This page is white as a white can be
Til I lift my pen and trace
A scrawl of black from an inky sac,
A tale of the human race.
I pick and choose, who wins, who lose
Their brief duet with fate,
Who twist and turn as they live and learn
To dance at my garden gate.

I paint in the cliffs and the sky above,
The shingle, down on the shore,
A tiny cottage that’s full of love
With a garden of herbs, and more,
A man who walks on the winding path,
He’s a difficult man to gauge,
Will he be happy, or sad, or what
When I get to the end of the page?

I’ll call him Clive, for he’s so alive
When he gets to the cottage gate,
His eyes are bright in the fading light
As he looks for his darling, Kate.
She hears the creak of the hinges greet
The one who captured her heart,
And races out through the cottage door,
Who am I, to keep them apart?

But the world is cruel and there’s always gruel
To add to a perfect tale,
I should be telling this up at the pub,
Over a pint of ale.
But I’d have to muddy my story up
To make my listeners tense,
And what does it take but a big brown snake
To add to the tale’s suspense.

The snake came slithering out of the herbs
And reared it’s head up high,
I could be mean with the following scene
As the snake bites Kate in the thigh.
But I’m only here to fill the page
Not to lay a ****** trail,
So Clive, alive to the danger leaps
To seize the snake by the tail.

Our hero takes the snake by the tail
And cracks it like a whip,
Shatters its spinal cord and so,
That was the end of it.
There’s a smiling face and a swift embrace
And a tale untold, for sure,
When Clive and Kate shut the creaky gate
And enter the cottage door.

I only wanted to tell a tale
To banish this page of white,
The page that mocks like a sly old fox
When I stare at it each night.
So take the story of Clive and Kate
Who live on top of the cliff,
And dream sweet dreams if your own life seems
Too bland, and think, ‘What if?’

David Lewis Paget

‘I’m looking for Nathan Cory,
I’m looking for Jonathon Brown,’
That was the woman’s story,
In a pub, this side of town.
I’d only gone for a quiet pint
And hoped to be on my own,
Til this angry face burst into the place
And I put my beer mug down.

‘Would I be my brother’s keeper,
To follow him near and far?
He may appear, but he’s never here,
You can try the public bar.
Jonathon flits from place to place,
You never can tie him down,
I should know, I’m his brother Joe,
At your service, Joseph Brown.’

She ordered a double *****,
With a twist of lemon, squeezed,
Then sat on the stool beside me,
Without a ‘you mind?’ or ‘please’.
‘And what of this Nathan Cory,’
She said, ‘Is that just a friend?’
And I thought back to the nursery,
With that dark wall at the end.

‘Oh Nathan, yes, well he comes and goes,
He isn’t a friend to me,
But Jonathon always speaks of him,
Has known him since he was three.
He’s not a guy you should tangle with,
He’s always wanting to fight,
Jonathon used to go with him
When he came to him at night.’

‘You say you’ve never seen Nathan, then,
Not once, in all of your days?’
‘I try to avoid the ones that cause
Me strife, in so many ways.
My brother and I, we live apart,
I haven’t seen him for years,
That Nathan came in between us two,
A bit like the family curse!’

Her smile was gentle, her eyes were brown
Her hair fell over her face,
She didn’t seem quite so angry now
But I saw she carried Mace.
The men in white came up to the bar
As I dashed my beer down,
They said, ‘Hello! Whoever you are,’
And I said, ‘I’m Jonathon Brown.’

David Lewis Paget

One last night in the dungeon,
One last night to his fall,
The Earl of Grace was chained in place
To the damp of the dungeon wall.
They’d taken him at the tourney,
The knights of the Duke of Beck,
While the King had turned his face away
As they fettered him by the neck.

They’d taken his chain of office,
They’d taken his rings and seal,
The shifting tides of the time had sighed
In showing him what was real,
The King had removed his favour,
The court had looked on askance,
That final fall from a height so high
Was part of the courtly dance.

For no-one survived forever,
In that court of grim intrigue,
He’d been aligned with the prince to find
The prince was brought to his knees.
Grace didn’t have the King’s permit
To marry the Lady Grey,
And that, just one of the sins he wore
Conspired to put him away.

For Beck was stalking the lady,
The wealth and the lands she had,
Her cold response to his needs and wants
Had driven the Duke quite mad.
The prince, confined to his quarters
Was backing the Earl of Grace,
But once the marriage had come to light
The scandal had brought disgrace.

He stood in the dark, and shivered,
In the hour before the dawn,
And watched them setting the gallows up
That would take his quaking form.
Beck had wanted the axe and block
But the King had murmured, ‘No!’
‘I’ll not part him from his noble head,
But I’ll hang him, long and slow!’

The hangman came at the dawning,
Was strapping his hands and feet,
While shuffling him to the drop, he said,
‘Hanging an Earl’s a treat!’
And Beck was there to await him,
To whisper his evil spite,
‘You’ll be deep in the earth, while I
Will be with your wife tonight.’

They took their time with the halter,
Were seeming to draw it out,
When down in the court a clatter
Of knights, and an awful shout:
‘The King is dead, long live the King,’
As they rescued the Earl of Grace,
Shuffled him off the drop, and then
They hung the Duke in his place.

David Lewis Paget

They said he was always a hothead,
As a kid he’d scream and shout,
He got so bad, made his mother mad
That his father locked him out.
He couldn’t get in at the windows,
So wandered all night round the farm,
And by the time that his folks were fine
The kid had set fire to the barn.

On the day he got out of Borstal
He was just turned seventeen,
And the Warder James said, ‘Listen Ames,
Better keep your fingers clean!
There isn’t a future in anger,
And less of a future in crime,
So keep your head, though your hair is red
Or you’ll be back, doing time!’

But any advice flew over his head
And headed on out to the stars,
For soon young Ames was making his name
Hanging in clubs and bars.
He never went home to his parents
For which they would say, ‘Thank God!
He got his genes from his Grandma Steenes,
And she was distinctly odd!’

He had a passion for fire, would sit
For hours, and stare at the flames,
They said his eyes would be hypnotised
When playing his thermal games.
He’d light a match in a pile of thatch,
In a wood or a field of gorse,
Then watch the firemen put it out,
Well hidden away, of course.

They wouldn’t take him as a fireman,
They said he was up to his tricks
When they saw him next to the fire house
Lighting up piles of sticks,
Then Sheriff Bruce said he had no use
For a hothead in his town,
And put the word on the street; he heard
They were going to hunt him down.

So he hid in the Church’s belfry,
And up in the Town Hall clock,
Then sit and fume in that tiny room
Til he finally ran amok,
He broke in just about midnight
According to Fireman Tuck,
Who’d come from his farm, and raised the alarm
‘He’s stolen the Fire Truck!’

Then fires broke out in the woodlands,
And fires sprang up in the town,
While the chief said, ‘Look for a big red truck,
It must be somewhere around.’
They called out the local constabulary,
They called out the National Guard,
And orders came from the top to say,
‘Go out, and hit him hard!’

They cornered Ames in a one-way street
Where he couldn’t turn it around,
So he climbed on up to the top of the truck
And they finally gunned him down.
The coroner ordered an autopsy
On the body of Hothead Ames,
As the circular saw dropped his skull to the floor,
His brain burst into flames!

David Lewis Paget

He watched as she passed each morning,
Same time, each day of the week,
But his lips were dry and his tongue was tied
And he found he couldn’t speak.
She had such a heavenly beauty,
That he’d raised her up on high,
So how could he, a poor mortal seek
Such a goddess, up in the sky?

Her hair the colour of ripened corn
Her lips the pink of the rose,
The dimple sitting in either cheek
And the tilt at the end of her nose.
Her eyes would flash as she passed him
In that wonderful glide and sway,
He almost spoke, but he always choked,
And cursed as she walked away.

While she kept steadily walking,
She never would look around,
Though the sight of the young Adonis made
Her heart pit-patter and pound.
He looked like a Grecian statue,
From the Pantheon of the Gods,
Why would he spare a glance at her
With her features all at odds?

For the blonde was out of a bottle,
And her eyes, they must have looked scared,
She tried to appear so nonchalant
And not that she really cared.
But she walked that way each morning
Just to get a glimpse of him,
Hoping he’d say one word to her
That would be encouraging.

The days passed on through the Summer
Then Autumn had come to stay,
And he still stood each morning
And she still walked that way,
But he paced in desperation,
Chewed his fingers down to the bone,
‘When would he pluck the courage up,’
She thought, as she passed his home.

They seemed to be making progress,
For they’d nod as she walked by,
But he didn’t see as she raised her eyes
Frustrated, up at the sky,
She’d put on a brighter lipstick,
Mascara, as black as coal,
While he despaired as she disappeared
At the emptiness in his soul.

He practised before the mirror,
And tried out a ‘How are you?’
But shook his head at the words he said,
It simply wouldn’t do!
What if he came straight out and cried
The thoughts he felt in his heart,
‘I’ve fallen so much in love with you
That it’s tearing me apart!’

While she broke down in the ladies room
The moment she got to work,
Her friends came gathering round to say,
‘He must be a total ****!’
But she flared back to defend him,
‘I think that he fancies me,
He stands and nods like a Grecian God
But his face is misery!’

The morning came that he steeled himself
And walked right into her path,
While she stood still as she broke a heel
And sat with him on the grass.
‘You can’t go to work like that,’ he said,
‘My name, by the way, is Bill.’
‘I often wondered,’ she smiled at him,
‘And mine, by the way, is Jill.’

David Lewis Paget

Always a bit of a mystery,
She lived in a seaside shack,
Would go to town when the sun was down
The widow of Martin Black.
She always went in her mourning dress
And a veil that covered her face,
‘Do you think she’d date,’ I had asked a mate,
‘You wouldn’t be in the race!’

‘There’s a list of suitors, long as your arm
Just waiting to take her out,
They knew her back on her Daddy’s farm
When Martin wasn’t about,
But he ******* them all with his shiny Porsche
With his black cravat and coat,
And in the bay not a mile away
With his V6 Jet-ski boat.’

‘You tell me she was a good time girl
In love with material things?’
‘She certainly liked the odd gemstone
And her hands were covered with rings.
But that was him, with his taste for gold
That he liked to shower on her,
And parade her down in the glitz of town
In bling, and covered in fur.’

‘And yet, I’ve not seen a single chain
Or a necklace, brooch or ring,
She’s so austere when I’ve noticed her
I’ve not seen anything,
She wears a drape of the blackest crepe
And a veil that hides her eyes,
But pauses there when I stop and stare
As if caught in some surprise.’

‘That isn’t much of a mystery
If you knew the couple, Jack,
You might as well be a twin of him
The fabled Martin Black.
She’d think that his ghost had risen up
If she saw you in the street,
You might just give her a heart attack
If your dress is not discreet.’

I went back home to the mirror, donned
A coat and a black cravat,
And topped it off with a load of bling
And an old black stove-pipe hat,
The type they said that he used to wear
When they roamed abroad at night,
Taking in all the music halls
To dance till the early light.

She saw me there in the street, and screamed
Then rushed at me and attacked,
And cried, ‘you’re not going to spoil my dreams,
You’ll not be coming back!’
Her fists had pounded my solid form
Til she stopped, collapsed and cried,
And babbled out a confession that
For long, she’d kept inside.

The last I heard she was with the police
Who had questioned her all night,
Extracted all of the details of some
Long and drawn out fight,
They took her down to the waterfront
Where the Jet-ski boat was kept,
And then began to rip up the floor
As the widow wailed and wept.

And he was there with a livid scar
Where she’d slashed him in the throat,
Stuffed him under the planks and boards
By his pride and joy, the boat,
I didn’t know he had disappeared
When I’d thought to bring him back,
But all I’d caused was a host of tears
For the Widow of Martin Black.

David Lewis Paget

‘I always wanted to see your face,’ she said,
She was teasing me,
I’d gone along to our twentieth wake
Since we’d been divorced, and free.
We got on better than ever we had
When chained together in time,
That piece of paper had choked us both
But being apart, sublime!

I looked across at the massive cake
They had wheeled across the floor,
‘Now that’s what I call a giant bake,’
I said. She said, ‘There’s more!’
There were twenty candles around the top
And seven around the lip,
The twenty since we had been divorced
And seven for when we flipped.

The seven year itch was what it was
When we ended up in court,
We really should have got over it
But we’d given it little thought,
For the plumber lasted a month or two
She confessed, in one of her gripes,
For she got bored with him on the floor
Checking her taps and pipes.

