He went ashore with the duty crew
The moment they got their leave,
And headed home for his two by two
And his waiting Genevieve,
He wore his official navy rig
With the medals on his chest,
Had taken pains that his suit was clean
And his blue jean collar pressed.

He followed the crazy paving that
Led up to his cottage door,
Could only see a glimmer of light
A smidgen of light, no more,
A heavy footfall came to the door
And flung it out wide, apace,
While he stood grim, and staring at him
A man with a stranger’s face.

Then Genevieve came breathlessly out
Went breathlessly up to him,
I want you to meet a cousin of mine,
He’s staying with us, meet Jim.
The sailor took a step in the door
And shouldered the man away,
‘I see,’ he said, ‘not seen him before,
I’ll see if your Jim can stay.’

They settled down in the kitchen, sat
Across the table and glared,
While Genevieve had served up a meal
A meal that had been prepared,
‘So who’s your cousin related to,
Your mother’s side, or your Da’s?’
She stopped for a moment then to think
‘It must have been Grandpa’s.’

But he’d grinned over the table then
At Genevieve, this Jim,
And that was the moment the sailor knew
That he’d been suckered in.
‘I don’t think this is your cousin, dear,
But there, I think you knew,
And hit the stranger fair in the face
With a plate of boiling stew.

I think that he scarred the guy for life
For his skin came off in strips,
While Genevieve took a paper towel
And tried to save his lips,
‘Take your mate to the Rose and Crown
And buy him a cooling beer,’
The sailor said, as he cuffed her head
‘For you’ll not be staying here.’

David Lewis Paget

It was Black Dog Night at the station,
With a Black Dog caught in my hair,
There were too many owls, there were shrieks and howls
There was too much intolerance there.

There were tales floating out and forgotten,
There were stories that claimed to be hype
There were nightmare things with handfuls of rings
There were things too awful to type.

There were nasties a-float in the darkness,
There were Gorgons, that looked for a fight,
There were these and more, and Griffins of yore
That gave any sentence respite.

In the dark, I could hear the farmer scream
He’d just cut the throat of his wife,
But the low of the cattle had masked her death rattle
And the slash-slash-slash of his knife.

There were monsters that sat on my keyboard,
They were growling, and screamed ‘Let me in!’
But I pushed them away, and I cried ‘Not today,’
They were creeping right under my skin.

Then a voice echoed up from the valley
Where the darkest of dreams lay at rest,
‘You may type in the grail at the end of my tale
If you’re sure that Milady is dressed.’

The night came and flew in the window,
To block all the plots I had kept,
It’s the Black Dog way, no story today
For the rest of the night, barely slept.

It was Black Dog Night at the station
With the rails outside rusted through,
But the Ghost Train came in the mist and the rain
With a story, at last, that was true!

David Lewis Paget

Winter was settling in at the hedges,
Whiting the meadows and hanging off ledges,
Crazing at windows and frosting the willow,
Creeping at ceilings and freezing my pillow,
Outside the woods were embraced in a tangle,
Snow falling steadily, stars were a-spangle.

I felt it time to be wandering steadily
Out where my footsteps had followed hers, readily,
Past where the pathway encircled the wishing well
Holding the pennies we’d tossed for a lovers spell,
She’d walked ahead with a bow in her auburn hair
One yellow ribbon, that’s how I remembered her.

She’d seemed uncertain and wanted to talk to me
I really didn’t, but she said to ‘walk with me’,
Down through the woods where the leaves lay in Autumn,
Yellow and golden, the grounds of Bell Norton,
Once was a convent and practiced religiously
Then we were deep in the woods by a poplar tree.

She turned and spoke of the thing I was fearing,
Took off her ring and the pearl in her earring,
‘I am in love with another,’ she said to me,
‘What of our love?’ then she said, ‘That is dead to me!’
‘You must allow me to love Justin Hanger,’
I felt cold rage and I lashed out in anger.

She fell pole-axed at the foot of a chestnut tree
Never a sign of the life that had once loved me,
Dragged her some distance and into the Folly,
Covered in creepers and mistletoe, holly,
Buried her under a floor that was rotten,
And left her in store so that she’d be forgotten.

Now it was months and I came back to see her
Deep in the winter, with weather so drear,
Opened the flimsy old door of the Folly,
Caught up in creepers and mistletoe, holly,
When from the floor came a sound like a groaning,
Under the boards was a weeping and moaning.

‘This can’t be true,’ as I came in and staggered,
Watched a hand rise through the floor, looking hagard,
Most of the flesh fell away from the bone,
Then the floor heaved and I heard the girl moan,
‘Where is my lover, the one that is true to me,’
‘You must be dead,’ I said, ‘all this is new to me.’

I took the axe that was stood in the corner
Raised it aloft as if I tried to warn her,
Then someone tackled and brought me to ground,
Muttering something, ‘At last she’s been found!’
And under the floor were her human remains,
No moaning or groaning, just my guilty pains.

David Lewis Paget

Down in the grotto we’d go to swim
Whenever the tide was high
And pouring into the basin there,
At low tide it was dry,
I’d go with the Percival sisters
Who would laugh and call and dive,
While bursting out of their suits, it seemed
A time to be alive.

While Carolyn had the bigger *******
Brittany had the thighs,
Carolyn had the sweetest smile
But Brittany had the eyes,
I never could choose between them for
I loved them both the same,
They’d flaunt themselves in the grotto pool
To them it was just a game.

The light would glimmer within the cave
Reflect off the grotto walls,
And from the roof would echo again
The sound of the girls catcalls,
We’d swim, then climb on a ledge of rock
To dry ourselves in the air,
And listen to water lapping in
From the mouth of the cave out there.

They often would try to bully me
To say who I loved the best,
I’d always say that I loved them both
And they’d say I failed the test,
So one day, standing upon the ledge
They both peeled their costumes off,
And said, ‘now tell us the one you love
Or haven’t you seen enough.’

The sisters’ beauty caught at my throat
And took the most of my breath,
I’d never seen them naked before
Nor since, I swear on my death,
I couldn’t answer, so they got mad
And flung me into the pool,
Then swam around me, ******* and legs
Determined to play the fool.

Brittany trapped me between her thighs
While Carolyn pushed me down,
The water swirled at my head so long
I thought I was going to drown,
But finally they’d had enough of me
Holding me down, submersed,
And I shot up to the surface then
Thinking my lungs would burst.

It’s years since ever we went to swim
Together again, all three,
For finally I had to make a choice,
Which one would marry me.
Brittany’s now my loving wife
For I found between her thighs,
In the grotto swim, when she squeezed me in,
The truth in a world of lies.

David Lewis Paget

The gates of the ancient prison creaked
And the chains clanked in the breeze,
When we pulled in with our caravan,
As we camped among the trees,
The kids went off for a quick explore
And were back before nightfall,
They said, ‘There’s all of this nasty stuff
Leaked out from the old stone wall.’

They said it looked like a yellow moss
But it had a putrid smell,
It clung in lumps to the chains, in clumps
That were hung in every cell,
‘Do you think it grew on the prisoners,’
Said Ted, with his eyes a-glare,
‘I’ve got a terrible feeling from
The damp in the cells in there.’

‘It’s only an empty building,’ said
Darnelle, but her eyes were bright,
‘I heard the prisoners whispering
As they must have done, each night,’
She let her imagination reign
Or that’s what we thought she did,
I learnt to listen more carefully
When she said that she had, our kid!

So later, when they were both abed
I took Clare by the hand,
And led her into the ancient Gaol,
To that misery of man,
Our footsteps echoed on cobblestones,
My voice came back like prayer,
Bouncing back from the old stone walls
In tones of a pure despair.

The moon came filtering down that night
And made patterns through the trees,
While beams shone in to the cells where once
Old men prayed on their knees,
And Clare would shiver where candlelight
Was once the only ray,
To keep the spectres away at night
Until the break of day.

I kept on wandering further in
While Clare would turn around,
‘Let’s go,’ she said, ‘it’s a scary thing,
We walk unhallowed ground,’
But no, I walked to the furthest cell
To the meanest cell of all,
And saw the bones, and the yellow moss
In a pile against the wall.

A beam came down from the rising moon
That lit up the pile of bones,
And there for a moment, all we heard
Was the sound of muffled moans,
A shadow rose by the weeping wall
Of a man who cried ‘I’m free!’
Who dropped the chains of his earthly pains
As he strode away, through me.

And all I felt was a deathly chill
As he passed right through my form,
My mind was frozen, my heart was still
And I felt I was unborn,
But then the morning arrived at last
With a terrible sense of loss,
For all one side of my face was gone,
Covered in yellow moss.

David Lewis Paget

She lived in a cottage, made with bones
Her garden, ringed by teeth,
All from the shipwrecked sailors floating
In from the hidden reef,
You couldn’t see when the tide was high
But the rocks lay down, and tore,
Down where the tide swept in the keels
That had sailed too close to shore.

The bodies were floating in for days
When the storm would calm, abate,
Bloodied and torn, their sailor ways
Were left to unfeeling fate,
The crows would gather and crowd the beach
As they ripped each corpse to shreds,
Tearing the flesh regardless, whether
The man was alive, or dead.

The beach turned into a boneyard, under
A blue and perfect sky,
With nobody willing to ask it,
The obvious question, ‘Why?’
But she in the boneyard cottage knew
When she harvested the beach,
For every ship, as her cottage grew
Left the bones, so white and bleached.

And there on the hearth of the kitchen lay
A skull that had been her own,
The one true love of her darling years
Who had promised to build their home,
He denied her plea and had gone to sea,
Was caught in a sudden storm,
Came rolling over the reef one day
With blood on his uniform.

And now, whenever a distant sail
Appears from near or far,
She runs on out to the bluff and screams
To God, ‘Wherever you are.’
She summons up from the depths a storm
With wind and a blinding rain,
And giant rollers that head for shore
That carry her lover’s pain.

