Marion Carrion, she was a tease,
She really knew how to flirt,
Would shake her hips and her moving bits
That were hidden under her skirt.
She’d beckon me out to the hockey field
And raise her skirt to the knees,
Said I could look at her secret nook
For only a simple ‘Please.’

She had all a woman’s mysteries
Although she was only a girl,
And knew the power of her nether bits
Would put my mind in a whirl.
So she showed her thighs with her flashing eyes
And then would have shown me more,
While I would share with a candid air
That I knew what she had in store.

Out there on the side of the hockey field
In the shade of the only bush,
We’d hide behind, so my hand could find
Whatever would make her flush.
I thought that I was the favoured one
While playing about with her toys,
But then I found on the soccer ground
She was sharing with all of the boys.

That moment of disillusionment
I thought would have broken my heart,
But I was tough and had seen enough,
There were other girls in the park.
So I thank Marion Carrion now
For her retrospect revelation,
She taught me well on the road to hell
And saw to my education.

David Lewis Paget

We’d been together so long, it seemed
That nothing could tear us apart,
We lived our lives in a world of dreams
And Barbara lived in my heart,
But frost had covered the window pane
And then it began to snow,
As Barbara turned, with a look of pain
And said, ‘It’s best that you go.’

I didn’t know what she meant at first
As I looked up from my book,
“Go where?’ I questioned, but thought again
As she quelled my heart with a look.
‘I said I want you to leave,’ she cried,
And her face was set in stone,
‘We’ve come to the end of the path,’ she sighed,
‘I want to be left alone.’

Then suddenly all confusion reined
I didn’t know what to say,
Whatever had brought this mood on her,
I wished it would go away.
But she was firm, and she packed my things
And ushered me out the door,
I stood there shivering in the cold
To be back on my own once more.

I found a flat and I camped the night
There was barely a stick or chair,
I’d have to buy all the furniture
To make it a home in there.
But I sat and cried in the empty room
As the question came back, ‘Why?’
I’d loved her so and my heart was torn,
I thought I wanted to die.

I went to her with my questions, but
She slammed the door in my face,
Whatever love she had had for me
Had vanished, without a trace.
It hurt so much that she cut me off
With never so much as a sigh,
I called that all that I wanted was
To tell me the reason, why?

The roses had bloomed so late that year
Were still in the garden bed,
We’d always tended the bush with joy,
We both loved the colour red,
So I snipped one off as I left one day,
And planted it under her door,
To let her know that I loved her still
I didn’t know how to say more.

Her brother called in a week or so,
Said she was in hospital,
She’d gone in just for a minor cure
And thought that he’d better tell.
So I caught the bus and I went on down
With a quaking fear in my heart,
She hadn’t said there was something wrong
Before she tore us apart.

The doctor came in his long white coat,
His brow and his face was grim,
I said, ‘Don’t tell me the news is bad,’
He said, ‘I’m out on a limb.
Your wife just passed from the surgery,
But she pulled, from under her clothes,
And asked if I’d pass this on to you,’
In his hand was a red, red rose.

David Lewis Paget

There once was a wicked Warlock
Who lived on Crabtree Hill,
He lured the Witch of the Morning there
Who was my mother still,
My father, he was the patient type
Said, ‘Son, she’s just a witch,
And she’ll be back in the morning, once
That Warlock’s scratched her itch.

I didn’t know what he meant just then,
I was far too young to know,
What people did in the darkness once
Their feelings overflowed,
But I was forever curious
And suppose that I am still,
I wanted to know, so had to go
On a trek up Crabtree Hill.

The Warlock lived in a copse of trees
In a tiny little shack,
A goat’s head hung up above his door
I remember, looking back,
A window covered in mud and dust
Was the way I looked inside,
To see my mother down on her knees
Like a nasty Warlock bride.

I knew that I shouldn’t be looking
Then she turned, and saw my face,
And stopped just what she was doing
Though I’d seen her loss of grace,
I turned to run, then I heard his voice
As he called my mother, ‘Cath!’
Then caught me running off through the trees
As he stood, and blocked my path.

The man was a massive mountain,
And he wore a hat with horns,
His arms like a pair of Christmas hams
As he called, ‘This one of yours?’
I fought and struggled and kicked like mad
As he took me into his shack,
While ever the Witch of the Morning smiled
And said, ‘He’s just my Jack.’

‘I think we should cook him up for tea,’
Said the Warlock, with a wink,
And Cath, my mother said, ‘Let me see,
I must have a little think.
I hope that he didn’t see the act
Of love that I did for you,’
Then took my hand and opened the door
And motioned me out, said, ‘Shoo.’

Now I’m a man, and I think on back
To that day on Crabtree Hill,
And just like the Warlock, I will stand
In front of my darling Jill,
While she gets down on her knees for me
On the floor, without a stitch,
To show me the love she has for me,
Just like the Morning Witch.

David Lewis Paget

The sun went down on a Sunday night
And didn’t come up again,
The clouds above were crimson and bright
And they shed life-giving rain,
The news came on at seven o’clock
In the morning, in the dark,
And said, ‘No sign of the morning sun,
The view from here is stark.’

I bounded up and got out of bed
And I hit the ceiling fan,
My arms and legs and my head were light
So I turned about and ran,
With every step, when I floated up,
I hit my head on the door,
And when I tried to jump, I hovered,
Six feet off the floor.

The news came on for a second time,
A comet had hit the earth,
And halted the rotation of
The planet that gave us birth,
It seemed that one side would overheat
And the people there would roast,
While we would freeze on the dark side,
When the sea iced at the coast.

The temperature dropped down through the floor
And it soon began to snow,
The wife lay huddling up, and said:
‘Now where are we going to go?’
But then the news had come through again
That a second comet hit,
Deep in the Russian tundra, and
The ground had shook with it.

It seems the earth had begun to turn
Once more, from the aftershock,
With everything back to normal then,
Whether it would or not,
But when the sun had come up again
We saw it rise in the west,
The week is reversed from Saturday,
What will they think of next?

David Lewis Paget

My sister Susan had disappeared
At the age of twenty four,
She’d gone on up to the attic room
And she’d locked and barred the door,
We beat, cajoled, and entreated her,
But she never would come out,
I said, ‘We shouldn’t have argued Sue,
I didn’t need to shout.’

My father came with his gravel voice
And demanded ‘Open up!’
He thumped and kicked on the cedar door,
And beat with a metal cup,
But there wasn’t even a whimper
As of somebody inside,
It was like she’d suffered a broken heart
Had crawled in there, and died.

We left her there till the morning,
Thought a night would calm her down,
‘She’ll come out once she is hungry,’
Said my brother, (he’s a clown).
But as the clock struck for dinner time
With not the slightest stir,
My father carried a battering ram
And ran right up the stair.

He stood and battered the cedar door,
He said it gave him pain,
‘I can’t afford to replace it, but,’
Then belted it again,
The door had splintered, the lock fell off
And he burst into the room,
But all that he saw were cobwebs, dust
And an air of deepest gloom.

‘Susan, where can you be,’ he cried,
‘There’s nowhere you can hide,
There isn’t even a window here
So you can’t have got outside,’
His voice rang out through the house and sent
An echo down the stair,
My mother burst into tears to hear
That Susan wasn’t there.

The police came over and climbed the roof,
Dropped into the attic space,
They hunted among the rafters there,
Looked almost every place,
There wasn’t a sign of Susan though
She’d simply disappeared,
‘The same thing happened to Grandma Coe,’
My mother cried, ‘It’s weird!’

‘She locked herself in the attic there
In the fall of forty-eight,
‘They thought that they heard her on the stair
When the hour was getting late,
But never a sign of her came back,
Then her husband, Grandpa died,
We always thought that she must be here
But somehow locked inside.’

We called the local clairvoyant in
And he brought his Tarot pack,
He stared long into his crystal ball
Till we had to call him back,
He chanted into the midnight hour
In a voice both loud and slow,
Till shuffling out of the Attic came
Not Sue, but Grandma Coe!

David Lewis Paget

I said, ‘We’re going to Coffin Cove
For the first weekend in June,
I’ve booked us a seaside caravan,
Under a bloodshot Moon,’
Giselda turned for a moment then
And she looked at me, wide-eyed,
‘I’ve just come out of the hospital,
You know that I nearly died!’

‘Why would you pick on Coffin Cove,
Isn’t that testing fate?’
‘That figure of death is out of breath,
He got to your bed too late.’
She’d had a terrible accident
And they thought she’d not survive,
But for a scar and the wreck of a car,
Here she was back, alive.

Giselda believed in portents and fate,
And something about the stars,
I said whatever the portents were,
She’d been driving the car.
‘We hold our fate in our own two hands,
And yours just slipped on the wheel,
But though you bled, that scar on your head
Has just taken time to heal.’

So off we travelled to Coffin Cove
On the long weekend in June,
The caravan sat there on the sand
While the skies were dark with gloom.
We’d heard a storm was heading our way
Though we’d both be snug inside,
The beach was clear for the time of year
So Giselda swam, and dried.

The wind came up as the clouds rolled in
So we shut and locked the door,
With lightning crackling overhead
She huddled up on the floor,
She hated thunder, and lightning too
Then it rained, and turned to hail,
The noise was deafening there inside
Then the wind began to wail.

The van would rock as the wind would gust
So I held Giselda tight,
The storm just wouldn’t let up, it raged
And roared all through the night,
We could hear the sound of the crashing waves
And they seemed outside our door,
Then the van took off, we could tell as much
By the movement of the floor.

I opened one of the windows just
To take a look outside,
Giselda said, ‘Are we floating off?’
And I must admit, I lied.
The breakers crashed in a sea of foam
And we seemed far from the shore,
I said, ‘Don’t worry, this van is tough,
It could float for evermore.’