And I got sick of the Dolly Bird
Who had lisped, she would be mine,
Who liked to strip to the Beatles hits
When her head was full of wine,
It all fell flat when the passion died
And we stopped to get our breath,
There was nothing she had to say inside
So she bored me half to death.

We came together just once a year
As a mark of our mistake,
And every year with the slightest tear
We would share a Parting Cake.
I’d never seen one as big as this
It was white, and frilled with lace,
And that’s when Jennifer said to me,
‘I wanted to see your face!’

The lid flipped up and the stripper rose
As I dropped my jaw, and gaped,
She stood a moment and struck a pose,
‘That’s my present for you, Jake!
It’s a bit too late to apologise
For making that awful scene,
But I think we’re older now, and wise,
And you get to lick off the cream!’

The girl was covered in cream all right
On her thighs and hips and breast,
‘You get to lick what you want tonight
And I’ll scrape off the rest.’
She laughed, I laughed, and I saw her then
As the face of one I’d missed,
There was little thought of the stripper then
As we both leaned in, and kissed.

David Lewis Paget

She’d gone on her own to the party,
But sadly, for she was alone,
Her partner had left her in limbo,
Had not even said he was going.
A month had gone by, with never a word
And nothing to say why he’d gone,
She looked in the mirror for why she was spurned
But life, as it does, carries on.

Nothing had changed in her that she could see,
She still had her beautiful hair,
Her lips were as full as they ever could be,
Her eyes had that hypnotic stare.
Her figure was slim, and as firm as it was
When her partner decided to leave,
If there was a problem, it had to be him,
Which left her no reason to grieve.

The party she went to was stranger than strange,
With Bogans, Goth make-up and Greens,
She guessed that their ages for most of them ranged
From middle-aged matrons to teens.
A pair of Goth sisters were eyeing her off
And flattering her, to deceive,
‘My, there is a beauty, the best of the lot,
I’d fit her, I think, with a squeeze.’

They twittered and tittered between them, the two,
Whose beauty had long gone to seed,
Whatever they’d had, it was plain that it flew
When excess took over from need.
They fed her with drinks and exotic confects
That she hardly liked to refuse,
Her hold on the present was slight, I reflect,
Her sadness was yesterday’s news.

The ugliest sister, whose name was July,
Rolled in like a mist to her brain,
The cunning of eyes and a whispered surprise
Made her think she was going insane.
She felt herself ebbing, and losing control
As July held her hands in her own,
And then somehow gelling with tissues and cells in
Some fatness that she’d never known.

She watched through a mist as the girl she had been
Laughed loudly, and then turned away,
Embracing the sister, that other unclean,
‘We’ll get you one, some other day!’
Her body felt loose, like an oversize suit
And her lips could but slobber and cry,
‘What have they done to my beautiful youth,’
As she turned to a mirror, to cry.

David Lewis Paget

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.
The hopes I cherished are in the past,
The dreams all come undone,
I look ahead to the future and
I know, there isn’t one.’

He sat alone on the patio
And stared on out to the bay,
‘There was a time,’ he began again,
Then stopped in his dismay,
For whitecaps out in the ocean still
Were rolling in to the shore,
Just like they had on another day,
Just like they’d done before.

And pictures came to his aging eye
Of the world, how it had been,
When life and love were a world away
When he was just sixteen,
But times and tides had rolled over him
In a restless, reckless ride,
Had torn the very heart out of him
To leave empty space inside.

‘There must be a time,’ he thought aloud
‘When it’s right to call it quits,
When you’ve done the things that you wanted to
And it’s fallen all to bits,
With friends and lovers gone on their way
And with not a glance aside,
While I, stiff-necked, being so correct,
Am caught in the sin of pride.’

And then, the thought of his darling wife
Had finally raised a tear,
The sense he’d not even noticed her
For the time that she was here,
‘We never know what we’ve got,’ he thought,
‘Til it’s well and truly lost,
Just one more line in the ledger that
Adds up to the final cost.’

Then the children, what of the children with
That look of innocent trust,
Who burrowed into that heart you had
When you thought that God was just,
But once they’re grown and you find they’ve flown
To their lives, to stand or fall,
You wait for them to return to you
But you find they never call.

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.’
The only sound was the breaking waves
With the salt-spray and its sting,
He looked about like a man who craves,
But none were listening!

David Lewis Paget

There was mist up high on the mountain
There were bones along the shore,
And a line of caves that met the waves
Around that evil tor,
There were screeches in the forest
But they weren’t from parakeets,
And the heavy sound of breathing
Late at night, and from the deeps.

While the waters round this island
Seemed to mutter from the reef,
When the tide would urge them forward
They would pile and then retreat,
It was if it was forbidden
For the waves to beat the shore
As an ancient Atavism
Gave out its primal roar.

So we camped out there on the beaches
Within sight of Hartley’s wreck,
That the reef had torn a hole in,
There was water to the deck,
It sat forlorn on a *******
Within reach, when the tide was low,
We hadn’t a plank so the vessel sank
And we had nowhere to go.

We lived on fish that we netted,
We traced out ‘Help’ on the sand,
We hoped that a plane from overhead
Would rescue our little band,
There was John who was the bosun,
There was Jane who cooked and chored,
Myself for the navigation,
And Hartley, that made four.

But seven others were lost at sea
Were afloat beyond the reef,
The tiger sharks had left their marks
With their cruel razor teeth,
So we kept a silent vigil
With the single flare we had,
And hoped that Keith would bring relief
In the merchant ‘Iron Clad’.

(for alternative ending, jump to *)

‘We need to go in the forest,’
Said Jane in a bleak despair,
‘We need to find what fruit and berries
Might just be growing there.’
So John went off with a bucket
As the sun began to rise,
But soon was back, he had been attacked
And was missing both his eyes.

‘A thing rose up in the forest,
It had no shape or form,
It just looked black but it still attacked
And I felt my face was torn,
It had a gutteral growl as old
As the earth that formed this place,
A sense of aeons before the storm
That created the human race.’

He died that night with a whimper,
With everyone else asleep,
I began to shake as this evil shape
Was taking him up the beach,
It dragged him into the forest,
Food for its larder there,
And I so scared and unprepared
That I fired our only flare.

It lit the heavens above us,
It lit up the sand, and then
It lit the trees in the forest
And the bones of other men,
When Hartley woke with a curse and spoke
The most welcoming words he had,
As Jane got up from her sleep, he cried,
‘By God, there’s the ‘Iron Clad!’

(Alternate ending from *)

When Hartley woke in the morning
We saw he had gone quite mad,
For John lay dead with a bleeding head
And a wound where he’d been stabbed,
While Jane took off and ran up the beach
To shelter in one of the caves,
And I was forced to listen to him
Engaged in one of his raves.

He was blaming John for wrecking the ship
And blaming me for the tack,
‘You were the Navigator, Jim,
So what do you say to that?’
I said that the fog was thick and deep
When we drove up onto the reef,
‘And you should have been up on the deck
Not down in a drunken sleep!’

He went for me with the rusty blade
He’d used already on John,
But I was younger and far too quick
As he came stumbling on,
I wrestled him to the ground and found
The knife had entered his side,
Then belching blood on the sand he cursed,
Lay on the beach, and died.

When I went to look for Jane I heard
A single scream in the cave,
Where a giant octopus held her,
I was just too late to save,
It’s tentacles were ten feet long
And were wrapped around her frame,
Though I slashed and cut off three of them
She was dead before I came.

So I wandered back to the lonely beach,
The only one alive,
My heart so low at this latest show
That I thought of suicide,
But then out there in my bleak despair
I fired the flare we had,
And there, beyond the reef I saw
The shape of the ‘Iron Clad’.

David Lewis Paget

He was nothing if not successful,
Grant Overman with his pen,
Everything that he seemed to write
Was well received back then,
The publishers fought for his stories,
And women swooned at his tales,
The only negative feeling then
Was coming from jealous males.

Was coming from jealous writers,
Who never quite got it right,
Their work returned from the publishers
To give it a ‘second sight.’
‘I don’t see how he can churn them out
So fast, with never a flaw,’
Said Ernest Benn to his leaky pen
While blotting his tale once more.

‘I think he’s in league with the devil,
He’s scribbled a pact in blood,
Or how could he twist my heartstrings so,
My tears come in a flood.’
His wife had sniffled through seven books
Of the hated Overman,
But never wailed at her husband’s tales,
He’d not yet published one.

‘I have to discover his secret,
There’s something we just don’t know,
If only you can get close to him
To see how his stories flow.
He needs a helper to clean his house,
Apply for the job, and then,
Rummage around what can be found
And watch him, using his pen.’

She used her charm at the interview
And was taken on to sweep,
To wash the dishes and scour the pans
To clean, three days a week,
While Grant would sit in his study there
And sit, bowed over his desk,
Then fall asleep in his padded chair
While he thought of tales burlesque.

Marie came back on the second day
And she said, ‘I think I know,
The thing he’s got and that you have not
That makes his stories flow.
He keeps it locked in a bureau drawer
Till he starts to write, and then,
It dances over the page, I swear,
He slept through chapter ten!’

‘You say the pen does the writing?
I see,’ said Ernest Benn,
His eyes aglow, ‘so at last we know,
He has a Magic Pen!
We need to get it away from him
So that I can find success,
The chances of getting caught are slim
If we do this with finesse.’

Marie left open the kitchen door
On an afternoon in June,
While Ernest, unobtrusively
Sneaked in, and hid in the gloom.
Though Grant was falling asleep, his hand
Had begun to race again,
So Ernest battered him from behind
While Marie took hold of the pen.

But Grant sat up, and he tried to rise,
He cried a hollow note,
Marie hung onto the pen, and then
She stabbed him in the throat,
And blood was suddenly everywhere
The desk, the floor, their shoes,
Said Ernest, ‘better get out of here
Before we make the News!’

After he’d washed and filled the pen
With a nice new brand of ink.
He held it over the paper, said
‘Do I even have to think?’
The pen began on its sudden scrawl
But was making quite a mess
By writing a line in blood, not ink,
‘I, Ernest Benn, confess!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I’m coming to get you now,’ he said,
‘I’m coming to get you tonight!’
Derek sat with his headset on,
His face was white with fright.
‘I think you have the wrong guy,’ he said,
‘It couldn’t be me you mean!’
‘Oh yes, I’m coming to get you now,
I know you, Derek McLean.’

He sat there silent as eerie chills
Spread up and along his spine,
A face came on his computer screen
That rang some bell in his mind.
‘This better not be a joke,’ he said,
‘You’d better not mess with me!’
The voice in the headset chuckled low
In some evil deviltry.

‘It’s taken a while to track you down,
But track you down I did,
You should have stayed off the Internet,
Covered your head, and hid.’
‘I’ve nothing to hide from,’ Derek said,
But his voice broke high in alarm,
‘You’ll never be able to block it out,
That day on Emerson’s Farm.’

At the very mention of Emerson’s Farm
The listener held his breath,
For years he’d struggled to block it out,
The site of that childhood death.
They’d played together in sodden fields
And had ventured into the marsh,
Thinking to pick the bluebells there
But the end of that was harsh.

‘I’d like to know who you are,’ he said,
But his words came out in a whine,
‘You know full well, do I have to tell,
I’m here for the second time.
You left me there and you ran on home
As I sank in there to my neck,
You had no care for my tiny life
But tonight, I’ll teach you respect.’

Derek shuddered and hit the switch
To turn the computer off,
But nothing flickered, the screen stayed on
And Derek began to cough.
‘Have you any idea what it’s like to drown
In a sludge of grass and mud?
It isn’t pleasant, I’ll tell you that
You should try it once, you should!’

Derek coughed and began to choke
In a fit of remorse, and fear,
He’d tried to forget the little bloke
Who had haunted him, year by year.
The doctor, when he examined him
Said, ‘Heart attack, and he choked.
His eyes are staring, as if in fear
But there’s mud in the back of his throat!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I am so tired, so tired,’ he said,
‘So tired but cannot sleep,’
He lay there restless in his bed
But could not even weep.
‘I’m all wept out,’ he would have said
If she’d been there to hear,
But he lay in an empty bed
Since she had disappeared.

‘It’s not as if she left a note
To say she’d not be there,’
He watched the light bulb spider weave
A web above his stare,
She’d gone down to the market at
The other end of town,
And though he searched, she’d left his world
She’d turned it upside down.

The stallkeepers had seen her there
She’d gone from stall to stall,
Whenever she’d go shopping she
Would want to see it all,
Her endless curiosity
Had kept him home that day,
His legs would never carry him
The miles she’d walk that way.

‘Go try the stall that sells the scarves,
I’m sure I saw her there,’
She never did do things by halves
Of that he was aware,
‘Go see the stall with rings and things,
She bought an amulet,
A silver chain, all old and stained
And placed it round her neck.’

