They’d painted a cross on the door outside
To keep the devil at bay,
While Ann took care of the soul cakes that
She’d baked in a shallow tray,
The Jack O’ Lanterns sat in a row
On a shelf to await reprieve,
As darkness fell on the House of Hell
At the last All Hallows Eve.

They’d whisked the wandering spirits out
With a witches broom of straw,
And placed a basin of milk outside
So they wouldn’t come through the door.
The dead could re-visit their homes that night
At that one grim time of the year,
So they set the table, an extra place
Should the shade of a ghost appear.

Across the road was a cemetery
To which John would haste away,
And light a candle on every grave
To keep the dead at bay,
He placed a dozen on ‘Hammer Jack’
As the murderer was known,
Who’d hung in chains through a drought and rains
Til at last, his dust had flown.

But John had a muttered confession as
He lit up the candles there,
‘I didn’t mean you to hang, old man,
But I was beyond despair.
When somebody pointed the finger, I
Was only relieved to see,
That though I murdered my mother, still,
It wasn’t pointing at me!’

He staggered back to the house and stood
To watch his woman, Ann,
He’d often thought to confess, but then
It’s not that she’d understand.
He’d only done it for her, he thought,
His mother was grim and old,
And threatened that she would put him out,
And Ann, out there in the cold.

Jack, an itinerent labourer
From a cottage across the way,
Had liked his mother and visited her
When the deed was done that day,
There was blood on his fraying overalls
And blood on his front and back,
When he staggered out of the house, some say,
So they blamed him for the attack.

When John lit the Jack O’ Lanterns he
Then placed them out in the yard,
Hoping that they would fend them off,
The ghouls from the devil’s guard,
But just on the stroke of midnight
He grew pale at a distant howl,
From out in the moonlit cemetery,
Though Ann said, ‘It’s an owl!’

But then came the long and heavy tread
Of a pair of boots he knew,
Sounding on the verandah, while
The door had opened, too,
And standing there in the doorway
Was a dead man with a list,
A Jack O’ Lantern sat on his head,
And a hammer in his fist.

Ann was crouched in a corner when
The police arrived, first light,
She babbled about some ‘Hammer Jack’,
Was right off her head with fright.
And blood was spattered on every wall
From John, who lay where he fell,
While ‘Hammer Jack’ was back in his grave,
Was done with the House of Hell!

David Lewis Paget

I’d met Helga at the ******’s Rest
Where I said that I’d be her mate,
Sailing her ancient Freighter for her
Down to the River Plate.
But then, I’d never set eyes on it
I was more concerned with her lips,
This Helga, who had bought the wreck
From the old graveyard of ships.

Then down at the dock, I saw it then
Coal fired, and full of rust,
And wondered if it could make it there
But she turned, and said, ‘It must!’
She’d spent the coin from a bad divorce
From the head of a shipping line,
‘I helped him to build that business up,
In truth, it ought to be mine!’

It was then that I saw the hatred there
Set deep in her flashing eyes,
‘My husband said he was going broke,
It was just a pack of lies.
He’s bought another great tanker since
That he calls Madrid Maru,
And sails it under a foreign flag
So there’s nothing that I can do.’

We threw some paint on the freighter then
And piled the coal in a stack,
Painted the name as Helga Jane
But the only paint was black.
She hired some Lascars, stoking coal,
An engineer for the crew,
And loaded the hold with tractor tyres
And aircraft engines, too.

We left the port with a head of steam
And nosed our way from the dock,
The pistons rumbled beneath the deck
In their first reprieve, in shock.
‘It’s been a while, it will settle down,’
Said the engineer, old Sam,
So slowly, out to the open sea
We sailed from Amsterdam.

The stars were bright on that first full night
With Helga stood at the wheel,
Heading into the darkness there
As if she could see and feel.
The Freighter seemed to respond to her
At the slightest touch of her hand,
And I took over the wheel once we
Were out of sight of the land.

I’d thought she might have been lonely
Once we had been some days at sea,
And hoped she’d open her cabin door
But her door stayed closed to me.
She seemed to brood, in an evil mood
When she joined me at the wheel,
‘I gave him years of my life,’ she said,
‘Then all that he does is steal!’

And even the freighter seemed to feel
The sense of her own despair,
It rose and fell with the ocean swell
And groaned as if steel could care.
In black of night, with a single light
There were sounds deep in its bowels,
The hull would shake as I lay awake,
And moan, like a demon’s howls.

A storm blew up on the seventh day
And it tossed our craft about,
We turned it into the crashing waves
As we tried to ride it out,
But the rudder snapped from the rudder post
So we couldn’t turn or steer,
And all this little black freighter gave
The crew was a sense of fear.

Then out of the mist of the driving rain
Came a hull she thought she knew,
And Helga screamed, and the freighter seemed
To know it, Madrid Maru,
The pistons started to race below
And the bow rose out of the swell,
Racing towards the starboard now
Like an arrow released from hell.

Though Helga clung to the useless wheel
To try to steer it away,
All the hatred she’d ever felt
Reposed in the ship that day.
We threw the lifeboat over the side
And the engineer jumped free,
I called to Helga, and she replied,
‘It’s fate! It’s coming for me!’

One of the Lascars made the boat,
The others were down below,
We watched as the Freighter raced ahead
While the tanker was long, and slow.
It punched a hole in the tanker’s side
And was rushed by the water in,
With Helga fighting the useless wheel,
I never saw her again.

It took an hour for the ships to sink
Still lodged together with force,
Even while drowning in the depths
They couldn’t get a divorce.
I’ll never forget that Freighter though,
It took on a woman’s pain,
They lie as one, now their day is done
Since we christened her Helga Jane.

David Lewis Paget

My uncle lived in a big old house
At the end of Mayfair Drive,
With thirteen rooms and a library,
Whilst he was still alive.
But he jumped one day from the second floor
And he hit the ground so hard
That his blood spread out like a pair of horns,
There in his own front yard.

We didn’t know why he had to jump,
It wasn’t a lack of cash,
His health was good, but before he jumped
He’d broken out in a rash,
The maid had brought him his morning tea
Had watched him put back a book,
Up on the topmost shelf it went
And he’d said to her, ‘Don’t look!’

The rash spread quickly under his arms
With pustules down in the groin,
The doctor said at the autopsy
That one was shaped like a coin.
‘You’d swear that there was a devil’s head
Imprinted there in his blood,
I’ve never seen anything like it since
And I hope that I never should.’

But my father moved us into the house
Now, with his brother gone,
He locked us out of the library
But went in there on his own.
There were shelves and shelves of books in there
And one on the topmost shelf,
The maid had whispered, ‘You’d best beware!’
But he took it down himself.

I noticed he wore his patent gloves
Whenever he went in there,
I peeped in through a crack in the door
And saw him stand on a chair,
The book was old, had a mouldy look
For the leather was turning green,
It looked like a fungus, taken root,
And the whole thing looked unclean.

As days went by I began to hear
Some babble behind the door,
And incense came in a steady stream
Out from a crack by the floor,
My father didn’t come out for meals
His voice was becoming hoarse,
He’d take a tray at about midday
But never a second course.

The maid resigned on the first of June
She said that she saw his face,
Was shivering uncontrollably
And muttering, ‘Loss of grace!’
The cook took both of us under her wing
And swore that she’d see us fed,
But wouldn’t come out of her tiny room
At dusk, she’d ‘rather be dead!’

The fire broke out in the library
On a Sunday, after Mass,
I caught a glimpse of my father then,
His face was as green as grass,
The shelves and the books had grown a mould
And it spread all over the floor,
I knew I had to get out of there
And ran right out of the door.

My father leapt from the window then
Came crashing down in the drive,
I knew before I got close to him
He couldn’t have been alive.
Two horns spread out from the place his head
Had crumpled into the ground,
But these were horns of a green fungi
Like the book on the shelf he’d found.

They quarantined us around that house
And came with chemical sprays,
‘This fungus seems to be hard to ****,
It’s going to take us days!’
They checked the wreck of the library,
I even went in myself,
With everything burnt to a crisp, still lay
A book on the topmost shelf!

David Lewis Paget

The passengers from the ‘Bold Dundee’
Were sick as they crawled ashore,
Tossed about in an angry sea
By the God that they knew as Thor.
He’d beat his hammer along their hull,
He’d roared as the thunder clapped,
And ripped the sails from the forward stays
As the sheets and the masts collapsed.

The tide had hidden the rocks from view,
A mist had obscured the shore,
The captain thought he was sailing free
As he’d always done before.
But the ocean swell in its mystery
Hid atolls of murk and myth,
That never appeared on a sailor’s chart
Where the Gods of old still lived.

The ship had shuddered and holed the bow,
Rode up, and sank at the stern,
The swell burst over the after deck
Drowning the crew in turn.
The passengers on the steerage deck
Were swept clean over the side,
Onto the rocks of a thousand wrecks,
But only a few survived.

By dawn that few had struggled ashore,
But the rest of them were dead,
Were floating out on the turn of tide
To rest on the deep seabed,
But Robert Young and his wife Jeanine
Were cast right up on the land,
And so was Emily Wintergreen
And the lad called Adam Shand.

They woke to an alien sunrise,
In a strange, pale purple mist,
And a sound came down from the mountainside
From a thousand years of myth.
A pale white horse bore a surly man
Who was ten feet tall to his head,
And roared, ‘Now bow before Woden, or
By Odin, you will be dead!’

Then striding noisily through the trees
That grew right down to the shore,
Came a giant man, a hammer in hand
Who roared, ‘You can call me Thor!
What brings you here to our hideaway,
To disturb our God’s redoubt?
We left you, hundreds of years away,
Yet now, you seek us out.’

Each one of them bowed, and touched the sand,
‘We don’t know why we’re here.
We didn’t plan it,’ said Adam Shand,
‘It wasn’t our idea.’
‘You turned away from us,’ Woden roared,
‘Sought other gods to please,
Once you were praying to us for help,
Would beg of us, on your knees.’

‘I swear we’ve never forgotten you,
You’re with us, all of our days,
For Woden, you are our Wednesday now,
And that is eternal praise.
While Thor is our every Thursday,
Every week that he comes around,
And Tiw, well he’s become Tuesday
So you’re lost, but you are found.’

