‘There are giants out in the hinterland,
There are monsters, horrible frogs,
There are birds of prey out there all day
There are streets of savage dogs.
There are bakers, making their ****** pies
From the girls found out on the street,
I think you’d better stay home and play
For you don’t know what you’ll meet.’

Janelle sat curled in the corner, with
Her eyes as wide as the moon,
She’d always led such a sheltered life
In a house, as dark as the tomb.
She’d never questioned her father, nor
The dreadful things that he taught,
He told her he was protecting her
For life out there was fraught.

She’d peer on out of the windows, see
The trees that waved in the breeze,
‘The sap on the lower branches will
Reach out, and capture your knees.’
She’d hear the wind in its savage bursts
That waited to take her breath,
And wondered why she would have to die
But the world outside was death.

She barely remembered her mother
Who had gone by the age of three,
A wistful smile for a fretful child,
He said she was drowned at sea.
But he often sat by a garden plot
When he said it was safe that day,
And planted a bed of forget-me-nots
To keep grave diggers away.

He’d only leave for a weekly shop
And he’d wear a coat and hat,
Dodging over some fences to
Avoid the giant rat,
The snakes were fierce in the supermart
And he said, ‘I do declare,
Don’t ever let me forget my hat
Or the bats will get in my hair.’

Janelle would sit by a mirror, and
Despair at her pale, white face,
She rarely got any sun on it
And her body was starting to waste,
Her legs were thin and her arms were skin
And bone, her ******* were small,
Her ribs would show in the mirror’s glow
She hadn’t much weight at all.

Whenever he’d leave her on her own
He’d be sure to lock the door,
‘We don’t want the zombies creeping in
And dragging you through the floor!’
He said they lived right under the house
But only came out at night,
And that’s when the cats would shriek and yowl,
They put up an awesome fight!

One day he went and forgot to lock,
He must have misplaced the key,
Janelle stood still by the open door
As the wind blew fitfully,
She took a breath, and it wasn’t death
But the sweetest of perfume,
The air was laden with scent that day
With the roses in full bloom.

She ventured into the garden, felt
The grass, so soft on her feet,
While the preying birds sat up in the trees,
But all that they did was tweet,
There were no bats, nor a giant rat,
Though a dog came wagging its tail,
And she saw a man in a crimson van
Pull up, delivering mail.

She finally flung her arms up high
In a moment then, and cried,
‘The world is wonderful, he was wrong,
He lied,’ she said, ‘He lied!’
By the time he arrived back home again
Janelle was gone with the wind,
But a policeman stood in his lounge and said,
‘At last! Well, do come in!’

David Lewis Paget

It started when he had brought a box
He’d bought, back home from the fair,
The size of an average tinder box
In brass, and embossed with care,
The scene was the site of a battlefield
Where the redcoats marched as one,
In the face of the French artillery
Looking down the mouth of a gun.

And on the right was a drummer boy
Who drummed to the marching feet,
He gazed ahead but his eyes were dead
As he kept up a steady beat,
A moment of peril embossed in time
When nations ruled by the gun,
The redcoats all in a staggered line
With the battle not yet won.

‘And how did you come by that,’ she said,
His wife, when he brought it home,
‘I should know better than let you out
With a pound, when you’re on your own.
The gypsies see you abroad, my lad
And they say, ‘Now there’s our mark!
They’d pick you out of a thousand folk
Out there, a-stroll in the park.’

‘It wasn’t a gypsy, Jen,’ he said,
‘But an old, sad military man,
Struggling on a pension for
His bread, as best he can.’
‘You’re just as soft as the next one, Bill,
They’d steal a beggar’s cup,
But now that you’ve got your tinder box
Let’s see, just open it up.’

‘I can’t, it’s locked with a type of lock
That I’ve never seen before,
It’s rusted on, and there is no key,
It’s a work of art for sure.’
He set it down by their rustic hearth
Where it looked so very fine,
A piece from their ancient history
Where the soldiers stood in line.

That night they woke to the distant sound
Of a battle, lost and won,
The sound of cheers, of clashes, tears
To the beat of a distant drum,
And Jen was lying there frozen as
She clung to her husband’s arm,
‘What have you brought on home to us?’
She cried, in her alarm.

The morning saw her attack the lock
With a hammer to no avail,
The lock, it might have been rusty but
Was solid, strong and hale,
And Bill said ‘Stop! You will ruin it,
There’s nothing there to hide,
I bought it more for the picture than
What might there be inside.’

Each night the sound of a battle filtered
Out of that tinder box,
The sounds of the muskets firing, of
Whizz-bangs and battle shocks,
And through it all was the steady sound
Of the little drummer’s beat,
It rose up out of the battleground
With the sound of marching feet.

They finally cut the lock away
With a coarse old hacksaw blade,
It took a couple of hours that day
So sturdy was it made.
Then Bill said ‘Your curiosity
Has made me wreck the lock,
So now, there’s nothing to stop you, Jen,
Just open up the box.’

The lid flew up and the sight she saw
Was enough to make her faint,
For there, the skull of the drummer boy
Lay with its coat of paint,
And blood, red blood was the skull in there
Though the teeth were pearly white,
A bullet hole in the frontal lobe
That had kissed the boy goodnight.

And folded there, but beneath the skull
Was the skin of the drummer’s drum,
Blackened, torn and beyond repair
It had sounded for everyone.
It’s buried now with the drummer’s skull,
It’s resting beneath a tree,
And never sounds, for its war is won,
It’s where it was meant to be.

David Lewis Paget

Some once called him a Grand Old Man,
Others called him a slime,
You couldn’t get a consensus that
Was even, all the time,
For some kow-towed to his money, while
Others fell by his sword,
His life was overall sunny, while
His victims quailed at his word.

He lorded it over his children,
He ruled their kids with ease,
A sullen look from beneath his brow
Would bring them to their knees,
His will was forever changing
As solicitors came and went,
One day he’d offer a mansion,
And another day, a tent.

When he finally died he was stony broke
And they wondered where it went,
He’d always been abstemious
But the money had been spent.
He left all their lives in ruins with
Their expectations gone,
A couple of ramshackle houses were
The only things they won.

There wasn’t the money to bury him
So they left him where he sat,
Up at the head of the table in
His black, beribboned hat,
He glared at them as he’d glared in life
One hand on the table-top,
Where he used to tap with his finger
As if it would never stop.

Tap-tap-tap on the table-top,
Tap-tap-tap it went,
His eyes bored into the back of your head
As if to say - Repent!
And people scurried, this way and that
To divine what the tartar meant,
The grim old man in his black top hat
Who ruled to their detriment.

They left him sat and they locked the door
Didn’t go back for a year,
Til the eldest, saying ‘let’s know for sure,’
Returned with a tinge of fear.
‘He might have stocks in his waistband there
Or shares hid under his shirt,
Or cash stuffed in his beribboned hat -
He treated us all like dirt!’

He ventured into the dining room
Where the grim old man still sat,
His eyes a-glare in the year long gloom
From under the brim of his hat.
But as the eldest approached him there
The finger began to tap,
A steady rap with a note of doom
That would curdle blood to sap.

So Toby dived to the tinder box
And he leapt up with the axe,
His face as pale as a ghostly tale
But determined to attack.
He raised the axe and he let it fall
Severed the finger there,
It skittered across the table top
As the old man fell from his chair.

The stocks were stuffed in the old man’s hat
The shares were stuffed in his sleeve,
And so much cash in his waistband that
They said, you wouldn’t believe.
But still he’s locked in that grey old house
For they found it wouldn’t stop,
That severed finger that skittered there
Still taps on the table-top!

David Lewis Paget

His wife was due on the midnight plane
That was coming from Beijing,
He got to the airport early so
He wouldn’t miss the thing,
There wasn’t a seat at Wenzhou so
He found that he had to stand,
It’s always tough when you’re sleeping rough
Away, in a foreign land.

He settled down in a corner, set
His back up next to the wall,
Pulled out the pic of his own Mei Ling
In front of a waterfall,
Her eyes smiled into the camera when
He’d taken the snap that day,
But that was before they married,
Now it seemed an age away.

They’d both had to fight her parents when
They saw he was from the west,
They called him a foreign devil, a
Yang wei, and all the rest,
They wanted her wed to a Han, they said,
Mei Ling had answered ‘No!’
She’d made her mind up herself, she said,
And would be his own lӑo pό.

She said she was flying China Air
And that gave him cause for thought,
He knew that their safety record was
The worst in any port,
But he waited patiently by the clock
Til it gave the midnight chime,
Then wandered into reception where
She’d be, most any time.

The Chinese waiting beside him
Milled and jabbered as they stood,
He never could understand a word
But he smiled as if he could,
And then he found they were friendly
Though they nudged each other now,
And some had even approached him with
Their greeting, their Ni Hao.

By half past twelve, there wasn’t a plane
And the people looked upset,
He thought there’d be an announcement,
Someone said, ‘there’s nothing yet.’
At one o’clock there were tears and fears
That the plane would never show,
And then he heard that the plane had ditched
In the waters off Ningbo.

His heart had sunk and he almost cried
But he thought to grieve with grace,
And everyone else was struggling
They were scared of ‘losing face’,
But they all broke down when a man came round
And he said, ‘there’s little hope,’
There wasn’t a single survivor,
Then he cried, he couldn’t cope.

He’d lost the love of his life, Mei Ling
With her beaming almond eyes,
Her jet black hair and her loving stare
But he got a quick surprise,
A man led him to a phone where they
Had called for him in vain,
And from Beijing he heard Mei Ling
Who sobbed, ‘I missed the plane!’

David Lewis Paget

‘I would if I could but I can’t,’ he said,
‘Though I know it would be sublime,
I’m spoken for, and it does my head
To think that you could be mine.
I made a vow, and I don’t know how
I could break it, and feel right,
But though I’m true, I’m thinking of you
As I do, each sleepless night.’

He shook his head and he walked away
As she clutched the verandah rail,
She turned her face away when the trace
Of her tears had left a trail.
‘I don’t know what the attraction is,’
She said, as she wiped her eyes,
‘But it must be true what I say to you,
Anything else is lies!’

He walked back into his hotel room
And held his head in his hands,
And as he did the temptation grew
For a taste of contraband.
She’d met him there as she always did
For she serviced all the rooms,
His monthly trip, and her heart would flip
As the day of his coming loomed.

And he would think of her sparkling eyes
The set of her moist, pink lips,
Her flaxen hair and her pointed stare
And the sway of her ****** hips.
Her image was burnt upon his brain
Though he still loved his woman too,
It left him sore and confused, he thought,
What was a man to do?

He fell at last in a deep, deep sleep
And Rhianna entered his room,
She saw him peacefully lying there
Quite unaware in the gloom,
She lay down quiet beside him, just
To see how it felt to lie
Next to the one that her love was on,
He woke, his hand on her thigh.

The silken feel of Rhianna’s thigh
Had put him into a trance,
He thought that a dream had come to life
Til he opened his eyes, by chance,
Her lips were hovering over his brow
Her flaxen hair in his face,
Her strange perfume permeated the room,
He rolled off the bed in haste.

‘I would if I could but I can’t,’ he said,
‘I need you to understand,
If I were free, with just you and me
But I’m not, and this wasn’t planned.’
He left, drove home in the early dawn
To arrive unexpectedly,
And saw the light in the bedroom on,
His woman had company.

She wept as the man had gathered his clothes,
And made poste haste for the door,
While he just stood as if turned to wood,
His feet fast glued to the floor,
‘Well, you’re always off on your travels, John,
You must consider my plight!’
‘That may be so,’ as he turned to go,
‘But I know where I’ll sleep tonight!’

David Lewis Paget

It was threatening rain for a week or more
It was always threatening rain,
The Weather Bureau was always sore
When the threatening rain never came.
We’d hold an open air barbecue
Each time they said it would come,
‘Hey it’s gonna rain,’ said Oliver Payne,
‘What do they think, we’re dumb?’

But the Bureau Chief, one Adrian Reef
Said he was sick to the core,
Why wouldn’t the weather behave itself
Like it had done before,
‘It’s making us look like a laughing stock,’
He bitterly said to Jane,
‘I want you to ring up the airport now
And charter a small, light plane,’

He loaded the plane up with dry ice
And a generous load of salt,
And lugged along an elephant gun,
The plane took off with a jolt,
He peppered the clouds with ice that day,
He put his job on the line,
The last thing he wanted to have to say:
‘The weather is going to be fine.’

And down on the ground at the barbecue
We were sizzling snags and steak,
Having an ice cold beer or two
And trying to stay awake.
The sultry weather was drowsy then
We’d heard the report, in vain,
But just when the steaks were nicely done
It came down, bucketing rain.

We didn’t have time to pack it up,
We couldn’t save snags or steak,
In only a couple of minutes there
We were staggering round in a lake,
And Oliver’s esky floated away
With the rest of the beer we’d bought,
While we took shelter as best we could
Under cover of Maggie’s porch.

The water rose right up to our knees,
Our cars were afloat that day,
The chickens drowned and the old hearth hound
Was found seven miles away,
While on the Teev was the Bureau Chief
With a grin that was not quite sane,
He knew he’d won with his elephant gun,
‘The sky is threatening rain!’

David Lewis Paget

He wandered along the decks by night,
Stood at the rails by day,
Kept to himself from what I saw
And didn’t have much to say,
He wore a yellow sou’wester when
The weather came in cold,
And a battered and worn old Navy cap
With the legend ‘Merchant Gold’.