He’d looked in vain to find the stall
But he had packed and gone,
‘We didn’t really want him here
With such a carry-on,
He dealt in spells and tiny bells
And readings in his tent,
We wondered what was going on
Then he packed up, and went.’

And no-one saw which way he’d gone,
They didn’t even try,
‘We didn’t want to mess with him,
He had the evil eye.
Two other guys have lost their wives
As well, since he came here,
They go into that tent of his
Then seem to disappear.’

‘He kept a cage of spiders, that I know,
I saw them there,
Of many different colours, weaving
Cobwebs in the air,
He said they were his weavers, making
Gossamer, so sad,
He’d sell it in the Faery Dell, he said,
The man was mad!’

‘I am so tired, so tired,’ he said,
‘So tired but cannot sleep,’
He lay there restless in his bed
But could not even weep.
He watched the light bulb spider weave
A web above his stare,
And cried aloud, ‘Where are you, Eve?
I’m lost in my despair!’

David Lewis Paget

From the time that Alison woke she knew
That she had to speak her lines,
It was part of some strange assignment that
Had lodged, deep in her mind,
And every day had begun like this
From as far back as the Prom,
For every day was a part to play
Though she didn’t know where from.

Her lines appeared in her deepest sleep,  
Were as glue upon her page,
She wasn’t allowed to deviate
Protest, or express her rage,
She’d go to Milady’s ballroom all
Dressed up with bustle and flare,
Plastered with ancient make-up and
A Pompadour in her hair.

And Alan, down off the ballroom he
Would finish his last cigar,
Straighten his wig and tails and take
His boots on into the bar,
A tumbler there of Cognac he’d
Toss back, then head for the ball,
Looking to share his heart out there
With the fairest one of them all.

He’d met her before on other nights,
She’d hidden behind her fan,
Her lashes were long and fluttered then
As he tried to hold her hand,
But she had proved to be skittish, she
Would lead him along, then stay,
And disappear in the dancers there
As she struggled to get away.

But Alan was more determined now,
He pinned her against the wall,
Caught the scent of her heaving breath,
‘Don’t you care for me, at all?’
She’d hesitate as those hated lines
Once more came into her head,
‘Oh my, this maiden is blushing, sir,
My cheeks are burning red.’

He led her towards an ante-room
For a long desired embrace,
But he couldn’t see behind the fan
The anguish on her face,
She wanted to live and love, she thought
She wanted to cry aloud,
But all that her script would let her do
Was gravitate to the crowd.

And Alan was so frustrated,
He thought that he’d never score,
For Alison seemed to disappear
As he opened the bedroom door,
And she stood out in the coffee room
With amazement on her face,
Where had he gone, she’d closed her eyes
To wait for his sweet embrace?

Alan tore off his tie and wig
And he hurled them to the floor,
Why did she always disappear
Just there, at the bedroom door?
He flung about, and he just went out
With his face so set and pale,
‘I’ll not be staying a moment more
In a Barbara Cartland tale.’

He had wondered where his speech came from
It had seemed so stiff and trite,
Embedded into his head, it seemed
When he was asleep at night,
He jumped on into a cab outside
In a vain attempt to flee,
When Alison ran beside him then
And cried, ‘Hey, wait for me!’

David Lewis Paget

I’d not seen them out in the open,
They grew in the alleys and lanes,
A purple flower with a sort of power
In the scent from its pores and veins,
I asked Romana the name of it
But she shuddered and turned away,
‘It’s a type of bloom called Purple Doom,
Or that’s what the gypsies say.’

The scent was sickly and sweet out there
I admit, it went to my head,
Romana came to the caravan
And made crazy love in bed.
The scent was an aphrodisiac
That drove normal men insane,
Our clothes were dropped and we couldn’t stop
Till we cried aloud in pain.

The aftermath was a migraine head
That we both endured that night,
And when we woke, she tried to choke me,
All we could do was fight.
At last, we came back down to earth
And surveyed the shattered room,
Romana said that we could be dead
From the scent of that Purple Doom.

I beat the weeds round the caravan,
I poked and prodded and pried,
Found Purple Doom, there in the gloom
So its scent was sweet inside.
I tore the clump right out by the roots
But I cut my hand, it bled,
I burnt the flower, curtailed its power
But with poison in my head.

I don’t remember the next few days
But I almost passed away,
I seemed to be wandering in the dark
Where the sky was always grey,
A castle rose in a fallow field
And I tried to cross the moat,
I called Romana ‘Lady Gay’
And she said, ‘Just stay afloat!’

But flowers assailed on every side
They were purple, pink and red,
Leaning in with their tendrils, seemed
To sip the blood I bled.
A gypsy shook me awake one day
And I slowly came around,
‘Don’t go bringing your caravan
And camping on gypsy ground!’

He’d gripped Romana by the hair
And tried to drag her away,
But she let loose with a gypsy curse
And he turned and fled that day.
We towed away the caravan,
And avoid all lanes and gloom,
But she retains a potpourri to
Make love with that Purple Doom.

David Lewis Paget

There was always something strange about
The tree by the clifftop farm,
It hadn’t been there when I was young
Till the storm blew down the barn,
Then once the land was cleared it grew
At a pace I’d never seen,
A raggedy, twisted wreck of a tree
That my wife said was obscene.

‘Why don’t we cut it down,’ she said,
‘Why do you let it grow?’
‘It doesn’t do any harm,’ I said,
‘It’s there for the winter blow.
It stands where it will protect the house
From the fiercest winter storm,
It may be ugly to see,’ I said
‘But it helps to shelter our home.’

The roots were massive and twisted, and
They spread, all over the place,
They tunneled under the house and then
Came up by the fireplace,
I chopped them off and I poisoned those
That tried to come through the floor,
And then I found there were other roots
Jamming our old front door.

The winter came in a rush that year
And we were buried in snow,
We hoped that there’d be an early thaw
But it didn’t hurry to go.
We stayed inside and we stoked the fire
With the roots I’d cut from the tree,
The food went down in the larder, but
The fire burned merrily.

I hadn’t so much as glanced outside
For a month, or maybe more,
The wind would howl at the chimney pots
But to go outside, what for?
Then Spring shone over the windowsill
And the snow began to melt,
So finally we could venture out,
I can’t tell how we felt.

For out there at the side of the house
The tree had grown grotesque,
It seems it had continued to grow
Beneath its snow-clad vest,
For branches snaked across to the roof
And clung to the chimney pots,
To hold itself upright and aloof
Where I’d chopped the roots right off.

But what had disturbed and frightened me
Was the tree had grown in height,
Its gnarled and twisted trunk so high
It was almost out of sight,
It disappeared in a darkening cloud
That seemed to hover and stay,
While other clouds were adrift up there
It was still there, day by day.

At night, with terrible grinding sounds
The branches moved on the roof,
They tumbled off the chimney pots,
Believe me, that’s the truth!
The wife said, ‘We should have cut it down
When we had the chance, last Spring,
But now it’ll probably take the house
So we can’t do anything.’

I know you’ll never believe me now,
It all seems so absurd,
But I broke out the elephant gun
At the sound of just one word,
We lay abed with it overhead
And the tree began to hum,
It woke me as I listened, and then
The word I heard was, ‘Fum!’

I aimed the gun up the tree that night
At those penetrating sounds,
I couldn’t have fired enough if I
Had had a thousand rounds.
And something hurtled on past me then
To land right down in the bay,
The tree was silent, it ceased to hum
And I chopped it down next day.

David Lewis Paget

I met myself on a winding path
With the beach ten yards away,
Walking slowly towards me then
By the pounding breakers spray,
The path was narrow, I stepped aside
As I felt a twinge of fear,
We both were startled, I heard us say,
‘What are you doing here?’

I looked at me as I must have been
At the age of thirty-one,
And I was visibly shaken, seeing
Just how the years had gone,
‘I’m not quite how I envisaged me,
Were the years ahead so hard?’
I felt a chill and replied to me,
‘I was hoist on my own petard.’

‘What has become of our hopes and dreams,
The ones that we must have shared?’
‘I let them slip through my fingers, once
I noticed that no-one cared.’
‘I always said that I’d have to fight
For the things that I held dear,’
‘But the years have changed, and rearranged
For none of those things are here.’

With one last look at each other, we
Then parted and turned away,
I to a desperate future,
And me to my dying day,
The I then turned that was thirty-one
‘Can you tell what happened to She?’
I couldn’t remember the one I meant,
‘She’s certainly not with me!’

David Lewis Paget

‘There are times and tides in every life,
There are things we never planned,’
The old man said to his grandson there
As he took him by the hand,
‘It may come soon, or it may come late,
It may be the final fall,
But when it does you may find you’re left
With your back against the wall.’

The lad stood still on the rocky ledge
He was more than petrified,
For half the cliff had given way
In a sudden, great landslide,
The path that they had travelled on
Had plummeted into the bay,
There was no forward, and no way back
Where they stood on the cliff that day.

‘Do you think they’ll come to rescue us,
Do they even know we’re here?’
The lad had cried in the first aside
Of his terror, and his fear,
The old man looked at the darkening light
And the clouds foretold a storm,
‘I think that we’ll be stranded here
All night, till the early morn.’

The old man looked where the cliff above
Had an overhanging ridge,
There was no way to clamber up
From their place on the narrow ledge,
And straight below, two hundred feet
Was the churn of an angry sea,
‘I think we’ll have to be more than brave
My boy, just you and me.’

The night came on with a swirl of wind
The first from an evening squall,
While they sat down on the narrow ledge
Their backs to the old cliff wall,
The lad was cold and his face was pale
So his grandpa held him tight,
‘Just think of what you can tell your friends
Once back from this dreadful night.’

The rain that came was torrential,
They both were soaked to the skin,
He wrapped his coat all around the boy
But he felt him shivering,
‘This brings back memories from the war
I was sat in an LCT,
Waiting for it to come and land
And to set the beaches free.’

The lad perked up, said, ‘tell me more,
Did you find yourself afraid?’
‘We knew the odds, we had gone to war
And the mines, they all were laid,
We hit the beach and they dropped the door
I was waist deep in the sea,
Trying to make it into shore
But I lived, and so can we!’

The boy was shivering constantly,
He’d die before the morn,
The old man struggled him to his feet,
‘We have to get you warm!
We’re both stood here in our LCT
And we’re brave, our hearts are pumped…’
He turned and smiled at the lad, and then,
Holding hands, they jumped!

David Lewis Paget

He slipped on a set of headphones,
Adjusted a dial or two,
Then introduced his radio show
And the members of his crew,
‘The Horror Tales of the Greats’ he read
Each week to the folk in town,
Just as the Moon was coming up
With the sun then truly down.

And the folk had huddled round speakers
To hear, in a thousand homes,
The tales of Edgar Allan Poe
In the speaker’s crackling tones,
And an eerie mist fell over the town
If they chanced to look outside,
As the ghosts of horror stories past
Rose up from the place they died.

Each tone was sent with a shiver
From the night’s Plutonian shore,
Just as that stately bird of old
Had repeated, ‘Nevermore!’
While the cats had yowled in the alleyways
When he read a tale of sin,
Of walling up the corpse of his wife
When the Black Cat did him in.

The Fall of the House of Usher,
The Masque of the Red Death,
The tales built up in the atmosphere
And made them short of breath,
The Cask of Amontillado,
The Pendulum and the Pit,
Whatever the horror, and most intense
There was always more of it.

The stars that shone in the evening sky
Had gone, though the sky was clear
As the Moon had dropped down, over a hill
While the airwaves dripped with fear,
And the walls back there, in the studio
Were seeming to seep a flood,
As the speaker droned in the microphone
The studio filled with blood.

And suddenly then, a different voice
Was heard all over the town,
Rattling through their radio’s
And shouting the reader down.
‘Shutter your windows and lock your doors
Put children under the bed,
Hide yourselves right under the stairs
Or you may well end up dead!’

‘The very air that you breathe has been
Long saturated with dread,
Has filled your lungs with the ripe unclean
That came from somebody’s head.
The ghostly voice on your radio
That has whispered blood and gore,
Will drown tonight in the studio
So there won’t be any more.’

And right behind that terrible voice
There was choking sounds and screams,
Enough to curdle the very blood
And to give them nightmare dreams,
Then after a long, chilled silence of
The type that terror sates,
A voice said, ‘that was the final of
The Horror Tales of the Greats.’

David Lewis Paget

There comes a day when a love that’s frail
Will shatter at a touch,
No matter how long it’s been that way
And has hung together, just,
The storm that gathers at eye and lip
Bursts out of a clear blue sky,
In a day of rage that will turn the page
And will leave you asking why?