It’s then that the skull on the hearth lights up,
A glow from its empty eyes,
And then a terrible screaming from
A mouth, that had once been sighs,
She knows he wants her to save the ship
She’s luring onto the rocks,
But whispers a curse at the fatal rip
‘On all dead men, a pox!’

David Lewis Paget

Way out, on what was a barren plain
A tree has taken root,
Over the spot where a poet’s lain
It bears the strangest fruit,
He wasn’t read while he lived and wrote,
Was neglected till he died,
But scribbled each verse like a private note
That he hugged to him in pride.

He lived in a garret, quite alone
And without a loving mate,
His heart would leap at each lovely girl
As she passed his garden gate,
But far too shy to invite them in
He could only sit and stare,
And think each time of what could have been
If he’d chanced to step out there.

But love still flowed from his poet’s pen
Though he had no-one to care,
He captured it from the universe
And he wrote it everywhere,
He left it piled in his gloomy den
When he took sick of the ride,
Turned his eyes to heaven again,
Gave up the ghost, and died.

They didn’t know what to do with it,
This love from a poet’s pen,
So placed it in the coffin with him
These shallow, heartless men,
Buried him out on a barren plain
Where nothing ever grew,
But marked the spot by planting there
A tree, namely, a Yew.

It’s twenty years since poetry was
Planted there, unread,
Alongside in the coffin with
The poet, newly dead,
But on the tree that proudly stands
With its roots entwined in love,
Each leaf reveals a verse or two
Fluttering from above.

David Lewis Paget

It floated ashore one pitch black night
We hadn’t seen it before,
All covered in barnacles and scale
Cast up from a distant war,
It gently rolled as the tide came in
And hit the rocks with a ‘clang’,
Then settled down as its scuppers cleared
The decks, all covered in sand.

The conning tower was an evil sight
Its paint was peeling away,
Ribbons of black, as camouflage
Peeled off in the light of day,
And there we could see the *******
Look down with an evil leer,
As once it looked on its victims when
It ruled in a sea of fear.

The storm that had brought it to the shore
Took far too long to abate,
It raged and roared for a week before
We’d take the risk on its plate,
But then we found that the rust had hid
All access into its gloom,
We walked the whole of its length but found
No way to enter the tomb.

There must have been twenty men inside
Or what was left of their bones,
But all I’d hear when the night was clear
Was a chorus of shrieks and moans.
We smashed the hatch in the conning tower
And a sailor ventured in,
We hauled him out in a quarter hour
But his mind was wandering.

I saw some movement deep in the hull
And I called out, ‘Who goes there?’
But then a guttural German voice
Had answered, in despair,
‘Stay well away from the conning tower
It’s a type of evil well,
Once within you are caught in sin
And you’ll find yourself in Hell.’

The sea rose up and covered the rocks
And it floated off the sub,
While all the bones in their shrieks and moans
Screamed ‘Mercy’ - there’s the rub,
They called for mercy they never gave
When they sank each helpless crew,
Now roam forever beneath the waves
In a sub, now sunken too.

David Lewis Paget

I followed the leaf-strewn path once more
Where it hugged the cemetery wall,
And made my way through the sandstone gap
Where the howl of the wind was stalled,
While snow still covered the sacred ground
And piled by each headstone lay,
Obscured the lettering, so profound
Of a love, now taken away.

And some of the headstones, cracked and worn
Cried out in their pure neglect,
Where were the ones their love had sworn
Who’d never visited yet?
But then a headstone, polished and new
With a name fresh cut in the stone,
I knelt in awe as my wonder grew
That beauty returned to bone.

My tears were frozen on either cheek,
The frost on my forehead lay,
If she could see from her reverie
She’d see that my face was grey,
But nothing stirred on that tiny mound
That covered her form below,
The wind that howled was the only sound
And I thought it told me to go.

‘Get up and leave, you can only grieve
In this garden of dead desire,
Love in this place may only deceive
It’s as dead as the ash in a fire.’
Sadly I placed the poem I wrote
For the girl, in case she’d need it,
Under a rock by the headstone there
In the hopes that Death might read it.

David Lewis Paget

Standing alone in the bank today
Was an angel in disguise,
I knew by how she had combed her hair
By the sparkle in her eyes,
A dimple nestled in either cheek
And her lips were pink and fine,
They smiled just once when she looked at me
In an echo of God’s design.

We waited to be attended to
But the teller was so slow,
She let us stand in a queue of two
That had nowhere else to go,
My eyes flicked over the angel’s face
As she stood beside me there,
She must have thought I was more than rude
But I couldn’t help but stare.

I don’t go staring at everyone
It isn’t a trait of mine,
To garner up my attention you
Would have to be more than fine,
But here was an angel, true to life
And she’d come to use the bank,
I had no idea who’d sent her there,
I didn’t know who to thank.

I think I must have unsettled her
With my frank and open stare,
She’d shift uneasily on each foot
And pretend I wasn’t there,
I watched as there came a holy glow
Like a rose on either cheek,
And thought that I was unfair to her
It was time for me to speak.

I motioned once as she turned to me
That I had something to say,
She nodded and she acknowledged me
As she waited, looked my way,
‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,
But I couldn’t help but stare,’
And then I said, ‘but you’re beautiful,’
And her smile entranced me there.

After the teller had done with us
And we ended in the street,
I thought that the angel went away
Then I heard her pretty feet,
‘Whatever you do, it’s up to you,
You’re the keeper of the spell,
I only ask that the thing to do
Is please, Oh please don’t tell!’

David Lewis Paget

I knew that something was going on
When she went to walk each night,
Just on dusk when the tide swept in
With the blue moon of delight,
She never asked me to tag along
Though at times I thought she must,
We’d once been close, but the time was wrong
And our closeness turned to dust.

I stayed back up in the dunes while she
Took on the darkening shore,
It triggered memories held when we
Had walked it once before,
That gentle rise where the sand had dried
And we sat awhile and kissed,
Now I sat lonely and cold aside
Bemoaning what I’d missed.

I didn’t follow along the beach
Too scared what I might find,
A lovers tryst in the dark I feared
That might upset my mind,
I knew my temper was short and so
I feared what might be done,
Out there, and under a hasty moon
Might see me overcome.

The moon was skirting the ocean’s rim
The stars were riding high,
My only thought as she disappeared,
In a single word, was ‘Why?’
I wondered what the attraction was
That would take her away each night,
Would leave me sat alone in the gloom
Like a pensive troglodyte.

It had to come to an end, I knew
So I strode along the beach,
Followed the trail of footprints where
The tide had failed to reach,
Till sudden, there was the sweetest song
On the wind, I ever knew,
And there was Isobel, sitting rapt
While the notes came fast and few.

And on a rock set above the tide
Sat the singer of the song,
The perfect form of a sweet mermaid
With her tail, so curved and long,
But then she gave out a sudden cry
When she saw my shadow fall,
And slithered back off the rock, to swim
Below to the mermaids’ hall.

‘Why did you come,’ said Isobel,
‘Why did you have to pry,
She’ll never come to the shore again
To sing to the empty sky.’
I turned and ran from her angry gaze
But at least I now know why,
She sits at night in the moon’s half light
And I often hear her cry.

David Lewis Paget

‘If only she hadn’t turned,’ he said,
‘The bread and the bacon burned,
It wouldn’t have made me jump,’ he said,
‘Knock over the butter churn.
Her petticoat was caught in the grate
With coals caught fast in the lace,
And that’s when the skirt went up,’ he said,
‘The flames in her lovely face.’

He carried her into the garden where
The rainwater barrel stood,
And tipped her into the chilling depths
Where the fungus ate at the wood,
The barrel hissed as she thrashed about
Came spluttering up to see,
Was anything left of her golden hair
Or aught of her modesty?

‘I saw the tender length of her thigh
Where charring parted her skirt,
The flames had burned so far and so high
Her cheeks were covered with dirt,
Her hair in tails was stuck to her face
Her bodice unlaced and wide,
I helped her out as best as I could,
She asked if I’d looked… I lied!’

‘That tiny scar you see on her brow
Is all that’s left of the day
Her petticoat was caught in the grate
Before I whisked her away.
I couldn’t wait until she was dry
To ask for her dripping hand,’
She said, ‘Oh well, I knew you were sly,
You looked at my contraband!’

David Lewis Paget

The earth had not been breathing
For an hour when I woke,
So the thought that I’d be leaving
Any time, became a joke,
There was not that faintest rustle
That we think to call a breeze,
When the leaves all rub together with
The swaying of the trees,
And the water lay in stagnant pools
Across the dying ground,
Where there once had flowed a river but
Its stream could not be found.

There was silence where there once had been
The babble of a creek,
If the earth turned on its axis now
That day took half a week,
And where the tide had used to turn,
Advance upon the land,
Its waves had ceased to function
All it left was drying sand,
If that was not enough, its dearth
Reflected in the sky,
In clouds dark brown like bracken
That would crackle up on high.

These clouds of louring thunder merely
Muttered in their pain,
And sent the flash of lightning down
But dry, and without rain,
And nothing that was living stirred
Within my line of view,
Not even what I should have heard
And so, I turned to you.
For there across the counterpane
Your lustrous hair was spread,
And all my world became insane
To know that you were dead.

David Lewis Paget

I married Rosita back in the Spring
As a new world budded with everything,
She sprang from an ancient family
Its heart in the vineyards of Tuscany.

Her skin was dark and her hair blue-black
From the blood of her father’s, way, way back,
Her family tree lay in mystery
So I thought I’d uncover their history.

Down in the damp of the cells, there lay
A mound of their documents, rotting away,
Down where the Monks had toiled below
In the crypt of the Church of De Angelo.

There I would work, and day by day
Would learn of plots where the skeletons lay,
The grinning skulls kept the plans alight
They had once conspired in the dead of night.

I asked Rosita to join me there
Way down below, at the foot of the stair,
And she came gliding, all dressed in white
Like some grim ghost with her girdle tight.

‘Why do you stir these shades,’ she said,
‘When for hundreds of years they’ve lain here dead,
It’s better we leave their old intrigues
Scattered like bones, and Autumn leaves.’