He must have been once a ******
In a time quite long ago,
He still had his steady ******’s legs
On the ‘Michaelangelo’,
A crusty and time-worn cruise ship
That had seen much better days,
Pottering round the islands through
The softly lapping waves.

I doubt that it could withstand a storm
It was just a summer cruise,
For a raggedy band of tourists who
Had nothing much to lose,
The fares were cheap and the cabins bare
So I utilised the bar,
While the wife would wander off and say,
‘I’ll know just where you are!’

I got in some serious drinking
There was nothing else to do,
While Helen came back with every name
Of the stewards, and the crew,
For Helen’s a social butterfly
And she loves to gad about,
I’ve never been much of a talker
So I tend to shut her out.

One night I happened to wander out
She was over by the rail,
Listening to the sailor who
Was reading her some tale,
I turned back into the dining room
Until my wife was free,
Then asked her: ‘What was he reading?’
And she said, ‘Some poetry!’

‘A poem called ‘Sea Fever’ that had
Brought a tear to his eye,
It was all about a tall ship
And a star to steer her by,
If only you could have heard him, Ben
He had such a tale to tell,
I could have listened to him for hours,
His soul is like a well.’

‘His life was spent on the water and
He calls it God’s domain,
He said that having to leave it brought
His life’s most constant pain,
He pointed the constellations out
Named every little star,
He gave me a feeling of awe about
The ocean, where we are.’

I know I must have been jealous for
I never took the bait,
I didn’t talk to the sailor,
When I would, it was too late,
A storm blew up and the rising seas
Crashed over the decks and spars,
While he clung onto the outer rails
And gazed on up at the stars.

And then I must have been seeing things
For a man approached him there,
Holding onto a trident with
Coiled seaweed in his hair,
Touched him once with the trident and
The sailor turned his head,
Nodded once, with a gentle smile
Then draped on the rail, was dead.

They gathered the poor old sailor up
And bound him up in a sheet,
Waited until the sea calmed down
Called everyone to meet,
Then after a simple service they
Just slipped him into the sea,
A fitting end for a sailor who
Had left our company.

But Helen was broken hearted she
Was weeping all day long,
While I was irritated, and
I asked her, what was wrong?
She stopped and smiled, and she said, ‘Oh well,
He’s back in the sea he loved,
In a tall ship with a broad sail,
With the sky and the stars above!’

I think of him, and Neptune with
A trident, on his throne,
The sailor reading poetry
But this time, quite alone,
While coral reefs and gentle seas
Pay tribute to his life,
But I couldn’t share it now with him…
He shared it with my wife!


David Lewis Paget

(‘Sea Fever’ by John Masefield)

The sun had not even risen when
Delaney opened his eyes,
To colours, bent through a prism, and
Rotating there in the skies.
He thought it might be the Northern Lights
But they’re not seen that far south,
And with them came a crackling sound
To sow the first seeds of doubt.

He rose and walked to the window,
To stand by the sliding door
That led to his private balcony
On the hundred and twentieth floor,
The world below was in darkness and
In shock, he began to shout:
‘Hey Mary, get up and look at this,
The lights of the city are out!’

The lights of the city were out, all right,
There wasn’t a glimmer of light,
In all the teeming metropolis
Not even a car’s headlight.
Mary sleepily rose from bed
And joined him there by the door,
‘It isn’t the dark that does my head,
What’s that on the balcony floor?’

And there in the shade of the balcony
Was standing a monstrous beast,
Its talons several inches long,
Its beak was a foot, at least,
It suddenly opened enormous wings
Then steadily folded them back,
With eyes that promised a thousand things
And one, the threat of attack.

It saw them there through the plated glass
And rushed across for its prey,
Hit the glass and it looked surprised
The two were backing away.
‘Call the firemen, call the police,
That thing will need to be shot.’
‘The signal seems to have gone astray,
And the cell phone’s all we’ve got!’

The sun came up through the morning mist
And it lit the city square,
Delaney got his binoculars,
Nothing was moving there.
The power was out, so there was no doubt
They were locked in their flat, for sure,
The door to the stairwell wouldn’t budge
On the hundred and twentieth floor.

No light, no heat, and down in the street
No cars that streamed that day,
It was just as if electricity
Had suddenly gone away.
Their door had a pin, and powered lock
As did every door below,
A hundred and twenty floors locked in
With nowhere they could go.

The day wore on in the morning sun
And the birds had multiplied,
Looking like pterodactyls they
Swooped over the countryside,
And five came down on the balcony
Of Delaney and Mary’s flat,
The food in the fridge was spoiling as
The ice dripped out on the mat.

They couldn’t cook, they couldn’t eat,
They couldn’t open a can,
The electric opener wouldn’t work
Nor the cleverer works of man,
And the pterodactyls sat in a row
Out on the balcony floor,
With eyes of hate they would sit and wait
Til someone slid open the door!

David Lewis Paget

She didn’t look awfully well that day
Though she never would make a fuss,
I said we should get to the hospital
That I’d travel with her on the bus.
The weather was terrible, snow on the road
And a seaborne yellow mist,
So I wrapped her well in a scarf and coat
And did my best to assist.

She leant on me, walked out to the stop
And we sat on the ice cold bench,
I thought for a moment she’d faint or drop
So taking the bus made sense.
The car would be hard to manage that night
For the roads were covered with ice,
I couldn’t hold her while driving the car,
But we needed a doctor’s advice.

The cough had got worse as the day went on
And her hanky was spattered with blood,
I prayed it was just a vessel that burst,
Not that I thought it should,
But consumption sat at the back of my mind
It was rare, but still around,
I was praying a lot, but still my head
Would cover the same old ground.

We watched as the lights of the bus rolled up
So dim in the mist to see,
A double-decker, we climbed aboard
It was number twenty-three.
The passengers all were grey and drab
And some of them seemed asleep,
A skeleton sat hunched up at the rear
And Kathie began to weep.

‘It’s only a medical student’s thing,’
I said, ‘there’s nothing to fear.’
But Kathie flinched as we walked on past,
‘Then why did he leave it here?’
She settled down in a window seat
While I sat next to the aisle,
And the bus rolled into the swirling mist
So we sat quite still for a while.

The lights in the bus were more than dim
And Kathie was looking grey,
While I got up at the hospital stop
Kathie was looking away.
Then suddenly I was out on the road
As the bus took off in the mist,
While Kathie stared through the window pane,
It was like she didn’t exist.

I ran and I ran, and chased the bus,
But I ran and ran in vain,
For the bus veered off, went over the cliffs
And vanished into the rain,
I found her there on the bus stop bench
Where we’d sat, all grey and still,
And I wept, and thought of the phantom bus
That had taken her over the hill.

I could swear we’d stood, and climbed on the bus,
My love, my Kathie and me,
But they said there never was such a bus
As a number twenty-three,
And I see her now in my dreams at night
As she stares through the window pane,
Of a phantom bus that takes her away,
Over the cliffs in the rain.

Over the cliffs on a freezing night
When she died, ice cold on the bench,
What was I thinking, I ask myself,
Where was my common sense?
Then I take some comfort to think that I
Had once been a part of us,
And travelled some of the way with her
Where she’d gone, on the phantom bus.

David Lewis Paget

His parents had both been gone so long
He’d forgotten how they looked,
So gathered up all the photographs
And pasted them in a book,
Then hid the book until once a year
He would bring it out in the light,
And ruffle through all of its pages in
A memorial delight.

His wife said, ‘Why do you bother, Ken,
It will never bring them back,
It’s surely enough to remember when
You left, on a different track.’
Her own had consciously turned away
When she went and married Ken,
Had spurned her later advances and
She hadn’t seen them again.

‘I gave my family up for you,
But what did you do for me?
You tied me down with your family plan,
Locked me in your family tree!’
‘Was that so bad?’ And he looked quite sad
She revealed what he’d always known,
That she’d always hated his parents and
Would rather they’d lived alone.

‘What did they ever do to you,’ he said
‘To warrant your gall?’
‘They took away from my time with you,
With them, they wanted it all.’
‘They simply wanted the best for us
So they helped us out where they could.’
‘They kept on coming around,’ she said,
‘A great deal more than they should!’

One year, on opening up his book
There was more than a missing page,
With some of the photo’s gone for good
He was flung in a sullen rage.
‘What have you done with the photographs
Of the folks, there, back on the farm?’
‘You must have mislaid the things yourself…’
And he looked at her in alarm.

‘Have you gone really quite mad,’ he said,
‘Have you gone really insane?
Why would you take my memories
And cause me so much pain?’
‘They’re gone, they’re dead,’ she had screamed at him,
‘Yet you never let them be,
As long as you still remember them,
Then I will never be free!’

‘I thought that I’d seen the last of them
When I put your mother away,
And then, with only your father left
I made sure he choked that day!
I needed to get a new life for me
I need to be more than a wife…’
She hurriedly poured his soup for him
As he slowly picked up the knife.

David Lewis Paget

Is it God out there in the woods tonight
Or some weird, unhallowed troll,
Uprooting trees in the scorching breeze
With a dread that shreds my soul,
The sky is glowering red like blood
For a warning, in advance,
Since ever the Hadron Collider fired
And swallowed half of France.

A planet, black as a pit of tar
Has appeared just up on high,
Has popped up out of some x-ray realm
And filled up half the sky,
The earth is teetering on the edge
Of a black hole, forged in space,
And threatening us with extinction,
What’s left of the human race.

It was all for the sake of science, so
They told us, overall,
To add to their fount of knowledge like
The new God Particle,
Though why they wanted to raise it when
There is no recompense,
As it ravages half of the planet,
What did they use for common sense?

There’s a hole down deep in the ocean that
Is swallowing half the sea,
The earth it quakes, and volcanoes
Are erupting frequently,
While we lie low in our cottage home
To the growling in the woods,
From some atavistic animal
Unwrapped from its hellish shrouds.

The ones who unleashed this savage beast
Have all been swallowed whole,
Are floating in some dimension in
Their Hadron hidey-hole,
We should have had them arrested long
Before they hatched their plot,
Lined them up with their arrogance,
Their science, and had them shot!

David Lewis Paget

The three of us had been travelling
For weeks, and were getting tired,
We’d taken pictures of everything
And our visas had expired,
We got a room in a gloomy house
And we settled down to wait,
For Julie wanted to sleep a lot
While Francis stood at the gate.

For he was the moody, restless one,
And wanted to travel back,
I was just glad to settle down
And dump my heavy pack,
I took a seat at the window ledge
And I read a magazine,
While Julie said that the light was bad,
‘You’ll ruin your vision, Dean!’

It certainly was a gloomy room
And the walls were painted brown,
We’d had to look for the cheapest in
An ancient part of town,
The concierge was a Capuchin
With a tonsure and a cross,
I felt like I had to bow to him
As he passed the keys across.

The room had merely a single bulb
That would only work at night,
And then, it had such a feeble beam
You could hardly call it bright,
But when it lit we could see at last
On the further, darkest wall,
There hung a dusty old painting that
We hadn’t seen before.

It blended in with the wall behind
For the tones were shades of brown,
The face of an old Franciscan who
Was looking sadly down,
But in his eyes was a faint surprise
As of one with mystic deeps,
And Francis said that it turned his head,
‘Those eyes give me the creeps!’

We ate a couple of sandwiches
And we turned in for the night,
We didn’t think it was worth it but
We still turned out the light,
Then I awoke in the early hours
To the sound of cries and shrieks,
The volume gradually rising
As my skin began to creep.

A sudden flare lit the room in there
From the painting on the wall,
The crackling sound of flames devouring
The monk, I was appalled,
And through the flames I could see those eyes
As they bored into the room,
And then, the crackling disappeared
And the room was plunged in gloom.

There wasn’t a sign of damage to
The painting, or the wall,
But a whisp of sulphur and brimstone
Hung in the air, and overall,
While Francis huddled in terror with
His face as pale as sleet,
And Julie couldn’t stop sobbing then
From underneath her sheet.

We snatched our stuff in the morning
And I handed back the keys,
I said, ‘Just who is that picture of?’
The concierge looked pleased.
‘That’s just one of the Franciscans
Who rebelled against the Pope,
He went to the Inquisition then
And they gave him little hope.’

‘Four of the monks were burned out there
As a lesson to the rest,
St. Francis would have approved, they were
Schismatic, at the best,
This is the town the Inquisition
Righted many a wrong,
They burned the recusant catholics
In the square at Avignon.’

Francis had left before us, he
Refused to wait in there,
He wandered out with his backpack and
Stood waiting in the square,
Just as the petrol tanker rolled,
From a worn and faulty tyre,
And the last I saw, he was standing there
Engulfed in a lake of fire!

David Lewis Paget

The Lady Mary had locked the door
And called the scullery maid,
The Boots was called and the Footman,
So they thought they were being paid,
She lined them up with the Butler,
The Housemaid, skivvy and Cook,
‘You’re not to go wandering out the door,
Not even to take a look!’

She knew her word, though the very law,
Was never to go down well,
For Alice was sweet on a lawyer’s clerk,
A lockdown seemed like hell.
The Footman needed his racing mates
To place a bet on the book,
So the Lady Mary had made it plain,
‘Not even a peep or a look!’