The clouds will gather, the lightning strike
And the swift torrential rain,
Will tear apart an uncertain heart
And will douse your love with pain,
It matters not if you back away
Or appease a fevered mind,
For words are said that in truth are bled
From a feeling most unkind.

You’re torn apart in a retrospect
Of the years you thought were fine,
But now discover that ancient lover
Was keeping tabs on time,
It seems that nothing was ever right
That you did in years before,
The cruel asides and the parting jibes
As they slam that final door.

It taints the best of your memories
It empties feelings inside,
It’s like a war with an empty core
Lost in a sea of pride,
But even then when you can’t pretend
That the end is worth a sigh,
The saddest sound in that dismal round
Is that final word, ‘Goodbye!’

David Lewis Paget

He walked on up to the cottage from
The cliff, the long way round,
He didn’t want to be seen or heard,
His footsteps made no sound,
He was wearing the same old overcoat
That he’d worn, those years before,
When he’d sauntered out of the cottage,
To take a walk on the shore.

The weather then had been brisk and cold
In the first few days of Spring,
The clouds had been light and fluffy then
He remembered everything,
The gulls were nested along the cliff
And the tide was on the turn,
A single fisherman cast his line
On the far side of the burn.

The pathway down by the cliff had been
Rock strewn and fairly steep,
His steps back then had been tentative,
He had time enough to keep,
He’d told his wife he’d be back by one
From his walk along the shore,
And she had blown him a kiss for fun
As she swept him out the door.

But now he looked at the garden that
Had been so nicely mown,
The privet hedge, the wisteria
Were all now overgrown,
The cottage needed a coat of paint
And the chimney pots were cracked,
He stopped and mused at the garden gate
For the love the cottage lacked.

Then a face appeared at the window that
Was pale, and sad, and drawn,
And he wished the earth would swallow him
From the day that he was born,
The door flew open and out she flew
Like a shrew, with little grace,
A look of scorn as he stood there, torn
And she slapped him round the face.

‘What do you mean by coming here,
Did you hope to see my tears?
You walked away, not a word to say
And you don’t come back for years.’
She screamed and pounded his overcoat
As he took one pace, and stepped,
Folding his arms around her as
She clung to him, and wept.

‘I think I know how the others felt
But it’s all beyond recall,
I only talked to the fisherman,
And I was held in thrall,
He talked and talked of the things to come
It was most distinctly odd,
The world closed in around me till
I felt I was talking to God.’

‘He said so much, and it sounded wise
But I can’t recall a thing,
I wanted to get back home to you
For time was hastening,
But the sun went down and the Moon came up
Which was when he said it, then,
‘I’m not here looking for fish,’ he said,
‘For I’m a fisher of men.’

‘It’s been three years,’ said his tear-stained wife,
‘It has been three years or more,
Since ever you took your leave of me
To wander down on the shore.’
‘That was the time of his ministry,’
He said, ‘and I was to blame,
He  kept on calling me Judas, though
I said that wasn’t my name.’

‘He said that we needed forgiveness, like
I need forgiveness from you,
I honestly don’t know where I’ve been
But I know I’ve always been true.
He packed up his fishing tackle in
A bag he kept on the sand,
Took thirty pieces of silver
And placed them back in my hand.’

David Lewis Paget

Deep in the gloom of her bedroom,
Young Kathy dried her tears,
It wasn’t as bad as the red room
She’d been banished to for years,
At least up there she could lie and dream
And play with her music box,
Not hear her parents arguing,
Whether they did, or not.

At least up here was her sanctuary
Where she could dream all day,
Of skipping out in the poppy fields
Where all the children play,
She’d lie there nursing a broken heart
For the loss of her former life,
For all had changed in her home, The Grange
When he took a second wife.

When her father took a second wife
And his face became so grim,
It seemed she couldn’t do anything right
For the sake of pleasing him,
The woman snapped and the woman snarled
And she said to call her Ma,
But Kathy had kept her lips shut tight
That was just one bridge too far.

So she lay and opened the paste-board lid
And the dancer, up she leapt,
Straightening out her toutou as
She tried one pirouette,
With one hand up to her forehead and
The other fixed and set,
The dancer twirled in her private world
To a Mozart minuet.

And Kathy thought she was beautiful
As she balanced on her toes,
A look of grace on her tiny face
And the flush of love, it shows,
With glitter up in her auburn hair
And a spangle on each shoe,
The thought had formed as the doll performed,
‘I wish I could be like you!’

‘I wish I could be like you,’ she thought
‘So small, and full of grace,
I’d never have to go down again
With tears on my face,
I’d wait till somebody wound me up
Then I’d dance for them with pride,’
And something happened to Kathy then,
A change that she felt inside.

For all the while that the dancer twirled
To the Mozart minuet,
It took in Kathy’s tear-stained face
And it seemed somewhat upset,
‘Why should she have this lovely room
And a life that I’m denied,
I wish I could be like you,’ it thought,
And the two thoughts did collide.

There seemed a change in the very air
Of that too secluded gloom,
When everything with bated breath had
Stopped in that fated room,
Then Kathy leapt to her feet with joy
And a final pirouette,
While the dancer smiled as at first she trialled
To that Mozart minuet.

The father arrived back home that night
To a scene of blood and gore,
His wife impaled with a table knife
Lay dead on the kitchen floor,
While Kathy twirled in the poppy fields
In a show of poise and grace,
And there in the bedroom, up above
There was blood on the dancer’s face.

David Lewis Paget

We’d been at sea on a cruise ship,
Some days to Paradise,
An island in the pacific
Of beaches, trees and spice,
But storms, they were foregathering
Not just for the ship at sea,
For frost with us was travelling
Inside Caitlin and me.

With eyes averted we rarely spoke
There were demons in my head,
For she would flutter about at night
Not join me in our bed.
The ship ploughed on through a restless sea,
While the clouds outside were grey,
And I began to regret that we
Had chosen this holiday.

I woke each morning before the dawn
And not a word was said,
For Caitlin lay, facing away
On the far side of our bed.
I’d roam around in the early hours
The silent, deserted ship,
But a life aboard alone, it sours
By the fifth day of a trip.

The clouds grew dark, enveloped the ship
And mist lay deep on the decks,
While down beneath the fathomless sea
Lay a thousand sunken wrecks.
A thousand wrecks of hopes and dreams
That started away like this,
Lost forever beneath the sea
At the lack of a touch, or kiss.

We sailed, we sailed, by God we sailed
With our heartsick contraband,
For days we sailed as the storm winds railed
But we caught no sight of land,
We caught no sight of the what-we-were
Before, when our world was new,
For love was blind in the mist and wind
That sailed with the cruise ship too.

Surely there was a meeting point
Between the land and the sea,
But the ship sailed on with our tempers gone,
We sailed in misery,
A day beyond our arrival point
The Captain came to say,
‘The land has gone, there’s something wrong
We were due there yesterday.’

Wherever we looked about to see
The sea was all we saw,
I’d turn and spin, keep my hopes within,
All hope had flown before.
We cruise around in an endless sea
With never a sight of land,
And nothing is left of what was ‘we’
It’s buried in sea and sand.

Buried alive in the sea and sand
With a frost that shatters the eye,
Gone with the hope of sighting land
Between the sea and the sky.
We’re drifting now, for we’re out of fuel
In a world of liquid pride,
With she content at the prow of the ship
And I with the wake that died.

David Lewis Paget

He sat in his favourite corner,
Each day, just taking his pills,
The old man, Frederick Horner
Counting his cash and paying his bills,
They watched and noted his every move,
Took note of each sign of life,
He’d outlived both of his daughters,
And even his scheming wife.

He never revealed how old he was
And nobody knew the truth,
He said he was old as Methusaleh,
Remembered the Biblical Ruth,
He still had the very first dollar he’d earned
Had framed it, and locked in his drawer,
But now he had multi-billions,
And each day added more.

‘You’d think he would give us some,’ they said,
His sons, Nathaniel and George,
For they had to work for their daily bread,
And Nathaniel slaved at a forge.
‘He can’t live forever,’ George opined
‘And then it will pass to us,’
The money was always on George’s mind,
As he drove the local bus.

‘We’re not getting younger,’ Nathaniel said,
‘I’m forty and you’re forty-two,
We could have made good if he’d shown some trust,
But look at our Becky and Sue.
They both died young, of neglect they said,
And mother, she died from the shakes,
But he goes on, he’s just about dead,
It must be those pills he takes.’

They’d watched him taking his yellow pills,
He never said what they did,
The blue, kept under the windowsill,
The orange, the old man hid.
‘It must be them that keep him alive,
The orange, the yellow and blue,
What if we take the pills away?’
‘You can, but it’s up to you.’

‘Maybe we ought to try them first,
They could give us both long life.’
‘They didn’t do much for her,’ said George,
‘The old man’s second wife.’
Nathaniel nodded and looked quite grim
He remembered the yellow pills,
Spilling out of the woman’s hand
When she fell down, deadly ill.

They’d never been close to their father when
Their mother suddenly died,
Whenever there was an argument
They’d taken their mother’s side,
The old man sat in his corner and
Would mutter of stains and blood,
Would wait for a glimmer of light to shine
But doubted they understood.

‘We’ll try the blue, one pill apiece
One night when he’s in his bed,’
And so they did, they swallowed them down
In seconds they fell down dead.
The old man grinned in his final breath,
‘Too curious, those two,
They should have asked who their father was
For it wasn’t me… I knew!’

David Lewis Paget

There’s a time at night when the moon is full
And the breakers pound the beach,
The world is dark and asleep, the gull
Lies nesting at the breach,
It’s then that the stirrings from the depths
Reach out, like a dead man’s hand,
And shortly, out of the rivulets
There are footprints on the sand.

They come ashore and they stand awhile
And they point, this way and that,
Considering well which way to go
As the waves erase their tracks,
Then a breeze picks up and it parts the grass
In a line up from the shore,
And the shape of feet on a farmer’s stile
Are left, till they dry once more.

While up on the rise, a cottage sits
With a single faint night-light,
Its simple beam like a beacon streams
Through the tar-black pitch of night,
While deep inside in a cosy room
Sleeps a girl called Carolyn,
Who tosses fretfully in the gloom
As she dreams the words, ‘Come in!’

The footsteps up from the field below
Stand still at the old front door,
The lock is rusty, the hinges swing
For an inch, or maybe more,
The wind is moaning and soughing now
And the door is soon ajar,
As the footsteps enter that sacred place
Under the evening star.

And Carolyn lies and moans aloud
As his death invades her sleep,
Since ever the depths had formed his shroud
All she had done was weep,
The footprints stood, facing her bed
For an age it seemed, they kept
A silent vigil, there by her head
When she woke, the sheets were wet.

David Lewis Paget

The first time that I noticed them
I passed them on the stair,
She wore an amulet love-charm then
He was much too old for her.
I should have hurried and looked away
But I caught her smouldering eye,
And my heart had leapt within my breast
To this day, I wonder why?

Her hair, a tangle of lovers knots,
Her lips, a definite pout,
Her figure light and her legs were white
And I saw her look about.
She peeked behind as she passed me by
And I caught her knowing look,
The moment passed with the slightest sigh
I was firmly on her hook.

I didn’t go out of my way for her,
She seemed so firmly fixed,
The man beside her glowered at me
And gripped her by the wrist,
I saw him leading her often then
As our paths began to cross,
And smiled at her as she came my way
But her eyes looked vague, and lost.

The man came up and he gripped my arm,
‘You’d better leave her be.
Don’t think to fall for her fateful charm,
Giselle belongs to me!’
He pushed me then, and he walked away
And he gripped her arm so tight,
He stopped the blood where his fingers lay
And her hand went stark and white.

I asked a friend who had known her once,
He said, ‘Just keep away.
She labours under a curse, that one,
She only brings dismay.
You see the man who escorts her now
And you think he’s far too old,
A year ago he was twenty-two
But he aged once in her hold.’

I didn’t think it was possible
But he aged as time went on,
His hair and his beard went pale and grey
And his features, pale and wan,
Though she gained colour in both her cheeks
And her eyes would sparkle blue,
While he would stumble, but still cling on
Till she said, ‘I’m looking at you!’

As soon as she uttered those fateful words
His hand released its grip,
And she walked on, not looking back
As if on a different trip.
She came to face me and say the words
That had snared good men before,
But I turned into my passageway
Grey faced, and I locked the door.

