The Little Withering Rep. had met
To rehearse their pantomime,
They’d left it a little late for Christmas,
Could it be done in time?
‘We have a choice, we can do Snow White,
Or Peter Pan would be good,
But we have the sets for another play,
‘The Wicked Witch of the Wood!’

Their hands went up for ‘The Wicked Witch,’
They thought it would be the best,
For Meryl Rose had a wart on her nose
And another one on her chest.
‘Meryl can play the wicked witch
As I think it’s understood!’
But Meryl pouted, she wanted to play
Little Red Riding Hood.

‘I’m always cast as the ugly *****,’
She cried, ‘But what about her?
She always gets the plummiest parts,
The ones with a bit of flair.’
But Helen stuck her nose in the air
And sniffed, ‘I’m younger than you.
You get to play the character parts,
I’m sweet, and innocent too.’

‘Now let’s not fight, it’s a Gala Night,’
The Director said, ‘Let’s cast!
Norman, you’ll be the noble prince,
And Fred can be Gormenghast.
Julia, you can be the Page
But you’ll have to improvise,
We’ll have you girt with the shortest skirt
For you have the longest thighs.’

‘We’ll have to steal from the other tales
For the script is not yet writ,
Helen, you get the sleeping part
For the apple that you’ve bit,
The littlest ones can play the dwarves
And run around on their knees,
Don’t worry, Matt, you can play a bat
And hang from one of the trees.’

They all got into their costumes,
Fancy cloaks with a funny hat,
But Albert Hook had been overlooked,
He dressed as a giant rat.
‘We’ll write in a part for everyone,’
For some had been looking glum,
‘You can be Jack and the Beanstalk, Mac,
And Tim can be ‘Fi-Fo-Fum!’

The curtain raised on the opening night
To reveal a darkened wood,
A giant bat fell out of a tree
To land where the Page was stood,
She shrieked, and clung to the wicked witch
Who was straddling broom and stick,
It knocked the apple out of her hand
That rolled in the orchestra pit.

‘Please can I have my apple back?’
She whispered over the lights,
The cellist was shaking his head at that,
He’d already taken a bite!
The sleeping beauty was not asleep,
The dwarves were looking dumb,
And Jack had shaken the beanstalk then
To the sound, ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum!’

Nobody seemed to know what to do
The rat ran over the floor,
The cellist in the orchestra pit
Then flung back the apple core,
The Witch ran over to Helen then
Who screamed in a long, high note,
‘You’re mad if you think I’m eating that!’
But the Witch rammed it down her throat.

After they’d called the ambulance
And carted Helen away,
The police came in for the errant Witch
And said, ‘You will have to pay!
A joke’s a joke, but you tried to choke
The lead with an apple core!’
While the dwarves were rolling around in fits
As the audience fled for the door.

David Lewis Paget

I was born and bred in a valley,
It was all that I ever knew,
The cows grazed out in the pasture and
The cottages were few.
I grew surrounded by simple folk
Who toiled, and ate their fill,
They had one rule that they never broke,
‘We don’t go over the hill!’

They said, ‘Be happy with what you’ve got,
A pleasant country life,
One of the girls you play with here
Will grow to be your wife,
We have no use for the world out there
With its thrills, and shrill alarms,
We’re all content with the life we’ve spent
On our peaceful valley farms.’

The school was simply a single room,
We had no need for more,
At best, the students were twenty two,
At least, they numbered four,
They didn’t study so very hard
For the life they lived outside,
To the best of my recollection there,
Nobody ever died.

The cemetery hadn’t been in use
Since eighteen eighty-nine,
We had no use for a doctor there
For our health was always fine.
It always seemed like a mystery
But one that was never told,
Just why in our recent history
Did no-one ever grow old?

They told me when I was twenty-one
The story of Maggie Grey,
Her headstone stood in the cemetery,
The last one from her day,
She’d gone as a girl to the mountain top
Picked flowers for a bride,
But when she staggered on down again,
Something had changed, inside.

She said she’d eaten a purple fruit
From a bush that fateful day,
Whatever it was, we didn’t know
But it changed her DNA,
Of all the children she bore from then
They all were still alive,
Seven were born to her husband Ben,
And then another five.

They intermarried to keep their blood
As pure as it was fine,
And everyone in the valley now
Was descended from her line,
The rest of the folk had died and gone
As it was, before her day,
And the very last to be buried there
Was poor old Maggie Grey.

They said that we never could leave there
Just in case our blood would spill,
Or mix with the common herd out there
For the mix would make us ill,
They said we lived in a paradise
But could never make it known,
The moment the world had heard of us
They wouldn’t leave us alone.

My girlfriend, Catherine Mundy was
Rebellious from the start,
She said she wanted to travel, that
To stay would break her heart.
I followed her on a moonlit night
Where she went, to work her will,
And called out, ‘Catherine, please come back,
We don’t go over the hill!’

She stared at me from the mountain top,
Plunged down the other side,
I chased her then and I caught her, said:
‘Come back, and be my bride!’
‘I have to go or I’ll never know
All the things in the world out there,
But when I’m done, I’ll come on back
To find if you really care.’

She disappeared in the darkness, and
I wandered sadly home,
They sent a party to search for her
But then came back, alone.
‘She’s down in that village of miners,
We just hope that she holds her tongue,
If she tells them the story of Maggie Grey,
The valley will be undone!’

A year went by and the soldiers came
And they locked us in our farms,
They brought a team of physicians who
Set up in one of the barns,
They tested us and injected us,
Took blood on alternate days,
They wouldn’t say what they expected,
But they checked us with x-rays.

Catherine came back home as well,
She was cuffed to an army jeep,
I asked her what she had told them, it
Was then she began to weep.
A farmer died in the early Spring
And his wife went to her grave,
The first ones buried in paradise,
In a valley too late to save!

David Lewis Paget

Nobody knows where the Ragman goes
In the wee, small hours of the morn,
When he’s taken the dray with your rags away
Through the pin-point eye of a storm.
He came to stay while you were away
And your sister gave him your dress,
The one with the dreams and the bright sequins
Sewn in to the lace at the breast.

She said that you wouldn’t be needing it
Since your dreams have faded to dust,
When all those hundreds of bright sequins
Were dimmed, and turning to rust,
But the Ragman knew that he’d capture you
If he made away with your dreams,
And sits unpicking your party dress
With a razor blade at the seams.

Your sister Grace has a second face
That she turns when she’s not near you,
In a zealous, jealous and carping place
That she keeps well hidden from view,
For nobody gives her a second glance
While she schemes and dreams and plots,
To plant your beauty deep in the ground
With a host of forget-me-nots.

Don’t peer too long from the balcony,
Don’t stand too long at the edge,
She’s loosened the rail you lean upon
And thrown the bolt in the hedge,
A sudden rush and a simple push
Will send you a long way down,
While she prepares her look of despair
As they plant you there in the ground.

I’m only a menial footman here
But my love is stamped on my face,
I’m going to track the Ragman down
And bring him back to this place,
I’ve seen his dray by a cottage door
In the forest of chills and frost,
And seen the women he buys and sells
Who wander the forest, lost.

Your sister sips on a nightly draught
As she sits and watches the Moon,
Plotting to see the end of you,
I know that it’s coming soon.
I’ll drop a potion into her drink
And tie her up in a sack,
Then throw her up on the Ragman’s dray,
She’ll never be coming back.

He’ll take her deep in the forest there
To the caves of unshriven souls,
Then put her up on the auction block
And sell her to one of the trolls.
The bolt is back in the balcony rail
And the potion’s in her drink,
The Ragman’s dray is coming today
And your sister’s at the brink!

David Lewis Paget

They took their shovels and digging tools
To the top of Highgate Hill,
They walked in a deadly silence there
In the dusk, in the evening chill,
They picked their way through the deep-laid bones,
The monuments, great and small,
And looked for the plain Rossetti stone
In their search for Elizabeth Siddal.

That red-haired, wraithlike, ghostly girl
Who had charmed the PRB,
She'd sat, at first, for Deverell
Who was doomed, with Bright's Disease,
She'd fallen hard for the artist then
Though her love was never returned,
For Deverell died so suddenly -
It was as if her love was spurned.

She sat for Dante Gabriel,
For Holman Hunt, Millais,
As the model for drowned Ophelia
In an ice cold bath she lay,
She lent her beauty to every brush,
Each stroke laid bare her soul,
When she looked around for herself she found
There was nothing left at all.

Rossetti had kept her close to him
As he slowly became obsessed,
He scribbled a dozen portraits from
Her head to her heaving breast,
He placed her high on a pedestal,
A Madonna in all but name,
But kept his physical love from her
That she might not suffer shame.

He penned the poems he wrote for her
In a small, grey calf-skin book,
He carried the poems everywhere
As a proof of the love it took,
He made no copies, he held them close
They were food for a future muse,
For his art and poetry vied with him -
It was painting he would choose.

But she; who knew what rent her soul,
The cravings she despaired?
She sipped at the potion laudanum
As her heart and her mind were bared,
She scribbled the weary verses that
Spoke love, of a love long-lost,
While Dante frolicked with Annie Hughes
At Elizabeth Siddal's cost.

As Lizzie despaired on laudanum
She had ceased to be of use,
Her visage was sad, and aged and drawn
In the sick room of abuse,
While girls with youth, vitality
And an earthy yen for sin
Like ***** Cornforth, came to sit -
And Rossetti let them in.

They wed, but much as a faded dream
The knot had been tied too late,
As Lizzie, dying a little each day
Succumbed to a morbid fate,
For one dark night she had laid her down
Penned a final note, to whit:
'My life has become so miserable
That I want no more of it.'

She lay by an empty laudanum phial,
Rossetti was quite distraught,
He'd loved her, but with a purer love
Than his lust or his money bought,
His grief was such, as he laid her down
In her coffin, she looked so fair,
That he placed the book of his poems
Between her cheek and her auburn hair.

The years went on and he sank himself
In a pit of despond, unwell,
Withdrew from his friends and dosed himself
With a phial of chloral,
His painting suffered, his income too,
He turned to the ancient muse,
And thought of the poems beyond the grave,
He knew that he'd have to choose!

He wrote to Charles Augustus Howell
A rogue that he'd used before,
To test him; whether to dig her up
Or to lose his poems forever;
Howell replied he should get them back,
Or he'd lose them to death, for good,
'Your works are the works of genius,
Bring them back to the world - You should!'

