I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget

I got the call at eleven o’clock,
‘They want you to dig a grave!’
It wasn’t such a terrible shock,
The message came by a knave.
A serving man from the House of Gull,
That mansion up on the hill,
Where Baron Downz kept his hunting hounds
And the beautiful Grace de Ville.

They often sent me a midnight call
To dig them a grave or two,
Whenever there was a duel fought,
For graves, well, that’s what I do!
I dig them deep in the dead of night
At the edge of the Forest Clare,
They pay me a hundred and fifty crowns
You wouldn’t know they were there.

For only I know the resting place
Of the Lords that fell by his sword,
Of every man that has tried his will
Each one that questioned his word.
The Baron’s known for his ****** mind
And revenge is his only skill,
He gets them drunk on his German wine
And then moves in for the ****.

He murdered the father of Grace de Ville
Then kept her there as his prize,
The night that he tried to have his will
She almost scratched out his eyes,
He keeps her bound by a silver chain
With a lock that tethers her wrist,
And swears she’ll only be free again
When her maidenhead is his.

The servants told me he paced the hall
With his patience growing thin,
He’d rage and roar when she locked the door
To prevent him getting in,
There was tumult up in the hall that night
So I knew that there may be blood,
I took my shovel and lantern out
And began to dig by the wood.

At three o’clock in the morning they
Arrived in the horse-drawn hearse,
Slid a coffin out of the back
And laid it down on the turf.
The Baron Downz rode his horse around
And peered in the empty grave,
‘A fitting place for the maidenhead
Milady’s so keen to save!’

I felt the chill running up my spine,
It raised the hairs on my neck,
Surely he couldn’t be so unkind,
But the coffin lay on the deck,
The Baron motioned them all away
And they left with the coal black hearse,
He watched me lower the coffin in
Then turned away with a curse.

‘Be sure to cover that coffin well,’
He snarled as he turned to go,
Tossed me a hundred and fifty crowns
Then ambled off, real slow.
I heard a thump in the coffin then
And my heart jumped into my throat,
A muffled whimper, down in the ground
And a scream on a rising note.

I knew my life would hang by a thread
If the Baron came back around,
But still I thought, I’d rather be dead
Than bury de Ville in the ground.
I clambered into that terrible grave
And prised off the coffin lid,
She gasped, and thanked the lord she was saved,
But then came a note of dread.

‘You play me false, you’ll pay with your life,’
The Baron stood looking down,
And then he began to unsheathe his sword,
The shovel was still in the ground,
I turned the shovel blade side up
And ****** it under his chin
We clambered out of that open grave
And swiftly tumbled him in.

I work for the Lady Grace de Ville
In her livery, red and gold,
I’ve not been asked for a single grave,
Nor ever will be, I’m told,
I take her out in the coach and four
To ride by the Forest Clare,
And run right over the Baron’s grave
Whenever we’re passing there.

David Lewis Paget

I was sitting, deep in my study
Under a single desktop light,
Listening to the patter of rain
As I wrote, late in the night.
The other sound was the scrape of the nib
As it traced ink over the page,
A setting on out of the mood within
As I traced McMurtrey’s rage.

I often would write at night back then
For the house was dark and still,
With none of the interruptions that
The day would seek to fill,
So the world outside would fade from view
As the Moon came out to shine,
Then I could re-visit the world I knew
In the latest storyline.

Each tale I told from a birds-eye view
As I watched from my secret place,
A god’s perspective of what I knew
Of despair, or a saving grace,
My characters hung from puppet strings
That I dangled down from my pen,
And I teased and taunted with sufferings
In the way that I did, back then.

I never would share with the world outside
What happened within these walls,
Or open up to their prying eyes
My visions of haunted halls,
For that would take them into the light,
Out here where the world is real,
And men could see what a cruel pen
A storyteller reveals.

The night that I sat there, pondering
How to make McMurtrey fail,
He’d been obsessed with the girl Mei Ling
She was like his Holy Grail,
The storm outside was gathering
And the thunder brought more rain,
When after a lightning flash, I heard
A tap on the window pane.

It made me start, I must admit
My skin had begun to crawl,
I very slowly swivelled my chair
Around, aside to the wall,
I pulled the curtains apart just then
And I peered out into the night,
But the face that stared in back at me
Was stark in the pale moonlight.

I heard him say, vaguely, ‘Let me in!’
As the lightning flashed once more,
Despite myself, I got to my feet
Unlocking the outer door,
He strode on into the study, stood
In a stance, most threatening,
‘I’ve come in search of my lady love,
As you well would know - Mei Ling!’

The room had shimmered and shifted then
And it faded from my sight,
We stood in the Hall of Gordonstall
And I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’
The hall was hung with the tapestries
They’d brought from an old Crusade,
But nothing was real, I knew it then,
They were things that my pen had made.

‘Mei Ling’s betrothed to a Mandarin
And she wears his dragon ring,
The last I heard she was headed out
On her way back to Beijing.’
‘Then you’d better pull out your pen, old man,
Ensure that the lady stayed,
Or you’ll never get out of your mind again
While this storyline’s delayed.’

I wander the Hall of Gordonstall
And I see no way outside,
I hadn’t written the doorways in
And the walls are high and wide,
I need someone from the real world
To knock at my study door,
But I fear that I’ve lost myself inside,
As I pace the flagstone floor.

David Lewis Paget

The phone rang almost off the hook
But I got to it in time,
‘You’d better come here and take a look!’
Said the voice of Esther Clyne.
I shook my head, rolled over in bed,
And said, ‘It’s after one!
It’s after one in the morning, Ess!’
She said, ‘You’d better come!’

Ess was an ornithologist
And she lived in Chandler’s Wood,
She’d never been an apologist
But demanded, when she could,
‘It’s pretty late,’ I tried to state,
‘Can it wait until I’m free?’
Her voice came rattling down the line,
‘Not now, just come and see!’

I dropped the phone with a silent curse
As I scrambled out of bed,
And wondered which of her feathered friends
Had disturbed the woman’s head.
She’d called me out for a frigatebird
That she’d spotted from her snug,
And many a rare and crested tern,
And even a vagrant dove.

I wore a hat and a leather coat
It was getting cold outside,
Grabbed me a pair of driving gloves
And I took the four wheel drive,
The track was sticky in Chandler’s Wood
It had rained the day before,
And headed in through the Maple trees
To the house she called ‘Jackdaw’.

I pulled up by her verandah, she
Had been waiting there for me,
Handed over a walking stick,
‘To beat them off, you’ll see!’
We walked together towards the lake
And there we saw old Jack,
The poor old guy was about to die,
Was lying flat on his back.

He seemed to have lost a lot of blood
It was streaked all over his face,
His shirt was tattered his trousers torn
There was blood all over the place,
And round him gathered the strangest group
That  ever I’ve seen, no lies!
For there was a couple of hundred owls
And one had pecked out his eyes.

I started to raise the walking stick
‘Shall I beat them off with this?’
She said she didn’t know what to do,
The ornithologist!
‘The stick is just to protect yourself
Should they suddenly attack,
Owls are nocturnal hunting birds,
We don’t want to end like Jack!’

There were Tawny Owls and scrawny owls
And a Snowy Owl or two,
A couple of hundred Barn Owls
Up in the trees for a better view,
The Moon was reflected in their eyes
As they sat and stared us down,
Perched in the trees around us and
A-blink, not making a sound.

Esther motioned to come away,
‘We can’t do anything here,
We’ll come again in the morning when
The ground and the trees are clear.’
So we edged away and we got to pray
But neither would turn our back,
We knew if we tried to run away
We’d end up as dead as Jack.

No sooner back at the house, ‘Jackdaw’
We locked the shutters in place,
Bolted the front and laundry doors
And blocked the chimney piece,
Esther put on the kettle, thinking
To make a *** of tea,
But outside there was a whirring sound
So we both looked out to see.

The owls were perched on the hand rail
On the verandah, all in a line,
They stared at the house unblinking
Being so patient, biding their time,
They pecked their way through the telephone line,
We couldn’t call out by phone,
And then they set up a screeching that
Sent chills through me to the bone.

I knew all about the Hoot Owl
But I’d never have heard them screech,
If Esther hadn’t have called me up
When I should have been asleep.
The screeching rattled the window panes
Then Esther let out a howl,
And suddenly they all flew away,
There wasn’t a single owl!

They found her out in the woods today
I can’t say I was surprised,
They said it must be a bird of prey
Attacked, and pecked out her eyes.
I’ve never been back to Chandler’s Wood
Since I got that late night call,
But don’t want to end like Esther, so
I keep a gun on the wall.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I’d only been home for a week or two
And Jeanine was acting queer,
Each time she’d pass the mirror she’d stare
And I heard her say, ‘Oh dear!’
I’d been away for five long years
But she hadn’t changed a bit,
Each time I’d ask, she’d cover her ears:
‘I have to go to The Crypt!’

I thought that she meant the local club
Where they drank and danced all night,
‘Aren’t you a little too old for that,’
I’d say, and her face turned white.
‘You’re only as old as you feel,’ she snapped,
‘If only,’ was my reply,
‘Whether we like it or not, we age,
And then, we finally die.’

She put her hands to her ears, and shrieked,
‘Don’t ever say that to me!
You can die, but I’ll still go on,
I’ll be what I want to be.’
I stood quite shocked as she raved, she cried
And turned and ran from the room,
I didn’t know what to make of her,
So sat, half stunned in the gloom.

She’d always worried about her looks
Had made up her face for hours,
I’d said, ‘You’re really compulsive, Sis,’
She’d take innumerable showers.
I said, ‘You’re washing yourself away,
There’ll be no oil in your skin.’
‘But don’t you think that I’m beautiful,’
She’d say, with an evil grin.

She’d never married, but dated men
Who would compliment on her looks,
‘He said I’m like Cleopatra,’ or,
‘Like Helen of Troy in the books!’
‘Words are cheap,’ I would say to her
And she’d fly right into a rage,
‘You’re always trying to put me down!’
‘You’re like a bird in a cage!

Always fluffing your feathers up
To say, ‘Hey look at me!’
Don’t you care for the things in life
That are not complimentary?’
But she would shrug and ignore me then
She was vain beyond compare,
I didn’t know that she’d signed a pact
With the Devil, in her despair.

The weeks went by and her mood got worse,
She was nervous, I could see,
Her hands would tremble and she would curse
Applying her toiletry.
The wrinkles set in around her eyes
‘So much for that cream I bought!
I’ll have to go to The Crypt,’ she cried,
And burst in tears at the thought.

One day I spied her out in the street
Down by a ruined church,
She forced her way past the battened door
And disappeared with a lurch.
I waited hours, out there in the street
To see when she’d reappear,
Then realised she’d gone to the crypt
In the bowels of that church, in there.