David Lewis Paget

There’s a village on top of a mountain
That’s always surrounded by mist,
They have a miraculous fountain
Allowing the folk to exist,
And no-one remembers the world below
They think that they float in the void,
Their library holds a single book
Called something, ‘According to Freud’.

They choose a new partner every night
In a version of musical chairs,
Nobody knows who belongs to who
And nobody really cares,
The women weave and the men deceive
In the way that it’s been for years,
And then at night, they put out the light
And lie back, counting the stars.

They’re trying to bottle the moonbeams,
To capture the secret of light,
And catch the sparkling frost that melts
Up on the mountain’s height,
The day that a mountaineer appeared
Climbing up out of the mist,
They thought the devil had somehow reared
Out of his precipice.

The villagers gradually dwindled,
They died or they jumped right off,
He spoke to them in a different tongue
And they said that they’d had enough.
He tried in vain to explain again
That his name was Karsikov,
But the village slowly emptied out,
They thought that he’d said, ‘*******!’

David Lewis Paget

We decided to offer a non-event
For it hadn’t been done before,
We ordered a super, over-sized tent
And the grass to grow on the floor,
But the tent was cancelled the day it came
And the grass returned to the man,
For who ever heard of a non-event
That ever ran strictly to plan?

There are music events, and party events,
And horsey events, equine,
Racing events and crazy events
And lazy events, sublime.
There’s events to do most anything
Which is why I thought it true,
That the most exciting event of the year
Would be one with nothing to do.

We’d offer an awesome Rock event
With a band who wouldn’t be there,
And a totally gratis haircut, meant
For the men without any hair.
A skin tattoo for the motley crew
That we know as **** and tatts,
Then tell them the ink was really glue
For manufacturing hats.

The roads would be blocked for an hour or less
With the cars that never came,
We’d put the non-event posters up
They could read them all in vain.
I hear we’re up for a Nobel Prize
For giving it up on Lent,
That one and only, never to come see
World Class Non-Event!

David Lewis Paget

I’d thought that they were extinct until
I found one in the coop,
A genuine Jersey Giant, strutting
Up on the henhouse roof,
Twice the size of the other hens
As I said to my sister, Faye,
‘Where did it come from?’ She replied,
‘Not there yesterday!’

‘I go to collect the eggs each day,
Do you think that could be missed?
That bird is a giant,’ she declared,
‘So don’t blame me, desist!’
I calmed her down, for she used to flare
At the slightest hint of crit.,
‘Whatever it is, it’s here to stay,
Perhaps we can breed from it?’

There wasn’t a cockerel near the size
Of this random Jersey Black,
‘It must have come visiting overnight,
I joked, ‘from a neighbour’s shack.’
She wandered into the henhouse and
From behind an empty keg,
She said, ‘You’d better come look at this,’
And showed me a giant egg.

An egg so big that you wouldn’t think
That a chicken could let it pass,
Tall and brown with a pointed crown
And a shell as thick as glass,
‘Are we going to let it hatch it out,’
Said Faye, ‘or crack it yet?
I wonder how many that would feed
As a giant omelette?’

‘We’ll leave her be, and we’ll wait and see
If a monster’s there inside,
We might as well, if a cockerel
It can be the henhouse pride.’
So we let her sit on the giant egg
For a week, or maybe more,
Then Faye came running inside one day,
‘You’ve not seen this before!’

The egg emitted a humming noise
And rocked a bit on its base,
While through the shell there were coloured lights
That would fade then grow apace,
And as we stood it began to crack
Then pieces would fall away,
It almost gave me a heart attack
For what I saw that day.

For spinning inside the egg we saw
A tiny universe,
With a sun-like star at the centre and
Our planets, in reverse,
And as we watched it began to grow
To float out the henhouse door,
Swelling constantly as it rose
To the skies, with a mighty roar.

I don’t know what it has done to us,
The sky doesn’t look the same,
There are three moons now in the evening sky
Since the Jersey rooster came,
I lopped the chicken that laid the egg
And I wait for the slightest sight,
With an axe for the Jersey cockerel
That Faye prays to at night.

David Lewis Paget

We had come across this grotto in
The cliff near Cater’s Pride,
And were swimming in the shallows
When we took a look inside,
There was just a tiny entrance that
Had broadened to a hall,
And the strange effect of lighting seemed
Reflected off each wall.

There were seashells, there were gemstones
Shining, in the rocky face,
And a narrow path around a pool
With depths we could not trace,
But the water was so clear and blue,
And warm, it must be said,
That Cathy cried, ‘Can this be true?’
While I just shook my head.

We sat back on the ledge and dangled
Feet down in the blue,
We didn’t know that danger loomed
And nor, I think, would you,
But then some minor turbulence
Disturbed the perfect pool,
And suddenly three heads appeared
To laugh, and play the fool.

Three nymphs with sparkling eyes and teeth
Who splashed, their laughter pealed
And echoed round the grotto, as
Their presence was revealed,
They saw us and they beckoned us
As if to swim and play,
If only caution reckoned in
The thoughts I had that day!

But Cathy laughed and waved at them
From just beyond my reach,
And two of them came swimming and
They seized an ankle each,
They pulled her off the ledge and laughing
In that pool so blue,
Then swam around her teasing so
I knew not what to do.

Now Cathy was a swimmer, she
Could more than hold her own,
But when they swam around her
What I saw would make me groan,
For as they broke the surface I
Could see her face was pale,
And each of these fair maidens, well,
They had a fish’s tail.

They whirled around and tumbled her
And pulled her by the hair,
And soon I saw her fighting them
As if in need of air,
I dived in then to free her but
They saw me coming down,
And took her to the depths with them
Until poor Cathy drowned.

I totally lost sight of them
And had to clamber out,
Sat weeping by the pool until
Just like a waterspout
Her body shot up from the depths
And then the mermaids three,
Swam clinging to each other, looked
Apologetically.

They didn’t know we had to breathe
They had no need of air,
They made me signs of penance but
My Cathy simply stared,
And in her eyes a look of awe
As if in death she’d seen
A world that was worth dying for,
A dream within a dream.

David Lewis Paget

We never forget the ones we loved
If the feeling was strong and true,
No matter what happened, the push and shove
That separates me from you,
And those who came after, who took your place
Will never extinguish the spark,
That sits in the memory’s starkest place
After making new love in the dark.

For an old love’s more than a pretty face,
It’s more than a bunch of sighs,
It’s more than a fragile cobweb’s grace
That recalls the look in your eyes,
It sits together with faded youth
We recall on our darkest nights,
The pain, obsession, the laughter too
As the mirror of memory lights.

The further down we push it away
It comes when we least expect,
Bustling in from our salad days
With a feeling of sad neglect,
How did it stutter and how did it fail
Is the question that meets our eyes,
And then we remember the truth of it,
Our false and our feeble lies.

Whatever possessed us to stray back then
We made up the perfect two,
But you would get angry with me, my love,
And I would get angry with you,
So our footsteps strayed and we lost the way
To find our way home again,
I’d be with girls that I didn’t know
And you’d be with other men.

But we’re still back there in the years that fled
And we’ll be together again,
When people talk of the life we led
In that time of way back when,
There are certain times in my history
That I see as a strange purview,
When I was entranced by your mystery,
And you were just simply you.

David Lewis Paget

‘There’s a crafty witch in Willow Vale
Putting spells on all the men,
She lures them out with a lurid tale
Of what they might miss, and then…
She chews them up and she spits them out
And they go home looking pale,
She just wants to prove to fretful wives
That she governs all things male.’

Pamela stood in the door and paused
And she looked direct at me,
‘If you should fall for her witches charms
You can go, I’ll set you free!
I’ll not take seconds from lovesick men
Who come when the witch is through,
You’ll not come in through my door again,
That’s right, I’m looking at you!’

So I threw my hands up in the air
And I said, ‘Why pick on me?
Have I so much looked at a scheming witch
When she’s up to her deviltry?’
‘That may be true but your time is due
You’re the last one in the Glen,
She’ll get to you when she sees you’re new
For a perfect score of ten.’

‘I promise Pamela, I’ll be true,’
But she said to call it quits,
‘An easy promise that you can’t keep
Is a lie upon your lips.’
Then I got mad and I said I’d had
Being judged up front, was lame,
I said I’d travel to Willow Vale
Play the witch at her own game.

‘Well just remember that if you do
A touch is all it will take,
A simple kiss that will bring you bliss
That would be your first mistake.
Don’t think you might get away with it
For I have my little spies,
I even know how the spell will grow
If you look deep into her eyes.’

So I set off for the witch’s haunt
In a cottage, in the vale,
And hearing Pamela’s final taunt
‘You won’t live to tell the tale!’
I pursed my lips, and gritted my teeth
As I knocked on the witch’s door,
It swung out wide, to show her sat
By a cauldron on the floor.

She didn’t even look up at me
She was sorcering a spell,
Dropping roots in the cauldron there
And muttering as they fell,
Her hair fell over her shoulders and
Her face was in the shade,
And then she stopped and she looked at me
‘Did you come here to get laid?’

I blushed and stammered and caught my breath,
This wasn’t going well,
My blood was running as cold as death
As I fell beneath her spell.
She’d painted her lips and eyelids black
And her fingernails like claws,
She said, ‘I’m ready to claw your back
You need only say, ‘I’m yours!’’

Her dress she slid up above her knees
To reveal her silken thighs,
Her bodice open, she leaned right back
And I had to shut my eyes.
‘I came to tell you you’re not for me,
That you weave your spells in vain,
I have a love that is true, you see
I don’t need to play your game.’

She bounded up to her feet and cried
‘A kiss for a lonely witch!
I’m only asking a single kiss,
What could be wrong with this?’
I shook my head and I turned to go,
And I reached for the cottage door,
Then the wig came off and I heard her laugh,
And there lay Pam, on the floor!

David Lewis Paget

We came in through the undergrowth
To a patch of blasted trees,
Then checked the radiation that
Had brought earth to its knees,
The skyscrapers were gaunt and tall
They rose like a cankered cell,
Of shattered forms, all overgrown
With a **** spawned straight from hell.

Then Roach said that we should wait awhile,
Make sure it had stabilised,
We’d seen what happened to men before
When they glowed, before our eyes,
But that had been thirty years before,
When men had made mistakes,
We’d not seen a man since we began
Living on rats and snakes.

I vaguely recalled the woman thing
That had held me in her arms,
Who cooed and cried when the lightning died
And the bells shrieked in alarm,
But we hadn’t seen a woman thing
For years, for they all died out,
It was something to do with ovaries
And things we don’t know about.

We’d met as a pair of ragamuffins
Roaming over the plains,
Hiding under a hollow tree
To avoid the acid rains,
Our skin was scarred, and our life was hard
But we managed to survive,
And now, as far as we knew we were
The only men alive.

I knew she’d read from the Bible for
That was a woman thing,
She taught me plenty of words back then
And showed me scribbling,
So I read fragments to Roach who said
He’d had something called a sis,
I had a piece of a Bible, torn
That was just called Genesis.

We smiled at the thought of a world that was
Quite empty, just as now,
But set in a fabulous garden with
A God, we’d find somehow,
And in there was the name of a man
My woman thing gave to me,
And while he slept, the God man kept
A rib, and he called it Eve.

The city that lay before us may
Have well been Babylon,
But silent now and deserted with
Its ancient people gone,
We wandered into its cluttered streets
And we saw the things of men,
All scaled with rust and a loss of trust
It would never come again.

It was there that we found a woman thing
Who was scarred, and scared as well,
For she’d never seen a man before
And thought that we’d come from hell,
She sat, backed into a corner,
And begging us both to leave,
But I said I was known as Adam, so
She must have been known as Eve.

And then that night, we had a fight
I committed a mortal sin,
I killed my friend as he went to bend
Over the woman thing,
And God roared out with his thunder,
I would always be to blame,
And then decreed in my hour of need
I would call my first son Cain.

David Lewis Paget

They lived in a farm on the lower slopes
Of a place called Gresty Hill,
Three sisters, Emily Jane and Hope
And the younger one called Jill,
My father said to avoid those girls
And my mother echoed him,
‘They’re plain and nasty and not for you,
My son, my darling Jim.’

Like everything that’s denied to you
My interest was aroused,
I’d watch them swilling the pigs below
And milking the Jersey cows,
They went barefoot and they slopped through mud,
When they laughed, I heard their cries,
And watched from up on the hill above
Till I caught their laughing eyes.

Then they’d point at me, and they’d strut and flounce
And would shake their tangled hair,
A blonde, brunette and an auburn girl
They would stand below, and stare,
And sometimes, when they were feeling bold
They would hitch their skirts up high,
Put one foot on a water cask
And show me a muddy thigh.