So Howell, he toiled up Highgate Hill
While Dante hid in his lair,
Too scared to look on his love again,
His muse with the auburn hair,
A fire was lit in the dead of night
The coffin was raised on high,
His love was torn from her deathly stare
They could almost hear her sigh.

The book was caught in her tangled hair
Which had filled the coffin's space,
And she was lovely, and quite serene
As they lifted the book from her face,
They lowered her gently, back in the ground
That had served as her awful tomb,
She lay defiled like a bride, reviled,
But without her lawful groom.

Rossetti published his poems then,
They sold by the thousandfold,
For Howell had leaked the story out
That he hadn't wanted told;
But a fate awaited Augustus Howell
A revenge that would beggar belief,
He was found, throat cut in the gutter -
With a coin, tight clenched in his teeth!

David Lewis Paget

‘What will you buy when Christmas comes
To show me your love, dear heart?
Will you fill my bower with fruit and flowers
To enjoy while we’re apart?
Will you buy the things that you promised me,
Like a bangle for my wrist,
Or a diamond, topaz, sapphire ring,
Or a giant amethyst?’

He stood, head down and he held her hand
As she lay so pale in the bed,
He didn’t tell her his job was lost
Or what his employer said.
There were charges he would have to face
That would fill her heart with gloom,
That by Christmas Day he would be away
And not be returning soon.

‘I’d rather give you the crescent Moon
As a coronet, dear Tess,
And pluck the stars from the Milky Way
As sequins for your dress,
Then call on the Charioteer, my dear
For your transport to the heights,
Where the gods will fall on their knees to bless
This glimpse of paradise.’

She smiled, then faded away to sleep
And dream of a ghostly tower,
Where her prince stood long at the battlements
At the height of a fateful hour,
An army lay in the fields about
In a siege for her, no less,
‘We’ve come for the Queen of Golders Green,
And we won’t leave without Tess!’

While he sat bowed in a lonely cell
And wept at his sense of loss,
He’d only needed another month
And the price would be worth the cost,
He’d not be there when she needed him
As she glided out through the door,
The Judge fixed him with a puzzled eye,
‘Just who was the coffin for?’

On Christmas Eve she awoke before
Her heart pit-pattered and stopped,
Her fading eyes had looked to the door
Along with her hopes, they dropped.
But in her hair was a crescent Moon
And stars were all over her dress,
While a Charioteer came into the room,
‘I’ve a chariot here, for Tess!’

David Lewis Paget

Of all the loves that I’ve loved in life
There was one, crème de la crème,
She turned my head and she caused me strife
But I loved her, way back when,
I met the woman by accident
As the ex-wife of a friend,
We’d see each other and look away
In a game we called ‘Pretend’.

‘Pretend’ she didn’t attract me then,
‘Pretend’ I couldn’t care less,
And she’d ‘Pretend’ that I held no sway
When she’d hide her eagerness.
We’d say, ‘Now, what a coincidence
That you happen to be here!’
But fate provided the incidents
For the best part of a year.

She ditched the guy she was seeing then
And I started calling round,
Just for a morning coffee break
And we’d stare each other down.
There was love and hate in each debate
We’d agree to disagree,
She’d say, ‘I’m glad that I’m not with you,’
And I’d say, ‘That goes for me!’

But then, if ever I missed a day
She’d say, ‘Where did you go?
I had a ride, but I stayed inside
Then in fact, you didn’t show!’
And sometimes, when she was out about
I would knock, and feel aggrieved,
‘Why weren’t you home at ten o’clock?’
I’d say, and she’d look relieved.

We felt a reverse attraction like
The same magnetic pole,
Pushing each other away today
Tomorrow, joined at the soul.
The tension there was electric once
That everything had been said,
And there on a Monday holiday
We tumbled into bed.

Our love was a roller coaster that
Would speed us up to the stars,
Bathed in a perspiration that
Was cold as the planet Mars,
And nothing was ever long enough
It was more like a disease,
For neither of us were strong enough
So we crawled away on our knees.

If love is a desperation to
Cling on to the one you need,
That was the explanation for
The love that we felt was greed.
I thought that I’d found the only one
That this love would never fail,
It was if I had found a holy one
In a search for the Holy Grail.

But nothing will last forever, for
The planets will move along,
Challenging each endeavour, be it
Love, or the right from wrong,
She slowly began to drift away
In search for a sense of self,
Begged for the space to run her race
And left me, high on the shelf.

I spent her absence, caught in a trance
And staring long at the wall,
I knew my soul was lost in advance
When I got the final call,
She fell enceinte with another’s child
Though she wanted to come back home,
But I was too hurt to take her back
So I soldiered on, alone.

Of all the loves that I’ve loved in life
There was one, crème de la crème,
She turned my head and she caused me strife
But I loved her, way back when,
I haven’t seen her for thirty years
But she has a place in my soul,
While I am playing the game ‘Pretend’
And the world is growing old.

David Lewis Paget

Garth lay still in the gilded cage
Unable to move a thing,
The bars were merely spiders’ webs
Of a faery’s magicking.
He’d wandered into the Faery Ring
Where he’d seen the mushrooms spread,
And now was caught in a faery spell
With the rest of the living dead.

With Tom, the Candlestick Maker’s son
And a barrel of candlewax,
He’d dawdled home from the marketplace
And lay in the beckoning grass.
He woke to find he was tightly bound
With a faery up on his chest,
She said, ‘Lock him in the cage as well,
Along with all of the rest.’

And Madge, the maid with a milking pail
Who was sent to milk the cow,
She’d wandered off on her way; she thought,
She needed to feed the sow.
She woke to mushrooms, ten feet tall
All towering over her head,
The stalks were bars, set under the stars
And her limbs, they felt like lead.

While Tim the Tinker was there as well
With his knives and sharpening tools,
His grindstone lay in a pile of hay
And the bonds on him were cruel.
The beggar lay in his filthy rags
While the rich man muttered, ‘Shame!’
He’d soiled his boots and his Regency suit,
Was bound with his watch and chain.

They lie not far from the caravans
Of a gypsy camping ground,
So Faeries say: ‘Let’s take them away
Before they’re seen and found!’
But dancing into the faery ring
Is the Gypsy, Mavourneen,
Who stumbles over the gilded cage
And steps on the Faery Queen.

The top flies off from the gilded cage,
The webs of the bars are torn,
And Garth crawls over the mushroom heads
To swear, ‘I feel reborn!’
The faeries weep as they carry their Queen
In death, to their Faery Dell,
There’s mushrooms still in that Faery Ring,
But now, Toadstools as well!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

He’d been away with the army then
For almost twenty years,
And walking back to his village he
Had expected smiles and tears,
He thought his wife would be waiting there
Though his son, he knew, was grown,
He’d been away and protecting them
Though the soldier, now, was home.

He saw the village had barely changed
Though the people stood and stared,
He thought that they were in awe of him
Could it be the village cared?
They took in his battered breastplate and
The dents that marked his greaves,
The helmet that had been battered and
The blood on his chain-mail sleeves.

He’d walked for several miles since when
His horse had collapsed and died,
It weathered many a battle but
Fell foul of the countryside,
But soon he’d take off his armour when
He would meet again his bride,
And she would make him a pottage, and
Rejoice that he hadn’t died.

He’d tramped in the lands of Burgundy
He’d fought in the land of Gaul,
He’d taken the Cross to Saladin
And wept at the Wailing Wall.
His face bore scars from the sword and lance
And a mace had raked his back,
From a knight behind who had been struck blind
In a frontal, forced attack.

He’d waded deep in a sea of blood,
He’d trampled a field of bones,
And helped to bury his comrades there
Marking the place with stones,
But now his body was tired and worn
It was leave the field, or die,
His horse had brought him wandering home
To the village of Burton Rye.

His wife came out from the cottage door
And she blanched, and shook in fear,
‘I don’t know where you are coming from
But you don’t belong in here!’
He glanced at the short and thickened form
That he didn’t recognise,
‘Are you the wife I’ve been fighting for,
If so, my memory lies!’

‘You went away in another life
Leaving none to warm my bed,
I took a shine to the blacksmith here,
Fell in love with him, instead.
It’s twenty years since you went away
Did you think you could return?
You’ve lived the life of a soldier, all
You do, is pillage and burn.’

‘I had to go to protect you here,
Out there, it’s a world at war,
I’ve fought the enemy everywhere
To keep the pain from your door.
I loved you when you were slim and young
And your eyes were bright with cheer,’
His shoulders slumped and he turned away,
‘I see I’m not wanted here!’

David Lewis Paget

She worked part-time as a seamstress,
An ordinary sort of girl,
But one with a dash of blue-eyed wit,
An endearing brunette curl.
I’d plucked up the courage to ask her out,
For me it was more than like,
And everything seemed to be going well
Before the lightning strike.

One day we walked to the countryside
By the fields of wheat and hay,
Rambling on by the hedgerows there
On a darkening Autumn day.
I stole a kiss in a grove of trees
From the lips that taste like wine,
And then she whispered her love for me
All coy, with her eyes a-shine.

The clouds were gathering overhead
And soon it began to rain,
We sought some shelter, under a ledge
Right next to a field of grain,
But she was nervous, clung to my hand
When the thunder growled on high,
‘The gods are grumbling over the land,’
She said, and began to cry.

I said, ‘There’s nothing to fret about,
It’s only an Autumn storm,
We’ll just stay here and we’ll wait it out,’
But Michelle was lost, forlorn.
A mighty clap came from overhead
And she screamed, ran out in the rain,
When a bolt of lightning struck her there,
A flash, then a shriek of pain!

I dashed on out, and I picked her up
But her clothes were burned and charred,
Her hair was white and it stood on end,
Full of some potent charge.
She rolled her eyes and she looked at me
Her face, a panic attack,
And then I saw that her sky-blue eyes
Had turned to a deep jet black.

The clouds were tumbling overhead
Though the rain was passing on,
The lightning strikes were further away
She cried, ‘Has the thunder gone?’
She sat there trembling in my arms
But focussed her gaze on high,
And said at last, as she stared above,
‘There are demons up in the sky!’

She spent a month in the hospital
And they said she’d be okay,
I’ll never forget the way she looked
When I picked her up that day,
She huddled up in the car and said,
‘The world outside has changed,
For fire and flashes are everywhere
There’s a lightning strike in my brain.’