‘This is your line,’ I then replied,
‘Who lived and schemed, and who loved and died,
As one day soon you may bear a son
Who’ll need to know where he’s coming from.’

And sure enough in the month of June
There were signs that he would be coming soon,
Her forehead burned and the glass she sipped
When she came alone to the darkened crypt.

Then shadows moved in the ancient cells
Where the Monks had worked on their evil spells,
And she began to shiver and glow
In the crypt of the Church of De Angelo.

I said what I should have spoken yet
That all I had was a deep regret,
That ever I asked her to get up and go
To the crypt that lay in the church below.

But still she went on that long descent
She seemed obsessed and would not relent,
Till late one night and a baby cried
Delivered on a cold slab, and died.

I keep Rosita so close to me,
And far from her family history,
Something is creeping, evil and slow
In the crypt of the church of De Angelo.

David Lewis Paget

The horseman rode up over the hill
Astride of his coal black steed,
His blood had dried on its withers, till
He may have been dead, indeed,
His battered buckler hung at his side
And his chain mail coat was rust,
He’d left so many behind who died
Of his comrades, turned to dust.

The scars crept over his forehead where
The enemy slashed at his helm,
He’d beaten off so many before
Their numbers had overwhelmed,
He’d planted pikemen deep in the ditch
As they thought they’d pulled him down,
A final ****** in their mortal dust
Saw them set, deep set in the ground.

And now, but one chased him down the hill
His sword raised clear to the sky,
He seemed determined to cleft his pate
Though one might question, ‘Why?’
The battle done on the battlefield
There had just remained these two,
As up there twirled a funnel of smoke
From a single chimney flue.

And out there burst from the cottage door
A woman who’d lain in wait,
For two long years she had hoped and prayed
He’d return to his estate,
He didn’t know about Fontainebleau
Who had offered up his hand,
And swore that when he returned from war
She would take the better man.

But now she stood with her father’s bow
And an arrow from his quiver,
Determined only to greet her man
And the other horseman, never!
They galloped down from the mountainside
In line with her shaking bow,
With him so suddenly unaware
Why the arrow, why the bow?

The second rider had gained the ground
He needed for his charge,
And swung his sword above and around
To clatter his helm, at large,
The rider fell from his forward horse
As his woman raised her bow,
And saw the arrow fly fleet and fast
To the eye of Fontainebleau.

David Lewis Paget

She wore a wig to cover the hair
That was windblown, into her eye,
And topped off that with a raffia hat
To disguise a look so sly,
She sat up there on the balcony
Looking down on the street below,
Watching the heads of the perms and dreads
And noting which way they go.

Her boots were scuffed right up to her knees
Her stockings ragged and torn,
Her linen skirt had dragged in the dirt
From the day it first was worn,
The neighbours called her a demon child
For the savage glare in her eye,
They looked away but they scarce could say
If she’d cursed them, passing by.

She said, ‘Watch out for a matt black car
With its windows tinted and grey,
A single headlight, seen from afar
And the chrome all rusted away,
The driver’s window wound halfway down
To the height of the driver’s eyes,
You’ll best not stare at that wicked frown
He will draw you into his lies.’

The clouds then gathered, the storm came in
From the place that it last had went,
Thunder clashing and lightning flashing
The hail and the sleet it sent,
She pulled her hat down over her head
In hopes that her hair would dry,
Then pointed down to a matt black car,
‘The Devil is driving by!’

David Lewis Paget

The only gas lamp left in the street
Was sitting outside my door,
The rest now lay on a ******* heap
Had been cleared some years before,
But strangely, all of the mist that once
Obscured the street from sight,
Now hung and clung to that gas lamp frame
And darkened my door at night.

I’d stand and stare through my window there
Whenever the mist was high,
Painting the drains and window panes
In the glow of the gas lamp eye,
And those that passed in the street at night
Would flicker and then be gone,
Just like a scene on the silver screen
They would pause, then hurry along.

And that’s when I saw the girl out there
One misty night, about ten,
All dressed up for a late night show
She’d certainly go, but when?
She wore a dress in a style I’d thought
More in Victorian taste,
A woollen shawl and a bonnet, small,
And a bodice of Nottingham lace.

She’d disappear in the swirling mist
Then reappear in the glow,
She’d cling on tight to the gas lamp post,
She wasn’t ready to go,
Perhaps she waited for someone there
I thought, how lucky he’d be,
She looked so beautiful, standing where
I’d wish she was waiting for me.

She seemed to come every friday night
But only during a mist,
If only she would knock at my door
I thought, I couldn’t resist.
One friday night it began to rain,
And she looked in a great distress
Now I could venture to ask her in
If only to save her dress.

I stepped right up and opened the door,
Her image would flicker and fade,
I saw her turn, and stare from the glow
That the old gas lamp had made,
‘So there you are,’ came her breezy voice,
‘I’ve been waiting here, you see,
Every friday at ten o’clock
Since 1893.’

That was the moment the lamp blew out
In a strong and sudden gust,
The glow, the rain and the girl had gone
With the mist remaining, just,
I stand alone by the window pane
And I peer into the mist,
To search forever the girl who came
That I saw, but never kissed.

David Lewis Paget

The storm was raging within, he thought,
Not out in the trees and fields,
It must have strayed in his mouth, and caught
His throat, for the breath it yields,
He sat himself on a wayward bench
Composed his thunderous sighs,
And caught a glimpse of a passing *****
With slumbering, lustrous eyes.

She had auburn hair, and a face so fair
She had dimples set in her cheeks,
She walked the snow in an afterglow
Of the first snowfall for weeks.
He’d sat so long and the storm was strong
As he waited the snow to melt,
She kicked the flurries of snow along
In the inward storm he felt.

Her eyes were a vivid lightning flash
That lit up his restless mind,
Her footsteps, more of a thunder crash
At his heart, but more unkind,
Her smile revealed her perfect teeth
Like a line of pure white stones,
Or headstones, laid in a cemetery
Like some bleached and ageing bones.

Her auburn hair was a-twist out there
All twirled like a plaited bun,
It seemed to fly in his storm-wracked sky
Blotting the morning sun,
Then as she passed, she looked in his eyes
And she saw the hail and sleet,
And caught her breath like a glimpse of death
Or the end of life, complete.

He stood, and held out his hand to her
And she halted in her stride,
Opened her mouth, and thunder clapped
And he felt it crash inside,
‘Nothing you say will draw me in
It would only do me harm,
If I should wed, it wouldn’t be
To you, as the Bride of Storm.’

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d made a collection up
Of certain sticks and stones,
To cast a spell in a paper cup
That drank, would break his bones,
She followed him to the mountain top
And down to the pebbled beach,
But every time she got close enough
She found he was out of reach.

He’d seen her sat at her cottage hearth,
He’d watched her casting her spells,
He knew that something quite dreadful was
Heading his way as well,
She’d not been over forgiving when
He’d been well caught in a lie,
And watched the remains of repulsive spells
As they came stumbling by.

He got in the way of avoiding her,
He wouldn’t respond to her call,
That’s when she made her potion up,
No-one would have him at all!
She had a draught that would bring him down
If ever it passed his lips,
She cast her spell from the deepest well
And it only took two sips.’

He turned his collar across his face
You could only see his eyes,
Then swept on up with his cloak in place
When she slept, as the moon would rise,
He seized the potion sat on the hearth
And he poured it down her throat,
And heard the crackle of breaking bones
As she screamed, one long, high note.

She lies awake in the cottage gloom
But she can’t quite make a fist,
Her spells that lie in the darkened room
Are beyond her shattered wrist,
While he will sit, and read them aloud
Though he never will see her smile,
For every spell is part of the shroud
He will torch in a little while.

David Lewis Paget

Just twelve, I swear, I must have been
The day they took the Witch of Steen
And put a halter round her neck
To teach her magic some respect.

The women in the village square
Tore off her clothes, and pulled her hair
Then called their menfolk out to view
Who crossed them there, what they would do.

They tied her hands behind her back
The rope around her neck was slack,
But tied to Jethro’s stubborn mule
They led her naked, like some fool.

And all her secrets lay out there
Uncovered, in the open air,
She looked quite beautiful to me
Her naked form, such artistry.

The mule dragged her, painful and slow
Along the lanes where they would go
As gusts of breeze blew out her hair,
Revealed what she was hiding there.

And I, I followed, just a lad
Whose eyes were full of her, by god,
Whose ******* were pert and firm back then
Whose thighs held secrets, hid from men.

I saw that tiny tuft of hair
That hid her womanhood in there,
That plagued me since, for every night
I’d think of it in dread delight.

But still they led her, lane and field
No place that she was not revealed,
They took her to the ducking pond
Where life or death would lie beyond.

And when they laid the ducking stool
With her aboard, across the pool,
Her voice rang out, this buxom maid
With words the villagers dismayed.

‘For all that you come judging me,
Look to yourselves, your pedigree,
What sons and daughters sprang at night
From phantom fathers, bred in spite.’

‘When husbands were out tending fields
And wives would wait, temptation yields.
What shadows stood by window ledge
Gained entry to some marriage bed?’

The women quaked before her spell
And screamed, then ducked the witch to hell
And would have left her there to drown
Had not the menfolk brought her round.

In mercy then, they set her free
And she had screamed, ‘A curse on thee!
‘Your cattle will roam free and late
Your catch won’t hold the cattle gate.’

‘Your crops will flatten in the fields
When hail and sleet destroy their yields,
And mud will fill your village hall,
Your church collapse, your roofs will fall.’

She left there with a final shout
The things she cursed, they came about,
But I was left a lifetime dream,
That naked witch, the Witch of Steen.


David Lewis Paget

There is something that feeds on the evil
It finds in the well of its mind,
To bolster the work of the devil
And other bad cess it might find,
It joys in the hurt it is causing
It revels in pain it may bring
To all who once loved and adored it,
For it never loved anything.