The grumbling went with the Cook downstairs
As they stood, and waited for tea,
‘It’s all very well for the likes of her,
There’s places I have to be!’
‘Enough of this nonsense,’ the Butler said,
‘We’re lucky to grace her floor,
If you want to leave in a fit of peeve
You’ll never get back in the door.’

They huddled down for a week or more
It was better than paying rent,
But a silence settled on every floor
For nobody came, or went,
The pantry shelves were emptying out
But the tradesmen never came,
‘We’re going to starve,’ was the one lament
When they ate the last of the game.

The Footman called the Scullery Maid
And they huddled up on a pew,
‘If you sneak out for an hour tonight,
Then I will cover for you,
And you can visit your lawyer’s clerk
Then place a bet on the book,
I’ll let you in when it’s nice and dark…’
‘I will, by hook or by crook!’

She slipped on out by the kitchen door
And he turned the key in the lock,
Watched the Butler heading for bed
And sat by the kitchen clock.
At ten o’clock, with a tiny tap
She had made her prescence felt,
And tumbled in as he opened the door,
Went straight to the hearth, and knelt.

He locked the door, then he heard her sob
And saw that her head was bent,
She stared so long and hard at the floor
That he thought his bet was spent.
‘What ails you Alice, now what went wrong,
Don’t give me none of your lies!’
She looked up into his face just then
And he saw blood stream from her eyes!’

‘They’re dead, all dead,’ were the words she said
As her tears had mixed with the blood,
Your racing pals and my lawyers clerk,
And the horses, down at the stud.
The Lady Mary, she should have said…’
But he cut her off right there,
Leapt up, unlocking the kitchen door
He dragged her out by her hair.

He locked the door and he scrubbed his hands
But he’d locked the beast within,
As blood then streamed from his Footman’s eyes
And he earned the wages of sin.
The Lady Mary came down the stair
To find him, dead on the floor,
And said to the Cook, with blood red eyes,
‘You’d best fling open the door!’

David Lewis Paget

She asked me how she had come to me
On a sunny afternoon,
She couldn’t remember anything,
Her memories had flown.
She looked in awe at the dress she wore
And the sparkles on her shoes,
‘I didn’t have any of these before,
But what have I got to lose?’

I had her in mind for a Faery Queen
Or maybe a party girl,
I hadn’t a plot to fit right then
But thought I’d give her a whirl.
She had such grace and a lovely face
So I thought she’d fit right in,
And later, plenty of colour for
My lepidoptera tin.

She flittered and fluttered about the field
While I got my butterfly net,
She’d probably still be fluttering
If I hadn’t caught her yet.
But that’s how I catch my characters
That I fit in every plot,
I chase them round and I bring them down
Whether they want, or not.

The women are always butterflies,
The men are usually moths,
I struggle to keep the women sweet
But sometimes they are Goths.
As long as they play their part so well
That the reader doesn’t twig,
That all my casts are butterflies,
The small parts and the big.

For villains I use the Death’s Head Moth
For his markings are so grim,
But the innocent girls in chiffon are
The first to let him in,
He’s mean and cunning, and not so sweet
As the ones he seeks to fool,
But I am only the writer, so
Their conflict is my gruel.

I need to go where the sun is bright
And they flutter in the breeze,
To hold my butterfly net upright
And pursue them through the trees.
Then one day soon in the afternoon
I shall write a plot that sings,
And catch me a lepidoptera,
The one with the brightest wings!

David Lewis Paget

He was hanging in line with the elder trees
From an oak that had broken the line,
That’s why they probably missed him, he
Became as one in design.
He wore a shabby old overcoat
But his hat lay there on the ground,
It wasn’t until a jogger who fell
Looked up, that the man was found.

The firemen cut his body down
While the police stood back a pace,
Then loaded him into an ambulance
With a consequent lack of grace.
His eyes were staring, his jaw was slack
And his arms flopped north and south,
But most of all, and what appalled
Was the purple tongue in his mouth.

Nobody seemed to know who he was
His clothing tags had been cut,
There wasn’t a wallet or envelope
In the pockets of his old coat.
‘He must be someone, but who knows who?
And why was he hanging there?
Could this have been ****** or suicide,
And really, does anyone care?’

He didn’t come up on the Missing List,
Nor his face on a Mug Shot file,
No-one was desperately phoning in,
He must have been gone for a while.
‘There’s a picture there, on his retina,’
The photographer said at last,
‘If we blow it up, it might give us a clue,
What he saw at his final gasp.’

The rope had been knotted behind his neck
So his head had been angled down,
His eyes had bulged as the blood withdrew
And snapped what he saw on the ground.
A woman was stood there, looking up
With an anguished look on her face,
Her hands together, as if in prayer
But holding a can of Mace.

The police supplied an identikit
And published it over the news,
They passed it around the prison guards
And questioned most of the Screws.
But they didn’t mention the woman there
Reflected in each of his eyes,
They kept that piece of forensic back
As their own well kept surprise.

The plain clothes men at the funeral
Were alert, but hid in the trees,
They’d made it known where the man was going
And when, to the cemetery,
So when a woman in black appeared
To watch as the coffin fell,
They swooped, and took her in charge right then
As she cried, ‘I’ve been in Hell!’

She cried all over the interview,
They thought that her heart would break,
‘I messed right up,’ was her one refrain,
‘It was one great big mistake!
We’d been together, over a year
And I loved him, he was nice,
But then he began to dabble in drugs
And he played about with ice.’

‘I begged and begged, but he wouldn’t stop,
And his violent side came out,
He ran amok and he wrecked our home
And he’d start to scream and shout,
I should have gone to the police right then,
Should have had him in rehab,
But I bought the Mace to protect myself,
I know, you must think I’m mad!’

‘Then he’d sober up, see what he’d done
And would be so full of remorse,
I had to forgive him, every time
Just as a matter of course,
Until the day that he knocked me down
And I said, ‘No going back!
I can’t put up with this any more,’
Then he took the rope from the shack.’

‘I followed him into the woods out there
And I tried to talk him down,
But he climbed the oak and he tied the rope
And he told me, with a frown,
‘The devil has got me by the throat
And I died when hitting you,
I’ll never deserve of your love again
What a terrible thing to do!’

‘Then he jumped,’ she said, and burst the dam
For her tears would never stop,
She went back into the woods again
To plant forget-me-nots,
And I heard she’d died of a broken heart
And was buried where he lies,
But still lives on in that photograph
As seen in a dead man’s eyes!

David Lewis Paget

The path that I like to wander on
Is a rural lane in the trees,
It’s a pleasant walk, and I tend to talk
To myself, just shooting the breeze.
Then it comes to a wood, and it parts in two
The main path tends to the right,
And heads up ‘til, just over the hill
It’s bathed in a pure sunlight.

And there stands a mansion in plain stucco
With columns that hold up a porch,
And each of the windows send out a beam
As of someone, holding a torch,
A woman dressed plainly in white comes out,
Invites me to come in for tea,
Then sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,
But we spend our time pleasantly.

We sit in a kitchen that’s tiled in white
And the sunlight beams through the door,
She sometimes reads to me from a book,
And asks what I’m looking for.
I tell her I’m totally lost, and then
Confusion’s writ over my face,
So she makes the sign of the saviour’s cross,
And blesses me with her grace.

The other path veers off to the left,
Is narrow and mean through the trees,
It slopes on down to a valley with grass
Though a turn in the path deceives.
For hidden there in the undergrowth
Is a cottage in shadow, and grim,
Where a gypsy girl with an evil smile
Beckons for me to come in.

And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,
She isn’t offering tea,
She dances and whirls in the kitchen there,
And sometimes, sits on my knee.
She places my hand on her silken thigh,
And asks what I’m looking for,
I tell her I’m totally lost, and then
I struggle on out of her door.

A poet once said that he took the path,
The one less travelled by,
I’ve tried them both, and I still go back
To the ones both low, and high.
For my soul is soothed by the woman in white,
She lifts me up to the heights,
But the gypsy girl puts my mind in a whirl
And she sates my darker nights.

David Lewis Paget

We were swept up onto this rocky coast
By a storm in ’93,
There were thirteen passengers and crew
And a stowaway, that’s me!
The ship was holed on the jagged rocks
And it sits still out in the bay,
We’ve never been able to fix the hole
So it looks like here we’ll stay.

It sits forlorn when the tide is low
But is covered when it’s high,
As the breakers beat on the after decks
Though the ship is never dry.
The water pours from the cabins, and
Lies deep in the forward hold,
While the rust is eating the hull away
And the cargo’s turned to mould.

We thought that we’d soon be rescued
By a ship just passing by,
But all we saw for a month or more
Was the lonely sea and the sky,
We made our camp on the beach where we
Could watch for a passing light,
And cook our fish on the signal fires,
But the trouble came at night.

The crew of seven were restless and
The passengers were few,
For only five of us men were there
And the women, only two.
One, the wife of a clergyman
The other a girl called Gail,
And she was sweet on a man called Deet
That she’d met before we sailed.

But Deet had fought with the bosun
Over the fish he said were his,
They moved away, went around the bay
To seek their Island bliss.
That left the clergyman’s wife with us
Who was praying we’d be found,
But late one night, in another fight
The clergyman was drowned.

The bosun dragged her away from us
With Froggat, Jones and Lees,
They took the struggling woman with them
Deep into the trees,
There wasn’t a thing we could do for her
So we went out to the ship,
And armed ourselves with iron bars
While we told ourselves: ‘They’ll keep!’

We moved our camp from the other crew
For the feeling there was mean,
The three the bosun had left behind
Hid out where they’d not be seen,
But then, at just about midnight we
Were hearing an eerie wail,
For down at the beach they’d murdered Deet
And dragged off the weeping Gail.

From deep in the trees we saw that Lees
Was trying to reach our spot,
His head was covered in blood, but then
He fell from a single shot,
The bosun was dragging Marie, the wife
To the open, by her hair,
Her dress was soiled and her face was spoiled
With the tears of a deep despair.

We didn’t see Froggat and Jones again,
They’d fallen to the knife,
But I had to run from the bosun’s gun
In order to stay alive,
Then under the cover of darkness we
Went after the weeping Gail,
And beneath the stars with our iron bars
We left a bloodied trail.

We caught the bosun asleep one night
And we beat him with our bars,
He didn’t have time to wake before
We dispatched him to the stars,
That left just Jeremy Leach and I
And the women that we’d saved,
For Gordon died of a fever then
And we dug his sandy grave.

It looks as if we’ll be here for good
So I’ll sign this bloodied screed,
Place it safe in a bottle then
And commit it to the seas,
We won’t fight over the women for
Marie is now with Leach,
And Gail has a tiny stowaway
As she wanders along the beach.

David Lewis Paget

Nadine was naïve when she came to me,
So innocent, fresh and sublime,
I found that I had to pinch myself
When she told me she was mine.
She was barely out of her teens back then
While I was over the hill,
She hadn’t a toe in the water then,
But I had been through the mill.

Her gentle face was a study in grace
And her eyes had sparkled blue,
Her hair like a field of waving corn
And her lips had glistened dew,
Her ******* were fresh, pushed under her dress
And her hips a promised world,
I’d watch her sway as she’d drift my way
This seductive, sensuous girl.

I’d lie on the bed after making love
And I’d watch her rise and move,
She’d pose for me in her poetry
Like a picture, hung in the Louvre.
She was never ashamed of her body then
Though she lent it just to me,
The rest of the world was missing out,
It was pure idolatry.

I’d take her walking to see the sites
Where culture lurked in the gloom,
And art then captured her simple heart
As we’d go from room to room,
Rubens, Goya and Cabanel,
Titian, Goya, Courbet,
She said, ‘I want to be seen like that,
Preserved in a youthful way.’

We met the sculptor, Matthias Krohn
At a gallery in Berlin,
His mouth fell open to see Nadine
With her pale and perfect skin.
‘You have a goddess, my friend,’ he said,
‘I must capture her in stone!’
I said, ‘Can I come along and watch?’
‘I must work with her alone.’

I’d drop Nadine at his studio
Each day, and she’d stay ‘til four,
I’d ask her how it was going, and
She’d shrug, wouldn’t tell me more.
‘The sculpture’s facing away from me
I won’t see it ‘til it’s done.’
I could tell by the downcast look of her
That it wasn’t really fun.

‘It’s cold, it gets very cold in there,’
She said, when a month had gone
And that was the first time that I knew
She was posed, no clothing on.
‘I thought he would drape your figure there,
In something filmy, like lawn,
‘I told him I wanted the world to see me
Naked as I was born.’

The months went on, there was something wrong
The sparkle had gone from her eye,
The hair that had been like waving corn
Was now just brittle and dry,
Her lips were pursed in a moody line,
No longer glistened with dew,
I said, ‘Am I doing something wrong…’
‘It’s nothing to do with you!’

I went on the final day with her,
Matthias ushered us in,
‘You’ve come for my greatest masterpiece,’
But all I could see was sin.
The eyes were cynical, looking down,
The lips were curled in contempt,
The ******* were pert like a blatant flirt
Who basked in her element.

I took one look at the parted legs
And reached for my girl, Nadine,
The tears were streaming along her cheeks,
‘You’ve made me appear unclean!’
Matthias shrugged as she rushed on out,
‘It’s true to the girl I saw.’
‘Your evil eyes must have told you lies,
You’ve turned Nadine to a *****!’