‘And now, in the darkest corners I
Have visions of swarms of rats,
While up in the eaves, and waiting there,
A host of vampire bats,
There’s crawling things that I didn’t see
Before, when my eyes were blue,
And awful spiders with fourteen legs,
Right now, they’re crawling on you.’

I took her home, and put her to bed,
I thought that she needed rest,
A week went by, but she’d sit and cry,
I thought she was quite obsessed.
Then I started hearing crawling things
At night, when I went to sleep,
And woke to a creature on my chest
That made my own flesh creep.

There’s demons up in the clouds,’ she said,
‘And fires scorching the ground,
And everywhere that I look, I see
Where evil spirits abound.’
I couldn’t take it a moment more,
These things invaded my mind,
I did what anyone else would do,
And now, Michelle is blind!

David Lewis Paget

I woke to a knock at the door one day,
And stumbled, to put on my gown,
The place was a shambles, and last night’s tea
In cartons, was scattered around.
I hate people seeing the way I live,
They shouldn’t call round, it’s a *****,
But called out, ‘Who is it?’ and got the reply,
‘It’s me, it’s the upstairs witch.’

I had no idea she lived upstairs,
The apartments are all very small,
The slightest of noises will carry on through
The ceilings, and paper thin walls.
I opened the door in bemusement then
To see who was pulling my leg,
She wore every colour the rainbow sent,
Pushed past me, and said: ‘Call me Peg!’

I followed her into the wreck of my room,
And mumbled, ‘I know, it’s a mess.’
She shrugged, and she pointed my PC out,
‘I knew it was that, nothing less!
You sit and you type through the early hours
I hear all your whistles and bells,
Your tappity-tapping is driving me spare,
And worse, is confusing my spells.’

‘I have to compose when the mood is high,
And that is from midnight and on.’
‘And I only spell when the Moon is nigh,
I can’t til the sun has gone.’
We stared at each other with little grace,
Both grim, with a certain intent,
She wouldn’t be giving an inch to me,
I murmured I wouldn’t relent.

‘We’ll have to come up with a compromise,
I’ll help you, if that helps myself,
I’ll spell in your program a silence key,
And you’ll be at peace with yourself.’
‘But what am I getting from you in return,
This sounds like it’s going one way…’
‘I’ll bring all your stories to life,’ she said,
‘In colour, and one for each day.’

‘I’ve written so many, you’ll never keep up,
I’ll need to go back through my files.’
‘Just open the drawer of your cabinet,
And I’ll carry you there, for a while.
I’ve seen all your stuff on the Internet,
Your devils and demons and ghouls,
I haven’t a clue what you think you will do
In a garden, with so many fools.’

She sits in her garret and plays with her spells,
I type without making a sound,
I open the drawer and I walk on the shore
Or hear bells from the church in the town.
I follow each lady I’ve written in verse
And make love when I’m feeling the itch,
They all wear the colours of rainbows at first,
And they look like the upstairs witch!

David Lewis Paget

The winter fogs roll in from the Thames
While frost forms up on the eaves,
The damp will settle in aching bones,
While the trees are bereft of leaves;
The streets were stark in the old East End
A footfall echoed and died,
And nights when the homes were shuttered in
They listened to wheels outside.

A Landau, black as the devil’s sin
And drawn by a single horse,
Rolled slowly up to The Black Dog Inn
By the side of the watercourse,
When out there came from the ***** house
In black from her head to tail,
A dollymop with a nosegay,
Wearing a bonnet, black, with a veil.

She’d climb up into the Landau while
The coachman, clad in a cloak,
Would give one flick with the reins,
And pull on the bit ‘til the horse had choked,
He’d take them off with a clatter
Wheels a-rattle on cobblestones,
His eyes agleam like a demon
While he whipped the horse to the bone.

The horse’s hooves on the cobbles
Warned ahead through the fog and mist,
As people cowered in doorways
Shouted a curse as the Landau passed,
They followed the glow of the gaslamps
Shedding their weak and feeble light,
And raced by the mighty river
Into the dark of the endless night.

They came to a halt at Wapping
Down where the river cast its spawn,
The bodies of dead and drowned who’d
Cursed their mothers for being born,
And hung on poles at the river’s edge
Was another terrible sight,
The bodies of sailor mutineers
That swung in their chains at night.

Hung on the Tyburn gallows
Then cut down and shackled again,
The bodies were coated with tallow
For a post mortem hanging in chain,
They’d bind them up with a winding cloth
Then coat them again in tar,
Hang them in chains at the riverside
‘Til their dust blew near and far.

The woman climbed out of the Landau
Took one look, and fell to her knees,
Her lover hung gently swaying,
Swaying in time to the river breeze,
His eyes stared out from the candle wax
And his mouth was shaped in an ‘Oh!’
He seemed to be saying, ‘Goodbye, my love;
What a terrible way to go!’

She wept like a woman demented,
Seized his legs, and pulled to her breast,
Clung to his swinging figure
Moaned like a creature, quite obsessed,
She tried transferring her warmth to him
But his cold was the cold of death,
And his eyes stared straight ahead of him
No thoughts, no love, no breath!

She climbed back into the Landau
As the coachman whipped it away,
And often at night they hear it go,
Those folks down Wapping way,
They say it spattered a stream of blood
On the road as it raced on by,
From the dollymop who’d slashed her throat
And lay in the coach to die.

And when there’s a mighty river fog
In the winter, down by the Thames,
They sit in the Inn they call Black Dog
And they drink to the health of friends,
They drink to the ones who’ve gone before
As they hear the wheels outside,
And hold their breath at the emptiness
As the door is opened wide!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

He worked in a great Department Store
As the window dresser’s mate,
Carting mannequins, wigs and clothes
From the back through an iron gate,
The store room piled to the roof with props
And the bolts of coloured drapes,
Was dark and damp, and a single lamp
Traced shadows through coats and capes.

The store stood over a hundred years
Was red brick to the core,
And towered above the other shops
Right up to the seventh floor,
They said there were gargoyles on the eaves
That would spout when the gutters filled,
And a Griffin standing with evil claws
That would leave a brave man chilled.

The buyer sat in a closet room
Where he’d watch the assistants work,
And call them in for the slightest sin
If he caught them trying to shirk,
He would warn them once, would warn them twice
He would warn them three times more,
Then send them packing to personnel
Way up on the seventh floor.

Nobody ever came back from there
Not even to punch their card,
Their coats and hats were collected up
And thrown, tossed out in the yard,
The beggars hovered around out back
When they heard the buyer roar,
‘Get your faggoty, skinny ***
On up to the seventh floor!’

Peter Peeps had been sound asleep
In the window well one day,
Trying to quell a head of Moselle
He’d imbibed, with Martha Hay,
A girl that worked on the second floor
With a line of maiden bra’s,
He’d had as much of a chance with her
As a flight to the planet Mars!

The buyer came to the window well
And he saw him sound asleep,
Then yelled, ‘Get up to the seventh floor,
You’re finished, Peter Peeps!’
So Peter sighed, and he took a ride
On the escalator up,
Higher than ever he’d been before,
His heart in a paper cup.

On the seventh floor was an old oak door
In a passageway filled with gloom,
A flickering gaslight either side
As he stepped through, into the room,
A metronome was ticking away
In a long, slow measured swing,
When a man in an old Top Hat approached,
‘Are you looking for anything?’

‘They sent me here to collect my pay,
Is there anything I should sign?’
‘You’ll get no pay from the Firm today
But you’re here, so now you’re mine!’
Peter backed to the old oak door
That had latched as he came in,
There wasn’t a handle on that side
And the man was looking grim.

‘You’ll never get out of here again,
You’ll have to work for your tea,
I’ll fix you up with a ledger, here
It’s eighteen seventy-three,
The seventh floor is a time-warp that
Was set when the store was built,
And all of you shirkers end up here
While you’re working off your guilt.’

He showed him the rows and rows of desks
Like a mid-Victorian link,
With everyone filling the ledgers in
With a pen they dipped in ink,
And there was Roger, and there was Ann
And there was Fiona Shaw,
He’d watched them once, all weaving their way
On up to the seventh floor.

The windows looked down onto the street
But it wasn’t a street he knew,
There wasn’t a horseless carriage there
And the other shops were few,
‘What if I smash the window here
And jump on out to be free?’
‘Then you will be buried before you’re born
In eighteen seventy-three!’

Peter Peeps looks out on a world
That had gone before he knew,
Then turns the page of his ledger back
To eighteen seventy-two,
There are rows and rows of figures there
That were written before his day,
But the one thing that he’s smiling for
Is the arrival of Martha Hay!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

There’s always been something controlling me,
I knew, but I knew not what,
Something diverting and foiling me
Since the days that I lay in my cot,
I thought it was simply a parent thing
As they whispered their rules in my ear,
The things that were right and the things that were wrong
And the things I would most have to fear.

They sent me to school and the teachers, too,
Must have read from the very same book,
They always laid blame and they said it the same
And the cane lent a sting to their hook.
‘You’re coming to learn, not to think for yourself,
You’ll repeat everything that I say,
And maybe just some of these rules will stick
If you dwell on the rules every day!’

Then once in the world my employers unfurled
All the rules and the regs I would keep,
I didn’t last long, I’d seen them before
And told them they put me to sleep.
The government fined and unlicensed me
From a book that they said was the law,
The magistrates sat on a heap of these books
As I shrugged and I said, ‘What for?’

I sat in the jail for contempt of court,
Spent plenty of time in my cell,
The world was consumed with a million rules
Designed to consign you to hell.
I watched all the lawyers and prisoners, cops
As they danced to the rules of the cot,
And sensed they were puppets, and most of them fools
Who would baulk at the words, ‘I will not!’

They’d hate to be questioned, they thought they were right,
If you disagreed you were canned,
They’d lock you away for a hospital stay
There was no going back, it was planned.
You had to be made to agree with their way
So they clamped electrodes on your head,
Then slide up the volts, and it wasn’t their fault
If it happened you ended up dead.

They called it Electro-therapy
And said it was doing you good,
But the thoughts in my brain they were never the same
When I came out from under that hood,
I saw the strings jerking from shoulders and heads
In a vision you couldn’t conceive,
And there were the hands that were pulling their strings
When I called out, ‘I don’t believe!’

‘I’ve never believed and I’ll never believe,’
I called, and they all moved away,
A thunderous cracking of mortar and ceiling,
It all fell apart on that day.
The strings fell away from my shoulders and hands
And I knew I was finally free,
And then I called up to the Puppet Master,
‘You won’t be controlling me!’