‘Don’t never go down to that Gresty Farm,’
My parents made me swear,
‘For once they get you they’ll use their charm
And will likely keep you there.’
But the girl called Jill had a butter churn
And she made it soft as silk,
And came with Hope to our rustic barn,
Selling the sisters’ milk.

They smiled and giggled when I came out
And they ****** their wares at me,
‘I don’t know whether the folks will want,’
I said, ‘I’ll go and see.’
But my father came and shooed them off,
‘We don’t want the likes of you!
You keep yourselves to your Gresty Farm
And do what you have to do.’

I asked my mother what they had done
And she shed a whispy tear,
‘Some things cannot be undone, my son,
I try not to interfere.’
My father turned to me, stony, grim
Said sleeping dogs should lie,
‘The likes of them are forbidden, Jim,
But you’ll not know the reason why.’

The day came after my father fell
From the tractor, over the hill,
Was crushed, and after the funeral
All of his secrets spilled.
My mother took me aside to say
That my father wasn’t a saint,
‘You know how a cuckoo drops its egg
In another’s nest… Don’t faint!’

‘Two of the three at Gresty Farm
Were his, but I don’t know which,
Their widowed mother would put about
Before they were born, the *****!
It well could be the first and the third,
The second, I couldn’t tell,
All I know is your father made my
Life, like a living hell!’

Jim went down to the Gresty Farm
For the first time in his life,
He lined up three of the Gresty girls
And said, ‘I need me a wife.
I’m told that two of the three of you
Are my sisters, is it true?
I need to know what your mother knows
For I sure can’t marry two.’

Their mother Gail gave a fearsome wail
When confronted by the four,
The daughters said, ‘Well we never knew,
Why didn’t you tell us before?’
‘Emily Jane and Hope were his,
I never was going to tell,
But Jill was William Parson’s girl,
Your father should burn in hell!’

He took Jill back to his hillside farm
And he called his mother out,
‘This is Jill, and her father’s Bill,
I’ve been told that, without doubt.’
Then he said to Jill, ‘Will you marry me?’
She was coy, and answered slow,
‘You’ll have to prove you can carry me,
If you can, you never know!’

David Lewis Paget

I was sitting outside the house at dawn
Having a quiet smoke,
I’m never allowed to smoke inside
And I’m just a quiet bloke,
I watched the first few friendly rays
Of the sun, rise over the town,
But then it grew dark, I watched amazed
As the sun went slowly down.

So dark, as black as a midden
And I truly felt alarmed,
Our cockerel ran in a circle, then
Fell down, was somehow charmed.
Surely the earth had not reversed,
But my senses said it had,
And when my chair went floating,
Then I knew that the news was bad.

Everything that was not tied down
Had slowly begun to rise,
Even my car and the outside bar
Hovered before my eyes,
I suddenly felt as light as air
And I had to grab a pole,
While the neighbour’s mobile home took off
And left behind a hole.

I made my way to the bedroom then,
It was doing in my head,
And there was the wife, still sound asleep
Floating above the bed,
The quilt and blankets were floating too
And I tried to hold them down,
‘I didn’t think that you cared,’ she said
As she woke, with a puzzled frown.

The problem lasted for seven hours
While we floated round inside,
I made my way to the ceiling light
And repaired the one that died.
The milk flew off from the cereal
And the toast popped up to the roof,
‘You see, the earth has reversed,’ I said,
‘If you need it, there’s the proof!’

The news was coming in fits and starts
From the station in the town,
While men were bracing beneath the desk
Just to hold the anchor down,
‘A giant comet has hit the earth
And has spun it in reverse,
They say that it’s only temporary,
Still, it could be worse.’

At midday, there was a glimmer of light
As the sun began to rise,
The furniture settled down again
And we saw familiar skies,
But the seven hours that we lost will be
Quarantined from time,
Unless we want to be rising as
The Noonday bells will chime.

And one thing that was a certainty
We’ll never trust again,
We said, ‘As sure as the sun comes up…’
But that was way back when.
And now I notice our cockerel
Can’t seem to sing a note,
Since ever its doodle-doodle-****
Came backwards from its throat.

David Lewis Paget

I’ve kept a journal of sorts for years
And I enter it in ink,
Not with a ball-point biro, it’s
Designed to make me think.
I form the letters with loving care
And I use an italic pen,
And keep it safe on a shelf up where
I can read it, over again.

The journal contains my deepest thoughts,
My secrets, hidden away,
Not to be seen by the eyes of men
Till I’m under the earth one day,
For all the wrongs that I didn’t right
And the rights that I failed to do,
Are hidden within its pages in
A sort of italic stew.

So when I received a letter from
A woman called Columbine,
Who said after reading my journal
She could never, ever be mine,
She mentioned a certain entry that
Had made up her mind, she said,
But the time and the stamp on the envelope
Was dated a year ahead.

I never had heard of a Columbine,
I didn’t know who she was,
But the fact that she’d read my journal
Made me more than a little cross.
I went to the shelf that held my book
To see what I had to thank,
But the page that she had quoted from
Was an empty page, a blank.

I went one day to the library
To look for a book of mine,
And the girl behind the counter there
Had a name tag, Columbine.
I looked deep into her stark black eyes
At the fall of her lustrous hair,
At her pouting lips and her fingertips,
And all I could do was stare.

She stamped my book and she stared at me
And she saw me staring back,
‘Is there anything else that I can do?’
She said, and called me Jack.
‘How do you know my name?’ I said,
‘Well that’s not super hard!’
And then she handed my book to me,
‘It’s on your library card!’

I asked her out for a meal, and then
The rest is history,
We were just engaged when I got to the page
That she’d written about to me.
I raised the pen, and decided then
That I had too much to thank,
Put the cap on my pen, and then
Left all the pages blank.

David Lewis Paget

‘To bed! To bed!’
Said Sleepy-head;
‘Tarry awhile,’ said Slow;
‘Put on the pan,’
Said Greedy Nan;
‘We'll sup before we go.’
        (from Mother Goose)

They sat at the kitchen table as
The candle flickered low,
And Greedy Nan put on the pan
To indulge her sister, Slow,
While Sleepy Weepy Annabelle
Blotted her book with tears,
And thought of her Beau from long ago
Who she hadn’t seen for years.

‘Why doesn’t Roger notice me,
Why doesn’t Alan Dell?
I’m wearing the dress cut low for me
And I’ve hitched my skirt as well.
I’ve a pretty turn to my ankle, so
You’d think it would drive them wild.’
‘But men are a mystery,’ said Slow,
‘And Alan Dell’s a child.’

While over the pan stood Greedy Nan,
Was cracking a turkey’s egg,
A lump of yeast and a slice of beast
And a single spider’s leg.
With a wing of bat and an ounce of fat
And a toe of frog for the spell,
She needed to turn her sister off
From her crush on Alan Dell.

For Greedy Nan was the eldest girl
And would have to marry first,
The other two would wait in the queue
Or their fortunes be reversed,
The omelette sizzled, and in the pan
She added before they saw,
A piece of some Devil’s Trumpet plant
For the mating game meant war.

She sliced the omelette into half
And she served them up a piece,
‘Didn’t you want?’ said Annabelle
But Slow enjoyed the feast.
‘I’m not that terribly hungry now
I’ve cooked it up in the pan,
I think I’ll just have a slice of bread,’
Said the scheming Greedy Nan.

They finished up and they sat awhile,
And they mused about their fate,
‘If Greedy Nan isn’t married soon,
For us it will be too late.’
‘I’ve set my sights on a country squire,’
Said Nan, without a blink,
Lured them away from her secret fire
To confuse what they might think.

‘The room is woozy, spinning around,
I’d better get me to bed,’
Said Annabelle, while Slow with a frown
Saw Dwarves dancing in her head.
But Greedy Nan was cleaning the pan
To clear all signs of the spell,
Her back was turned to her sisters, spurned
For the sake of Alan Dell.

And when he came in the morning
Greedy Nan was sat by the door,
While Annabelle and her sister Slow
Were lying dead on the floor,
‘I didn’t mean it to **** them, Al,
It was only a simple spell,’
But as he cuffed and led her away
He frowned, did Alan Dell.

David Lewis Paget

It was always a hassle on Fridays
To sort my weekends out,
If Angela said, ‘Those are my days,’
Then it left me in no doubt.
I would have to travel to Moira,
Come up with a good excuse,
‘I couldn’t drive to the north, my dear,
I have a wheel bearing loose!’

So I’d have to put the car on a jack
And then unscrew the wheel,
Take my time in putting it back
I had to make it real.
Then Monday kissing her and the kids
A fond and a long goodbye,
‘Make sure you wear your bicycle lids,
I’ll see you, bye and bye.’

And Angela would welcome me home
She’d had a rough weekend,
She’d taken the kids to their grandma’s, then
Had tended a sickly friend.
We had three days to rumple the bed
Until I had to go,
Arriving back at Moira’s, just in time
To take in a show.

It wasn’t a set routine because
It varied from week to week,
Angela was the stay-at-home,
Moira the dancing freak,
I’d married Angey at twenty-one
For she loved to stay at home,
And Moira, wed just five years on
Who always wanted to roam.

I managed to keep the two apart
And I led a varied life,
A quiet romp with the stay-at-home,
A fling with my roaming wife,
But the kids had come, with three for one,
And two for the other half,
And what once seemed the perfect dream
Became an ironic laugh.

Lucky I had a well-paid job,
Lucky I held it down,
Keeping the one a stay-at-home
While the other raged in town,
I thought I must be the only one
To have complicated my life,
But that was until a man called Bill
Spoke of his second wife.

He must have been drunk, he said he was
Or he wouldn’t have said a thing,
He said that it only started off
As a mad, misguided fling,
He’d met the first in a ladies bar,
And she’d gone to his lonely bed,
It became a loose, irregular thing
And before he knew, was wed.

She always wanted to gad about,
She never would stay at home,
He got so sick of the nightclub clique
That he lost the will to roam.
He met another who liked to sit
And cuddle up by his side,
And in a moment of madness then
She became his second bride.

‘It seems to work, but it’s hard to plan
For they both have days away,
I have to coordinate my time
With the one that’s free that day.’
‘The same with me, I’m never free,
I haven’t sufficient time,
When I want a quiet night at home
She wants to dance the line.’

A week went by since our talk, and I
Was sat in the Scarlet Lounge,
Waiting for Moira to come by
When I spotted Bill with Ange!
They walked right by, and I heard a sigh
As Bill saw Moira Freeze,
I hid behind a pillar as Ange
Went off by herself to sneeze.

I waited till she was on her own
Then went and confronted Ange,
‘What are you doing here, my dear,
Here in the Scarlet Lounge?
You always wanted to stay at home
Are you on your own out here?’
While Bill on the other side of the lounge
Was questioning Moira dear.

So Moira was Bill’s quiet one
While she led me quite a dance,
And Ange, who was my stay-at-home
Was going with him to prance!
We thought that we were the bigamists
But it’s left us in some doubt,
We think that they may be trigamists
On the days that we’re both shut out!

David Lewis Paget

I’m hot on the tail of a poem’s trail
To discover what makes it tick,
For the ones I receive in the daily mail
Are always giving me stick.
I don’t want the ones with a ******-probe
That go ravelling into my brain,
Or a moody muse with a too short fuse
They only generate pain.

When I spot one bearing a carefree lilt,
A rhythm that echoes my heart,
Or a rhyme scheme pairing a seem with dream,
We’re off to a flying start.
It gallops ahead of me, feeling its way
Through words that it finds by chance,
And makes it plain that it wants to play
In the meadows of assonance.

So I chase it over a babbling brook
On a cliché, rhyme or hook,
And still the breeze that will rhyme with trees
Turns the pages of my book.
I search for characters, sweet young girls
And for ladies, fair of face,
Who dance along with the poem, twirl
In the aftermath of grace.

While men, the heroes of quests and seas
Marooned on a distant shore,
Will take the poem to where they please,
You’ve never been there before.
And they meet the girls with the hair like corn,
Are trapped in their sparkling eyes,
They come together in winter storm
And all that you hear are sighs.

For the poem gives, and the poem takes
It will lull you, thrill you, dance,
From its wedding bells to its funeral wakes
It will still you, fill, entrance!
Its magic lies in its rhyme and scheme
As it weaves a recurring spell,
It nestles into your heart and dreams
Like an Olde Tyme Wishing Well.

And when it finally comes to stand
On the shore of a timeless lake,
As the book slips out of your listless hand
It whispers, ‘Are you awake?’
Then I spring to life and I seize it then,
And give to its tail a twist,
‘I’m still the poet, I hold the pen,’
I write, in the evening mist!