As midnight struck on my mantle clock
Giselda jumped, fell back,
‘Who’s that,’ she pointed along the van
To a shape, all dressed in black,
Its hood half covered a grinning skull
And it held a wicked scythe,
Then in a rattling gravel voice,
‘You’ll not long be alive!’

I couldn’t speak for a moment there,
The sight just took my breath,
I said, ‘Just what do you want with us?’
‘I’m here to bring you death!
I reign supreme over Coffin Cove
As you should have known full well,
I waited, knowing you’d wander in
To the seventh circle of Hell!’

The van was tumbling in the waves
And turning round and round,
‘I won’t be using my scythe today,
The two of you will drown.’
But then a thunderous, monster wave
Threw me down on the floor,
And underneath us was solid ground,
We’d landed up on the shore.

The evil figure rose up at that
And turned to a greying mist,
Then suddenly he had gone complete
As she and I had kissed,
We burst on out through the open door
And we cried, ‘We’re still alive!’
‘Don’t bring me again to Coffin Cove,’
Giselda said, ‘Just drive.’

David Lewis Paget

Whenever I went with winsome Kate
She’d say, ‘I’m a witch, and that,’
And while in bed, with love in my head,
All she would do was chat.
She’d chatter about the latest spell
She’d found in her old Grimoire,
While I would lie, and dream of her thighs
And hope she’d surprise me there.

And so she did, a number of times
Each time that I’d reach for her,
Like shifting sand, I’d find in my hand
A handful of ***** fur,
The black cat under the counterpane
Would wriggle and spit and scratch,
And I’d withdraw, away from its paw
I’d find it more than a match.

Then she’d go on about frogs and spawn
While up above in her flat,
And hanging down from her ceiling fan
The nastiest looking bat.
‘I hope that’s not going to drop on us,’
I’d say, but she didn’t care,
It often lay on her pillow case
All tangled up in her hair.

‘Wouldn’t you like to make witching love?’
I’d say to her, in despair,
While she would lie, with spells in her eye
And some that would really scare.
She said she needed to concentrate
And would make some terrible moans,
They seemed to come from the mantlepiece
Where she kept a pile of bones.

She called them Fred, he was certainly dead
And he stared at us from above,
She’d cry, and say that there was a day
When he was her one true love.
But he’d fallen into her pickle jar
One day, when casting a spell,
And she’d pulled him out, too late, no doubt,
He’d pickled his way to hell.

I bid farewell to my witching one
Before I suffered his fate,
I’d prayed for love to heaven above
Knowing it was too late.
She’d filled a cauldron with toads and newts
Then turned and reached for my hand,
But I had fled, the moment she said,
‘Now all I need is a man!’

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d only be gone for a week,
I saw her off in the car,
‘It’s not that long,’ she began to speak,
‘It’s not that I’m going far,’
So I waved goodbye and I turned to go,
I wish I could live it again,
For that was the last I saw of Flo
I’m missing her so, Amen.

Her mother phoned on the following day,
‘What have you done with Flo?
She said we’d meet in the market place,
Did she even set out to go?’
I said she had on the previous day,
‘Is she really not there?’ I said,
And then my mind kept racing away,
I thought that she might be dead.

I called the police and the hospital,
And even the Fire Brigade,
No-one had ever heard of her
Or knew where she might have stayed,
Then I saw a clip on the news that night
She was walking along in the rain,
They were filming down at the station as
She was boarding the Melbourne train.

A week went by and I heard no more,
I thought that she might have phoned,
I saw her brother and sister too,
‘I think that she’s left,’ I moaned.
‘They hadn’t heard, not a single word,
Since that man in an overcoat
Had called in, said he was looking for her,
And left her a simple note.

‘Catch the plane at Tullamarine,
I’ll meet you in Istanbul,
Pick up the pack from the man in green,
Make sure that the pack is full.’
‘I thought you were going on holiday,’
Her brother had said to my face,
I said I didn’t know where she was
She’d gone, with never a trace.

The bomb in the old Ramada Hotel
Went off, I saw on the news
The old city part of Istanbul,
They published a set of views,
And Flo was running from smoke and flames,
I saw her, clear as a bell,
And right behind was a man in green
In front of the old hotel.

They said a woman with auburn hair
Had dropped a pack at the desk,
And then had run, she carried a gun,
Was currently under arrest.
The following day, she got away,
Squeezed out through the window bars,
Then jumped in a waiting limousine,
One of the Russian cars.

I heard she went to Saint Petersburg,
Had asked for asylum there,
They’d said, ‘No way,’ that she couldn’t stay,
She replied, ‘It isn’t fair!’
Nobody wanted to charge her so
They flew her on out to Wales,
And that’s when I met her in Cardiff
Where we sat, with a couple of ales.

She said she had won an adventure
All hush hush, in an online quiz,
But had to deliver a package first,
‘I should have asked what it is.’
She said she was sorry not telling me,
I reached out and held her hand,
‘Where did you think you were going then?’
She said, ‘to Disneyland!’

David Lewis Paget

Back in the days of the old gas lamps
When the streets were lit, but dim,
A young lamplighter would tour the streets
And the houses, looking in,
The flickering flame of each lamp would light
The windows in the dark,
He’d see what he wasn’t meant to see
In the light of each flickering spark.

He saw what he thought was an angel
Through a window in Lygon Street,
Sitting in front of a mirror,
Looking down, and washing her feet.
Her hair trailed over her shoulders like
Some golden ears of corn,
Then she looked up, and her bright blue eyes
Made him feel he was new-born.

Her lips were set in a steady pout
And were red and ripe to kiss,
Her brows were raised as she looked his way
And his heart felt instant bliss,
While she looked through her window pane
At the face of an angel boy,
Who, breathing mist on her window glass
Had scribbled his name there, ‘Roy’.

Their eyes had locked with each other when
He framed his lips in a kiss,
And she stood up and approached him,
Then she put her lips to his,
They stayed so long that the glass had warmed
But the mist spread round about,
Till neither could see the other it
Had blotted each vision out.

Then every night he had lingered there
With his taper to her lamp,
And shivered out on the footpath for
The nights were getting damp,
He hoped that she would be sitting where
She had sat, before the kiss,
But nothing had moved within that room
From that day until this.

He didn’t know but she’d had to go
To stay on her uncle’s farm,
To breathe the purer air out there
Than the fog that did her harm,
She still spat blood in her handkerchief
But she thought about the boy,
Who’d kissed her once through a window pane
And the thought still brought her joy.

David Lewis Paget

What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You went outside in the storming,
The lightning flashed and it struck you dumb,
You couldn’t get up this morning.
I tried to give you a sweet caress
But you discharged on my finger,
I fear your voltage grows more, not less,
There’s no good reason to linger.

I wrapped a cable around your toe
Ran it to earth in the garden,
Your toe as well as the cable glowed,
I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.
There’s lightning flashes behind your eyes,
Your tongue is all of a sizzle,
The storm has gone but the rain keeps on
Although it’s only a drizzle.

I took you out to our ******* bin
The neighbours thought I was fooling,
And sat you down on the surface tin,
I thought that it would be cooling.
But soon the bin was a glowing red
I hauled you off from the garbage,
As flames and smoke took the garden shed
And put an end to our garage.

I thought that I’d better hose you down
When water hit, it was frightening,
The bolt ran over the garden hedge
And burnt it down with its lightning.
What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You know that I love you dearly,
But I’ll never sleep in our bed again,
Till you are discharged, and feely.

David Lewis Paget

I’d taken my friends way off the shore
In my small, glass-bottomed boat,
The weather was clear, the sea was calm
For the sturdiest boat afloat,
I wanted to scan the hidden depths
Watch all that lived on the reef,
But Peter my friend, just wanted to fish,
And so did his brother, Keith.

They busied themselves with their fishing rods,
Were bent on baiting their hooks,
When suddenly something beneath the boat
Made me take a second look,
It only appeared a shadow at first
Came on with a sinuous glide,
It wasn’t a fish I had seen before,
‘Hey, just look at this,’ I cried.

They both turned around and peered below
But then the shadow had gone,
‘What did you see,’ said Peter P.
‘It must have been twenty feet long!’
‘Oh *******,’ said Keith, ‘beyond belief,
There isn’t a fish of that size,
Not even the great White Pointer Shark,
You must have mud in your eyes.’

‘I know what I saw,’ I said again,
‘It had the most horrible teeth,
It seemed to be looking for prey down there
Across the top of the reef.’
‘I’ve fished these waters for twenty years,
I think I’d have seen it by now,’
Said Peter P. with a smirk at me,
‘Watch us, and we’ll show you how.’

They knew I wasn’t a fisherman,
I wouldn’t know Cod from a shark,
I just liked to watch the fishes swim
Through the glass-bottomed boat in the dark,
I’d rigged up floodlights to light below
That eerie, mysterious deep,
Where seaweed swayed in the land they played
With the rest of the world asleep.

The guys continued and cast their lines,
While I sat reading a book,
We’d be there hours, and that was fine
I took the occasional look,
We drifted over a patch of blue
The sand was clear below,
When back there came that sinuous shape
I said to the guys, ‘HeLLO!’

This time it headed up for the boat,
Less like a fish than a snake,
A massive head with reptilian teeth
And suddenly I was awake.
It shot straight up, right over the boat
Snapping its massive jaw,
And took Keith’s arm from his shoulder blades
Right into its mighty maw.

We just couldn’t stop the flow of blood
It filled the boat as he died,
And Peter P. was distraught as he
Sat helplessly, and he cried.
‘That must be some prehistoric beast
That lived on the ocean floor,
I’ll never go fishing again,’ said he
As we headed back to the shore.

David Lewis Paget

‘It’s only for over Christmas,’ said
The son to his father there,
And watched as the old man’s shoulders hunched
As he painfully mounted the stair,
‘It’s just for the festive season while
The house will be full of kin,
We’re going to need your bedroom if
We’re going to fit them in.