People were falling all over the place
As he dropped all the strings from his hands,
The bearded Master could see the disaster,
‘You’ve ruined my world and my plans!’
He paused for a moment and then he was gone
Leaving people to blink in the light,
The rules were the rules of the Puppet Master
Now we can decide what is right!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

When the roof came down in the copper mine
There wasn’t much hope, we said,
Those twenty men on the south-west drive
Are buried, and probably dead.
The guys came in from the midnight shift
And they shovelled away ‘til dawn,
Pumping air in over the drift
They propped where the roof was torn.

For nearly seventeen hours they worked
They took it in turns to drive,
A passage was finally opened up
Though the men were barely alive,
I watched them all come staggering out
They’d all survived to a man,
But the last one out had begun to shout:
‘There’s a guy in there, like Pan!’

They sent in the stretcher bearers, who
Were there for an hour or more,
The men were shaken and pale of face
And wouldn’t say what they saw.
The stretcher was bearing a crumpled form
That they’d covered up with a sheet,
‘We’d better be taking this to the zoo,
And everyone, be discreet!’

A rumour, much like a whispering sigh
Was spread through the mining town,
For everyone wanted to know the guy
They’d pulled from under the ground,
The men they’d saved from an early grave
Lay still in their hospital beds,
At every question they looked away,
Just lay there, shaking their heads.

Their syndicate lottery numbers won
On the Tuesday of that week,
A million each for the twenty men
But still, they wouldn’t speak.
I guess I was feeling curious
So I took myself to the zoo,
They’d closed it down for refurbishment
But I knew the keeper, Hugh.

He put his finger up to his lips
And he said, ‘Don’t make a sound!
You’ll get me shot if as like as not,
They see that you’re looking round.’
He let me in through the rear gate
That was clogged with vines and weeds,
And we crept unseen where we’d best be screened
In the shade of the lilac trees.

He pointed me up to the Tiger’s cage
And he said, ‘You go ahead!
I’ll not be going further than this,
But don’t get close, or you’re dead!’
I wandered carefully up to the cage
It was slowly becoming dark,
And something hung in the evening air,
A sulphurous smell in the park.

The Tiger lay all over the cage
Its body was ripped to bits,
Its blood was spattered in violent rage
A snarl was on its lips,
Then from the rear of the cage a shape
Came shambling up to the bars,
It stood upright as a human might
But it certainly wasn’t ours.

The eyes were narrow and slitted, and
They glowed with a dull rich red,
The beard was long and the teeth were strong
Set deep in a goat shaped head.
It seemed to be wearing an evil grin
As it seized the bars with its claws,
And over above its pointed ears
Was the hint of a pair of horns.

Its legs were the crooked legs of Pan
There wasn’t the slightest doubt,
I took one step away from the cage
And stifled a fearful shout,
But then its shape had begun to change
And a tail whipped round at the bars,
It was long and pointed, covered in scale
And marked with a hundred scars.

It grew in size, in front of my eyes
As I stood, stock still and stared,
Pressed its face up close to the bars
And grinned with its nostrils flared,
A sudden flame shot out of its mouth
And a voice rose up from its gorge,
And rasped a name that lay deep in my brain,
‘So we meet again, St. George!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Samantha worked in the Take-away
Right next to the Coalpit Mine,
With a cheery smile for everyone
Til the day that her eyes went blind.
One minute she served up fish and fries
Then her world went eerie and dark,
‘Has the sun gone suddenly down,’ she said,
‘Behind the trees in the park?’

They called me back from my p.m. shift
For they knew that we two were close,
She’d dated some other miners too
But she’d gone with me the most.
‘You’d better get her on home,’ they said,
‘There’s something wrong with her eyes,’
She stared in a peculiar way
With a vacant look of surprise.

The doctor said there was nothing wrong,
Or nothing that he could see,
‘It must be something psychological,’
That’s what he said to me.
He flashed a light in each of her eyes
But she didn’t even wince,
I must admit, it troubled me less
Than events that happened since.

I said perhaps we should get engaged
Rather than take it slow,
I’d be her eyes and a steady guide
Wherever she’d need to go,
She smiled that wonderful smile at me
And said, ‘You need to be sure,
You’re tying yourself to an invalid
Who can’t venture out the door.’

We bought the ring at a jeweller’s shop
Where she chose the ring by feel,
A tiny diamond, glittered and shone,
She asked if the stone was real.
We laughed as I guided her back home
And she clung on tight to my arm,
I swore that I would protect her then,
And stop her coming to harm.

A week went by, and I took my leave
From the dirt and dust of the mine,
We laughed and loved and said together
That things would work out fine,
But then I noticed a subtle change
In the way that the house was laid,
The rooms seemed somewhat bigger than ever
The architects had made.

The chairs and tables would move about
From one day to the next,
I asked Samantha what she had done
And she answered, ‘Nothing yet!’
She didn’t trip and she didn’t fall
As I did, the fault was mine,
I had two eyes but I couldn’t gauge
The depths of Samantha’s mind.

She said she had to rebuild her world,
Recall from her memory,
And if it wasn’t exactly right
It wouldn’t matter to me.
‘You have two eyes, you can navigate,
While I’m still trapped in the dark,
I still remember that day of fate
When the sun blinked out in the park.’

We opened the door to venture out
And I blinked, and gave a grunt,
The supermarket was on the right
With everything back to front.
‘The mine was off in the east,’ I said,
‘But now it’s off to the west.’
Samantha shrugged, ‘Does it matter now?
You’ll see, it’s all for the best.’

She walked as if she had perfect sight,
While I just followed behind,
My head was spinning in horror at
Each different thing that we’d find.
And people stood, and stared in the street
As if in a total daze,
They turned and twisted and took it in
This mirror glimpse of their ways.

‘You have to set it to rights,’ I said,
‘You have to turn it around.
The people here will be going mad
At what you’ve done to their town!’
‘They’ll have to adjust,’ Samantha shrugged
As she went to step off the kerb,
Just as a double-decker bus
Came round the corner and swerved.

‘The road was suddenly back to front,’
The driver said, as he cried,
‘I had to get back over the line,’
He said, as Samantha died.
We live in a topsy-turvy world
In thrall to the power of mind,
When anything can that happen will…
(I hope I never go blind!)

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

We’re all down here on a long, long train
To be taken for a ride,
As the signs flash past each year, we gasp
At the changing countryside,
Each mile is a passing minute, and
Each year is a passing mile,
The further we get from the starting point
The more that it seems worthwhile.

Each coach is numbered a different year
It depends when we got on,
Each coach was first hooked on at the back
But then it will move along,
The train gets longer with every mile
As we slowly move to the front,
And nothing can stop this railway ride
He gave as his covenant.

We know there’s a tunnel coming up
It’s somewhere around the bend,
We left our names at the starting point
There’s a headstone at the end.
I drop my poems along the track
For the ones that are far behind,
In hopes that they might remember me
As a man who was simply kind.

My children are twenty coaches back
My parents further ahead,
They’ve both gone into the tunnel now
Past a light that’s showing red.
That tunnel’s ahead for all of us
As each coach will end its ride,
But isn’t it going to be glorious
When we pass out the other side?

David Lewis Paget

The ice drew lace on the window panes
We couldn’t see out for a week,
The air had frozen and blocked the drains
And my tears were ice on my cheek.
‘Come back to bed and forget her now
She’s been gone since the crescent Moon,
Her passing has freed you from your vow
Yet your grief’s pervading the room.’

‘I need to know what was in her mind
On the day that she passed away,
She left no message of any kind
Why she swallowed the draught that day.
But you were there when she combed her hair,
You were there for the last words said,
She must have told of her deep despair
Or she wouldn’t have ended dead.’

‘You knew my sister had many moods,
You knew, before you were wed,
She’d lie, consulting the ancient runes
While hiding deep in her bed.
Her superstitions were known, it seems
Her hold on the world was loose,
She drifted half in and out of dreams
But death was what she would choose.’

I shook my head and I walked away,
And ploughed through the drifted snow,
Crunched a trail through the empty streets
To the cemetery gates at Stowe,
The clouds were grey in the sky above
And the snow built up in the trees,
While headstones peered from their icy tombs
Like sinners, down on their knees.

I scraped the ice from the headstone face
That said ‘Elizabeth Jane,’
‘An Angel fallen to earth,’ it said
‘While her heart was wracked with pain.’
A shadow fell on the marble face
As I turned, but no-one was there,
Then words appeared like an act of grace,
‘My sister killed me - Beware!’

The horror showed on my face, I rose
To follow the tracks I’d made,
But somebody else had left their prints
Leading away from the grave,
The tracks were made at a frantic pace
And they forged on way ahead,
Leading me through the cemetery gates
But Elizabeth Jane was dead!

A storm blew up on the way back home
And had turned the house to ice,
I forced my way up the frozen stairs
To confront Margot Desize.
But she lay frozen with eyes a-stare
And a glance said she was dead,
The horror fixed in her final glare
As a shadow stood by the bed!

David Lewis Paget

Words flutter by us,
Caught in their moments,
Words sent to try us,
‘Loss’ and ‘Elopements’,
Some may inspire us,
Others may burn,
Once they decry us
They never return

Some were left out there,
When I was young,
Caught in the frost where
My youth was undone.
Some may pass by me
More often, and then,
Echo in silence and
Drip from my pen.

Where do they float to,
That is the mystery,
Some learnt by rote to
Be writ in each history,
Others elude us but
Catch at our breath,
Slide in our coffins and
Hound us to death.

While we are ever
Living and breathing,
Some words should never
Be heard, one is ‘Leaving’,
Three words are only
Both honest and true,
Should one be left lonely,
And those, ‘I love you.’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

‘You have to come up to the house,’ she said,
‘I hate to be there at night,
I have two ghosts in the old bedposts
And each of them wants to fight,
They make their way to the kitchen there
And clatter the pots and pans,
The woman ghost is a Gretel, and
The masculine ghost is Hans.’

I said, ‘You must be imagining,
There’s not a ghost you can see,’
‘Well, I’ve got two and I’m telling you
I see, believe you me!
The guy is a cranky, violent fool,
He must have been bad in life,
While she defends herself with a stool
Each time that he beats his wife.’

The house was Gothic and Romanesque
And leaned out over the street,
It had an arch like a gothic church
With an overhead retreat.
And that’s where she kept the poster bed
Where the ghosts, she said, reside,
‘They can’t come out in the light of day
So they go in there to hide.’