Revenge is the one thing that drives it,
A payback to feed discontent,
But it does it in dark and in hiding,
It’s sly and it doesn’t repent,
It tries to unwrap any secrets
That may have been hidden from view,
In diaries, letters and journals,
Or letters, specific to you.

It doesn’t know shame in its spying,
That others feel only disgust,
A soul that is black and repulsive
That’s headed for Hell, as it must,
It thinks its success is so clever
And laughs when revealing its scar,
But others laugh at you, not with you,
And evil, you know who you are!

David Lewis Paget

I’d only been gone for a moment,
A moment was all that it took,
And up to the edge of that moment
I’d been sitting, and reading a book,
Then I looked up and saw you were staring,
But your eyes were glazed over, I see,
And I swear you weren’t looking, but glaring
At something you hated in me.

Then the room began twisting and turning
To the sound of the storm’s rapid roar,
As it went racing up to the ceiling,
And dived in a twirl to the floor,
It snatched at the book I’d been reading
And it flung it straight up in the air,
On the cover it said ‘Time is Bleeding’,
And I thought, ‘I don’t want to go there.’

Still you clung to your chair, my Miranda,
While the furniture skittered and slid,
Some had headed out to the veranda
Where the glockenspiel lay on its lid,
But your face and your skin became older,
As the years yet to come hurried by,
And the air in the room became colder
When I heard, ‘You’re much younger than I.’

And that’s when I felt it receding,
That eddying moment of time,
That had shown me the love that was bleeding
It hadn’t been yours, it was mine,
I sheltered there on the veranda
From the clinical glance of your gaze,
For time was against you, Miranda,
And it showed, in a myriad ways.

I’d only been gone for a moment,
A moment was all that it took,
And up to the edge of that moment
I’d been sitting, and reading a book,
Then the storm battered in through the shutters,
And it snatched at the book in my hand,
But you’d gone, slipped away down the gutters
With all I had loved in the land.

David Lewis Paget

The place was a crumbling ruin,
It sat on the top of a hill,
If we hadn’t been travelling tired that day
We may have been travelling still,
But you said we ought to seek shelter there
From a sudden deluge of rain,
So I parked outside its terraces
And entered the palace of pain.

You were the first to say ‘It’s strange,
The feeling within these halls,’
While all I could hear were the scraping sounds
That came from the whispering walls.
It must have been long deserted, it
Was just like a pile of bones,
That someone left when its throat was cleft
And lay fading into its moans.

The night came down with a vengeance once
We’d made our camp on the floor,
And rain poured in at the windows that
Were probably there before,
You said we’d leave when the morning came
Once the sun was up, and bright,
We didn’t know that an age of shame
Wrapped that place in an endless night.

I tried to sleep but you’d wake me up
Each time that I dropped my head,
‘Didn’t you hear that dreadful scream?’
I seem to remember you said.
But all I heard were the awful groans
That echoed around the halls,
I couldn’t explain the sense of dread
That came from the whispering walls.

I thought that the rain poured down on us
I thought that we lay in mud,
I lit a match in the early hours
To see you covered in blood.
I said, ‘We’d better go back to sleep
Till the nightmare hour is past,
But then you noticed the blood on me
And you screamed, and lay aghast.

I wish that we’d never gone near the place
I wish we’d stayed in the car,
Then you’d still be who you used to be
And I would know where you are!
But you ran screaming into the night
When they came with their hoods and gowns,
With their bloodied hands and their burning brands
To burn the place to the ground.

David Lewis Paget

I woke in the early hours to find
My head between her thighs,
She hadn’t been there before, I swear
And I’m not a man who lies.
I’d seen her out in the Public Bar
Of the ‘Jacaranda Tree’,
Halfway along the Outback Track
On the way to Wendouree.

I’d seen her dance on the table tops
I’d seen her prance on the bar,
I’d said to Lance as I saw him glance
‘I don’t know where we are!’
He shrugged, to say that he didn’t care
As long as she danced that way,
Her stockings, down at her ankles and
Her skirt in disarray.

‘Now there is a ***** to turn your head,’
Said Lance, with a burst of pride,
He’d been out on the verandah, then
He’d turned to go back inside,
She’d joined him there for a moment,
Just brushed by for a quick connect,
But he hadn’t noticed her eyebrow raised
In a sign that said, ‘Reject!’

We both had our eighteen wheelers parked
Outside in the hotel grounds,
I was headed away up north
And he to the lights of town,
He offered to give her the sleeper cab
While he drove the star-filled night,
I looked away and I thought it sad,
But the trucks both looked alike.

I heard him leave at the midnight hour
And thought she was gone for good,
It wasn’t often I hauled this way
Or stayed in this neighbourhood.
But then I clambered into my bunk
Above, at the cabin’s rear,
And fell asleep like a hopeless drunk
Till the morning sun drew near.

I made an offer to buy that pub,
The ‘Jacaranda Tree’,
But only when she agreed to stay
And dance on the bar for me,
I asked if she’d meant to go with Lance
And she looked at me with scorn,
I sleep the sleep of a new romance
And the pillows keep me warm.

David Lewis Paget

The garden at home, from what I recall
Was massive and overgrown,
More like a huge untended park
That was mine to explore and roam.
There were trees and shrubs and flowerbeds
That were all burnt up and dried,
I never saw anyone water it
So most of the garden died.

And my grandfather would wander about
And he’d grumble under his beard,
Mumble about his offspring, as he
Wondered what he’d reared.
‘They all take after their mother’s side,’
He would say, ‘They have no spine,
I’ve searched and searched for an Astrogoth
But I don’t think that they’re mine.’

I doubted they really wanted me,
They’d throw me over the fence,
And say, ‘Go play with your grandfather,
He’s more like you, and dense.’
Then off they’d go to the garden’s end
To sit by the smoking pit,
Whenever I’d ask if I could go
My mother would throw a fit.

‘Don’t go to the end of the garden or
We might just leave you there,
Your cousin fell in the pit of hell
And was burnt beyond compare.’
I watched the smoke pour out of the ground
To see if my parents lied,
But sure as hell, there were flames as well
Right there, where my cousin died.

One day I watched as it opened up
To reveal the son of sin,
My parents ventured a little close
And then they had tumbled in,
He yelled and roared, called on the Lord
That he spared him in his den,
‘Just take your half-wits back,’ he cried,
‘My hell is not for them!’

I haven’t been to the garden now
For years, since my Gramps took off,
So I’m the only descendant now
With the name of Astrogoth,
That smoking pit with a door to it
I have tried for years to sell,
But nobody seems to want to buy
A personal door to hell.

David Lewis Paget

The hull was that of a freighter, merchant,
Old, but still under steam,
It rose from off the horizon, distant,
Out of somebody’s dream,
Its livery had been dull and black
But now it flaked and it peeled,
The paint rose up on bubbles of rust
It was once designed to have sealed.

And from its stack there was dark grey smoke
That rose and spread on the sea,
Fouling the air in a narrow track
So they wouldn’t be seen by me,
We put the coastal cutter about
And raised the flag in the sun,
So Sally could see we were headed out
As she went on the Black Dog run.

The day was done it was almost dusk
When we entered that trail of smoke,
The freighter, ‘Emily Greensleeves’ must
Have burnt off a ton of coke,
We only saw her faint through a haze
And never a single crew,
But only Sally up on the bridge
As the dog came rabbiting through.

The dog, as black as a tinker’s ***
Raced back and forth on the deck,
Not so much as a chain restraint
Or a collar stud at its neck,
It stood there slavering down at us
When we got up close with a gun,
And often we thought to pick it off
When out on the Black Dog run.

But then the freighter would slip away
Deep in its trail of smoke,
And we’d be left alone in the bay
Trying to breathe, not choke,
Others have said they will bring her in
This ghostly girl, with a gun,
But nobody’s able to pin her down
When out on the Black Dog run.

David Lewis Paget

The door was ajar to a pokey room
All gloomy and morbid inside,
It gave off an air of despair and gloom
Not joyful, befitting a bride,
The couple arrived as I wandered by,
But she with her eyes on the ground,
While he simply glared as we passed on the stair
As if to say, ‘See what I found!’

I wasn’t that curious back in the day
For couples, they came and they went,
Those pokey apartments so full of decay,
They’d be better off in a tent.
But these two had stayed there much longer than most,
She rarely came out in the light,
And he placed a padlock from door to the doorpost,
Whenever he left in the night.

Whenever he left, and he certainly did,
He’d leave her in there on her own,
Though where he would go, I now think that he hid
For sometimes I heard the girl moan.
I’d feel the floor shudder, and hear the walls creak
While out in the hall it would whine,
And I would go searching, like hide and go seek
To be sure it was nothing of mine.

One night with a rumble behind their front door
I heard someone dragging a case,
That terrible screech on the lino, at least
In that something was dragged out of place,
Could that be a trunk, was he doing a bunk
With her body to sink off the coast?
I called in the cops as I thought she was lost
And they blocked the door off, he was toast.

They opened the trunk, took the padlock away
And that’s where she was, true enough,
When they questioned him why she was locked up inside
‘She’s a penchant for travelling rough.’
They said did she mind and to this she replied
The woman, whose first name was Joyce,
‘He showed me the padlock and said it was wedlock,
I thought that I had little choice.’

David Lewis Paget

Have you crept off into the darkness,
Have you hidden yourself in your spell,
Is your world the world of starkness,
Are you two steps closer to hell?
I felt you throw off the purple quilt
As the night came down as mist,
And take the stairs in a rush, full tilt
As you called out, ‘Please desist!’

Your legs had flashed on the stairwell,
Your thighs stark white in the hall,
When only minutes before I’d had
You pressed tight up by the wall.
I sipped and bit at your lower lip
As I raised your face for a kiss,
But pressed up tight by the hallway light
I could see your eyes resist.

Your spell is the essence of madness,
I find myself at your feet,
Is love this impossible sadness
Like a gourmet meal, replete,
I watch you dance when the Moon is yolk
And your mantle twirls and flares,
At night, in front of the gentle folk
You delight in their naked stares.