She never came back to our home again,
She wandered the streets in shame,
I tried to find her, to track her down
But I heard she was on the game.
I saw her last, get into a car,
Her lips were curled in contempt,
Her hair was brittle, like faded straw
But she looked in her element!

David Lewis Paget

What happens to love that’s neglected,
What happens with absence of care,
When only the shrug of indifference
Is left for you both to share.
What happens when neither will reach on out
To touch, or caress or to hold,
Or eyes never meet when you pass in the street
There’s a shrivelling up of the soul.

And the taste of the past is like ashes,
While the memories gone are like dust,
Growing deeper with time as it passes
To bury attraction and lust.
And you wonder about the excitement
That you felt at the moment you met,
Was that a mirage, is the desert so large
That your heart remains lost in it yet?

When the days stretch ahead, and are endless
That you fear there will be no respite,
Are you under a curse, could it be any worse
With your tears on the pillow at night?
When you put a brave face on each morning,
And you nod to each other, then go,
But pray life will not be extended,
What happens? I think that you know!

David Lewis Paget

The storm outside was abating, or
He thought that it was, at first,
He’d only gone to the pub with Joe
To slake a raging thirst.
They’d both been out on the landfill
And it was humid through the day,
So Joe said, ‘Bet I can race you there
And put two pints away!’

But the storm had built as they drank in there
And the rain came down in sheets,
Then hailstones peppered the windows and
Joe said, ‘It’s turned to sleet!
I think we’re not going anywhere
‘Til the storm has passed and gone,
We might as well have another..
And it’s your shout,’ he said to John.

They’d known each other forever, and
Had married two sisters, late,
They’d both been into their thirties,
Sister Jean and sister Kate.
While one of them was a loving match,
The other one was mean,
And Joe said, ‘would you consider a swap,
My Kate for her sister, Jean?’

So John had laughed, but he looked away
For he knew that Joe was sore,
For Kate was never the bargain that
His mate was looking for,
Her tongue was sharp, though he knew her bark
Was worse that her fabled bite,
For John was meeting Kate in the dark
When they both were alone at night.

He’d kick himself, for he knew that Jean
Was the love match of the pair,
But she tended to work at night so much
That she often wasn’t there,
And Joe would stay at the pub so late
That they had to throw him out,
He didn’t have cause to go back home
So he stayed until last shout.

The storm continued to rage outside
So they both got worse for drink,
And the talk died down as they sat and frowned,
They both had time to think.
‘We’re always going to be mates,’ said John,
‘I hope that you think so too.’
‘We’re side by side where we both belong
No matter what we might do.’

But the ***** brought on a maudlin state
And it seemed to get to John,
‘It may be time to confess,’ he thought,
‘This deception can’t go on.’
‘I’ve something I have to tell you, Joe,
It’s time I was coming clean.’
But Joe stayed him, and he said, ‘Me first!
Old mate, I’ve been seeing Jean!’

David Lewis Paget

I’ve had a terrible day today
The horse had broken a shoe,
I had to get to the marketplace
And didn’t know what to do,
So I borrowed the neighbour’s horse and cart
Was stopped by the local cop,
He said that the stuff on the neighbour’s cart
Had been stolen, from a shop!

He wouldn’t believe it wasn’t mine
And locked me up in a cell,
I’m being done for the stolen goods
And the stolen cart as well.
It took them hours to bail me out
Then I had to walk back home,
Fifteen miles to the mountain top
And the tongue of a rabid crone.

‘Why do you always do these things,
Why is it always you?
The guy next door, he never gets caught
But he’s so much smarter - True!’
I didn’t think she’d ever give up,
My dinner was down the drain,
They say that marriage is so much bliss,
Then why is there so much pain?

The kids were screaming about the place
When they should have been in bed,
She said she couldn’t control them, but
At least the kids were fed.
I bit a crust that was far too old
And it almost broke my teeth,
Then saw the thing was covered in mould,
All that I want is Sleep!

‘All that I want is sleep,’ I said
As I staggered off to my room,
It seemed a conspiracy overhead
Was acting out in the gloom,
A crash, a clash on the tiles above
I thought it was drunken Joe,
He’s always fooling about at night,
Him and his ‘** ** **!’

The wife snuck into the bedroom then
And she said, ‘Don’t make a peep!
Or Father Christmas will hear you, Ben,
You ought to be sound asleep!’
My eyes bugged out and I leapt on up
Flung open the window wide,
‘And how do you think I’m supposed to sleep
With you ******* about outside!’

I heard the chomping of many teeth
And a very distinctive ‘Neigh!’
Stuck my head out so far that I
Could see this silver sleigh.
I yelled, ‘Hey get off my effing roof,
You’re damaging all my tiles!’
And then this guy in a bright red suit
Looked down, his face all smiles.

All he could say was ‘** ** **’,
He’d come from some funny farm,
I yelled, ‘Do you want a bunch of fives?’
He started to look alarmed.
I heard the rattle of antler horns
As he started to ride away,
I couldn’t believe my eyes to see
It was Santa’s Silver Sleigh!

They’ve stuck me out in the doghouse here,
I had to kick out the dog,
But found, at least, that his rug was fleece
I could sleep at last, like a log.
There’d better not be another day
Like this, as I said to Steve,
‘You’d think that someone would warn me when
It’s coming up Christmas Eve!’

David Lewis Paget

There’s an angel down in my garden plot
But she’s overgrown with weeds,
She looms up out of the sassafras
Set back in among the trees.
I don’t know how long she’s stood out there
But her wings are green with moss,
And her tired face is a study in grace,
Reflecting a sense of loss.

‘Your flesh was an alabaster white
But it’s almost faded to grey,
You’re weather-worn, and you look forlorn
As if you’ve been cast away.
The days when you were a centrepiece
Of a garden, laid and fine,
Have now passed on, with the garden gone
But I’ve found you now, you’re mine.’

‘I promise I’ll clear the weeds away,
I’ll scrub the moss from your wings,
I’ll light that tender smile on your face
With the glow a spotlight brings,
I’ll bring you back to the glory you
Reflect from heaven’s spell,
And people will come adoring you
When I put in a wishing well.’

‘A wishing well for your hopes and dreams
And the hopes and dreams of them,
They’ll touch your gown and they’ll toss a coin
When they leave, they’ll wish you well.
I’ll sleep with you looking over me
And dream of the King of Kings,
And see his crown as he’s looking down
We’ll see what the future brings!’

I worked to see my promises kept
‘Til the angel gleamed and shone,
But one day there in the garden wept
For the angel there had gone.
She’d fluttered off from her plinth one night
With her feathered wings reborn,
And through my tears, and despite my fears
I rejoiced at the Crimson Dawn!

David Lewis Paget

I recall I lay at the top of the hill
A toboggan, all set to go,
My friend behind, and urging me on
We’d had a good fall of snow,
I was lying flat, head first on that
When we hurtled on down the hill,
My friend was dragging his feet to steer,
He steered to a certain spill.

A clump of trees in the valley below,
I told him to steer out wide,
But he dragged his foot with his hob-nailed boot,
I knew we were going to collide,
The tree came up like a railway train
There were stars and I lay there still
A piece of branch was lodged in my brain
From the tree at the base of the hill.

They said I’d never survive, I know,
They said I’d surely be dead,
With a length of fir tree, covered in blood
And sticking right out of my head.
I was out of it for a month or more,
A coma of long lost time,
But finally woke in the hospital
To find I was almost blind.

All I could see were shadows, shades
That drifted in silent space,
These shadows all were as black as coal
And none of them had a face,
As if I was seeing a different world
To the one I’d always been in,
And one of them sidled on up to me,
‘You’re seeing the world of sin!’

I couldn’t see when the nurses came
But I heard them when they spoke,
A doctor came, said ‘it’s such a shame,
So sad for the little bloke!’
Three shadows were hanging on every word
As they lounged near the further wall,
And then I knew that they stuck like glue
For the Doc had done for them all!

They sent me home to recuperate
Sat out in an easy chair,
The garden looked like a negative
Of a black and white picture there,
My parents slowly came into view
But the shades stood out by the fence,
I’d always thought they were both sin free
But their sins were there, past tense.

My friend from the great toboggan spill
Came to visit me there to see
If I’d suspect that he’d steered direct,
Deliberately into the tree,
But a shadow hung at his shoulder there
And it gave his game away,
The shadow was mine, and over time
Will be there ‘til his dying day.

We’re all of us shadow makers when
We’re sinned against, done wrong,
We don’t have to be earth shakers, but
That sin will never be gone.
My sight has slowly recovered now
But I wonder, now I am back,
How many shadows are following me,
And when are they going to attack?

David Lewis Paget

The Church in its awesome majesty
Looked down, from over the hill,
From faith, to hope, to travesty
It stood, and is standing still,
So proud in its fine regalia
Its ritual, and never the least,
Its potent God who would wield his rod
Deter the jaws of the beast.

The Bishop of Saint Ignatius Church
Was a proud and holy man,
Who wouldn’t suffer the jibes of fools
From Rome to Afghanistan,
And certainly not those down the hill
In the new Masonic Lodge,
That beastly, secret doctrine that
He advised his flock to dodge.

He’d stand at the steps of his church and stare
Down at the barbarians,
He hated Lodges, he hated Mosques
And Rastafarians,
‘There shouldn’t be anyone else but me,
I hold the eternal God,
What gods they worship could never be,
For they’re all distinctly odd.’

While down at the Lodge of the Masons
They were cool with their golden rule,
They had to believe in a god as such,
But how, it was up to you.
For some would practice the Baptist faith,
And some Presbyterian,
While some enrolled in the Primitive state
Were a type of Wesleyan.

There was only a single Catholic
And he wore a glued on rug,
He wanted to still be young at heart,
Was known as the Grand HumBug,
The Antidiluvian Mason’s Guild
Was the name he’d chosen himself,
The others differed, but he was keen,
And he was the one with wealth.

Their God was known as the Architect,
They carried the masons tools,
The set square set them apart from all
The disbelievers and fools.
They worked on their secret rituals
And kept a goat at the back,
For leading a blindfold novice in
And guarding the Lodge from attack.

The Bishop heard that a Catholic
Was leading the Masons there,
He fumed, choked on his rhetoric, but
Was heard to firmly declare,
‘I will not shelter a wayward sheep
Who has taken to ways I hate,
The only fate for a traitor here
Is to excommunicate!’

He gathered a dozen priests to march
With candles, down to the Hall,
Surrounded the base heretic’s Lodge
And named HumBug in his call,
Sprinkled his holy water ‘til
It fizzed, and gave off a smell,
Doused his candle and closed his book,
Consigning the man to Hell!

But Humbug patted his glued on rug
Went out, untethered the goat,
He let it loose on the dozen Priests,
It butted the Bishop’s coat,
They ran in confusion up the street,
To the church, set up on the hill,
While the goat was hard at the Bishop’s heels
Like a demon released from Hell.

It butted the Bishop’s altar and
It charged, knocked over the font,
Scattered the pews for the devil’s dues
In a hellfire sacrament,
While HumBug muttered he might end up
In Hell, with his Mason’s sect,
But the Bishop’s God, had failed with his rod
In a clash with his Architect!

David Lewis Paget

I like to walk on the beach, I said,
As it sweeps around in the bay,
There isn’t a single building here
To rise, or get in the way,
It’s as it was when the world was formed
For only the tides will change,
And God sits there in his easy chair,
There’s nothing to rearrange.

You brought me here when the sky was clear
In the first full flush of love,
Your eyes met mine, they were so divine
And I thanked the Lord above,
For what were the chances of meeting you
In the larger scale of things,
Angels are usually out of view
But they gave your soul bright wings.

It was just by chance, but I saw you dance
When you thought you were on your own,
But I was out in the park at dawn
When you fluttered down from your throne,
I thought my eyes had been mesmerised
When you twisted, turned and spun,
That perfect grace, and an angel’s face
In the rays of the morning sun.

You brought me here to this lonely beach
Where the love we made was fun,
But then you said it was out of reach
It would soon be dead and gone,
For nothing as fine as this could last
It was tempting fate, you said,
And ‘darker shadows will come to pass’
Were the words I came to dread.

The season is brief for everything
For life, you said, for love,
And youth is merely the briefest dream
When it comes to push and shove,
But I walk the beach now the years have gone
With the memories that we share,
But now you share them from up above
With God asleep in his chair.

The future yawns, for we’re just the pawns
In some sad, celestial game,
A brief exposure to happiness
And the rest in eternal pain,
So I walk the beach for I try to reach
The days I was here with you,
Your shadow teases me at the breach,
In the end, there’s only the view.

David Lewis Paget

I have a man with a pointy hat
Lives under my desktop lid,
He came for muffins and jam, and that,
I call the Wizard of Did,
His beard got caught when the lid came down
So I had to trim it back,
But he says it’s comfy and warm in there
So he’s turned it into a flat.

I thought at first I would charge him rent
But he wasn’t too keen on that,
So I suggested a garden tent
And he said he’d pass the hat.
I’d try to type in the early hours
But he’d bang up under the lid,
‘How can I get my beauty sleep,’
He said, the Wizard of Did.

‘You’re going to have to pay your way,’
I said, ‘It’s not for free,
‘You’d better come up with something good
That’s of some use to me.’
‘You say you struggle for plots,’ he said,
‘Well I can help with those,
‘I’m full of people I want to be,
I just need different clothes.’