‘I’ll pick you up when the New Year dawns,
My promise is set in stone,
On the first or second of January
Expect me to bring you home.’
But the old man merely paused and turned,
The set of his mouth was grim,
‘You don’t need to make me promises,
I know I’m not wanted, Tim.’

And Tim would have said that wasn’t true
But he had to heed his wife,
She’d said it was him or her would leave,
And her words cut like a knife,
‘I’m always the one to wash and clean,
To cook, and pick up his mess,
He has to be gone by Christmas John,
I’ll not put up with less.’

So early the morning of Christmas Eve
The son had packed a case,
And helped his father into the car
To head for the old folks place,
‘It’s lucky your mother’s dead, my son,
You’d tear us both apart,
How do you think your Mum would feel,
I think you’d break her heart.’

And tears had run down the father’s cheek,
And also down the son’s,
Tim said, ‘Look Dad, I am sorry but
There’s nothing to be done.
I’ve said I’m coming to pick you up
So what more can I say?’
‘I thought to be spending my Christmas
With my son, on Christmas Day.’

The car pulled up at the iron gate
And the son had forced a smile,
‘It won’t be long and with Christmas gone
It will just be a little while,’
He carried his case inside for him
And he turned to say goodbye,
When muttering ‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’
The old man answered ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

They ‘pressed me on His Majesty’s frigate
The H.M.S. Carew,
It only took me a day to find
I was lodged with the Devils’s crew,
The Captain, ‘Black Jack’ Hawkins
Was a gentleman by name,
But on the ship he used the whip
To his undying shame.

I slipped and fell from the foremast arm
When I caught my foot in a stay,
And though a net kept me safe from harm
That wasn’t the Captain’s way,
He said I’d swim for my mortal sin
Told the crew to rope me through,
Then dragged me over the side and said,
‘We’re going to keel-haul you.’

The barnacles on the Carew’s hull
Nearly tore my back to shreds,
My lungs were so close to bursting that
I thought that I was dead.
They hauled me over the side again
The deck was red from my back,
At least I knew I was safe again
From a sudden shark attack.

They rubbed raw salt in my many wounds
Till I thought I was in hell,
While some of the crew had mocked and jeered
The Devil’s own cartel,
They wore tattoos of the skull and bones
It was strange for a Royal crew,
But they themselves had been Impressed
So they hated Hawkins too.

He used to stand on the quarter-deck
Quite close to the starboard rail,
Where he could see any slacking off
While we were under sail,
He’d tie the men to the nearest mast
And would whip, before the crew,
Till every man was inflamed and raw
And would plot what they would do.

It fell to me to devise a plan
That everyone agreed,
We had to get rid of this Devil man
It became our only creed,
So I took a rope when I climbed the mast
That was fixed above his head,
Then swung and booted him over the rail
So we thought that he was dead.

The crew then dashed to the starboard side
And they all looked down and cursed,
For Hawkins floated upon the tide,'
It couldn’t be much worse,
He shouted up, ‘This is mutiny!
I’ll flay that man to the bone.’
But all he got were the jeers of the crew
As the Captain sank like a stone.

David Lewis Paget

‘It won’t be much of a Christmas,’
I said to his woman, Kate,
As she met me in the garden,
And opened the garden gate,
I asked how well he was faring
And she answered, ‘Not too well,’
Her eyes were blackened for lack of sleep
She looked like she’d been through hell.

While George lay out on a camper
Trying to get some air,
His lungs were riddled with cancer,
He said that he didn’t care.
‘I’ve had enough of this rotten life
It threw me a sucker punch,
I’ll just be glad when it’s over, mate,
Just think of me out to lunch.’

I couldn’t say he’d get over it,
He’d catch me out in a lie,
The one thing both of us knew right then
Was George was about to die,
They’d given him just a week or so
Till his organs began to fail,
He might just make it to Christmas, but
That was the end of the tale.

But Kate was doing just what she could
To comfort his final days,
She’d come across to his neighbourhood,
When Kate decides, she stays,
They hadn’t ever been love’s young dream
Had parted the year before,
For George was always intolerable
Living with him was war.

And I would try to avert my eyes,
Whenever Kate was around,
I didn’t want her to see me blush
So kept my eyes to the ground,
If only I had got to her first
I’d say to my mirror glass,
But far too late, she was with my mate,
He was way beneath her class.

And even though they had parted,
I couldn’t begin to tell,
My feelings, how they were started
By being within her spell,
For she’d always been his woman,
Been his lover and his mate,
And even now they were parted,
I thought it a little late.

But he called me into the garden
To sit by his camper bed,
And said that he begged my pardon,
He knew he would soon be dead.
‘But I have a gift to give you,
It might be a little late,
But at Christmas time I wish you
Would take care of my darling Kate.’

‘I know that you care about her,
For I’ve seen you blushing and stare,
It’s a year I’ve been without her,
Due to my lack of care,
But I think she’ll come to love you,
You can ask yourself instead,’
For Kate was there in the garden,
And stood there, nodding her head.

David Lewis Paget

We knew that the plane was going to crash,
We plunged through the air, on high,
We probably had five minutes to grieve
A minute to say goodbye,
She clung to me from her window seat
And cried, ‘It’s starting to fray.’
And through the port I could see the wing
As it tore, and twisted away.

‘Why did you make me take this flight?’
She cried, as the others screamed,
‘I could have been happily safe at home
If not for your stupid dream.’
She meant the holiday we had planned
Forever, to take in Rome,
The Coliseum, it still would stand
When they ferried our bodies home.

I felt quite peeved, for I didn’t want
To take in those ancient piles,
But she’d insisted that Rome it was,
I wanted the Grecian Isles.
This wasn’t the time for an argument
So I patted her crying cheek,
I needed to hear her ‘I love you’,
But that would have taken a week.

The plane was spinning, with just one wing
Was heading nose down to the ground,
And all the passengers screamed and cursed,
Stood up, were lurching around.
‘Just get me my bag from the overhead,
It holds all our holiday cash,’
It didn’t dawn on her she’d be dead,
To mention it would have been rash.

‘At least we’re together, Cheryl my love,’
I said, in calming her down.
We’d passed right through the cumulus cloud
So close we were to the ground.
The engine was screaming, the one we had
The emergency door flew wide,
And suddenly Cheryl was torn from her seat,
****** out of the aircraft, and died.

I sat in the blast from the open door,
My heart had stopped in my chest,
I cried, ‘My God! Just let it be quick,
My lover has gone to her rest.’
‘What lover’s that?’ said my Cheryl’s voice,
From the foot of our bed, at home.
‘You mean we’re saved, that we have a choice?
There’s no way we’re going to Rome!’

David Lewis Paget

The sisters Newell were a shining jewel
That would pass my understanding,
We met at night when the moon was white
Out on the communal landing,
One was blonde, was a demi monde
The other brunette to the shoulder,
The legs of the blonde were lean and long
The brunette a little bit older.

I fell in love with them both at once
I think it was what they wanted,
For both, well versed in extravagance
Their ego’s, each were undaunted,
The blonde would stalk in her Baby Doll
Next to her window, extended,
The other, naked, would read a book
Sprawling in view and bed-ended.

The blonde was the first to invite me in,
The other said she felt stranded,
We sat together like kith and kin
It’s lucky that I am left handed,
They asked which one did I like the best,
I said, ‘Now that would be telling.’
And kissed them both on the lips, to test
As the tears in their eyes were welling.

I had the choice, there were two to choose
The blonde had said she was willing,
The brunette said she was mine to lose,
I tossed for them with a shilling.
The blonde, I knew her as Flirty Anne
Picked heads, and lost in the tossing,
The other, I knew as ***** Pam
Was out in the bathroom, flossing.

David Lewis Paget

That brief interlude between
Sleeping and waking,
I pass through each day like
Some dark undertaking,
Where nothing is real, where
I’ve been to or going,
My mind is disordered,
My heartbeat is slowing.

And even the room that I
Enter is swaying,
My eyes are distended my
Brain is nay-saying,
While legs stagger sideways
And crablike in function
Like some leaden corpse treated
To extreme unction.

The wars were all won, or
Were lost in the sleeping,
While everything worthwhile
Would seem to be weeping,
The slate should be cleared by
Each act of purgation,
But I wake each day to
Some strange dissipation.

I often forget simple
Words in our language,
That drive to distraction
And cause me more anguish,
But calm will return when
The evening is making
That brief interlude between
Sleeping and Waking.

David Lewis Paget

It hovered above on the ceiling,
It only would come at night,
My sister said she’d a feeling
It was dark, and was full of fright,
The light would glimmer and slowly fade
As the Moon came over the hill,
The globe grew dimmer in light and shade
Than a candle that flickered still.

I’d lie and I’d stare at the corner
Where the cloud had begun to swirl,
It had little form and no meaning
When first it began to unfurl,
But then came the claws in the ceiling
The eyes in the cloud glowing red,
And Clara would scream and be reeling
With her hands pulled over her head.

I thought that if I could disperse it,
It would run on back to its well,
And perhaps the Devil could curse it
Or find it a place in hell,
I beat at it with a baseball bat
But it seized the bat with its teeth,
And wrenched it out of my wretched hands
With a strength beyond belief.

It grew a cloak and a pair of horns
And roared with an orange flame,
It burnt a patch on the ceiling then
And I saw it had written its name,
‘Askarametch’ it had written there
The demon that lived in our well,
I said to Clara, ‘it won’t be long
I’ll be sending the demon to hell.’

In daylight hours I filled up the well
With bracken and poisonous weeds,
Then as the sun was beginning to fade
I’d add Belladonna seeds,
A gallon of petrol damped it all down
Till the Moon had begun to rise,
Then what I struck had it all lit up
To match the red demon’s eyes.