You never like to be seen by day
The light of the sun is harsh,
You’re more content to be naked by
The dwindling light of the stars,
I don’t know whether you’ll come to me
It’s much too early to tell,
I asked you once, and you said you’d be
Just two steps closer to hell.

David Lewis Paget

She stood and she watched as the storm came in
With the wreck of the Unicorn,
Its forward cabins under the swell,
Its masts so high and forlorn,
Her sailors dashed on the wicked rocks
To colour the blood-red foam,
‘Oh where, oh where is my sister Kate,’
She cried with a blood-red moan.

I reached on out and I spread the shawl
To cover her auburn hair,
The wind and rain in our faces as
I stood by the wall, with Claire,
The wreck was merely a hundred yards,
Was foundering near the shore,
With not a single man on the spars
Where the sail had billowed before.

We heard the bowsprit grind on the rocks,
The rudder tear from the post,
And Claire gave out the cry of the lost
To call for the customs boat,
The waves came thundering onto the shore
Flung spindrift high in the air,
Its mist obscured what the waves had lured
To drift in a mute despair.

‘How may I save my sister Kate,’ she cried,
But I couldn’t tell,
The Unicorn was coming apart
Was bound on its trip to hell,
And Kate by locking her cabin door
To keep out the surging sea,
Had forged herself a coffin before
The schooner had ceased to be.

We found her there in the flooded room
With the wreck cast up on the shore,
The moment the storm had shed its gloom
And the sun shone bright once more,
With gentle currents making her sway
And seaweed caught in her hair,
She held a locket her sister gave
With the line, ‘Bon voyage, Claire.’

David Lewis Paget

‘We never had much in common,’ said
The man in the sailor hat,
‘He was the father, I was the son,
And that,’ he said, ‘was that!
We had some fun in my younger days
And he seemed to always care,
I grew, and we went our different ways
And I lost him then, out there.’

‘Why would you turn your back on him,’
I asked, and he shook his head,
‘Didn’t you think one day you’d blink
And your father would be dead?’
‘I didn’t believe it would cut me down,’
He said as he wiped a tear,
And leant his back on the headstone,
‘I didn’t know that I’d meet him here.’

‘So what was that final argument
That made you get up and go?
I asked him once what had turned your head
And he said that he didn’t know.’
‘Neither do I, but he must have said
A word, and my temper flared,
A single thing with an inner sting
That said he had never cared.’

‘He always cared, I can tell you that,
From the time you could kick a ball,
He only had eyes for you, his son,
But surely, you can recall.’
I left him sat on the grave while I
Went off to brood on my own,
Then found that he’d scratched ‘I love you Dad,’
Too late, on that old headstone.

David Lewis Paget

He was wearing a coloured waistcoat,
All covered in Moons and stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,
I saw him first in the marketplace
Hid under his pointy hat,
With ribbons and whorls, and pictures of girls
Pinned over the place he sat.

And she was there at his feet that day
In a dress like a gypsy curse,
Her hair was red, and I’ve always said
She was one with the universe.
If ever love had bitten my hand
Tearing the flesh from the bone,
Then I’d have bled like a river, red
While dragging the girl back home.

But there on the table between them
The tickets were piled so high,
And each one said, ‘would you rather dead,
Or up for a place in the sky?’
It looked like a planetary super mart
With pebbles from outer space,
And there I saw an astrology chart
With a sketch reflecting my face.

I’d swear that the gypsy scowled at me
As the Moon Man tapped with his wand,
A sense of dread sweeping over my head
Put me in the sea of despond,
‘You know you have to get out of here,’
He whispered, the Man from Mars,
‘They’re coming to sweep you away this year,
Along with your rusty cars.’

The girl threw open her gypsy dress
The end would play on her screen,
The earth had gone where it once had shone,
It looked like a nightmare scene.
For bits of earth were floating apart
And space glowed green in the night,
While only the Moon still lit up the room
Where once there had been delight.

‘Pick up your ticket for who knows where,’
He said, to lighten the gloom,
The gypsy curse had been getting worse
Since I knew the earth was a tomb.
I thanked them both, then I turned away
As they faded into the stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,

David Lewis Paget

I watched him stalk through the evergreens
In his black top hat and tails,
Just like some figure, lost in dreams
Or a voodoo doll, with wails,
I’d heard that they called him Doctor Bones
And thought that I could see why,
With teeth that gleamed like white tombstones
And a hole for a missing eye.

‘You conjure him up,’ said Marceline,
‘You bring him back from the grave,
His ancestors had laid him down
He was much too bad to save.’
She called Darleen and she told her, ‘go,
Bring a ritual bird to slay,
We have to get rid of Doctor Bones
Or Marc may die today.’

I lay back on the verandah, and
I fell in a tranceful stare,
I looked on out to the evergreens
And knew I could see him there,
He carried a stick and danced about
Then bowed with a sweep of his hat,
‘He’s dancing upon my grave,’ I said,
‘Now what do you think of that?’

Darleen came back with a feathered bird
And she danced and swung it round,
Filling the air with feathers as she
Dashed the bird on the ground,
‘Get back to the grave you came from,’
Marceline screeched out to the wood,
And Doctor Bones responded with moans
Then sank to his knees in mud.

They said that they broke my fever as
The bird had screeched at the last,
They wiped its blood all over my face
Where it seemed to set, like a cast,
I rose up out of my torpor and
Saw Darleen clutching the cat,
While I was stood by the mirror, and
Was wearing his tails and hat!

David Lewis Paget

She always seemed to run on ahead,
Skipping, prancing and dancing,
All the way to the Goblin’s Wood
While I followed on, romancing.
She never seemed to see me at all
Though she was my only vision,
The only feature that filled my world
Right through to the intermission.

She wore her hair in a plaited braid
That jiggled along behind her,
And left a trail like a dragon’s tail
So bright that the light would blind her,
But I was mesmerised by the legs
That danced in a crazy pattern,
They moved too fast for the man who begs
Or the girl that they call a slattern.

I’d see her shadow between the trees
As it weaved and it side-slipped gladly,
Whipping the pale white flight of the breeze
As the leaves whirled around her, madly,
Then all the denizens of the wood
Would come to the sight entrancing,
Dressed in the garb of the neighborhood
I’d leave them behind me, dancing.

‘Come out, come out,’ would the Goblins shout
But she’d leave them behind her, whirling,
The old ones suffered from reams of gout
And would sit with their hair there, curling,
I live in hopes that she’ll turn to me
When her dance has become more mellow,
Entwined around the mystery tree
Her dress fading green to yellow.

They call her Summer, but Autumn shades
Seem they’re a long time coming,
The leaves are skittering down like blades
In a part of the year that’s slumming,
The breeze is cool as I call her in
From the dance that she’s in the making,
While I, contented, await the sin
She keeps in the oven, baking.

David Lewis Paget

The castle was smaller than I’d thought
In the Scottish countryside,
It sat in a hollow called Claymore Court
Where all the defenders died,
The signs of cannon, pounding the towers
Were there in the crumbled walls,
And shrubs grew out of the rubbled bowers
While trees took root in the halls.

I sensed a touch of hostility
The moment I reached the gate,
For Angus’s friendability
Came on just a little late,
We’d both attended the Priory School
But that had been way back then,
And I, in parting, called him a fool,
He wouldn’t remember when.

But he did us proud with a suckling pig
And a quart of ‘**** o’ the North’,
Marie, who knew him, was ever so big
And sat with me, holding forth.
I had no mind that he felt so strong,
I’d have left the woman at home,
He had this feeling I’d done him wrong
When I coaxed Marie to roam.

And there she sat with a month to go
Way out in front with our bairn,
I didn’t know it would crease him so
But there, you live and you learn.
He coaxed her drink, with a dreadful leer
Pressed on her **** o’ the North,
It wasn’t as if she was drinking beer
Or water, for all that it’s worth.

We went to bed in a tower room
When the moon rose over the glen,
It felt to me like a Highland tomb
As it was to my clan back then,
Marie began to moan in the night
That the bairn was coming forth,
It had a skinful, thanks to Marie
Of that liquor, **** o’ the North.

And Angus heard and he came to gloat
When he heard that she couldn’t hold,
I dropped him there, head first in the moat
To a grave both wet and cold.
Marie and I, we sit in the barn
And the blame swings back and forth,
What price my friend, and a helpless bairn
To a jar of **** o’ the North?

David Lewis Paget

I spend my time in the graveyard of
St. Martin’s in the Fields,
Cleaning the moss off the headstones
Just to read what damp reveals,
The local vicar has let them go
And the graveyard’s overgrown,
As creepers cover the finer points
Of the lives now dead and gone.

And some of the stones have fallen down,
Some of them on their face,
Showing their stories to the ground
That wouldn’t reveal a trace,
I heave and jemmy them back upright
Under the noonday sun,
Then read the inscriptions in the light,
Long hidden from every one.

The work is slow and exhausting but
It gives of its own reward,
They say that it stops the haunting by
The ones that are being ignored,
The graveyard dips down into a dell
And spreads through the willow trees,
With some of the graves so covered up
I get to them on my knees.

And some of them have been there so long
That the tops have fallen in,
Opening up the coffin lids
To the skull’s unholy grin,
I sometimes cover the aging bones,
Then I sometimes leave them be,
It all depends if they made amends
Once I know each history.

But one I found in that shaded dell
Made the hairs crawl up my back,
I raised the stone when I was alone
When I should have called for Jack,
For there on the new raised frontage
Was a scene from a dream of hell,
A demon, wearing a flowing cloak
And with sharpened claws as well.

She stared from the stone of granite
Her horns stood out on her head,
Someone had carved her figure there
To give us a sense of dread,
Her teeth were those of a vampire bat
Protruding out of the mud,
And only once I had wiped them off
Could I see the signs of blood.

And then I read the inscription:
‘Here lies the Lady Vamp,
She lured her victims into the woods
Disguised as a willing *****,
Then once inside she would tear their throats,
It looked like a beast of prey,
So no-one thought to look for her till
She’d given herself away.’