She came out walking, as in a trance,
So beautiful, redefined,
I couldn’t believe the change in her,
I thought that I’d lost my mind.
The girl I saw was only a shell
Of the woman who once was whole,
Whoever she’d met in that evil crypt
Had walked away with her soul!

David Lewis Paget

The body lay in a mound of hay
That was all piled up by the forge,
He took one look at the butcher’s hook
And the sick rose up in his gorge,
He peered on down at the bloodied face
There was nothing that could be done,
But held his breath when he saw that death
Had taken the blacksmith’s son.

He looked around for a sign of life
But the shop and the forge were cold,
The blacksmith Kirk hadn’t come to work
Though he’d seen him, out in the fold,
And darling Kate would be calling in,
His fate whirled round in his head,
What would she think when she found him there
With the love of her life stone dead?

The villagers knew no love was lost,
They’d fought at the village fete,
All over the hand of the pretty one,
The hand of their darling Kate,
But George was on an apprenticeship
For his father had owned the forge,
While Faber was a farm labourer,
So Kate had gone off with George.

But now George lay in a pile of hay
And he wouldn’t be dating Kate,
So Faber thought that he shouldn’t stay
Though he’d left it a little late.
He didn’t know if they’d seen him come,
He couldn’t be seen to go,
They’d think that he was the only one
To deliver the killer blow.

He heard a rustle within the store
And the sweat broke out on his head,
He knew if somebody found him there
That he’d be better off dead.
He peered silently through the door
And into the corner gloom,
And Kate was sobbing, there on the floor
In the darkest part of the room.

Her bouffant hair was a tangled mess
Her dress was tattered and frayed,
It didn’t take but a single guess
To see the part that she’d played,
For blood was mingling with her tears
Her bodice was stained deep red,
‘He stole my innocence,’ she exclaimed,
‘I hit him just once,’ she said.

Now Faber sits in a darkened cell
To wait for the hangman’s rope,
The Judge had asked, but he wouldn’t tell
So now he’s bereft of hope.
He’d told the court that he’d stumbled in
On the blacksmith’s son, and ****,
And hit him once with a butcher’s hook
For the sake of the darling Kate.

But Kate was strolling with someone new
On the day that they pinned his hands,
And led him up to the gallows floor
To pay for the court’s demands,
She never gave him a thought that day
Though the blacksmith thought he knew,
And lay in wait with a butcher’s hook
As Kate was passing through.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

(for alternative ending, jump to *)

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

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

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

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

(Alternate ending from *)

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Jack Cornwell was a Boy, First Class
On the Chester’s forward gun,
There to relay the settings with
A pair of headphones on,
He’d turned sixteen just months before
Was trained for his chosen task,
And hoped for a life of adventure as
He sailed, before the mast.

The Chester sailed to join the Fleet
That had left from Scapa Flow,
The Grand Fleet with its battleships
Sailed under Jellicoe,
They’d intercepted the German codes
And knew that they’d put to sea,
Hoping to split the British Fleet
And gain a victory.

The Chester turned to meet the flash
Of gunfire, far away,
The light was poor before the dawn
And the mist was thick that day,
Three funnels of a German ship
Came gliding through the mist,
And the Chester turned to starboard
Ready to show the British fist.

But the German ship was not alone
And the shells began to rain,
From the following battle cruisers
Shattering decks, in blood and pain,
Jack Cornwell stood at his post while all
His gun crew lay there dead,
Ready to take his orders, though
The Chester turned, and fled.

The medics found him with shrapnel wounds
Steel splinters in his chest,
He wouldn’t desert his post, he was
As brave as all the rest,
The Chester sailed for Immingham
Disembarked the wounded crew,
Put Jack in Grimsby Hospital,
There was nothing they could do.

He died just two days afterwards
Before his mother came,
She’d hurried on up from London
Where she’d caught the fastest train,
They buried Jack in a communal grave
So many men had died,
Fighting for King and country
Steeped in duty, worth and pride.

His name was honoured from lip to lip
How he’d stood beside his gun,
Determined to fight the German ships
‘Til the Chester turned to run,
Such courage born of England
Where it was tempered at the forge,
Was so inspiring in one so young
Said the Navy, to King George.

‘For shame,’ then cried the ‘Daily Sketch’
When they heard of the communal grave,
‘Is this how we treat our heroes,
Jack deserves the nation’s praise!’
The coffin was shortly disinterred
And draped with the Union Jack,
Drawn on an open gun carriage
With the Navy at its back.

His name went down in the history books
As the boy who stuck to his post,
In the midst of dead and dying men
As they made their way to the coast,
King George conferred the highest award
That there was, for bravery,
Awarded him the Victoria Cross,
Jack Cornwell, Boy, V.C.

David Lewis Paget

She was always essentially evil with
Her long, straight raven hair,
Her eyes as black as a midden, and
Her cheeks, so smooth and fair,
Her lips were ripe with the juice of love
Though she had no love to give,
But coloured them with a hint of blood
From her last aperitif.

She lived in an ice-bound castle, pitched
Next to a frozen lake,
Under a towering mountainside
As white as her wedding cake,
The clouds that hung on the mountain top
Were dark and as foul as sin,
And every day was a shade of grey
Where the sun could never get in.

She wandered the dark and gloomy halls
In a fur, but shivered her bones,
Her footsteps echoing off the walls
Her shadow cast on the stones,
The braziers on the passage wall
Would light her way to a room,
The room where a magic mirror hung
Reflected her in the gloom.

The hearth held a blazing yew tree log
That never seemed to go out,
Apart from a sneaking graveyard dog
There was nobody else about,
She’d stand in front of the mirror there
And look at her hard, cold face,
Say, ‘Mirror, when will you let me be,
I need to get out of this place!’

The face in the mirror grimly smiled
With a look of evil intent,
‘Why don’t you visit the dungeons, dear,
You know you need to repent.’
She tossed her head at the steely gaze
As her conscience peered on back,
‘I only did what I had to do
To replenish the blood I lack.’

The woman back in the mirror snarled
And she grew long pointed fangs,
Her brow had darkened, her eyes were fierce
‘We reflect our rights and wrongs.
The darkness deep in your cold, cold heart
Has entrapped this place in ice,
Compared to what lies ahead of you,
This place is Paradise.’

The woman turned and began to sob
And she paced the flagstoned floor,
There wasn’t a hint of the word ‘Repent’
As she opened the passage door,
She ran down several flights of steps
To the dungeon underneath,
Then stood and glared through the rusted bars
At her husband, Gordon Reith.

But Gordon sat on the ice cold floor
His back to an icy wall,
The frost had set on his face and hands
He wasn’t moving at all,
The puncture marks on his neck were red
With the last of his lifeblood flows,
She’d screamed the moment she’d found him dead
And ripped and torn at her clothes.

And that was the day the blizzard came
To freeze the lake in the night,
Covered the castle and mountain top
In an endless coat of white,
The mirror showed her an evil face
In place of the one she had,
‘You’ll not be drinking his blood again,
The blood of a corpse is bad!’

She opened the lock of the dungeon door
And she walked right into the cage,
Shook his body and gouged his face
In a wild, impotent rage,
The door had creaked as she turned her back
And it slammed and locked for good,
As the mirror fell from the wall above
And shattered where she’d stood.

A castle sits in a valley green
And beside a wide blue lake,
With mountains towering up above
To a sky where the sun’s awake,
You wouldn’t know that there once was snow
And I don’t know if you should,
But down in the dungeon lies a man
And the woman who drank his blood.

David Lewis Paget

I was doing research in Hubei
Where they executed Yu,
That deity soldier glorified
By Buddhists, Taoists too,
I sat perusing manuscripts
That dated from the Ming,
And came across a reference
About Yu’s finger ring.

A ring of gold so broad that it
Would fit a peasant’s wrist,
For Guan Yu was a mighty man
His ring, an amethyst,
Set round with groups of diamonds
It was lost the day, they said,
That Sun Quan had ordered them
To lop off Guan Yu’s head.

They lost it for a thousand years
It turned up with the Ming,
Was lost again in battle with
That mighty force, the Qing,
I’d heard it round the market place
A whisper, now and then,
That ring, it might have surfaced
In the village of Maicheng.

I scoured the streets and alleyways
For signs of old antiques,
Researching as I went, I walked
Around the town for weeks,
I found a backstreet corner shop
One night, and open late,
Run by a dodgy Chinaman
A total reprobate.

He had links to the Triads, they
Would come into the shop,
A shifty group of gangsters with
Their stolen goods to pop,
From where I sat with manuscripts
Up on the second floor,
I’d look straight down the staircase
Watch them come in through the door.

One day they brought in a bundle
******* in a burlap sack,
Threw it down on the counter, said:
‘What do you make of that?’
Fang Zhang then opened the parcel and
He pulled out a giant hand,
The flesh the texture of leather with
A monstrous golden band.

The ring was almost immoveable
The hand, with fingers spread,
Could grasp a maiden around the waist
Or crush a warrior’s head,
I held my breath as the Triad tried
To disengage the thing,
And all the while the diamonds flashed
On that massive golden ring.

Fang Zhang paid over a block of notes
That looked more like a brick,
There must have been a million Yuan
From what I saw of it,
The Triad left and I caught my breath
Fang Zhang had pulled it off,
He threw the hand in a ******* bin
And then I left the shop.

He hid the ring as I walked on through
I had to get some air,
I’d caught a glimpse of a famous ring,
A thing I couldn’t share,
They’d say it didn’t exist, that I
Was dreaming, if I tried,
They thought that it had been lost to view
The day that Yu had died.

I went back down the following day
The Police were there in force,
They stood out front and barred the way
From normal *******,
They told me through an interpreter
Of the ****** of Fang Zhang,
His face was black, for around his neck
Was a massive, ringless hand!

David Lewis Paget

(Pronunciation: Guan Yu - Gwon you
Hubei - Who - bay; Sun Quan - Sun Chu-arn
Qing - Ching; Maicheng - My - cheng
Fang Zhang - Fang Shjang (soft J))

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

I haven’t the pocket to buy antiques
But often I like to go,
To sit at the antique auctions,
See who’s there, who’s in the know,
The men with yen and the businessmen
The Lords and the Ladies too,
Still with the loot their forebears stole
In 1642.

So guys like me can only watch
As the bids creep up each time,
Some of the things they’re bidding for,
It’s like white-collar crime,
There’s better stuff in a garage sale
Or found in a pile of junk,
I come away and I often say:
‘Well, that was a load of bunk!’

But sometimes, at the end of the day
When the bids and the deals are done,
There are items that are cast away
Not even a bid, not one,
And they sit forlorn, out there on the lawn
Where everyone passed them by,
Waiting for owners to pick them up
Under a threatening sky.