We never see clouds on the ceiling now
It doesn’t seem able to come,
The only thing is the sulphur smell,
It’s potent, I give you the drum.
It drifts on in from the well outside
And hangs in the bedroom air,
Clara will spray Devil’s Nightcap for days,
It’s better than demons in there.

David Lewis Paget

In one of those fogs of London
I boarded the East End train,
The mist was a yellow, evil smog
And then it began to rain.
I found a compartment, only two
To bother my peaceful ride,
And placed my case at my feet, in place
With my gold-blocked name outside.

The smell of the fog was drifting in
And burning my eyes and throat,
I said to the man, ‘Let fresh air in…’
He sat and buttoned his coat.
‘The air out there is as bad as in,’
He said with a scowl and stare,
‘You might be happy to sit and choke,
The window stays up, I swear.’

I leant well back, and looked at the girl
Who sat there, opposite me,
She wore her skirt right up to the hip,
I stared at her stockinged knee,
Her eyes were bright, an emerald green
But tears I saw on her cheek,
‘This fog,’ she muttered, and wiped them dry,
‘I think it was worse last week.’

‘But London’s always suffered from fog,’
I ventured, ‘Back in the day,
The Ripper used it to hide his crimes,
He used it getting away.’
‘Overblown,’ he said, the man in the coat,
‘There’s many was worse than he,
The blood ran thick in the gutters here
At times in our history.’

‘But he’s the one who never got caught,
You must at least give him that.’
The man slunk down in his corner seat,
Then sat, and played with his hat.
The girl just smiled, and said in a while,
I think you’re right, he’s the one,
I wouldn’t like, on a foggy night
To meet him, minus a gun.’

The man reached into his overcoat
And seized the girl with a sigh,
Holding a cut-throat razor to
Her throat, with a smile so sly.
‘I said I’d never do this again
But I must admit, I lied,
I noticed the name on your carry case,
You’re Jekyll, I see – I’m Hyde!’

David Lewis Paget

He lived in the outer darkness where
You never could see him cry,
With only a lighted candle there
Whenever his eyes were dry,
But I knew him for an evil soul
A troll that waited for you,
To cast me off like a heap of dross
Which is what he’d want you to do.

So you only saw a handsome prince
A hero there in the light,
You told me about the good things that
Your friend had done in your sight,
But you couldn’t see the curling horns
That sprouted out of his head,
Nor even the narrow, squinting eyes
Glowing at night, bright red.

Your image of him was of a lord
Born of a line so high,
While I knew him as a Beelzebub
Who flew in the evening sky.
He often fluttered above my yard
Flinging his barbs at me,
They cut and wounded and hit me hard
With never you there to see.

I felt you slipping away from me
When I saw you huddled with him,
Whispering secret messages
In the hall of the local gym,
I knew that I’d have to take him out
Or risk the loss of your love,
So fashioned a wooden arrow for
One night, when he flew above.

I thought that I’d planned it perfectly
The crossbow hidden outside,
He fluttered over the garden wall
Looking for you, my bride,
I shot him straight through the heart with it,
His chest exploded in light,
I saw, on you, when you bent to him
Your curling horns in the night.

David Lewis Paget

Lavern lived down in the valley
Away from the village folk,
She didn’t want to be seen by them
Playing with eggs and yolk,
And skin of frog, an old dead dog
A toad and the eye of newt,
She only conjured them in the fog
When dressed in her birthday suit.

But I would see her abroad in the woods
From up in the old oak tree,
She flitted naked under a hood
Albeit most carelessly,
She liked to gather her toadstools there
And take her favourite bat,
Clinging onto her long, dark hair
And follow her magical cat.

The mushrooms grown in a Faery Ring
Were an ever present danger,
For goblins gathered them all themselves
For a goblin baby’s manger,
She’d lost an eye in a goblin pie
When he reached on out and plucked it,
She got it back, but the dwarf was sly
In the sauce she’d used, he’d ducked it!

I didn’t mind that she’d got one eye
For her thighs were well developed,
I thought I’d marry her, by and by,
Then she went with Rodney Mellop,
I wandered up to her window-sill
When I heard his sighs and moans,
I thought they must have been making love,
She was hanging up his bones.

I must admit that it calmed me down,
That it put a damper on it,
I’d watched him lie in her *** and drown
As she danced in a pretty bonnet,
His bones she pulled from the boiling stew
And made wind chimes from his femurs,
At night they sound like a xylophone
In a madhouse full of dreamers.

David Lewis Paget

Someone said ‘look to the future
When you have a minute to spare,
For life is a force of nature,’
When I looked, it wasn’t there,
I thought I might see the lights on
But all I could see was dark,
The shutters were on the horizon
There wasn’t a single spark.

But there, back over my shoulder
Was the way that it always was,
When all that I’d ever told her
Was hurrying on to loss,
For love was a broken promise
That followed the same old round,
It failed when I was dishonest
And ended up broken down.

Then time had finally failed me
There wasn’t any to spare,
I’d used up all my allotment
To find there was nothing there,
I stood alone in a corridor
Leading to empty space,
Where far ahead was a mirror for
Reflecting the loss of grace.

There isn’t the time to start again
To mull over gross mistakes,
Making new vows when time allows,
There isn’t the time it takes,
We carry the burden of our fame
If it all amounts to dross,
And all of the failures in each name
Are carved on a headstone cross.

David Lewis Paget

He wandered along the Pullman car
As if he owned the train,
And wore the badge of ‘Conductor’ and
A whistle on a chain,
He carried a block of tickets that
Were printed differently,
With various towns and places from
The inland to the sea.

He’d walk from behind the driver, from
The front up to the back,
His steps in time to the rhythm of
The train, its clicketty-clack,
He wouldn’t look at the passengers
Unless their eyes were strained,
But then would pause with his ticket block
To see which ones remained.

And then, as if he divined the stress
Each passenger went through,
He’d tear off one of the tickets, as
He would, for me or you,
And suddenly they’d be on a beach
Or resting in some town,
And making love to a red-haired *****
Just as the sun went down.

The train continued its journey with
Its steady clicketty-clack,
The passenger sitting limply with
His eyes, empty and black,
While ever the train’s conductor walked
Along the swaying aisle,
Dispensing the tickets on the block
For mile on endless mile.

Then once at their destination he
Would blow a single note,
Using that tiny whistle hanging
Chained down by his throat,
And all of the passengers would wake,
Their eyes no longer black,
Marvelling at the dreams they’d had
While travelling on that track.

If ever you board that certain train
Be sure to be aware,
And look long at the conductor,
As he walks; No, even stare!
Then if he pauses in front of you
Think where you’d like to be,
And watch as he peels your ticket off,
Your ride to ecstasy.

David Lewis Paget

He came one day to the village green
And rented a cottage there,
The village gossips said, ‘have you seen
That guy with the flame red hair?
We know he’s up to some evil scheme
He wouldn’t be up to good,
He goes inside and he’s rarely seen,
He’s bad for the neighbourhood.’

He never went out to work at a job,
They didn’t know how he lived,
He always had funds at the supermart,
‘He must be a crook,’ they believed.
One of them pushed through his letterbox
A message to curdle his fear,
‘Your kind isn’t wanted,’ the message read,
‘So why do you want to live here?’

They hung a bad omen up over his door,
Threw rocks through a window-pane,
Left his milk bottles smashed on the floor,
And did it again and again,
He never seemed flustered or worried at all,
But wandered abroad with a grin,
They thought he set fire to the village hall,
But never could prove it was him.

Then girls were beginning to knock at his door,
And he began letting them in,
They’d stay there for hours, but none could recall
Why tattoos were found on their skin.
For each had a number, embellished in red
And nobody knew what it meant,
The higher the number the shorter the skirt
The answer, it seemed evident.

The mothers, they gathered then, out in the street
And cried ‘leave our daughters alone!
Stop tattooing numbers on arms and on feet,’
The neighbours would hear them all moan.
But he would ignore them and lock himself in,
The guy with the flame red hair,
He’d not venture out till the dark had set in,
And scattered the women out there.

The night came that fathers, with cudgels and belts,
Came down on the house on the green,
‘Come out, take your medicine, bruises and welts,
We know all your crimes are obscene.’
They tried to set fire to the front of his porch
To drive him out into the street,
But he had escaped by the light of his torch
And the silent pit-pat of his feet.

He should have been able to seek his revenge
On this village of trivial minds,
But he was content in the time he had spent
With the daughters of them at the time.
For long after all had forgotten their angst
At that stranger who’d angered them there,
Some seventeen daughters, the pride of the town
Gave birth to a tribe with red hair.

David Lewis Paget

I called her once, then I called again
And I called throughout the night,
There wasn’t a message from Olwen’s pen
Nor the answering ‘ching’ of delight,
I’d begged forever her not to go
But she must have gone and went,
Down to the Fair at Cinders Flo
And into the strongman’s tent.

We’d been together to see the Fair
When the sun was riding high,
And all the rides and the Ferris Wheel
Were reeling up in the sky,
We rolled a ball at the grinning clowns
And we won a Teddy Bear,
The hairy woman and legless man,
All of the freaks were there.

But then we got to the Strongman’s tent
And I saw her eyes go wide,
He picked her up with a single hand
And I’ll swear that Olwen sighed,
I found I couldn’t drag her away,
She paid for a second show,
And after stroking his biceps once
She waved for me to go.

I had to drag her away from there
Or she would have stayed all day,
‘What do you find so interesting?’
I finally had to say.
‘Isn’t he such a mighty man
And his muscles ripple so,
He makes me feel like I want to squeal
Like a Tarzan’s Jane, you know.’

I finally went to Cinders Flo
In the middle of the night,
Thinking the end of me and Olwen
Seemed to be in sight,
I got to his tent, and there she was,
A-stare, a look aghast,
For what she had woken up was slim,
She saw the truth at last.