The Wizard was as good as his word
He’d pop up now and then,
Whenever I’d sit and scratch my head
He’d mention Holy men,
Then march along the top of the desk
With mitre, staff and cross,
And make me kiss the pontiff’s ring
On the eve of Pentecost.

He’d play the role of a murderer,
He’d play the role of a clown,
He’d play an old sheep herder-er
With a crook in a shepherd’s gown,
He’d pop up with a pirate’s patch
And ****** pieces of eight,
Or keep me longing for Molly Brown
When my ship came in too late.

Whenever I sat there at a loss
For a line, a rhyme, a verse,
He’d throw a bag on the table top
And say, ‘Now pick a curse!’
He’d turn mine into a haunted house
And he’d stalk me in the gloom,
And have me making a pact with Faust
In a dark and lonely tomb.

And now when I think my muse has gone
That my stories have been spent,
I tap-tap-tap on the table top
And he says, ‘You must repent!
I’m not a bottomless pit, you know,’
Climbs in, and closes the lid,
I say, ‘You promised a constant flow,’
And he groans, ‘I know… I Did!’

David Lewis Paget

He came on down from the mountain like
An ancient prophet of old,
His hair was long, and fine and white
And his neck was chained with gold,
He carried a staff as he limped on in
To the farm, and asked for a bed,
I said, ‘We live in the farmhouse here,
But there’s hay in the cattle shed.’

He thanked me then and he stayed the night
I thought he’d be gone at dawn,
But the sun was high on the mountainside
When I saw him stand in the corn,
‘Your Lord provides and is bountiful,
You must have kept his commands,
My people wandered for forty years
In the drift of the desert sands.’

I asked him if I could know his name
For the strangers here were few,
He looked askance, but he shook my hand,
‘It’s Moses, here, to you.
I’m on my way to the Canaanites
Who possess my promised lands,
But I need to know where I have to go
I’m a stranger in your hands.’

I thought he must have been wandering,
Some defect of the mind,
I said, ‘You’re not on the continent
That you want so hard to find,
That mountain there isn’t Sinai,
We’re far too south to gauge,
This farm’s in Eastern Australia
By the Great Dividing Range.

He shook his head and his eyes went dead
And he turned towards the creek,
It was riding high with a swollen tide
For the best part of a week,
I thought, he’ll never get over that,
The current is far too strong,
But he beat his staff on the bank, three times,
How could I be so wrong?

The water parted, it ceased to flow,
But it raised in two tall towers,
Then he set off in the midst of it,
I sat in shock for hours,
The last I saw he was marching off
As the creek collapsed to flow,
I thought, ‘and the best of British luck,
You’ve a helluva way to go!’

David Lewis Paget

The man had a terrible temper,
Would rage at the skies above,
Would screech and howl, like a midnight owl,
He’d been unlucky in love.
He’d stomp about in the village square,
Go out, and look for a fight,
The villagers always avoided him
When he’d roam around at night.

Then he’d come and knock at my own front door
Demanding to talk to Jill,
I’d hear her say from the passageway,
‘I don’t want to talk to Bill!
I’d had enough when he beat me up
And my heart would never heal,
Just tell him I’m sticking with you, my love,
I know that your love is real!’

He’d punch the door, then he’d stand and roar
So I’d slam the door in his face,
He kicked a panel across the floor
And I said I’d call the police!
I heard him muttering as he left,
‘Come out, I’ll give you a fight,
Tell Jill she’s dead if she’s in your bed,
I’ll call in the dead of night!’

I took the hammer and nails outside
And battened the shutters down,
Then strung an electrical tripwire that
Would pulverise the clown,
‘The man’s as mad as a meat axe, Jill,
Bi-Polar, that’s for sure,’
‘More of a schizophrenic, Jim,
‘Be sure to bar the door.’

We’d sit in a petrified silence in
The cottage, every night,
Listening for the slightest sound
If something wasn’t right,
The roof would creak as the timber cooled
And the wind soughed through the eaves,
We even strained by the window panes
At the patter of Autumn leaves.

‘How long are we going to put up with this,’
I said to Jill, one morn,
‘He’s tempting fate by the garden gate,
He’s been there since the dawn.’
‘I’m going to have to confront him,’ said
The darling of my life,
I hadn’t proposed to her just then
But I hoped she’d be my wife.

She walked on out to the garden gate
And I heard him raise his voice,
I couldn’t quite make his words out, but
He was giving her a choice.
Then Jill I heard in a voice that stirred
From the depths of a gravel pit,
And he went white with a look of fright
And he left, and that was it!

‘What did you say to the maniac
That he turned and went away?’
She smiled, and cuddled on into me,
‘I think I made his day.
I said that I’d go back home with him
But I’d poison his meat and drinks,
Or slit his throat when asleep one night…’
He hasn’t been back here since!

David Lewis Paget

I wanted to go to the end of the street
To buy a chocolate éclair,
But now I’m at the end of the street,
The end of the street’s not there.
I’ll swear it was there just yesterday,
Was there on the day before,
But now when I look for the end of the street
The end of the street’s no more.

All I can see is a land of waste,
A land of rubble and weeds,
Where bushes grow in untidy rows,
A scatter of burdock seeds,
I wander on where the shops have gone
Where you used to meet with us,
But the road just ended around the bend
Where we caught the 16 bus.

There’s nothing left but a wilderness
An empty paddock and space,
As if I meet at the end of the street
The end of the human race,
The houses, shops and the industry
And the people I saw before,
They seem to be lost in a history
That nobody felt or saw.

That nobody felt or saw, I thought,
That came and took you away,
Strapped in the back of an ambulance
Laid out on a cold tin tray,
And your laughter fades in the wilderness
And your sighs reach up to the Moon,
And my heart that burst at the back of the hearse
Will never be mended soon.

I wanted to go to the end of the street
To buy a chocolate éclair,
For chocolate’s really the only thing
That will feed my deep despair.
But my soul is lost in the wilderness
Of your empty passing by,
I’d spend my grief on the lonely heath
If I thought I could only cry!

David Lewis Paget

When Alison left the bath to run
It ruined the parquet floor,
It spilled on out like a waterspout
And ran right under the door,
She’d gone back into the bedroom, so
The spill continued to run,
Across the landing and down the stair,
‘Now look what our daughter’s done!’

We couldn’t dry out the parquetry
It swelled, and loosened the glue,
Then bits would lift and would come adrift,
I didn’t know what to do.
Then Barbara said, ‘It’s coming up,
We shouldn’t have laid it down,
I’ll go and choose some ceramic tiles
At that tiling place in town.’

I said that I’d lay the tiles myself
But Barbara would insist,
‘We really need a professional
For a job as big as this.’
I shrugged, and let her get on with it
I never could win a trick,
So the tiler that she employed was one
Ahab Nathaniel Frick.

I’d seen this tiler about the town
All hunched, and wizened and old,
His wrinkled skin was like parchment in
Some leathery paperfold.
He wore a hat with a drooping brim
So the sun never touched his face,
A puff of wind would have blown him in
To leave not a hint, or trace.

‘Are you sure that he’s up to this,’ I said,
‘He isn’t the best of men,
He’ll probably get on his knees all right
But never get up again.’
But Barbara shushed me out of there
Was keeping me well at bay,
She wanted to prove what she could do
In laying the tiles her way.

I didn’t get in to see them then
‘Til the tiles were laid, with grout,
Nor see Nathaniel Frick again,
I supposed that he’d gone out.
I stood and stared at the new laid tiles,
Their pattern was in the floor,
And Barbara, waiting proudly said,
‘What are you staring for?’

‘There’s something a-swirl in those tiles,’ I said,
‘Some pattern you didn’t mean,
The way that he’s put them together, well
There’s a sense of something unclean!’
I said the tiles made an evil face
And showed her the curving jaw,
The squinting eyes that could hypnotise
And the cheeks, so sallow and raw.

She said that she couldn’t see it then,
That I must have twisted eyes,
I wasn’t wanting to hurt her so
I tried to sympathise,
But the monster’s face was set in space
And it wouldn’t go away,
I dreamt about that face by night
And I saw it, every day.

At night, the face seemed to snarl at me
When I passed it in the gloom,
And I worried that it was set right there
Outside our daughter’s room,
Then Barbara thought she heard a noise,
An intruder in the house,
And tipped me out of the bed to chase
The night intruder out.

The moans began in the early hours
And the groans came just at dawn,
Then Alison came into our room,
‘There’s a shadow on my wall!
A man with a broad-brimmed, floppy hat
And with squinting eyes that gleamed,’
I said, ‘That’s it,’ when she had a fit
And our darling daughter screamed!

I went on out to the lumber shed
And I brought a mattock in,
While Alison jumped in the double bed
As the tiles set up a din,
A wailing, groaning, squealing sound
That would raise the peaceful dead,
I raised the mattock and smashed the tiles
Just above the monster’s head.

The tiles rose up with a mighty roar
And shattered, scattered around,
As a shadow from underneath the floor
Rose up with a dreadful sound,
It hissed, and made for the stairway, leapt
And it almost made me sick,
For fleeing out of the open door
Was Ahab Nathaniel Frick!

David Lewis Paget

I was sat in a Tavern in Pompey Town,
Sipping a tipple of ***,
When I watched a Jack make an axe attack,
Chop off his finger and thumb!

I couldn’t believe the blood that flowed
From the cut of that rusty blade,
But the barmaid Flo, said ‘You’ve done it, Joe,
Now look at the mess you’ve made!’

She cleaned it up with a swill of ale,
Walked off with the finger and thumb,
‘I’ll nail these up on the balustrade
With the rest that have been as dumb.’

But Joe sang out when he’d had a drink
‘It’s better than being a tar!
I spent three years, under the lash
On His Majesty’s Man o’ War.’

‘They ‘pressed me when I was still a kid
And treated me like a dog,
I suffered scurvy and couldn’t work,
The answer to that, was flog.’

‘They flogged me around the Southern Cape,
They flogged me a-ship and ashore,
Whenever I thought that I might escape
They dragged me onboard for more.’

‘And Cap’n Foggett’s abroad tonight
With his cut-throat parcel of rogues,
Impressing the able-bodied men,
They’re lining them up in droves.’

‘For Nelson’s lying abaft the lee
With barely a half a crew,
He needs more men for the ‘Victory’,
And that means me and you!’

‘In every tavern they’re moving in,
In every alley and quay,
At first they offer the King’s shilling,
To war with the enemy.’

‘But the Frenchies rake with the carronade
That will rip the flesh from your bones,
And the decks run red from the men who bled
Impressed from their wives and homes.’

‘They say he sails on the tide tonight
So they’re doing a quick Hot Press,
Even a gen’lman walking late
Won’t meet with their gentleness.’

‘A cudgel whack on a squire’s head
Then dragged to the bilges, free,
They’ll never know ‘til they all wake up
That they’re headed on out to sea.’

‘That Nelson’s got but a single arm,
He’s got but a single eye,
If that’s not enough to be alarmed
By God, then I wonder why!’

The Press Gang came to the Tavern door
But couldn’t come on inside,
They tried to sell me a Man o’ War
But Joe had made me decide.

I took a gulp of Jamaica ***
And I steeled myself to the task,
‘The Press are waiting outside,’ I cried,
‘Just hand me that rusty axe!’

David Lewis Paget

She lay so pale, under a veil
On the hard mortician’s tray,
A tube ran down from her artery
And her blood was seeping away,
I’d never seen her so still and white,
So cold, and her eyes so glazed,
I shook my head when they said, ‘She’s dead!’
More than a little dazed.

It had only been just a week ago
That I’d gone to call on Jan,
And there, right under the portico
I’d met her sister, Anne.
I’d heard about her before, of course,
The mysterious older Sis,
Who’d travelled far, was in Zanzibar,
Hong Kong and the Middle East.

I’d wondered how she could pay her way
When I heard the awesome tales,
This woman trekking the Russian Steppes
And ending up in Wales.
Now here she was in a Sydney Street
Not a hair was out of place,
Her eyes were shining to greet and meet,
Deep set in her suntanned face.

I must admit that she stirred me then
So I had to drop my eyes,
I’d been with Jan since I don’t know when
So I thought it more than wise,
A jealous woman is worse than hell
And I’d rather stick with bliss,
So reached for Jan and I held her hand
As she introduced her Sis.

She’d come to stay for a month, she said,
Then had to be on her way,
She had to meet with a Turkish man
In a market in Cathay,
But Jan was not even curious,
Though the questions crossed my mind,
Most of them would be spurious
But I wondered what I’d find?

What was her line of work, I thought,
How did she make it pay?
Was she some rich man’s paid consort
In a Persian alleyway?
Was she smuggling drugs or guns
With secrets tucked in her bra,
Or was she a spy for love, or funds
From a man in Zanzibar?

She settled in to a set routine
In the house, it was absurd,
She always seemed to be normal, not
The hellfire that I’d heard,
We’d sit up late by a blazing grate
Play cards, and drink and rave,
Then Jan went off for her monthly trip,
And she said, ‘You two behave!’

She laughed at us as she left, and said
That she’d be back in a week,
It was always some promotional tour
But of what, she wouldn’t speak.
For both these sisters were secretive
Tight lipped on the things they’d do,
But when she’d gone, Anne came on strong,
And said, ‘I’m looking at you!’