‘A soldier came on her sleeping
While she was covered in blood,
Her victim’s throat was in keeping
With a vampire loose in the wood,
He sharpened a stake from a sapling
And stood for a moment, apart,
Then turned in a burst of fury,
Thrusting the stake through her heart.’

The top of her coffin had fallen in
I saw, with the creeper aside,
And there lay the vampire, staring at me
As if from the day that she died,
The stake was ****** in through the ribcage there
She’d helplessly reached with a claw,
And tried to remove, to seek a reprieve
From what she was dying for.

I’m not superstitious, I should be, I know,
And in that there lies my mistake,
I reached through that rotten, coffin lid so
I’d get a good grip on the stake,
I pulled it out swiftly, and gave it a twist,
A foul wind blew in, like a breeze,
And I was aware of a woman who watched,
Stood silently there by the trees.

David Lewis Paget

I wish that we’d never found it now,
I wish that we’d stayed away,
Avoided the twisted mansion that
Was fashioned in Cromwell’s day,
But we were just a couple of lads
Out there, and having fun,
We wouldn’t have thought to change the world,
Nor hurt just anyone.

The place sat deep in a bluebell wood
Surrounded by a marsh,
I said, ‘Should we?’ and he said we should,
My friend was a little harsh,
We waded up to our knees out there
Until we reached the porch,
The rooms within were as dark as sin
Till Joe took out his torch.

The house had once been a splendid place
Though the floors were deep in mud,
Of fetes and ***** there was still a trace
Then the fields submerged in flood,
The house sank on its foundations then
No doubt, to cries and tears,
Its noble crew had deserted it
For all of two hundred years.

I raced my friend to the stairway that
Led up from the central hall,
Half of the rail had fallen away,
Was resting against the wall,
When up above in a tiny room
Stood a bureau, finely made,
Inlaid with delicate parquetry
That lay concealed in the shade.

But over the lintel of the door
Was the carving of a man,
His wings spread wide, with the sharpest claw,
He was from some evil clan,
His teeth protruded over his lip
And his eyes were fierce and black,
I caught at Joe and he almost tripped
But he shrugged, and turned his back.

And on the dust of the bureau lay
A long, fine feather quill,
I knew I shouldn’t disturb it there
But I thought, ‘I can, I will!’
And beside the quill was a manuscript
In an old and faded hand,
Calling for the death of a king
That I couldn’t understand.

I knew, I’d read in my history books
That a cruel, evil one,
A man called Oliver Cromwell had
Caused pain for everyone,
He’d raised a citizens’ army and
Had thought to **** the king,
But fell to the King’s Own Cavaliers,
Was beheaded in the spring.

I knew this, yet I still signed my name
With that awesome feather quill,
It seemed to have me so hypnotised
That I quite had lost my will,
So then when a roll of thunder shook
The house right through to the floor,
The man in black that was carved, alack,
Came bursting in through the door.

He snatched at the parchment manuscript
And let out a howl of glee,
Then screamed, ‘I’ve waited forever just
To play with your history.’
I know that you think the civil war
Took the head of a rightful King,
But how could I know the power of a quill
That could upturn everything?

David Lewis Paget

He waited until the Moon was high
And its beam shone on the sand,
Telling himself the time was nigh
He could overcome the land,
But everyone slept beneath the Moon,
Their minds were out of reach,
Except for the girl who stayed awake
And wandered along the beach.

Her mind was a well of confusion
There was love and there was pain,
She’d only done it the once, she thought,
But never she would again,
She thought of the sense of boundless joy
It gave when the love was there,
And how it crashed like a broken toy
When it gave way to despair.

And all the while he had watched the girl
From his vantage point on high,
Peering from his coal-black wings
In the dark of the evening sky,
Her thoughts he was carefully sifting
To glean what he could of use,
‘What was this thing called love,’ he thought,
‘It must be a term of abuse!’

And then a panicky wave of pain
Had hit him out of the blue,
How could she feel such love again
When the pain came seeping through,
He tried to stop but he couldn’t block
She was too intense for that,
His wings were quivering, dark and shivering
Like a giant bat.

He tried to impress his mind on her
As often he’d done before,
But found that distress was more or less
What she was looking for,
She dumped her pain in the darkening sky
And thought that she saw some wings,
As he crashed into a raging sea
In wonder at what love brings.

David Lewis Paget

He’d never forgotten the heap of ****
That sat beside the mine,
It blocked the sun from his morning walk
With its shadow, so sublime,
It grew to hover above his home
From the time that he was three,
Its overpowering vastness grew
Not slow, but steadily.

And every time that the wind would blow
Its dust would fill the air,
Would saturate every cranny, even
Darken his mother’s hair,
The coal dust strangled their garden bed
So not a thing would grow,
And filled up his father’s lungs with dust
Each time that he went below.

The more that they mined the deeper coal
The higher it grew, the heap,
It spread away from the poppethead
Was covering up the street,
They tried to manage the monster but
It grew out of control,
With every truckload of **** they dumped
From where they mined the coal.

At night it loomed like a giant bat
With its shadow on the ground,
Gleaming black in the moon’s pale beam
It terrorised the town,
‘I don’t like walking at night out there,’
You’d hear the women say,
‘That heap is covering Satan’s lair
We need to get away.’

But nobody ever got away,
At least, not with their soul,
They’d sold their souls to the devil, and
Were tied to the monster, coal,
The men came home with their faces black
And their hands all scarred and torn,
For coal mining is the sort of job
You are cursed with, when you’re born.

And he was taken to work the mine
When he’d barely turned just six,
His father said, ‘Well, I think it’s time,
You can leave behind your tricks,’
They showed him how he could work the fan
To fill the mine with air,
And there he worked twelve hours a day
While he learned the word ‘Despair’.

His father died when a prop collapsed
And they had to leave him there,
Under a hundred tons of coal
But the owners didn’t care,
They simply began another drive
To make up the owner’s loss,
Whether the miners lived or died
Their lives were seen as dross.

So Andrew, that was the orphan’s name
Went down between the shifts,
He took some fuel and matches down
He’d long been planning this,
He managed to start a coal seam fire
That roared by the morning sun,
And smoke poured out of that poppethead,
While they raged, ‘What has he done?’

But Andrew never emerged again
To pay for the thing he’d done,
He’d told his sister to write a note,
‘I did it for everyone!’
His bones lie charred where his father fell,
Under a hundred ton,
They couldn’t put out the coal seam fire,
The father lies with the son.

David Lewis Paget

I hated to pass the talking tree,
It made me feel all undone,
Raveling on in its revery
Like a racquet, coming unstrung,
What made it worse was the silken voice
Not matching a stringybark’s,
If I’d been offered a simple choice
I’d rather the voice was harsh.

It tried to attract my attention there
Each time I ventured to pass,
‘What are you going to do, just stare?’
It said, ‘Well, kiss my ***!’
It always tried to embarrass me
By being uncouth, and loose,
I said, ‘You’re surely the rudest tree,
We haven’t been introduced.’

It quoted Coleridge by the ream
Whenever I wore my hat,
‘A painted ship on a painted sea,
Now what do you think of that?’
‘I don’t know where you borrowed that line
I said, I have no notion, it’s
“As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean!”’

It used to sulk when it got it wrong
To wave its trunk with a clatter,
‘Who’d believe,’ it would say to me,
‘That getting it right would matter?’
‘I think He would, old S.T.C.
Would listen, hear, and note it,
Nor be impressed that a talking tree
Would get it wrong, and quote it.’

I turned up there with a saw one day
And the talking tree had cried,
‘I say, I’m not going to cut you down,’
I said, but it knew I lied.
For ‘April is the cruellest month,’
I said, and I wasn’t kidding,
I saw through its Eliot, silence its Pound
And cut off its Little Gidding.

David Lewis Paget

I pulled at the oars with Valentine
While Derek sat at the rear,
He’d taken his turn, now I took mine
Our quarry was drawing near,
For up on the bluff, deserted now
The tower stood, gaunt and white,
We’d managed the creaking boat somehow
To get to the Keystone Light.

It hadn’t been manned for fifty years
Its age was a matter of doubt,
The Keeper’s wife, in a fit of tears,
Left the light sputtering out.
Her husband gone in a giant wave
That carried him off from the bluff,
While in the dark was the Barque ‘Enclave’
Settling down in a trough.

And on the steps of the Keystone Light
The widow clung to the rail,
The wave was tugging about her skirt
As the Barque lost its mizzen sail,
A shark, caught up in the mighty swell
Was swept right up to the steps,
And took her leg in a single bite,
Returned with it to the depths.

They found her dead by the Keystone Light
The Barque, smashed up on the shore,
But never a sign of the Keeper, Sam,
Who had guarded the Light before.
They said his ghost ruled the tower top
That it howled in a winter storm,
While she kept swinging the outer door
To try keep the tower warm.

So we climbed up on that winter’s day,
The three of us to the bluff,
We lads let Valentine lead the way
She liked all that ghostly stuff.
The door hung off from its hinges there
From flapping about in the wind,
While Derek muttered, ‘We’d best beware,
There may be ghosts,’ and he grinned.

We’d gone, expecting to stay the night
So carried our candles and gear,
The bottom floor with the open door
Was a little too breezy, I fear.
I followed Valentine up to the Light
And carried the blankets there,
The view was truly a marvellous sight
But the wind gave us all a scare.

It hummed and soughed at the outer rail,
It groaned, and whispered and growled,
They’d warned, ‘It sounds like the Keeper’s wail,’
And true, at times it had howled.
It even seemed to have called her name,
The widow, crying in pain,
‘Caroline, I’ll be coming for you,’
Was the sound of the wind’s refrain.

We slept that night, or we tried to sleep
All huddled up on the floor,
But Derek rose, and before the dawn
His body lay down on the shore.
He must have fallen over the rail
While both of us were asleep,
But now the sound of the wind in its wail
Said, ‘Catch the wave at its peak!’