The Gods stood back, and then conferred,
‘We’re going to let you go,
But only because you honour us
With your calendar, if that’s so.’
A longboat, free from the wreck came in
And the four of them climbed aboard,
Then waved goodbye to the Isle of Gods,
But at sea, they thanked the Lord!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I’ve long been pondering suicide,
My life is such a mess,
I thought to try on the other side,
It couldn’t be worse than this,
I’d always been such a coward though
My pain threshold is low,
I wondered how I could **** myself
With just one simple blow.

I didn’t fancy to cut my throat
There’s such a lot of blood,
And somebody has to clean it up
They’d curse me, as they should,
A gunshot straight to the head would put
My brains all over the wall,
And everything would be grey and red
With a blood-spray in the hall.

So I considered a poison pill
And a quart of Mister Beam,
That might just happen to fit the bill
For a death, both quick and clean,
But where would I get a poison pill
To accelerate my death?
I’d hate to die when I’m feeling ill,
Fighting for every breath.

I’d pondered on it so very long
That it quite obsessed my mind,
And I began to see shapes and figures
From some other time,
The ghosts of others who’d gone ahead
And done the evil deed,
Were poisoned, shot, or their throats were cut
When their own lives were in need.

They seemed to come when the clock struck twelve
Just on the midnight hour,
That’s when the demons that rot in hell
Can demonstrate their power,
They kept on coming to egg me on
To get on that fatal bus,
‘You need to do it, it isn’t wrong,
You can join with all of us!’

They almost had me convinced that I
Could drown myself in the sea,
Or pick my favourite river then,
One that appealed to me,
They said to drown was a pleasant death
I’d drift away in a dream,
And none would know that I’d killed myself,
It’s an ‘accidental’ theme.

The next night there came a stranger to
This ghostly neighbourhood,
Trailing festoons of river ****
And covered in clods of mud,
His face was twisted in anguish and
Such pain, that now I see,
Why I have suddenly changed my mind,
That freak-out ghost, was me!

David Lewis Paget

You said that you came from Angel Dust
When I saw you emerge from mist,
Your hair was covered with spangles, and
Gold bangles dangled each wrist,
Your bare feet trampled the Autumn leaves
Whose gold reflected on high,
The rest of you, like some ancient rust,
That’s when I knew you’d die.

And then I awoke and saw you there
Asleep in our giant bed,
All thoughts of a gold goddess were fairly
Skittering from my head,
Your breath, it was long and laboured, and
Your hair, it was falling out,
With tufts of it on the pillow there
The chemo had left no doubt.

And all the love that I had for you
Poured out of my aching heart,
At least I knew that you loved me too,
You’d said we would never part,
But nobody told this grim disease
That came to you in a flood,
To desecrate your perfection, then
To end with you coughing blood.

You begged to me that I end it, that
I put out the final light,
That thing I loved, that I rend it, that
You wouldn’t put up a fight,
I wept as I kissed you one last time
Held on till I stopped your breath,
And felt you fall from me, after all
Through the final stages of death.

And then in the early morning as
I stood distraught by the bed,
I thought that I saw you rise again
Though I knew you were surely dead,
And I thought that you came from Angel Dust
When you wandered into the mist,
For your hair was covered with spangles, and
Gold bangles dangled each wrist.

David Lewis Paget

I’ve devoted my life to poetry
Whenever I’ve had the time,
Created whole towns and villages
And even the people rhyme.
There’s only supposed to be six plots
In the stories we have to tell,
And half of them aim for heaven, while
The rest of them end in hell.

But I’ve written fourteen hundred tales
And each of them has a plot,
With climaxes in the middle, and
A twist in the tail, or not.
There’s anger, love and revenge in there
Mixed in the poetic stew,
And some of the plots are quite threadbare,
But they’re all written for you.

My women are all quite beautiful,
My men are as hard as nails,
They constantly search for love, I find,
In all of my paper trails.
But most have an itch they have to scratch,
For some of them there’s regret,
They pay the cost when a lover’s lost
And it haunts their stories yet.

I often scribble in witches, ghouls,
And spirits that have no souls,
That hover around the edges, with
Their indeterminate goals.
I look to the distant future now
For tales you’ll never forget,
And trust to fate that it’s not too late
For a million stories yet.

David Lewis Paget

We went to live in Smuggler’s Cove
Near a cave, right on the beach,
Where once they’d hidden ill-gotten gains
In the cave, and out of reach.
The locals said two hundred years
Since the smugglers came ashore,
Carrying casks of Spanish wine
And a chest of gold moidores.

Led by a man called One-Eye Red
For the only one he’d got,
He’d lost the other, the locals said,
To a random pistol shot,
He wore a patch on the missing eye
For the wind blew in at the hole,
And froze his brain till he went insane
When the winter winds were cold.

He hung with Sally, a thatcher’s wife
Who would meet him in the cove,
And he would sample her plain delights
Till the time came round to rove.
She kept lookout on the cliff top there
For a glimpse of Revenue Men,
And would fire her flintlock pistol where
She had thought she’d sighted them.

My wife, her name was Sally too
And I’d rib her there in jest,
‘You’d better not hug a smuggler, Sally,
Dressed only in your vest.’
We’d laugh back then in those early days
As we worked to settle in,
But sensed some dread foreboding there,
In the air from old past sin.

It came on strong in the winter time
When the cove was filled with mist,
The mouth of the cave was grim and dark
It would almost seem possessed,
Then Sally started to walk at night
As the waves crashed into the shore,
She said she needed to beat the fright
That she’d suffered from times before.

I’d watch her walk to the darkened cave
Then halt to stare in the mouth,
It opened onto the northern shore
Then she’d turn, and wander south,
She’d come back shivering, pale and wan
And would warm up by the fire,
Then come out with the strangest thing
That it filled her with desire.

She’d strip right off by the glowing hearth
And I’m not one to complain,
She’d not been so very down to earth
Since the Lord invented rain,
Then one night when the mist was thick
I could barely see the cave,
When a ghostly figure stepped from the sea
And walked all over my grave.

Then Sally turned and she spoke to him
As my stomach churned inside,
They walked together into the cave
Like a bridegroom and a bride,
I left the cottage, the door ajar
And I ran down to the beach,
But when I got to the mouth of the cave,
Sally was out of reach.

Sally was out of reach that day
And has been each day since,
The phantom that walked her into the cave
Was One-Eye Red at a pinch.
I called and called for her to come back,
I even tried to insist,
But all that I’ve seen on a winter’s night
Are their shadows, abroad in the mist.

David Lewis Paget

My father called it the Watching Tree
For it turned, and swivelled to see,
He’d planted its seed in the winter weather
On top of the grave of Annabelle Feather
Who killed their mother for why, whatever,
Then hung from a hawthorn tree.

The hangman never would cut her free
While she spun and spiralled around,
Her eyes a-bulge on the village gallows
In front of the church they call All Hallows,
While urchins jeered to toast marshmallows
As Annabelle stared at the ground.

My aunts in pinafores hung on her feet
To stretch her neck with the rope,
Her tongue stuck out at least six inches
A rigid perch for the garden finches
Who pop the eyes of the one they lynches,
Once they’ve given up hope.

They laid her down in an open grave
The rope wound tight at her throat,
Planted the seeds of the tree above her
Just to remind of the murdered mother
So people be kinder to one another,
Or that’s what my father wrote.

The roots of the tree bored into the skull
Of Annabelle, in through her eyes,
Tendrils of thoughts were left forever
Deep in the well of Annabelle Feather
And sent from her eyes to the tree, whatever,
A poisoner never dies.

So still I call it the Watching Tree
For it waits till I’m not around,
Dropping its poisonous leaves whenever
It’s cold and bleak in the winter weather,
As black as the heart of Annabelle Feather
Stone cold, and dead in the ground.

David Lewis Paget

The flowers grew from the craters where
The bombs ripped open the ground,
Back in that terrible time of war
When God in his heavens frowned,
I just remember destruction, piles
Of bricks where houses had stood,
And years along, new growth began
Where Airmen lay in the wood.

Their plane came down in the poplar trees
That had stood in a long, straight line,
Tearing a swathe of destruction through
Where we’d played in a former time,
And just beyond was the surgeon’s house
That had boasted a Roman Spa,
Now flat, and exposing the Roman Tiles
That survived the previous war.

I’d go down there with Priscilla, who
Lived out by the railway track,
We’d play our games in the cellars
That had lain open, since the attack.
I hadn’t taken much notice of
The flowers that grew in the weeds,
That sprang into life like mushrooms, when
The bombs had scattered their seeds.

Priscilla did, she would smell the scent
That had wafted up from the flowers,
And say, ‘I’ve never seen these before,
They’re new, they’re meant to be ours.’
She’d pick the flowers and take them home
And attempt to make them thrive,
But once removed from their sacred ground
They’d rarely stay alive.

I didn’t handle the flowers as much
So I wasn’t quite as ill,
When she went down with a jaundice that
The doctors couldn’t heal.
They tried their best and they traced it to
The flowers she’d taken home,
A level of radioactivity
Was the reason that they’d grown.

The ground has been cordoned off for good
With a special yellow tape,
While she and I are forbidden to go
To the place that was our escape.
They keep her tied to a wheelchair where
They attempt to hide her sores,
While I’m in a sort of cage since I
Grew skin like the dinosaurs.

David Lewis Paget

The house had an evil aspect as
It hung out over the street,
Casting a permanent shadow there
Where the market stalls would meet,
The first floor was half-timbered, with
The ground floor made of stone,
The windows were made of pebble glass
And the window frames of bone.

No one had lived in the house for years
Til the Robinson’s moved in,
A couple, straight from the wedding church
Where they’d cleansed themselves from sin,
They’d listened to all of the rumours that
The house had its share of ghosts,
But the cheapness of the peppercorn rent
Had influenced them most.

The house was built where a charnel house
Had stood in the days of plague,
Where later a debtors’ prison stood
Though its history was vague,
They said there had been a gallows there
With a trapdoor through the floor,
And the arm of the ancient gallows now
Was the lintel of a door.