For there hanging up within the tent
Was the Strongman’s muscle suit,
With every ripple and every bulge
And a chest that was hirsute,
But he sat up in his lonely bed
And was pale and thin and white,
With a certain wiry toughness, though
He could never cause delight.

I think that it cured my Olwen though
She’s never been so still,
She spends her mornings and afternoons
Hung over the window-sill,
I try to get her to walk with me
But she can’t, she says, she hates,
She’s staring down at the guy next door
As he’s working out, with weights.

David Lewis Paget

You said that you came from Angel Dust
When I saw you emerge from mist,
Your hair was covered with spangles, and
Gold bangles dangled each wrist,
Your bare feet trampled the Autumn leaves
Whose gold reflected on high,
The rest of you, like some ancient rust,
That’s when I knew you’d die.

And then I awoke and saw you there
Asleep in our giant bed,
All thoughts of a gold goddess were fairly
Skittering from my head,
Your breath, it was long and laboured, and
Your hair, it was falling out,
With tufts of it on the pillow there
The chemo had left no doubt.

And all the love that I had for you
Poured out of my aching heart,
At least I knew that you loved me too,
You’d said we would never part,
But nobody told this grim disease
That came to you in a flood,
To desecrate your perfection, then
To end with you coughing blood.

You begged to me that I end it, that
I put out the final light,
That thing I loved, that I rend it, that
You wouldn’t put up a fight,
I wept as I kissed you one last time
Held on till I stopped your breath,
And felt you fall from me, after all
Through the final stages of death.

And then in the early morning as
I stood distraught by the bed,
I thought that I saw you rise again
Though I knew you were surely dead,
And I thought that you came from Angel Dust
When you wandered into the mist,
For your hair was covered with spangles, and
Gold bangles dangled each wrist.

David Lewis Paget

I was staring at the horizon on
A clear and balmy day,
The sky was blue and the sea a type
Of aquamarine in the bay,
There wasn’t a sign of storm or squall
Till the sunset turned dull red,
And then the sky, of a sudden turned
From blue to the grey of lead.

And you were stood there, Geraldine
With your collar turned up high,
You shivered once, then looked around
Took note of the darkening sky,
‘Is that a barque or a barquentine
I see ******* to the pier?’
And slowly, filtering into my view
Was a ship that wasn’t there.

It hadn’t been there all afternoon
It hadn’t sailed into the bay,
I’m sure that I would have noticed if
It was fifteen miles away,
But there it sat with its stays and sails
Reefed in and sitting becalmed,
But dark and ever so threatening
I was right to feel alarmed.

Then Geraldine ran along the pier,
I was trying to call her back,
When lightning lit the sky above
With a sudden tumultuous crack,
She turned just once and she called to me:
‘Don’t follow, it’s my fate!
The ship’s the Admiral Benbow,
I’m a hundred years too late.’

She ran, and her coat flew out behind
Like an ancient type of cape,
And on the deck of the barquentine
Were men, with mouths agape,
A single plank lay across the pier
And up to the wooden bow,
Which Geraldine clambered up to board
While I stood, and wondered how?

No sooner was she aboard, than then
The men gave up a cheer,
And she I saw in the arms of one,
A brigand privateer,
She waved just once, then she went below
To my ever present pain,
The love of my life, my Geraldine,
I never saw again.

The wind blew up and the rain came down
And the barque then raised its sails,
Was cast adrift in a heaving sea
In that coastal port of Wales,
And then I swear, the Captain came
To the bow, and then he leered,
And by the time that I turned around
That barque had disappeared.

David Lewis Paget

We went to sit at the front of the train
In seeking that extra thrill,
Marlene and me, and a guy called Kane
Who came from Mulberry Hill,
I hadn’t known him at all till then
He said that he knew Marlene,
And she had smirked when he said he knew,
She didn’t know that I’d seen.

Now this was one of those super trains
And we knew how fast it could go,
Over two hundred clicks, they said,
They certainly put on a show,
We sat in the very front window seat
Could see where the driver sat,
He wore a coat of orange and green,
A ridiculous pork pie hat.

Well, finally someone had signalled ‘Go’
And we rumbled off down the line,
To start, the engine was going slow
The driver had plenty of time,
But then, once out in the countryside
He must have been feeling the heat,
For it went so fast, down the track at last
It threw us back into the seat.

The trees and the meadows were flashing by,
No sooner there, they were gone
The little farms and the rustic barns
Like the gardens of Babylon,
Marlene was pale, I looked at her face
And Kane he was almost white,
‘I think we’d better move back,’ he said,
‘I’d like to get home tonight.’

I said I’d stay, when they both got up
And moved to the back of the car,
I didn’t want to give in to fright
We wouldn’t be travelling far,
But we missed a stop, went roaring through
And I looked where the driver sat,
He was slumped on over the speed controls
With his pork pie hat in his lap.

When the speedo said a hundred and ten
I first thought of throwing up,
It reached a hundred and ninety when
I did, in a paper cup,
The driver lay there, dead on the stick
As far as anyone knew,
We couldn’t get into his cab to check
And as for the train, it flew.

I joined the others, up at the back
And wrapped myself round a pole,
So when the rescuers got to me
At least they would find me whole.
The others stood, and clung to a rail
That passed up over their heads,
I said, ‘Get down, that metal will fail
And both of you end up dead.’

They wouldn’t budge in their deadly funk
Their eyes were popping and white,
We hit the buffers at General Trunk
And both took off in their flight.
Kane headfirst like an arrow flew,
Marlene went more like a ball,
So where Kane went through the windscreen first
The hole was narrow and small.

Marlene, there wasn’t a piece intact,
A rescuer known as Krips,
Said he had just been checking around
And found her child-bearing hips.
I got a terrible rupture where
The pole almost cut me in half,
Since then, I don’t ever travel by train
But stick to a horse and cart.

David Lewis Paget

I sit in the silence of my room
And stare at the stucco walls,
From morning glare to the evening gloom
The coming despair appals,
For I know that it’s sneaking up on me
That memory of your face,
So cold and still in the evening chill
And pale, once you’d run your race.

You always gave me a joyful wave
And said you’d be there for me,
But what you gave from a shallow grave
Was only more misery.
You couldn’t reach out to hold my hand
As you did in the days before,
When once a kiss was the source of bliss
But of kissing, there was no more.

Your skin was an alabaster white
Once your blood had ceased to flow,
Where was the warmth when I held you tight
On those nights, so long ago?
And where the spark that shone at your eyes
From the recess of your soul?
It leaves the eyes when a lover dies
And the touch of the skin is cold.

But now you form on the stucco wall
And wave, like you waved to me,
Before you ran from the narrow hall
And out by the willow tree,
A car came leaping into the room
As it did, and it knocked you down,
It’s then I cradled you in my arms
Like a man who’s about to drown.

I see these visions, day after day
When I stare too long at the wall,
I cry and weep, and I get no sleep
When I dream of your funeral,
I reach right into the plaster where
I think I can touch your face,
But only can feel the stone cold wall
Of another time and place.

David Lewis Paget

I said that there only were ninety steps
To the drop at the edge of the cliff,
As long as she didn’t take ninety one,
She wouldn’t end up as a stiff.
She’d only been blind since the accident
When the car got away from me,
Went rolling, gambolling on down the hill
And ending up flat by a tree.

And Cindy went straight through the windscreen
She shattered the glass she went through,
She screamed out to me that she couldn’t see,
She cried, ‘I’m just looking for you!’
But I was sat pinned by the steering wheel
I couldn’t get out if I tried,
I said, ‘Don’t distress, they’ll fix you up yet,’
One look at her eyes said I lied.

We came up to move in to ‘Ocean View’,
The house overlooking the sea,
I thought that the air would be good for us,
And the view would be okay for me.
I paced out the steps to the edge of the cliff
And reported to Cindy as such,
As long as she kept to her boundary
She wouldn’t fall over - (Not much!)

It isn’t much fun when your partner is blind
When everything has to be done,
She took it for granted that I wouldn’t mind
So sat on the porch in the sun.
I washed and I cooked and I tidied the house,
While she took her lessons in braille,
My life wasn’t funny, but she had the money,
I felt I was living in jail.

I walked with her right to the edge of the cliff
But always stopped seven steps short,
I said, ‘When you venture away from the house,
Remember the cliff is due North.’
I tried to impress it was safer to stay
Within ninety steps from the edge,
What I hadn’t told, as my blood had run cold
It was Eighty Eight steps to the ledge.

They’d say it was ******, I’d say it was fate
If she finally fell from the cliff,
I would say, ‘what the odds, it was up to the gods,’
And ‘life, it was full of ‘what if?’
My plans came to nothing, she drowned in the bath
But I still felt as guilty as sin,
I knew I’d had ****** there deep in my heart
And that evil is doing me in!

David Lewis Paget

Why did I fall in love with you,
There’s thousands more would have loved me too,
But love like yours is an evil brew,
While mine is true, and a man thing.

How could I see your lovely face
And think it harboured a state of grace
When all it hid was a can of mace
That drove me mad in decanting.

I should have sought your history
That kept you hidden in mystery,
For though I followed you wistfully
I never uncovered the bantling.

What is the hold you have on me
That keeps me wanting you wretchedly
Long after your love has done with me
And lost itself in your canting.

You may have coined a gypsy curse
That got to my heart, and hurt it first,
But you’re without love, and what is worse
Love’s without you in your ranting.

David Lewis Paget

The old man sat in a musty room
And his eyes peered on outside,
Where trees were lost in the evening gloom
With the rest of the countryside,
He watched the woman, tied to a tree
As she shook her golden hair,
And cried again, so piteously
In the essence of despair.