We spent the evening playing cards
To wait for the witching hour,
Sat in our coats to await the ghosts
And their ectoplasmic shower,
‘It often gets messy,’ Cassandra said,
‘At the point they first appear,
They give out this vapour in the air,
A bit like the froth on beer.’

It must have been eleven o’clock
When Cassandra fell asleep,
I thought I could see her nodding off
Though her eyes began to peep,
Each nostril gave out a pale white smoke
And it formed on left and right,
One was Gretel and one was Hans
And it gave me quite a fright.

It didn’t take them a moment then,
She screamed and he would bawl,
He beat her with a broom handle and
Then pinned her against the wall,
She kicked him fair in the shins and ran
Right out of the room in there,
I watched him yell as he followed her
Down by the kitchen stair.

And then there was a clatter of pans
A noise like you’ve never heard,
They threw them around the kitchen
Until Gretel was calling ‘Merde!’
I tried to rouse Cassandra, who
Was groggy, but still awake,
I said, ‘You’ll have to be exorcised,’
And watched her begin to shake.

‘They may have been in the bedposts when
You came, I’m sure that’s true,
But maybe they found a better place
For now they live in you.’
I told her the ectoplasm formed
From her, and from whence it came,
She covered her mouth and nose and said,
‘They’ll never get back again!’

When daylight dawned in that gothic house
And the sun came shining in,
The ghosts came back to the bedroom and
They paid for their ghostly sin,
Cassandra fended them off until
They both were shouting, ‘Merde!’
Until the light had destroyed them with
A scream that you should have heard.

There’s not been a ghost in that gothic house
From then until this day,
I’m visiting still with Cassandra and
We’ve found a game to play,
It has to do with that poster bed
With its polished, wooden posts,
But the one thing that we’re certain of,
We’ll never be seen by ghosts.

David Lewis Paget

While wandering on a local beach
Half buried in **** and sand,
The sparkle of something caught my eye
The shape of an old tin can.
I kicked it loose from entangling ****
And saw there was something within,
A colourful creature there indeed,
An octopus in a tin.

I thought it cute so I took it home
To put in the garden pond,
Then added salt for a briny mix
So it wouldn’t think to abscond.
It swam on out of the tin to feed
And seized on a goldfish there,
I said to Diane, ‘He has a need,’
While she just tore at her hair.

‘What were you thinking?’ Diane said,
‘It’ll eat all the fish we’ve got,’
‘They’re only a couple of bucks,’ I said,
‘I’ll get some more at the shop.’
He settled right in, our strangest pet,
And cost us to feed the least,
I said that I’d name the tinker, ‘Jet’,
Diane just called him ‘The Beast’.

He started to grow, outgrew his can,
So settled down in the depths,
He couldn’t be seen for thick pondweed,
Diane said,’It’s for the best.’
The dog would bark when The Beast came up,
Would stand there, wagging his tail.
We loved that dog, though barely a pup,
Then Diane began to wail.

‘It’s eaten the effing dog,’ she said,
Her language was more than coarse,
And Rin-Tin-Tin in the pond was skin,
She said, ‘Keep it away from my horse!’
I poked around in the pool for him
Just trying to make him rise,
He bit the end of my pole clean off,
He must have grown to a size.

She said I had to stop feeding him
But that only made it worse,
He looked for food, and he got the cat
As it chased a couple of birds.
Diane was walking down by the pond
When I suddenly heard her scream,
A tentacle wrapped around her leg
It looked like a nightmare scene.

I tried my best to peel it away
The octopus was too strong,
Diane went struggling over the edge
And fell right into the pond,
It took her down to the lower depths
And ate her, clean to the bone,
I tell this tale, so you won’t forget,
Don’t take an octopus home.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The fire began in the cobbler’s shop
In a terrace of shops that day,
And spread right through to the milliners
That was owned by Mrs. Gray,
It leapt up into the rooftop beams
And galloped along the street,
Burning a swathe through the fodder stores
And the blacksmith, Simon Fleet.

The smoke rose into an Autumn sky
And blackened the old clock tower,
It didn’t pause, it was far too dry
For even an Autumn shower,
And Simon said, as the embers fell
To the household servant, Gert,
‘The courtyard’s starting to look like hell,
Get out of that silken skirt.’

He hadn’t looked twice at Gert before
And she was so awful shy,
While he was never the greatest catch
With his horseshoe-looking eye,
But once he saw that the embers fell
He was more than kept alert,
He knew the fabric would burn like hell,
The silk in the servant’s skirt.

She’d bought the skirt, it was second-hand
From a Drapers along the street,
It felt so silky and smooth, she’d said
From her waist down to her feet,
She liked the line of the skirt, the lads
Would see her pass, and stare,
So like the ladies she aped, she swore
To wear no underwear.

So Gert had blushed as she heard the words
Of the Blacksmith, Simon Fleet,
She wasn’t going to show her legs
To Simon, out in the street,
The skirt went up with a sudden roar
And he heard her pitiful cries,
So trying his best to douse the flames
He wrapped canvas round her thighs.

The blaze was stopped by the corner shop
Where the fire engine stayed,
And kept from running its rampant course
Along the Grand Parade,
But Simon said it was Gertie’s legs
That had failed her, in her pride,
But caught his eye with a tender sigh
As they fed the fire inside.

Whenever they speak of the shopfront fire
It’s as if it paved the way,
The two have said, to the day they wed
And their happiness today,
For Gertie doesn’t have charming looks
And he’s ugly too, says Gert,
But Simon says it’s a treat, that heat,
Under a silken skirt.

David Lewis Paget

I used to think that thunder was
The sound of the Hammer, Thor,
He’d beat it up on the clouds above
Each time he was waging war,
He’d quell his foes with a lightning strike
Or drown them all in his rain,
Whenever he came along at night
His purpose was always pain.

For we lived down in the valley where
The tendency was to flood,
Whenever the river was swollen with
A squirt of his enemy’s blood,
We’d have to climb up to higher ground
And sit there, soaked to the skin,
With lightning flashing around our heads
We’d need to pay for our sins.

‘Pay for our sins,’ my father said
In a voice that rumbled and roared,
He’d pull a hood up over his head
And speak to the god called Thor,
Then Thor replied with a mighty blast
To drown out my father’s cries,
As if he answered him there at last,
‘All that you speak are lies!’

While mother sat in a silent weep
As often she’d done before,
‘Why did you have to build our house
Way down on the valley floor?
We would have been safer, further up
And still walk down to the stream,
To carry a bucket of water up,
But all that you do is dream!’

That was his sin, my mother said,
He didn’t know black from white,
He never looked far enough ahead
He didn’t know wrong from right,
Dreaming up schemes that failed, it seems
Like a prophet, living in dread,
That one black night at the river’s height
We’d all be drowned in our bed.

‘Not that his bed means much to him,’
My mother would often moan,
‘Not since that gypsy girl, that Kym
Stayed in the valley alone,
He spends his time in her caravan
Drinking her gypsy tea,
And letting her hold and read his hand,
He never did that with me!’

And so it was on a cold, black night
He’d gone to her caravan,
‘Just to check that she’ll be all right,’
He said, just playing the man,
The thunder crashed on the mountain top
While we prayed, and gave up thanks,
To the mighty Thor beating at our door
That the river not break its banks.

Lightning flashed though the vale of trees
Where she’d parked her gypsy van,
And then my mother was on her knees
As we heard a mighty bang,
For lightning struck at the heart of sin
And it set the van ablaze,
While both the sinners were trapped within
And paid for their sinful ways.

We buried him on the valley floor
For my mother said, ‘It’s right.
He doesn’t deserve a headstone
Nor a grave that’s watertight.’
Whenever the god of thunder calls
And the river overflows,
I think of my father down below
And I wonder if he knows.

David Lewis Paget

I’d read of the yacht that was lost at sea,
Among the Antarctic ice,
I never thought it would matter to me
Though its ending wasn’t so nice,
There were three on board, and two had died,
But one must have got away,
For I found the log of its final days
In a second-hand shop in the Bay.

It was badly damaged with damp and rot,
And some of the ink had run,
Some pages stuck so I couldn’t read
The writing on every one.
But the hairs rose up on the back of my neck
To read what there was to see,
For a tale of human failings were what
Became so apparent to me.

They’d gone in search of the southern whales,
John Stanley, Evan and Eve,
Though why they went at that time of year
I find it hard to conceive,
For the winter’s cruel in those Southern climes
And the sails ice up with the spray,
‘It’s hell when there’s no-one to keep you warm,’
John Stanley wrote on the day.

For Evan and Eve kept each other warm,
While John made do with a quilt,
He wrote that Eve kept looking his way,
Could that be a sign of his guilt?
He waited till Evan had gone topside
Then made his advance to Eve,
But she just pushed him away, and then,
He wrote, ‘I caught at her sleeve.’

‘She fell, and crashed to the galley floor,
And split her head on the sink,
The wound on her scalp was red and raw,
I needed a moment to think.
I lifted her into an easy chair
And wiped the blood from her brow,
Then Evan came tumbling down the stair,
‘What have you done to her now?’

The following entry was smeared with blood,
I couldn’t read what it said,
I only know when he wrote again
That Evan must have been dead.
‘I lifted him over the starboard rail
And slipped him into the sea,
His body had left a bloodied trail
But that had left Eve and me.’

‘She came around on the second day,
But only could sit and stare,
So I lifted her into the lower bunk,
I needed her warmth in there.
A look of horror had crossed her face
When I crawled under the quilt,
And held her tight on that second night,
I can’t explain how it felt.’

The next few pages were in a lump
I couldn’t tear them apart,
But then a page was written in rage,
‘I’d given the girl my heart.
But though she still couldn’t speak to me
She lay on the bunk and spat,
I told her that Evan had gone, so she
Had better get over that.’

The ink had run on the following page
In water that looked like tears,
So he must have felt her rejection while
She lay, gave way to her fears.
The entry he wrote on the seventh day,
‘I held her close, and she sighed,
I thought my love had begun to move her,
When I awoke, she’d died.’

‘I held her close on the seventh night
But she had become so cold,
I tried to give her my body heat
As the yacht in the ocean rolled,
I couldn’t slip her over the side
To do what I’d done before,
She needed a christian burial so
I’d take her back to the shore.’

The next few pages were merely rant
Bemoaning the love he’d lost,
But never a mention of Evan there,
Who’d paid the ultimate cost.
The sun came out on the fifteenth day
And the cabin became so warm,
Where Eve had lain in her rotting flesh
‘The worms came out in a swarm.’

‘I couldn’t believe the smell down there,
Her body was falling apart,
I should have buried her when I could,
I just didn’t have the heart.’
The yacht was locked in Antarctic ice
When the ice breaker came through,
And took both John and the Ice Log off,
So now I can read it to you.

But Eve lies still on the ice bound yacht
A skeleton now, but free,
Her soul in search of Evan, her love,
They’ll meet down deep in the sea.
While John still roams abroad on the earth
And carries his personal hell,
To mourn the love that he found and lost
Among the Antarctic swell.

David Lewis Paget

I saw her first in the lighting flash
That lit her up in the storm,
The rain was beating on down to slash
Her more than shapely form,
She’d just emerged from a woodland copse
Was soaked as she could be,
So came to shelter beneath the
Mighty Oak, along with me.

Her hair was more than bedraggled, but
As black as a phantom crow,
Her clothes were old and ragged, but
They clung to her figure so,
I asked her what had possessed her then
To wander out in the rain,
She looked at me and began to pout,
‘I could well ask you the same.’

I said I wasn’t prepared for it,
It came down out of the blue,
Just as the sun went underground
And dark, so what about you?
She said that she only ventured out
When the daylight was eclipsed,
In wind and storm she was newly born
On an evening such as this.

But then she sighed and I saw her eyes
Weren’t blue or green, but black,
Her lips an unearthly red, like blood,
No lipstick looked like that.
She said, ‘they call me The Selfling, for
I offer myself for free,
I give whatever you want, but then
I take what I want for me.’

She lay down under that mighty tree
And pulled me down on top,
Onto a pile of Autumn leaves,
And said, ‘now don’t you stop.’
I must confess that I did no less
Than The Selfling said to do,
As she took me into that wilderness
There was pain and pleasure too.

Her teeth bit into my helpless wrist
As we rolled there in the mud,
I felt my essence begin to ebb
As she took a pint of blood.
When I awoke I was on my own
Though I caught a final glimpse,
Of her, in a flash of lightning, though
I’ve never seen her since.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I saw the note on the mantelpiece
When I got home, rather late,
I knew that something was wrong when I
First saw the open gate,
The house was still and the air was chill
As I called her name, Lorraine,
The note said, ‘Don’t try to follow me,
I’ve caught the evening train.’

I stood for more than a minute
Staring down at her tidy scrawl,
And didn’t breathe for a minute more
‘Til I thought that I would fall,
She’d often threatened to leave me but
I’d put that down to pique,
I stood there now with a furrowed brow
And a future, looking bleak!

I studied the train timetable
Was she going West or North?
The West Express would have left, I guessed,
She’d head for the Firth of Forth,
I backed the car from the garage
Dipped the lights and stepped on the gas,
And headed on up the Great North Road
Beside the railway tracks.

The train was fully a mile ahead
It was lit like a silver snake,
Winding in and out of the bends
And easy to overtake,
I pulled abreast by a hillside crest
To a carriage, just on the rise,
With a single female passenger,
Who sat there, dabbing her eyes.

I knew that the train would stop at York
So I raced on there instead,
Jumped out and ran to the station
While the blood had rushed to my head,
I caught the train as it pulled on out
And I found her on her own,
Weeping free, with her back to me,
She thought she was all alone.

She jumped when I sat in front of her,
And I reached on out, in vain,
‘Why did you even follow me,
I thought that I’d made it plain!’
‘You know I never could let you go,
You mean all the world to me!’
She turned and looked out the window
So I knelt there, down on one knee.

I fumbled deep in my pockets, felt
For the only helpful thing,
Slipped it onto her finger, then
A big brass curtain ring,
She laughed and said, ‘You don’t mean it!’
But her eyes were bright with tears,
And I said after I’d kissed her
That I’d meant to ask, for years!

‘You know that you’ll have to come on home
At five, or six at the most,
No more of your office parties where
I burn and spoil the roast!’
I put my hand on my heart right there
And I quelled her, with a look,
It has to be pretty special when
The master marries the cook!

David Lewis Paget

There’s a blank sheet of paper before me,
It’s as blank as our lives have become,
But nothing’s been said, though the passion is dead,
We still make believe we are one.
And the days seem to drift on forever
In this mist that I call ‘No Man’s Land,’
Whatever I say, you’ll be looking away
And you never reach out for my hand.

We eat all our meals in a silence
And pretend we enjoy it that way,
I reach for the newspaper, you for a book
So our eyes never meet in dismay.
Where there once was a ripple of laughter
As your foot rubbed inside of my leg,
Your lips are now pursed in a silence that’s cursed
And I feel that you want me to beg.

We shop, as if we are together,
And we smile when we see our old friends,
But friendship is rare, as our friends couldn’t bear
To watch as this partnership ends.
They can sense all that distance between us,
And note that our smiles are grim,
We never accept invitations,
Unless they’re for ‘her’ or for ‘him’.

Now you’re suddenly working long hours
At the bookshop, when you feel disposed,
Though I’ve wandered at night in the market,
And noticed, the bookshop is closed.
Then you wander back in about midnight,
And go on straight up to your room,
You’re taking your showers at the strangest of hours
While I sit downstairs in the gloom.

So now that I’ve put it on paper,
I shall leave this brief note by your bed,
It might shine a light on our silences,
The issues that should have been said.
I know you’ll be happier once I’ve gone
So I’m catching the midnight train,
I want you to know that I loved you once,
But that love has now turned, to pain!

David Lewis Paget

The Chief of the General Staff awoke
To the ring of the telephone,
He’d tried to ****** a couple of hours
At his Hunting Lodge, in Scone,
But the red phone was insistent, it
Would ring ‘til he picked it up,
‘For God’s sake Carter, what’s it now?’
The answer was abrupt.

‘The Early Warning’s gone to red,
They need you down at Staff!
Hang on, I’m going to patch you through
We’re not sure if it’s naff.
It didn’t go through to orange as
It usually does at first,
But we can’t afford to take a chance…’
The General’s lips were pursed.

‘Scramble the FA-18’s
Are the carriers out, d’you know?’
‘There’s two in the Med and one caught dead
In the dock at Scapa Flow!
The Seventh Army’s at Aldershot
And the Fifth’s in the Middle East.’
‘Well, whether the troops are out or not
It’s Martial Law, at least.’

The Action Room in the basement of
A secret place in Poole,
Had interrupted a war game with
The Army Training School.
The radar screens were alight with scenes
Beamed in from the new AWAC’s,
With missiles coming from everywhere
‘We need to be hitting back!’

The submarines were alerted to
Prepare their missile racks,
The silo’s over in Kansas armed
And ready to attack,
Then suddenly in the Action Room
The radar screens were clear,
There wasn’t a single sign or trace
Of a missile coming near.

And down in a London Nursing Home
They were leading him away,
A nice old fellow with Parkinson’s
With a half-full breakfast tray,
They snapped the lid of his laptop
Told him, ‘George, you’re going to be canned!’
He said, ‘I just got the hang of it,
That game called ‘The High Command!’’

David Lewis Paget

There were tigers, bears and elephants,
The day that the circus came,
And dwarves and clowns in our tiny town
It never would be the same.
The people stared as it passed on by
It was like a grand parade,
If only we’d known what was going down,
It was time to be afraid.

The tent went up in the open field
Behind old Barney’s store,
And lines of booths for the local youths
At a penny or so a draw,
While lines of coloured bulbs lit up
Where the fairground rides were set,
And musical hurdy-gurdies sounded
Just like a passing jet.

Then girls in flimsy bikinis flew
Up and under the top,
A giant net underneath them, yet
In case that one might drop.
The Ringmaster with his hat and whip
And his giant, curled moustache,
Kept all of the ******* riders straight
In line, and under his lash.

The elephants were herded in
And stood on their great hind legs,
Trumpeting sighs, and rolling their eyes,
Just like a dog that begs.
The clowns raced in and disrupted all
Clambering over the seats,
And roused the crowd, that laughed out loud
At all their ridiculous feats.

At ten, the tent had begun to whirl
And the audience went still,
As hounds had bounded in and around,
The Hounds of the Baskervilles.
A massive bell had begun to chime
The Ringmaster’s coat turned black,
He grew in size right before their eyes
And some had a heart attack.

He grew two horns on top of his head
That made him look like a goat,
And then a shimmering tail of dread
Slid out, from under his coat.
‘You pays yer money and takes yer choice,’
His voice boomed out in a bit,
The prayers prayed and the screamers screamed
As the floor sank into a pit.

The first three rows fell into the pit,
The rest of us stood and cowered,
While he just floated and cracked his whip
Over his pit of power.
And flames shot up from the pit below
To the chime of the Black Mass Bell,
We knew we stood at that terrible hour
By the Seventh Circle of Hell.

Our lips were sealed, and I risk my soul
And any future of grace,
By telling you all just what went down
In this, now devilish place.
You’ll see the field behind Barney’s store
Lies burnt, still black with their blood,
Where once the Devil’s own circus came
And set up in our neighbourhood.

David Lewis Paget

They bet me I couldn’t spend the night
Locked up in the Abbot’s loft,
Up where recusants once, in fright
Would wait for the stake at Pentecost.
They’d once piled ******* high in the square
And taunted all night long,
When peasants stood in the firelight
In a massive, cheering throng.

But that was hundreds of years ago
So of course I said I could,
I should have known there was something wrong
When I saw the man in the hood,
The loft was next to the church bell tower
And would creak when they pulled the rope
Of the giant bell that sat in its bower
To wait commands from the Pope.

I climbed the circular, rickety stair
And they came and locked me in,
There wasn’t a spark of light in there
It was dark, as black as sin,
And all there was was a narrow bed
On a hard, old wooden plank,
A single cover to keep me warm
But I knew just who to thank.

They played the silliest games, of course,
They would howl outside the door,
Just as I started to settle down
I would hear this terrible roar,
Somehow the timbers would start to creak
When they put a strain on the rope,
And then the bell with a sound like hell
Would boom, and I’d almost choke.

I lay the night in a fevered sleep
But I swear someone came in,
I felt a breeze from the open door
And that coarse, harsh breath of sin,
But then a gurgling, choking sound
As my hair stood up on end,
I stayed curled up in my dark surround
As the door creaked once, then slammed.

When morning came, a sliver of light
Shone in through a rafter beam,
It fell upon a terrible sight
A nightmare, wrapped in a dream,
A man, whose body lay by the bed
His throat all ragged and torn,
And blood in puddles of horrible dread,
I wished I’d never been born.

They must have rushed on up to my screams
Flung open the padlocked door,
Then stood in silence, staring at me
And what lay dead on the floor,
I saw him then, the man in the hood
He’d wanted someone to blame,
And there I was, all covered in blood
With friends to witness my shame.

They’d bet me I couldn’t spend the night
Locked up in the Abbot’s loft,
Up where recusants once, in fright
Would wait for the stake at Pentecost.
But now my nights are spent in a cell
Dreaming of death and blood,
And why he’d want to send me to hell
That infamous man in the hood.

David Lewis Paget

The cottage in the country
Had become my main retreat,
From the chaos of the city,
From its never ending beat,
From the traffic and the steeples
Of the people and their cares,
I could leave it all behind me
When I went to ground out there.

It was just an hour’s driving
Through some shady country lanes,
Round the far side of a mountain
And by cultivated plains,
Until sheltered in a valley
I could spy our cottage roof,
And my tension would release me
When arriving there, with Ruth.

There was little of the comfort
That we take for granted there,
Just a worn old wooden table
And for each, a shaky chair,
With an ancient cast iron heater
And a kettle on the hob,
We had the whole world beaten,
It was like a gift from God.

At dusk we’d wander hand in hand
Out past the Pepper trees,
When the heat of day was cooling
With a gentle valley breeze,
But lately I had sensed out there
That something must be wrong,
I couldn’t quite get over it,
The feeling was so strong.

I waited ‘til the morning, then
I paced the ground outside,
I hadn’t been mistaken, though
My memory had lied,
I thought there’d been just sixteen paces,
So I told myself,
From cottage to the Pepper tree,
But now, there was but twelve.

I hesitated speaking out,
Then mentioned it to Ruth,
We’ve always been wide open
And there’s nothing like the truth.
She came and paced it out with me,
I think she thought I lied,
Then went back in the cottage and
She sat right down, and cried.

We spent a pensive week out there
And noticed how the floor
Pushed up in different places where
It raised, and jammed the door,
And cracks were re-appearing where
I’d fixed them long ago,
The cottage walls were leaning
And I said, ‘I told you so!’

We paced each day the garden from
The cottage to the trees,
The changes were so slight we prayed
And Ruth would mutter, ‘Please!’
But one day when we paced it from
The Peppers to the den,
‘It’s not twelve paces anymore,’
I said, ‘It’s only ten!’

‘So what’s the explanation, John?’
Ruth said, before we left,
I didn’t have the answers, I
Was feeling so bereft.
‘There’s something scientific
Going on, beyond our ken,
The world has started shrinking,
And it has to do with men,’

‘Perhaps the outward motion of
Our growing Universe,
Has stopped at last, and now the thing
Is moving in reverse!’
I only know our one retreat
Has shrunk to half its size,
The trees are at our old front door,
And distance never lies!

David Lewis Paget

He gazed at me with his rheumy eyes,
‘You think that you’re getting old!
You’ll not go travel that lonely valley
Until your bones are cold.’
His voice was like the sound of a rasp
Bubbling up through his chest,
And his claw-like hands reached out for mine
As I backed away from his desk.

‘I see that you won’t come close to me
And I can’t blame you for that,
This body holds a corrupted soul
That’s caught, like a drowning rat.
I tasted sin ‘til I’d had my fill
When I once was young, like you,
I’m twice as old as you think I am
At a hundred and twenty two.’

I took a further step from his desk
And I let his words sink in,
I’d known that he was a billionaire
But not that he’d tasted sin.
‘They told me you had the answers, you
Could steer me to great success!’
‘I could, but given your chances, you
Should probably aim for less.’

‘I aimed as high as I thought I could
But life only gave me gruel,
I wanted to rise as high as the rest
But the lack of success was cruel,
They passed me by for promotion while
The idiots by me flew,
I watched them counting their bonuses
While the ones that I got were few.’

‘So envy lies at the heart of it,
You think it’s better with wealth,
You only can spend a part of it
What you really need is health,
Your cheeks are ruddy, your eyes are bright
You can walk in the winter rain,
While I sit crippled with untold wealth
In a body that’s racked with pain.’

‘But you’ve been able to buy the best
In a long and a fruitful life,
While I’ve been able to give much less
At home, to my loving wife.’
‘At least your woman has stayed by you,
She hasn’t been fired by greed,
She’s more content than the wives I knew
Who wanted more than they need.’

‘I don’t have even a single friend,’
He said, with a misty eye,
‘But plenty of greedy hangers-on
Who are waiting for me to die.
I wasn’t warned when I signed the form
In blood, that the heart grows cold,
That even the love of my children then
Could only be bought with gold.’

He shuffled the papers on his desk
And pushed one across to me,
‘Just sign on the bottom line in blood
And you’ll have everything you see.’
I looked at his ancient, withered form,
At the lines in his face of woe,
Thought of my wife and children, then:
‘I think I’d better just go!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Down at the end of Kilmartin Street
Where nobody seems to go,
A widow lives in an ancient mill
Where the river will overflow,
The mill race turns the mighty wheel
Though it grinds no wheat or corn,
It’s not been used as a working mill
Since before we both were born.

And the widow there is a mystery,
For we don’t know where she’s been,
She doesn’t give out her history
Though we know her name’s Christine,
She’s rarely seen in the street outside
But the gown she wears is black,
And those that visit and go inside
Are rarely seen to come back.

And I’ve watched myself, that paddle wheel,
It seems to go in reverse,
Whenever she has a visitor there
It’s as if the mill is cursed,
For then the water flows uphill
It’s against all laws, I know,
Whoever heard of the water going
Back to the overflow?

There’s a warning sign on the portico
And a warning sign within,
‘Don’t think to enter the Devil’s Mill
If your life is filled with sin,
For it may get rid of the things you want
And delete the good things too,
You may uncover a life within,
But of course, that’s up to you.’

I went one day to the portico
And beat on the old front door,
Then heard her footsteps begin to echo
Across the flagstone floor,
The door flung wide and she stood aside
And I walked into the mill,
But heard the grind of the wheel rewind
Outside, I can hear it still.

I felt my head beginning to spin
As I travelled back in time,
Undoing every single action
That once I’d thought were mine,
Then once outside, I stood and cried
For my world was not the same,
I’d lost my only love, my bride
And forgotten our baby’s name.

I thought I’d possibly get them back
If I went again to the mill,
And stood just cautiously inside
While the wheel went forward still,
But the widow blocked the door to me
And she said, ‘Don’t come again,
You only get but a single chance
Or the end result is pain.’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

They’d gone to live in an old stone house
On the further side of a hill,
‘You’ll come to enjoy the countryside.’
She said, ‘I never will!
I’ll miss my friends and the city streets,
And where will I go to shop?’
‘You shop too much as it is,’ he said,
‘Perhaps it’s the time to stop.’

He’d taken a job on a local farm,
He wanted to get away,
Away from her supercilious friends,
The ones that had made her stray.
He’d caught her necking with Edward Jones
At the Carlton, out for a drink,
The ***** was seeping into her bones,
She needed to stop, and think.

She said it was only harmless fun,
He didn’t mean much to her,
‘He’s just a friend that I’ve known since when,
It was just a peck, I swear.’
‘Your friend’s been after your skirt too long,
He drinks you into a fog,
He’ll take advantage, so you beware,
I’ve heard that he’s called ‘Black Dog!’

She wandered around the house alone
When he went to work at the farm,
Scoured the house for a bottle of gin,
Or something to keep her warm.
She looked out over the countryside,
Was suddenly on her guard,
For bounding over the garden stile
Was a ******* dog in the yard.

His coat was sleek, and his body lean
And his tongue lolled out of his jaw,
She took a slug of the Gilbey’s Gin
Found hidden behind a door.
The dog lay panting, and stared at her
With its eyes of grim intent,
While she stared back through the window pane,
And trembled until it went.

A week went by, and it came each day,
And stared at her from the yard,
She couldn’t move while the dog was there
But she kept the windows barred.
When Ben came home from his daily toil
He could see she was most upset,
‘You’re pale and shivering, Gail,’ he said,
‘What seems to be wrong, my pet?’

‘I can’t go into the garden, Ben,
I’m stuck in this house all day,
It’s cold and lonely within these walls
Each time that you go away.’
‘You need to open the doors,’ he said,
‘And open the windows too,
You should be letting the sun shine in
With the fresh air blowing through.’

She didn’t tell him about the dog,
She thought that he’d think her mad,
‘It’s only a dog,’ she thought he’d say,
And suddenly felt quite sad.
‘I’ll try,’ she muttered, but shook inside
At the thought of an open door,
With a ******* dog come wandering in,
And slavering at the jaw.

It came each day for another week
Then she threw the window wide,
The breeze rushed in and it calmed her down
With the scent of the countryside.
The dog came up to the window then
And it placed its paws on the sill,
Its eyes had gleamed, turned red it seemed
And it almost broke her will.

She seemed to hear in her inner ear
What the dog, in its gruff, low tones,
Was beaming into her mind, so clear,
‘Come back to Edward Jones!
He’ll keep you clear of the countryside
And you’ll have your friends as well,’
But reflected back from the black dog’s eyes
Was a scene from the depths of Hell!

That night, she spoke of the dog to Ben,
But he laughed, and shrugged it away,
‘It’s probably just a farmer’s dog
That comes over here to play.’
‘It’s more than that, I’m afraid of it,
For its eyes are cruel and hard,’
Then Ben leaned over the window-sill,
The black dog stood in the yard.

It stayed a moment and then was gone,
It leapt back over the stile,
Then disappeared in a darkened field
While Ben just stood for a while.
His face was pale when he turned to Gail
And he said, ‘I’ll buy a gun.
He won’t come worrying you again,
By God, I’ll make him run!’

He came back home the following day
To a house, so cold and still,
He placed the gun on the table, then
Looked over the window-sill.
The black dog stared, and its eyes were red
As it sneered its disregard,
For a ***** went following on behind
As they both took off from the yard.

David Lewis Paget

I’d come back home from an early shift
When I wasn’t expected - True!
But the house on the hill was cold and still
So I went off, looking for you.
I couldn’t find you at your parents place,
They said they hadn’t a clue,
Your brother said he’d not seen your face
Since the day we spent at the zoo.

It wasn’t like you to disappear,
You might have left me a note,
It wasn’t until I came back home
That I found one, stuffed in my coat.
‘I’ve gone to the place that dreamers go
When the world is getting them down,
Gone where a dreamer’s dreams would seem
To be better, next time around.’

My heart flipped once and it almost stopped,
I’d thought we were doing well,
We’d been together for seven years
I was truly caught in your spell.
I’d thought that your air of discontent
Was a phase, but I couldn’t see,
You left on the first full day of Lent
So you were giving up me!

I wandered around our empty house
For days, in the throes of grief,
I felt my heart had been torn apart,
Then I thought of my cousin, Keith.
He’d lodged with us for a month or so
And I’d seen the spark in his eyes,
But barely noticed the answering glow
Of your own, so now - Surprise!

I found a bundle of letters then
In the back of your bedside drawer,
From him to you and from you to him,
I’d never looked there before.
They spilled their passion on every page
Like a toadstool, spreading its spore,
His love was greater than mine, he said,
He’d love you forevermore.

And you said terrible things of me
That I’d treated you with neglect,
That I’d taken your love for granted, and
Was an albatross round your neck.
I couldn’t believe the things I read
From the one that I’d loved to death,
But now, I knew what you really said
With every disloyal breath.

You’d slept with him while I went to work,
He’d never worked in his life,
But like a Judas he’d worked his will
On you, a deceitful wife.
My stomach turned and I felt quite sick,
For days, it tumbled and churned,
The pain in my heart was like a brick
Til the day that my anger burned.

           *     *     *     *     *

A month went by and she came again
To knock at our own front door,
‘I’ve made an awful mistake,’ she said
As her tears ran down on the floor.
‘I’ll do whatever it takes,’ she said,
‘To make the pain go away.’
My eyes were sad but my heart was glad
As I said what I had to say.

‘I’ve gone to the place that dreamers go
When the world is getting them down,
Gone where a dreamer’s dreams would seem
To be better, next time around.
I haven’t a place in my life for you
Since you left with such little grace,’
Then I shook my head, for my love was dead
And I slammed the door in her face.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

He met her under the willow trees
That grew by the valley creek,
He hadn’t been able to visit her
For the best part of a week,
She patted her horse’s neck, and sighed,
And waited for him to say,
The one thing that she feared the most,
That he might be going away.

But in his eyes there was only love
As he reached, and kissed her hand,
‘We mustn’t be seen down here by him,
I need you to understand,
He rides abroad since he found us out,
And says he’s looking for me,
His stablemaster has said, no doubt,
I’ll hang from the nearest tree.’

‘He wouldn’t dare,’ said Jennifer Moss,
‘My father would have him lashed,
He’s always been too quick with his fists
He killed a man in the past.’
‘But never paid the ultimate price,
He thinks he’s above the law,
I’m keeping my flintlock pistol primed,
My powder dry by the door.’

‘He hasn’t said anything yet to me,
So how do you think he knows?’
‘Your stablemaster has seen us kiss
By the barn where the river flows.
Beware, my love, he’s a dangerous man,
Will settle his score with me,
But then, with you, he will seek revenge
Denial may set you free.’

‘You must deny that you care for me,
Deny that our lips have met,
Deny, deny is the only course
That may make the fool forget.’
‘My heart is bursting with love for you,
I couldn’t deny what’s true,’
‘You must, my love, or the scene is set,
I fear what he’ll do to you.’

He rode away to his hilltop farm
And he locked and barred each door,
While she rode off to the Manor House
Where her husband paced the floor.
‘I fear my wife is a Jezebel,
So the stablemaster tells.’
‘I have no interest in men,’ she said,
I’m married to one from Hell!’

He turned on her in a rage at that,
He believed his master spy,
While she continued to hear the words
Of her love, ‘Deny, Deny!’
‘I’ll spare his life if you tell the truth,
If you don’t, the man is dead,’
She weakened then and admitted it,
She once had been in his bed.

He sent his louts to the Hilltop farm
And they dragged him out in dread,
They tied him to the back of his horse
To the Manor House, they led.
The husband leered when he saw him there,
‘Well, your love has you redeemed!
I’ll let you live in your bleak despair…’
His love was hung from a beam!

David Lewis Paget

The cumulus clouds built overhead
But were dark, and filled with rain,
They brought to the sky a sense of dread
Of the storm to come, and pain,
The wind picked up in the barley fields
And the sea beat in to the shore,
‘If you don’t go out and anchor the boat
It will land on the rocks, for sure.’

I didn’t want to go out that day
But my father said I must,
All that my brother did was play
So I thought it so unjust.
‘Why is it always me,’ I said,
‘When Fred’s as handy as I,
He only goes when the weather’s calm
With not a cloud in the sky.’

It made no odds so I had to go,
They didn’t give me a choice,
I was the child of the family,
The one with the weakest voice.
I took the skip and I rowed on out
Where the Huntsman strained its chain,
With the breakers crashing across the prow
On top of the driving rain.

I seized the rope and clambered aboard
Then tied the skip to a post,
It was only held by a slender cord
To the Huntsman, as its host.
I went for the starboard anchor then
And slipped it into the sea,
That would give it a second hold, I thought,
But in truth, there should be three.

The waves were crashing across the deck
And the Huntsman wheeled around,
Now side-on to the waves it heeled
With a rasping, creaking sound,
If only Fred hadn’t lost the anchor
Chained up close to the bow,
I would be able to hold the swing
But it wasn’t likely now.

The swell was something tremendous and
The rain came down like sleet,
What with the sway and the decks awash
It was hard to keep my feet.
Slowly the boat had begun to drift and
Drag its chains to the shore,
Down in a trough, and then the lift
As the swell built up once more.

Making my way to the cabin door
I locked myself inside,
Then started the Perkins diesel and
Prepared to go for a ride,
I thought that if I could turn the bow
And point it out to sea,
We might be able to ride it out
The boat, brute force, and me.

I didn’t know that my brother Fred
Had borrowed somebody’s skiff,
And now was heading on out to help,
My father had said ,’What if?’
The diesel roared into life and tugged
The anchors in its wake,
But wouldn’t respond to the rudder
I had made my first mistake.

Borne on the swell, the Huntsman roared
And headed in to land,
Nothing I did would turn the bow
Though I had the wheel in hand,
I’ll never live down the Huntsman’s loss
Or forget that awful sound,
That terrible scream like a nightmare dream
As I ran my brother down.

David Lewis Paget

You only can die but once, they say,
There isn’t a second time,
We carry fears all along the years
When we think, which day is mine?
We envisage that marble headstone
That’s indicative of our fate,
Standing ***** in some unknown field,
And wonder about the date.

How often we hear that someone said
While trying to be more than brave,
But shuddering at the thought of the dead,
‘Someone just walked on my grave.’
It creeps on up, the length of your spine
The shiver that never ends,
Bringing a list of your sins to mind
With no time to make amends.

You think of that open casket,
And lying there sightlessly,
So all can stare, and look at you there,
‘I’m glad that it isn’t me.’
We wonder if we will hear them sigh
About all the good we did,
Or even know, if terror will grow
The moment they close the lid.

I think about Averill Crombie
Who said that she knew the date,
And suddenly died as she sat wide-eyed
Poking the fire in the grate.
We all went along to the service,
To say our goodbyes, as we should,
But then our hair, stood up in the air,
On hearing three taps on the wood.

We scrambled to open the coffin,
To find her still breathing in there,
And then she began to start coughing,
******* in lungfuls of air.
She tried to climb out of the casket
With many a cuss and a curse,
But then must have blown a gasket,
So we carried her into the hearse.

You only can die but once, they say,
There isn’t a second time,
She knew the date, it was simply fate
But the first time blew her mind.
I still see them lower her into the ground
When she’d died, just twice, perhaps,
But I couldn’t swear, when leaving her there
That there weren’t three ghostly taps.

David Lewis Paget

He picked up the faded diary
That had lain in his mother’s chest,
Along with a host of her recipes
That she’d saved in her little nest,
He’d just come straight from her fading eyes
When she’d, fraught, reached out for his hand,
‘Don’t ever believe, for the eyes deceive
What a moment of madness penned.’

‘There are things you never should read, my son,
There are things that you shouldn’t know,
For life is a series of scenes and dreams
Like you see in a picture show,
There is love, distress, and bitterness
That has nothing to do with you,
So promise me that you’ll burn the book,
That you won’t read a page or two.’

He nodded his head at the coming grief
As the tears welled up at his eyes,
And her hand went slack, with pure relief
At the last of her offspring’s lies.
She stared intent for a moment then
To capture the much loved face,
Then breathed her last as the moment passed
And lay in a state of grace.

His grief burst out in a torrent, as
He sat by his mother’s bed,
His shoulders heaved as he tried to cleave
To the last that his mother said:
‘Be sure to burn all the papers that
I’ve hidden in drawer and nook,
I’ll never rest ‘til you’ve passed the test,
Be certain to burn the book!’

He paced the floor when he got back home
He paced on into the gloom,
The night came down as he stumbled round
In the house, as still as a tomb.
He spared a thought for his father, gone
And the thought had trembled his lip,
With just the occasional birthday card
Kept under his pillow-slip.

He’d never known why his father left,
Or why his mother was grim,
She’d weep at night with him tucked up tight,
It was nothing to do with him.
He’d reach on out, she’d push him away
On the nights when her grief was worst,
So he’d curl up under the blankets, thought
His life and his love were cursed.

He’d watched her pull out her diary
And fill up her pen with ink,
He never knew what she was writing there
But it gave him pause to think,
In the morning it was hidden away
Far from his prying eyes,
When he’d ask her what she’d written there
She would snap, ‘Just words and lies!’

And now he held the very same book
In the palm of his shaking hand,
He knew that he shouldn’t open it
But his conscience said, ‘I can!’
There were reams and reams of terrible scrawl
Of torment, deep despair,
In a wild, embittered, sad harangue
Like claws in her windswept hair.

There were pleas to her absent husband, saying
‘How could you ever go?
It only happened the once, I swear,
You know that I love you so!’
He flicked through pages, further along
Where the writing was underlined,
‘How could a single fall from grace
See love being so unkind!’

He took the diary out to the bin
And he put a match to the page,
He shouldn’t have read his mother’s sin
Not now that he’d come of age,
As the pages blackened and curled away
He regretted all that he’d done,
For the final page revealed her rage,
She’d written: ‘I hate my son!’

David Lewis Paget