But the Robinson’s had sailed right in
With a mop and a whisking broom,
‘In no time, it’ll be **** and span,’
Said Sally, within the gloom,
While Brad had opened the shutters then
To let all the light stream in,
‘We’ll flush the ghosts from their waiting posts
With a broom and a pound of Vim!’

They dusted down the old furniture
Left sitting since George the Fourth,
And turned the old oak table round
So the end was facing north,
‘But still there’s a dampness in the air,
And a tension that feels grim,’
Sally said, as they lay in bed,
And she clung, so close to him.

‘Are you sure that they can’t get in,’ she said
‘Now we’ve flushed them out in the street?’
But Brad was trying to understand
Why the bed was cold at his feet.
‘Why are the sheets so damp,’ he said,
‘And they’re cold, as cold as sin,’
Sally was shivering, fit to burst
Though the sun came streaming in.

They sat at the old oak table with
Their bowls of soup, home-made,
And Sally reached out to hold his hand
But he started back, dismayed,
The soup was thick in the serving bowl
It was still three-quarters full,
When a swirl in the murky liquid then
Revealed a grinning skull.

Sally shrieked, but she couldn’t speak
And Brad had held his breath,
‘We’ve got to get out of this house today,
We’re surrounded here by death.’
The shutters slammed on the windows and
The doors flew shut on their own,
And barring the pebble windows were
The frames that were made of bone.

The people out in the market heard
The screams at an early hour,
Looked knowingly at each other, said,
‘They have them in their power!’
And Brad was hung from the lintel when
They finally broke inside,
While Sally was dead by a grinning skull
In the dress of a new-wed bride.

David Lewis Paget

They’d shovelled her husband into the ground
Before she got to the grave,
She wasn’t able to keep good time
And her husband used to rave:
‘I spend my life, waiting for you,
You’ll be late for your funeral,’
That wasn’t due, but it may come true,
She was late for his, do tell!

He wasn’t a very pleasant man
He was known for his violent moods,
She’d married the guy, then wondered why,
He was often downright rude.
She knew what he was capable of
For he’d often flipped his lid,
And left a trail of destruction then
For that was the thing he did.

If only she had got to the grave
In time for a swift goodbye,
And with a spray, sent him away,
She may have just heard him sigh.
But he must have known she was still at home
When the hearse, with him inside,
Arrived at the local cemetery
On time, but without his bride.

She lay awake in the bed that night
And thought she could hear him breathe,
Just across from her pillowcase
And her breast began to heave.
The wind sough-soughed at the windowsill
And she heard a step on the stair,
She wished for once she had been on time
To know she had left him there.

But she hadn’t seen the coffin drop
And the hole was almost full,
She’d asked that they uncover it
But she didn’t have the pull.
She only hoped he was six feet down
Unable to get back out,
When there was a rattle, out on the porch
And she heard a dead man shout.

‘Late, you’re late, you’re always late,’
It moaned, in an eerie tone,
‘You couldn’t get to the grave on time
So you left me all alone.
You’d not come even to say goodbye
And for that, you’ll pay the price,
For I’ll reach out of the grave tonight
And I promise, it won’t be nice!’

The shutters began to rattle and bang
And the door flew out, ajar,
The wind howled in like a taste of sin
‘I know just where you are!’
She shrieked, and pulled the covers up
And placed them over her head,
‘You just can’t stay, please go away,
You can’t be here, you’re dead!’

The covers were torn from her huddled form
And from what the coroner said,
‘Her face was white, she died of fright,’
Curled up in her lonely bed.
There was just one thing in the autopsy
That was missed, and he made a note,
The thing was botched, for her husbands watch
He found, was lodged in her throat.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Have ever you noticed that liars
Cross their fingers when they lie?
They seem to think it absolves them from
A judgement, up on high,
For fingers crossed means they didn’t mean
The thing they’re telling you,
But if you’re silly, and fall for it
They make you think it’s true.

I knew a terrible liar once
His name was John Coltrane,
He always cried on my shoulder then
As if he was in pain,
He said that life was short-changing him,
That there was nothing fair,
It only took just a minor thing
To drive him to despair.

We both worked then at an auto plant
And used a giant press,
Knocking out doors and bonnets there,
And working under stress,
For time and motion had set a rate
That we could not fulfil,
And truth to tell it had seemed like hell
And was making Coltrane ill.

No matter how fast we put them through
The steel kept banking up,
Thanks to the other press’s crew
Who’d stop, and have a cup,
While we were struggling then to clear
The backlog, piled up high,
And John was constantly in my ear,
‘I think I want to die.’

I said that he didn’t mean it,
It was just a lousy job,
But he just kept on repeating it
And even began to sob,
To tell the truth, it got on my nerves,
It really began to grate,
I lost my cool, and I said the fool
Was really tempting fate.

He seemed to go a bit crazy then,
Lay backwards on the dye,
I tried to pull him away, but he
Lay staring at the sky,
The press came down with a mighty thump
And it flattened out his head,
Two hundred and fifty tons per inch
Said John Coltrane was dead.

We all of us stood around in shock
When the press released him there,
All that was left was a headless corpse
With blood and brains to spare,
His corpse let out a terrible sigh
At the judgement he had lost,
For though he said he would want to die,
He lay with his fingers crossed.

David Lewis Paget

At night I walked in the winter months
By the banks of an old canal,
Where the barges lit their ghostly lamps
Like the wake of a funeral,
They would glide in those silent waters
With their silence like a shroud,
The horse at the end of the towrope
Passed me by, its head unbowed.

They sat so low in the water with
Their tons of pitch black coal,
The coal dust covered their livery
And of course, the paint was old,
A single steersman sat aloft
At the rear, and he looked ahead,
The black cut-out of a silhouette
Of a man that could be dead.

One night ahead of a ****-backed bridge
Where the towpath passed below,
The mist was a thick grey swirling mass
As the horse passed by me, slow,
I saw the glow of the ghostly lamp
And then as the barge appeared,
Just nosing out of the bank of fog
I thought that the bow looked weird.

For glistening under the ghostly lamp
And over the cabin door,
I saw a stream of something damp,
Was it mud, or blood, or gore?
I waited until the barge had passed
With the steersman, in my fright,
And I called out ‘****** ******!
‘You should look to your bow tonight.’

And the steersman muttered ‘Carolyn’,
In a voice both muted, low,
His voice came whispering back to me,
‘She shouldn’t have used me so.’
I saw his cardboard cut-out turn
In the glow of the ghostly lamp,
But then the barge slipped into the mist
Along with its ****** stamp.

I didn’t know where it disappeared
On its voyage into the mist,
Along with its grisly cargo though
Its name was ‘Amethyst’,
But Carolyn lay aboard somewhere
In a pool of her blood as well,
As that barge would nose its way through mist
To enter the gates of hell.

David Lewis Paget

In the time of knights and chivalry
In the Castle of Grim Intent,
There lived the Baron de Romilly
That the King or the Devil had sent,
His knights were the scourge of the countryside
For they only dealt in pain,
Taxing the helpless peasantry
In the name of Lady Jane.

But Lady Jane was a prisoner
In a dungeon, deep and dark,
Gone were the days she’d ridden to hounds
In the castle’s spacious park,
The Baron had taken the castle,
On a dark and moonless night,
He held a warrant from England’s King
But that didn’t make it right.

He’d slain Milady’s pikemen,
Who had been the drawbridge guard,
Thrown their bodies into the moat
Left others, dead in the yard,
While Lady Jane on the battlements
Said, ‘What brings the Baron here?
Your evil knights are the country’s blight
So I would that you’d disappear!’

The Baron laughed in his ugly way
But his face was grim and sour,
He seized her, said he would make her pay
Then ****** her into the tower,
‘You’ll pay for this, I’m of noble blood,’
She had screamed, and cursed his name,
But he dragged her down to the dungeon,
And he tethered her there in chain.

His knights had raged through the countryside
Put yeomen and serfs in thrall,
They ran a sword through the village priest
And the Squire in the Manor Hall,
The countryside was awash with blood
As the Baron’s rule held sway,
While Lady Jane had muttered in pain
‘He will live to rue this day!’

She’d retained a wandering minstrel,
Who had played to pay her court,
And he was spared by the Baron’s men
For the music that they sought,
But one night after a revelry
When the knights lay drunk on the floor,
He slipped away down an old stairway
With the keys to the dungeon’s door.

He heard a weeping, as if in pain
And wandered along to check,
And found the prison of Lady Jane,
Released the chain from her neck,
They crept on out to the castle yard
And mounted two horses there,
Then galloped out through the drawbridge, leaving
The gaping guards to stare.

She roused the surrounding country,
‘You have everything now to gain,
Pick up your scythes, and your swords and knives
And we’ll show the Baron pain!’
They marched as a farmers army,
With bitterness at its core,
And slew the guards at the castle gate
And the knights that lay on the floor.

The Baron was dragged to the battlements
Where they’d fixed a sturdy rope.
He begged for Milady’s indulgence,
But she gave him little hope,
‘You’re going to meet your maker,
For you’ve played the Devil’s pawn,’
Then launched him into eternity
To the cries of the peasants scorn.

His corpse hung ‘til it rotted away
While Milady held a feast,
In thanks to the local peasantry
That he’d cared about the least,
While her minstrel wooed with a tuneful song
Though his eyes cried out in pain,
From the dreadful love that he’d held so long
For his mistress, Lady Jane.

David Lewis Paget

‘Why do you colour your lips so black,
Darken your piercing eyes,
What are you hiding behind your back,
Have you been telling me lies?
Why are you wearing those knee length boots,
Pulling that cloak round, tight,
Where are you going, under the Moon,
Where will you be tonight?

Christabel grimaced but wouldn’t reply,
She turned, with her hand on the door,
Gazing right through me, I’d thought that she knew me
But there was no love like before.
Her brows, they were furrowed, her eyes hard as glass,
Her lips they were pursed in contempt,
I should have left then when she’d put down the pen
But I didn’t know then what it meant.

I knew she was moody, I knew she was dark,
She’d flutter round blind, like a moth,
She always wore black, even out in the park,
They warned me, they said ‘She’s a Goth!’
I’d found her entrancing at first, I admit,
I tried to get into her mind,
But once in those raveling tunnels of darkness
The deepest of thoughts were unkind.

I picked up the note she left ******* on the floor
The moment she left for the night,
‘I have to see Jack,’ she had scribbled, ‘That’s that!’
I must put my nightmares to flight.’
I knew there was darkness and heartache to come,
She’d promised him plenty of strife,
But then I’d jumped in to his bucket of sin
As I thought she was out of his life.

I asked her at first was she over him yet,
And yes, she assured me she was,
But surely his name wouldn’t drive her insane
If it wasn’t a question of loss!
A terrible feeling came over me then,
I needed to know where she went,
So headed on out to where Jack hung about,
I shouldn’t have gone, I repent.

I saw through the window the angel of death
Her cloak streaming out, like a moth,
And he in the corner, not catching his breath
His throat in the grip of a Goth!
I tried to burst in but the door was deadlocked,
I saw the knife raised in her fist,
Then plunge, and a scream like some terrible dream,
For just as he died, she had kissed!

She came out toward me but covered in blood,
On hands, on her lips and her face,
While I backed away, I had nothing to say,
But,‘Heaven above, lend me grace!’
She ran away, stumbling, on through the dark
But she’d not seen her nightmares off,
I found she was hung on a light in the park,
In her mouth was a fluttering moth.

David Lewis Paget

I’d seen her coming and going for
A couple of years or more,
Her hair in the wind was blowing
Every time she walked on the shore,
I must admit I was taken in
By her eyes and her lips of gloss,
She made me think of imagined sin
The woman who never was.

She wore the flimsiest blouses that
Were loose, and tied at the waist,
And lived in one of those houses they
Put up in the new estate.
She seemed to delight in teasing me
By wearing her skirts so high,
The slightest gust from a breeze would free
A glimpse of a naked thigh.

She never actually spoke to me
But she’d raise a brow my way,
While I hung over the garden gate
Thinking of what to say,
And soon it became a ritual
She’d pass in the early hours,
Then come again in the afternoon
With her basket full of flowers.

In time I noticed a subtle change
In the way she wore her hair,
She started to pin it back, and then
It didn’t seem so fair.
The eyes that had used to tantalise
Became harder, and the gloss
Was fading out on the ruby lips
Of the woman who never was.

I thought I was slowly losing her
But just a little each day,
Nothing would stay the same, I saw
Her slowly fading away,
I said to a friend, ‘What’s happening,
I have this sense of loss,’
And he replied she was trapped inside,
The woman who never was.

‘She doesn’t really exist you know,
It’s better you let her free,
You’ve compromised and idealised
Till she thinks, ‘I can’t be me.’
She may just show if you let her go,
If you don’t, you’ll count the loss,
She’ll stay forever inside you then
The woman who never was.’

I switched her off and I walked the shore,
Went up to the new estate,
Then held my breath and knocked at her door
And I said, ‘I know I’m late.’
She looked at me and she smiled, you see,
And she said, ‘My name is Roz,
It’s been so long I was feeling wrong
Like the woman who never was.’

David Lewis Paget

He was walking along the tramway
On the other side of town,
The lines had shone in the darkness,
There wasn’t a tram around,
The road from the rain was glistening
Reflecting the roadside lights,
Then the man stood still, and listening
On this coldest of winter nights.

It had been so still and silent
Once the shoppers all had fled,
Out of the city centre,
And heading on home to bed,
But he was one of the homeless
Adrift on the city’s streets,
And prey to the wind and weather
That the homeless people meet.

His coat was ragged and weathered,
His boots were holed in the soles,
He hadn’t managed a shave for days
So his beard looked grey and old,
His pants, held up by a piece of string
Were the sorriest in the town,
And his face was racked with misery,
For he looked just beaten down.

But now as the lights of the bedrooms died
On either side of the street,
The dark was becoming palpable
As he dragged his weary feet,
But still he stuck to the tramway lines
As the quickest way to the docks,
Hoping to find a brazier’s heat
To dry out his sodden socks.

But still he stood and he listened
For sounds in that dreadful night,
It seemed that animals snapped and snarled
Beyond the reach of light,
The homeless went with a rumour
There were wolves out there in the dark,
For many a trace of blood was found
By day, out there in the park.

And there in the dark of alleyways
He could see the eyes a-gleam,
Waiting for him to pass them by
Before they would pounce, it seemed,
He shivered under his ragged coat
And pulled the collar up high,
Thinking it might protect his throat
When they came for him, by and by.

The wolves then bayed at the crescent moon
As they watched his figure pass,
They saw him shaking in fear and gloom
Like walking on broken glass,
But suddenly there was a rumbling
And the lights of a late night tram,
He moved aside then as if to ride
When a wolf tore at his hand.

Then suddenly there were three or four
In a fury of rip and snarl,
Tearing apart a bag of bones
Of the man who was known as Carl,
His blood seeped into the tramway tracks
As the tramway driver stopped,
And watched as they tore the man apart
With one of the city cops.

The council workers came out at dawn
To clear up the grisly mess,
They’d had their orders from City Hall
To dispose of homelessness,
The keepers, out from the city zoo
Recaptured the wolves out there,
But ready to let them out again
When a killing was in the air.

‘We have to clean up the city streets,’
The mayor had long opined,
‘Get rid of the homeless, nice and neat,
The residents sure won’t mind.’
The street’s a virtual jungle when
The lights in the streets go out,
And all you’ll hear is the scream of fear
When a homeless person shouts.

David Lewis Paget

Walking among the Autumn leaves
On a cold and blustery day,
Between an avenue of trees
As the daylight passed away,
The shadows lengthened across my path
And my way was hit or miss,
As a sudden wind would seem to blend
My other world, with this.

A world where nothing would make much sense
I’d lost it all, I knew,
Where day was night when it should be bright
And it left me, looking for you,
A world of shadows and woods and streams
Where there’d been a town before,
And the sea crept in where it might have been
For a million years or more.

While creatures high in the treetops there
Reflected their blinking eyes,
From a sudden ray at the close of day,
Just as the Moon would rise,
It was such an alien place to be
It was grim, and chill, and old,
As I wandered by an ancient sea
In a dark place of the soul.

I remembered how you had said to me
On the last day that we’d met,
How I would rue the loss of you
In a wasteland of regret.
And I had laughed as I slammed the door
To return the way I came,
Not thinking that I would miss you too,
But the end result was pain.

While you remained in the hospital
And stared with your sunken eyes,
I couldn’t bear that I’d put you there
With my lack of care, and my lies.
The doctor said you were almost dead
With your heart split open wide,
It’s only now, and it must be said,
That it wasn’t you that died.

David Lewis Paget

The bus rolled up, and parked on the green
It was painted black outside,
With just one sign, up over the door,
‘Come in for a hell of a ride.’
So the neighbours gathered around the bus
And the wife went up to the door,
She said, ‘Come on, stop making a fuss,
What are you waiting for?’

My Dawn has always been quick to jump
She’ll do most things for a fling,
She gets herself in trouble enough
By trying most everything,
She once got stuck on the Ferris Wheel
When she got right up to the top,
Then the lights went out, and they all went home
And the seat began to rock.

You’d think that that would have cured her when
She spent the night in the air,
Freezing her **** in the darkness and
Tied to a swinging chair,
When the wind blew up and the rain came down
And the lights in the fair went out,
She swears that she almost lost her voice
For the times that she tried to shout.

Now here she was at the door of a bus
That was black, and dim inside,
You couldn’t see through the tinted glass
I know, for we all had tried,
The neighbours stood there, egging her on
Though they stood well back in fear,
While Dawn rapped ******* the bus’s door,
Nobody else went near.

The door slid back with an evil swish
And revealed a dim red glow,
She said ‘Come on,’ and I said ‘You wish,’
She called me a so-and-so,
But climbed the step and the door slid shut
Locking us all outside,
The diesel roared as it started up,
Drove into the countryside.

That said it might have been Martians or
Some pinhead freaks from the Moon,
We didn’t know what they came here for
But we all would find out soon,
I hate to think what they did to her
In the glow of that evil bus,
Or if there was only the driver, but
He sure wasn’t one of us!

They found her out in a country lane
Or at least, what there was left,
I went quite crazy with grief, for I
Had never felt so bereft,
They’d taken her heart, and her kidneys, lungs
And even the ***** of her eyes,
So now we knew what that sign had meant,
‘Come in for a hell of a ride.’

If ever you see a ******* bus
Roll up and park on the green,
Stay well away from the door, or pay
The price that my Dawn has seen,
It’s there to collect the organs from
Unwary ones, and it steals
Whatever it can from mortal man,
It’s really a hell on wheels!

David Lewis Paget

There must have been seven chimneys
In the great house on the hill,
I never actually counted them
While the house was standing still,
But the years had brought their own neglect
And the house was well run down,
By the time we pulled the place apart
For a new estate in town.

We couldn’t just use a wrecking ball
It was too immense for that,
When we took it brick by brick apart
We could build a hundred flats.
The chimneys were the hardest part
For the flues had twists and turns
As they rose up through three storeys with
Each hearth, soot black and burned.

It had been the home of Dukes and Earls
Back in Victoria’s day,
With gardeners, cooks and pantry maids,
All with a place to stay,
There were ***** and more for the gentlefolk
For the vicar and local squire,
And after the garden parties they would
Huddle, in front of the fire.

We chipped away at the chimney stacks
And gradually brought them down,
Brick by brick to the local tip
As red dust covered the ground,
But then a guy gave a sudden cry
During a working lull,
‘I think I see, what it seems to me,
The top of a human skull.’

The top of a human skull it was
Of a child, no more than six,
Jammed up tight in the chimney there
Imprisoned by old red bricks,
We managed to pry him loose at last
And lifted him from the flue,
But then the horror came home to us
For his legs were missing, too.

We saw the mangling hook they’d used
That lodged in one of his ribs,
That tore the body apart to clear
The chimney, for His Nibs,
The kid was lodged in a twisting flue
They knew that his case was dire,
And tried to make him climb up and through
By lighting a smoking fire.