David Lewis Paget

I wrote a book called ‘The Afterdeath’
With a thousand gory themes,
Of what takes place at your final breath
When you lie in your swirling dreams,
Your body hung by its fingertips
Between here and the place you go,
When the deed is done, and your race is run
Will there be no afterglow?

Will there be no afterglow, I said
With a place you can lay your head,
Up in the clouds and the stars somewhere
On a downy, cloudy bed?
To wake from the sordid human dream
That you lived, three score and ten,
Trying to make your way between
Your hopes and ambitions then.

But always thwarted, you don’t know why
For nothing would come out right,
And always hanging over your head
Are thoughts of that endless night,
That bright intelligence snuffed right out
That learning lost to the air,
Your body locked in a six foot box
In its final death despair.

I wrote of the ones who wake in dread
To the sound of the shovel’s spray,
Tipping that final dirt on you
As your coffin’s hidden away,
You thump and scream in your final dream
Kicking the bottom out,
With the coffin muffling shrieks and screams
When you want them to let you out!

It’s easy, while I am sitting here
To write of a man’s despair,
When he’s in the dark, can’t see a spark
And fighting for gasps of air,
Or maybe rather the sputtering jets
Of the crematorium,
As the box implodes and your body glows
Round your scared cerebellum?

So now that I’ve made you comfortable
Accepting your sad demise,
And the way that they will dispose of you
(Believe me, everyone lies!)
Take heart in the fact you’re not alone
That final terror will be
There at the end with everyone,
Including the author, Me!’

David Lewis Paget

Back in the tiny town of Hamm
In a province best unknown,
Is an ancient sandstone prison tower
Where the grounds are overgrown.
The locals still in the town are few
Were wary of us at first,
But ventured out when they heard me shout
To tell me the tower was cursed.

‘Don’t venture there if you fear despair,’
They said in a foreign tongue,
Then slunk back, each to his rundown lair,
But we were too smart, and young.
‘They’re peasants, what would they know,’ said Kym,
‘They’re superstitious and fools,
We’ll test their funny old tower now.’
We should have played by their rules.

It was built in a grim and Gothic style
But had sadly been run down,
Hundreds of years of standing there
Put a torpor over the town.
The rusty railings, falling apart
Had never been breached by them,
The peasants whispered and looked away
In the manner of Holy men.

We made our way through the bushes, sedge
And weeds that grew in the grounds,
But then up close to the building saw
Some features that astound.
The walls had flying buttresses,
A door with a pointed arch,
And a gargoyle leering from above
Next to soldiers on the march.

We didn’t go in the first time there
But wandered around the site,
It was Kym who had the bright idea
We should go and explore by night.
I wish that we’d known its history
For that might have broken its spell,
I wouldn’t have sought its mystery,
And Kym would still be well.

We noticed an old Teutonic sign
Engraved, and above the door,
We couldn’t translate it at the time
It should have been done before;
Before we entered that cursèd place
And risking our sanity,
For I came out with a twisted face
Though Kym was worse than me.

The moon was casting a yellow glow
As we stood before that door,
Directly under the gargoyle that
Let out a fearful roar,
Then a stream of ectoplasm flowed
From its jaws, and down on Kym,
Covered her in this bluish light
And then, it dragged her in.

I followed, not that I had a choice
I was quite beyond control,
My legs did whatever they wanted to,
I had no choice at all.
Inside was a vaulted ceiling over
An old and blood-stained block,
And Kym was struggling, screaming,
As she was stretched across its top.

She glowed and glowed in this bluish light
Her neck was placed on the block,
And then a shimmering man appeared
I think I went into shock.
He held a shining scimitar sword
And he raised it up to strike,
And still I live that terrible scene,
Each and every night.

I saw it clearly pass right through
The base of Kym’s long neck,
And watched as this bluish head fell off
Went rolling along the deck.
But her head was there, was still in place
As I dragged her screaming out,
It was then I noticed my twisted face
That I can do nothing about.

They say that it’s called Bell’s Palsy, that
I must have suffered a shock,
The right hand side of my face is numb,
My eye and my mouth have dropped,
But Kym just utters the weirdest moans
As if blood was starved from her brain,
Her eyes astare at the horror there
I think she must be insane.

The last I saw of that evil tower
The gargoyle seemed to grin,
As if to say there is hell to pay
For those who might come right in.
And the screed engraved above the door
The letters were filled with lead,
‘You’ve come to the Tower of Grimm von Gore,
Enter, and lose your head!’

David Lewis Paget

The world looks grim when your eyes are dim
And they’re swollen red with tears,
When all that you’ve won has come undone
And all you have left are fears,
So Jonathon Ley had felt that day
When he looked for his missing girl,
But she was several streets away
In bed with a man called Earl!

His world had come to a shuddering end,
His hopes had burst at the seams,
He knew that his heart would never mend
And all he had left were dreams.
The clouds of grief that came like a thief
Had stolen his girl, Elaine,
And she, the source of his one belief
Was promising only pain.

He hadn’t had any back-up plans
When planning his life ahead,
With Lainey gone he was on his own
Just him, and his empty head,
He thought that he’d put an end to it
The pain and suffering; How?
He spent some days considering ways
Under his furrowed brow.

He climbed to the top of the Town Hall clock
And found himself looking down,
All that he had to do was drop
Right next to the Lost & Found,
He’d looked on up from the street below
Took a final look at a star,
But didn’t know when he had to go
That the street would be down so far.

There’s always time for a change of plan
He thought, as he climbed back down,
Hiding his face from everyone
In case they thought him a clown.
He took a blade from the kitchen drawer
And thought he’d go to the park,
Then slit his throat in his overcoat,
By God, but that blade was sharp!

He wandered moping along the street
To think just what could be done,
He wanted to do it, quick and neat
But he hadn’t bought him a gun,
Then Lainey came, she had changed her mind
For Earl was a dog, and things,
‘You got the jist of the story wrong,
He asked me to test his springs!’

So Jonathon’s world came back in view
The clouds were cleared from his sky,
With everything now about her new
He never asked Lainey why.
They wed in June, in the afternoon
And the baby came in a whirl,
But he wouldn’t presume to question why
The baby looked like Earl!

David Lewis Paget

The change in his habits was hard to define,
He thought, getting older, had shortened his time,
Less time to waste sleeping, for rest or respite,
From eight hours to six hours, to four hours at night.

He’d sit up late working, and not watch the clock
At midnight he’d vaguely hear something tick-tock,
But still would sit up with his eyes full of rue
And not get to bed until one, maybe two.

Awake before dawn he would feel some relief,
That death had not squandered his life in his sleep,
And though he was tiring, he wouldn’t give in,
Began to see sleeping as some kind of sin.

Then down to an hour, and then to a half
He ended up napping short time by the hearth,
Five minutes would pass, he’d be fully awake
When under his chair he would feel the earth quake.

And when his eyes opened and looked to the skies
He’d see giant gimbals above the sunrise,
That held the earth spinning in place like a top
A gyroscope, seeming it never would stop.

Then in the dark hours when all were asleep,
He’d see all the monsters come out for a peep,
Come out from their hidings in forest and glen
Whenever they hadn’t to fear meeting men.

They’d play in the shallows, they’d play in the streams,
They’d dash in and out of the sleeping mens dreams,
They’d laugh and they’d frolic up high in the trees,
And wave in the branches with every slight breeze.

And sometimes they’d argue, and sometimes they’d fight,
Hip-hopping from one to the other all night,
They’d not see the watcher, awake in his den
For monsters see horrors in all kinds of men.

The world would return to the way it had been
Before men came begging, and made it unclean,
With meadows and grotto’s and magical spells,
And hedgerows and sedge rows and woods of bluebells.

He sat there in wonder, and watched the full flight
Of worlds unimagined that came out each night,
And suddenly death was the least he would fear
If death would come dreaming and carry him here.

The watcher relaxed and he fell sound asleep
He slept for eight hours with never a peep,
And when he awoke with the rise of the sun,
He wept in his sorrow, what sleep had undone.

David Lewis Paget

Houghton Hall had been derelict
Since the Roundheads came and went,
They said that it couldn’t be restored
No matter how much you spent,
But I loved that place and its spacious grounds
So I went against advice,
I paid a pittance and thought I’d get
A part of it looking nice.

It still had the stately central stair,
It still had the marble floors,
It needed a bit of the lead replaced
But still had the cedar doors.
The windows needed a scrub and clean
Were original pebble glass,
It soon was done though my Bank was lean
And I moved right in, at last.

There wasn’t much furniture at first
To muffle its ancient walls,
My footsteps echoed around the floors
Of its entry, rooms and halls,
It was only then that I saw her walk
In the gloom of a winter’s night,
And found I’d bought, along with the Hall
A ghostly woman in white!

She glided along the balustrade
Came steadily down the stair,
I stood well back in the entryway
Pretended I wasn’t there.
Then she stopped and grabbed at the bannister
And let out a dreadful wail,
It seemed to swell from the hounds of hell
And I felt myself grow pale.

She seemed to fade on the stairway there
And her wailing went as well,
The hair stood up on the back of my neck
For I felt she’d come from hell.
So I asked around with the village folk
If they knew, they said they might,
And for a bribe of a drink or two
Described the woman in white.

It seems she had been Lord Houghton’s bride
When the Roundheads came to call,
And Ireton’s men had shot the Lord,
He told them to **** them all.
She died on the central stairway there
She died from a single shot,
While the Roundheads plundered the ancient hall
With her corpse left there to rot.

I felt for her, yes, I really did
It was such a gory tale,
But it got too much when at night I hid
For she came each night to wail.
My eyes were haggard, I couldn’t sleep
I was feeling so uptight,
And then I came across the cupboard
That clothed the woman in white.

The cupboard stood in an upstairs room
That I hadn’t quite restored,
I hadn’t bothered for in the gloom
The damp had swollen the door,
And in a drawer was a pile of clothes
So old, that she kept for best,
And there preserved with a bullet hole
Was the very same woman’s dress.

I took the dress and I hid it well,
Then waited for her that night,
Till she came stumbling down the stair,
She did, the woman in white.
But there was no sign of the dress on her
Just camiknickers in silk,
And pain and sadness were in her wail
Though her skin was white as milk.

A week went by and she still came down
That stairway to keen and wail,
So I went back with my sleepless frown
And I hid it, without fail,
The camiknickers, the stockings, shoes
And I left that cupboard bare,
Invited a crowd from the local hunt
To come, to stand and stare.

And she came just once on that fateful night
She was naked and serene,
Then she saw us all in the entryway
And the woman stood and screamed.
If you need to get rid of a troublesome ghost
You must cause some slight mishap,
She never came back down the stairs again
Once we all just stood, and clapped.

David Lewis Paget

Alan had stood at our open door,
Shaking and white with fright,
First he was speaking to Eleanor,
Then had a word with Dwight.
‘What seems the problem,’ I said to him,
(My name, by the way, is Bill),
‘Haven’t you seen it,’ he said to me,
‘It’s moving, McAvanagh’s Hill!’

I went to the door and I looked on out,
The hill seemed to still be in place,
On closer inspection, it seemed to me
It had moved to the south, a trace.
‘It must be a trick of the light,’ I said,
A hill is a hill and can’t move,’
‘But look at McCafferty’s,’ Alan said,
‘It’s settling down in a groove.’

And true, but McCafferty’s roof had moved,
It used to stand up on the height,
The moon would come up just behind his roof
And highlight his house every night.
His house had dropped down the back of the hill
Or the top of the hill was too high,
‘Now isn’t that strange?’ I said in a muse,
And Dwight said, ‘I wonder why?’

The rumbling, grumbling started that night
But deep in the earth, underneath,
And Eleanor came in a panic to cry,
‘There’s movement, out there on the heath!’
We ran to the garden, and under the moon
We could see the heath starting to tilt,
As slowly it moved, and then it became
The rising front side of the hill.

Alan ran home and brought back a gun
He said, ‘I feel better with this!’
‘You think you can stop it by firing a gun?’
‘At least with a hill, you can’t miss.
There’s something behind it, something so weird,
A hill can’t just move by itself.’
Then Eleanor suddenly burst into tears,
‘The Devil’s come into the Dell!’

We didn’t get very much sleep that night,
We took it in turns just to watch,
The nearer the movement came up to our door
The more Alan knocked off my Scotch.
We felt the first tilt of the house next day,
Our porch was beginning to rise,
The hill loomed above us, and leaning back,
The house pointed up to the skies.

McCafferty’s house had quite disappeared
As it slid down the other side,
While our house was on the way to the top,
It was really a question of pride.
McCafferty lorded it over us all
As long as his house was on top,
But now he came racing along, was appalled,
‘I order this movement to stop!’