That’s where I found the Georgian desk,
Beaten, battered and worn,
The side was scuffed and the top was chipped
With one side panel gone,
Someone had found it, out in a barn,
Under a pile of hay,
And brought it along on spec, they said,
They hoped it would go away.

I said, ‘Well what do you want for it,
I’ll cart it off in the truck,’
He said, ‘I’m happy with forty quid!’
I couldn’t believe my luck.
I got it home and I cleaned it up
And polished the ancient stain,
I’ll swear that the desk had smiled at me
With faith in itself, again.

And then I replaced the panel that
Was missing from times before,
But not before I’d inspected it,
Discovered a secret drawer,
And tucked in there was a parchment
Faded yet, and next to a quill,
It said, ‘Dear Margaret, hearken to me,
This love has made me ill!’

A chill ran suddenly down my spine
The hairs rose up on my neck,
The room went dark as I placed the parchment
Down, face up on the desk.
I felt my heart beginning to pound
As I read what he had to say:
‘I came, my love, at the time you said,
But the soldiers took you away!’

That was the day that changed my life
For the weather ‘til then was fine,
A cloud had come, and covered the sun
As I got to his final line,
Then thunder cracked and rattled the roof
While lightning shattered the birch,
He wrote, ‘Your father and his dragoons
Are out there, guarding the church.’

My mind was set in a turmoil, and
I paced for that afternoon,
Wondering who these people were
That had cast my life in gloom,
The only clue was the cursive date
And the name that he’d finely wrought,
For that was 1768
And his name was Jeremy Thorpe.

It seems they’d planned to elope and wed
In the church at Medlin Tort,
But the father said that he’d strike him dead
Despite what his daughter thought,
For Jeremy was a colonist,
And would take his daughter there,
To the Massachusetts colony,
Revolution in the air!

The nights that I couldn’t sleep, I paced
And wandered from room to room,
The study was faintly lighted by
A waning, rising Moon,
One night a young man sat at the desk
With a powdered wig and quill,
And wrote, ‘My Heart, all hope has fled,
But for me, I love you still.’

I went there looking for answers in
The local reading room,
I searched the shelves of the library
And I found an ancient tome,
A Margaret Evancourt had died
Imprisoned in a mill,
And left a note, ‘My Jeremy,
This heart bleeds for you still.’

That night I sat at the Georgian desk
Picked up the quill and I wrote,
Nothing of great import, but just
A simple, one line note,
I left it there on the desk, and laid
It underneath the quill,
It said, ‘Your love is imprisoned,
You will find her down at the mill!’

I never saw him again, my note
Had gone when I arose,
I couldn’t wait to be off, in haste
I struggled with my clothes,
Then down at the little church I’d found
Still there, at Medlin Tort,
Were written the wedding lines I’d sought
Of Margaret Evancourt.

David Lewis Paget

‘The time has come,’ he heard them say
Outside his tiny cell,
‘Go in and get the beast to pray
To save his soul from Hell.’
The Priest then walked up to the bars
And stated his intent,
‘Will you confess at last, my son?
Will you, at last, repent?’

‘The only thing that I repent,’
The prisoner said at last,
While staring at the Priestly face
At length, through double glass,
‘Is how your justice operates,
Your Judge sits on his bench,
Determines guilt before the trial
And brooks no argument.’

‘You have been tried by twelve and true
Your jurors had their say,
Condemned you as a murderer
Before they walked away.’
‘They would have found me innocent
Had he not been precise,
And sent them back to change their view,
Not only once, but twice.’

‘The law’s the law,’ the Priest replied,
‘The verdict said it’s you,
You had your day in court, and now
You’ll have to pay your due.’
‘I’m innocent,’ the prisoner said,
‘I swear it before God!’
‘Take not his name in vain, my son,
It’s time to reck his rod.’

‘Your God is just an ornament
To keep us fools in check,
If he were real, he’d swoop on down
And break the Judge’s neck.
The only God is in my heart
And he knows everything,
He welcomes us, the innocent,
Hypocrisy is sin.’

‘You risk your soul,’ the priest replied,
‘So hold your tongue in check,
For soon it will be silenced as
The rope, it breaks your neck.’
‘How many Nuns have you despoiled,
How many children died,
How many now lie buried, spread
Across the countryside?’

‘You hide behind your surplice, and
Your cassock and your gown,
You say you represent him, but
In fact, you put him down.
You tie us up with ritual
And steal our Peter’s Pence,
Then hide your sins by making all
The laity repent.’

‘I’ve had enough,’ the Priest replied,
Then turned and stepped aside,
The gaolers tied his hands and feet
And shuffled him outside,
They dragged him to the gallows and
Put on the dreaded hood,
But still he called, ‘Repent yourself,
Oh Priest! You know you should!’

It barely took a minute for
The rope and then the drop,
And then just twenty seconds for
His beating heart to stop,
The Priest’s thin hands had trembled
As he walked out in the cold,
And prayed, not for the prisoner,
But for his own poor soul.

His sins lay heavy on him as
He walked up to the nave,
Then knelt before the altar asking
God, his soul to save,
But God was strangely silent
And the Priest had felt like dross,
The morning saw him hanging
From the altar’s Holy Cross.

David Lewis Paget

The wind blew out and the sea rolled in
By the cliffs and the curving beach,
A lonely stretch, they were kith and kin
And had never heard human speech,
A cottage grew by the shore one day
There were figures of surly men,
The sea had muttered, ‘They’re in my bay,’
And the wind replied, ‘Amen!’

The men had left but the cottage stayed
Like a wound to the ocean’s pride,
It split the wind at the valley floor
As it passed there, either side,
The sea said ‘blow it away my friend,
For it grieves my heart to see,
The works of man where I lap the sand,’
And the wind said, ‘Leave it to me!’

It soughed and soared at the eventime
And it scored with sand from the beach,
It struggled to topple the chimney pots
As it surged at one and each,
It lost its puff as the sun came up
When the tide was on the ebb,
‘I couldn’t move it a jot,’ it sighed,
‘And the roof, it felt like lead.’

‘We’ll wait for the winter tides,’ my friend,
‘I’ll surge and wash it away,
I’ll undermine its foundations, then
I’ll sweep it out in the bay.’
But then a flickering candle lit
From a window, facing the shore,
‘There’s something a-move, for a shadow flit
Last night through the cottage door!’

The sea had grumbled, ‘We’ll wait and see
What lingers there in the light,’
The wind peered in at the window pane
And sighed at the wondrous sight,
‘A creature there with its golden hair
And its eyes, a deep sea blue,
That set me quivering in their stare,
So what will they do to you?’

The morning saw at the cottage door
A woman all dressed in white,
She wandered along the empty shore
And the sea had gulped, ‘You’re right!’
He lapped his waters around her feet
As she waded in for a swim,
And said to the wind, ‘She’s warm and sweet,
And it’s sad, but you can’t come in!’

Back on the beach, a gentle breeze
Had whispered the woman dry,
Then flitted, scurrying out to sea,
‘You’ve changed your tune, but why?’
‘I think we needed that cottage there,
In reflection, let it stand.’
The wind just capered along the shore
As the door of the cottage slammed.

David Lewis Paget

They’d crashed the party at midnight
Surely, a motley looking crew,
All of them dressed in the weirdest best
That the Monster Shop could do,
There was Beelzebub, and Astaroth
And the pale Witch of the North,
Ahead of the Prince of Darkness in
A goats-head mask, of course.

They didn’t look out of place, for all
The guests were dressed to ****,
One attired as a Fairy Queen
While others were dressed to chill,
Out of the mouth of Frankenstein
The blood poured in a stream,
And though it was only cochineal
It brought the odd party scream.

Most had thought it a great idea
(Except for her folks, who’d cursed),
They’d all dress up in the neighbourhood
For Emily’s twenty-first,
They’d even formed a committee so
They knew what they had to do,
And each would be wearing a different face
So there’d only be one, not two.

They studied the Ars Goetia
And scanned it for demon names,
The butcher had come as Malphas for
He only had brawn, not brains,
The newsagent was Vapula
And his errand boy was Baal,
While the postmaster was Sallos
And he came there, bearing mail.

They all were full of the grapes of wrath
As it chimed the midnight hour,
While Emily surged out like a goth
From the depths of her wardrobe bower,
The house, at 22 Rankine Street
In the ‘burb of Astral Downs,
Was built where an ancient charnel house
Had piled the bodies in mounds.

Her folks had put in a swimming pool
Where there’d been a village well,
Right on top of a demon school
In the seventh circle of hell,
The water began to heave and churn
As Beelzebub drew near,
And it cooked a few of the swimmers there
As their laughter turned to fear.

‘You thought that you could make fun of us,’
Said the Prince of Darkness then,
‘For that, we’re making you one of us,
You won’t bother us again!’
The ‘burb dropped into a bottomless pit
That glowed with the flames of hell,
‘A subterraneaun coal seam fire,’
Said the Fire Chief, Adam Schnell.

Emily’s parents came back home,
Sat in the car, and cried,
‘I told her that Goth stuff wasn’t good!’
‘Too late! Our Emily’s fried!’
They filled it in, there’s a parking lot
Where her parents had sat and cursed,
I’d like to bet, they’ll never forget
Their Emily’s Twenty-First!

David Lewis Paget

Since ever he came to live at our house
We’d never felt safe or sure,
So late at night we’d turn out the light
And block up the bedroom door,
We’d slide a heavy old chest in place
That he never could push right in,
We knew, with just one look at his face,
The man was riddled with sin.

Our mother, bless her, was long divorced,
Our father was gone for good,
He never called, and we were appalled
That he never came when he should.
‘Why do you need that man in the house,’
I said, ‘You have me and Drew.’
But she would smile, ‘Well, it’s been a while,
And there’s things that you can’t do.’

We didn’t know what she meant back then
For we were too young to know,
How a woman’s won, or she bears a son,
Where a man and a woman go.
We only knew he was far too nice
When he first came into our home,
His creepy fingers, they felt like ice
So we wished he’d leave us alone.

He’d wander about the house by night,
We’d hear him mounting the stair,
And feigning sleep, not let out a peep
When we heard him breathe out there.
He’d come to a halt by our bedroom door
And stand and listen, we thought,
The tears in my brother’s eyes would glisten
In fear that we’d be caught.

His frightful stare gave a mighty scare
When he fixed on Drew and I,
Our mother said it was really sad
That he had just one good eye.
His other eye, it was made of glass
He had lost that one in the war,
It never closed, so we both supposed
That he slept, but still he saw.

Our house lay at the top of a hill
And a milk cart stood outside,
Its great cartwheels were covered in steel
And to hold it, it was tied.
One day we loosened the holding chain
As he came out into the street,
And watched the cart as it rolled on down,
Knocking him off his feet.