There weren’t so many, roaming and free
He thought, in the cruel world,
Not more than a few in captivity
And some, they called them ‘a girl’,
He thought of his faded mother then
Before they took her away,
And told him then, he was only ten
That they needed her for ‘play’.

He’d caught this one in a rabbit trap
As she crept in the depth of the wood,
Her hair was gold but her eyes were black
And she’d fought him, well and good,
He bound her wrists and shackled her feet
Before he could let her be,
Then carried her back to his tiny shack
And tied her fast to a tree.

He didn’t know what to do with her
He’d never had one alone,
Maybe she’d make good eating when
He stripped her down to the bone,
Out in the night he tore her dress
When taking her clothing down,
Then stood amazed with his eyebrows raised
At the extra flesh he found.

She couldn’t speak in his language then
But only could scream and cry,
He hadn’t hurt or abused her, when
She glared, and spat in his eye,
So he filled up the ancient cooking ***
And he brought her slow to the boil,
Then when she was dead, he took her head
In hopes that her meat not spoil.

David Lewis Paget

We’ve navigated the old canals
Since the roads were blocked with cars,
And we were stuck when the highway truck
Rolled over the top of ours,
They poured a layer of bitumen
Across the roofs of them all,
Then crushed them under a steam roller
Until they were flat, and small.

They didn’t bother to pull them out
The ones who were trapped inside,
Just wrote them off the accounting books
And made a note that they’d died,
They needed to halve the ones who lived
Or the earth would sputter in space,
Spinning across that great divide
With the death of the human race.

But we got out, and we made a break
For the fields and the old canals,
And found a deserted barge afloat
Thanks to the help of pals,
We got some paint and we cleaned it up,
Made it all right to roam,
Then once inside it was quite a ride
And started to feel like home.

Most of the waterways were clear
With some of them overgrown,
I’d send Gwen Darling back to the rear
To steer while the weeds were mown,
I’d scythe them out of the way ahead
And steer the barge through the gap,
Then rest at night by a harvest moon
With Darling Gwen on my lap.

I’d bag a hare on a winter’s night
And steal the milk from a cow,
The earth was dying, but we survived
And Gwen kept asking me how?
‘We’re going back to the way it was
Before computers and such,
Before the Banks had us by the throat
When love was lived by a touch.’

So still we wander across the land
As they did in the days of old,
Those ancient barges, covered in dust
But laden, carrying coal,
There’s a merry fire on a metal hearth
And an oven, full of a goose,
And a woman’s wiles, to gladden my heart
As her stays are coming loose.

David Lewis Paget

I said that we shouldn’t place it there
When first we surveyed the town,
The only place for the dead, I said,
Is six feet underground,
They shouldn’t be way up there on a hill
When it rains, their bones will leach,
And run down into the drinking water
Pumped on up from the beach.

But no, they wouldn’t listen to me,
The Town and the Council ****,
He said, ‘we’ll set it up in the trees
I think that that will work.’
So the town was built on the valley floor
And the dead stuck up on the hill,
I told them what I had said before
When the first became so ill.

The older ones were the first to go
They’d fade away in the gloom,
There wasn't enough flesh on their bones
To warrant a marble tomb.
But then the young had begun to fade
Were beginning to be so ill,
That soon the hearses making their way
Were all lined up on the hill.

The population began to grow
But not down there in the town,
The figures seemed to reflect and show
They were six foot underground,
And then the copse of surrounding trees
Began to glow in the night,
Give off a pale evanescent glow
Some said was blue, others white.

When lightning struck in that grove of trees
It forked and struck on the hill,
And burst some bodies, with their disease
From coffins, wriggling still.
I heard reports of a walking corpse
That tried to kick in a door,
And when they saw who the corpse had been
They found he’d lived there before.

I said that we shouldn’t place it there
When first we surveyed the town,
The only place for the dead, I said,
Is six feet underground.
The town has paid for the Council ****
Who buries them up there still,
On days that the dead come walking down
From the cemetery, up on the hill.

David Lewis Paget

‘All that I do is eat and sleep,’
The surly monster said,
Chewing away on a piece of thigh
From the woman in his bed,
He sat in the tower of Castle Grymm
And surveyed the countryside,
And the pile of bones by the Castle walls
That he’d tossed, once they had died.

His hair was clean but his skin was green
As a tear squeezed from his eye,
Pondering what his bride might be
And who, and where, and why,
The villagers sent him virgins up
But they weren’t quite to his taste,
A single bite and they screamed in fright
So he ate the rest in haste.

His goblins scoured the countryside
For a girl with golden hair,
The myth had said she would be misled
And her steps would lead her there,
But every blonde in the neighborhood
Had fled, as if forewarned,
Leaving only the russet crop
Or the brunette’s that he scorned.

They printed a notice in the town
And pasted on every wall,
It said that Igor would never eat,
Not once, a blonde, at all.
It said that he wanted just one bride
A blonde, to stop his moans,
But everyone saw the Castle walls
And the heap of gnawed on bones.

He even offered a huge reward
For any who’d bring him in,
The golden girl to his Grymm old world
He would give them gold to spin,
So some with greed in their eyes set out
To trap a golden girl,
And drag her up to the Castle Grymm,
That girl was known as Pearl.

Somebody said they were on their way
So she painted on her skin,
What some old witch said would bewitch
Igor and the Brothers Grymm,
They dragged her up to the topmost tower
Where the monster kept his bed,
And chained her up in his inner bower
Till the monster could be fed.

His eyes had gleamed when he saw the sheen
Of her silken golden hair,
He reached on down beneath her gown
Where he felt her skin so fair,
She lay and shuddered within his bed
As he bent to take a lick,
Then screamed a note as he clutched his throat
And doubled up, was sick.

They say Igor let out a roar
Like the folks had never heard,
He’d only munched on his own before
Wouldn’t mutter a single word,
But now he jumped from the parapet
With his mouth and his throat on fire,
To land himself on the pile of bones
That would be his funeral pyre.

So here is the nub of the story,
If you’re looking for a bride,
Forget about the colour of hair
For they’re all the same inside,
And when you come to that bridal night
Just be careful who you pick,
Or give her a scrub in that wedding tub
Before you begin to lick.

David Lewis Paget

She didn’t want her to be with him,
She wanted Anne for herself,
Since ever he had been on the scene
It was like she was on the shelf.
Anne never called for a girl’s night out
As she’d done in the days before,
So tears had streamed in her nightmare dreams
And Cathy had said, ‘it’s war!’

She painted her lips and shortened her skirt
And tied her hair in a plait,
The hair that now was a lustrous blonde
Not the straggly brown of a rat,
She sprayed some perfume under her arms
And more down under her skirt,
Then pulled on stockings with straightened seams,
A suspender belt that hurt.

She rouged her cheeks till she looked quite flushed
Like an innocent girl at play,
So when she wanted, it seemed she blushed
Pretend to be looking away,
Mascara darkened her cunning eyes
And dimples formed in each cheek,
A pencil arched where she’d plucked each brow
And her lips would pout when she’d speak.

She tried it out when she went to town
And bumped right into her friend,
For he was hanging on Annie’s arm
Like a drunken man on the mend,
He clung so tight it was surely love
She’d be lucky to tear them apart,
And Annie smiled as she told her friend,
‘My man has a lovely heart.’

But Cathy stood in the fellow’s way
Her bodice spilling her *******,
He seemed to stare at  her open cleavage
This was the ultimate test,
He didn’t flinch then or look away
And Annie gave her a frown,
But patted him on the wrist, to say,
‘He seems to be looking down.’

Cathy turned as to walk away
But then looked down at her shoe,
And bent right over, her skirt rode up
He looked, but what do you do?
‘You should be careful,’ then Annie said,
‘You’ll show someone your behind,
It doesn’t matter to me, or he,
My darling lover is blind!’

David Lewis Paget

Often I sit at the soul’s soft reach
Where the tide sweeps in to a lonely beach,
Where the rollers roll and the breakers break
To tug at the strings of an old heartache.

Where the swell will rise till it reaches the sky
When it breaks with the spume, so white and high,
To race to the shore with a fume and a roar
Then retreats to the sea as it will, once more.

And then comes the girl I see in my dreams
As she wades in the tide to the waist, it seems,
I watch as she walks, her hair flying free
Her shawl dripping wet with the spray from the sea.

And each time I see her, down at the shore
I think of some maiden from old folk lore,
Her skirt in the water right up to the knee
She leans at the wind, but she never sees me.

One day he rose from the spume and the spray
A man grim-faced with his hair so grey,
He lurched from the water and reached for her wrist,
And when she resisted, he gave it a twist.

Then she called out with a voice like a bell
A sound, if you like, like a cockleshell,
I heard her cry he should let her be,
Not plague her with love, she’d like to be free.

I knew I should help, but the tide was high,
And where I was sat it was warm and dry,
He dragged her through rollers that covered her head
As far as I know, that girl must be dead.

So often I sit at the soul’s soft reach
Where the tide sweeps in to a lonely beach,
Where the rollers roll and the breakers break
To tug at the strings of an old heartache.

David Lewis Paget

The rain swiftly flowed down the gutters,
The thunder roared out overhead,
The wind whistled in through the falling leaves
Of the trees that were thought to be dead,
And Annie stared out of the window
Was trapped at the height of the storm,
She should have been down at the hospital,
Her baby was soon to be born.

But she saw that the driveway was empty,
For Tom had gone out with the car,
She hoped and she prayed that he’d reappear
For surely he hadn’t gone far.
Contractions were now just a minute apart
That she timed on the clock on the wall,
And let out a moan when the clock chimed a tone
She knew she was weak, and might fall.

She’d not really wanted this baby,
Had argued with Tom when he came,
The shadow that climbed through her window that night
Had brought her perpetual shame,
It wasn’t as if she had known him,
He came under cover of night,
Then planted within her his darkness,
She felt there was something not right.