We hurried on down the spiral stair,
As the dawn came up like a trick,
We couldn’t bear to be caught up there
With both of us feeling sick.
But Valentine went out on the steps
Where the widow had stood before.
A sudden gust caught the door and just
Knocked Valentine to the floor.

I saw she’d never get up again
With the wound it gave to her head,
So much blood, like Caroline,
I knew she had to be dead.
I heave away at the oars, and pray
That their sacrifices will be
Enough to bring back my Caroline
For the Lighthouse Keeper was me!

David Lewis Paget

My father told us the story of
The time of his greatest pain,
Back in the year of ninety-nine,
During Victoria’s reign,
He lived in a two-bed terrace,
With a brother and sisters two,
With gas lamps out in the cobbled street
And nothing you’d call a view.

‘The windows were of a pebble glass
That distorted all you’d see,
And when it rained and the clouds were grained
All these shades appeared to me,
The lamps would cast a flickering beam
On the movement in the street,
To paint in shadows the local scene
Of that place they called ‘The Fleet’.’

‘I thought these shadows were passing ghosts
Who had died and lost their way,
Their shadows, caught in the pouring rain
Coming back and forth all day,
I little knew that my brother too
Would be claimed before too long,
Would add his tiny, flickering soul
To the heart of that heaving throng.’

‘For down below, a river would flow
Underneath the Coach and Horse,
The mighty sewers of the Fleet
Followed that watercourse,
The entrances were underground
And the water in it foul,
But floating bodies were often found
And the sewer men would howl.’

‘And Toby, our little Toby, he
Would be sent along the street,
He’d clatter along the cobblestones
For a loaf of bread, a treat,
He’d fetch a plug of tobacco for
Our father’s pipe, of course,
Collecting it from the barman there,
Down at the Coach and Horse.’

‘He’d toddle away, in light or dark,
He’d go in the sun or rain,
Whatever my father asked him do
He saw no need to explain,
And Toby went in the drizzling rain
One day, for a quart of beer,
I watched for him through the pebble glass
But the lad quite disappeared.’

‘All I could see were the moving shapes
Of the shadows in the rain,
Of ghosts, all huddled in coats and capes
As they passed my way, again,
But never a sight of our Toby, nor
The quart of my father’s beer,
We sent out a searching party, but
He wasn’t to reappear.’

‘We got in touch with the sewer men
Who said they would search the Fleet,
And try to find him before he flowed
To the Thames on New Bridge Street,
But all they found were a dozen dogs
Along with a monster pig,
Who all had drowned before they were found
And Toby was half as big.’

‘My father stood at the open door
At the same time every day,
Come rain or shine, he couldn’t divine
Why Toby had gone away,
But I can see, as if in a fit,
A thing that should count the least,
My father’s pipe, forever unlit,
Still gracing the mantelpiece.’

David Lewis Paget

The sun sat up on the mountain top
And started to sink from view,
A shadow, spread on the valley floor
Was creeping over you,
You’d just told me that you’d had enough
In the shade of a chestnut tree,
And then I saw in your shrouded smile
That you meant you were through with me.

I didn’t know what I’d done to you,
I thought it was only love,
But then the shadow had covered you
From the mountain top above,
You pulled your hood up over your hair
And wrapped yourself in your cloak,
Said you were going to leave me there
Go off with some other folk.

Your words were cruel, and pierced my heart
I wasn’t aware I’d erred,
You acted as if we’d strayed apart,
There was someone you preferred,
We’d been together so long I thought
That no-one could take my place,
But since you’ve shown that I’m on my own
I’m afraid of losing face.

And so I lie in the Mulberry bush
And I wait to see him here,
His first embrace with the one I love
Will become his last, I fear,
I took the knife from the kitchen drawer
With a view to bring his end,
But now I see as he ventures near
That the cheating one’s my friend.

How could you take my friend from me
As you take yourself away,
It isn’t enough that I’m losing you
But my friend as well, today,
I’ll not be spilling his blood tonight
As I thought I’d surely do,
But all the anger and hurt I feel
Has turned the knife on you.

David Lewis Paget

He wandered along old Codshill Street,
Quite late on that Christmas Eve,
And scanned the used haberdashery
Society ladies would leave,
The hats they’d worn, but only the once,
The boots with barely a scuff,
The poplin prints they hadn’t worn since,
A single dance was enough.

He stood outside in his working boots
The ones he wore at the mill,
He hadn’t had time to change himself
He should have been working still.
But in his pocket he clutched the pound
He’d saved for many a day,
He’d squirrelled each shilling away for months
Out of his meagre pay.

And all he could see was Mirabelle,
Who lodged at his heart and eye,
She worked upstairs in the counting room
Above where the shuttles fly,
And he would glimpse her once in a while
Pottering to and fro,
Dressed in a worn and paltry frock
Where the stitching was letting go.

He’d wait outside, and follow her home
To see she was safe and sound,
The rogues that he’d meet in Codshill Street
Would keep their eyes on the ground.
While she was aware of his loving gaze
And sometimes gave him a smile,
Others were bold in their loving ways
And pressed their court for a while.

And so it was on this Christmas Eve
That a Squire had stood at her door,
With a string of pearls you wouldn’t believe
He’d bought in a jeweller’s store,
And she was flushed as she let him in,
So pleased to have such a gift,
For she was only a working girl
And his interest gave her a lift.

But there in the haberdashery
In a window, stood at the side,
Was standing a model, dressed entire
In a gown so fine, he’d cried.
He thought he could see his Mirabelle
In place of the mannequin,
In the gown of grey crushed velvet, so
In a moment then, went in.

‘You know that the gown is second-hand,’
The girl explained to his stare,
‘Here are a couple of tiny stains,
And there is a little tear.
But this, that once cost a hundred pounds
Is a bargain now for a cause,
If you can give me a single pound
This lovely gown can be yours.’

She placed the gown in a long flat box,
And tied a ribbon around,
Then he flew out to his Mirabelle
In hopes she still could be found.
He saw the pearls were around her neck
When she had opened the door,
But once she pulled out the gown, she checked,
And dropped the pearls on the floor.

Her kiss was sweet on that Christmas Eve,
Though he had showed her the stains,
The tears she shed on that gorgeous thread
He said, were like summer rains,
She had no time for the wealthy Squire,
She’d waited for him all along,
Her greatest gift was a second-hand gown
With the love that the gown came from.

David Lewis Paget

I’d always thought that books were the same,
There wasn’t a lot to choose,
They each seep slowly into your brain
With knowledge you can’t refuse,
But then a book I found on a shelf
All ***** and dark and dank,
I’d read so far, then turning the page
I’d find every page was blank.

The print will stay till I drop my eyes
And the book slips from my grasp,
Then every page that’s ahead is blank
As the book escapes my clasp.
The villain smirks as I lose the plot
And he changes what’s to be,
He struggles up from the printed page
In an effort to be free.

I read the book on a cliff top verge
Looking down along the coast,
The day was calm like a soothing balm
And I felt as warm as toast,
My eyelids, heavy as lead dropped down
Preparatory to sleep,
When someone scaling the cliff ahead
Called out, began to weep.

‘God help me, sir, or I’ll fall below,
On that pile of jagged rocks,
Reach out for me and don’t let me go,
You don’t look the type that mocks.’
I noticed then that I’d dropped the book
In a pool of mud, and rank,
It fell agape with a broken back
The following pages blank.

‘I have to ask how your tale will end,
It’s unfinished in the book,
Your villainous deeds go on, and then
Disappear each time I look.’
‘It ends any way you want it to,
It’s the tale without an end,
For you are the villain in the book
You can do what you intend.’

I stood up straight and I kicked on out
At the figure on the cliff,
And he fell back with a scream, a shout
To the rocks along the reef,
I turned to pick up the broken book
Wiped the pages free from mud,
There wasn’t a single page left blank
Each page was stained with blood.

David Lewis Paget

They often walked in the garden, though
The garden was such a mess,
It was overgrown with Ivy, and
Choked up with watercress,
The pond was overflowing its banks
At the wet time of the year,
But no-one tended the garden then
It was much too hard to clear.

The house was old and the walls were damp
It had been a fine estate,
Built up from scratch by the pioneers
Then left to my schoolboy mate,
And now he was nearing twenty-five
And he had Germaine in tow,
I’d thought I could win her heart from him
But I had no place to go.

We lived, we three, in the house where we
Could each survive on our own,
While keeping the others company
Though not quite living alone,
So Paul lived up on the West Wing floor,
Germaine set up in the East,
While I had a couple of rooms downstairs,
In truth, I counted the least.

I stayed away from the garden when
I saw a snake in the pond,
More of a giant serpent that was
Six foot long, and beyond,
I didn’t caution the other two
For some strange quirk of my own,
For Paul would walk on the pondward side
While she would wander alone.

I heard her scream as the serpent came
Slithering up from the pool,
My blood ran cold as it struck at Paul,
He was much too close, the fool.
It bit, he said, on the hand and leg
It struck so fast, and had flown,
Then he called out in a chilling shout,
‘Its fangs went through to the bone!’

We carried him up in a faint that day
The venom was coursing his veins,
I must admit I was glad of it
For I only thought of Germaine.
She saw me stare at her auburn hair
And she must have known, before,
I’d been so very obsessed with her
But she only thought of Paul.

He lay in a fever there for days,
I thought that he might just die,
But felt ashamed of the thoughts that came,
My friendship caught in a lie,
If only she could have come to me
I could truly call him friend,
But she was true, and it seemed I knew
She would nurse him to the end.

One day she came, he was not the same,
She said, in a tortured tone,
‘His skin is starting to scale,’ she said,
‘He wants to be left alone.
His eyes have turned into tiny slits
And he seems to slither in bed,
His fangs are longer and sharper now
Than ever I’ve seen,’ she said.

I had to go, to see for myself,
I noticed his skin was grey,
His eyes were shifty, flickered about,
I didn’t know what to say,
He licked his lips but his tongue was forked
As if he’d split it in two,
His lips drew back and his fangs slid out,
‘What do I want with you?’

‘I’ve never seen such a change,’ I said,
‘How much of what’s left is Paul?’
He reared up in the bed at that
And flattened against the wall,
I felt that he was about to strike
So I left the room in a rush,
And told Germaine, ‘We had better leave,
Or it might mean the end of us.’

She stuck with Paul to the very end
I think that I knew she would,
They found her lying beside the pond
With her face suffused with blood.
Her skin looked just like a dragon’s scales
Her eyes pinpoints, if at all,
They killed two snakes in the garden pond,
There was nobody there called Paul.

David Lewis Paget

My father married a scheming witch
The month that my mother died,
He barely waited her final twitch
And it killed something inside,
I suddenly found myself alone
Apart from my brother, Liam,
But my heart inside had turned to stone
And the house was a mausoleum.

I’d hear her wandering round the house
When my father was away,
And something about the air in there
Made me feel some blank dismay,
For Liam was little help to me
He fell to the witch’s charm,
I tried to warn, but he looked in scorn
While I only felt alarm.

My father became a wealthy man
When my mother left him all,
She’d been the heir to a ladyship
And the deeds to Woolhampton Hall,
A wooden chest with the whole bequest
Was locked in a basement room,
And giant rocks in a jewel box
Would flash, they said, in the gloom.

But Lara never could find the key
Though she searched, both high and low,
My father never let on he knew
For he’d promised my mother so,
When she had said, with her final breath
‘I know all about the witch,
Don’t let her near my jewel box
Or you’ll end in a pauper’s ditch.’

He carried the key most everywhere
In his waistcoat, or his cuff,
He fastened it to his horse’s hair
And once to my choirboy’s ruff,
So Lara stormed while he was away,
I could hear her scream and curse,
And beat her feet on the basement door,
I didn’t know which was worse.

She asked Liam if he’d help her find
The key, and she’d see him right,
I heard him lurking about the house
To our father’s room, at night.
I asked him, ‘Where is your loyalty,
To your father or the witch?’
But he cursed and said flamboyantly,
‘Well, the witch will make me rich!’

‘I wouldn’t go in that basement room,’
I said, in a word of warning,
Remembering something my mother said
To her mirror, one dark morning,
‘I’ve made it plain in my will,’ she said,
‘And it’s there in the many riders,
Whoever thinks they can steal from me,
Must deal with a world of spiders.’

And so it passed, when Liam at last,
Found out where the key was hiding,
Was taking her to the basement stair
While my father was out, and riding,
I heard the screams in the basement room,
That sounded much like a riot,
By the time that I went to lock them in,
Both he and the witch were quiet!

David Lewis Paget

When once we dived on the San Miguel
Off the coast of old Peru,
We little knew that under the swell
Was an Aztec treasure, too.
I scuba’d down, and the vessel lay
Tipped onto its starboard side,
And mostly covered in silt that day
That buried its Spanish pride.

The wreck had never been seen before
So my heart began to pound,
We’d found the ship we’d been looking for
Submerged, and under a mound,
While whisking some of the silt away
My eyes had caught a gleam,
The helmet of a Conquistador
Lay trapped, and under a beam.

But as the silt was dispersed I saw
That the helmet still was full,
For glaring out from beneath its brim
Was a fearsome human skull,
The skeleton was intact, and lay
Still trapped, where once he fell,
His legs were caught in a cannon bay
Of the fated San Miguel.

I had no time for the niceties
That I should have shown to him,
But seized the helmet from off his head
And I left him, looking grim,
I took it up to the surface as
The first of our spoils that day,
And told the crew that I claimed it,
It was mine, so come what may!

The treasure trove was incredible
Of jewels and gold moidores,
I didn’t think that my helmet would
Be missed, once taken ashore,
But in my mind was a picture that
I’d seen on the ocean bed,
Of that struggling, drowned Conquistador
And that helmet on his head.

I sat that helmet in pride of place
As a conversation piece,
Tricked it up with a piece of lace
Thanks to a helpful niece,
But then the sounds had begun at night
The clashing of steel on steel,
And shadows, moving in passageways
From something that wasn’t real.

One night, the door with a mighty crash
Fell into the passageway,
I must have been feeling more than rash
To venture toward the fray,
For standing there in the open door
Was a skeleton, with a sword,
Who slipped the helmet onto its head
Not saying a single word.

I watched it wade back into the sea
This pile of ancient bones,
And think I know where it’s sure to be
Back where it lay, alone,
It seeks its brother Conquistadors
Where each had perished as well,
Guarding the store of gold moidores
In the hold of the San Miguel.

David Lewis Paget

I’d swear a monster lived in the hall
Of the house when I was young,
Just like the tiger under the bed
I could see when they were gone,
For I could hear him climbing the stair
When the house was fast asleep,
I knew he roamed around and about
When the stairs began to creak.

And then he’d enter my bedroom and
He’d re-arrange my toys,
That’s how I knew he disliked me, he
Kept all his tricks for boys.
He never bothered my sister, or
Disturbed her dolls and things,
Her bedroom was like a sanctuary
For her necklaces and rings.

He’d hide in all of the daylight hours
So he’d not be seen by them,
The others, who would make fun of me
When I warned them all again:
‘You wait, he’s going to take you out
He will catch you unawares,
You won’t be able to scream or shout
When he comes, and climbs the stairs.’

The winter months were both damp and cold
And the woodwork creaked and groaned,
It shrunk and stretched, it was getting old
And it hid the monster’s moans.
So I hid down by the bannister
And I tied a string across,
To trip him when he would climb the stairs,
I would teach the monster loss!

A storm was raging outside that night
And the wind howled through the trees,
The back door opened and flapped a lot
And let in a winter breeze,
I heard my father run down the stairs
And an awful cry and crash,
Then silence settled and fed my fears
Where the bannister was smashed.

I thought the monster was gone for good
With the service come and gone,
I thought he couldn’t survive that crash
And the crematorium,
But barely a week had passed us by
And the stairs began to creak,
So I placed a candle under the stair
And the place burned for a week.

David Lewis Paget

The flats were old and the rooms were cold
But I didn’t have much choice,
I hadn’t the money for anything else
Since the spat I had with Joyce,
I’d walked the streets for almost a day
Just to find a place to stay,
When I finally found a flat to rent
The building was old and grey.

Dust was grimed on the windowsill
And mud was tramped in the hall,
Whatever was left of the carpet there
You just couldn’t see at all,
The caretaker in the bottom flat
Handed out the do’s and don’ts,
The rent on time on the topmost line,
Ahead of the wills and won’ts.

I didn’t know it was partly share
Till I’d paid, and taken the key,
Until I entered the bathroom there
And found there was more than me.
A woman sat there, painting her nails
Come in from the flat next door,
Said, ‘You’re my share?’ as she patted her hair,
‘You’d better prepare, there’s more.’

We not only shared the bathroom there
But the key to the only Loo,
There was only a single kitchen there
And it looked like we shared that too,
I wasn’t impressed, was more than depressed
And I kept on thinking of Joyce,
How could I sink so low, I thought,
But she didn’t give me a choice.

I lay in bed the following morn,
Lay in till a quarter-past two,
Why should I get up early when
There was nothing I had to do.
I thought I’d cook me a rasher or two,
Some eggs, and a slice of bread,
Till I walked out into the kitchen, then
And into a land of dread.

There were bats hung over the fireplace,
And a great big *** on the hob,
And something thin that had just been skinned
Lay over an iron ****.
There were piles of bones on the platter board
And some fingers left on a plate,
Their rings were on but the hand was gone,
Off to a dismal fate.

I whirled about in despair, in case
Someone was stalking me,
And checked the grate of the fireplace
Where the ashes glowed redly,
The *** was bubbling on the hob
And some things that looked like ears,
Kept bobbing up to the surface
Like some headless bombardiers.

I spun away to the kitchen sink
And I gazed into its depths,
Peered on in with a single blink
And I fought to keep my breath,
For staring up was a grinning skull
As the girl I saw last night,
Came leaping in like a beast of sin
And I lost my appetite.

‘It isn’t what you might think,’ she said,
‘I should have warned you, right!
We use this room for the local Rep
To rehearse their play tonight.
I set it up for the witches scene,
It’s only a plastic skull,
And plastic bats and toy skinned-cats,
Want to eat?’ I said ‘I’m full!’

David Lewis Paget

I was out when the heavens opened up,
I was only but halfway there,
I hadn’t a coat or umbrella then
On my way to my darling dear,
But she was dry in her great big house
That was built up high on the ridge,
The river rose and it blocked my path
With the Warlock, guarding the bridge.

His hat was wet and his cloak had flared
While his eyes, pinpoints of red,
Stood out from under his hat and stared
As my mind was filled with dread,
I didn’t know if he’d let me pass
I had met his type before,
He was grumble-growl with a werewolf’s howl
And a sharp and mighty claw.

I tried to pass on the narrow bridge
But he growled, ‘Who goes you where?’
I said, ‘I’m going to meet my girl
In the house on the ridge up there.’
‘You shall not pass, you shall not go,
I shall tear you limb from limb,’
His claws he raised in a grisly show
And his jaw was set and grim.

The rain continued its pelting down
And the thunder pealed above,
I felt determined to beat this clown
I was fortified with love.
‘You’ll not be wanting to cross Nyrene
She will drop a spell or two,
That will tear apart your Warlock’s heart
When her spell is done with you.’

The Warlock started to make reply
When the lightning hit the rail,
And lit him up like a paper cup
From his head down to his tail,
The river washed him across the bridge
And into its raging flow,
Whether he drowned or fried that day
Well really, I wouldn’t know.

‘You shouldn’t have used my name in vain,’
Nyrene told me at the door,
‘That lightning flash may have caused you pain,
It was kept in my ‘Un-aimed’ Store.’
I never go up if the rivers rise
When Nyrene’s home on the ridge,
If lightning’s lurking up in the skies
Or a Warlock’s guarding the bridge.

David Lewis Paget