Jan crept back in about midnight, and
She caught us both in bed,
She screamed and ranted about the room,
Went quite right off her head,
She pulled a knife and she went for her,
The startled sister, Anne,
‘You’ve always stolen the one I loved,
And you! You’re never my man.’

The body lay on the silver tray
As they walked me in, then out,
Identifying the corpse, they said
So there wasn’t any doubt.
They placed me cuffed in a Candy Car
On a charge of ****** One,
While Anne was headed for Zanzibar
As I said goodbye to Jan!

David Lewis Paget

He crashed on into our dining room
Like a man convulsed with pain,
And breathless, gasped as he tried to ask,
‘What have you done with Jane?’
I stood En Guarde by the mantelpiece
And clutched at a kitchen knife,
‘Who are you, and what do you want?
You’re talking about my wife!’

He leant exhausted against the wall
And groaned, like a man obsessed,
I thought he could have escaped somewhere
That he might have been possessed.
‘I can’t believe she’s done it again,
She’s going against the plan,
I’ve told her time, and time out of time
To wait for her rightful man.’

‘See here,’ I said, with a touch of fear,
‘She’s mine, with never a doubt,
We married a couple of years ago
So I think I’ll show you out.’
‘I have to stay ‘til I see her face
She’ll remember when I do,
If you can’t stand up to the challenge, then
She never should be with you.’

He’d hit a nerve, and he knew he had
For I’d never been too sure,
For Jane had always been hesitant
When I’d asked for her hand before.
I thought there might have been someone else
Lurking behind her fan,
A former lover, she’d have no other
Now here was this crazy man!

I sat him down in an easy chair
And gave him a shot of Beam,
Then took a double shot for myself,
And stared at him, in a dream.
I tried to imagine her with him
And it shook me, without doubt,
For I could tell that they’d couple well,
Then wished that I’d thrown him out.

Jane came back home from her shopping spree,
Came in through the broken door,
And stood aghast at the pile of glass
He’d smashed there, down on the floor.
The stranger stood, he jumped to his feet
And held out a shaking hand,
‘I thought I saw you out in the street,
Don’t you know me, I’m your man!’

She held her nerve and she looked at him
As a stranger, far away,
‘I seem to recall,’ she muttered, ‘but…
‘All that was another day.’
‘Another day in a another time,
The fifth, but never the last,’
He looked at her with his pleading eyes,
Please try to remember the past.’

Then Jane went white as a cotton sheet
And said, ‘You couldn’t be Paul!
I left you last in the marketplace,
Leaning againt a wall.’
‘The soldiers came, and took us away,’
He said with the slightest tear,
‘They took us behind a barn that day…’
I said, ‘What’s going on here?’

It was suddenly like I’d disappeared
There were only two in that room,
Their eyes were locked in an act of grace
That I couldn’t share in the gloom.
‘Of course, it’s coming on back to me,
The bed in that cheap hotel,’
She seemed to blush as her eyes cast down,
And my heart had stopped, as well.

‘I’ve had just all I’m about to take,’
I said, ‘I want you to go!
And Jane, just tell me for heaven’s sake
You continue to love me so.’
The man stood up and he shook her hand
And he said, ‘That’s really an art.
I didn’t think you could act, my dear,
I was wrong, you get the Part!’

David Lewis Paget

The Jester put on his cap and bells
For the final time, we’re told,
The Queen was set to replace him for
She said he was far too old,
‘He doesn’t amuse me like he did
Before, when we all were young,
Should I dispense with his services,
Or command the Jester hung?’

Her courtiers were gathered around,
They wanted to please the Queen,
Lord Chalmers said, ‘Suspend by his feet!’
Then Darnley: ‘No! By his spleen!’
‘Tar and Feather him,’ said Bottolph,
‘And run him around the town,
Then tether him to a stake, and light
Him up, in the palace grounds.’

The Queen thought that was hilarious,
And clapped and cried in her mirth,
‘By Jove, we’ll have us some jesting yet,
We’ll bring him on down to earth!’
‘He’s sure to appreciate the jest
For he won’t deny your fun,’
The Chancellor of the Exchequer said,
‘We’ll gather in everyone.’

While the Jester sat in his lonely room
In a dark and evil tower,
He knew that he would be summoned soon
But he didn’t know the hour.
He wondered if she might knight him then
For his services to the crown,
Or grant him a fabulous pension for
The years that he’d played the clown?

For Jesters, they are but mortal men
Aside from their clownish role,
Down under bells and motley lives
A far from perfect soul,
The jesting covers a beating heart
That is rarely ever seen,
And his was filled with a lifetime love
For Her Majesty, the Queen.

He’d loved her since, as a little girl
She’d laughed and played in the grounds,
While he’d leapt out of the bushes there
To her squeals, and laughs and frowns,
He’d always jingled his bells for her,
And carried her in to tea,
When she was sleepy and all laughed out
After playing so happily.

He knew that he’d made more enemies
Than friends, as the years went by,
For jealousy breeds in a court with needs
And the courtiers were sly,
They took it in turns to trip him up
And to hurt, as part of the jest,
But he took new heart at the cruel laughs
By the ones who were not impressed.

He finally stood in front of the Queen
And bowed right down to the floor,
He looked for a smile on her much loved face
But a scowl was all he saw.
‘You’ve come to the end of your usefulness,
A Fool on a bended knee,
Take him outside and string him up,
Upside down from a tree!’

He hung for an hour in misery,
And then they had cut him down,
Tarred and feathered his motley’d form
And beat him around the town.
They wanted to stake and light him up
But the Queen said, ‘Let him go.
Give him a crown in a silver cup
For the years he amused me so!’

They cast him out in a farmer’s field
And barred him then from the court,
He wept and wailed in his anguish there
For a day and a night, and thought;
The slings and arrows he’d suffered from
Were now brought up with his bile,
And sweet revenge was his ruling theme,
He planned and schemed for a while.

One night he went to the palace yard
And crept down the cellar stair,
He doctored all the barrels of hock
And the fine French flagons there,
Then some time after the palace hunt
He hid in the servants’ hall,
And waited til they drank and were drunk
At the Queen’s Most Favoured Ball.

Then Bottolph woke in a barrel of tar,
And Chalmers hung by his heels,
While Darnley woke in a quivering fear
In a barrel of snakes and eels,
The Queen awoke in her stately bed
Pinned down by a giant sow,
And wearing the Jester’s bells. He said,
‘Who is the Jester now?’

David Lewis Paget

The sky was dark, it was overcast
When the hearse rolled into town,
The people stopped in its passing,
And stood, with their eyes cast down,
Four black, high stepping, friesian mares
Stepped proud, ahead of the hearse,
While a man was following close behind
But sat on his horse, reversed.

His wrists were bound with a length of twine
Were tethered behind his back,
His eyes were well blindfolded,
Under his black top hat,
His leather boots had glistened and shone
And they rode right up to the knee,
There was something about his stately mien
That said, ‘Aristocracy’.

The horses were decked with ostrich plumes
Fine harness and plaited tails,
The coach shellacked in a shiny black
And fitted with silver rails,
The coffin lay on a satin tray
In the hearse, was covered in lace,
Inscribed with scrolls from the honour rolls
Of a noble house, disgraced.

And far at the rear of the slow cortege
Was a line of women in black,
Carrying jewellery fashioned in jet
As black as the coach shellac.
There wasn’t a tear amongst them all
Nor a smile for the ruined man,
The blindfold merciful, like a pall
In front of his ruined clan.

The hearse rolled into the cemetery
And stopped by the gallows tree,
A footman took off his blindfold then,
‘I hope that’s not meant for me!’
They dragged the coffin out of the hearse
And the man looked once, then twice,
‘I’m not your common old peasant, sir,
I’m the Lord of Mecklen Weiss.’

They dragged him ****** off his horse
And lifted the coffin lid,
‘You’re the Lord of six square feet of earth,
And the Lord of all you did!’
They ****** him into the coffin then
Encased his struggling form,
‘He’ll have some time to consider now
It were best he’d never been born!’

They lowered the coffin into the ground
To the sound of shrieks and cries,
But not one woman who watched it fall
Had a need to dry her eyes.
They say that some heard muffled cries
At that grave for a week or more,
But then, the peasantry always lies
For they hold the Lords in awe.

David Lewis Paget

Bring all the kids on home from school
And gather the pets in tight,
Send out and warn the village fool
For it’s Crow Fly-Over Night.
Stable the horse, bring in the geese,
Shut up the chicken run,
We can’t rely on the local police
So load me a scatter gun.

Shut the windows in both the Utes,
Drive the car in the shed,
Lay out my anti-vermin boots
And a helmet to cover my head.
Lock the shutters and pull the blinds,
We don’t want to show a light,
Set the locks on the window-winds
For it’s Crow Fly-Over Night.

Then watch for the man in the hood and cape
As he drifts in, under the Moon,
If I sight him well, then he won’t escape,
Not like in the month of June.
He brings his carrion in to feed
In a flutter of feathered blight,
If he’s not dead yet, then he will be soon
For it’s Crow Fly-Over Night.

And the widow Raines in her mourning dress
Has been seen to stray, she roams,
She scatters seed in the wilderness
But the Crows will pick her bones.
At dusk they come in an evil cloud
But with not a single caw,
Then settle over the land, and loud
Announce the word is ‘war’.

So hide the children beneath their beds
And bar each door in place,
Block up the chimney flu with lead
And call your sister, Grace,
If she doesn’t come before the Crows
She’ll find the door locked tight,
And then she’ll know what the Devil knows,
It’s Crow Fly-Over Night!

David Lewis Paget

Some say that life is a mystery
That we have to pay our dues,
It’s written in every history
Marked out by a series of clues.
So it was when I saw her sally forth
With that lost refrain of us,
Older now, but a constant muse
As we caught the self-same bus.

I hadn’t seen her in twenty years,
Her temples were going grey,
She’d gained a little in weight, I thought,
Since she’d stormed on out that day.
She didn’t see me at first, I know.
Or she might have raised a fuss,
But I sat beside her, anyway
On the rearmost seat of the bus.

She huddled up in the corner when
She saw just who it was,
I couldn’t get her to speak at first
And I felt a sense of loss.
‘Fancy seeing you now, out here,’
I began, ‘it’s been a while.’
Could I detect the hint of a tear?
There was no sign of a smile.

‘It’s been forever,’ she said at last,
‘And I’ll thank you now to go,
I have no need of ghosts from the past
In the life I’ve come to know.’
I heard my voice, it broke in my throat
As I tried to suppress a sigh,
‘I have no wish to alarm you now,
But I thought to ask you, Why?’

‘Why did you leave that sunny day
In that terrible month of June,
You said you were going to make me pay
When I came back into the room.’
‘You know full well that I had to leave
When that woman knocked at the door,
That painted Jade, that Jezebel,
That blonde, unspeakable *****!’

My jaw dropped open in bleak surprise,
I struggled with grim intent,
I couldn’t think for the life of me,
Or remember who she meant.
‘There was no woman, as I recall
Though you always thought there was,
Your paranoia was there on call…
Did you mean my region’s boss?’

The mist was beginning to clear away
From that mystery, lost in time,
‘My god, she called to discuss our costs,
Did you think that she was mine?’
She stared at me and her face went pale
As the truth came home to bite,
‘I sat and waited for months, when you
Didn’t come home that night!’

A tear now flowed down her pale white cheek
And she turned her face from me,
She stared on out of the window at
Some vagrant, passing tree.
‘I always loved you alone,’ I said,
But she’d never brooked delays,
We both got off at the same bus stop,
And went our separate ways.

David Lewis Paget

They have me chained in this noisome cell
With its smells, its moans and shrieks,
No wonder they call it Bedlam for
I haven’t slept in weeks,
They brought me here from the Bridewell,
For they said I was raving mad,
I swapped a cell for a place in hell
And the food in here is bad.

We’re chained and beaten by loutish guards
And starved and purged as well,
Unless we ***** and take the cure
They bleed us in the cell,
I see the others who beat their heads
On posts, and the old stone wall,
Hoping to join the peaceful dead
When they have no blood at all.

The rats will nibble at hands and feet
If we sleep too deep, and soon
You’ll hear the patter as hundreds scatter
About the cell in the gloom,
There are chains and shackles around my neck
My waist and my ankles too,
The only part is my beating heart
Where they can’t chain me from you.

I live with the shrieks and moans and groans
Of the most demented souls,
The prostitutes in their open cells
Who squat on the sewer holes,
A guard says he will take care of you
And I know just what he means,
Be true my love, he’ll take hold of you
And I know the man’s unclean.

I should have minded my temper when
I was walking in the yard,
Was cursed by the devil’s tempter, then
I hit the Bridewell guard,
I hang on tight to my sanity
For I never scream or shout,
And hope for the governor’s lenity
That they come and let me out.

The visitors come and they poke their fun
At the lunatics in here,
They hold their noses and spit at us
And they make their feelings clear,
We’re only **** in the world they’re from
If the fools could only see,
That our putrid state could be their fate
In seventeen sixty-three!

David Lewis Paget

We moved on into this neighborhood
When we couldn’t afford the rent,
So my pessimistic Uncle Jim said,
‘Next step down’s a tent!’
The house is set in the meanest streets
And the locals here are rough,
They’d steal the pleats from your mother’s skirts
If they weren’t nailed down, that’s tough!

