that we formed a voting block
To target the safest seats,
And toss out the whole corrupted lot
By dumping them out in the streets.

David Lewis Paget

I’ve devoted my life to poetry
Whenever I’ve had the time,
Created whole towns and villages
And even the people rhyme.
There’s only supposed to be six plots
In the stories we have to tell,
And half of them aim for heaven, while
The rest of them end in hell.

But I’ve written fourteen hundred tales
And each of them has a plot,
With climaxes in the middle, and
A twist in the tail, or not.
There’s anger, love and revenge in there
Mixed in the poetic stew,
And some of the plots are quite threadbare,
But they’re all written for you.

My women are all quite beautiful,
My men are as hard as nails,
They constantly search for love, I find,
In all of my paper trails.
But most have an itch they have to scratch,
For some of them there’s regret,
They pay the cost when a lover’s lost
And it haunts their stories yet.

I often scribble in witches, ghouls,
And spirits that have no souls,
That hover around the edges, with
Their indeterminate goals.
I look to the distant future now
For tales you’ll never forget,
And trust to fate that it’s not too late
For a million stories yet.

David Lewis Paget