And now there was no-one to help her,
No nurse or midwife at her bed,
The doctor expected a troubled birth
To go by the things that he said,
And now the involuntary pushing
That ****** her down onto the floor,
Three fingers dilated, the birth that she hated
Would leave her both chastened and sore.

The child started coming despite her,
She screamed as the head became free,
Then felt as if claws and the ripping of jaws
Were tearing her clear to the knee,
But then it lay out on the carpet,
Its little dark face creased with joy,
And Tom, looking down, had said with a frown,
‘It has horns, but at least, it’s boy!’

David Lewis Paget

The sculptured mermaid hung at the prow,
And breasted the highest waves,
Her hair flew back from the salt and spray
Was carved from some wooden staves,
She never smiled in a cruel sea
But watched for the distant shore,
In hopes that one day, try as they may
They’d leave her behind once more.

She’d had enough of the fuming foam
Of the white capped waves by the shore,
The heaving swell made her feel unwell
And each storm brought a taste of Thor.
She’d once been used to a merchant’s lot
Had sailed to the East and West,
Her arm was shattered by cannon shot
When the French attacked at Brest.

But now she was tied to a Man-of-War
She couldn’t escape her fate,
She knew she’d end on the ocean floor
If support was a little late,
Her skirt was ragged, was chipped and torn
And her paint beginning to fade,
She lived in dread of the Dutchmen’s horn
Or the sound of a fusillade.

The only time she was known to smile
Was back in the port once more,
She’d meet and greet with all of her friends
The carved figureheads of war,
She’d will the ship run into the pier
To tear her away for good,
And hope the break would be clean and sheer
To pamper her aching wood.

The salt and damp got into her pores,
The rot set into her bones,
Then one fine day when a world away
She dropped to a bed of stones.
She sits below where the sailors go
When their ships cast them to the deep,
And as they pass she will smile at last
As they enter their endless sleep.

David Lewis Paget

He caught my eye as he stared to sea,
I noticed his shoulders heave,
And tears were flowing so fast and free
More than you would believe,
He wasn’t young, but was not too old
To be caught in the pangs of love,
I thought I’d see what his fortune told
So I called to him from above.

I leant right over the balcony
Looked down at the old sea wall,
And called out ‘Friend, would your heartache mend,
Is there much I can do at all?’
He turned and twisted his face to me
And I saw the pain in his eyes,
And round his mouth was the misery
He’d caught from all of her lies.

‘I wish I’d never believed her spin,
She swore that she loved me true,
She opened her heart and she asked me in,
What was a man to do?
She taught me things that I didn’t know
She let me into her world,
A world of stockings and petticoats
And the sweet perfume of a girl.’

I thought that I was a lucky man
To have a wife such as mine,
Who’d wait at home and would hold my hand
And smile with a look divine.
We’d sworn our vows in the little church
That sat way back on the hill,
‘Do you take Annie-gelina now?’
She said that she would take Will.

‘So what is it turned your world about,’
I asked the man down below,
I thought to get all the story straight
As he was turning to go.
‘She said she was married, I’d have to go
Though she’d never said it before,
I couldn’t believe that my Annie-gelina
Was simply a painted *****.’

David Lewis Paget

She kept him out in the garden shed
Where her sisters wouldn’t see,
He’d not been once in her upstairs bed
If they saw, she’d say, ‘Who me?’
He hadn’t come from her neighbourhood
So he wasn’t quite her class,
Whenever they met, he’d be upset
Like walking on broken glass.

He wasn’t known to her wealthy friends
Her folks or her peers at all,
If they came by she would go all shy
And gaze at a cold brick wall,
While he made out that he wasn’t there
Would hum and look at the sky,
She made him stare like he didn’t care
Or was merely passing by.

But deep down things were beginning to hurt
As he felt each little slight,
Like when she came to the garden shed
For her love feast every night,
She’d bring her cushions and lay her down
As she offered up her breast,
Then pick the cushions up off the ground
To take, once she had dressed.

She didn’t want to be seen with him
She’d say, ‘It can’t be done,
My friends would freak and would think me weak
If they knew what’s going on,’
She said he’d have to be patient, that
It all would be all right,
‘The time will come when I’ll have to tell
But it just won’t be tonight.’

Her sister came to her room one day
With a new bow in her hair,
Her hands had shook with excitement
And that made her sister stare,
‘You’ll not believe what I found today
And I took into my bed,
The greatest love of my life, and he
Was sat in the garden shed.’

David Lewis Paget

The brook at the end of the garden
Would gurgle and gush through the weeds,
Would ripple and plash in the morning sun
Like a spirit with spiritual needs,
I’d play as a child with my paper boats
As they twisted and twirled on the stream,
Not knowing the danger my sister faced
As she paddled barefoot in a dream.

For under the water and in the weeds
Was the face of a Grindylow,
He’d stare long up at my sister’s legs
From his weedbed, down below,
I should have known and I should have warned
If I’d known he lay down there,
Ruling the brook from his silver throne
But I didn’t, I declare.

I didn’t then, till I saw one day
His face in the willow shade,
Reflected up on the water course
Like a shadow God had made,
He wore a sinister smile that turned
The edge of his mouth to scorn,
And eyes that pierced as Deirdre passed
Her legs quite bare at the dawn.

I said, ‘You walked by the river god
And he stared right up your skirt,’
But Deirdre frowned, stared at the ground
I thought that she must feel hurt.
She kept on paddling in the brook
Walked out by the willow tree,
And two long arms then pulled her down
Rose out of the brook, by me.

I hadn’t the time to scream or cry
Her hair went into the brook,
Quick as a wink, she made no sound
I dashed to the tree to look,
And though the water was inches deep
Its depth had taken the girl,
Down through the weeds where the Dryads weep
With the water starting to whirl.

The brook still bubbles and gurgles there
Will ripple and plash in the weeds,
But I won’t go where I know below
My sister lies in the reeds,
She must have married the Grindylow
For she never came back to see,
If I was there in the morning air,
If anything happened to me?

David Lewis Paget

They said that he lived in the tunnel
That burrowed right into the hill,
That once saw a belching funnel
Of sulphur and black clouds spill,
The train on the iron railway
That chuffed its way into the past,
To just leave the eerie tunnel,
Smoke blackened and silent at last.

In closing the barbed wire entrance
To keep all the children at bay,
They’d come to the end, in repentance,
The end of the steam railway,
It lived in the lost generations
In memories lost to the young,
In dreams and in steam in the stations
The old locomotives lived on.

But something lived deep in the tunnel
That hadn’t been there long before,
A product of sulphur and brimstone,
A thing with a terrible roar,
It wandered at night in the meadows,
It tore the throats out of the sheep,
And left pools of blood by the hedgerows,
Returned to the tunnel, to sleep.

The town held a council of elders
The ones who remembered the train,
‘We have to get rid of the monster,
It comes out again and again,’
‘I think that the monster is lonely,’
Said one of them, in a remark,
‘He needs to be soothed to be healthy,
We’ll lure him out into the Park.’

They thought of the spinster called Mary,
A woman not gifted with looks,
In truth she was ugly and hairy,
She buried her head in her books,
‘She’d do very well for a monster,’
They all of them seemed to agree,
And rolled her in lashings of sulphur
And brimstone for her pedigree.

They tied her just outside the entrance
Attached to barbed wire in the fence,
The tunnel grew dark as an ulcer,
Both she and the townsfolk were tense,
The monster came out and he saw her
And made sniffing sounds in the dark,
And Mary had gone in the morning,
Back into the tunnel, not Park.

And now, when the roar of the monster
Is heard, there’s no gutting of sheep,
But merely a purr like a hamster,
That says he is going to sleep,
As a man needs the love of his woman
So a monster has needs to be quelled,
And it seems ugly Mary is happy
To be with the monster from Hell.

David Lewis Paget

He got to the top of the mountain
And he saw the shadow of God,
Then he heard it mutter, and shouting
‘Will you heed the reck of the rod.’
Then he fell on his face in horror
When he saw the burning bush,
And he said, ‘I’ll begin tomorrow,
Don’t be in such a rush.’

He headed down from the mountain
And his face was strained and grey,
He stood by the edge of a fountain,
Said ‘I’ve come to make your day.’
He saw the villagers gathered
And he said, ‘New rules from God,
They’ll clatter down from the mountain
And will make you reck his rod.’

And then the first of the tablets
Came rolling into the square,
Engraved with a form of writing
That they’d never seen out there,
They asked the man to explain it,
And he thought, ‘this might be fun,’
‘No matter what you might gain by it,
Don’t ever design a gun!’

The wise men nodded so wisely,
And the dumb ones just looked glum,
Whatever they knew, knew slightly,
They’d never heard of a gun,
The second tablet tumbled down
From somewhere up on the mountain,
It bounced and reared and fell right in
To the water, deep in the fountain.

‘All should be baptised here, it said
By jumping into the water,
But know you’ll be married here instead
If you jump with somebody’s daughter.’
More tablets rolled down the mountainside
To quick for any to count them,
And some were crushed in the awful rush,
The ones that had tried to mount them.

‘You mustn’t commit adultery
Unless you’re adults in play,
And then when you swap your wives about
It’s only for just one day,
The seventh tablet deals with death
And what you should do, or oughta,
After you ****, just take a breath
Then go for a general slaughter.’

The man went back to the mountain top
And he sought the shadow of God,
‘Got all the tablets, thanks my friend,
But isn’t it rather odd?
I couldn’t make out a word they said,
They passeth my understanding.’
‘Don’t call me your friend, you slimy sod,
The Devil wants you, for branding!’

David Lewis Paget

They said that the ocean was rising
It would soon overwhelm the land,
While I lived down on the valley floor
Below the sea and the sand,
The only thing that had kept us dry
Was a narrow band of ground,
Between a couple of mountainsides
In a long protective mound.