So we put a chain on the old front door
We put a lock on the back,
We nailed all the lower windows down
In case of a night attack,
We put ‘hedgehogs’ in the garden beds
So intruders would step on the nails,
And stay away from the window ledge
Like Peeping Tom in the tales.

‘It’s best we’re prepared,’ said Uncle Jim,
‘The locals are all on drugs,
They break into houses on a whim,
Thinking we’re all just mugs.’
He kept a cricket bat by the door
And a baseball bat in reserve,
‘If anyone comes in here at night,
By God, we’ll give ‘em a serve!’

I’d stand my watch on the upper floor
If anything moved in the street,
And write it down for my Uncle Jim
On a crumpled, beer stained sheet.
I’d note the time by my digital watch
That had cost five bucks in the Strand,
‘It’s better for you, my lad,’ said he,
You can’t tell the time with hands.’

We crept on out in the dark one night,
He said it was Christmas Eve,
And took a saw and a flashlight out
Looking for Christmas trees,
We stole a tree from a neighbour’s yard
He’d planted the year before,
‘He’ll never know,’ said my Uncle, low,
He’ll never get through our door.’

We dragged it back to our house, and left
An obvious trail of green,
I pointed it out to Uncle Jim,
‘What if that trail is seen?’
He shrugged, and put on his thinking cap,
‘I’ll say someone stole our tree,
They dragged it along our garden path,
It’s nothing to do with me!’

We stuck the tree in a bucket inside
Then dangled some paper chains,
And some ancient pieces of glitter, that
Were worse for the winter rains,
He found a little fat fairy, who
Looked like she was six months gone,
And stuck her up on the top of the tree
With a Goblin called ‘Bon Bon’.

Lying in bed that very night
Something moved on the roof,
One of the rats from the neighborhood
No doubt, on forty proof,
I went and I woke my Uncle Jim
And we clattered on down the stairs,
Just as a pair of big, black boots
Came ‘Crash’ on the hearth out there.

I rushed and I grabbed the cricket bat
My Uncle Jim had a shoe,
This geezer dressed in a funny hat
Popped down, and out of the flue,
His suit of red was covered in soot
And he started to dust it off,
When I whacked him one on his ******* boot
And he yelled, ‘Hey! That’s enough.’

But Uncle Jim had pummelled his waist
And belted him with the shoe,
I whacked him once on his fat behind,
What else was a boy to do?
Then Uncle Jim had grabbed at his beard
All wispy white, like floss,
Swung him twice all around the room
Then said, ‘It didn’t come off!’

We let him go, then we stood and stared
While he cursed and swore at last,
Then clambered back up the chimney piece
My Uncle said, ‘What a blast!
I don’t know what he was hoping to steal,
There’s nothing in this old house.’
But looking out in the yard, I said,
‘The garden is full of cows!’

They were funny cows with great big horns
Like I’d seen in countless books,
Tethered fast to a loaded sledge
Piled up with frozen chooks.
‘I think we’ve made a mistake,’ he said,
My poor old Uncle Jim,
And true, I’ve not seen the man in red
Since we almost did him in!

David Lewis Paget

Who would have thought the storm would come
So soon, from a pale blue sky,
When the weather man said, ‘Fine til noon,
And the afternoon, quite dry.’
But moisture fell in a feathery squall
On the morning of that day,
Blown from the top of an anvil cloud
Some twenty miles away.

By two o’clock, the cumulonimbus
Cloud had drifted in,
Its anvil top like a dreadful shroud
As black as the darkest sin,
And lightning crackled within that cloud
Before it was given birth,
And loosed in chains with the driving rains
As it found its way to earth.

We pulled the blanket off the beach
And we closed the hamper top,
As the wind picked the umbrella up
And bowled it, til it dropped,
While Helen stood with her hands on hips,
Stared balefully at the sky,
‘Thanks, you ruined our picnic,
With never a warning, why?’

As if in answer to Helen’s taunt
The lightning struck her tongue,
Her face lit up in a brilliant glow
As bright as the morning sun,
She stood for a moment, paralysed
Then she toppled onto her face,
I’d never seen anyone crash to earth
Face down, with such little grace.

I rolled her over the sand, face up
And I gave her mouth to mouth,
Her head was facing magnetic north
And her feet were pointing south,
Her lips were black as the weirdest Goth
And her cheeks were pale and white,
I managed to get her breathing then
But something wasn’t right.

She stared at me with her purple eyes
That before, I’m sure were blue,
And lightning sparked in her retina
As she said, ‘Thank God for you!’
She wouldn’t go to the hospital,
She staggered back to the car,
And said, ‘I’m needing a drink, for sure,
Let’s find the nearest bar.’

I took her home in an hour or two
And I put her straight to bed,
She said her stomach was rumbling,
There was lightning in her head,
She slept right though to the early hours
And got up before the dawn,
She stood and stared out the window, then,
‘I think I’ve just been born!’

I heard her go to the kitchen then,
Where she said that coffee called,
Then heard the clatter of cutlery
Went down, and was appalled,
For spoons were sliding along the bench
Each time that she waved her hand,
When the coffee *** spun off its top
She said, ‘Now ain’t this grand!’

‘That lightning’s made you magnetic,
I don’t know what we’re going to do,
For all things loose and metallic now
Are turning to follow you.’
I called a friend who was trained in this,
I thought he was more than wise,
‘We’ll have to construct a Growler, but
It has to be oversize.’

A Growler’s simply an A/C coil
That you drop the magnet in,
It only takes a moment or so
To reverse that power within,
It took him over a day to make,
We stood her inside the coil,
I turned my back when he switched it on
And listened to Midnight Oil.

She blew every circuit in that thing
The coil was glowing red,
And lightning was flashing in her eyes
While thunder burst from her head,
She was twice as strong as she’d been before
And everything metal stuck,
We peeled the spanners off at the door
While Helen just ran amuck.

She went to live on a mountain top
Away from the bustle and pace
She said she couldn’t come back to me,
Nor even the human race,
There’s nothing metallic up there, she says
So lives up close to the sky,
And hopes to be struck by lightning, once,
She says that it’s worth a try!

David Lewis Paget

I was driving along the coastal route,
Looking for somewhere to stay,
A Bed and Board that was cheap would suit
In a nice secluded Bay,
But the weather broke on the seaward side
As the clouds came tumbling in,
So I had to pull to the side of the road
Next to a painted Inn.

The swinging sign said, ‘The Final Rest’
And it creaked as the seawind blew,
With a skull emblazed on the painted crest,
Though rain impeded the view,
And what was left of an ancient wreck
Lay caught on the rocky shore,
Only a matter of yards beyond
The road, and the old Inn door.

I waited until the rain had stopped
Then made my way to the bar,
An ugly crone stood there alone
On her face, a terrible scar,
She leered and said, ‘Would you like a bed,
For the storm’s set in for the night,’
My mouth was dry as I wondered why,
That scar was a terrible sight.

I said that I’d stay for just one night,
Then stood, and couldn’t but stare,
She said, ‘I know what you’re looking at,’
Reached up, and patted her hair,
She ran her finger along the scar
With a wizened, frightful hand,
‘There were some once said I was beautiful,
Oh, the wondrous works of man!’

I dropped my eyes and apologised,
While taking the proffered key,
‘I hadn’t meant to be rude,’ I cried,
‘It’s nothing to do with me!’
‘That’s what they always say,’ she said
While leading me up to my room,
Way up there on the topmost floor,
It was dark, and like a tomb.

The room held a large four poster bed
With a canopy up above,
I shut the door and I sighed, ‘There but
For the grace of the Lord above…’
The wind was rattling round the eaves
It was well set in for the night,
And I lay and mused on the woman’s fate,
What a truly, dreadful sight.

I must have fallen asleep just then
For my soul was so depressed,
I didn’t want to be stranded there
But at least I’d get some rest,
Then two o’clock in the morning I
Awoke, as my heart had raced,
The canopy had been winding down
Was pressing down on my face.

I wriggled out from beneath its hold
And struggled to get my breath,
I now knew what was ‘The Final Rest’
It was nothing less than death,
I watched the canopy creep on down
Til it gripped where I had been,
It was nothing less than revenge on men
In a plan that was obscene!

Then nothing happened for half an hour
While I shuddered beside the bed,
I knew, if I had been lying there
The odds are, I’d be dead,
But then the bed had begun to move
To tilt on its side, real slow,
And then the floor, it had opened  up
To reveal a tank below.

And there the bodies of seven men
Lay in a watery grave,
Suffocated in blissful sleep
By a woman that was depraved,
The man that inflicted that dreadful scar
Had taken her life and soul,
Had turned her into a twisted crone
The Devil had in his hold.

She finally entered the deadly room
And her eyes were dull, and blank,
I jumped on out and I seized her then
And threw her into the tank,
She didn’t struggle, she didn’t cry
She knew it would come to this,
But sank and stared from the water tank
As the floor closed, with a hiss.

Whenever I travel around these days
I always sleep in the car,
It’s not so comfortable, that I grant
But it’s safer now, by far,
I hear that ‘The Final Rest’ has gone,
Developers bought the site,
And built a massive hotel just there,
They call it, ‘The Restful Night’.

David Lewis Paget

‘Where are the spirits of those who went
Before, do they still survive?’
I said to Alice who pitched our tent
Outside, in the cottage drive.
We couldn’t sleep in the cottage then
There was still a mess to repair,
And rubble lay in the dining room
With dust, most everywhere.

We thought that we were so lucky then
For the cottage and grounds were free,
An ancient Aunt, called Emily Sahnt
Had left in her will, to me.
I’d never met her, the dear old thing
But I raised a glass to her now,
Despite the fact that her neighbours thought
That she was a right old cow!

They said that she was a witch of sorts,
Had given the evil eye,
Had grumbled all round the neighborhood
Had killed some pigs in a sty.
And out in back was a wishing well
Uncovered, that somebody found,
And that’s where Emily met her end,
She fell in the well, and drowned.

I said, ‘I’ll clear it away some day,
The rubble that hid the well,
You never know what it might conceal
A tunnel that leads to Hell!’
And Alice shuddered as Alice does
Whenever I freak her out,
I love to tease her as well as please,
She knows what it’s all about.

There wasn’t time for the well just then,
The cottage was coming first,
We cleared a couple of rooms inside
Moved in, and Alice had cursed,
The paint peeled off from the ceiling and
It dropped in chips to the bed,
We woke, with bits in our mouths and ears
And Alice felt strange in the head.

She felt quite ill for a day or two
Was sick, confused for a spell,
I left her sleeping it off and went
To work in clearing the well,
I dropped a bucket into its depths
For the water, clear and chilled,
And used it up in the cottage then,
And kept the bucket filled.

The groaning started that very night
And a grumbling in the eaves,
I said to Alice, ‘Is that you, Pet?’
Then I heard the crunch of leaves.
There were footsteps round about the place
And I lay, tensed up with fright,
I wasn’t game to be venturing out
In the middle of that dark night.

Alice said she was hearing things
And I tried to calm her down,
We’d burned our boats in moving there
And couldn’t go back to town,
She seemed to be sleeping a lot by day
And plagued with fears at night,
I wanted to do the best for her
What I did, it wasn’t right.

We were using the water from the well
To wash, to cook, for tea,
I suffered from blinding headaches then,
I found, and so did she.
The pigment in her nails had changed
She convulsed, not once, but twice,
I said I’d bring in the doctor just
To get some sound advice.

Alice died in the morning, she
Lay still on the side of the bed,
I shook her a couple of times, she was
So cold, I knew she was dead,
The doctor sent for forensics, and
They checked the place, the well,
There was arsenic in the water there
And the ceiling paint that fell.

I’m lying here in the hospital
But I’m chained, and under guard,
The police think they have a ****** case
And they say I might be charged.
But I had a dream of a rustic crone
Who was clutching Alice hard,
Who said, ‘I don’t want to be alone,
You can walk with me in the yard!’

David Lewis Paget

You caught at my understanding,
You shocked me right to the core,
I’ve not had a harder landing, than:
‘Don’t come here anymore!’
I thought that you must be joking,
But couldn’t detect a smile,
My heart had missed when you said that this
Was coming on for a while.

I shook my head in confusion,
How could I have missed the signs?
You working, close in collusion
With your mentor, Matthew Grimes.
He promised you’d have a starring role
In a film he was going to make,
I said right then to be wary, when
He was probably just a fake.

He’d said he was a Producer,
I treated all that with scorn,
The only score that he’d had before
Was something to do with ****.
You shrugged, and said that you trusted him,
That he was your first big break,
And then, ‘So what,’ for he said you’d got,
Everything that it takes.

‘Everything that it takes,’ he said,
We know what he meant by that,
He wanted you *******, on the screen
With a cane and a tall top hat.
I didn’t think you would go for it
But I see, how wrong could I be?
You’ve let the seed of ambition rule,
Confused it with artistry.

I toss and turn in my fretful sleep
And sweat in my bed at night,
For every dream is of you, it seems
And it puts my sleep to flight.
I can’t tell whether it’s real or dream
When I knock at your old front door,
And you keep repeating the same old theme,
‘Don’t come here anymore!’

David Lewis Paget

‘We must have entered the Latter Days
For the Moon has broken in two,’
Said Paul Maresh in the month of May
Of Twenty Twenty-two,
‘I said they shouldn’t be mining it
And drilling through to its core,
For now the Russians claim half of it
And the States have gone to war.’