A wheel rolled slowly over his head
As he gave a deathly sigh,
His brains on the road were grey and red
And the pressure popped his eye.
It lay and stared at the two of us,
Was accusing us then, and still,
The memory sits and stays with us
For we’d never meant to ****.

Our mother wailed, and our mother mourned
And she kept his one glass eye,
She propped it up on the mantelpiece
‘So he’s with us still,’ she’d sigh.
Drew would shudder and I would shake
As it followed us round the room,
We both grew up with a complex that
We’ll never get over soon.

David Lewis Paget

Her skin was dark and her hair was black,
She walked with a Spanish sway,
‘She could be from South America,’
I would hear the neighbours say,
She’d taken the cottage in Ansley Court,
Put seagrass mat on the floor,
Then given them something to talk about
With the shingle she hung on the door.

‘A Course is starting on Wednesday week
For the women of Risdon Vale,
“The Secret Rites of the Shuar Revealed,”
(For ladies alone - No Male!)
The art of centuries, hidden ‘til now
Will be taught in a matter of weeks,
Be among the first to learn of these skills,
(At just sixty dollars, each!)’

Said one, ‘It’s probably just a scam,
For what could she have to show?’
‘This village is such a bore,’ said Pam,
‘I’d pay to see rushes grow!’
But curiosity killed the cat
They say, in that wise old saw,
And half the women of Risdon Vale
Turned up to the stranger’s door.

She took the women, one at a time
Examined each one alone,
Then chose just six to make up the course
And sent all the others home.
She’d weeded out all the gossipers,
And the ones that were loose of tongue,
Had sworn to secrecy those she chose
At an altar with candles on.

Not one of the chosen ones would speak,
Not one of them say a word,
They hung together in whispered cliques
And wouldn’t be overheard.
Their husbands too, were kept in the dark
When asked, they would heave a sigh,
Shrug their shoulders, and raise a brow
Though everyone wondered, ‘Why?’

Ted Wilkins wasn’t impressed by this
And took himself to the pub,
‘I don’t like secrets,’ he told his mates,
Then left to head for the scrub.
They said he’d gone with Emily Bates,
They’d been having it off for years,
‘Her cottage is suddenly empty too,’
Said the wags in ‘The Bullock’s Curse.’

There wasn’t a tear in the Wilkins home,
She seemed to be quite relieved,
‘I always thought that she must have known,’
So half of the Vale believed,
A woman alone is a tidy mark
For a man like Michael Stout,
They saw him creep to her house one night,
But no-one saw him come out.

The tongues were wagging in Risdon Vale
About ‘funny goings-on,’
‘The preacher hasn’t been seen at church
Since that spat with Lucy Chong,’
Then Red Redoubt who had beat his wife
Took off, when he knew the score,
For Gwen had bid him ‘good riddance’ when
He was heading on out the door.

The women met on a Wednesday night
And they burned a light ‘til dawn,
‘What do you think they do in there?’
Said the gossip, Betty Spawn,
She crept up close to the house one night
And peered at the light within,
So Pam came out and surprised her there,
Said, ‘Why don’t you come right in!’

The six week course was almost done
When the police came round one night,
Kicked the door of the cottage in,
Gave the girls a terrible fright.
‘We need to know what you’re doing here,
There are rumours, round about,’
But the woman from South America
In the dark, had slipped on out.

There were pots and pans and cooking things
And a smell of something stale,
‘We’ve been learning all these secret things
But we can’t tell you, you’re male!’
Then a cry came out from another room
From a lad in the local police,
He said, ‘There’s six new shrunken heads
Out here on the mantelpiece!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

‘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 followed her over the countryside,
I followed her near and far,
She said that she had to live her life
Alone, as a shooting star.
‘The world began when I came to be
Will be gone,’ she began to shout,
‘When I leave my trail, a silvery tail
And the Moon and the stars go out.’

‘But what about love,’ I called to her
As she shimmied by in the breeze,
Her eyes were fixed on the future as
I settled down on my knees.
‘I haven’t got time for love,’ she said
‘It fades, and swallows my life,
There’s more to living what I’ve been given
Than being somebody’s wife.’

‘The world out there is a lonely place
When you wander its wilds alone,
You’ll need somebody to hold your hand
In the dark, when you’re on your own.’
‘I don’t need someone to tie me down
I shall steer my course for me,
No man shall tug at my either hand
Or change my trajectory.’

‘My heart is full of my love for you,’
I said, but she didn’t care,
She laughed, and hurried away to find
What life had in store for her.
I caught a sight of her now and then
As she lived her life to the full,
With greedy lips at the brimming cup
As she drained the life from her soul.

The years were cruel as she partied on,
Her hair became iron grey,
Her skin was losing that youthful bloom
With the drugs that she took each day,
The money lenders were out in force
So she had to swallow her pride,
And sell herself when she had to pay,
But then she shrivelled inside.

She landed up on my doorstep only
Once, and I thought she’d fall,
She looked so ill that my heart went out
But my skin began to crawl,
‘So what became of the shooting star?’
I said - She began to pout,
Then tears welled up at her eyelids as
Her Moon and her stars went out.

David Lewis Paget

I went to stay with an old schoolmate
In the village of Rushing Brooke,
I thought there wouldn’t be much to do
So I took a favourite book,
He said he’d only been there a while
For the cottage rent was cheap,
He’d needed to get away, he said,
But never could get to sleep.

His face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot
His hands would tremble and shake,
He said it was close to a fortnight since
He’d started to lie awake,
‘I get to the point I’m drifting off
When I hear that terrible knell,
A long slow tolling invades my sleep
From the church that has no bell.’

We sat up talking ‘til one o’clock
Then I made my way to bed,
But nothing invaded my sleep that night,
‘It won’t at first,’ he said.
‘There’s something wanders the street outside
In the hours before the dawn,
Clad in a cowl, or a hooded cloak
But it’s gone before the morn.’

From all that I saw of Rushing Brooke
The cottages were quaint,
They certainly had a timeless look,
Could do with a coat of paint.
The roads were rough with a pebbled look
But I saw no folk about,
I passed the Smithy and Fodder store
But the Blacksmith, he was out.

We walked on over to see the church
That was grim, and overgrown,
There’d not been a single service there
Since the Roundheads stormed the town,
But weeds grew up in the vestry, there
Were signs of an ancient fire,
And looking up we could see a space
Right under the old church spire.

‘That was the space they hung the bell
But the bell has long been gone,
The Roundheads carried it off, they say,
So it couldn’t toll for Rome.
The bell had tolled for the death of Charles
As his head fell under the axe,
The soldiers came for revenge in force
In one of their brute attacks.’

I kept him company every night
But I had to get some sleep,
For days I’d wake and I’d find him still
Awake in a crumpled heap.
I woke one time and I saw him stare
Through the window, into the night,
For there was a ghostly cloak and cowl,
It gave me a sudden fright.

And that’s when I heard the tolling bell
For the first time, that he’d said,
The bell from the church, that wasn’t there
Was tolling in my head,
I lay awake ‘til the sun came up,
Went out to greet the day,
But there the village had tumbled down,
Had long since gone away.

Only the marks of ancient roads,
Foundations that had stood,
There wasn’t a cottage left out there
Just an encroaching wood,
The church was standing among the trees
And our cottage, cracked and scarred,
Half of the roof was missing, and
The chimney lay in the yard.

We hurried away to the nearest town
And found an old-style Inn,
My friend had fallen asleep within
A moment of checking in,
He slept and he slept for two whole days
While I asked about the town,
‘What of the village of Rushing Brooke?’
But all that they did was frown.

The wife of the keeper of the Inn
Was tidying my room,
I asked her the same old question as
She worked there in the gloom,
‘I wouldn’t go near to Rushing Brooke
Not now, for a thousand pound,
That’s where the soldiers stole the bell
And mowed the villagers down.’

‘They say as the place is haunted by
The figure of a monk,
They burnt him alive inside the church
As he tolled the bell by the font.
He lived in a little cottage there,
The only one that stands,
I’ve heard some tell that they’ve heard the bell
And seen him, walk in the grounds.’

David Lewis Paget

The yacht swept up in the dunes had been
Abandoned the year before,
I came across it, quite by chance
Some miles away on the shore.
The bow was buried, the mast had gone
I climbed and I peered inside,
And there in the cabin, it seemed to me
That somebody must have died.

There were stains of blood on the cabin floor,
Stains of blood on the sink,
Handprint stains on a cupboard door,
I took me outside to think.
Without a body the boat felt right,
I needed somewhere to stay,
And this was cosy and out of sight,
As free as the livelong day.

I used seawater to clean it up,
I got the cupboard to shine,
Whoever had bled in there before
This cabin would do just fine.
I found some blankets under the bunk
To set up a makeshift bed,
I felt like a proud new owner there
And the feeling went to my head.

I caught some fish in the darkening light
And cooked it there on the beach,
The flames had flickered and showed the mark
As high as the tide could reach.
A breeze blew up and I crept inside
Protected from wind and rain,
And sat, and pondered a lazy pipe
In there, where a corpse had lain.

It must have been after the Moon went down
I first heard the woman’s cries,
Up from the shore, through the cabin door,
‘You’re always telling me lies!’
The wind was howling about the dunes
And the waves beat loud on the shore,
And over it all, the woman’s wail,
‘We’ve been through all this before.’

Then something clambered up on the deck
A thing with an ominous tread,
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck
As the woman wailed, ‘You’re dead!’
The thing jumped down to the cabin floor
In a shapeless gown of black,
All I could see were two red eyes
As it moved on in to attack.

The blade of a knife flashed by my face,
It gleamed in the light of the stars,
I tried to cry, ‘Whoever you think
I am, I’m not, I’m Lars!’
But the blade sank home in my shoulder then
And I reached for it in pain,
I cut my hand on its sharpened blade
As it tried to strike me again.

That shapeless thing had let out a shriek,
Had glared with its two red eyes,
‘Why do you hide on the Devil’s yacht
If you’re not a part of his lies?’
I tried to answer but nothing came
The pain swept me like a wave,
And blood was seeping from cuts and wounds
I was trying in vain to stave.

The figure turned and it left the yacht,
I staggered up to the deck,
And watched as it entered the breaking waves,
A sight I try to forget.
There were stains of blood on the cabin floor,
Stains of blood on the sink,
Handprint stains on a cupboard door,
They were always mine, I think.

For the woman that I’d been hiding from
Had sworn with her final breath,
‘I’ll seek you out, wherever you’ve gone,
It won’t be a peaceful death.
I shall loose the demons from the hell
That you gave me, ready or not.’
How could I know that they’d find me where
I’d hid, on the Devil’s Yacht?

David Lewis Paget

‘I am pure, forever now,’
The words scratched on a skull,
That I dug up one morning
In a garden, back in Hull.
I didn’t know just who it was
Or where the skull had been,
The skull itself the only one
That knew what it had seen.