There were others lived in the valley
It was like an ancient clan,
That had hung on tight to its own birthright
Since before the world began,
While the fathers ruled for the daughters
That they may not look aside,
They could only marry within the clan
If they’d call themselves a bride.

But I was a rank outsider,
I could look, but couldn’t touch,
I tortured myself with Geraldine
Who flaunted herself so much.
Her skin was the texture of silk and cream
And her voice the trill of the thrush,
She’d bare her ******* till she knew I’d seen
Then laugh when she made me blush.

But Geraldine had a father, Roy,
Who was rough, and high in the clan,
He’d single me out and say, ‘You boy,
Your eyes are straying again!
You’d better not look at Geraldine
She’s not intended for you,
I’ll marry her to a real man
That’s what she’d want me to do.’

He’d threaten to beat me with the staff
That kept Geraldine in line,
I thought, she’d never be marked like that
If ever the girl was mine,
But fate lay just round the corner then
With storm clouds tumbling through,
And gale winds whipping the breakers up
In a high tide whirl of a stew.

The mound was breached in the early morn
And carried away like a dam,
Suddenly water was everywhere
I reached for my boots, and ran,
The whole of the ocean seemed to flow
Right down to the valley floor,
With most of the cottages swept away
The clan, it seemed, was no more.

I heard her crying out in the flood
Reached out as she floated by,
And Geraldine had clung onto me,
Her father would drown, and die.
We fought our way to the higher ground
And we saw our homes subside,
Buried forever beneath the flood
But I made the girl my bride.

David Lewis Paget

Elizabeth Warr was the woman next door,
They called her a witch and a hag,
We lived in a lane that was called ‘Little Payne’
Though what there was lived in her bag,
She carried a hammer, a sharp bladed knife
A corkscrew and two leather twists,
The corkscrew she carried for putting out eyes,
The leather for binding of wrists.

She’d been more than sane up until the back lane
Had revealed that her daughter was courting,
Who’d never told anyone who she had met
Till they found her the following morning,
But she had been ravaged, her body was savaged
Her skirt was pulled over her head,
And blood ran in rivulets down to her ankles
Elizabeth’s daughter was dead.

And that’s when she swore that revenge would be hers
As she haunted the back lanes and alleys,
Carting the murderous tools in her bag
And noting who dillies and dallies,
‘He’ll try it again, and I will be there,’
She announced to her friends and her neighbours,
‘They always return to the scene of the crime
And the place of their murderous labours.’

The months had gone by with barely a sign
He’d ever come back to the midden,
With no-one attacked, he hadn't looked back
So guessing the culprit, forbidden.
But then on a line in the communal yard
A scarf fluttered high on the line,
Elizabeth saw it and reached out and caught it
And muttered, ‘I know that, it’s mine!’

Her daughter had borrowed that scarf for one night
The night that she’d thought to go courting,
And then in the horror, the fear and the fright
The scarf wasn’t there in the morning.
Elizabeth watched who collected the scarf
The mother of Alan John Sidden,
Then carried her bag to the rear of the park
While she waited for dark, to be hidden.

They say there were screams and loud howls in the dark
On that night in the early September,
And smoke in the trees that would waft in the breeze
Along with some foul smelling embers,
When Sidden was found, what was left, on the ground
In the morning, his throat cut, it’s true,
They said that his eyes were a gruesome surprise
They’d been taken by some sort of *****.

David Lewis Paget

I didn’t think I’d be affected,
I thought I could just be aware,
When she left me for another man
I thought I could sit and stare,
Could sit and stare as he held her hand
Could stare as he touched her knee,
And not be moved when another man
Roamed over my territory.

We’d been together forever
But things had fallen apart,
There’d been a change in the weather
A canker, aimed at the heart,
The words we said became twisted,
We fired our arrows of pain,
And all our wrongs became listed
Our pleas were met with disdain.

I slept alone in the parlour,
She slept alone in the bed,
And life itself became harder
Despite that little was said,
She started seeing her friends alone
While I got on with my life,
A lonely desert became our home
No place for husband or wife.

And that was when she had met him,
The man who would take my place,
She laughed with him as she’d laughed with me
Back when, in my memory’s trace,
The pain would hit as I’d sit and stare
When she balanced, and sat on his knee,
While running her fingers through his hair,
She never did that with me!

She’d never done that, or a dozen things
That she suddenly started to do,
But like a bird that had found its wings
She suddenly woke, and flew,
That’s when I woke to the simple truth
That she’d never been right with me,
I walked away from the pain that day
And said, ‘I’m setting you free!’

David Lewis Paget

The Queen stepped ahead of the gun carriage
That bore the country’s king,
He’d died, they said, in the early hours
In the palace’s east wing,
And now he rode in a state of grace
As the people lined his way,
His coffin high on the gun carriage
Pulled by a pair of greys.

The Queen was hid by a widow’s veil
That covered the sovereign’s face,
It stopped them seeing the evil smile
Hidden behind the lace,
For way behind in a carriage, mad
With power, and bedecked with rings,
And wearing the crown his father had
He was now, ‘Long live the King!’

The Horse Guards led the procession with
Their sabres raised to the sky,
Then came the Dukes and Duchesses
And never an eye was dry,
The King who died was a pleasant king
And beloved of the people’s grace,
So thousands of flags were waved for him
As he travelled along that place.

Then as they reached Horse Guards Parade
The gun carriage gave a lurch,
It hadn’t been fixed too firmly when
They set it up at the church,
The coffin came flying off the top
Flew open and hit the ground,
That’s when a pile of pale white bones
Were scattered about and around.

And rising up from a mutter, there
Was a roar from the waiting crowd,
It started off with a stutter, then
With a bellowing rage, aloud,
A pile of bones from a new dead king
Just what were they trying to prove?
The Queen was seized by the angry crowd
And her widow’s veil removed.

The Queen with platitudes, tried to speak
But her words were heard in vain,
The people wanted their funeral
There was no way to explain,
They set the coffin back where it was
And ignored her screams and cries,
A single nail in the coffin lid
And a royal to despise.

Then all the way to the cemetery
The people pulled the Queen,
Safe on top of the gun carriage
And only a muffled scream,
The King, arrested, was buried first
In a hole, a deeper drop,
And then his mother, as would beseem
In her coffin, on the top.

And all the while the old king sat
On a terrace in Tuscany,
Sampling all the local wines
And savouring to be free,
Never again to hear the whine
Of that dreadful troll, the Queen,
Or kissing another baby’s head,
Life was but a dream!

David Lewis Paget

She turned up here on my doorstep
Completely out of the blue,
She didn’t say where she was coming from
Or where she was going to,
She carried a single paperback
And I think it carried his name,
I tried to see, but she held it back,
The book had a title, ‘Shame!’

I should have been warned by that single word
And barred the girl at the door,
She didn’t say, or I never heard
Just what she was looking for,
She stepped inside, and pushed me away
And walked with a silent tread,
Along the hall where the stairway lay
And muttered just one word, ‘Bed’.

She found the room on the upper floor
That saw the occasional guest,
With a single bed and a counterpane
And a walnut, inlaid chest.
She went to bed and she fell asleep
Nor even kicked off a shoe,
I stood perplexed on the landing there
Not knowing what I should do.

I waited for her till she awoke
Then headed her off at the stairs,
‘What did you mean by coming here
Our guests are often in pairs.’
‘I meant to challenge your friend, my ex,
He left me mired in pain,
You well should know him, his name is Rex,
He wrote this novel called ‘Shame!’

Then Rex had entered and faced the stair
And she rushed into his arms,
If I’d known better, or been aware
I might have raised the alarm.
The book flew open, revealed a knife
Secreted into its pages,
And she had stabbed him, not once, but twice
Revealing one of her rages.

Rex was lying so still, and cold
We held her down on the floor there,
‘Are you quite crazy,’ I tried to scold,
But she had cut her own throat there.
A pool of blood spread across the floor
And mingled there from the lovers,
I swore right then I would bolt my door
Deny all entry to others.

David Lewis Paget

I’d known him since we were boys at school
So I let him in to the flat,
He wasn’t known for playing the fool,
I knew him better than that,
But he carried a canvas under his arm
And he propped it up on a chair,
And said I needed to help him out
Could I keep the picture there?

I stood well back and surveyed the paint
It was oil, laid on with a knife,
Of a naked woman, with auburn hair
He said it was somebody’s wife,
She lay at rest on a purple lounge
Had shaken her hair quite loose,
And all she wore on her wonderful form
Was a pair of ballet shoes.

‘Why do I need to keep it here?’ I said,
But I didn’t mind,
Something about the woman’s eyes
Said she was one of a kind.
‘Her husband visits me all the time
I wouldn’t want him to see,
He doesn’t know that she had it done
Or passed the picture to me.’

Marcus gave me a fleeting look
But still had the grace to blush,
I didn’t want to embarrass him
Put fingers to lips, said ‘Hush!’
He left, but said that she might pop in
She’d want to inspect the place,
To find it suitable, that her skin
Was hanging in naked grace.

It took a week till she showed her face,
Came hurrying in at the door,
Her head was covered in widow’s lace,
Announced herself as ‘Lenore’,
I doubted that was her real name
But took her through to my den,
The **** hung high on the picture wall,
She stood and she said, ‘Amen’.

And then she turned and she looked at me
And she smiled as if approved,
Something about that smile, her eyes,
And I felt strangely moved,
‘Would you care to see the original,’
She said, and began to strip,
I couldn’t mumble a word, my tongue
Was tied and set to trip.

She told me to look away until
Quite ready for my gaze,
I couldn’t imagine what she did
It seemed to take for days,
I heard her shake out her auburn hair
Until well and truly loose,
And when I looked, she was naked but
For a pair of ballet shoes.

David Lewis Paget