‘That nuclear bomb on Ohio left
A crater, big as a lake,
And I heard that Lake Ontario
Has flooded New York State,
The world is shifting allegiances
So we don’t know where we are,
Since the Internet has crashed and burned
With my friends, both near and far.’

He went to the old style UHF
That he kept in his father’s shed,
Checked that the aerials were up
And the generator fed,
For the power had gone for the second time
And they said, it won’t be back,
With the power station the target in
That first, but brief attack.

He switched on channel 11 then,
Hoping to hear her voice,
Through shifting, drifting frequencies
He sat there, calling Joyce,
But all he got was a wailing call
To prayer, from a Dervish man,
Sent out to all of the faithful from
Some place in Pakistan.

He checked through all of the channels that
They’d used, back there in the past,
But mostly got a cracklng sound
From the swirling, nuclear ash,
His sister Joyce, having flown on out
To the States in the month before,
He thought was missing in Florida,
In the first week of the war.

Then a voice came through on channel three
That was lost, and fraught with pain,
‘Is that the Paul Maresh I met
In June, on the Sydney train?’
His mind went back to the smiling girl
With the drawn out Texas drawl,
Who’d chatted, stolen his heart away
With her laughed, ‘Be seein’ Y’all!’

They’d kept in touch on the Internet
And she said she was coming back,
Preparing to give their love a fling
On some great Australian track.
But then the world had shuddered with
That first American bomb,
So now, as frequencies swirled, he said,
‘Where are you calling from?’

He thought that she said from ‘Boston’, though
A crackle had interfered,
Maybe the word was ‘Austin’ back
In Texas, that he’d heard,
But then her voice was carried away
In a trans-pacific hum,
And the last few words he heard, she said
‘I really love you, ***!’

Part of the Moon has crashed to earth
In the Gulf of Mexico,
With Texas drowned in a sea of mud
And the earth’s rotation slowed,
But Paul Maresh in the Aussie Bush
Is clamped to the UHF,
Looking for Joyce and Linda if
It takes him his final breath.

David Lewis Paget

I’m sitting mute in my wheelchair,
They think that I’m deaf and dumb,
Since ever the stroke that took me out
Emboldened everyone,
The jokes that they told behind my back
They say straight out to my face,
They think I’ll die of a heart attack,
I think they’re a sad disgrace!

It’s always about the money,
It’s always about the gilt,
They think they’re getting a fortune,
They’re all hocked up to the hilt,
They think that my Corporation
Will soon be theirs for the take,
They’ll shunt me out to the sidelines,
I think that’s a big mistake!

If they think that I’m weak and dying,
They really don’t know the man,
I built up a corporation
With the strength of these two hands,
I was out in the streets at fourteen,
I was selling and hustling then,
While they were ******* their mother’s paps
I was out with working men.

Not one of them’s done a hard days work,
They sit there, pushing a pen,
They’ve never raised blisters on their fists
That bled, oh, time and again,
They sit in their pristine offices
With a wall of framed degrees,
But never spent time in a filthy trench
With water, up to their knees.

When I’m left alone in the evenings,
I stagger up out of this chair,
And force myself to walk to the wall
And back, as I fight despair,
But I’m gradually getting stronger,
And my head’s as good as it was,
I’ll show these ignorant jokers
What it takes to be a boss!

I think they’re getting impatient,
They want me out of the way,
I’ve heard them mutter between them,
That they’ll speed my going away,
The one that I used to trust the most
Has sat in my chairman’s chair,
He smirks and shirks all the daily work
While I can but sit and stare.

They’re treating me like an imbecile
They’re treating me like I’m mad,
They’ve draped a blanket over my lap
And don’t realise, I’m glad.
They come at night with a plastic bag
And they place it over my head,
But out from the rug my Magnum looms
And then, Bang Bang, they’re dead!

David Lewis Paget

‘Why do they call it Goblin Castle?’
I asked my friend, Carstairs,
We sat, gazed up at the battlements,
‘It’s a hell of a way up there!’
I knew that the Lord and Lady Crane
Had been living there, forever,
‘It used the be called the Castle Bleak,
But Goblin Castle... Never!’

He bit his lip and dismounted, and
We tethered the horses fast,
Went to sit by a hollow tree
And squatted, sat on the grass.
Carstairs had worked for the Cranes for years
So he knew the ins and outs,
Of every tittle and tattle there
In that massive, noble house.

‘It happened just when the Lady Crane
Was only a maid in there,
Before the Lord had taken a shine,
And offered his hand to her.
Her name was Jenny de Quincey
From some distant, noble blood,
But all she had was the noble name,
Her folks were as poor as mud.’

‘There were places there that she shouldn’t be,
There were places that were barred,
The servants said that its history
Was more than battle-scarred.
They whispered rumours of little folk
Who had roamed about in the past,
Had stolen goblets and golden plate
But they’d all died out, at last.’

‘She ventured down to the dungeons, where
They’d kept the local churls,
Back in the days of taxes, that
Were paid to the Lords and Earls.
She expected to find them empty, but
Then further along the hall,
She found a dwarf, just two foot four
Who’d long been chained to the wall.’

‘The dwarf had a sickly pallor that
Looked green in that eerie light,
A monstrous forehead and bulging eyes,
And he gave the maid a fright.
He said he’d been chained a hundred years,
That he came from a local tribe,
‘Of Goblins, Hobs, and Gnomes,’ he sobbed,
But the rest had not survived.’

‘Jenny was wearing a golden chain
That he came to the bars to see,
For goblins love the glitter of gold,
Are rabid for jewellery.
He snatched the chain and he backed away,
Clutched it against the wall,
‘You’ll have to bring the key to the cage,’
He said, and she was appalled.’

‘She brought the key the following day
And opened the rusted gate,
She didn’t know quite how strong he was
But she found out, all too late!
It wasn’t only the glitter of gold
That the goblin had in mind,
But to draw a veil on part of the tale,
I think would be more than kind.’

‘She luckily married the Lord that week
So it wasn’t a total mess,
She started to show, that womanly glow
And the Lord had thought him blessed.
But the truth came out when the heir was born
With a face that glowed pale green,
With bulging forehead and flapping ears,
And the biggest eyes I’ve seen.’

‘They keep him down in the dungeon, in
A cage, right next to his Pa,
While she’s locked up in the tower room,
Has never got out, so far.
It used to be called the Castle Bleak
And it lived right up to its name,
But now it’s called the Goblin Castle
Of Lord and Lady Crane.’

David Lewis Paget

I’d brought my woman to live with me
In a cottage by Elmsley Wood,
We lived on pure and simple fare
For my wages weren’t that good,
I bagged a hare and a stoat or two
With my ancient .22,
She skinned and cooked, and cleaned and looked
For something better to do.

‘I’m used to the shops and supermart,
The bars, fast cars and fun,
I didn’t know we’d be isolated,
Let’s go back there, ***!’
I hadn’t a job for two full years
And she knew that to be true,
‘I only remember the city tears
When I couldn’t look after you!’

We’d always been such a loving pair
When we lived outside the yoke,
With plenty of time for making love
In a ratty flat, and broke.
But once I became a gamekeeper
I had a feeling of pride,
‘A man has need of his self-respect,’
I said, so Kathy sighed.

I’d do my rounds at the dawning while
The sun was lying low,
While she would sleep every morning
Spring or Summer, heat or snow.
Then I’d go out in the evenings when
The Moon was riding high,
Hoping to catch the poachers on
My patch, and being sly.

So Kathy began to go for walks
Each sunny afternoon,
She wouldn’t stick round for lunch, or talks
And the cottage was filled with gloom.
I’d take my break in the afternoon
Either read, or take a nap,
And hear the crackle of twigs and leaves
As she came walking back.

I warned her not to go walking through
The depths of Elmsley Wood,
‘There’s a couple of shady characters
In there, up to no good.’
She said she’d taken it all on board
Just walked the nearer trees,
Listening to the songs of birds
And the hum of busy bees.

One afternoon she had gone, and I
Was not too tired that day,
So wandered deep in the wood where I
Might meet the rogue, John Gray.
I saw him out in a clearing, and
He had her in his clutch,
I thought that I must be dreaming for
She wasn’t wearing much.

I turned, and hurried back home without
Them knowing I was there,
I had my heart in my throat, but was
Determined not to care.
The rage was building within me
For the woman who was mine,
I thought, ‘How could she deceive me?’
But that evening was sublime.

She said that the larder was empty
Could I go and bag a hare,
I said, ‘Just give me an hour or so,
I’ll bag some thing out there.’
I came in late, and upon the plate
I tossed her John Gray’s head,
‘I couldn’t find you a hare, I swear,
Just pickle that instead!’

David Lewis Paget

The hands are at eleven o’clock
There’s an hour of life to spend,
I haven’t looked since seven o’clock,
Where did it go, my friend?
We all were out there, having a ball
Or doing what had to be done,
And sleeping, mating, loving and hating,
Thinking that life was fun.

We had no thought of how far we’d come,
We laughed in the sun and rain,
And cried sometimes, we were overcome
With the thought of another’s pain,
We left some friends on a different track
And our loved ones disappeared,
Lost forever, they won’t be back
And the thought brings us to tears.

So what will we do with the days to come
That have dwindled down to a few,
Will we all forget, and despite regret
Keep doing the things we do?
There is just one thing we should mull upon
As we’re drawn to the sky above,
That the maker gives and the maker takes
But the greatest of gifts is love.

So now I look in my lover’s eyes
You’ve been faithful, good and true,
I wouldn’t have got to eleven o’clock
If I hadn’t been loving you.
You baked the bread with your loving hands
And I broke the bread for us,
But once that terrible midnight chimes
I’ll leave on a different bus.

So let’s be thankful for what we’ve got,
And everything that we’ve had,
The toys, the joys, the girls and the boys
And everything good and bad.
There’s a greater plan in the universe
And it waits, beyond despair,
It’s not the end in that tasselled hearse,
I’ll be waiting for you, there!

David Lewis Paget

Whenever I ride in the countryside
On the further side of the hill,
I can see the new church steeple, rising
Over the fields and rills,
Then I venture down to the valley, on
The Little Newhampton side,
And see the wreck of the ancient church
And remember the day it died.

Its blackened stone lies wide to the sky,
Its rafters lie in the nave,
If God was passing that fateful day
He thought it too late to save,
The lightning bolt that shattered his cross
Went on to set it on fire,
The lectern, pews, of Reverend Buse
Conspired to burn on his pyre.

They found his skull, all covered in ash
But the rest of him had gone,
Had flown his soul with its blackened wings
To a feast on the Eve of John,
He was known to hold a Satanic Mass
On the night of the Witches Moon,
But the Bishop’s men were ******* his track
And would have defrocked him soon.

His congregation was always sparse,
For the good folk stayed away,
They’d heard strange rumours of what went on
With the Squire, and the Widow Hay,
They locked themselves behind cedar doors
And called on the god of wrath,
With lighted candles, inverted cross,
Laid out on the altar cloth.

The evening of the lightning strike
The leadlight flickered and flashed,
And screams rang out in the early hours
As a black cat hurried past,
For then the windows had glowed bright red
To herald a presence there,
While a deep, loud gutteral voice rang out
To foul and corrupt the air.

‘Where are my churls and underlings,
My troglodytes and my trolls?
Tonight is the night of sundering
Each evil heart from its soul!’
The Squire burst out, made a run for it
And tried to leap on his horse,
But the old black mare took him back in there,
And somebody slammed the doors.

And that was when the lightning struck,
It flashed, and shattered the cross,
The blazing roof came tumbling down
And the Widow Hay was lost.
They never found the Squire or his horse,
But I think that’s just as well,
They’re probably roasting chestnuts, down
In the seventh circle of Hell!

David Lewis Paget

He never came out in the daytime, though
He’d always come out at night,
I’d hear his feet, pass in the street
By the gaslamp’s feeble light,
He’d peer through the frosted window glass
And I swear that he always hissed,
Whenever I opened the trap, he’d gone
A-swirl in the yellow mist.

We huddled under the chimney piece,
We huddled under the stair,
Whenever his steps were echoing
From here to the you-know-where,
I tried to protect my Carolyn
Who would shut her eyes and ears,
He had the power, for over an hour
To bring Carolyn to tears.

He’d come when the frost brought icicles
He’d come when the wind would blow,
He’d come when I left her tricycle
Outside, and covered in snow,
And then when the ice on the window ledge
Began to go crack-crack-crack,
She often hid, right under the lid
Where the firewood lay in a stack.

And then when the door blew open, from
A gust in the wind out there,
We’d lie, with fears unspoken
As the creaking rose up the stair,
Then Carolyn shrieked, while I couldn’t speak
For hearing her cries and moans,
As terror spread, from under the bed
And chattered through teeth and bones.

I swore that he wore a ******* hat
With a brim that covered his eyes,
Carolyn wrote that he wore a cloak
As part of his dread disguise,
But nobody would believe us, ‘til
We heard he was coming back,
His hobnailed boots on the cobblestones
Approached, a-click and a-clack.

They’d slow, and stop by the outer door
Our hearts in our mouths, alas,
And then his shadow would fall right there
He’d peer through the frosted glass,
The knocker had an echoing sound
As he knocked, went rat-tat-tat,
And mother leapt to the door in a bound,
‘Dear God! It’s Uncle Jack!’

David Lewis Paget