‘I know you’re behind it, you’ve conjured a scheme,
What set this in motion, Bill?’
I shrugged and I mentioned that my hands were clean,
‘It is, after all, just a hill!’
‘My real estate value just fell through the floor,
I’ll sue if you don’t move it back!’
‘Then go for it Buddy, there isn’t a court
That can order a hill… See you Jack.’

We’re sitting in clover, our house at the top
Of what was McAvanagh’s Hill,
For once it had moved, it suddenly stopped
And now it’s the Hill of Bill!
McCafferty sits down the hill in a glade
And he rages at everyone,
While Alan’s deluded, he swears at this stage
That it stopped when it noticed his gun.

David Lewis Paget

He had got on the train at New Street,
Found an empty carriage spare,
And settled down with the paper
With not one to disturb him there,
But the train pulled in at Sandwell
And the carriage door slid wide,
And in there walked a pair of heels
With a dimple and hips beside.

She sat on the seat across from him
And laid her bag on the seat,
Kicked her shoes on the floor, so he
Could see her pretty feet,
He tried to look at his paper but
The print got up and walked,
Up from her ankles to her calfs
And he found it hard to talk.

‘How do you do,’ was banal but
That’s all that came to mind,
She briefly looked from her knitting, and
He thought that her eyes were kind,
But never a word would pass those lips
She had the slightest pout,
And her needles clicked to the railway clack
As his mouth was drying out.

He’d bought some fruit in the Bullring
So he thought he’d have some there,
And at different times he offered her
An apple, peach or a pear,
But she shook her head so slightly and
Politely, in disdain,
As if the thought of a stranger’s fruit
From a man in a suit, might stain.

The train chuffed on through Wolverhampton
While he drank a Coke,
He knew that his time was limited
For she’d get off at Stoke,
He offered to put the window down
But she said it blew her hair,
Then he offered his name as Paul, but she
Was not inclined to share.

She crossed her legs and she hitched her skirt
Just slightly above her knees,
While his eyes looked up to the luggage rack,
Was this some sort of tease?
Her knitting needles were clicking away
Was she knitting some sort of sack?
It seemed like she was racing the train
Ahead of its clickety-clack.

The train went racing to Stafford,
In and out, but it passed so fast,
He said, ‘We’re almost at Stoke, that’s where
We’ll both get out, I guess?
There’s quite a nice little café
Down by the station in the square,
I’d like to buy you a coffee, if you want
I’ll shout you there.’

She stopped, and packed up her knitting
Tucked it carefully in her bag,
And said, ‘You must be Australian,
And coming here, so sad.
I’ve never been ‘shouted’ a drink before
But I think you’re rather nice,
I’ll let you know that you’re past first base
On your way to Paradise!’

David Lewis Paget

I had an Indian Fakir come
To stay, from Uttar Pradesh,
I was doing a friend a favour,
I don’t, as a rule, have guests,
I couldn’t make out a single word
He said, and so my friend
Provided a written commentary
To guide me, in the end.

It seems he was naming my furniture
It’s something that they do,
In places that are incongruous
Like the depths of Kalamazoo,
And he wanted to give them English names
So he asked my friend’s advice,
In case I couldn’t pronounce them,
Well, at least the thought was nice.

My armchair became Albert
And my settee Gunga Din,
I suppose he thought it would be okay
As it was from Kipling.
The tallboy was called Gerald
And the wardrobe, simply Joe,
The polished table Cheryl
And the kitchen one was Flo.

I’m glad that he wrote them down because
I can’t remember names,
Just that the bed was Susan
And the kitchen sink was James,
Some of them were portentous like
Ignatius, for the desk,
While each of the kitchen chairs was given
A name that ends with -este.

Celeste, Impreste, Doneste and Geste
And then of course, Ingeste,
I couldn’t remember which was which,
My friend was not impressed.
We bade farewell to the Fakir
And the Wardrobe flapped its doors,
And rumbled out a ‘Goodbye my friend’
From between its mighty jaws.

Then voices rose in a chorus from
Each part of my tidy home,
The names had given them each a voice,
It was rowdier than Rome,
The voices were accusatory
Trying to lay some guilt,
And Susan said of the Wardrobe, Joe,
‘He’s looking up my quilt!’

‘How could I help it,’ Joe replied,
‘I’m at the foot of the bed,
You’re flashing me with your silken sheets,
It’s doing in my head!’
While Albert grumbled in voice so deep,
‘Do I have to be a chair?
Each time you plonk on my tender seat
I’m gasping out for air!’

Then the kitchen chairs were out of place
And James was choked with suds,
The carpet, name of Emily
Was sick of traipsing mud.
It seemed that the polished table top
Was scratched, and she was mad,
The desk disliked my keyboard so
To each, I answered ‘Sad!’

‘You’re going to have to get along
I won’t put up with this,
Until that Fakir came along
This house was perfect bliss.’
I did away with their English names,
Replaced them with Chinese,
But they couldn’t speak a word of it
So I brought them to their knees!

And peace returned to Grissom Place
Just as I thought it would,
I made it plain to Wardrobe Joe
‘You’re just a lump of wood.’
While Susan smooths her quilt right down
And tucks her sheets right in,
And James just blubs, he’s full of suds
As I nap on Gunga Din!

David Lewis Paget

Rosalyn stood in the castle tower
And gazed out over the plain,
It wasn’t exactly a sumptuous bower
For the drapes were old, and stained,
The furniture had seen better times
In the days of the knights of old,
But the cracked and broken window panes
Had made the bower cold.

She’d shivered as she had got undressed
And donned a filmy gown,
She pined for the sight she hoped to see
As she stood there, looking down,
Three knights stood guard at the outer moat
Their armour was dull and black,
They couldn’t be seen on a moonless night
But were there to ward off attack.

Attack from the southern Baron’s men,
Attack from the western marsh,
They came to rescue fair Rosalyn
For her sentence had been harsh,
Confined for life in that wintry tower
For her love for the Duke of Spur,
Who’d not been seen since the winter green,
Nor asked what became of her.

The rain came down in a sudden squall
He shivered, and scratched his head,
What could he do with the Duke of Spur
If the man had turned up dead?
He pushed his seat away from the desk
And he rose, and stretched, and yawned,
The cursor blinked on the final line
As the moon beamed in through the storm.

How could he save fair Rosalyn,
That was the question here,
He opened the door of the old bar fridge
And knocked the head off a beer,
He sat again at the keyboard then
And stared and stared at the screen,
He didn’t know where to go from there
But found himself in a dream.

He woke in the damp and windswept tower
Where Rosalyn lay asleep,
He thought that he must be crazy, that
His mind made a giant leap,
He saw the screen in the corner where
He sat, as if in a trance,
But here on the other side of the screen
He was caught, by some mischance.

Rosalyn woke from her slumber then
And she held her arms out wide,
‘I wondered when you would join me in
This tale from the other side.
I’ve seen you sitting and watching me,
You watched as I got undressed,
And I know it’s only a story but
In truth, I wasn’t impressed.’

‘I must be asleep and dreaming,’
He replied, ‘but you can’t be real,
I haven’t finished the story yet
But in here I can see and feel,
And there I am on the other side,
I’m sat in front of the screen.’
‘If you don’t shut up and make love to me,’
She said, ‘then I’m going to scream!’

He spent an hour in a wilful daze,
She held him close in her arms,
He kissed her eyes and her silken thighs
Revealed much more of her charms,
And when they were finally done, she said
‘Will you rescue me, or not?’
He lay as dead as he scratched his head,
‘I think I’ve lost the plot!’

He woke as the sun came slowly up
Stiff and cold in his room,
The cursor was dim and blinking as
The only light in the gloom,
He typed that a coil of rope was hid
On the other side of a drape,
Thinking that she could use it then
To make a swift escape.

She saw the rope and she tied it firm
To the leg of the solid bed,
The thought he was going to rescue her
Was the only thought in his head,
She dropped the rope so the Duke of Spur
Could climb and clamber in,
But when he climbed to the window ledge
The Duke of Spur was him!

David Lewis Paget

He trudged on up from the great seaport
After a year at sea,
And in his mind was a single thought,
That thought was Emily.
He’d got her note when he disembarked
In the pouring, driving rain,
And read it under a single spark:
‘You may never come here again!’

‘Never come here again,’ it said,
What was that meant to mean?
The blood had rushed to his sailor’s head,
He conjured a nightmare scene,
He thought of the tidy garden path,
Of seeing a man at the door,
And Emily hiding behind his hat,
A man he’d not seen before.

Perhaps the year was too long to wait,
She hated it on her own,
He’d often suffered a lack of faith
That she could remain alone.
He’d conjured visions in distant ports
At the curious lack of mail,
While he had written his deepest thoughts
To post them before he sailed.

He’d thought of her at the village dance,
He’d thought of her down the street,
And meeting a friendly guy, perchance
Who would sweep her off her feet.
While he had suffered temptations too
At the taverns along the way,
The sparkling eyes of the barmaids there
When the ship put in for a stay.

But now he trudged in the driving rain
At that terrible time of night,
When shadows loomed to increase the gloom
That he felt, with never a light.
He’d struck a match when he’d read the note
But it fizzled in record time,
He’d only read when the match went out
The first, not the second line.

He felt his way up the garden path
And he paused, then knocked at the door,
His heart was there in his mouth at last
To the tread of a man, for sure.
The door swung open, a man stood there
A quizzical look in his eyes,
‘We didn’t expect you here so late,
But still, what a nice suprise.’

The sailor stood, was taken aback,
He hadn’t the words to say,
‘What have you done with Emily,’
His breath was taken away.
‘Your Emily’s moved, she went next door,
I see she’s burning a light,
You’d better get home, you’re living there,
She’s waiting for you tonight.’

David Lewis Paget

They said it was only climate change,
It would take a hundred years
To raise the temperature one degree,
It was easy to reverse,
But the weather pattern was changing
We could see that for ourselves,
And the strangest things were happening
But it only came in spells.

Torrential rain in the dryest state,
And flooding over the plain,
Blazing heat in the winter like
We’ll never see again,
The Ozone Layer had opened up
With the use of C.F.C’s,
And the burn effect of the sun increased,
Was causing more disease.

I told Joanne she should cover up
When she sunbathed at the beach,
You can lead a horse to water
But there’s some you just can’t teach,
She cooked herself to a golden brown
And the burn began to tell,
As the melanomas began to form
In her fragile, human cells.

She had a couple cut out, but then
Some more began to form,
But still she went to the nudist beach
When the sun came up at dawn,
‘I want to look brown and healthy
Not a pastey white, like some,’
And shook her head at the zinc cream
And the protection I put on.

The level of radiation was
Increasing with U.V.,
And even the whales in Summer Bay
Got cancers in the sea,
I warned and warned but she tossed her head,
In that stubborn way she had,
I braced myself for the future, for
I knew, it would be bad.

It started off as a scaley lump
On her shoulder, then it grew,
Faster than anything I’ve seen,
An inch, in a day or two,
I told her to get to the hospital
But she said, ‘I’ll use some cream.’
We little knew what was coming through
It seemed like a nightmare scene.

She sat in the sun again next day,
I said, ‘You’re tempting the fates!
Go and have it cut out, Joanne,
Before it gets too late.’
But the clouds rolled up and the sun went in
It was sultry still, not cool,
Then the lightning flashed around our place
And struck, in our garden pool.

It ran along our verandah rail
And it lit up Joanne’s chair,
While static electricity
Was crackling in the air,
Her hair stood out like a *******
Then her skin began to glow,
And that must have been the moment when
The thing began to grow.

The scab fell off in the morning
Leaving a hole, both red and raw,
And later, when she was screaming,
How to describe the thing I saw?
She stood in front of the mirror with
Her eyes so full of dread,
For up and out of the open wound
Had popped a tiny head.

The tiny head of a pygmy thing
That glared, with razor teeth,
With evil, glittering, crimson eyes
It was just beyond belief,
And then it started to babble in
A strange high, whining tone,
The only words I could understand:
‘You’d better leave me alone!’

Joanne collapsed on the bathroom floor
She had gone out like a light,
And I went straight for the cabinet door,
I was petrified with fright,
I pulled out the cut-throat razor and
I sliced it off at the neck,
But not before it had bitten me
As I dropped it on the deck.

I’m writing this final message so
The rest of you will know,
You’re going to have to cremate us
To destroy this so-and-so,
Joanne has five, and is terrified
While I have only three,
But we’ve sliced off more than a dozen heads
So far, God pity me!

David Lewis Paget