There were no other bones, they were
All missing, neck to toe,
Perhaps they’d gone on walkabout
And said, ‘We’ll let you know!’
The skull was left to rest in peace
Beneath a flower bed,
Where jonquils wavered in the breeze
Above this lonely head.

The bed was bound by sleepers
That were there before the time
My grandparents had owned the house -
Who covered up this crime?
They must have known, had surely known
Whose head it was, deceased,
Before they laid that garden bed
Hacked off the head, at least!

For someone scraped those five short words
Bit deep into the bone,
Had used the knife that cut its throat?
Or merely, some sharp stone.
I held the skull beneath the tap
To wash away the dirt,
The empty sockets stared at me
Relentless, in their hurt.

Was this a male or female skull?
I found it hard to say,
The teeth were young and pearly white
I called it ‘she’ that day,
Old Jeb, the gardener came round
And saw, and burst in tears,
‘I haven’t seen that pretty smile
In more than fifty years!’

‘Her name was Clementine,’ he said,
‘A little pantry maid,
Back in the days of service when
We all were underpaid,
When I was just a lad myself
And new into the fold,
Your crusty great grandfather ruled,
Old Ebenezer Gold!’

‘We weren’t allowed to mix back then,
We slept on different floors,
He took a special interest in
The womenfolk, indoors.
He’d stalk around at midnight, checking
Under every bed,
Would threaten us with vengeance from
The Lord above, he said.’

‘I’d meet with Clementine outside,
We’d use the potting shed,
She’d tease and tempt me daily, dare me
Sneak into her bed,
Then one day she came crying, but
She wouldn’t tell me why,
Just said that Ebenezer was
A sneak, a ***** spy!’

‘I thought she must have got the sack,
She simply disappeared,
And nobody would mention her
Their lips were sealed, I fear.
He really had a hold on us
He oversaw the plots,
And said I had to seed that bed
With blue Forget-Me-Nots.’

He died near forty years ago
So Jeb and I agreed,
There wasn’t any point to raise
A scandal, without need,
I told him to put back the skull,
He cried, and kissed it lots;
Pulled out the jonquils, planted seeds
Of blue Forget-Me-Nots!

David Lewis Paget

He looked on down from the higher ground
At the village he held in thrall,
A gaggle of bowers, of steeples and towers
And he ruled them, overall.
They went their way each enchanted day
Unknowingly bound in his spell,
Not able to leave, to fret or to grieve
While he ruled their wishing well.

The wishing well in the village square
That had been since ancient days,
Nobody knew who put it there
Some sage with enchanted ways,
Its spirit was always known for good
Till they dragged her from a ditch,
That haggard harridan, Elsie Hood,
Known as the village witch.

They’d ducked her once in the village pond
To see if the crone would float,
Pricked her skin with many a pin
So the Witch Finder could gloat,
The sentence passed was the first and last
For a witch, in that village dell,
While some were stern, said a witch should burn,
She was tossed, head first down the well.

The well grew an ugly, creeping moss
That gave off an evil smell,
And everything good from it was lost
Some said, ‘It’s the witches spell!’
Then he had come to the village square
And tossed in a coin or two,
Said, ‘I command, let me rule the land
And the village surrounding you.’

And from that day they were cut away
From the villages all around,
Each road would twist with an evil mist
They were lost, and not to be found,
While he looked down from the higher ground
To gloat on each church and bower,
For then by stealth he had taxed their wealth
Though all that he had was power.

A maiden sat in the village square
Selling her flowers and blooms,
Each day, enchanting the people there
By night, in the Tavern’s rooms,
She caught his eye, and he breathed a sigh
When she smiled, so innocently,
So he went to tell the wishing well
‘That’s who I want, for me!’

The spirit flew from the wishing well,
The spirit of Elsie Hood,
‘I’ve done the thing that you want me to,
But now you want her, for good!’
It dragged him screaming across the square,
And tore at his eyes and skin,
His blood was spread almost everywhere
By the time that she dropped him in.

The mist has gone, it has moved along
The roads in and out are clear,
The moss dried up on the wishing well
And the girl, well she’s still here.
They filled the well to the top with sand
So no-one conjures a spell,
They’d rather be part of the greater land
Than wish in a wishing well.

David Lewis Paget

‘We haven’t the money for bread, my love,
We haven’t the money for tea,
You’d best get dressed in your Sunday best
And go down to the docks for me.
There’s plenty of sailors round the town
Who have just come in from the sea,
They’ll spare five shillings a head, my love,
You only need two or three.’

So Rosalie went to the old wood chest,
To change, as she always did,
Slipped off her shabby old cotton dress
And shook, as she lifted the lid,
Her muslin dress was a shade of grey
That had come third hand from a sale,
Next to a whale-bone corset that
Laced up, made her face go pale.

They’d only been married the year before
When he’d sworn he would care for her,
But most of his money had gone on drink
And the Dollymops at the fair,
He never had kept enough for the rent
When the landlord came, to pay,
‘It’s time that we used what assets we have…’
He’d grinned, in that crooked way.

‘Make sure that you pull your bodice down,’
He said as he tightened her stays,
‘You need to be showing some cleavage, but
Make sure that the blighter pays!
Just leave your drawers on the bedroom floor
You’ll not be needing them there,
The quicker they’re in and out, my love,
The less that you’ll have to bare.’

They walked together along the street,
He to the Wayside Inn,
While she went on to the alleyways
That were always so dark and grim,
He’d wait for her ‘til she’d done the deed
Then she’d meet him back at the bar,
And hand whatever she’d earned out there
In the clutch of many a tar.

She’d steel herself and would go quite numb
At the thought of those clumsy hands,
The leering faces, the coarse remarks
For the rent, and a *** of jam.
The other women would glower at her
If she pitched too close to their stall,
Was pushed in alcoves and spread on bins
And stood, her back to the wall.

She would have left, but her folks were dead
So there wasn’t a place to go,
And he would have thrown her out in the street
If ever she’d whispered ‘No!’
London was full of the fallen ones
Who were shunned, as she would be,
For only a Madam would let her in
To be used, continually.

Her husband sat at the Wayside bar
‘Til it closed, and bundled him out,
With still no sign of his Rosalie
He was mad, and grim at the mouth.
He headed down to the alleyway
When he saw the bobbies there,
They were standing over a pile of rags
And a tangle of auburn hair.

‘You can’t come on, there’s a ****** done,’
Said the sergeant, raising his hand,
A croak came up from the pile of rags,
‘Oh dear, that’s my old man!’
She stirred and murmured before she died
Sunk deep in a bleak distress,
‘Oh John, I’m sorry, the sailor lied,
And the blood has ruined my dress!’

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

On a twisting, winding, rutted track
That weaved from under the pines,
A figure came in a burlap sack
Where the crossroad intertwines,
I could only see the bleeding feet
As they peeped from under the sack,
And the hood hid every feature that
Would deem it a Jill or Jack.

There was purpose in that stolid walk,
And determination fixed,
I thought to offer a helping hand
But my feelings there were mixed,
There were leaves and twigs on the figure’s back
And a slime that looked like mud,
I thought that it might have been attacked
When I saw that the slime was blood.

Nothing could stop its slow advance
As it plodded into the street,
I reached on out but it just walked by
So I thought I’d be discreet,
The day was settling into dusk
As it reached the village square,
And just as the ancient gas lamps lit
It gave a cry of despair.

The cry was that of a woman lost,
Was more of a hell-fire screech,
It echoed up to the steepletop
And I thought of Caroline Beech,
The girl who’d gone to the woods one day
For a picnic of pies and mince,
The basket lay for a week and a day,
She hasn’t been heard of since.

The figure stopped and its arm flew out
To point at the Baker’s door,
I saw his face at the window lace
As pale as a painted *****,
The sweat stood out on his beady brow
As he hurried from room to room,
Locking each door and window now,
And shivering there in the gloom.

A crowd was gathering in the square
Surrounding the baker’s house,
‘You’d better come out and show yourself!’
But he was quiet as a mouse.
The men of the village burst right in
And they ****** him down on his knees,
She put one ****** foot on his head
And he squealed, ‘God help me… Please!’

‘I only wanted some love,’ he said,
‘But you just pushed me away,
I’d never have hurt a hair of your head
If you’d loved me once that day.’
And that was enough for the surly crowd
Who called on Oliver Beech,
To bring a rope from the stableyard
For a lesson they had to teach.

Her father fastened the rope around
The cringing baker’s neck,
Just as the daughter’s burlap sack
Collapsed to a heap on the deck.
There was nothing inside the hood or sack
As it lay there on the street,
Only the footmark stains of blood
From the murdered woman’s feet.

They dragged him down to the wood of pines
And he showed them where she lay,
Under a pile of autumn leaves
He’d covered her with that day,
They left him hanging above the spot
As they bore her gently home,
Now there is no baker in Warley Copse
So the villagers bake their own.

David Lewis Paget

I found I was left a mantle clock
The type that you wind by key,
It had stood upon my father’s shelf,
Now it came down to me.
Inside the clock I had found a note
Scrawled in my father’s hand,
‘You never must overwind the clock
For time is a shifting sand.’

That’s all that it said, that tiny note
And I’d wondered what he meant,
Surely he could have talked to me
And made it more evident.
But my father had been secretive
And never would say too much,
Just that his life had raced away
And left him behind, and such.

The end of his life had come too soon,
It certainly was a shock,
I found him sat alone in his chair
And pointing up at the clock,
It wasn’t until the afternoon
I noticed the clock had stopped,
Just as his heart had ceased to beat,
There wasn’t a tick, or tock.

I took it home and I placed it up
In pride of place on the shelf,
Over the wooden mantlepiece
And wound the thing up myself.
I just didn’t know how many times
I was meant to turn the key,
So probably over wound it then,
Not knowing what was to be.

Over the following week I found
The clock had been gaining time,
And thought, that’s probably what he meant,
Never to over wind,
I tried to adjust it back a bit
To change the rate of the pawl,
But found the cog was racing away
And speeding up overall.

No matter what I did to that clock
Its speed just wouldn’t be tamed,
I’d slow it down and it speeded up,
I felt I was being gamed,
But then I woke on a Wednesday and
I thought there was something strange,
The man on the news said ‘Thursday’,
Like the days had been rearranged.

The weeks and the months went flying by,
I still kept winding that clock,
Remembering how my father died,
I wouldn’t have dared to stop.
But then one day I forgot to wind
And it slowed, and took me aback,
I held the key, was about to wind
When I had my heart attack.

Luckily Joyce was in the room
Thank god for my lovely wife,
She seized the key and she wound it up
And probably saved my life.
I never forget to wind it now
That clock’s in sync with my heart,
But now my life is racing away
With the clock still playing its part.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

There was always an odour of sin around
The nave of that ancient church,
I knew of it as a choirboy,
I didn’t have far to search,
The smell welled up in the vestry,
A sulphur and brimstone tang,
It leached on into our cassocks
When the bell for the matins rang.

The priest, he was old and doddering
And didn’t look ripe for sin,
Old Father Coates may have sowed his oats
With nobody looking in,
But sin was there for a century,
It wasn’t of recent time,
The stories told of a Father Golde
I heard from a friend of mine.

Back in the days when the church was strong
And it ruled the lives of all,
A Father Golde was the priest of old
And preached of the devil’s fall,
When women came to confess their sins
And spoke of their evil deeds,
The priest took them at the altar there
In sin, and down on their knees.

The Nuns attached to the convent were
Obedient to his whim,
And many a cold and frosty night
He would call a sister in,
Her place, he said, was to warm his bed
To deter his chills, and ague,
And many a child was born in dread
To the parish, since the plague.

But one day after confessional
He had ***** a Colonel’s wife,
Who came to him with her petty sin
And described what it was like,
The priest, inflamed by her words and deeds
Had her pressed by the vestry door,
And who could know what she had to show
But the flagstones on the floor.

A troop of soldiers had marched on in
To assuage the Colonel’s rage,
The moment the wife had gone back home
And told of the priest’s outrage,
They seized the priest and they ran him through
With a sword right to the hilt,
Then tied him onto the cross outside
Where a sign outlined his guilt.

And every year on the first of June
You can hear the feet outside,
Marching up to the old church door,
The day that the father died.
A sense of sin that is coming in
As the church doors swing apart,
And blood appears on the altar in
The shape of an evil heart.

David Lewis Paget

The cabin had sat at the edge of the woods
Since Eighteen fifty-two,
It still belonged to our family,
So I guess that meant me too,
I found myself in need of a roof
And they hadn’t been there for years,
So I swallowed my pride, and hitched a ride
And forced the door with a curse.

It was down on the Tasman Peninsula
Was built by my fifth great-great,
He’d been picked up in a London mob
And suffered a convict fate,
He’d done his time with the cat ‘o nine
And had broken rocks for the road,
For seven years and a bucket of tears
He’d suffered the convict code.

His Ticket-of-Leave had set him free
So he’d headed into the woods,
Taken a common law wife with him
And a few of their paltry goods,
He’d cleared a section and cut the trees
For the cabin that sits in the grove,
And the one embellishment that he brought,
An American *** Belly Stove.

The stove still sat in the corner there
It hadn’t been lit for years,
I sat on the sagging miners couch
Gave way to a fit of tears,
The branches of trees had ventured in
The water was drawn from a well,
The door at the rear just hung and creaked,
I thought I’d arrived in hell.

I lit an age old paraffin lamp
That luckily still had fuel,
Searched my bag for a scrap to eat
But all that I had was gruel,
The sun went down and the dark set in
To the sounds of the wind outside,
Rustling through the tops of trees
And the leaves of the trees inside.

At midnight, I awoke with a start
To the sound of an evil roar,
More like a man than an animal
Standing at my front door,
I braced myself by the door, it roared
And then it began to pound,
‘What do you want?’ I screamed on out.
‘You’re sitting on hallowed ground!’

‘I want what’s properly mine,’ it said,
‘And then I’ll leave you alone.’
My teeth were chattering then, in fright
When it gave out another groan.
‘I’ll never rest ‘til I get it back,
I need it to make me whole,
A hundred years since they carved me up
I’ve waited to claim my soul!’

I looked across to the ancient stove
Where a mist was rising up,
A pale blue mist from the rusted flue
And I thought, ‘That’s it! Enough!’
The mist was taking a human shape
The shape of a surly man,
Wearing an age old Warder’s cap
But lacking a good right hand.

I crawled across to the iron stove
And I opened wide the door,
The bed was full of the clinker they
Had burned there, years before.
But buried deep in the ashes there
When I brushed aside the sand,
I saw a shape that had made me gape,
The bones of a human hand.

‘Is this the hand you are looking for?’
The thing gave out a groan,
‘Come out, and push it under the door,’
I heard the creature moan.
I did, then packed my bag and I burned
The cabin, deep in the grove,
I’ll never go near a house again
That has a *** Belly Stove!

David Lewis Paget

There’s a man been hung at the old crossroads
In the village of Little Deeping,
And in his pockets a couple of toads
That were there when they caught him, creeping,
They bound his arms and they hung him high
On the bough of a mystic rowan,
And filled his stuttering mouth with straw
To quell the spell of his going.

The village is set in a mystery
That was old when the world was growing,
Three thousand years of its history
Is lost to the world, unknowing,
The valley’s not in the land of them
Who are yet to stumble upon it,
For men live now as they once lived then
With their wives in a primrose bonnet.

And superstition is rife down there
In the village of Little Deeping,
Where women never reveal their hair
With men in the meadow, reaping,
They take their water deep from a well
And light each cottage with lamplight,
Using a primitive type of oil
That seeps from the soil, in moonlight.

Their brides leap over a witches broom
When the harvest grain is swelling,
Under the beams of a crescent moon
With a bonfire near their dwelling,
They change their partners every year
If their bellies haven’t swollen,
Or hang their charms up over the door
So their offspring won’t be stolen.

They live their lives by the Druid gods
Who would bring about the seasons,
And never question the rights and wrongs
For nature has its reasons,
Their days began at the break of dawn
To the sound of the cockerel crowing,
An ancient bird with its comb and spurs
That would bring the sun up, showing.

But Tam Eilann was a surly man
Who would often lie in, sleeping,
Dreaming away the early day
While the rest were out there, reaping,
He hated hearing the cockerel crow
As it bid the sun, its rising,
When he said, ‘that cockerel has to go,’
He was more than just surmising.

One autumn night, he snuffed his light
Went out in the darkness, creeping,
And caught the only cockerel left
In the village of Little Deeping,
His knife flashed once in the cold moonlight
And left the cockerel dying,
His neighbours hurried to see the sight
Of their only cockerel, lying.

‘You’ve shamed the gods and must pay the odds,’
They said as they bound him, crying,
Then hung him high on the rowan tree
And cursed, as they watched him dying.
The cattle low in the byre still
And the bees, they stay in the hive,
For there’s not been a single sunrise there
Since the day the cockerel died.

David Lewis Paget

The sky was a smudge-coloured blue up there
When the sailing ship came in,
With full top gallants and spinnaker flared
Full flight from a world of sin,
The mermaid carved on her prow was proud
As she breasted the salt-licked spray,
Her hair a-stream, as the waves she ploughed
And surged to Ascension Bay.

I’d watched her approach from the Sailor’s Rest
That lay way up on the cliff,
‘It isn’t a question of when,’ he’d said,
‘Nor even a question of if!
The ghost of ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’
Comes in with a clear blue sky,
It happens but once a year,’ he’d said
‘On the twenty-fifth of July!’

I’d laughed at him in the ‘Admiral’s Arms’
As he swallowed his seventh ale,
While others listened with frightened eyes
Each face was a shade of pale,
‘You’ll see it best from the Sailor’s Rest,
That ruin, up on the cliff,
But don’t get caught by the devil’s cohort
Swarming up from the ship.’

They’d scaled the cliff to the Sailor’s Rest,
I knew the story of old,
Had slain the crew of the ‘Captain Teck’,
Or so it was always told,
They’d left the ‘Rest’ in a sea of flames
For the sake of an ancient feud,
While ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’ lay wrecked
By the mutineers that crewed.

They’d seized young Molly, the serving girl
Who’d worked at the Sailor’s Rest,
Had pulled her hair and had pinned her down,
Exposed the girl at the breast,
They took their pleasure and dragged her out
To the edge of the cliff, and pale,
Then flung her screaming down to the deck
Of ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’.

And so it was that I lay with the glass
So firmly fixed to my eye,
Up on the cliff by the Sailor’s Rest
On the twenty-fifth of July,
The ghostly ship flew into the shore
Under a mass of sail,
No sign of the crew, no lookout stood
On watch at the forward rail.

The ship ground up on the Daley Rocks
Rose shrieking, up in the air,
Her timbers creaking and groaning with
The mermaid’s look of despair,
The crew poured out of the lower decks
And flung themselves overboard,
These phantoms, straight from the devil’s lair
To put good men to the sword.

I ran some way from the Sailor’s Rest
Lay under a bush, and hid,
I didn’t know what to do for the best
But watched, to see what they did,
They swarmed all over the Sailor’s Rest
Put everyone to the sword,
Then dragged poor Molly out on the grass
And I cried, ‘Please stop them, Lord!’

Then the phantoms stopped as they heard my cry
And they turned, each black as sin,
Molly let out a quivering sigh
And they burst in flames, within,
She stood alone at the edge of the cliff
And she waved, no longer pale,
While the mermaid smiled on the prow of the ship,
‘The Falls of Borrowdale.’

David Lewis Paget

The Press surrounded the boarding house
That was kept by Mary Toft,
Her sailor man was Rickety Dan
Who was hidden, up in the loft.
‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’
Cried the head of the Press Gang crew,
We’ve got you a berth on the frigate ‘Perth’,
‘Don’t make us come looking for you!’

Mary stood by the door and blocked,
‘You’ll not be coming in here,
You can’t Impress in a private house,
The law of the land is clear.’
‘But this is a plain old ***** House
It’s the Navy’s right to come in,
You don’t say no to a guinea or so
From a sailor, looking for sin.’

‘I’ll have you know it’s a Boarding House
Not a ***** House, Oh dear!
You’d better go off for a pint of gin
And swill it around in your ear!
A Boarding House is a private house
And protected, under the law,
You’d better go looking somewhere else,
Like ‘The Angel’, down at the shore.’

‘We’re here to pick up Rickety Dan
We know that he’s here with you,
There’s no protection since Bony came
And the Navy’s short of a crew,
So stand aside, by the rising tide
He’ll be lost to you, Miss Toft,
For somewhere out by the channel ports
He’ll be clambering up, aloft.’

Dan had rickets when he was young
His legs were bowed like a bell,
He heard the door come clattering in
And he heard young Mary yell;
He seized his favourite capstan-bar
And he leapt right out of the loft,
Then laid about him from right to left
In defence of his Mary Toft.

The Press consisted of Isaac Raines
A farmer, plucked from the hay,
A weaver, minus the broken frames
The Luddites had taken away,
A shipwright, also a ropemaker
Who had joined to avoid the Press,
‘As long as you bring them in, my lads,
I’ll not let you go for less!’

Dan lashed out with the capstan-bar
And he laid the weaver low,
Sent the farmer to tend his fields
With only a single blow,
Chased the shipwright out of the door
Where the ropemaker had fled,
Knocked the Lieutenant down to the floor,
Then saw that he lay, stone dead!

‘I’m gone, I’m gone,’ said Rickety Dan,
‘I’d better head back to the sea,
It’s bad enough that I’ve killed the man
They’ll all be looking for me,
I’ll go and sign on an Indiaman
If I have to sign as a cook,
Once I’m safely away at sea
It’s the last place that they’ll look.’

She never saw Rickety Dan again
Though she’d wait at the turning tide,
Whenever an Indiaman came in
She would dress herself as a bride,
And even after they’d left this life
With Dan no longer aloft,
A bird perched up on the mizzen mast
Would look out for Mary Toft.

David Lewis Paget

She cooked the final meals at the gaol,
Collected the hangman’s clothes,
For he inherited everything
Of the hanged man, heaven knows.
She gave the widows the twist of rope
That he’d used to hang their men,
It all came down to the widow Crope
And whether she liked you, then.

She’d interview the widow-to-be
With a questionnairre or two,
About her man, was he handy, and
What did he like to  do?
Then later, in the condemned man’s cell
She’d say that she’d cut him free,
‘You’ll never see your woman again,
So all you have left is me.’

Her husband had died on the gallows, so
She’d known of that final *****,
A widow Kerr had done it for her
Before she was widow Crope.
Then down beneath that terrible drop
She would wait for him to appear,
Hang on his feet, as well as not
While he kicked at the air in fear.

Then once that the corpse was pale and still
She’d take it down to the morgue,
Lay it out on a slab, and then
She’d borrow the gaoler’s sword.
And while they were pouring the candlewax
For a later hanging in chain,
She’d slice a couple of fingers off
For the rings that were hers to claim.

But then she might, in an act of spite
Cut off a dead man’s hand,
Dip it well in the candlewax
And walk it late through the land.
She’d light the end of the fingertips
And carry it like a torch,
Making her way where the widow lay
And spike it, out on her porch.

And wives would say as their husbands lay,
‘Don’t mess with the widow Crope,
If ever the hangman comes, that day
She may be your final hope.’
And those awaiting a capital case
Would sit with their husbands there,
And tell them that it would be okay
In that final act of despair.

She’d never worn anything else but black,
She called them her widows weeds,
But never, she said, felt safe from attack
For her husband’s evil deeds,
She finally married the hangman, Jed,
And handed the job to her,
An hour since she’d hung on his legs
And made her the widow Claire.

David Lewis Paget

At midnight, out on the cobblestones
There’s the sound of rolling wheels,
And a shadow cast on a window pane
From the road outside, it steals,
A wagon, black in its livery,
And pulled by a single horse,
As black as the heart of the man that steers,
Whipped up from the watercourse.

From down in a tiny inlet, deep
Enough for a man of war,
A French corvette is lying, waiting,
Just metres away from shore,
It carried a cargo of brandy, wine,
And cases full of tea,
Smuggled into the tiny cove
Its goods all duty free.

Now it’s waiting upon the tide
To turn the ship around,
Its cargo gone in the wagon now,
Headed for higher ground,
And then the galloping hoofbeats echo
Over the cobblestones,
The crack of a couple of pistols and
The air is filled with groans.

The horse breaks free of its halter and
The wagon rolls back down,
It’s shadow passing my window pane
A second time around,
It rolls back into the harbour while
I hear the boom of guns,
Firing from the French Corvette
As it hoists its sail, and runs.

Once a year on the fifth of June
And late into the night,
Whenever the moon is lying low
And casting down its light,
I see the shadows and hear the sounds
From that deadly time of yore,
As the ghostly French Corvette departs
And sails from the ghostly shore.

And glistening out on the cobblestones
There’s a dampness, looks like mud,
That dissipates in an hour or two,
A pool of the smuggler’s blood,
I dare not go to the window, look,
Or even open the door,
In case I’m carried away by them
From two hundred years before.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

‘You’ve come to the end, it’s sad, my friend
But there’s nothing more we can do,
Your kidneys have malfunctioned, and
You’re at the end of the queue.
You’d best be making your Will out now
Or you may run out of time,
There’s just a question of fifteen thou’
You owe for our work, just sign!’

‘I’ll not be signing my life away
Just now, though it’s almost done,
I may be taking a walk someday
But not ‘til I’ve had some fun.
You say I’ve only a week or two
To spend, and that’s at the best,
I’ll cram the rest of my living in
With the help of a Prescient Vest.’

The Prescient Vest, the brainchild of
A Silicone Valley clone,
It calculated the path of life
From the life already known,
It fed its images through a brain
That would never live to see
The normal span of the life of man
Through some abnormality.

So Kevin fronted the Institute
And was strapped into a chair,
Fitted with Vest and Headpiece
And was virtually aware,
It drained the memories of his life
That flashed on past his sight,
And stored them into a tiny file
Just less than a Gigabyte.

And then it started to calculate
Beginning with his wife,
It showed her having a sweet affair
With the boarder, Stanley Smythe,
They both attended his funeral
And she leant upon his arm,
And held the wake with a Currant cake
At Stanley’s father’s farm.

Then Kevin struggled within his bonds
And tried to say, ‘Not true!’
But then his favourite daughter came
Quite suddenly into view,
She stole the funeral money he’d
Been keeping in a jar,
Then jumped on into his Thunderbird
And drove off with his car.

She let her idiot boyfriend in
To sit behind the wheel,
But all he could see were dollar signs
And a car he’d like to steal,
He dropped her off at a candy shop
Drove off and left his Pam,
While only a half a mile away
He ended under a tram.

Kevin suffered a minor fit
At the wreck of his pride and joy,
But didn’t suffer a single qualm
At the death of the stupid boy,
His job had gone to a minor clerk,
Dumped records in the bin,
The careful working of twenty years
That he’d spent compiling them.

Then Stanley got at his savings and
He frittered them away,
His wife was clueless, she let him sell
The house he’d slaved to pay,
The future, once he had gone was not
The thing he’d visualised,
He strained and screamed at the Techs,
‘Just get this thing from off my eyes!’

He staggered home in a mood and took
Some gas from out the car,
Splashed it around the house, and took
The cash from the funeral jar,
He threw a match and it all went up
Though he didn’t know or care,
That his wife and Stan were up above
When the flames went up the stair.

He jumped on into the Thunderbird
And went for a long, last ride,
Along the Beachside Boulevard,
And once he had stopped, he died!
They’ve banned the use of the Prescient Vest
With a raft of bills and laws,
‘The future needs to be locked,’ they said,
‘For the damage it might cause!’

David Lewis Paget

The first time he came into the light
He thought that his eyes had gone,
The sun was shining, ever so bright
With nothing to focus on,
They led him out to sit on a rock
And hacked off his ball and chain,
It took a week of his ticket of leave
Before he could see again.

Richard Dawson, a broken man
Had finally done his time,
He’d spent three years in shovelling coal
In the colony’s first coal mine,
They said it was only his just desserts
For a pocket, picked in the Strand,
And sent him out on a convict ship
To the hell of Van Diemen’s Land.

At first they set him to breaking rocks
For laying the first rough roads,
He worked while tethered in iron chains
That chafed his skin and his bones,
He wasn’t allowed to take a rest
From swinging the pick or axe,
For the guards would follow the line of men
And lay the whip on their backs.

He lost his God and he lost his soul
Or he thought that he had, out there,
Where men were hung as a matter of fact
And nobody seemed to care,
He slaved four years with the other men
But his future was looking bleak,
When he hit a man who was guarding them
He was sent to Saltwater Creek.

If ever there was a hell on earth
It was called Saltwater Creek,
The devil had got in the minds of men
And they formed a barbaric clique.
The cells were buried, were underground,
There wasn’t a spark of light,
And the men were taken out of the mine
When it was dark, at night.

They started before the sun was up,
They finished when it was gone,
Were locked and chained in their pitch dark cells
In a terror that just went on,
And while they were buried and mining coal
They’d think of the old country,
While their judge sat cool in his stately robes
And finished his morning tea.

A man turns into a surly brute
When he’s kicked and cursed, and beat,
But take the sun from his daily run
And his soul admits defeat.
Richard Dawson, later in life
At night, would take to the street,
And never could quite explain to his wife
The Hell of Saltwater Creek.

David Lewis Paget

The news came rustling through the trees
As I tethered the horse’s head,
It came with a gentle sigh on the breeze,
‘The Lady Mulcrave is dead!
She waits for you to attend her now,’
I shook in a craven fear,
‘Her arms are crossed in eternal rest
As she lies on her oak wood bier.’

I stared in horror about me then
For the voice I heard in the glade,
Though nothing moved in the gloom out there
But the shadows the fire made.
‘You lie,’ I cried, as I saddled the horse,
Buckled and fastened the bit,
Then spun around by the river’s course,
‘I’ll not hear a word of it!’

We galloped over the rickety bridge
And the hoofbeats rang in the air,
They seemed to echo the one refrain
That desperate word, ‘Despair!’
The moon hung over the distant hill
With the Motte and Bailey Hall,
Where I’d left Milady an hour before
At Sir John FitzAlan’s Ball.

She’d said, ‘Be certain to call for me
When it strikes the midnight hour,
I wouldn’t like to be left in there
Bereft, in FitzAlan’s power,
I’ve fended off the proposals that
He’s made, in the times before,
Be sure to wait at the Bailey’s gate
With my father’s coach and four.’

I’d left her there with a merry throng
In their masques and gowns and lace,
The gentlemen with their tricorn hats
And coats, cut high at the waist,
I’d ridden off to the distant wood
To sit out the time before
I’d ride alone to her father’s home
And collect the coach and four.

But now, I hurried on back in fear
That Milady was taken ill,
I prayed to God on my foam fleck’d ride
As we crested, over the hill.
The Motte and Bailey was dark outside,
Not a lantern at the door,
And not a guest to be seen out there
Where they’d thronged, an hour before.

I rode on into the courtyard where
The coaches had wedged in tight,
There wasn’t a single coach or horse
To be seen in the pale moonlight,
I called, ‘Is anyone left in there
I’ve come for Lady Mulcrave!’
There wasn’t a sound in the silence there,
A silence, deep as the grave.

I beat on the heavy oaken door
It echoed on through the hall,
I thought that I heard some breathing, breathing
Whispering through the wall,
‘Open the door and let me in,
I know you were here before,’
The hinges creaked and the door gave way,
Into an empty hall.

The air was rank and the walls were damp
And a moss grew on the floor,
There hadn’t been anyone living there
For fifty years or more,
And standing near the ancient hearth
Was a shape that brought a tear,
For stood in the gloom of that ancient room
The remains of an oak wood bier.

I sit in my cabin, deep in the woods
And avoid the world outside,
Something that happened late that night
Disturbed my time and tide,
The Lady Mulcrave died that day
In that Motte and Bailey Hall,
On the same day I was born, they say
As Sir John FitzAlan’s Ball.

David Lewis Paget

The farm at Little Rottingdeane
Lay fallow for a year,
Since Cromwell’s Ironsides had spent
The winter, quartered there,
They’d emptied out the pantry, killed
The cattle, stripped the barn,
And ***** the little milking maid
Before they left the farm.

The farmer, Rodger Micklewaite
Lay in his bed all day,
Too sick to raise his farmer’s head,
Too ill to bale the hay,
His wife took on the milking of
The milker they had left,
And comforted the milking maid
Who cried, as one bereft.

‘The master should be well again,
By early May or June,’
The wife had muttered tearfully
While gazing at the Moon,
But soon a pair of pigeons took
Their places in the loft,
‘Lord help us, it’s a sign of doom
To curse our little croft.’

The pigeons had been there before
When folk had fallen ill,
And when they came, it fell the same
For death would spread its chill,
And Rodger died, when they appeared
There was no time for grief,
A man called Palm soon bought the farm
To give them some relief.

The milking maid, her belly swelled
Betook her to her bed,
A tiny room that lay in gloom
Beside the milking shed,
She cried and cursed the Ironside
That set her on this course,
‘May Satan put a thorn beneath
The saddle of his horse.’

The babe was born by All Saints morn
She’d screamed to see its face,
The head shaped like a helmet or
Some bony carapace,
She only could discern its mouth
With teeth sharp, and ill-formed,
‘I cannot nurse this ugly waif,
I’ve bred the Devil’s spawn!’

Then Palm screeched at the sight of it,
Was sick unto his soul,
‘I never should have bought this croft
Or housed this Satan’s troll!’
The widow made his sickness bed
And counted him as lost,
For pigeons two came into view
And settled in the loft.

Then Palm began to waste away,
She fed him beer and broth,
He died upon the seventh day,
Was buried in the croft,
But then a troop of Ironsides
Rode through there from the moors,
And one of them remained behind
To tend his fevered horse.

‘What ails your horse,’ the widow said,
The trooper growled with scorn,
‘Some fool that saddled up my horse
Slid under it, a thorn.’
The milking maid, recovered then
And ****** into his face,
The baby, wrapped in lace and shawl
To hide its carapace.

‘You left a trace of you behind
When last you passed through here,’
The trooper blanched to see its face
Then shook in mortal fear,
The hungry babe went for his throat
And bit with all its might,
As blood streamed from the Ironside
To drown the Devil’s mite.

Two pigeons flew into the loft
Just as the trooper fell,
It only took a minute for
His soul to wake in hell,
The widow and the milking maid
Packed up and left that night,
‘This time, we’re like two pigeons,’
Said the widow, ‘taking flight!’

David Lewis Paget

Deep in the village of Darkling
Where the Squires and their Ladies rule,
No-one comes out in the eventime
Unless they’re a brazen fool,
The Hunt is rallied for after dark
And they wear the hood and the cowl,
Roam far and wide through the countryside
While the ravening hounds just howl.

They say that they’re hunting foxes,
But I know, that just isn’t true,
That blood they seek at the end of the week,
They may be looking for you,
They take their cues from the Magistrate
Who leads the Hunt through the grounds,
His word is law, and he sets the score,
They call him the Master of Hounds.

Sir Roland Bear has an awful stare
As he glares at you from the bench,
The lawyers do what they’re told to do
And offer little defence,
If you poach a hare from a Squire’s land
Or take a fish from his stream,
And you see him add your name to a list,
You know it’s your final scene!

For once outside in the courtyard there
The peasants will stare in dread,
They cross themselves as they pass you by
For nobody speaks to the dead!
You can’t go hide in your cottage,
If it still has a window or door,
Though you’re locked right in, the hounds of sin
Will come up through a hole in your floor.

The light of my life, Evangeline,
Was married to Percival Shroud,
He beat her once with a riding crop
To keep her bullied and cowed,
She worked all day in the Dairy,
In a barn on Percival’s Farm,
And I said one day that he’d have to pay,
I’d not see her come to harm.

She stared at me with her worried eyes
And she let me believe she cared,
We’d hide together beneath the hay
At the height of our love affair,
But one day soon, her burly groom
Had seen us going to ground,
And hauled us before the Magistrate
While our legs and our hands were bound.

‘There isn’t a place in Darkling here
For the likes of a pair like you!’
Sir Roland Bear, his pen in the air
Considered what he would do.
‘You’ve wandered outside the marriage bounds
Brought shame on the vows you swore,
While you have sullied her decency,
And turned a wife to a *****!’

He put his pen to the fabled list
And he wrote two names in there,
Then ****** us into the courtyard so
The folk could shame and stare.
They cut our bonds and we heard the hounds
As they howled and yapped for blood,
So we went trembling, hand in hand
To hide ourselves in the wood.

The Squires were grim and remorseless when
The Hunt pursued its fare,
Their Ladies thought it a festival
When they rubbed warm blood in their hair,
I’d said I’d not let her come to harm
But Evangeline had cried,
I broke a branch and I sharpened it
To defend my shattered pride.

They came at us like the hounds of hell
In their cloaks, and hoods and cowls,
Along with a pack of hunting dogs,
We could hear their approaching howls,
Evangeline was safe in a tree
While I stood guard below,
My fear was clear in my trembling hands
But I stood so it wouldn’t show.

A rider burst on out through the trees
And he roared, ‘Now pay for your crime!’
I waited until he rode up close
Then I ****** my stake in his eye,
He screamed just once, and fell from his horse
And his cowl, it floated wide,
I saw I’d killed the Master of Hounds
As the dogs tore at his hide.

The Squires looked down with little remorse
At the corpse that lay in the mud,
While the ladies leapt from their jittery mounts
To dip their hands in his blood,
We made our way unseen through the woods
Escaped from the killing grounds,
And Darkling now is free from the spell
Of the evil Master of Hounds!

David Lewis Paget

‘There were noises up in the attic
When I arose today, Maureen,
Have you been storing your batik
Up on the shelves, for the shelves aren’t clean!
I said you shouldn’t go prying there,
There is nothing up there to see,
Just things I cast from a hazy past
Before your marriage to me.’

‘I keep all my art and craft downstairs
In the cupboard, next to the door,
You’ve watched me folding my batik there
So what would you ask me for?’
‘I only wondered,’ her husband said,
‘Those scrabbles, they could have been rats,
More reason never to venture there…’
‘I’ll bring in the neighbours cats!’

She smiled, and blew him a kiss just then,
They hadn’t been married long,
They’d worked together for six long months
When she only knew him as John.
But after the office party, and
That cupboard, under the stairs,
A half a jug of Bacardi, and
They knew, the future was theirs.

She heard the scrabbling overhead
On a Sunday, lying in,
And what seemed like a rattle of chains
Though she thought, it couldn’t have been.
John Dean was out at the supermart
So she scrambled out of bed,
Pulled down the ladder and mounted it
To the attic, overhead.

The hatch slid back from a faulty catch
And she peered, up into the gloom,
There were spiders webs and rusty beds,
And dust, in that grim old room,
She saw what looked like a cabin trunk,
Padlocked, and covered in chain,
And another trunk with an open lid…
She climbed down the ladder again.

At lunch, she mentioned the sounds she’d heard
And she watched her husband’s face,
He seemed quite distant, then perturbed,
Got up and began to pace.
‘You haven’t been up in the loft, Maureen,
That attic is out of bounds!’
‘Well listen to you, the stern John Dean!
How do you think that sounds?’

They didn’t talk for another day
But her anger was aroused,
While he went up to the attic twice,
Mad at the scene he’d caused.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said,
It’s just that it’s full of dirt.’
But she shrugged off his excuses, she
Was playing at being hurt.

She searched the house for the padlock key
That had locked the trunk in chain,
Then finally found it on his ring,
And slipped it off again.
She waited until the coast was clear
With John Dean not around,
Climbed the ladder and opened the trunk
With the key that she had found.

Just as she went to raise the lid
His head appeared in the hatch,
‘Sorry it’s come to this, our kid,
You’re about to meet your match.’
The lid went up and she looked aghast
At the woman, speared with a knife,
‘Maureen, please meet Deborah Dean,
She was my former wife.’

She pulled the knife from the woman’s throat
And she pointed the blade at him,
‘Don’t think you’ll ever do that to me,’
Her voice was dour and grim.
‘That open trunk is your future home,’
He said as he locked the hatch,
‘You’ll jump right in and you’ll close the lid
When you hear the giant rats!’

David Lewis Paget

He pondered over the note he wrote,
Sat hunched and cold in his chair,
He nodded once as he read it then
And signed the bottom with flair,
The house was not even stirring then
As he rose, looked out at the sea,
It said, ‘By the time you see this, Jen,
I’ll be hanging from some old tree.’

Then he slipped on out to the breaking day
As the dawn was beginning to spread,
He should have been further along than this,
By now, he should have been dead.
He’d heard them stir in the attic room
When he’d come in late from the bay,
His wife and a lifelong friend of his
Who’d thought he was still away.

He’d heard the sound of them making love
As he crept to the attic door,
His face turned white in the passage light
As he sank to the passage floor.
The tears had welled at his eyes at last
As he crept back down the stairs,
He’d lost a friend and his woman, Jen,
And the love that he thought was theirs.

He wandered over the grassland there
To the woods at the edge of the cliff,
But not forgetting to take the coil
Of rope, he held at his hip.
He wondered how many times they’d met
While he was away at sea,
And laughed, the minute his back was turned
To leave him no dignity.

Then pictures rose in his troubled mind
That he shouldn’t have had to think,
He cursed himself, for he must be blind
When his friend had tipped her a wink,
The pain was really too much to bear
For he’d lost not one, but two,
He’d loved them both, she’d broken her oath
And his friend had betrayed him too.

He found a tree, hung over the cliff
That was old and gnarled and bent,
With a sturdy branch that would do the trick,
It was too late to relent.
He flung the rope and he made it fast
Then fashioned the hangman’s knot,
It would swing him out and over the sea
And send him where time forgot.

He tugged on the rope to test the branch
To see if it took his weight,
Dropped the loop down over his head
When a voice cried out, ‘Just wait!’
He turned to see his Jen on the path
That ran alongside the cliff,
‘What are you doing, my love, my love,
Is my love worth less than this?’

She said she’d gone for a walk that night,
Hadn’t been able to sleep,
‘Your friend is up in the attic room
With a woman from Warley Heath.
He only met her a week ago,’
She said, ‘and borrowed the bed.
He said that you wouldn’t mind, but I
Wasn’t impressed,’ she said.

He pulled the rope from over his head
And he hugged his woman tight,
‘I’m such a fool, but I thought that you
And he… It was such a fright!’
The sun beamed down and it seemed to say
That a love so strong was rare,
While a gnarled old tree drooped over the sea
With its rope, still hanging there.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget