He knew that there must be something wrong
From the time he brought her home,
His mother had turned her back when he
Announced her as Alice Frome,
‘She lives in the vale by Abbeville
Where I met her at the dance,
Mother, you have to greet  her for
This may be a true romance.’

His mother had pursed her lips, and turned
Surveying her up and down,
‘You shouldn’t get carried away,’ she said,
‘There’s plenty of girls in town.’
Then Alice blushed, was taken aback
By this woman’s cruel jibe,
‘What have I done to you,’ she said,
And the lad, he almost cried.

She left, and swore she’d never come back
And the lad had left as well,
His mother watched throught the curtains
Knowing she’d put her son through hell,
‘Just what in the world were you thinking of?’
He said, when he came back home,
‘I meant, she wasn’t the one for you,
That girl, that Alice Frome.’

‘You don’t even know her,’ said the lad,
‘You wouldn’t know what she’s like,
She’s good at art and she’s awful smart,
She’s not some terrible ****.’
‘I know her sort, I’ve seen them before
And she’s not the one for you,
Take your mother’s advice, my son
Or she’ll tear your heart in two.’

But he went to meet her secretly
On the odd nights of the week,
And when his mother had asked him where,
She found that he wouldn’t speak.
He woke one Saturday morning late
His ankle chained to the bed,
‘You won’t be going to visit that girl
Unless I’m already dead!’

He cried and ranted and called for her
But his mother wouldn’t come,
She locked the door to his bedroom
And the windows, every one,
She brought his meals but she wouldn’t budge,
‘You will lie here ‘til she’s gone,
‘Til she has another boyfriend, and
I’ll bet, that won’t be long.’

She kept him chained for a week in there
Then Alice came round to call,
She beat and beat on the panelled door
Then sat on the old stone wall.
‘I’ll not be leaving ‘til you come out,’
She yelled, so the neighbours heard,
And soon, the mother had let her in,
Face grim, but her eyes were scared.

They sat and talked in the kitchen there
For an hour, or maybe more,
Then Alice walked with a tear-stained face
Slamming the old front door,
His mother let him off from his chain
But she made him sit downstairs,
‘That Alice Frome said leave her alone.’
He said, ‘I know she cares!’

‘It isn’t a question of caring, son,
But a question of what is right,
You just can’t marry that Alice Frome
And I’ll tell you why tonight.
I felt let down when your father left
And I had an affair or two,
And then I fell, you should know as well
For I am her mother too.’

‘I had her swiftly adopted out,
Burying past mistakes,
I couldn’t care like I cared for you
We do whatever it takes.
But I knew the people that took her in
And I’ve watched her from afar,
You couldn’t marry your sister, son,
You’ll find there’s a legal bar.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before,’
He cried as he turned his back,
‘I didn’t want to reveal my scar…’
He said, ‘It’s too late for that!
We think she may be expecting now,
It’s not just affecting you!’
‘She’ll have to have an abortion, son,
That’s what she’s gone off to do.’

He left the house in a flood of tears,
His mother cried in the dark,
The worst had come of her secret fears
She was losing her son, her Mark.
A week went by then they found the two
Curled up in a four-post bed,
Their pale young faces were tear-streaked,
A brother and sister, dead.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

My life was pretty well empty,
I hadn’t a friend to call,
Trying to make a friend was like
Hitting your head on a wall,
Most other people bored me,
Others had nothing to say,
I didn’t know how much longer I
Could go on living this way.

My folks had died in the autumn,
In a wreck on Highway One,
I suddenly felt like an orphan
When nobody wanted one,
My brother had gone to the tropics
My sister had gone to the west,
So there I was on my lonesome,
Just me and an old tea chest.

I looked at the chest in the corner,
It hadn’t been opened yet,
I didn’t know if I was ready for
The surprises I might get.
My sister had packed and sealed it,
She said she felt like a thief,
‘Don’t even think of opening it
Until you’re over your grief!’

It was full of our family papers,
Documents, photo’s and rings,
All the stuff that our folks had left,
Some of their favourite things,
She knew that I’d cry when I opened it,
And went through the things she’d packed,
Our family had been torn apart,
There was now no putting it back.

It was late on a Saturday morning,
And I had nothing to do,
I prised the lid off the old tea chest,
And took a deep breath or two,
I shut my eyes and I dived right in
Tipped all the stuff on the floor,
A thousand pics of a thousand things
That the family did before.

I must admit that I almost cried
When I saw my mother’s face,
Just as she’d looked when I was young
In a bonnet of Irish lace,
My father was holding me close to him
In his army uniform,
He didn’t know it would end like this
In a crash, and a firestorm.

All the sepia tints were there
And the studio photographs,
Each one holding a simple pose
To wait for the camera flash.
There were faces there unknown to me
From the family, way back when,
Victoria sat on the English throne
And our ‘Grands’ were living then.

There was one old tattered photograph
Of our Great Grandfather Jim,
******* away on a gnarled old pipe
And our great Grandma, Eileen.
Then I heard a noise and I looked around
To the corner, in the gloom,
Where an old man sat in a trilby hat
Smiling across the room.

‘Don’t be alarmed, I mean no harm,’
He said, as I went to rise,
There was something vaguely familiar
About the grey in his eyes,
‘I see you’re checking the photographs
And I thought I’d just drop in,
I keep an eye on the family ties
And you, so how have you been?’

I looked again at the photograph,
At the man in the trilby hat,
‘I don’t know whether I’m going mad,
Are you Great Grandad, or what?’
‘I am, I am, you got it in one,
I’m part of your family tree,
Your folks just asked if I’d pop right in,
They’re out there now, with me.’

‘They worry about you doing well
You’re too much on your own,
I came to give you a tip or two
To brighten your life at home.
I met Eileen in a butcher’s shop
There’s one just down at Cleve,
She watches you when you walk on by
And wears her heart on her sleeve.’

I knew the shop, I knew the girl,
I wanted to ask him more,
But where he’d sat in the corner there
Was a piece of empty floor.
I went for a walk, to buy some meat
And she smiled in a sweet surprise,
When I said, ‘Don’t think that I’m forward, now,
But my, you’ve got lovely eyes!’

David Lewis Paget

The rain came down in a torrent, while
The rest of the world had slept,
The mud it churned was abhorrent,
It was as if the planet wept.
They said we’d come to the final times
That the earth could take no more,
For people raged like a virus
Rotting the planet down to the core.

They said it’s time that we left the place
That we found a pristine home,
It’s sitting, somewhere out there in space
If we had the ship to roam.
But we’re tied forever to walk the earth
And to share in its demise,
Or stop polluting, and ****, and looting
The place we live our lives.

For God is not going to save us now
Since he gave us all free will,
He won’t be along to pick it up
The ******* that we spill,
His temper’s seen in the thunderheads
And the lightning in a storm,
The earthquake under our feet of clay
So we’ll wish we’d not been born.

The final times have been coming since
The ancient days of Tyre,
And we, like them will be running from
Destruction, and from fire,
It’s much too late to pontificate
On the things that should be done,
Before the planet’s a wasted mass
On its journey around the sun.

David Lewis Paget

The office was in a building that
You wouldn’t have looked at twice,
In truth, it stood in a part of town
That wasn’t very nice,
The blinds forever were drawn down tight
And were thick with stains and dust,
I wouldn’t have sought a job in there
But I felt that I really must.

I was over a year on welfare, and
I knew that it had to end,
I’d lost all my self-respect, my car,
And I hadn’t a single friend,
When this came up in a tiny ad
On the supermarket board:
‘Be one of the Movers and Shakers,
Then put the Takers to the sword.’

My curiosity peaked, and I
Marched into the office grim,
An insipid girl was behind the desk,
‘You’ll have to talk to him!’
A man in an inner office sat
In a cloak and black cravat,
‘We’re needing another numbers man,
Do you think you’re up to that?’

I said I was up to anything
For I didn’t really see,
That there would be ramifications
And they would apply to me,
He showed me into an office with
A desk and a swivel chair,
Then pulling a ledger off the shelf
He set it before me, there.

‘Your job is to add up the columns
Putting a total to each name,
Remember, you’re only the numbers man
So you’re really not to blame.
Then when you get to five hundred, tear
The page from out of the book,
A man will be round to collect it,
Let’s just say, he’s Dr. Hook.’

I didn’t meet this mysterious man
‘Til I tallied up more than three,
A Johnson, Sands, and an Adamson,
And a man called Jacoby,
They’d totalled just five hundred each
When I tore their pages out,
And Dr. Hook slid them into a book,
I said, ‘What’s it all about?’

‘Never you mind, my lad,’ he said,
‘It’s better you didn’t know,
There are things that shouldn’t bother your head
Until it’s your time to go.’
But those names remained in my mind until
On watching the nightly news,
An Adamson died in a mighty wreck
And a Sands, from a faulty fuse.

I thought it might be a coincidence
And I put my mind at rest,
When the girl from work came visiting,
And she seemed to be distressed,
I’d thought that she was insipid, but
There was fire in her belly too,
‘You know that the guy whose place you took
Is dead…  So I’m warning you!’

She said that I had a page as well
In a book, kept under her desk,
‘If you saw your column, adding up,
I think you’d get little rest.
For every page you give Dr. Hook
I add ten each to your name,
With that score of ten, you’ll be just like Ben,
He lasted a year in the game!’

‘He’d started fudging the figures when
His number was creeping up,
I’d warned him, like I am warning you,
But it wasn’t ever enough,
An audit pushed him over the top
By adding a hundred points,
And the ten he’d skimmed then died with him
In that fire at the Pizza joint.’

My column is stuck, four-eighty-nine
At this moment, as I write,
I still believe I can fend it off
If I’m careful, keep it tight,
I sweat, while adding the figures up
Of a certain Dr. Hook,
His column tops five hundred and one
As I tear his page from the book.

David Lewis Paget

We were out on a training mission
Up in a Neptune, hunting a sub,
The pilot was Captain Grissom
Taking a nap, aye, that was the rub,
The plane was on auto-pilot
Left in the hands of Lieutenant Free,
While I was down in the nose cone
Keeping a watch, beneath us the sea.

The skies were a starlit wonder
Never a cloud to temper the view,
The Moon, it had barely risen
Casting its light with a purple hue,
We’d dropped right down to a thousand feet
As the sonar checked the bay,
Then Free had said, ‘There’s a flock of birds,
Just a couple of miles away.’

The plotters gave out a chatter
Picking the signals up from the buoys,
The Snifter, it didn’t matter
It was detecting diesel oils,
But up on the pilot’s radar screen
Was a mass of darkened rows,
I heard Free say on the intercom:
‘It’s a swarm of migrant crows.’

We knew we’d better not hit them
They could be ****** into the pods,
And then if they clogged the jets our fate
Would be in the hands of gods,
I peered on out through the perspex cone
It was much too dark to see
A couple of thousand crows out there
With feathers as black as could be.

Free said we should duck beneath them
So he took us down real low,
The shapes had massed on the radar screen
There couldn’t be far to go,
And then I had caught a sight of them
The first of these flying things,
My voice croaked into the intercom,
‘None of these crows have wings.’

They flew on the straight and level
Bunched in groups of two or three,
I knew they were something nasty,
Then I heard Lieutenant Free,
He seemed to choke, he’s a rational bloke
And couldn't believe his eyes,
‘If you can see what they are, tell me,
Don’t give me a bunch of lies.’

But who’d be the first to say it,
I was pensive, down in the cone,
Nothing I’d say would mend it
If I was first to say on my own,
‘It looks like a flight of witches
All in black, and each on a broom,’
The crew back there were in stitches
Thinking that I was a ****** Toon.

The coven dived on an island
Covered in trees, and out in the bay,
I thought that we might collect one
But we gave them the right of way,
‘We’ll tell them, when we get back,’ said Free,
That it was a flight of crows,
Don’t anyone talk about witches, for
It’s best if nobody knows.’

David Lewis Paget

He’d stared at the silver screen so long
He thought he was going blind,
For a fortnight after his wife had gone
He thought he would lose his mind.
She’d snatched her purse from the window ledge
And said that she’d not be late,
‘I’ll just call in to the grocery store,
Then call on my sister, Kate!’

An hour went by and he scratched his head
While watching the cricket score,
Then two, and three put the sun to bed,
He went and stood by the door,
The Moon rose up at eleven or so,
It shone on an empty street,
And Kate replied to his mobile call,
‘I’ve not seen Jane for a week!’

There wasn’t a lot he could say to that
For Kate would have played it straight,
She wouldn’t lie for her sister Jane,
She had enough on her plate.
A drunken husband, threatening her
Each time that he laid one on,
And Kate had whispered to Jane, ‘I wish,
He’d pack up his things, be gone!’

Sam went to report to the police next day,
One lost, or wandered or strayed,
(The cop had smirked to his mate out back,
‘Perhaps she went to get laid?’)
‘It’s not like her, she’s a homely type,
But something has gone amiss,
She left three bags at the grocery store
And she’s not done that, ‘til this.’

Once back at home on the Internet
He checked on her Facebook page,
Her smiling face looked back at him yet,
Making him more dismayed,
A man had posted a Timeline rant,
Had posted the previous day:
‘I love you Jane, and I’m deep in pain,
I’m coming to take you away.’

The face of the man was indistinct
Was hidden in deepest gloom,
He must have taken the photograph
At night, in a dim-lit room,
The name that he used was ‘Love-Will-Out’
But surely that couldn’t be,
For Jane, he thought, was a simple soul,
‘She wouldn’t be false to me!’

He caught a glimpse of her now and then
As he wandered, page to page,
She’d left a trail as she trawled back when
And he felt a gathering rage.
A ‘like’ on a friend she used to have,
A comment that made no sense,
‘I need a map’ was the one remark
That had kept him in suspense.

‘I don’t know where,’ she’d written up there,
Elsewhere, ‘or where I am.’
‘Somebody’s following close behind
But I keep looking for Sam.’
Snatches of words that made no sense
He would see as they flashed on by,
And through the runnels of Facebook tunnels
He’d see that same grim guy.

So still he stares at the silver screen
Though he thinks he’s going mad,
She seems to be there on the Facebook scene,
(In a way, that makes him glad).
But he’ll never rest ‘til she comes back home
To end that feeling of pain,
Whenever I ask if he’s coming out,
He says, ‘I’m following Jane!’

David Lewis Paget

You sat in your chair, and read your book,
As often I’ve seen you do,
While each now and then I’d peek a look,
A glance filled with love for you.
The hour was late, but you didn’t stir,
I said I’d be off to bed,
I noticed your look was fixed on your book
So it went right over your head.

I lay awake for an hour or two,
And thought that you might come up,
We’d both had coffee before I came,
I’d made you a second cup,
You may have fallen asleep down there
All cuddled up in your chair,
I cleared my head, and got out of bed,
Thinking to call you there.

I ventured into a darkened lounge
And found that the power had failed,
While lighting flashed through the open blinds,
And thunder above assailed.
But still you sat in your cozy nook
And stared straight down at the page,
Clinging on to your open book
By an old, forgotten sage.

I called you once, and I called you twice
But you didn’t move or stir,
I tried to shake you awake, but you
Were cold in the cool night air.
Your face was pale in the flashing light
Of the lightning bursts outside,
And then the terrible truth came out,
You’d sat in your chair, and died.

I tried so hard to revive you, but
You didn’t allay my fears,
Your eyes were open, but dull and black,
While my own eyes filled with tears.
I laid your open book on the hearth
And tried to preserve the page,
The final one you were looking at
As you left this mortal stage.

And often now I stare at that book
At the final words you read,
As death crept up and it claimed you then
As those words rang in your head:
‘You must let go and come walk with me
To the green fields of the park,
Just take my hand and then leave with me,
Don’t be afraid of the dark.’

David Lewis Paget

I set out on a filthy evening
Jogged the stream and under the bridge,
Headed into the pouring rain
And over St. Alban’s Ridge,
I heard some footsteps running behind
But never could turn to see,
For who would venture out in the rain
Just to be following me?

I’d heard the following steps before,
Had stopped, and I’d turned around,
Scanned the bushes and hedgerows
There was no-one there to be found,
I thought I could hear some breathing
From a bush, or hid in a tree,
Though nothing stirred but a restless bird,
Nothing that I could see.

I’d always travelled the leaf strewn path
By the early sun of the day,
But sometimes ran when the darkness fell
By the light of a moonlight ray,
I loved the scent of the pine fresh air
It made me alive, and free,
It wasn’t until I courted Claire
That the footsteps followed me.

They’d stop whenever I stopped, and then
Would start again when I jogged,
I thought at first it was just a trick,
An echo, bounced off a log,
But sometimes, there in the silence when
I stopped while catching my breath,
I’d feel the hairs beginning to stir
Way up on the back of my neck.

I turned to run by a farmer’s field
That was stacked with new mown hay,
Reflecting light from the pale moonlight,
Awaiting the farmer’s dray,
I heard the footsteps behind me squelch
In the mud from the driving rain,
I called, ‘You’d better come out tonight,
By God, or I’ll cause you pain!’

I pulled a glittering knife blade out
I’d hidden, deep in its sheath,
Scanned the track by the farmer’s field
And the heather, down on the heath,
But nothing stirred in the pale moonlight
Though I saw its tracks in the mud,
And as I watched in a gathering fright,
They seemed to be filling with blood.

I turned and ran in a panic then
And weaved my way through the trees,
My heart was beating, my mind was numb
I slipped, and fell to my knees,
I finally found the giant oak
Where I knew that a corpse would lie,
The moon was sending a single beam
And lighting the dead man’s eye.

I’d propped him there when I’d slashed his throat
To free up the hand of Claire,
She’d been bereft when he disappeared,
Would never have found him there.
I’d meant to come back, bury the bones
But still he sat by the tree,
And now the footsteps joined with him there,
His eye was glaring at me.

They followed a trail of blood, they said,
The searchers said, when they came,
And I was cowering by the corpse,
They said that I was to blame.
They’ve put me here in a darkened cell
Where I sit and stare at the floor,
And hear the shuffle of footsteps there
On the other side of the door.

David Lewis Paget

He lay awake in his narrow bed
And opened his bedside drawer,
Then fumbled around until he’d found
The thing he was looking for,
A faded folder, covered in dust
It must have been there for years,
‘I want you to take this folder, son,
And give it to Mildred Pierce!’

His grandson blinked away a tear
And uttered a silent sigh,
Then dropped his gaze, he found it hard
To look in the old man’s eye,
He knew he wouldn’t be there for long
Though his steely brow was fierce,
He said, ‘Sure Gramps, I’ll pass it along
When I find your Mildred Pierce.’

‘You’ll find her back where I left her, when
The way of the world was wide,
Up on the banks of the Darling, she’ll
Be there on the Wentworth side,
She used to teach when the town was young
In a little timber school,
I should have stayed, but the girl had clung
And I guess I was just a fool.’

‘She looked so prim in her teacher dress
And her hair was up in a bun,
We used to walk by the river banks
When her teaching day was done,
Down in the shade of the eucalypts
I kissed her there one day,
With her hair let down on her shoulders
She said, ‘Please don’t go away.’’

‘I only stayed for the shearing, then
I followed the shearing tracks,
I had to keep on the move as long
As the wool grew on their backs,
We said goodbye at the junction where
The mighty rivers join,
I should have stayed for the love she gave
But my only love was coin.’

The old man, he was exhausted then,
Lay back, and then he sighed,
His grandson waited a moment, but
He saw that his gramps had died,
He took a look in the folder when
He settled in back at home,
And found a number of pages there
And each one was a poem.

One called ‘Sorry!’ and one called ‘Why?’
And one that he’d drowned in tears,
One that was just a stark lament
‘For the Love of Mildred Pierce’.
The boy had blushed at the poem meant
To eulogise her thighs,
While others sought for her tender lips
And the lovelight in her eyes.

He waited until the summer break
When the funeral was done,
Loaded the car and headed out
To where the rivers run,
He thought that she would be dead by this
It was just an exercise,
But when he had asked for Mildred Pierce
They had caught him by surprise.

‘She’s out on the banks of the Darling
You can’t miss her little shack,
She keeps herself to herself, prefers
To wander the outback.’
He stopped the car at her garden gate
And he called out by her door,
‘I’m looking for Mildred Pierce!’ Then heard
Her footsteps on the floor.

He half expected an ancient dame
With half a foot in the hearse,
But what he saw was a lovely girl
And still in her tender years,
‘They named me after my mother
Who was named for her mother too,
But Gran’s been gone for ever so long
So what did you want to do?’

They sat on her small verandah, and
He showed her the folder then,
‘My gramps wrote these for your grandmother,
Some time in the way back when.’
She slowly read through the pile of verse
And her eyes had filled with tears,
‘I’d heard all about this shearer from
My grandma, Mildred Pierce.’

‘He couldn’t have known they had a child,
My mother arrived in the spring,
And she was told who her father was
But they never heard a thing.
My Grannie died as a spinster, still
A teacher at the school.
How sad that he couldn’t reach her then
To say that his heart was full.’

They went to walk by the river where
Some fifty years before,
A teacher walked with a shearer for
A magic moment more,
They stopped, stood under the eucalypts
With them both reduced to tears,
And that was the moment he kissed her,
For the love of Mildred Pierce.

David Lewis Paget

It comes to us all, we ask ourselves
Is love the source of bliss?
If true, then why did I love her so
And yet feel so amiss?
Could it be conversation that
Would bind us, heart to heart,
Or physical stimulations that
Would sour, before we part.

‘It’s always been such a mystery,’
I said to Anne Marie,
‘What was the force that drew us in,
Why did you cleave to me?’
She shrugged, and thought for a moment,
‘Why must you philosophise?
I thought there was something welcoming
About your soft, grey eyes.’

It wasn’t enough, I knew it then
There had to be more than this,
How could you build a relationship
On a stolen midnight kiss?
I needed to know the locks and chains
That would bind us, as they should,
On through a distant future, when
In thrall to a different mood.

I told her that I was leaving her
On a cold dark winter’s morn,
‘I knew that you would,’ said Anne Marie
As the sun came up at dawn,
‘You’re not content with the time we’ve spent
So your love was not for me.’
I couldn’t tell how my heart was full
With my love for Anne Marie.

But I thought it had to be tested,
Love’s not sure ‘til it’s tasted pain,
By leaving, there could be one result
And that one result was gain,
It would either set us apart for life
As our ardour died in the flame,
Or qualities more substantial would
Draw us together again.

I knew it was quite a gamble, that
It could well change my life,
Tampering with a primal force
Could only bring me strife,
But love would have to be strong as steel,
Unwavering in its course,
To prove that everything else was real
Not waning from the source.

I disappeared for a month or more
But where, I didn’t say,
None of our mutual friends had seen
Me out, by light of day,
I thought to set up a mystery
To prove an ancient saw,
That absence makes the heart fonder
As it did, in times of war.

Whatever I sought to prove, I did,
The proof was in the gruel,
With plenty of time to ponder, though
The lesson learned was cruel.
I crept up there on a starless night
And I heard her whispered lies,
‘I thought there was something welcoming
About your soft, blue eyes.’

David Lewis Paget

Down in the depths of Frosty Hollow
The Dell where nobody sleeps,
The eyes are watching one another
In case some human peeps,
It sits in a time of hither and slime
Each side of a distant flood,
Where nothing is really worth the bother,
The ancient Wizard stood.

He stood by the spell of them-and-us
That he spun in a past go round,
That sought the well of the what-they-were
When the skies were close to the ground,
And nobody sought to leave the Hollow
Except in a cowl or hood,
The ways of men were hard to swallow
Outside the enchanted wood.

The stars that sparkled up in the trees
Had promised a cold come in,
But the Wizard ruled the things that matter
And various types of sin,
He ruled the currents that gave them breath,
And told of the marsh outside,
Where those who left met an evil death
In the end, so nobody tried.

And slowly, he would increase the size
Of the Dell to the world outside,
The Dell would spread on the bones of the dead
He said, in his sin of pride,
But the eyes were fed with suspicions, and
They looked to each other first,
And the first in Hell were those in the Dell
Who looked at the Wizard and cursed.

Down in the depths of Frosty Hollow
The Dell where nobody sleeps,
The eyes are watching one another
In case some human peeps,
It sits in a time of hither and slime
Each side of a distant flood,
And there you’ll find an ancient Wizard
Who lies in a pool of blood.

David Lewis Paget

There’s a new thing up on the Internet
And it’s how some people ‘Ghost’,
They date and chat, but it’s after that
That they disappear the most.
You think you’re starting a new romance
And that they are full of you,
But they never say that they’re gone today,
That they won’t be back, it’s true!

They once would call, and they’d ring the bell
And stand on the hallway mat,
Then face to face with a lack of grace
They would say ‘That’s the end of that!’
But that caused tears and was much too hard
For the one who’d want to leave,
When the jilted one said that’s not much fun,
And cry on the leaver’s sleeve.

Then the mobile phone came to everyone
And they all began to text,
It wasn’t long before right or wrong
They would use that method next,
They’d text, ‘Too bad, but I’ve changed my mind,
I can’t take you to the ball,’
Then days would pass and you soon would find
Your romance had hit the wall.

But then at least you could text your Jack
And call him a piece of ****,
‘ You had to do it behind my back,
With a text, you cut and run.
You’ve not the guts of a greasy toad
For you couldn’t face to face,
You didn’t tell me in bed last night,
You’re an absolute disgrace!’

So texting slowly went out of vogue
It was hard to change your Sim,
Every time that they’d text you back
So they’d think, ‘He’s never in.’
It’s far more easy to slip away
Get lost in a cyber mist,
Block your love on your Facebook page
It’s as if you don’t exist.

You slip away like a silver wraith
With the substance of a fog,
Nevermore to be seen by them,
Of course, you’re a ***** dog!
But that’s the way of the Internet
If you come across a ghost,
Avoid the dating sites online
Or your love life will be toast.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

He spoke of the stream that flowed uphill
In a grotto, long forgot,
Then said the stream would be flowing still,
And I could believe, or not.
I thought he was strange, with a twisted mind
For the concept was insane,
He said that he came from another time
In a land of eternal rain.

I’d met him at Janet’s party where
He drifted from room to room,
Where everyone else was hearty but
He gave off an air of gloom.
I noticed one of his eyes was blue
The other was green, I’d say,
Whenever he stared they both were red
And his face became slate grey.

I’ll never know why he spoke to me
I hadn’t met him before,
He had this prominent artery
That ran the length of his jaw,
His voice was flat and unmusical
Though it said the strangest things,
The bones of knuckles were beautiful
He said, when covered in rings.

I followed him to the verandah where
I found him gazing at stars,
He said they seemed to be back to front
I said, ‘Well at least, they’re ours.’
‘The grass I knew was a deeper blue,’
He said, ‘and the sky was green,’
I said, ‘You must be from out of town,
We would think that was obscene.’

He said ‘You’re not very friendly,’ when
I thought we were doing fine,
He asked me to show him the number six
But I showed him the number nine.
The bus would take him to Goblin Dell
By the longest way around,
I said to myself, it’s just as well
He’ll end in the Lost and Found.

I still regret that I didn’t go
To the grotto, long forgot,
He said he was willing to take me there
Whether I would, or not,
I’d like to have seen the fabled stream
That he said had flowed uphill,
And where it led to the source of dream
Where the rain is raining still.

David Lewis Paget

He was often at the market
Signing books that no-one read,
If they had, and known the target
Then they’d not be lying dead.
For the mystic glyph inscriptions
Pointed men towards their fate,
He would say, ‘You’d better read them
Or perhaps you’ll be too late.’

But he seemed so insignificant
They wouldn’t heed his words,
Threw his books in their collections
So they wouldn’t be disturbed.
For the few who really read them
Dived right in and turned the page,
Suffered instant palpitations that
Expressed themselves in rage.

Though they didn’t realise, he was
A god from outer space,
Who had come down with his minions
To save the human race,
But the human brain had limits that
Could not absorb much more,
Than the irritants that stimulate
And lead them off to war.

It came to pass that leaders heard,
Surrounded him with trucks,
And trying to suppress the word
They seized, and burned his books.
They didn’t want the people having
Knowledge, at the least,
That could interfere with politics
And might burst out in peace.

The dollar ruled that ammunition,
Bombs that could be lobbed,
And hand grenades, and tank displays
They all came down to jobs.
And so they closed the market down
To end the sale of books,
That warned about conscription, and
Aspiring army cooks.

And so the god from outer space
Climbed back in his machine,
He’d tried to help the human race,
The human race was mean.
He took on board his minions
And said, ‘It’s getting late,’
Engaged the afterburners and
Then left us to our fate.

David Lewis Paget

He’d ventured out with his fishing gear
Before the breaking dawn,
Packed the bait in his four wheel drive
And backed it across the lawn,
He knew that he’d be the only one
At that time on the beach,
And maybe catch, with the early worm,
From the rocks along the breach.

He’d parked the Ranger, doused the lights
Before he looked to see,
The miles and miles of sand out there,
But no sign of the sea.
It must have been one of those funny tides
That receded out of sight,
There wasn’t a billow or breaking crest
Though the sea was there last night.

He climbed back into the Ranger then
And drove, while it was firm,
Way, way out, where the winter spray
Would freeze the air, in turn,
He must have driven a mile or more
But the sea was out of sight,
There were only deepening rock pools that
Were uncovered, overnight.

He stopped and parked by a monster pool
In the hopes there’d be a catch,
Long and deep where the fish would keep
Till the tide came rolling back.
He tossed his line with a baited hook
And it sank into the depths,
Until a flurry of water caught
His eye, and snagged his nets.

And then there rose to the surface such
A sight he’d never seen,
A pale and struggling girl with eyes
Of blue, and hair of green,
He hauled her in with his net until
Her strength began to fail,
And then he noticed that from her waist
Was a silver, fishes tail.

‘My god, you must be a mermaid,’ he
Exclaimed, but more in shock,
And she lay still and she stared at him
From a seaweed ledge of rock,
She didn’t struggle, she didn’t fight
But she held her arms up high,
As he gently lifted the mermaid up
And he swore he heard her sigh.

That was more than a year ago
And the sea’s back, as before,
But he is more of a stay-at-home
Won’t go fishing anymore.
He sits and plays by his covered pool
So the contents can’t be seen,
And frolics there with the tiny fish,
And all of their hair is green.

David Lewis Paget

I’m sitting here in the morning glow
Of the early winter sun,
Staring at the picture of you
And wondering what I’ve done,
You left to go on a shopping trip
In the middle of the week,
You said that you’d be an hour away
Was the last I heard you speak.

I’m used to you never turning up
So I knew I’d have to wait,
I’ve often taken a chair out there
To sit by the garden gate,
The sun went down and the Moon came up
There was still no sign of you,
And when I crawled upstairs I saw
That the bed was empty too.

I wondered what you were shopping for
As it’s true, you never tell,
You might be looking for pitchforks from
The seventh circle of hell,
You come back home with the strangest things
Like a bag of knitted straw,
And once with a dozen rubber rings
What did you want them for?

A day went by and I rang around,
Caught up with your friend Denise,
Checked with the local hospital,
With the Firemen and the Police,
But nobody knew just where you were
Or at least, they wouldn’t say,
Constable Gurk suppressed a smirk
Said you might have run away.

Somebody said that you’d passed them by
In a number fourteen bus,
Another one said, they don’t know why,
You were seen with Uncle Gus.
I knew all along that must be wrong
Though I don’t know why they lied,
They must have been seeing things, it’s been
A year since my Uncle died.

So now I’m left with a mystery
It’s already been a week,
I’ve been so alone, all on my own
I’m forgetting how to speak.
I’d never have thought you’d want to leave
I thought that our love was true,
I’ve just had a call, you’d not believe,
They found you, locked in the Zoo.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I was sent to work at the old Repat.
It was forty years since the war,
Those ancient diggers would sit and swear
At the pain of the limbs they wore,
The wounds would open as years went by,
They’d come for another slice,
That war was never over for them,
And morphine was paradise.

I saw one veteran struggle and curse
As he ripped at the buckles and straps,
The new prosthesis had rubbed him raw
As his knee began to relapse.
He tore the leg from his wounded stump
Sat on his bed, and roared,
Then swung the article over his head
And flung it across the ward.

The others had ducked as the leg took off
And bounced off the opposite wall,
‘I’ll have to report you,’ the nurse exclaimed,
‘It’s a good leg, after all!’
‘You wear it then,’ was the man’s response,
‘For it’s driving me insane,
What would you know of Flanders Fields?
You wouldn’t deal with the pain!’

My job was to settle and calm him down
So I asked him about his leg,
‘When and where did you lose it, Dig?’
The veteran tossed his head.
‘You’ve heard of a place called Flanders Fields
Where the bullets came in like hail?
Well, I was there with the Anzac’s, son,
At a place called Passchendaele.’

‘Our Generals were trying to ****** us,
I swear, on my mother’s head,
They kept on sending us over the top
Until half of the men were dead.
The German gunners would enfilade
As we struggled against the mud,
I’ll never forget the battlefield,
It was spattered with bones and blood.

They’d send artillery shells across
At the height of a soldier’s knee,
We’d watch them come as they parted the grass,
They were Grasscutters, you see!
Well, I was running with bayonet fixed
And praying for God’s good grace,
When suddenly I was lying there,
I’d tumbled, flat on my face.’

‘It’s strange that I never felt a thing,
When the Grasscutter got me,
It took a while ‘til I saw my leg
Was gone, from under the knee.
But that was the end of the war for me,
The end of the life I’d known,
I spent some time back in Blighty, then
I came on a ship, back home.’

I never chided those men in there
Though they’d curse and swear, and roar,
For every man was a hero where
They'd trudged in mud through the war.
That Repat. job was a fill-in job
And I left, still young and hale,
But I never forgot the Grasscutter
Or the man from Passchendaele.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

My father married a scheming witch
The month that my mother died,
He barely waited her final twitch
And it killed something inside,
I suddenly found myself alone
Apart from my brother, Liam,
But my heart inside had turned to stone
And the house was a mausoleum.

I’d hear her wandering round the house
When my father was away,
And something about the air in there
Made me feel some blank dismay,
For Liam was little help to me
He fell to the witch’s charm,
I tried to warn, but he looked in scorn
While I only felt alarm.

My father became a wealthy man
When my mother left him all,
She’d been the heir to a ladyship
And the deeds to Woolhampton Hall,
A wooden chest with the whole bequest
Was locked in a basement room,
And giant rocks in a jewel box
Would flash, they said, in the gloom.

But Lara never could find the key
Though she searched, both high and low,
My father never let on he knew
For he’d promised my mother so,
When she had said, with her final breath
‘I know all about the witch,
Don’t let her near my jewel box
Or you’ll end in a pauper’s ditch.’

He carried the key most everywhere
In his waistcoat, or his cuff,
He fastened it to his horse’s hair
And once to my choirboy’s ruff,
So Lara stormed while he was away,
I could hear her scream and curse,
And beat her feet on the basement door,
I didn’t know which was worse.

She asked Liam if he’d help her find
The key, and she’d see him right,
I heard him lurking about the house
To our father’s room, at night.
I asked him, ‘Where is your loyalty,
To your father or the witch?’
But he cursed and said flamboyantly,
‘Well, the witch will make me rich!’

‘I wouldn’t go in that basement room,’
I said, in a word of warning,
Remembering something my mother said
To her mirror, one dark morning,
‘I’ve made it plain in my will,’ she said,
‘And it’s there in the many riders,
Whoever thinks they can steal from me,
Must deal with a world of spiders.’

And so it passed, when Liam at last,
Found out where the key was hiding,
Was taking her to the basement stair
While my father was out, and riding,
I heard the screams in the basement room,
That sounded much like a riot,
By the time that I went to lock them in,
Both he and the witch were quiet!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Somebody said it was Halloween
I hadn’t a clue till then,
But the street was full of pumpkin heads
Carved out, with the candles in,
And the kids kept saying ‘trick or treat’
Though I didn’t know what for,
They must have thought I was pretty dumb
As I shooed them away from my door.

Then Mandy came out dressed as a witch
With a cloak and a pointy hat,
And waving a broom they call a ‘swish’,
‘So what is the point of that?’
‘Tonight the witches fly to their mass,
Under a harvest moon,
Shut your eyes as the broomsticks pass
Or they’ll put you to sleep, till noon.’

I thought I’d better prepare myself
So broke out my scatter gun,
The moment a witch would show herself
I swore that I’d have some fun,
With Jack O’ Lanterns the only light
As the night grew evil and dark,
I almost forgot that we lived next door
To the Mountainous Ski-Lift Park.

There wasn’t a Moon that eerie night,
It must have been hid by a cloud,
I could hear the chatter of witches, laughing,
How could they be so loud?
At midnight all of the chatter stopped
And everything went so still,
Just as the Moon popped out of the cloud
And the witches flew over the hill.

I saw their shapes up against the sky
Riding their broomsticks there,
With warty noses and pointy hats
And horrible tangled hair,
I didn’t think, I just raised my gun
And I blasted a spray of shot,
And watched each witch as she fell to earth
Whether they would, or not.

Mandy screamed and she seized the gun,
Ripped it out of my hands,
‘Have you gone crazy, what have you done?’
She wouldn’t cease her demands.
‘I saw them flying, up on their brooms,
I blew them out of the air.’
‘They didn’t fly, they just held on tight
Under the Ski-Lift chair.’

Whenever Halloween comes around
I tend to stay in my room,
And woe betide any witch that tries
Approaching me with a broom,
While Mandy locks up my scatter gun,
(That’s the one thing that will chafe),
Then goes to the witches at the door,
‘Yes, the Ski-Lift chair is safe!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

Solomon thought he was doing well
His assets just grew and grew,
He had no moral imperative
While ripping off me and you,
He’d made a fortune in stocks and shares
And a little insider trading,
Had married, divorced, with a bit to spare
For his extra-marital mating.

He wasn’t exactly a murderer
Though he’d peddled horse and hash,
If someone died he would say they lied,
He needed the extra cash.
He was at his prime and was feeling fine
At the age of forty-two,
When an evil bloke with a scythe and cloak
Said, ‘I’ve been looking for you!’

The sudden shock was a heart attack
The pain caught him by surprise,
He thought he might buy him off, but saw
The implacable, staring eyes.
The guy said, ‘I’m just the messenger,
You’re going away, it’s sad!
You’ll have to leave it behind, you know
But you can’t complain, you’re bad!’

He found himself on an open road
That was either up, or down,
He thought, with the wisdom of Solomon
He'd try the high end of town,
But a clerk with wings at a Pearly Gate
Said, ‘First you must come by me,’
Pulled out a plate that was headed ‘Fate!’
‘I have to check your CV!’

He read, and mumbled and held him there,
And whispered under his breath,
‘This can’t be right, you shouldn’t be here,
You suffered an early death!
You haven’t had time to mend your ways
But the rules are more than clear,
You’ve not enough points on the ‘Goody’ side
So you won’t be welcome here!’

He pointed to way, way down on the road
Where there shimmered a reddish glow,
‘They might be more than amenable
To letting you in, you know.’
So Solomon turned, his heart in his throat
And he made the long trek down,
To a surly goat in a pigskin coat
Who greeted him with a frown.

He tried to enter but, ‘Not so fast!’
The goat had stood in his way,
‘I have to check your CV you know,
Before you get in today.’
He read and mumbled and held him there
And whispered under his breath,
‘There’s not enough evil here to spare
With you guys from a premature death.’

‘It’s sad,’ he said, ‘but you can’t come in,’
He said in a voice so gruff,
‘You’re bad, I see, but your history?
You’re simply not bad enough!
I have to be able to justify
That you’ve earned more than you can handle,
It’s a serious thing, for eternity,
To make you a Roman Candle.’

So Solomon found himself out in the cold
On a long and deserted highway,
With all of the others rejected there
Who’d said they would do things ‘My way!’
If only they’d thought before they died
What they’d need for a clear admission,
The goat would have welcomed them all inside
As a lawyer, or politician!

David Lewis Paget

He laid no claim to a perfect life,
Nor looked to a higher power,
‘He lived his life,’ said his seventh wife
‘At a hundred miles an hour.’
And those he bruised as he hurtled by
Were the first in defending him,
‘He didn’t live by our man-made rules
But those he defined within.’

There were some that said he was selfish,
And some that said he was cruel,
Those with the backward collar he
Devoured, and used as fuel.
He couldn’t stomach the hypocrite,
The ones that would have you pray,
‘If there is a god, I’ll give you the nod,
You wouldn’t be here today.’

There wasn’t a woman could tame him down
Not a concubine, nor a wife,
He wore out many an eiderdown
In living a lustful life.
He lived as the rest of us should live
In a type of joyful surge,
And carried us all along with him
With our inhibitions purged.

He set a pace that would burn him out
As his strength and youth declined,
But railed and ranted against the force
That made him a prey to time.
‘I’ll not give in, it would be a sin
To deny in my final breath,
A life that’s sailed too close to the rail,
That’s an ignominious death.’

He swore that he’d find a way to show
That death only set you free,
As he laid his head on that final bed,
Here’s what he said to me:
‘Just watch that picture over the hearth
Of me, when the world was young,
I’ll make it fall from the chimney wall
If the sting of my death’s undone.’

And so he died in his earthly pride
Then went to his funeral pyre,
I told my wife, ‘there’s another life
Devoured in the flames and fire.’
I didn’t believe that he could survive
On the strength of his will alone,
But went away to the wake that day
They held in his childhood home.

His friends were milling about the house
And drinking his cellar dry,
While I stood pensive before the hearth
And asking the question, why?
When a sudden crash on the cobbled hearth
Saw his picture fall from the wall,
The shattered glass from his grinning face
Went showering over all.

It must have been a coincidence
I said, and the wife agreed,
‘We’ll have to go to the cemetery
To prove that he’s there, indeed.’
We waited just on a week to go,
It rained, and the grave was soaked,
But pouring out from his headstone there
Was a plume of Holy Smoke!

David Lewis Paget

I just got home in the past half hour
From a great weekend at the lake,
I can’t remember how I got home,
I think I’m about to flake.
The driveway’s empty, I lost the car,
The house, as quiet as a tomb,
And where the wife and the kiddies are?
Must be in another room.

The air round here had been highly charged
For weeks, till we got away,
So I suggested a trip from home
If only just for a day.
I thought we could sort our problems out
Just for our marriage’s sake,
I thought that we might find love again
Together, up at the lake.

The kids took buckets and floaties too,
They said that it would be fun,
And Jen took some of her own home brew,
She’s legless, after just one.
We packed them all in the four wheel drive
And headed up for the shack,
It’s on a reach that they call the beach,
It took an hour to unpack.

But Jen got drunk, as she always does
And spoiled the night of the first,
Her mood was black, while on the attack,
I said our marriage was cursed.
I saw no love in her eyes that night,
And even her smile was forced,
So stone cold sober the second day
She said, ‘I want a divorce.’

I thought that she might get over it,
I said, ‘We’re here to have fun.
Let’s call a truce for the kids at least,
Be happy, for everyone.’
She said she would, but she wouldn’t talk,
Just glowered, down at the beach,
While I and the kids would take a walk,
Have fun in the sun, at least.

Now in the drive, I can see a car,
A man has come to the door,
He says, ‘We pulled out your four wheel drive,
What did you do it for?’
I look bemused as he says to me,
‘Your children, for heaven’s sake!’
My heart stops for an infinity,
‘You drowned them all in the lake.’

David Lewis Paget

Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, up on the bluff,
He’d spent his life as a rover, and
He said, ‘I can’t get enough!
The sea, the sea, the lure of the sea,
It whispers at my front door,
And calls to me, here up on the bluff,
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’

‘But I can’t go down and I won’t go down
For I daren’t go down, you see,
Not since I was caught in the maelstrom
When the seabed beckoned to me,
My mate had clung to the mast, while I
Had lashed myself to the rail,
And he went down to the stony ground
Along with the yards and sail.’

‘I hear the sound in my ears still
The roar of the whirling pool,
I’d cried, ‘Let go of the iron chest,
But he’d not let go, the fool.
It was filled with gold and pieces of eight,
Dubloons and precious stones,
It carried him down to an awful fate
Is spread, all over his bones.’

‘But I clung on ‘til the turn of the tide
I could almost touch the ground,
My head was spinning, deep in the pool
As the ship whirled round and round,
But then the tide began to subside
And I said goodbye to Bjork,
For then the ship rose up to the lip
And popped right up like a cork.’

‘We’d sailed forever the Spanish Main
The ship, Bjork and me,
And searched the atolls of rocks and sand
Of the Caribbean sea,
We found the treasure that Blackbeard hid
In a shaft, six fathoms deep,
Then Bjork had pined for Norwegian lands,
Said, ‘What we’ve got, we’ll keep!’

‘The further north that we sailed, the sea
Grew surly in its ride,
The waves crashed over the foredeck and
They tossed us, side to side,
The squalls came in and the rain came down
And we had to reef the sail,
The water rose in the bilge, until
I thought we’d have to bail.’

‘But then one night it was flat and calm
And the water lapped below,
I heard the voice of a siren then
That whispered, sweet and low:
‘Come down,’ she said, ‘you can rest your head
And give up your earthly seat,
But lie instead on a seaweed bed
With a mermaid at your feet.’’

‘I think of Bjork on the ocean bed
Though I don’t know where he lies,
His bones are covered with precious stones
With two dubloons for his eyes,
I’ve never been back to the sea since then
For I fear it, more and more,
As still it whispers on moonlit nights
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’

Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, facing the sea,
He seemed remote, but a final note
That he wrote was left for me.
‘My days of watching the sea are done,
I think that I’ve had enough!’
And then he strode as the tide arose
And walked, right over the bluff.

David Lewis Paget

(Inspired by E. A. Poe’s ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom).

The mornings were cold and dreary when
We used to meet at the Kirk,
And you would be sad and teary on
The blustery days to work,
I’d ask you why you were sad and drawn
But you usually pulled a face,
And knowing you, it was him again,
Your husband, what a disgrace!

I never could understand how you
Had chosen him over me,
He wouldn’t work in an iron lung
But had a ‘need to be free.’
I knew he wouldn’t look after you
But you were blind as a bat,
You didn’t even react when you
Had caught him, kicking your cat.

I knew that he had a violent side,
You said that it wasn’t true,
‘He’s always so warm and loving.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ’till he turns on you.’
But nevertheless you married him
And it’s been now almost a year,
Whenever we make our way to work
You’re never without a tear.

I cornered him in a midnight bar
He was more than a little drunk,
I said that he’d better treat you fair
And called him a low-life skunk,
He took a swing and I laid him out
Now you’re never to talk to me,
I see you now and you look away
So our friendship’s not to be.

On Monday, you had a broken cheek
And wore make-up on that eye,
I took you down to the hospital
And I watched you sit and cry,
I swore by God I would get revenge
While he drank at the local bar,
I took some snips and a couple of nips
As I doctored up his car.

Now God in heaven forgive me
Though I did what I had to do,
I need you so to believe me for
I’d not meant to injure you,
You met him there at the bar that night
As my heart was in my mouth,
And climbed aboard, and you hit the road
On the highway, headed south.

I followed some way behind you, and
I really had the shakes,
The oncoming lights would blind you
Then I saw him hit the brakes,
He ran off the road and hit the tree
And you both went through the screen,
I’ve never seen so much blood before
And I knew I’d lost my dream.

I’m standing beside your coffin in
That tiny little Kirk,
The one where we met on Sundays, and
Before we went to work,
No matter how violent he had been
I’d played too fast and loose,
And though he was dead, I knew in my head,
Our sins had come home to roost.

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

The windows up on the second floor
Peered out through the mist at dawn,
Through what seemed a couple of eyelids,
Peeping out, when the blinds were drawn,
They scanned to the far horizon
Past the billows and foaming waves,
As if to seek a solution
As they scowled from their architraves.

‘How long, how long,’ was the question that
Had hung in the air for years,
How long to a sure destruction like
A fabric, when it tears?
The sea surged up to its doorstep with
The king tide at its peak,
And whispered its evil mantra, ‘House!
You haven’t another week.’

The House had stood five hundred years,
It had seen them come and go,
The coaches bringing their ministers
Of church and state, below,
Armies had been sequestered there
Beneath the sheltered eaves
Conspiring to hide the redcoats ‘til
The rebels made them leave.

It had sheltered friend and foe in there,
And had made no judgement call,
Its spacious rooms had been welcoming
To anyone there at all,
But now that its greatest enemy
Was surging at the lea,
‘Who will come to my aid at last
To save me from the sea?’

The time was once when the sea lay back
A mile or so from the shore,
But long decades of its slow attack
Saw it conquer, more and more,
Its progress so very gradual
That some generations hence,
Each single lifetime lost just yards
From its seaward farmland fence.

A wall of sticks and boulders rose
That the sea had overcome,
Had buried under its surges while
The work was being done,
A hill of sand and flotsam that
Was bound by bush and tree,
But the sea reclaimed its contraband
Washed the sand back out to sea.

And now, five hundred years had gone
The tide lapped at the brick,
And softened the old foundations as
The window-eyes looked bleak,
The king tide then had abated and
Sank back, to mutter its lack,
‘Have no fear,’ it grated, ‘House!
For I shall be coming back!’

But with the sea lying dormant,
Men approached with great machines,
With bulldozers and graders and
Huge tip-trucks in a stream,
And when the sea had resumed again
With its king tide of assault,
It beat forlorn on a concrete wall
With pathways of asphalt.

The windows up on the second floor
Peered out through the mist at dawn,
Through what seemed a couple of eyelids,
Peeping out, when the blinds were drawn,
The rain had hidden a couple of tears
As the House had heard men say:
‘We have to preserve our history,
And keep the sea in the bay!’

David Lewis Paget

I only wanted a quiet life
Was the first thought that I had,
When the woman beat on my cedar door,
I thought that she must be mad.
She beat and beat, and would not retreat
Though I begged her just to go,
But she cried, ‘He’s going to ****** me,
You must let me in, I know!’

I peered out through a crack in the door
Just to see the woman’s face,
Her lips were ******, her eye was black
And the tears had left their trace,
I groaned I wouldn’t become involved
But knew in the end I would,
I opened the door and let her in,
Her hands were covered in blood.

‘Don’t drip that blood on the carpet!’
She just turned to me with a shrug,
‘I’ve taken the carpet cleaner back
I borrowed to clean the rug!’
Too late, too late, as she smeared the blood
All over my pristine wall,
‘Are you callous or just plain crazy?
He’ll be coming to **** us all!’

‘Then why did you come to me,’ I cried,
‘There’s a hundred doors out there,
Go pick on another married fool
With a life lived in despair.
I never fell for the gender trap
For it always ends like this,
A bottle of Jack with a drunken lout
Who had promised married bliss.’

I steered her into the bathroom, ran
The taps as I heard him roar,
‘Come out you blanketty wilful witch
Or I’ll have to beat down the door!’
My cedar door with the frosted glass
That I only installed in June,
I heard a splinter, and then a crash
As he burst on into the room.

I pointed the shaft of the toilet brush
At him, from under a towel,
‘I’ve got a gun and I’ll use it!’ But
All that he did was howl.
A bullet whistled on past my head
And shattered the shower screen,
‘I swear I’ll blow you to Kingdom Come
If you don’t come now, Doreen!’

‘For God’s sake, give it a rest,’ she said,
As she washed the blood away,
Wiped her hands on my nice clean towel
As I groaned in my dismay,
He put the gun in his pocket, dropped
His head and began to weep,
‘Is this the guy you’ve been seeing then?’
‘What him? The guy is a creep!’

‘He’s more concerned with his carpet
Than a lady in distress,
I’d rather you with your ****** Toons
Though you tend to make a mess.’
She walked on up and she kissed him
And they walked out hand in hand,
‘Who’s going to pay for the damage, then?’
I called, but they had gone.

I never answer a beating door
No matter how long they knock,
I call out, ‘Sorry, I’m not at home,’
As I click the fifteenth lock,
A beaten wife is a world of strife
For the man who intervenes,
The bodies may pile outside my door
But I keep my carpets clean.

David Lewis Paget

The beach, it circles round to the Cape
As a frame to a Prussian blue seascape,
While cliffs arch up to a vaulting sky
To claw at the clouds just passing by;
     But nobody heeds them now, nor I.

The sea, it grumbles or lies sublime
Content in its deeps, or marking time,
Then storms its breakers onto the beach
In search of the mountains, out of reach;
     With nothing to learn, and none to teach.

The sky, it hovers and looking down
Hangs over the earth, both green and brown
Where nature, in its fecundity
Runs wild and free from the sky and sea;
     And unattended by God, or me.

While cottages lie like a pile of bones
Or an ancient monster’s stepping stones,
And none of them cared where man came from
Nor where he went while the sun still shone;
     Once they were here, but now they’re gone!

David Lewis Paget

I think she came from a Gypsy Clan
Where Dracula spilt his blood,
All that way in a caravan
To live in a field of mud,
But she danced like a whirling dervish,
At the campfire by the sea,
While I looked on like a love-lost one
Each time that she looked at me.

She wore a bright red rose in the hair
That was long, and thick, and black,
And dangling golden earrings,
With a shawl across her back,
But I stood transfixed as she twirled and kicked,
I felt like a man who begs,
Her skirt flared out as she danced about
And all I could see was legs.

All I could see was legs, I said,
The legs of a country girl,
The fine and moulded calves and thighs
That had danced half round the world.
She smiled with a hint of mystery
As she flashed her cute behind,
And said, ‘I know all your history,
For I can read your mind!’

She danced away in a sort of play
Now she’d got me on the hop,
I didn’t know where to put my eyes
On her *******, or eyes, or what!
She certainly was a buxom girl
But her legs had made me blind,
She kicked up high and she showed a thigh,
That said, ‘I can read your mind!’

I hadn’t much of a mind just then
It was all consumed with lust,
Why can a thigh make a grown man cry?
I thought it was so unjust.
A man could dance til the cows came home
But it wouldn’t raise an eye,
While the other kind could make men blind
At the glance of a naked thigh.

I shook my head and I turned away
I couldn’t take more of this,
If that, her wheeze, was merely a tease,
She’d cornered the world of bliss.
But she stopped her prance and her wild dance
As I walked off into the trees,
She followed me from the clearing there,
Kicking up autumn leaves.

I turned, as she was behind me then
And pressed her against a tree,
I said, ‘Just tell me your Gypsy name,’
She said it was Chavali.
‘Well, Chavali you’re a teaser,
Are you really one of a kind?’
She raised her eyes to the northern skies
And said, ‘I can read your mind!’

We wandered into the furthest woods
And we found a bed of leaves,
I couldn’t tell you what happened there,
Though Chavali skinned her knees.
But now, today, it’s a world away
And I’m not a man who begs,
For every time, she can read my mind
And flashes her Gypsy legs.

David Lewis Paget

She’d walk on out to the balcony
Each day that it didn’t hail,
Braving the bitterly cutting winds
In the search for a distant sail,
I’d wait ‘til she was shivering cold
And her lips were turning blue,
Then drag her in through the open door;
Well, what was I meant to do?

She’d cry, of course, as I thawed her out
By the small, *** belly stove,
The only thing that kept us alive
In that tiny, ice-bound cove,
I’d wrap a blanket around the form
That I’d loved since I was three,
While she looked out for the love she’d lost
And I’ll swear, it wasn’t me!

He’d gone away on a masted barque
With the winter coming in,
Had kissed her once as he went aboard
And swore he’d be back again,
He waved just once, then he turned his back
As the barque had sailed away,
Hauling on the top gallants as
It headed out from the bay.

The three of us had been ***** friends
Until Charles had gone to sea,
But only then had professed his love
For the love of my life, Marie,
I’d been too timid to state my love,
She saw me just as a friend,
I felt that my heart was broken, when
She turned to him in the end.

But I lived up on the cliff-top face
With a perfect view of the bay,
I’d see him first when he sailed back home
So she asked if she could stay,
She settled in, and my heart had grieved
As I watched her pale blue eyes,
Skimming the far horizon as
The rain had turned to ice.

The skies grew dark and the storms came in
And the sleet had turned to snow,
It covered all of the cliff-tops and
The sand on the cove below,
‘We’re in for a wicked winter,’ I
Remarked, as I chopped the wood,
And she had turned, to give me a smile
To say that she understood.

The weeks went by and the storms still came
Til the cove had turned to ice,
The sea froze out in the distant bay
While we passed the time with dice,
‘Isn’t it strange how fate decrees,’ she said
‘How love will lie…
What if it wasn’t Charlie, what
If it was you and I?’

The look on my face betrayed me, for
She sat right back and stared,
A tear had caught at my eye, she said,
‘Why didn’t you say you cared?’
‘I couldn’t see how you’d care for me
Though I cherished you as a friend,
I knew you would set your sights on Charles
And leave me in the end.’

‘You didn’t give me the choice, you should
Have left it for me to choose,
Now it’s a little too late for us,
What did you have to lose?’
She stomped on out to the balcony
Where the hail came down like rice,
And like a fool, I left her there
Til her tears had turned to ice.

I found her frozen, stuck to the rail
Where she stood and stared to sea,
I should have taken her in before
And she might have come to me,
But still she stands with her frozen hands
As a barque sails into the bay,
And Charles will see that she came to me;
What am I going to say?

David Lewis Paget

‘There were icicles hung from the window-sill
At dawn, when I thought to peep,
And the snow’s built up to the top of the door,
It must be six feet deep.’
Diane was shivering under her gown
When she crawled back into bed,
‘You’d better go out and fix it, Phil,’
‘Too late for that,’ I said.

I’d peered on out of the window and
The sun was shining bright,
The birds were twittering in the trees
Awake in the early light,
There wasn’t a sign of ice or snow
At the door, or window-sill,
I went to check on Diane, because
I thought that she must be ill.

She lay, still shivering in the bed
I thought that she had the ague,
‘The ice is deep in your soul,’ I said,
But her eyes were cold and vague,
‘The ice is there on the window ledge
And the snow is piled at the door,
Go out and clear it away for me
Before it spreads to the floor.’

I stopped to look at the mantelpiece
At the picture of our son,
She’d cut him off with never a word
For some trivial thing he’d done,
We hadn’t seen him for seven years
And he never phoned or called,
She’d not shed even a single tear
And for that, I was appalled.

‘The cold is eating my very bones
I can feel it creeping in,’
She seemed so suddenly old and grey
(There are several types of sin).
‘Will you not go out and shovel the snow
For the wife that you used to love?’
‘I would if the snow was at the door,
But the sun is bright above.’

‘You haven’t loved me for years,’ she said,
‘You never do what I want!’
‘Love is a two-way street,’ I said,
‘Not a one-way covenant.
Before we take, then we have to give
So the feeling is returned,
But you’ve locked yourself in your tiny soul
And you’ve left me feeling spurned.’

‘I give you what you deserve,’ she said
‘Since you let our daughter go,
You let her marry beneath her,
As I said, ‘I told you so!’
‘You made our daughter unhappy, by
Rejecting the one she loved,
You wouldn’t go to the wedding, so
She said that she’d had enough!’

‘The ice has formed on the ceiling now,
Why can’t you feel the cold?’
‘The ice and snow that you’re seeing is
The ice cave of your soul.’
‘I’ve hated you for many a year,’
She spat, and she said it twice,
‘That’s sad, for I’ve always loved you,’
I began, but her eyes were ice.

David Lewis Paget

He stood at the end of the pier that day
In hopes that they’d ask him on,
But Marilyn had just sailed away
With his elder brother, John.
He stood and scoured the horizon till
The sun went down in the west,
Then turned and wended his way back home
Though he’d get but little rest.

He tossed and turned for an hour or so
But he couldn’t get to sleep,
Then crept on out of his bed, he thought
He might take a little peep,
For out of his bedroom window there
The sea shone under the Moon,
The surface calm as a millpond as
He fell back into his room.

And his dreams that night were turbid dreams,
Obscured like a murky pond,
Where he couldn’t see the half of it
Viewed through the slough of despond,
Had he lost the only love he had,
And the brother he loved so well?
The morning dawned on a sudden storm,
And the sea, with a giant swell.

There wasn’t a sail on the sea that day,
There wasn’t a boat at all,
The yacht was found all smashed around
The end of the stone sea wall.
They said there wasn’t a soul aboard
Whoever there’d been was gone,
He didn’t know who he mourned the most,
His Marilyn, or his John.

John came to him in his sleep that night
With his eyes all brimming with tears,
‘I shouldn’t have taken her out, despite
I’d loved the woman for years.
But don’t blame her, it was only me,
For she made it plain that day,
She’d only come for a friendly sail,
And then she pushed me away.’

And Marilyn came to his dream as well
With the seaweed caught in her hair,
‘I shouldn’t have gone with your brother John,
Now I’m lost beyond despair.
He said you’d come, but he sailed away,
Said, ‘just a bit of fun,’
But now I weep in the ocean’s deep,
It’s the end for everyone.’

They found the bodies beyond the pier,
They were floating, hand in hand,
And when they got them ashore they found
That she wore John’s wedding band.
They never appeared in his dreams again
And he thought it just as well,
If ghosts could lie, he at least could cry
As he wished them both in hell.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The woman to grace my garden would
Have generous hips and thighs,
Long curling hair and a playful stare
A come hither look in her eyes,
A dimple set in a smiling cheek
And lips that would sometimes pout,
She’d move with grace at a steady pace
And her love would knock me out.

We’d meet at noon by the garden seat
In the shade of an apple tree,
With a plate of scones, and jam and cream
That her hands laid out for me,
We’d read a book in that shady nook
As we ate, drank lemonade,
I’d hold her hand in that magic land
And smile, at the game we played.

Then when the day had begun to cool
I’d wrap her up in a shawl,
Our summer days would begin to fade,
We’d still be there in the Fall,
Our talk would cover a thousand things
But we’d marvel most at life,
That fate had brought us together, she’d
Be proud to be called my wife.

My thoughts still stand in that happy land
As I sit alone in this,
And wonder where she may be out there
For a life, so full of bliss,
I sit and wait by the garden gate
For her form to pass on by,
Our eyes may meet in this dismal street
Until then, I’ll sit and sigh.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

When I was a great deal younger than today, and first embarked on a life devoted to poetry, I made a decision to write a one verse poem every ten years, starting at the age of 21. This was to reflect the way I felt at the time, in relation to my life, and to my writing.  The following is the verse written for the age of seventy-one, and below that the complete verses that built up to this point. The collection is called…
Into the Light

VI

Here I am, seventy-one
They say that only the good die young,
I’ve made the most of my current plight
To find dark corners, to sit and write,
The Chinese taught me their own folk lore
And Poe his raven, above the door,
So now I’ve written a thousand tales
Of shifting time and of dragon’s scales
While things I thought that would bring undone
Before the age of seventy-one
Have left me sat in my garret webs
To pen the last, to the final dregs,
I know where to head, the time is right,
     Out of the darkness
          Into the light.

David Lewis Paget

23 November 2015

- I    -

Here I am, twenty-one,
So many things have to be done,
Many’s the cause I’ll be fighting for
Keeping the vows that I’ve sworn before,
How many children blessing my way,
How much love can a lover sway,
How many words can I write and read
In the years ahead for my restless need,
Where am I headed, this fateful night…
             Out of the darkness
                  Into the light!

                     - II -

Here I am, thirty-one,
So many things still to be done;
Where are the causes? Fought and lost!
What of the vows? Tempest tossed!
Where are the children? Left behind!
What of the lovers? Love is blind!
How many words have you written and read?
Much too much for this aching head.
Where are you headed, this fateful night?
             Out of the darkness
                   Into the light!

                    - III -

Here I am, forty-one,
And all life seems like a dream undone.
Everything I would have taken for me
Has slipped from my grasp, forsaken me.
All my children are grown, but one
And wonder; ‘Where did this man come from?
What was the pact that he kept with me…’
While I have nothing to answer thee.
All my words as a mist, widespread
Have since dispersed from a source long dead.
Where am I headed, this fateful night?
           (Have you learned nothing….?)
                I guess you’re right!

                   - IV -

Here I am, fifty-one,
The daylight fades and the muse has gone.
The loves I loved as my vision bled
All turned from me, and to them, I’m dead.
The rhyme was lost and the music died
As I turned to stone in my heart, inside.
Where is the youth that yearned to write
Through the endless days to the latest night?
Is this what happens, the years take flight –
             Into the darkness
                 Out of the light.

                  - V -

Here I am, sixty-one,
I thought the end would have come and gone!
But then a light seemed to beckon me
To trip through another’s history.
When China called, I know not why
I saw new future’s I’d never tried,
The way was clear, my life was spent
So I fetched up in the Orient.
With all its bustle, its pomp, and pride,
I picked up the pen that I’d put aside,
For black-haired girls feed my heart’s content
And children like jewels are heaven sent;
Is this the future, I know it’s right....
Out of the darkness
      Into the light!

David Lewis Paget

The store had been closed for a month or more,
The Receivers opened the door,
To auction off all the fittings there,
Whatever stood on the floor,
There were counters, mirrors, plenty of stock,
The tills and the ******* bins,
It was all going under the hammer,
Even a line of mannequins.

When John McRogers happened to pass
He heard the clamour inside,
He peered on in through the window glass
And he watched the human tide,
The bids were coming from everywhere
From phones, and spread through the store,
So he wandered into the human mass
And made his way from the door.

He wandered along the vacant aisles
Saw everything piled in heaps,
There wasn’t much of a bidding war
So everything went quite cheap,
He wondered if he should make a bid
Was there anything there for him?
His eyes then came to rest on a girl,
A fabulous mannequin.

She stood in a line of eight or nine
But caught his eye from the start,
He thought that she had the bluest eyes
Of all, and she stood apart!
She must have been all of six foot six
With a tapering line to the waist,
And ******* of promise and silken legs
A woman of style and taste.

He put in a nervous bid when she
Was auctioned along the line,
But nobody put in a counter bid,
And he thought to himself, ‘She’s mine!’
He had a courier pick her up
And take her straight to his home,
Then stood her up in his office, where
He could savour her there, alone.

She hadn’t a scrap of clothing on
They’d taken it off when she went,
He tried to avert his eyes, she showed
No sign of embarrassment,
Her hands hung limply down at her side
No effort to cover up,
But her eyes had followed him round the room,
Whenever he’d start, or stop.

‘I’m going to call you Jennifer,’
He said to himself, out loud,
Then sensed she shuddered and straightened up
In a movement that seemed quite proud,
His wife had left him the year before
For a keeper, down at the zoo,
So now he said, and in fact he swore,
‘I only have eyes for you!’

‘I only have eyes for you, my dear,
My Jennifer from Le Trée,
I’ll always cherish you near me here
When I work out here, all day,
We’ll spend our evenings here in the warm
With a single desk-top light,
And in the gloom of this little room
You might even come to life!’

He left her naked, stood by his desk,
She had an ****** air,
The wig she wore flowed over her back
Brunette, but the lights were fair,
He worked each night at his desk in gloom
Lit only by one small stand,
And every now and again he’d rouse,
Reach over and touch her hand.

The hand was cold, plastic and hard
And it couldn’t return a thing,
Until one night, he opened a box
And slipped on a wedding ring,
He worked away for an hour or so
Til he’d filled out a batch of forms,
Then reached unconsciously out for her hand
To find it was soft and warm.

He looked up into her shining face
And noticed, to his surprise,
Her cheeks had softened, her lips were red
And a lovelight shone from her eyes,
He stood and reached for her willing form
And she did what he wanted to,
But an urgent message tugged at his brain,
‘I only have eyes for you!’

‘I only have eyes for you,’ she thought
And beamed that into his head,
He never would leave that office again,
His friends soon thought he was dead.
They came in force, broke into his house
And found that he’d really gone,
‘There’s only a couple of mannequins here,
But one of them looks like John!’

David Lewis Paget

He’d lain off the island just a week,
It was really only a reef,
That ****** up out of the waters
Ninety miles from Tenerife.
It didn’t show up on a local map
And he thought he’d heard it said,
‘Be sure, if you think of sailing west
That you miss the Isle of the Dead.’

On the higher part was a grove of trees
He explored when he went ashore,
And hidden deep in the foliage was
A house, not seen before.
It was made of wood, and covered in vines
That acted as camouflage,
It couldn’t be seen ‘til you came up close,
And stood with the door ajar.

He thought it must be deserted, though
A garden was weeded out,
And then, as he had approached the door
He was pulled up short, by a shout.
‘Who’s this, who enters my private grounds,
Who’s this, who plays with my head?
We never have visitors here, you know,
For this is the Isle of the Dead!’

He turned, was facing a sprightly girl
With a mass of auburn hair,
She wore a costume of paw paw leaves
That had made him stand and stare,
Her eyes reflected the brightest blue
Of the ocean, out in the bay,
And her mouth affected the slightest pout
As he wondered what to say.

A woman came through the cottage door
And she said, ‘Come in, Narreen,
We never talk to the strangers, for
You don’t know where they’ve been.’
Her manner was quite unfriendly as
She gestured to the shore,
‘You’d better be making way, my friend,’
Then shut the makeshift door.

He slept on his vessel every night
But he came ashore at dawn,
Hoping to get the briefest sight
Of the girl, for his heart was torn.
He hesitated to call it love
But it grew, each time he saw,
Her figure appear from the grove of trees,
Or saunter along the shore.

She finally came to talk to him
And squatted to hear him tell,
Tales of the wondrous world out there
Of jewels and gold as well,
Her eyes grew brighter with every tale
And he said, ‘You should come with me,
We’ll sail on the balmy Autumn swell
And you’ll see the world for free.’

Her sister came to the beach one day
And she took the girl back home,
‘I think that it’s time you sailed away,
We haven’t the need to roam.’
But he came ashore the following day
And he lured the girl to his boat,
She seemed surprised at the size of it
And the fact that it could float.

He tried to sooth, as he raised the sail
‘We’ll just go out for a spin,’
But she was suddenly nervous, and
She asked that they go back in.
He thought that he’d made the girl his own
As they sailed from the bay, at last,
But then he noticed the withered crone
Who clung, in death, to the mast!

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