We couldn’t tell if the sweep was dead
Or simply allowed to choke,
When someone ordered the fire lit
And sent up a cloud of smoke,
Perhaps he screamed as the smoke had streamed
And the fire burned, but slow,
He was just a sweep, his life was cheap
Compared to the guests below.

The little lad’s in the cemetery
He was laid with special care,
With everyone but nobility
Gathered to lay him there,
It’s a page at last from a cruel past
That we turned, but won’t forget,
Great wealth destroys our humanity,
Have we learned that lesson yet?

David Lewis Paget

Why did I fall in love with you,
There’s thousands more would have loved me too,
But love like yours is an evil brew,
While mine is true, and a man thing.

How could I see your lovely face
And think it harboured a state of grace
When all it hid was a can of mace
That drove me mad in decanting.

I should have sought your history
That kept you hidden in mystery,
For though I followed you wistfully
I never uncovered the bantling.

What is the hold you have on me
That keeps me wanting you wretchedly
Long after your love has done with me
And lost itself in your canting.

You may have coined a gypsy curse
That got to my heart, and hurt it first,
But you’re without love, and what is worse
Love’s without you in your ranting.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She was walking the damp and cobbled streets
Like one with nowhere to go,
I saw her quivering, cold and shivering
Deep in a fall of snow,
I rarely talk to a stranger, but
She looked me straight in the eye,
And said, ‘Dear sir, could you help a girl,
I noticed you passing by.’

She took me out of my comfort zone,
She quite appealed to the eye,
I mumbled in an embarrassed tone,
I have been known to be shy.
‘I’ve not been warm for a week,’ she said,
‘And haven’t slept, and I’m tired,
I wonder if you could take me home
And let me sit by your fire?’

I didn’t want to be compromised,
I had a girl of my own,
But barely thinking, I said all right
And so she followed me home.
I built the fire with a log or two
Then she sat down by the grate,
And held her hands to the warming flames,
But the hour was getting late.

I wondered where she would sleep that night
With nowhere to go, she said,
Then like a fool, broke the golden rule
Said she could sleep in my bed.
‘I’ll stay out here on the couch, so you
Can catch right up on your sleep,’
If only I’d had a crystal ball
The future would make me weep.

She said that her name was Elspeth Jane,
Had run away from her home,
So stayed wherever there was no pain
From brutes, just bad to the bone.
She said she could tell a gentleman
And smiled, when looking at me,
I felt quite flattered, I must confess,
Not knowing what was to be.

I had a girl, and her name was Kate,
She’d be around in the morning,
I thought that the waif would be gone by then
But Kate showed as it was dawning.
‘Who is the girl, there in your bed?’
As Elspeth lay a-bed, stretching,
‘I thought I could trust you, now you’re dead,’
Then Elspeth said I was letching.

‘He picked me up for a bit of fun,
He didn’t mention a girlfriend,
He’s quite a lover, son of a gun,
You should hang on to your boyfriend.’
‘Why would you lie, you slept alone,’
I looked in horror at Elspeth,
The door then slammed, and Kate had flown,
While Elspeth asked about breakfast.

I should have kicked her out in the street,
I should have barred her forever,
But first I offered her toast to eat,
Then thought it was now or never.
She walked back in through the bedroom door
Her gown slipped down off her shoulder,
I knew that a starving man must eat,
And now, I’m wiser and bolder.

David Lewis Paget

That wild energy that’s the muse of the sea
When I loiter the beach in a storm,
Will always reflect all your features to me
As I dwell on the shape of your form.

I think of you striding knee deep in the swell
As the foam swirls and leaps at your thighs,
Above you the stars that will add to your spell
And reflect in the depth of your eyes.

For nature has laid some perfection on you
From the curl of your hair to your heels,
While I am caught up with an outsider’s view
Of what nature’s perfection reveals.

You’re way beyond beauty, and way beyond touch
As your hair reflects acres of corn,
Your skin has a fragrance that’s almost too much
From the moment perfection was born.

Your smile has a radiance hard to describe
As it peers down on me from above,
Its essence the finest of wines to imbibe
In its warmth, and the presence of love.

Beware of the man who has death in his soul
And the winter set deep in his eyes,
He’ll court and he’ll chaff you, until he can have you
Then tear you apart with his lies.

If I could but charm you, I’d never alarm you
But gaze on you rapt from afar,
Your love would be taken, but never forsaken
I’d worship you just as you are.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She stared at him out of the paper
And he recognised her eyes,
He knew he’d seen them before, somewhere,
But her face was a different size,
There wasn’t a dimple in the cheek
And her lips were rather thin,
It said that she was her sister, so
He sat, remembering.

The girl that he’d met in the nightclub
Who had stared across the room,
Their eyes had met in a brief vignette
And held, in the smoke-filled gloom,
They’d danced at the end of the evening
And he’d said he’d take her home,
The thought of a kiss from those ruby lips
Had driven his hands to roam.

She’d slapped his face, he remembered that,
But the rest was just a blur,
But now, from out of the newspaper
He was quite entranced by her,
He’d not read much of the article
For his reading skills were slight,
But he made his way to the same lane way
Where he’d held her sister tight.

The house was an old Victorian
With a gable above her room,
He saw the light on that winter’s night
That lit the surrounding gloom,
Her shape appeared in the window frame
As she stared down at the ground,
He thought he knew she would want him to
So he stayed, and hung around.

He stood right under a lamp post and
Was lit by a single beam,
While she stared down from the window, and
He knew that he’d been seen,
The door had creaked as it opened up
And she walked into the lane,
While he, now full of bravado, said,
‘It’s nice to see you, Jane.’

She paused, just inches away from him,
And she said, ‘my name is Joan,
You must have been with my sister
On that night she was alone.’
He looked confused, and then quite amused
At the harshness in her voice,
Then said, ‘I’d rather have been with you
If I’d only had the choice.’

‘I knew that you would come back one day,
Though I knew you’d take your time,
The killer always comes back, they say
To the place they did the crime.’
He stared right into her eyes just then
And he saw the eyes of Jane,
His fingers wrapping around her neck
As she stared at him in pain.

‘She really shouldn’t have slapped my face,’
He said, ‘it wasn’t right,
All that I did was touch her breast
Before a kiss goodnight.’
But then he staggered in shock and pain
To feel what her sister did,
As the kitchen knife slid in between
His first and his second rib.

David Lewis Paget

He’d always thought there was somebody
Who could make his life complete,
Among all the faceless people that
He passed in the city street,
But not one ever attracted him
For the faces there were blank,
Lost in their daily routine, at the Mall
And the City Bank.

A city is full of strangers with
No time to smile or greet,
They come in out of the suburbs, and
They jostle, but never meet,
Their lives are hidden from everyone
If they even have a life,
‘The girls are married to drones,’ he thought,
‘And the men to a restless wife.’

‘And mine is just as monotonous,’
He thought, as he caught the train,
Hurrying through the sliding doors,
Each morning was just the same.
He caught a glimpse of the human tide
On each station they passed by,
He caught the only Express each day
And that was the reason why.

It hurried away past Ovingham,
It slowed but it didn’t stop,
It passed the station at Orly Rue
Raced past the folk at Klop,
It slowed right down to a walking pace
As it sauntered past Beauclaire,
And as it did, his eyes had lit
On a girl that was standing there.

It must have been only seconds that
He could focus on her face,
Her eyes a dazzling blue, her stare
Was arch, but full of grace.
He turned his head as he went on by,
And could swear she stared right back,
Prompting his heart to leap so high
It was like a heart attack.

But the train went on and the girl was gone
As he mopped his fevered brow,
His head said she was the only one
But to find her, it screamed, ‘How?’
He took some days off work, and haunted
The station at Beauclaire,
If ever he was to find her, then
He’d surely find her there!

The days went by, but she didn’t show
And he thought she’d gone for good,
How would he ever find her again
In this massive neighbourhood?
He watched as his own Express went by
In a burst of springtime rain,
And there was her face at the window,
The face in the passing train.

David Lewis Paget

I’d never felt comfortable in that house
Not once, since we’d moved on in,
A rambling, derelict, barn of a house,
Three storeys of age-old sin.
Nobody said there’d been murders there,
Or told of the gypsy’s curse,
Three hundred years of discarded junk
And I don’t know which was worse.

The air was dank, and creepy and cold
So I opened the windows wide,
Trying to get some airflow through
To clear the smell inside.
It was musty, dusty, smelt like a tomb
With a corpse, decayed and grey,
We cleaned and scrubbed it room by room
And the smell went slowly away.

We tackled the ground floor first, we thought
We could leave upstairs til last,
The stairs were blocked with a French chaise longue
From some distant time in the past,
It was jammed hard up by the bannister rails
So it wouldn’t go up or down,
I said I’d have to pull it apart
And that sparked a Hartley frown.

Hartley was the love of my life
Who tackled that house as well,
She said it was a pig in a poke
That its real name was ‘Hell!’
But we finally cleared a space to live
And she worked out a way to shift
That French chaise longue from the stairway by
Trying a twist and lift.

The second floor was a nice surprise
There was none of the junk and grime,
The bedrooms still remained as they’d been
Laid out in another time,
So Hartley dealt with the dust in there
While I went up for a look,
The room above was an attic room
And that’s where I saw the book.

It lay on a dusty table with
Its pages ragged and torn,
The paper a sort of parchment and
The ink, quite faded and brown.
The cover was ancient leather, cracked
And worn, as if by an age,
‘The Many Lyves of this House’ it had
Embossed, as a title page.

I cautiously opened the cover, read
The words on the parchment page,
The light in the room then turned to gloom
And a storm began to rage.
I raced on down to the ground to find
A man outside, who said,
‘For those inside, don’t seek to hide,
I say, bring out your dead!’

And a cart stood out in the street outside
A pile of the dead in place,
The street was cobbled, not like before,
But of bitumen, no trace.
And on my door was a huge red cross
With a white and painted scrawl,
‘God, have mercy on us,’ it read,
‘Have mercy on us all.’

And there on the floor, inside the door
Was a corpse wrapped in a sheet,
I dragged it out by the feet, no doubt,
And I left it in the street.
On climbing back to the topmost floor
I leapt and pounced on the book,
But the page had turned, and the fire burned
Before I had time to look.

London burned in the distance and
Lit up the night like day,
I didn’t know of it then, but it
Was burning the plague away,
And every page in that cursèd book
Brought a different time to bear,
‘The Many Lyves’ that this house had lived
Were all inscribed in there.

I slammed that leather cover shut
And I laid it on its face,
Then swore that I’d never open it
While the Lord would lend me grace.
And Hartley, dragged from her cleaning chores
She never could understand,
Why I put a torch to that ancient house
And burnt it to the ground.

David Lewis Paget

The thunder was rumbling overhead
As we walked toward the church,
I whispered, ‘What are you doing, girl,
Are you leaving me in the lurch?’
She looked so fine in her wedding dress
But her face was set in a frown,
‘You had your chance,’ she gave me a glance,
‘You’re always letting me down.’

I wasn’t supposed to be there so
Her father gave me a nudge,
‘Sit at the back if you really must!’
He’d always carried a grudge.
‘I couldn’t sit by to see her tie
Herself to that freak, d’you hear?’
‘Just make a sound and I’ll knock you down
And throw you out on your ear!’

I looked at the six foot three of him
And knew he meant what he said,
But I couldn’t part from Josephine
In truth, I’d rather be dead,
The thunder rumbled and lightning cracked
Exploded the Wishing Tree,
Dropped it across the Vestry path
As if it was meant for me.

The tree had blocked us off from the Church
As the rain came pelting down,
Josephine raised the front of her skirt
And screamed, ‘We’re going to drown!’
We turned and ran way back to the car
But they locked me out in the rain,
And Josephine turned her eyes away
For my face was racked with pain.

My clothes were sodden, my hair was drenched
As I wondered what to do,
‘What can I say to change your mind,
To prove my love for you?’
She wound the window a tiny way,
Said, ‘This is a practice run,
The wedding’s not until Saturday,
And by God, you’d better come!’

She’d planned it all and had set me up,
Her father sat and grinned,
‘I’ll be along with a shotgun, so
You’d better be there, my friend!’
I danced out there in my soaking suit
As the rain streamed down my face,
The ‘freak’ was simply a cousin of hers
I’d thought was taking my place.

She told me we were having a son
Just after I said, ‘I do!’
I said, ‘Well aren’t you the sneaky one,
Why didn’t you tell me? True!’
She waited ‘til the reception, then
She really took me to task,
I asked her, ‘What of the practice run?’
‘I thought that you’d never ask!’

David Lewis Paget

The night outside was a solid mist
You couldn’t see past three feet,
Or so she thought, the Telephonist
As she came back in from the street.
There was no point following Jill and Tim
For the mist had swallowed them up,
They’d wandered out for a drink before
To head for the ‘Stirrup Cup’.

So Caryn finally went inside
And stood by the lounge room door,
There was blood, red blood on the candlestick,
There was blood, red blood on the floor,
She opened her mouth and she tried to scream
But couldn’t begin to shout,
She seemed to be locked in a crazy dream
And the folk in the house were out.

There wasn’t a body that she could see
But chills ran over her spine,
She wondered about her sister, Jill,
Then thought, ‘I’m sure she’s fine!’
But Tim, now there was a moody man
And his anger knew no bounds,
She’d hidden from him in her room before
When he’d stomped the house and grounds.

She staggered into the street again
There must be someone to call,
She felt her way through the garden gate
There was blood, red blood on the wall,
And a trail of blood lay under her feet
That led to the ‘Stirrup Cup’,
She felt the gorge rise up in her throat,
She was close to throwing up.

She felt her way through the evening mist
Stuck close to the kerb as well,
There was blood all over the bailiwick
As she called her sister’s cell,
It rang and rang ‘til it rang right out
And Caryn let out a moan,
But then a text on her tiny screen
That said one word, ‘Alone!’

She felt so faint that she stumbled then
Her head was a pounding wreck,
There was blood, red blood in her auburn hair,
There was blood on her cheek and neck,
She seemed to glide to the further wall
And caught herself looking down,
Down to the blood where her body lay
All crumpled, there on the ground.

And Jill and Tim found her lying there
As they walked by a stranded bus,
‘Oh God, it’s Caryn, my sister, Tim,
She must have been following us!’
They called the Police and they got back home
To find the blood on the wall,
There was blood, red blood on the candlestick
And blood all over the hall.

While Caryn drifts in a nightly mist
That you can’t see past three feet,
She used to be a Telephonist
But now she’s lost in the street.
Wherever she turns there’s blood, red blood
But she can’t believe it’s hers,
She seems to be locked in a crazy dream
Of a never ending curse!

David Lewis Paget

I’d driven along the cobbled street
And along to the village square,
When something had caught my attention, and
It was then I became aware,
I’d had vague thoughts of another life
That I’d lived in the distant past,
Was there something locked in my memory
That would tell me the truth, at last?

I didn’t remember who I was
My name, or even my face,
For five long years I’d hunted and searched
For a clue, a familiar place,
My life ‘til then was a total blank
I’d found myself by the sea,
Crawling up out of the water there
Was the first that I knew of me.

The war was just about over, and
Confusion had reigned supreme,
So much rubble and people dead
I couldn’t remember a thing,
The place I’d lived may well have been bombed,
I wandered the empty streets,
Of buildings, shattered to empty shells
Of craters, seven feet deep.

I found some clothes in a rubbled shop
For my own had been torn from my back,
There were burns all over my body,
Had I been caught in an air attack?
I went to the local hospital
Where the staff had treated my burns,
But they said they didn’t know who I was
So I left, and never returned.

I did odd jobs and I found a room
And I bought the News each day,
I checked the names on the missing lists
In the hopes I’d be found one day,
But I never saw a familiar face
Nor read a familiar name,
I’d given up when I drove on through
The village called Hamlin Dane.

I parked the car, next to the square
Where a cottage had caught my eye,
My heart was beating, loud in my chest
Though I stood and I wondered why,
Then a woman walked on out to the street
There was something familiar there,
She looked across and she caught my eye,
Then stopped and began to stare.

She walked, then ran right up to my side,
And then she began to cry,
‘My God, it’s you, just where have you been,’
Then stopped, and let out a sigh.
‘For five long years we thought you were dead,
So why have you come back now?’
I shook my head with a sense of dread,
I wanted to tell, but how?

Then fleeting visions came into my mind
Of a warm and a cosy hearth,
A loving woman beside me there
And a child that we’d christened Garth.
I tried to tell her I’d lost my mind,
My memories stirred just then,
She shook her head, ‘I’d like to be kind,
But I’ve just got married again.’

Then I was aboard a Lancaster
Heading on home from a raid,
We’d bombed the city of Frankfurt, and
The turret was shot away,
We limped back over the channel, then
Were hit with a burst of flack,
The plane went down in a burst of flame,
And I thought we’d never get back.

I was the only survivor, that
I knew, as we hit the sea,
The others went down with the crippled plane,
They wouldn’t be looking for me,
I stared at Joan and began to cry,
The tears were wet on my cheek,
‘I’m sorry, darling, I don’t know why
But the future is looking bleak!’

There was a time when I’d lived a life
That I’d lost and I don’t know how,
A wife, a son, and they’d turned their backs
And I can’t really blame them now.
She said it was best if I left that place,
She was married again, for sure,
So I stayed a week then I drove away,
I can’t even blame the war.

It’s sixty years, I stare at the hearth,
I never got married again,
My life flew by in a stream of tears
Of what I had lost, back then,
My son found out and he looked me up,
He said he was sorry, and how,
I hugged him close and I bit my lip,
And said, ‘I’m living for now!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She didn’t want her to be with him,
She wanted Anne for herself,
Since ever he had been on the scene
It was like she was on the shelf.
Anne never called for a girl’s night out
As she’d done in the days before,
So tears had streamed in her nightmare dreams
And Cathy had said, ‘it’s war!’

She painted her lips and shortened her skirt
And tied her hair in a plait,
The hair that now was a lustrous blonde
Not the straggly brown of a rat,
She sprayed some perfume under her arms
And more down under her skirt,
Then pulled on stockings with straightened seams,
A suspender belt that hurt.

She rouged her cheeks till she looked quite flushed
Like an innocent girl at play,
So when she wanted, it seemed she blushed
Pretend to be looking away,
Mascara darkened her cunning eyes
And dimples formed in each cheek,
A pencil arched where she’d plucked each brow
And her lips would pout when she’d speak.

She tried it out when she went to town
And bumped right into her friend,
For he was hanging on Annie’s arm
Like a drunken man on the mend,
He clung so tight it was surely love
She’d be lucky to tear them apart,
And Annie smiled as she told her friend,
‘My man has a lovely heart.’

But Cathy stood in the fellow’s way
Her bodice spilling her *******,
He seemed to stare at  her open cleavage
This was the ultimate test,
He didn’t flinch then or look away
And Annie gave her a frown,
But patted him on the wrist, to say,
‘He seems to be looking down.’

Cathy turned as to walk away
But then looked down at her shoe,
And bent right over, her skirt rode up
He looked, but what do you do?
‘You should be careful,’ then Annie said,
‘You’ll show someone your behind,
It doesn’t matter to me, or he,
My darling lover is blind!’

David Lewis Paget

The truck pulled up at the crack of dawn
On a Sunday morn in June,
I could hear the men unloading from
The darkness of my room,
‘What a strange time to deliver,’ I thought,
As I rose, pulled on my socks,
For there on the porch outside I found
They’d left a ******* box.

There wasn’t a mark on this gleaming box
But the scrawl of my own address,
Nothing to say who it was from
Just a silent emptiness,
I left it there til the sun came up
Then I pulled it through the door,
And there in a tiny script was writ
The legend, ‘from Zhongguo’.

Why would the Chinese send a box,
I hadn’t been there for years,
Maybe the Tong I’d tangled with
Back then, for black was a curse.
I looked for a way to open it
But there wasn’t a flap or seam,
It wasn’t tin and it wasn’t steel
But a substance in-between.

I dragged it out in the garden then,
Outside of the door, at back,
And thought that I would figure it out,
Then the box began to crack.
It heated up in the morning sun
And began to peel away,
Opening up the inside to
Be seen by the light of day.

And there inside was a giant egg,
The biggest I’d ever seen,
All sorts of curious markings on
The shell, in Mandarin.
I went inside and I locked the door
And I sat myself to think,
Why would they send a giant egg?
My mind was on the blink!

It only took a couple of hours
In the sun, that day in June,
And the shell began to break apart,
To hatch in the afternoon,
And a thing crawled out of that empty shell
That I never thought I’d see,
A tiny Chinese Dragon hatched
Came out, was suddenly free!

I couldn’t believe how fast it grew
As it fluttered out its wings,
It ate the cat and my bowler hat
And a host of other things,
Then it wandered down to the goldfish pool
Slid in, and began to swim,
There isn’t a single goldfish left
And the pool is sizzling.

Its head comes up and it gives a roar
And it sets the reeds on fire,
The flame is almost ten feet long
And my future’s looking dire.
Will someone get in touch with the zoo
They can have the beast for free,
Oh no! It’s wandering up the path,
No doubt, it’s looking for me!

David Lewis Paget

Zhongguo – ****. Jong gwar – China

The Inn he kept at the crossroads shone
A lantern, out on the street,
The only sign it was still alive
To the few its doors would greet,
Its passageway was in shadow once
You entered and closed the door,
And that was the way he wanted it,
The owner, Titus Claw.

For Titus was a hideous man
With a face like a railway wreck,
A scar cut deep with the fleshy burn
From a rope around his neck,
They said he’d cheated the hangman twice
With a neck like a coiled spring,
They’d hung on each of his legs in vain
For he never felt a thing.

The rope had broken under the strain
And dropped them all on the floor,
And he was the first to rise again
As he croaked, ‘I’m Titus Claw!’
They backed away as his form had swayed
With the hood still over his head,
‘There isn’t a rope can cope with me,
If there was, then I’d be dead!’

They tried again, he began to spin
As the rope became undone,
The strands unravelling faster than
The ropemaker had spun,
The hangman turned and he crossed himself
As he said, ‘I’m done with him!
If you want to hang this miserable wretch
Go find the Brothers Grimm!’

The Warden suffered a heart attack,
The jailers fled when they saw,
The Judge hid under the drop and cried,
‘He’s surely the Devil’s spore!
Release him now so our souls are safe
From the reach of the evil one,
It’s not his time for an early grave,
But God help everyone!’

So Titus went to manage the place
He called ‘The Devil’s Drop Inn’,
That sat way out on the crossroads
With a sign that creaked in the wind,
Whole families would avert their eyes
As they passed, and cross themselves,
For the only patrons came by night
And they called them, ‘Satan’s Elves’.

They came with their hats pulled over their eyes,
Their collars hiding their cheeks,
Then slide on into the passageway
And wouldn’t come out for weeks,
No lights were seen through the pebble glass
For the insides lay in gloom,
No drunken revellers came outside
It was silent as the tomb.

But once a month when the Moon was full
And the wind soughed up in the eaves,
A passer-by might hear a cry
Or a howl on the midnight breeze,
But nobody thought to check inside
They’d wear their hood like a cowl,
Then turn and suddenly rush away
When they heard an animal growl.

The storms would come and rattle the tiles,
As the sign would swing and creak,
And hail would shatter the window panes,
Three times in a week,
Til one dark shuddering winter’s night
With the good folk in their cots,
The lightning struck on the Devil’s peak
And shattered the chimney pots.

The fire began in the topmost room
And it raced on down the stair,
Gobbling up the dry rot that
It found most everywhere.
It made its way to the basement ‘til
The whole Inn was ablaze,
The pebble glass was exploding
And the walls themselves were razed.

A couple of passers-by have sworn
That all they saw were cats,
Rushing out of the passageway
And followed by tawny rats,
But in the glow of the embers, heading
Over the hill, they saw,
A shadowy figure, slinking away
The image of Titus Claw!

David Lewis Paget

They said that he lived in the tunnel
That burrowed right into the hill,
That once saw a belching funnel
Of sulphur and black clouds spill,
The train on the iron railway
That chuffed its way into the past,
To just leave the eerie tunnel,
Smoke blackened and silent at last.

In closing the barbed wire entrance
To keep all the children at bay,
They’d come to the end, in repentance,
The end of the steam railway,
It lived in the lost generations
In memories lost to the young,
In dreams and in steam in the stations
The old locomotives lived on.

But something lived deep in the tunnel
That hadn’t been there long before,
A product of sulphur and brimstone,
A thing with a terrible roar,
It wandered at night in the meadows,
It tore the throats out of the sheep,
And left pools of blood by the hedgerows,
Returned to the tunnel, to sleep.

The town held a council of elders
The ones who remembered the train,
‘We have to get rid of the monster,
It comes out again and again,’
‘I think that the monster is lonely,’
Said one of them, in a remark,
‘He needs to be soothed to be healthy,
We’ll lure him out into the Park.’

They thought of the spinster called Mary,
A woman not gifted with looks,
In truth she was ugly and hairy,
She buried her head in her books,
‘She’d do very well for a monster,’
They all of them seemed to agree,
And rolled her in lashings of sulphur
And brimstone for her pedigree.

They tied her just outside the entrance
Attached to barbed wire in the fence,
The tunnel grew dark as an ulcer,
Both she and the townsfolk were tense,
The monster came out and he saw her
And made sniffing sounds in the dark,
And Mary had gone in the morning,
Back into the tunnel, not Park.

And now, when the roar of the monster
Is heard, there’s no gutting of sheep,
But merely a purr like a hamster,
That says he is going to sleep,
As a man needs the love of his woman
So a monster has needs to be quelled,
And it seems ugly Mary is happy
To be with the monster from Hell.

David Lewis Paget

‘I’d swear that the sun is hotter,’ she said,
‘It’s hotter than I can recall,
The garden’s turned into a desert, is dead
My plants are fried up to the wall.’
I said I agreed, the car was so hot
I often got scorched by the steel,
The belt with the buckle was always red hot
And so was the steering wheel.

I said you could tell by the state of the road
Could tell by the bitumen melt,
The surface was shiny with liquefied tar
The heat off the surface you felt.
Beyond was the countryside, brown and bereft
Not a single green shoot could you see,
The bushes were brown from the top to the ground
And there wasn’t a leaf on a tree.

‘The place is like tinder, it just needs a spark
And it all will go up with a roar,’
We couldn’t survive in the smoke from the park,
We would have to be gone, well before.
I told Desdemona to pack us a case,
Just those things we would need on the run,
Some food and some water, a doll for our daughter,
Remember to pack us a gun.

We took it in turns to keep watch through the night,
To listen to every slight breeze,
The heat was intense, we looked over the fence
For any strange light through the trees,
It came from the valley, that terrible roar
So we knew that the demon was out,
Some one lit a spark way down in the park
And Des raised the house with a shout.

The three of us piled in the four wheel drive
And headed up over the hill,
The terror of flames in the rear view mirror
Have plagued and have haunted me still.
The wind had been gusting and fanning the flames
Pursuing us on our retreat,
Had crept up beside us and threatened to ride
Ahead to our certain defeat.

The heat so intense it had cracked the screen
And blistered the paint on the door,
When Desdemona let out a scream
To point to the gun on the floor.
‘Is this why you asked me to pack the gun,
Is it either that, or burn?’
I’d not meet her eyes with a tissue of lies
So I masked my own concern.

I heard her pray as the tyres caught fire
And exploded, one by one,
I kept the pedal flat to the floor,
It was either that, or the gun.
Then out of the darkness loomed a lake,
It was water up to the doors,
We came to rest where the water blessed
With the fire held back by the shores.

The skies were grey and they opened up
With God’s good grace at the dawn,
I held my wife and my daughter close
As the rain made us feel reborn,
When the people tell me there is no God
I just smile, and I let them go,
If he isn’t there then I find it odd
That he sent the rain…  I know!

David Lewis Paget

They didn’t tell when we bought the place
Of the ghost in the attic room,
They knew that they’d have to drop the price
If the ***** jumped out in the gloom.
So we’d signed the papers and paid the fees,
There wasn’t really an out,
We’d had a couple of days of peace
Then it came jumping about.

It started with a terrible crash
That roused us out of our bed,
I said, ‘that sounded like breaking glass
And it came from overhead.’
But overhead was the attic room
And that was an empty space,
So I went up with a whisking broom,
Found glass, all over the place.

And worse than that, it was mirror shards
It was seven years bad luck,
So just like an irritated Bard
I yelled out, ‘***?’
I got to work with the whisking broom
And was cursing, fit to toss,
When the *****, in the corner of the room
Appeared with a blazing cross.

I noticed he held it upside down
Raised up, to cover his face,
I must admit that I threw a fit,
I acted with little grace,
‘What the hell are you doing here,
You’ve given us quite a fright,
Don’t you know, we were trying to sleep,
It’s an hour past midnight.’

It waved the blazing cross in the air
And gave out a dreadful groan,
Then flames from the floor devoured him
And left me standing alone.
I went back down to the bedroom to
The woman I loved the most,
Who said, ‘Well, what did you find up there?’
‘We’ve got us a Holy Ghost!’

From that night on, it was every night
It was boom and crash and groan,
While Jenny in fright, would curl up tight,
‘Won’t he ever leave us alone?’
I said, “It’s only at night he comes,
He must sleep during the day,
I have an idea, don’t worry dear,
He won’t have it all his way.’

I rigged up a speaker system there
And fed it all through an amp,
Then during the day, I’d blast away
And light the room with a lamp,
A blinding lamp of a thousand watts
To strobe, at a hundred clicks,
And blasted him with Metallica,
I knew it would make him sick.

The ***** came out on the seventh day
Stood trembling on the stair,
The flames on his cross had all gone out,
He stood there, tearing his hair.
He dashed on out through the open door
I thought he was going to puke,
And that was the last of the Ghost we saw,
So that’s how you ***** a *****!

David Lewis Paget

These winter days have been cold and grey,
The sun is hidden above,
Much of my life is spent that way
Since I lost my only love,
For the clouds have entered my heart of hearts,
The cold has withered my smile,
Since ever the day she went away,
When I’d been out for a while.

I’d only been gone an hour or two,
Or so I thought at the time,
But when I returned, her clothes were gone,
She even took some of mine.
The house was empty and cold within
With cobwebs lining each room,
And dust had covered the furniture,
It smelt as rank as a tomb.

The phone had been disconnected, and
The power was off at the wall,
I had to fling open the windows
For any fresh air at all.
The weeds in the lawn were three feet high
Like a jungle, out in the yard,
The cat lay dead in the garden shed,
The tyres were flat on the car.

I called around to her mother’s place
To see where she might have been,
Her mother slammed the door in my face
And shouted something obscene.
I panicked then, and I went to see
Where she worked, at Kilroy Square,
But they had a new receptionist,
‘She hasn’t worked here for a year!’

I bought a paper and saw the date,
And at first it looked all right,
It said the 2nd of August, but
The year then gave me a fright.
It was one year on from the date I left
To walk on down by the lake,
I said to the man behind the stand:
‘That year must be a mistake!’

I’d lost a year, and I don’t know where,
The sweat stood out on my brow,
Where had I been in the in-between?
I don’t know, even now.
I went to wander, down by the lake
Where I’d wandered the year before,
And there was Jane, with a look of pain
On a bench by the lakeside shore.

At first, she’d not even look at me,
She wouldn’t answer my plea,
I said, ‘Thank God that I’ve found you, Jane,
Surely you know, it’s me!’
She said, ‘I’ve nothing to say to you,
But maybe you’ll tell me, Why?
You said that you’d not be gone for long,
You’d not even said Goodbye!’

‘I only went for an hour,’ I said,
‘An hour, or maybe two,
I didn’t roam, but I came straight home
And went out looking for you!
I couldn’t believe a year had gone,
I must have been going mad!’
She turned, with a scornful look at me,
‘As it all turned out, I’m glad.’

She showed me the tiny diamond ring
She wore on her wedding hand,
‘I’ve been engaged for a month, to Gage,
I think he’s a better man.’
These winter days have been cold and grey,
The sun is hidden above,
Much of my life is spent that way
Since I lost my only love!

David Lewis Paget

She sat at the edge of the second floor,
‘I’m going to jump!’ she cried,
He stood well back from the balcony,
‘You lied,’ she said, ‘you lied!
You swore we’d marry before the Spring
That I’d always be with you…’
‘I didn’t promise you anything,
It’s not what I want to do!’

‘Well, why did you lead me on,’ she said,
‘Did you want to break my heart,
I’ll fling myself from this building if
We’re going to be apart.’
‘I’ve got a lot of living to do
Before I take a wife,
You said that you’d never tie me down,
That you wanted to live your life.’

‘I wanted to live my life with you
Is all that I really meant,
But now you’re twisting my words, you want
To set up an argument.’
He said, ‘You’re getting hysterical,
I think that you ought to jump,’
Took one step back, and lifted his foot,
Then planted it in her ****.

She flew off the top of the doll’s house
And sat squat on the gravel drive,
Just as her mother motored up,
‘I see that you’re still alive!’
His father wandered from out the door
And waved to her mother, Gwen,
‘I thought I could trust you two out here,
I see what you’re doing, Ben!’

‘I think she’s been watching the Soaps again,
She’s always the drama queen,
What have you said to Ben,’ said Gwen,
‘He’s just as bad,’ said Deane.
‘What have you got to say for yourself,
Apologise to Gwen!’
‘She said that she wanted to marry me,
But she knows that I’m only ten!’

David Lewis Paget

He stood at the back, and looked around
The church, not even full,
There wasn’t a face he recognised
From his far off days at school,
He thought of Jim in the coffin there
Who had reached his end of days,
Then hid his head and the tears he shed
As they sang a hymn of praise.

The congregation had filed on out
To attend a hurried wake,
‘I hope she finished the Lamingtons,’
Said the grandson, Edward Drake.
‘We’re lucky to have a wake at all
For they’ve been divorced for years,
I couldn’t believe she’d put it on
But she even cried real tears!’

He didn’t follow the mourners down
But turned away on his own,
He hadn’t anything much to say
To the strangers Jim had known,
He’d said goodbye to his only friend
To the last one that he had,
The rest had gone on ahead of him
And the thought of that was sad.

What do you do in an empty world
When the last of those you knew
Is lying under a grassy knoll,
Covered in morning dew?
When your wife has gone to an early grave
And your son has gone, too soon,
While a daughter’s taken in childbirth
Early one Sunday afternoon.

He walked and walked til the sun went down,
To the sound of an inner voice,
‘Why have you stayed around so long?’
‘My fate gave me little choice!’
His mind filled up with the sounds of them
Who had laughed and joked in the past,
They said, ‘We knew it would come to this,
But someone had to be last!’

He wandered out in his garden then,
So dark that he couldn’t see,
But every one of his friends was there
Hiding behind each tree,
They called and chaffed in the darkness that
Their time had been way back when,
‘We’re quite content with the lives we led,
Why don’t you join us, Ben?’

But Ben sits still in his empty house
While a candle gutters there,
He thinks he’ll go when the flame goes out
Sat in his easy chair,
He doesn’t think of the future now
For his life was lived in the past,
And his mind is filled with memories
Til the Lord takes him, at last.

David Lewis Paget

He was sitting alone by the window
In hopes that the phone would ring,
Just as he’d sat there every day
Since she’d disappeared last Spring,
But snow now lay in the gutter,
Was glistening up in the trees,
And his thoughts would stray fom the words he’d pray,
‘Won’t you please come home, Louise!’

The phone lay stubbornly silent,
The snow untouched in the street,
There wasn’t a cart or a tyremark,
Nor even a sign of feet.
The sky was louring grey outside
As it was, the day she went,
He wished he knew, but hadn’t a clue
There had been no argument.

He’d thought perhaps she’d been taken,
Had struggled, against her will,
But there’d been no sign of a ransom,
The phone had stayed silent still.
He’d asked her friends in the neighborhood
What she’d said, could they recall?
But all of them said Louise was good,
That nothing stood out at all.

Her clothes still hung in the wardrobe,
And gave off their faint perfume,
As days went by he would sit and cry
Could barely go in the room,
The Police were as good as useless,
Inferred she’d taken a walk,
‘She’s probably got a new boyfriend,
If only your walls could talk.’

The only clue that he’d ever found
Was a script in a bag she’d left,
He found the word unpronounceable
But strange that the script was kept,
She wasn’t a one for keeping things
She said there were bins for that,
She’d thrown out even a friendship ring
And an old and beaten hat.

One day there were footsteps through the snow
Wound up at his own front door,
He raced to open the doorway up
But the footsteps stopped at the floor,
There wasn’t a sign they’d gone away,
There wasn’t a sign of retreat,
Whoever had come to his front door
Was still out there in the street.

He went back into the study then
And gazed through the sudden rain,
He never knew when the phone rang through
It would cause him so much pain.
A voice intoned, ‘If you’re on your own,
Sit down, are you Brian Drew?’
And then went on with its dismal song
‘I’ve a message to pass to you.’

‘This is the Somerhill Hospice, with
A body, ready to claim,
It’s up to you, but it’s Louise Drew
She left a note with your name.
She finally died this morning from
That tumour, found on her lung,
We didn’t know she was married, though,
That note was under her tongue.’

‘She didn’t want you to suffer, it
Was better she went away,
She wrote she hadn’t told anyone
But came in as Louise Grey.’
Brian’s face became bloodless at
The wet footsteps in the hall,
Then took in the silent nothingness,
And threw the phone at the wall.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

They’d arranged to meet on Charter Street
At the point that midnight chimed,
She was to come with a yellow bag,
And he with a book of rhyme,
The ad had run in the Daily Mail
And had said, and here I quote:
‘Wanted: A gentleman for fun
With a high speed motor boat.’

Then he’d replied that he had the boat
Could she bring along the fun,
And she wrote back, ‘Nice to meet you, Jack,
I have fun for everyone.’
He saw her in front of the Gaumont
That had played ‘The Cruel Sea’,
Standing there with a yellow bag
And thought, ‘That’s the one for me!’

He wandered up and he waved the book
With the title ‘Nonsense Rhyme’,
She gave him a cool, appraising look
Like a laid back Valentine.
‘It’s much too late for the boating lake,’
He said, ‘Would you like a drink?’
And she stood there with a vacant stare
But replied, ‘What do you think?’

He led her down to the Castle Club
Where he had a private booth,
Then sat her down till the drinks came round
And remarked upon her youth.
She raised a brow when he asked her how
She had come to advertise,
She said, ‘It’s something I have to do
If I need to meet new guys.’

They drank their drinks and they talked a bit
About nothing much, per se,
And then he asked her about the fun
But she said he’d have to pay.
‘I thought a ride in my motor boat
Would be payment,’ he began,
To which she said, ‘I’m not free to ride,
I’m a working courtesan.’

While back in the heart of Charter Street
Where the leaves blew from the trees,
A girl stood there in a party dress
And the wind blew round her knees,
She’d been in watching ‘The Cruel Sea’
For the time had seemed to lag,
But now stood out on an empty street
Holding her yellow bag.

David Lewis Paget

Death called my name, and I replied,
‘I’m not quite ready now.
There must be others, more deserving
Of your time, somehow.
I find I still have much to do
Or leave the world in debt,
For instance, all the many women
I’ve not slept with yet.

‘You’ve followed me for far too long,
I’ve felt you on my tail,
Your hot breath on my neck, though I
Tried not to leave a trail.
My health is not the best, it’s true,
But there are some far worse,
The great decision’s up to you
But you should take them first.’

‘I noticed when you call my name
There’s some disparity,
With other names almost the same
You used a second ’t’,
Go back and check the register
You’ll find some other guy,
Who hides behind my name, he’s game,
But you should ask him ‘why?’’

‘You’ve stalked the world for far too long
In you there’s little grace,
You’ve taken everyone I loved,
You give no breathing space.
Don’t worry, I shall let you know
When I am done with life,
Should you want one to practice on
You might try my ex-wife.’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget