It stood by my uncle’s hatstand for
As long as I can recall,
This ugly wooden carving, leering
Staring out from the wall,
My mother would say, ‘It’s evil,’
That it wasn’t fit to see,
Not for a young impressionable,
By that, she just meant me.

It used to give me the shivers
Every time that I passed its way,
It had a glare of malevolence
I felt, in a mute dismay,
My uncle brought it from Africa
A memento of his time
Seeking out the Azuli tribe
Who lived in a tropic clime.

‘I think his name was Jabuka,’
My uncle said to a friend,
‘One of those baleful spirits that
Was said to torture men,
He’d pluck your eyes from their sockets
If you saw what you shouldn’t see,
And infected men with a virus
That would **** their family.’

For years it sat in abeyance,
Whatever the power it bore,
There was never a hint of impatience
As it sat, and stared by the door,
It wasn’t until my uncle hired
A sultry African maid,
That evil entered the atmosphere
Of the house where I went, and played.

I think it was then that I noticed
There was something strange at large,
My hair rose up as I walked on by,
An electrostatic charge,
It prickled in all my fingers
Ran up the hairs of my arm,
I’d lie if I should deny that day
I felt a sense of alarm.

While little dark skinned Mbutu,
Would bow when she’d dust it off,
Would mumble some words in Zulu
That I could make nothing of,
I saw the fear in her eyes the day
I glanced off it in the hall,
‘Never to touch Jabuka, son
Or him rage is fearful!’

It must have been close on midnight
I heard, when over and done,
My uncle came on Mbutu
Stark naked before ‘the one’,
It must have been some strange African rite
As she danced, she gave weird cries,
But then next day, my uncle lay
And bled from both of his eyes.

My aunt then died of Ebola,
No more than a week from then,
The virus grew, then Mbutu too
Was lost to the world of men,
I sat by my uncle’s bedside
At the hospital by the park,
When he said, ‘Oh Ben, I’m a fool,’ and then,
‘God, but this room is dark!’

He told me to take Jabuka
And carry it out that day,
‘But while you carry that evil thing
Be sure you’re looking away,
There’s petrol out in the potting shed,
Though barely a gallon or two,
Make sure you douse it over the head,
You know what you have to do.’

I watched the flames as they roared and claimed
The wood of that idol’s gaze,
And felt the surge of an evil urge
Attack, in so many ways,
I knew I’d watched what I shouldn’t see
As I felt it rise in my hair,
And lost one eye as it bled bone dry,
It’s lucky I have a spare!

David Lewis Paget

There was someone I detested at
The edges of my dream,
He was sneaky, underhanded and
I thought him quite unclean,
For he knew my life with Candace
Had then almost run its course,
He was waiting in the wings; I said,
‘Don’t take my wife by force.’

And he smiled, but somewhat grimly
In the way he had back then,
As if he would do whatever
To ensnare my wife again,
But I said, ‘Don’t even think it,
Though you had your chance before,
If you even make a move on her
It’s like declaring war.’

He could tell then that I meant it
Just by looking in my eyes,
They were red, and so distended
That he backed off, he was wise,
But it didn’t help my marriage
For her love had run its course,
And she told me in our carriage that
She wanted a divorce.

I had tried my best to please her
But my efforts went unsung,
I’d played hard to get, to tease her
Years before, when we were young,
And I’d won her then, from Anson
Who’d refused to go away,
And had hung around forever
Right up to the present day.

I had said it was unhealthy to have
Ex’s hanging round,
But Candace said, ‘He’s just a friend,
Don’t make him feel put down.’
She didn’t think how I would feel
To always have him there,
At times when we should be alone,
He’d sit awhile, and stare.

So she left me on a Monday and
She barely said goodbye,
I wandered round the empty house
But found I couldn’t cry,
For anger welled up in me when
I saw them walking past,
Arm in arm and laughing and
Together now, at last.

Emotions so intense rise up
To twist a jilted brain,
I swear I wasn’t in control,
I must have been insane,
I traced them to his caravan
And waited till she left,
Then went to get some petrol
I was feeling so bereft.

I waited til the early hours
When he would be alone,
Then poured it underneath the door
Of this, his mobile home,
I thought, ‘I’ll fix his little scheme,’
And stood, and watched it pour,
Then lit it with a single spark,
It went up with a roar.

I had to stand and watch it then
The fruits of my despair,
I heard a scream, as in a dream
The door flung open there,
And Candace stood, encased in flame,
She shrivelled as she stood,
All black and burned, revenge had turned
Destroyed my neighborhood.

They didn’t find too much of him
And she died on the grass,
They found me weeping in the gloom
When once the fire had passed,
And so I stare out blindly now
Through bars of hardened steel,
They wouldn’t need to lock me in,
I’ve ceased to see or feel.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The world looks grim when your eyes are dim
And they’re swollen red with tears,
When all that you’ve won has come undone
And all you have left are fears,
So Jonathon Ley had felt that day
When he looked for his missing girl,
But she was several streets away
In bed with a man called Earl!

His world had come to a shuddering end,
His hopes had burst at the seams,
He knew that his heart would never mend
And all he had left were dreams.
The clouds of grief that came like a thief
Had stolen his girl, Elaine,
And she, the source of his one belief
Was promising only pain.

He hadn’t had any back-up plans
When planning his life ahead,
With Lainey gone he was on his own
Just him, and his empty head,
He thought that he’d put an end to it
The pain and suffering; How?
He spent some days considering ways
Under his furrowed brow.

He climbed to the top of the Town Hall clock
And found himself looking down,
All that he had to do was drop
Right next to the Lost & Found,
He’d looked on up from the street below
Took a final look at a star,
But didn’t know when he had to go
That the street would be down so far.

There’s always time for a change of plan
He thought, as he climbed back down,
Hiding his face from everyone
In case they thought him a clown.
He took a blade from the kitchen drawer
And thought he’d go to the park,
Then slit his throat in his overcoat,
By God, but that blade was sharp!

He wandered moping along the street
To think just what could be done,
He wanted to do it, quick and neat
But he hadn’t bought him a gun,
Then Lainey came, she had changed her mind
For Earl was a dog, and things,
‘You got the jist of the story wrong,
He asked me to test his springs!’

So Jonathon’s world came back in view
The clouds were cleared from his sky,
With everything now about her new
He never asked Lainey why.
They wed in June, in the afternoon
And the baby came in a whirl,
But he wouldn’t presume to question why
The baby looked like Earl!

David Lewis Paget

‘It’s only for over Christmas,’ said
The son to his father there,
And watched as the old man’s shoulders hunched
As he painfully mounted the stair,
‘It’s just for the festive season while
The house will be full of kin,
We’re going to need your bedroom if
We’re going to fit them in.

‘I’ll pick you up when the New Year dawns,
My promise is set in stone,
On the first or second of January
Expect me to bring you home.’
But the old man merely paused and turned,
The set of his mouth was grim,
‘You don’t need to make me promises,
I know I’m not wanted, Tim.’

And Tim would have said that wasn’t true
But he had to heed his wife,
She’d said it was him or her would leave,
And her words cut like a knife,
‘I’m always the one to wash and clean,
To cook, and pick up his mess,
He has to be gone by Christmas John,
I’ll not put up with less.’

So early the morning of Christmas Eve
The son had packed a case,
And helped his father into the car
To head for the old folks place,
‘It’s lucky your mother’s dead, my son,
You’d tear us both apart,
How do you think your Mum would feel,
I think you’d break her heart.’

And tears had run down the father’s cheek,
And also down the son’s,
Tim said, ‘Look Dad, I am sorry but
There’s nothing to be done.
I’ve said I’m coming to pick you up
So what more can I say?’
‘I thought to be spending my Christmas
With my son, on Christmas Day.’

The car pulled up at the iron gate
And the son had forced a smile,
‘It won’t be long and with Christmas gone
It will just be a little while,’
He carried his case inside for him
And he turned to say goodbye,
When muttering ‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’
The old man answered ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I pulled at the oars with Valentine
While Derek sat at the rear,
He’d taken his turn, now I took mine
Our quarry was drawing near,
For up on the bluff, deserted now
The tower stood, gaunt and white,
We’d managed the creaking boat somehow
To get to the Keystone Light.

It hadn’t been manned for fifty years
Its age was a matter of doubt,
The Keeper’s wife, in a fit of tears,
Left the light sputtering out.
Her husband gone in a giant wave
That carried him off from the bluff,
While in the dark was the Barque ‘Enclave’
Settling down in a trough.

And on the steps of the Keystone Light
The widow clung to the rail,
The wave was tugging about her skirt
As the Barque lost its mizzen sail,
A shark, caught up in the mighty swell
Was swept right up to the steps,
And took her leg in a single bite,
Returned with it to the depths.

They found her dead by the Keystone Light
The Barque, smashed up on the shore,
But never a sign of the Keeper, Sam,
Who had guarded the Light before.
They said his ghost ruled the tower top
That it howled in a winter storm,
While she kept swinging the outer door
To try keep the tower warm.

So we climbed up on that winter’s day,
The three of us to the bluff,
We lads let Valentine lead the way
She liked all that ghostly stuff.
The door hung off from its hinges there
From flapping about in the wind,
While Derek muttered, ‘We’d best beware,
There may be ghosts,’ and he grinned.

We’d gone, expecting to stay the night
So carried our candles and gear,
The bottom floor with the open door
Was a little too breezy, I fear.
I followed Valentine up to the Light
And carried the blankets there,
The view was truly a marvellous sight
But the wind gave us all a scare.

It hummed and soughed at the outer rail,
It groaned, and whispered and growled,
They’d warned, ‘It sounds like the Keeper’s wail,’
And true, at times it had howled.
It even seemed to have called her name,
The widow, crying in pain,
‘Caroline, I’ll be coming for you,’
Was the sound of the wind’s refrain.

We slept that night, or we tried to sleep
All huddled up on the floor,
But Derek rose, and before the dawn
His body lay down on the shore.
He must have fallen over the rail
While both of us were asleep,
But now the sound of the wind in its wail
Said, ‘Catch the wave at its peak!’

We hurried on down the spiral stair,
As the dawn came up like a trick,
We couldn’t bear to be caught up there
With both of us feeling sick.
But Valentine went out on the steps
Where the widow had stood before.
A sudden gust caught the door and just
Knocked Valentine to the floor.

I saw she’d never get up again
With the wound it gave to her head,
So much blood, like Caroline,
I knew she had to be dead.
I heave away at the oars, and pray
That their sacrifices will be
Enough to bring back my Caroline
For the Lighthouse Keeper was me!

David Lewis Paget

They said she suffered from visions, so
They locked her up in her room,
I heard her pacing the floor in there
To softly cry in the gloom,
Her food they slid in under the door
And that’s when I heard her shout:
‘You can’t keep me forever in here,
You must let my nightmares out!’

But a doctor listened outside the door
And shook his head as he went,
A Priest then wafted some incense in
And muttered a sacrament,
But no-one dared to unlock the door
For they’d heard a howl within,
‘She must be conjuring demons there
Or some terrible type of sin.’

At night when everyone was asleep
I’d put my head to the floor,
And whisper low to my sister through
The gap, just under the door.
‘Go find the key,’ she would say to me,
‘And unlock the door in the night,
We’ll creep on out while the house is still,
Take off while the Moon is bright.’

I didn’t know where to find the key,
I didn’t know where it was,
It wasn’t hung up on the kitchen hook
Or the nail in the wooden cross.
She begged me, ‘Keep on looking for it,
It’s the only chance for me,
Then we will be together again
At last, and finally free!’

But then her visions returned again
And lights shone under the door,
While sounds, like animals caught in pain
Built up to a sullen roar.
I whispered, ‘Sis, can you hear me now,
I’m scared,’ and started to bawl,
She cried, ‘There’s lights and a million things
All creeping out of the wall.’

I went to beat on our parent’s door
But I heard my father snore,
I ran downstairs and I found the key
They’d hid in the bureau drawer.
I hesitated before I turned
The key in my sister’s lock,
The door swung open and lay ajar
As I stood, stock-still in shock.

For in the room was a wooded glade
With creepers clogging the walls,
Bats were hung from the old lampshade,
The bed was a waterfall,
But of my sister, never a sign
She must have been lost in the trees,
But monsters struggled out of the wall
As I fell in dread to my knees.

They say I suffer from visions, so
They’ve locked me up in my room,
I couldn’t cope with my sister’s loss
They said, but she’s in a tomb.
I know she’s not, for I hear her whisper
Under the door at night,
‘We’ll creep on out while the house is still,
Take off while the Moon is bright.’

Then sounds, like animals caught in pain
Build up to a sullen roar,
I call for her, again and again,
‘Just get the key to the door.’
But then she fades, and she slips away,
So far that I have to shout:
‘You can’t keep me forever in here,
You must let my nightmares out!’

David Lewis Paget

‘The world has left me behind,’ he said,
‘I live my life in the past,
None of the things that I came to love
Survived, they just couldn’t last.
The rails that I rode are overgrown,
The music I loved has gone,
The friends that I made are left in the shade,
Though most of them travelled on.’

The woman who’d answered his ad was sat
Beside him out on the porch,
She’d heard this tale a million times
So she never carried a torch.
She bent her head as she listened to him
And she smiled, her hair was grey,
The years of care were visible there
As her beauty faded away.

‘But wasn’t it all a wonderful ride,’
She sighed, as she thought of him,
The man who’d always been at her side
‘Til he died, his end was grim.
But that was a dozen years ago
And life carried on, though sad,
She wanted to meet a gentle soul
Which was why she’d answered the ad.

‘Why would you want to live in the past
When the past is done and gone,
I tip my hat to the past,’ she said,
‘But the future lures me on.
There’s conversation and love to share
As long as there’s life and breath,
The future’s only a day away,
The end of it all is death.’

He sat up straight and he stared at her
Transfixed by her gentle voice,
The things that stirred in his hardened heart
He’d buried them there by choice.
Behind her eyes was an inner glow
That he hadn’t noticed before,
‘Could you really bring me to life again?’
He said, and his voice was raw.

‘We can take it just one step at a time,’
She said, ‘as we did when young,
The world was such a marvellous place
To explore, like a song unsung,
We’ll bless the sun coming up each day,
To spread its light through our land…’
Then watched the roll of a single tear
As she reached on out for his hand.

David Lewis Paget

The old man sat in a musty room
And his eyes peered on outside,
Where trees were lost in the evening gloom
With the rest of the countryside,
He watched the woman, tied to a tree
As she shook her golden hair,
And cried again, so piteously
In the essence of despair.

There weren’t so many, roaming and free
He thought, in the cruel world,
Not more than a few in captivity
And some, they called them ‘a girl’,
He thought of his faded mother then
Before they took her away,
And told him then, he was only ten
That they needed her for ‘play’.

He’d caught this one in a rabbit trap
As she crept in the depth of the wood,
Her hair was gold but her eyes were black
And she’d fought him, well and good,
He bound her wrists and shackled her feet
Before he could let her be,
Then carried her back to his tiny shack
And tied her fast to a tree.

He didn’t know what to do with her
He’d never had one alone,
Maybe she’d make good eating when
He stripped her down to the bone,
Out in the night he tore her dress
When taking her clothing down,
Then stood amazed with his eyebrows raised
At the extra flesh he found.

She couldn’t speak in his language then
But only could scream and cry,
He hadn’t hurt or abused her, when
She glared, and spat in his eye,
So he filled up the ancient cooking ***
And he brought her slow to the boil,
Then when she was dead, he took her head
In hopes that her meat not spoil.

David Lewis Paget

I have nothing left to say
All my thoughts have blown away,
And I dread the sun that rises in the morning,
For my wife will look at me
Knowing all my history,
While my emptiness is all that I was born in.

For the world has bled me dry
Took the tears I meant to cry,
And corrupted everything that I believed in,
All the things I thought were right
Disappeared overnight,
Leaving only false ideals that were deceiving.

All I see is greed and hate
Love that tends to dissipate,
And the friends that turn away when you are needing,
All the former friends before
Who came knocking at your door,
But don’t want to know the score when you are bleeding.

Life is much too long alone
When your family has grown
Leaving just the faintest essence of their passing,
When they find the world out there
They have little left to share
But the faded photographs you lived your past in.

I was young, but now I’m old
So the story has been told
And there’s little in the future I’ll be keeping,
But a faded, caring wife
Who stood by me in this life,
And will still be by my side when we are sleeping.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

‘There has to be something more than this,’
She said, with a thoughtful frown,
Standing over the farmhouse sink
And the dishes, looking down,
Her brother was out in the milking shed
And her mother had gone away,
They hadn’t seen her in fifteen years
But thought of her, every day.

They’d both grown up in the countryside
Secure on their father’s farm,
Had walked the mile to the little school
By way of Maltraver’s barn,
The air was pure and the nights were clear
They could see way up to the stars,
And Jessie would watch as the moon appeared
While her brother would stare at Mars.

They had their chores as they grew, of course,
For Adam would milk the cows,
While she would carry the bucket down
To feed the pigs and the sows,
There was fencing, drenching, ditching too
There was never a moment spare,
But Jessie fretted for something new
In the way of the world out there.

The father died in the Autumn time
And left the farm to his son,
‘Jessie will marry and move away
The way that it’s always done.’
She packed her bags when she turned eighteen
And she caught the bus to town,
She told her brother she’d keep in touch
But Adam was feeling down.

‘We’ve always been together,’ he said,
‘And now you’re going to roam,
When you get sick of the city lights
You can always come back home.’
‘I’m bored,’ she said, ‘with the simple life,
I’m going to have some fun,
She kissed him as she got on the bus,
Said, ‘Sorry, I have to run!’

She rented a small apartment with
Some money her father left,
And worked in Haile’s Department Store
In the basement, wrapping gifts,
She gradually met the bright young things
That hung in the clubs and bars,
Dangling chains and cheap gold rings
And high as the planet Mars.

‘It’s a totally different world out here,’
She wrote on home to the farm,
‘The place that they hold the dancing here
They call it ‘The City Barn!’
It’s full of strobes and coloured lights
And the music’s wild and free,
You’ll have to come to the city, bro
And I’ll take you out with me.’

Adam finally drove to town
In the farm’s old battered ute,
He took a shirt that he’d newly pressed
And his only ******* up suit,
He knocked on Jessie’s apartment door
And a Goth had let him in,
The place was full of the hoi poloi
And he couldn’t hear a thing.

The thumping rhythm would drown him out
And it made him feel a fool,
His sister gave him a little pill,
Said, ‘take it bro, it’s cool!’
He shook his head and he dumped the pill
In a *** plant on a stand,
Said, ‘Jess, you’d better get out of here,
This crowd will see you ******!’

‘I’ve never heard anyone talk so slow,’
Said the Goth with the purple hair,
‘Your bro’s a little bit slow as well,
Are they all like that, out there?’
One night was all that it took, and Jess
Was pushing him out the door,
‘You’d better get back where you belong
Or I’ll die of shame,’ she swore.

It took all night in the battered ute
‘Til he reached the open plains,
Shook off the stench of corruption
In the first life giving rains,
The city lights in his mirror had
Receded to just a glow,
When the stars came out in a country night
That the city would never know.

And Jess, back there with her new-found friends
Was dizzy up on the heights,
They fed her chemicals, liquid dreams
And they tricked her into flight,
‘There has to be something more than this,’
The last thought that she’d got,
While Adam had smiled at the countryside
And said to himself, ‘There’s not!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

When I met, and married my wife,
I opened a secret door,
I knew that her mother, Grace, was strange
But I didn’t know what for.
They spoke so low that I couldn’t hear
In a mother/daughter pact,
But Ellen, she was my holy grail
Til I found it was an act.

I’d been brought up in the English way
Of roast beef, fruit and veg,
The mint that grew and the rhubarb too
By our garden’s privet hedge,
I didn’t know there were other things
That were quite beyond my ken,
But she’d come up through a different school
Though I didn’t know it then.

They say you should check the mother out
If you want to save your tears,
For what the mother is like right now
Is your wife in thirty years,
And Grace was skinny and pastie-faced
With a rock-hard, gimlet eye,
While Ellen was soft and curvy then
And just a trifle shy.

Grace was running a cuisine club
For the village ladies all,
Every Wednesday they’d go en masse
Down to the village hall,
Ellen said there were treats in store
But I didn’t really see,
Not til she brought it home with her
That she’d try it out on me.

The first of the treats she brought on home
Almost knocked me through a loop,
I said, ‘What’s that in the steaming bowl,’
And she answered ‘Batwing soup.
You might need a knife and fork for it,
The wings have a leathery feel,
It won’t take long to get used to it
It tastes a little like eel.’

After I’d gagged and choked a bit
I managed to keep some down,
I said, ‘I’d rather have beef, my love,’
But she stood awhile, and frowned,
‘I’ve made you a special omelette,
Of turtle legs and bees,
Bound together by turkey eggs
And just a little cheese.’

I couldn’t say what I thought of it,
She would be dismayed, my wife,
I knew the love she’d put into it
It would only cause us strife,
But every Wednesday she’d bring one home
A treat for me to try,
Her casserole was a lucky dip
And snake in her cottage pie.

I suffered it for a month or more
Then I put my case to her,
‘I draw the line at toadskin wine,
And a pie with rodent fur,
I love you, Ellen, I really do
But your mother gives me the creeps,
Her witches recipes just won’t do,
I hate ragwort and leeks.’

We came to a final arrangement,
She could do what she’d always done,
The whisk broom under the stairs, she said
Was her idea of fun,
I try to ignore the pointy hat
That she wears when the moon is high,
But she never feeds me toads and rats
Though her mother asks her, ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

An Isle rose up from the ocean swell
On the seventeenth of June,
It was totally unexpected by
The M.V. Cameroon,
She’d sailed with seven passengers
And some cargo in the hold,
They all kept well to their cabins for
The deck was more than cold.

The Captain up on the bridge had checked
His maps before they sailed,
Had marked his course dead reckoning
Though the gyro compass failed,
They’d been at sea for eleven days
So he took a fix on the stars,
Then left the wheel to the Bosun while
He searched for the coffee jar.

The ship ground up on a coral reef
At two in the morning, sharp,
The night was black as a midden since
The clouds had hidden the stars,
The hull bit deep in the coral as
It drove ahead with its way,
Grinding slowly to come to halt
Just in from a new-formed bay.

‘There isn’t supposed to be land out here,’
The Bosun cried to Lars,
The Captain said, ‘I fixed a point,
Dead reckoning by the stars!
There shouldn’t be land in a hundred miles,’
But the ship was high and dry,
‘It must have come up from the ocean floor,’
The Bosun said, ‘but why?’

The passengers spilled out onto the deck
With cries and shouts in the gloom,
‘What have you done, the ship’s a wreck,’
Said the Banker, Gordon Bloom.
The sisters, Jan and Margaret Young
Burst out in sobs and tears,
‘How are you going to float it off?
We might be here for years!’

At daylight they could see the extent
Of the distant lava flow,
‘Lucky we’re not on the other side
Or we’d all be dead, you know.’
The tide came in and the tide went out
But the ship was high and dry,
As clouds of steam from the lava flow
Poured out, and into the sky.

‘We’re not gonna starve,’ said Andy Hill
As he peered down onto the reef,
As thousands of ***** and lobsters crawled
‘There’s plenty of them to eat.’
They lowered him down on a rope, along
With the engineer, Bob Teck,
Where they gathered the lobsters up by hand
And tossed them, up on the deck.

The evening meal was a feast that night,
They ate and they drank their fill,
‘Too much,’ said Oliver Aston-Barr
‘I think I’m going to be ill.’
But Jennifer Deane, Costumier
Had an appetite for four,
She ate the scraps that the others left
And was calling out for more.

The following morning all was still
Til Jennifer Deane came out,
She roused them all with a frightened scream,
And then continued to shout:
‘I’ve got some horrible bug inside
And I’ve lost my sense of taste,
It must have come from the lobsters, for
It’s eaten half of my face!’

The lobsters must have been undercooked
For the symptoms would appal,
A necrotizing flesh eater
Had started on them all,
The flesh was eaten from Andy’s hand
And the leg of Gordon Bloom,
While the sisters Jan and Margaret Young
Lay screaming in their room.

The sickness took them rapidly,
For Jennifer Deane had died,
They had no place to bury her
So threw her over the side,
The ***** then swarmed and attacked her there,
Ate all of her flesh away,
There was little left of Jennifer Deane
Before the end of the day.

Each time that one of them died, the rest
Would fling them over the side,
The bodies had piled up higher out there
Than those alive, inside,
Til finally, Oliver Aston-Barr
Was last to die, on the bridge,
Of the Motor Vessel Cameroon,
Upthrust on a lava ridge.

A winter storm was to float it off,
It drifted out with the tide,
A rusted hulk with ‘The Cameroon’
Paint peeling, off from the side.
An ancient freighter, crossing its path
Drove past it, steel on steel,
And that’s when the helmsman held his breath,
‘There’s a skeleton at the wheel!’

David Lewis Paget

In one of those fogs of London
I boarded the East End train,
The mist was a yellow, evil smog
And then it began to rain.
I found a compartment, only two
To bother my peaceful ride,
And placed my case at my feet, in place
With my gold-blocked name outside.

The smell of the fog was drifting in
And burning my eyes and throat,
I said to the man, ‘Let fresh air in…’
He sat and buttoned his coat.
‘The air out there is as bad as in,’
He said with a scowl and stare,
‘You might be happy to sit and choke,
The window stays up, I swear.’

I leant well back, and looked at the girl
Who sat there, opposite me,
She wore her skirt right up to the hip,
I stared at her stockinged knee,
Her eyes were bright, an emerald green
But tears I saw on her cheek,
‘This fog,’ she muttered, and wiped them dry,
‘I think it was worse last week.’

‘But London’s always suffered from fog,’
I ventured, ‘Back in the day,
The Ripper used it to hide his crimes,
He used it getting away.’
‘Overblown,’ he said, the man in the coat,
‘There’s many was worse than he,
The blood ran thick in the gutters here
At times in our history.’

‘But he’s the one who never got caught,
You must at least give him that.’
The man slunk down in his corner seat,
Then sat, and played with his hat.
The girl just smiled, and said in a while,
I think you’re right, he’s the one,
I wouldn’t like, on a foggy night
To meet him, minus a gun.’

The man reached into his overcoat
And seized the girl with a sigh,
Holding a cut-throat razor to
Her throat, with a smile so sly.
‘I said I’d never do this again
But I must admit, I lied,
I noticed the name on your carry case,
You’re Jekyll, I see – I’m Hyde!’

David Lewis Paget

Someone said ‘look to the future
When you have a minute to spare,
For life is a force of nature,’
When I looked, it wasn’t there,
I thought I might see the lights on
But all I could see was dark,
The shutters were on the horizon
There wasn’t a single spark.

But there, back over my shoulder
Was the way that it always was,
When all that I’d ever told her
Was hurrying on to loss,
For love was a broken promise
That followed the same old round,
It failed when I was dishonest
And ended up broken down.

Then time had finally failed me
There wasn’t any to spare,
I’d used up all my allotment
To find there was nothing there,
I stood alone in a corridor
Leading to empty space,
Where far ahead was a mirror for
Reflecting the loss of grace.

There isn’t the time to start again
To mull over gross mistakes,
Making new vows when time allows,
There isn’t the time it takes,
We carry the burden of our fame
If it all amounts to dross,
And all of the failures in each name
Are carved on a headstone cross.

David Lewis Paget

There’s a glow in the sky this morning,
A pink, red-tinted glow,
But what will I do with the day to come,
I really wouldn’t know,
You left on your final journey
When the night was still at last,
And everything that we knew and loved
Has now become the past.

I woke to the timbers creaking in
Our old house by the lake,
All else, a deafening silence
When you should have been awake.
I turned to you in our marriage bed
And I said, ‘I’m feeling old!’
But you lay still in the morning chill
And God, but your hands were cold!

What will I tell the children?
What will I tell our friends?
You left with never a word for me
Or a chance to make amends.
I didn’t think that the day would come
When you’d turn, and leave me blind,
But I awoke to the morning glow
And you’d left me far behind.

What will I do with the days ahead
As your figure fades from view,
With all the memories gone at last
Of the years that I spent with you?
I can’t imagine a single day
When I’ll never hear you speak,
As I kiss your lips and your fingertips
And my tears fall on your cheek.

David Lewis Paget

The house, an aristocratic pile
Sat nestled into the hill,
Hidden by trees and bushes, while
It harboured its silence, still.
No outward sign of its infamy,
No clue to the years before,
When men had described it, clinically
As being, itself, at war.

Designed and built by my grandfather
In a late Victorian style,
It had all the trappings of balconies
And of lacework in wrought iron,
The tiles were Italian marble
And the pathways local stone,
My Grandma, Jenny McArdle,
She gave it a heightened tone.

The gentry came for the parties,
They came for the dress-up *****,
I don’t remember a time they weren’t
Wandering through the halls,
It fretted Jenny McArdle
Who wanted a little peace,
But **** was a hunting sporting man
And he wanted peace the least.

He’d take his chums to the library
Where they’d play their six card stud,
There were threats and there was bribery
And before too long there, blood,
Then finally, on an ill starred night
That would hit my grandma hard,
Her husband wagered the house she loved
Just once, on a single card.

The moment she heard the house was gone
She flew at their deck of cards,
Split open the heads of more than one
Left acres of glass in shards,
‘You’ll not be taking my home from me,’
She screamed at the Earl of Vane,
Before she fell from the balcony,
Cursing her husband’s name.

And **** was never the same again
He had to vacate his home,
While Jenny McArdle’s blood was still
Staining the local stone,
They say her ghost wouldn’t leave the place
And that’s why it caught alight,
Once when her shape had leapt in space
From the balcony one night.

And now I sit in the clearing where
That once great house had sat,
Amidst the trees and the sounds of bees
When I’m feeling low, and flat,
That house, it should have been left to me,
I’m the only downward line,
But still I hear when the weather’s clear
My grandma’s voice, ‘It’s mine!’

David Lewis Paget

I’d only been gone for a moment,
A moment was all that it took,
And up to the edge of that moment
I’d been sitting, and reading a book,
Then I looked up and saw you were staring,
But your eyes were glazed over, I see,
And I swear you weren’t looking, but glaring
At something you hated in me.

Then the room began twisting and turning
To the sound of the storm’s rapid roar,
As it went racing up to the ceiling,
And dived in a twirl to the floor,
It snatched at the book I’d been reading
And it flung it straight up in the air,
On the cover it said ‘Time is Bleeding’,
And I thought, ‘I don’t want to go there.’

Still you clung to your chair, my Miranda,
While the furniture skittered and slid,
Some had headed out to the veranda
Where the glockenspiel lay on its lid,
But your face and your skin became older,
As the years yet to come hurried by,
And the air in the room became colder
When I heard, ‘You’re much younger than I.’

And that’s when I felt it receding,
That eddying moment of time,
That had shown me the love that was bleeding
It hadn’t been yours, it was mine,
I sheltered there on the veranda
From the clinical glance of your gaze,
For time was against you, Miranda,
And it showed, in a myriad ways.

I’d only been gone for a moment,
A moment was all that it took,
And up to the edge of that moment
I’d been sitting, and reading a book,
Then the storm battered in through the shutters,
And it snatched at the book in my hand,
But you’d gone, slipped away down the gutters
With all I had loved in the land.

David Lewis Paget

‘I wish that I could be young again,’
He sighed from his easy chair,
Watching the film he’d made back then
When there was still time to spare.
‘Why would you want to go back to that,’
His wife said, ‘What about me?
We hadn’t met when you made that film
Back in 1963.’

Margaret lit an incense stick
And sandalwood filled the air,
A heavy aroma filled the room
As Derek continued to stare.
And there was his wife, at seventeen,
Just walking along the pier,
Should he go up and say hello.
Or should he just disappear?

He suddenly felt so fit, and light,
He hadn’t felt that for years,
Then turned to look at his ageing wife
As her eyes all filled with tears.
‘You wouldn’t pick me again,’ she said,
‘Not knowing what you know now,’
He would have replied, but love was dead,
Had died, he didn’t know how.

‘I wouldn’t know what I’d do again,
Given the self-same choice,’
‘Surely you would,’ said Margaret then,
‘You would have chosen Joyce.’
He thought of Joyce in the winter barn
As she rolled with him in the hay,
What was the point that she’d said goodbye,
And ended up going away?

‘You were still going with Gordon then,’
He said, as if in reply,
‘I was surprised that you went with me,
You said that you loved the guy.’
But Margaret’s tears were flowing now
And rolling along each cheek,
She should have been true to Gordon, but
He’d gone away for a week.

‘Life is just full of ironies,’
He said, while stroking her hair,
‘There was a moment, back in time,
When you were suddenly there.
I thought that you cared, and I did too,
We both of us made a choice.’
Too little, too late, to think it now,
For Gordon had married Joyce.

David Lewis Paget

To what degree does love survive
No matter what it cost,
Can man escape lost love alive
Once it is truly lost?
When let into a tender heart
Love pierces man’s defence,
And leaves the heart with battle scars
Without much recompense.

The early Spring of love will bring
A new and urgent beat,
As love will raise his footsteps up
A foot above the street.
And nature seems to smile on him
From blue, unclouded skies,
The Summer of his love will beam
From her adoring eyes.

But Autumn brings the falling leaves
All dry and burned up, sere,
Once she begins to turn her back
At this time of the year.
Then love will show its darker side
Will threaten to depart,
As he despairs at her grim cares
That tear and shred his heart.

Foul winter is the final stage
When he awakes one day,
To echoes of her footsteps as
He finds she's gone away.
Then life will stretch before him like
A grim, unending storm,
As love will turn its back on him,
He’ll wish he’d not been born.

David Lewis Paget

She turned up here on my doorstep
Completely out of the blue,
She didn’t say where she was coming from
Or where she was going to,
She carried a single paperback
And I think it carried his name,
I tried to see, but she held it back,
The book had a title, ‘Shame!’

I should have been warned by that single word
And barred the girl at the door,
She didn’t say, or I never heard
Just what she was looking for,
She stepped inside, and pushed me away
And walked with a silent tread,
Along the hall where the stairway lay
And muttered just one word, ‘Bed’.

She found the room on the upper floor
That saw the occasional guest,
With a single bed and a counterpane
And a walnut, inlaid chest.
She went to bed and she fell asleep
Nor even kicked off a shoe,
I stood perplexed on the landing there
Not knowing what I should do.

I waited for her till she awoke
Then headed her off at the stairs,
‘What did you mean by coming here
Our guests are often in pairs.’
‘I meant to challenge your friend, my ex,
He left me mired in pain,
You well should know him, his name is Rex,
He wrote this novel called ‘Shame!’

Then Rex had entered and faced the stair
And she rushed into his arms,
If I’d known better, or been aware
I might have raised the alarm.
The book flew open, revealed a knife
Secreted into its pages,
And she had stabbed him, not once, but twice
Revealing one of her rages.

Rex was lying so still, and cold
We held her down on the floor there,
‘Are you quite crazy,’ I tried to scold,
But she had cut her own throat there.
A pool of blood spread across the floor
And mingled there from the lovers,
I swore right then I would bolt my door
Deny all entry to others.

David Lewis Paget

The grave they kept on the lonely beach
Lay under a foot of lime,
Most of the pile had washed away
With rain, and the tides of time,
It had been so long since its stone was laid
As a warning to who went there,
The rough-cut name had begun to fade,
To the solitary word, ‘Despair!’

It said, ‘Despair if you dig it up,
Despair if you set it free,
It savaged the girl called Maidenhair
It ravaged this fair country,
It roamed the farms at the dead of night
And tore into sheep and hogs,
The farmers called it the devil’s blight
When they found their blood-spattered dogs.

The only monk that was left to tend
The grave, now lay in the church,
His Order gone, now the only one
To fend off the tidal surge.
The church was almost a ruin since
It had shattered the oak-backed doors,
And blasted the Brothers altar with
Its devils breath, and its claws.

But the monk lay ill, and he knew full well
He never could make the beach,
To pile the lime on the Beast of Time
And the sea would surely breach.
His fellow monks were all laid in clay
On the upper side of the cliff,
Their duty done, they had one by one
Passed on, and lay cold and stiff.

A crack appeared in the bed of lime
With a rush of air from the shore,
And something groaned with an eerie moan,
The seed of the devil’s spore.
A whisp rose out of the open grave
To join with a gully breeze,
That sent it whirling along a wave
And into a grove of trees.

And then an ominous rumble rose
As a whirlwind formed on high,
It whipped the waves to a surly peak
As it rose to blacken the sky,
A tempest, such as had never been
Tore trees, like beeches and birch,
And cut a swathe like the path it paved,
On its wayward way to the church.

The monk lay there with his gilded cross
As he heard the beast outside,
It gave a roar by the shattered door
And the monk had almost died.
But a gentle hand took the cross from him,
A hand that was soft and fair,
And held it up to the beast so grim,
The ghost of Maidenhair.

It shuddered once as she stood with ease
And the cross then drove it back,
The whirlwind died to a gully breeze
As it fled back down the track.
It seemed confused, and it seemed to lose
Its overwhelming reach,
And sank back into its limestone grave
On that long deserted beach.

The sea had battered the arching cliff
Hung over that limestone shore,
It now collapsed in a final lapse
With the monks who’d passed before.
And beneath a thousand tons of earth
That is holding off the sea,
There’s a rough-cut stone that says, ‘Despair,
Despair if you let it free!’

David Lewis Paget

The sculptured mermaid hung at the prow,
And breasted the highest waves,
Her hair flew back from the salt and spray
Was carved from some wooden staves,
She never smiled in a cruel sea
But watched for the distant shore,
In hopes that one day, try as they may
They’d leave her behind once more.

She’d had enough of the fuming foam
Of the white capped waves by the shore,
The heaving swell made her feel unwell
And each storm brought a taste of Thor.
She’d once been used to a merchant’s lot
Had sailed to the East and West,
Her arm was shattered by cannon shot
When the French attacked at Brest.

But now she was tied to a Man-of-War
She couldn’t escape her fate,
She knew she’d end on the ocean floor
If support was a little late,
Her skirt was ragged, was chipped and torn
And her paint beginning to fade,
She lived in dread of the Dutchmen’s horn
Or the sound of a fusillade.

The only time she was known to smile
Was back in the port once more,
She’d meet and greet with all of her friends
The carved figureheads of war,
She’d will the ship run into the pier
To tear her away for good,
And hope the break would be clean and sheer
To pamper her aching wood.

The salt and damp got into her pores,
The rot set into her bones,
Then one fine day when a world away
She dropped to a bed of stones.
She sits below where the sailors go
When their ships cast them to the deep,
And as they pass she will smile at last
As they enter their endless sleep.

David Lewis Paget

Long after a heated argument
With his wife in the afternoon,
Roger James had taken his angst
To nurse in the small, spare room.
She said he’d always lived in the past
But little he knew of today,
And what he knew had no further use
For the past had drifted away.

He said that the base of knowledge was
The things they learned from the past,
That all they knew in the modern day
Was built from the past, at last.
‘There’s not a single decision we make
That hasn’t been made before,
And a study of consequence, you’ll find
May stop us from going to war.’

‘You crazy man,’ was his wife’s response,
‘Your life is a pitiful lie,
What do you know of the price of milk
Or the cost of a shirt, tie-dye?
Does it matter that stamps were tuppence once
Or that petrol was three and six,
And what can enhance our lives today
From the knowledge you have of the Blitz?’

‘You trivialise the argument,
Your feet are stuck to the floor,
You’re lost to the thrill that knowledge brings,
You’ll never be able to soar!’
So he took his gloom to the attic room
And he lay on an old camp bed,
His mind was filled with a sense of doom
As images raced through his head.

He knew he’d never been practical,
He kept everything inside,
She’d thought he was a wonderful catch
When first he’d made her his bride.
But the gloss had gone as the world went on
He was gradually left behind,
Sat in a nook with a cosy book
While she burnt the chicken, and cried.

He lay and sent up a silent plea
To the stars and the universe,
‘If this is life in the present day,
Could the future be much worse?’
A crack appeared in the further wall
And a bell had tolled outside,
And when he walked back down to the hall
There was no sign of his bride.

Her things still lay where they’d lain before
But of her, there wasn’t a trace,
The house was still, in the world outside
No sign of the human race.
He walked awhile on the empty streets
Where the cars were parked, and still,
But nothing moved, not even a dog
As he walked up, over the hill.

The buildings seemed to be all intact
With a single change, he swore,
The date had changed on the city bank,
One after the day before,
Just a single day in the future, he
Was leading the human race,
They hadn’t arrived where he was at,
It was merely one day of grace.

He spends his time in the library
And walking the empty streets,
He knows they’ll never catch up with him
‘Til his wandering day’s complete.
But now he misses his wife and kin
And everything of that ilk,
So spends an hour of his future day
On the prices of gas and milk!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

(for alternative ending, jump to *)

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

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

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

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

(Alternate ending from *)

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She lay awake in her tiny bed
And she waited for the dawn,
For then she’d be turning five, they said,
The day that she was born,
She hid her head right under the sheet
And she giggled, now and then,
Thinking about the presents like
They’d given once, to Ben.

For Ben was her older brother and
He’d recently been eight,
Was given a bike, though second-hand,
And Ben had thought it great,
He’d fallen off it a dozen times
And she saw he’d skinned his knees,
But how she would love a bike like his,
She lay and she whispered, ‘Please!’

He’d also got lots of lollipops
And he wouldn’t even share,
The one that she stole got sticky, and
Got tangled up in her hair,
But best of all was the parcel that
Unwrapped, was a railway train,
It puffed real steam and its livery gleamed
Til he left it out in the rain.

The sun peeped over the window-sill
And she thought she’d take a look,
For lying there on her counterpane
Was a well-thumbed Cookery Book,
And dimly, stood in the corner of
Her sparsely furnished room,
Was a brush and pan and a black lead can
And a new, short-handled broom.

‘You’re old enough for the chores,’ she heard
As her mother watched her sob,
‘You can start by filling the kettle,
Then you can place it on the hob,
You’ll use the pan for the ashes that
You’ll be scraping from the grate,
Then spread them out by the roses, on
The ones by the garden gate.’

‘You’ll sweep the floors in the morning with
That nice new broom you got,
Attend to all of the blacking when
The oven’s not so hot,
And then you’ll help with the cooking, so
You’ll come home straight from school,
Your Da’ has need of his supper, so
You’ll work, not play the fool.’

The broom had come from a gypsy van
That was camped out on the green,
Was shaped and whittled by gypsy men
To whisk the meadow clean,
It carried with it a gypsy spell
That was woven in a hearse,
To whisk it well, or a taste of hell,
Along with a gypsy curse.

When Martha picked up the broom she felt
The power spread in her hands,
She whisked away to a gypsy tune
She’d heard from the caravans,
She whisked the ashes over the floor,
Put blacking over her nose,
Spilled the kettle over the hob
And ruined her father’s clothes.

Her mother started to beat the girl
But the broom then beat her back,
Whisking her out through the open door
And putting her under attack,
It swept the porch right into a heap
It piled the boards of the floor,
Tearing them up from the joists, and then
Sweeping them out the door.

It whisked the lid off the blacking can
And spread black over the walls,
Til Martha’s mother ran down the street
To the sound of squeals and squalls,
So Martha’s father bought her a doll
That could do all kinds of tricks,
While Martha waved the broom at her Ma,
‘Just wait til I am six!’

David Lewis Paget

What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You went outside in the storming,
The lightning flashed and it struck you dumb,
You couldn’t get up this morning.
I tried to give you a sweet caress
But you discharged on my finger,
I fear your voltage grows more, not less,
There’s no good reason to linger.

I wrapped a cable around your toe
Ran it to earth in the garden,
Your toe as well as the cable glowed,
I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.
There’s lightning flashes behind your eyes,
Your tongue is all of a sizzle,
The storm has gone but the rain keeps on
Although it’s only a drizzle.

I took you out to our ******* bin
The neighbours thought I was fooling,
And sat you down on the surface tin,
I thought that it would be cooling.
But soon the bin was a glowing red
I hauled you off from the garbage,
As flames and smoke took the garden shed
And put an end to our garage.

I thought that I’d better hose you down
When water hit, it was frightening,
The bolt ran over the garden hedge
And burnt it down with its lightning.
What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You know that I love you dearly,
But I’ll never sleep in our bed again,
Till you are discharged, and feely.

David Lewis Paget

Alan had stood at our open door,
Shaking and white with fright,
First he was speaking to Eleanor,
Then had a word with Dwight.
‘What seems the problem,’ I said to him,
(My name, by the way, is Bill),
‘Haven’t you seen it,’ he said to me,
‘It’s moving, McAvanagh’s Hill!’

I went to the door and I looked on out,
The hill seemed to still be in place,
On closer inspection, it seemed to me
It had moved to the south, a trace.
‘It must be a trick of the light,’ I said,
A hill is a hill and can’t move,’
‘But look at McCafferty’s,’ Alan said,
‘It’s settling down in a groove.’

And true, but McCafferty’s roof had moved,
It used to stand up on the height,
The moon would come up just behind his roof
And highlight his house every night.
His house had dropped down the back of the hill
Or the top of the hill was too high,
‘Now isn’t that strange?’ I said in a muse,
And Dwight said, ‘I wonder why?’

The rumbling, grumbling started that night
But deep in the earth, underneath,
And Eleanor came in a panic to cry,
‘There’s movement, out there on the heath!’
We ran to the garden, and under the moon
We could see the heath starting to tilt,
As slowly it moved, and then it became
The rising front side of the hill.

Alan ran home and brought back a gun
He said, ‘I feel better with this!’
‘You think you can stop it by firing a gun?’
‘At least with a hill, you can’t miss.
There’s something behind it, something so weird,
A hill can’t just move by itself.’
Then Eleanor suddenly burst into tears,
‘The Devil’s come into the Dell!’

We didn’t get very much sleep that night,
We took it in turns just to watch,
The nearer the movement came up to our door
The more Alan knocked off my Scotch.
We felt the first tilt of the house next day,
Our porch was beginning to rise,
The hill loomed above us, and leaning back,
The house pointed up to the skies.

McCafferty’s house had quite disappeared
As it slid down the other side,
While our house was on the way to the top,
It was really a question of pride.
McCafferty lorded it over us all
As long as his house was on top,
But now he came racing along, was appalled,
‘I order this movement to stop!’

‘I know you’re behind it, you’ve conjured a scheme,
What set this in motion, Bill?’
I shrugged and I mentioned that my hands were clean,
‘It is, after all, just a hill!’
‘My real estate value just fell through the floor,
I’ll sue if you don’t move it back!’
‘Then go for it Buddy, there isn’t a court
That can order a hill… See you Jack.’

We’re sitting in clover, our house at the top
Of what was McAvanagh’s Hill,
For once it had moved, it suddenly stopped
And now it’s the Hill of Bill!
McCafferty sits down the hill in a glade
And he rages at everyone,
While Alan’s deluded, he swears at this stage
That it stopped when it noticed his gun.

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The mirror was there when we moved in,
Full length, and stood in the hall,
Right where the lounge room opened up
Against the opposite wall.
Yvette was startled at first, she said,
‘That mirror gave me a fright,
To see a figure suddenly there
Stare back in the dead of night.’

‘You’ll soon get used to it there, Yvette,
There’s nowhere else it can go,
Once you have moved your chattels in
And filled up the house below.’
‘It’s strange though, isn’t it,’ said Yvette,
‘It reflects the wrong way round,
My right is left and my left is right
Like an opposite me it’s found.’

‘You’d better tell her you’re not impressed,
That she’s taken half your face,
And moved it to the opposite side
In a sign of twisted grace.’
For Yvette had one green eye, the right,
And a pale blue eye, the left,
So what stared back from that mirror there
Was a back to front Yvette.

She’d stand in front of that mirror there
And would pose, and raise her hand,
‘I raise my right, and it seems to me
I’m reversed in mirror land.’
I said, ‘It’s the same for everyone
But you seem to be obsessed,’
‘It isn’t me,’ said Yvette, ‘you’ll see
When she steps out through the glass.’

I woke at night, in the early light
And Yvette was not in bed,
I found her down by the mirror there
Where the morning light was shed.
I crept up slowly behind her there
And saw what Yvette could see,
That figure, facing away from her,
But never a sign of me.

‘I told the woman to turn around
And she did, I see my back!’
But so did I, it was such a shock
Like a brought-on heart attack,
Yvette went missing the following day
Though I searched both high and low,
But didn’t stare at the mirror there
Just in case she was… you know!

I called her name when the evening came
And she crawled right into bed,
‘You scared me out of my mind,’ I cried,
‘But I don’t know why,’ she said.
She gave me a long, fulfilling kiss
When I stared, as one bereft,
For this Yvette had a blue eye, right
And a green one on the left.

David Lewis Paget

I wake and prowl the house at night
And wander through the gloom,
The only light that streams are beams
Of silver from the Moon,
While every room is silent
And the passageways are dark,
There’s just one sound, the beating of
My misbegotten heart.

But no-one else is stirring
And the atmosphere is thick,
With dreams and ancient memories
From some old sailing ship,
They rise up from the midden of
A thousand journeys sailed,
That came to grief on some dread reef
As each one said, ‘You failed!’

And long-lost faces turn away
Before they’ll meet my stare,
I try to capture them again
And say, ‘I know you’re there!’
They shake their heads in silence and
Then drift into the night,
‘I know that I was wrong,’ I call,
They whisper back: ‘You’re right!’

So on then through the early hours
My vigil seeks the past,
Re-visiting each love I lost
As if it were the last,
And tears stream like some sad dream
Repeating: ‘Well, you know
Just why I turned away from you,
I really had to go.’

The years have mounted up, and now
Lie on me like a tomb,
Reflected in the silence of
This darkened, empty room,
And just as dawn is breaking I
Cry out, ‘I cared, you know!’
My voice, it echoes in the gloom,
‘Why do you hate me so?’

David Lewis Paget

He kept them locked in a tower,
And I’ll let you guess the score,
The thirteen women that disappeared
To leave not a sign before.
We thought we would never find them,
There wasn’t a clue or trace,
They’d simply gone for a gentle stroll
And walked off the planet’s face.

And mine was the thirteenth woman,
To date, who had disappeared,
At first, I thought she had left me,
Or that was the thing I feared,
But I heard her voice coming back to me
As an echo, alone at night,
‘My love for you is a love that’s true,
Rolled up in a ball, and tight.’

She had such a way of smiling,
Of reaching, cuddling in,
She said we had such a special love,
A personal kind of sin.
So I knew she must have been kidnapped,
Was snatched as she crossed the street,
As all those others had gone before,
They hadn’t been indiscreet.

I haunted the railway station,
Went roaming abroad most nights,
I peeked in each cottage window
From valley to village heights,
When out on the edge of woodland
I came on the black stone tower,
A padlock bolt on a door of oak
I found at the midnight hour.

I hid in the trees and bushes,
Then waited and held my breath,
A figure came in from the rushes
Crept in, at the hour of death.
For they say at three in the morning
That our hearts will beat the least,
But mine was pounding and roaring
As I leapt, and captured the beast.

The women were chained to a railing,
To links in the cold, stone wall,
They shivered, without any clothing,
And cried, when they heard me call,
For some had been physically altered,
Each one for a different kink,
I chained the beast as their cries increased,
And then I undid each link.

I wrapped my girl in my shirt, then sent
The beast to his ****** fate,
I heard him scream as his manhood went,
For him, it was getting late.
He lay in pieces, spread through the trees
And no-one was ever charged,
The police in their wisdom wrote their screed,
‘There must be a wolf at large…’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

She started wearing the corpse paint when
She’d just turned seventeen,
Renamed herself Pandora, though
Her real name was Jean,
We thought it was just a cult thing when
She dyed her hair pitch black,
Painted her lips and fingertips,
She looked like a shark attack.

With piercings in her eyebrows, tongue
And thumb rings on each hand,
An ankle chain that proclaimed her game,
‘I’m anyone’s, on demand!’
She’d go to the Metal concerts or
She’d sit and sulk in her room,
And file her eye-teeth down to a point,
And scare herself in the gloom.

She kept a tin trunk under her bed
That she’d picked up second-hand,
But wouldn’t let on just what it held,
She said it was contraband,
We thought that she might grow out of it,
Get sick of being a Goth,
But that was before she came on it,
A huge, Death’s Head Hawkmoth.

She’d always collected butterflies
A Lepidoptera freak,
They hung in frames with her Gothic games
And she pinned them every week.
She’d bring them fluttering in a jar
And she’d spread their tiny wings,
Lay them down on a plaster board
And stick them there, with pins.

She brought the Hawkmoth home one day
And she let it out in her room,
She said she wouldn’t be pinning it,
It danced to an evil tune.
‘It foretells war, and famine, death!’
She said as she watched it fly,
She seemed entranced as she watched it dance
For her mouth was open wide.

I didn’t see, but I heard her choke
And I found her on the floor,
Trying to retch the hawkmoth up
As she choked and spat, and swore,
‘It flew right into my open mouth
And it’s gone right down my throat!
I feel it fluttering way down there,
Will it **** me, if I choke?’

‘It’s probably dead by now,’ I said,
‘It couldn’t survive your bile,
It’s just like eating a turkey roast
You’ll digest it, in a while.’
‘I don’t feel well,’ said the Goth from hell,
But she took a sip of Coke,
Then hid away for the rest of the day
Wrapped up in her Gothic cloak.

She’d never been very talkative
But she now clammed up for good,
She’d sit in the gloom of her darkened room,
We thought it was just a mood.
But then I opened her bedroom door
To check on our evil Goth,
And out there flew, more than a few
Of the Death’s Head strain, Hawkmoth.

Pandora lay way back on the bed
And her mouth was open wide,
All I could hear was fluttering, fluttering
Coming from way inside,
And moths were flying out of her mouth
In a steady stream to the room,
And all the walls and ceiling, covering,
Moths in the afternoon.

A week had passed from the funeral,
The coffin was sealed with glue,
For moths kept fluttering out of her mouth
With nothing that we could do.
I finally opened her old tin chest
And found it was full of moths,
Of every species, fluttering, fluttering
Out of Pandora’s Box.

David Lewis Paget

I was introduced to her mother
One Whit Sunday, down at the Hall,
They said that this was a ritual
And suffered by one and all,
She wanted to check your hands were clean
That you had no flaw on your skin,
I wanted to marry her daughter
But if I had, I couldn’t come in.

They led me in through the servant’s door
Down a passageway to the rear,
Marching me past some gloomy rooms
Was an ancient Grenadier,
He didn’t reply to a single word
That I said, his face was grim,
Then into a room with a chandelier
That was gloomier than him.

She sat at the end of a table, veiled
And motioned me to a chair,
The dust was thick on the table-top
And I’m sure there was dust on her,
I’d heard she once was a beauty
One of the greatest in the land,
But she sat there bowed like a coffin shroud
As she raised her withered hand.

‘Show me your hands and your fingers,’ she
Then whispered in gravel tones,
Her voice like the dying embers of
The ashes of human bones,
I raised my sleeves to the elbows and
I held them out to her stare,
‘I’m going to marry your daughter,’
I declared, ‘so be aware!’

She flinched, as if I had slapped her
Then she said, as hard as nails,
‘I’ll write the end of the chapter,
I’ll not heed your rants and rails.
My daughter won’t marry anyone
That I don’t approve, you’ll see,
You think that you are the only one
Come cap in hand to me?’

‘There was a time, I was in my prime
When the world was at my door,
And I could have married anyone
But the love that I had was poor,
A rival had him imprisoned, just
To get him out of the way,
Then said I could buy his freedom if
I’d lie with him for a day.’

‘My love was such that I put my trust
That this Earl would keep his word,
So slept with him on a Sunday, then
He put my love to the sword.
He said that I’d have to keep his bed
For I had no place to go,
That I was fit for playing the *****
And he’d let my friends all know.’

‘I couldn’t cry, I would rather die
But my first thought was revenge,
My heart was broken forevermore
But my love would be avenged.
I ran his lordship an evil bath
With herbs and salts disguised,
Then held him down while it ate his flesh,
And put out both of his eyes.’

I leapt to my feet on hearing that,
And staggered back from my chair,
‘So now you know I’m a monster,
If you cross me, just beware!’
‘I think you’ve told me a pack of lies,
But I love your daughter, true!
I’m going to marry her come what may,
I swear, in spite of you!’

She rose and beckoned me follow her
And she led me through the gloom,
Down through a flagstone stairwell and
Into a tiny room,
A man lay there in an iron bath
That was filled to the brim with oil,
And only his face was still intact
Though his eyes had both been spoiled.

‘He hasn’t an ounce of flesh on him,
The oil just keeps him alive,
He’ll never get out of this bath again,’
But he’d heard us both arrive.
‘For God’s sake, **** me and end it now,’
He groaned from his oily tomb,
‘I will when you bring my Martin back,’
She whispered, there in the gloom.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough
But I’d lost my way inside,
I knew I couldn’t get married now
I was far too terrified.
She called me back and she raised her veil
And she said, ‘He stole my grace!’
I saw to my horror that syphilis
Had eaten part of her face!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The freighter loomed from the darkness
Its shadow high on our port,
And Jenny screamed at the starkness
Of the fate the freighter brought,
Its bow wave flowed right over the prow
Of our tiny little yacht,
We knew that we couldn’t ride it out
So whether to swim, or not?

The sea was luckily clear and warm
It had been a perfect day,
As we had lazily sailed along
The length of Innotto Bay,
As night had fallen the breeze had too
And it left us quite becalmed,
So when the freighter came ploughing through
It had seen us both alarmed.

It rose above us, this rusty hulk
That had seen much better days,
The bridge was lit, could they see us sit
Where their bow cut through the waves?
The yacht was rocked by the turbulence
That its mighty hull displaced,
And suddenly we were swamped out there
As the sea rose to my waist.

The yacht had foundered, was going down
Crushed by the mighty bow,
And we fell into the sea where we
Clung on to each other, now.
It ****** us in as it glided past
And we heard the turgid roar,
As the giant props left a wake of froth
That would **** us in, for sure.

And Jenny panicked to stay afloat
As I clung on to her arm,
But down we went as our strength was spent
Where the props would do us harm,
We saw them thrash as we sank on down
And a dull throb filled our ears,
The blades would slice like a guillotine
Was the source of both our fears.

But the violent thrash of the water there
Sent currents beneath the stern,
And we were violently ****** on down
Where the props had ceased to churn,
And when we bobbed to the surface, we
Saw the freighter disappear,
Ploughing into the distance while
We lay in the bay, to cheer.

We were only a mile beyond the reef
And beyond that lay the land,
So struck out together in relief
And I held her by the hand,
We’ll never forget that rusty hulk
As it passed, I caught it’s name,
Riven with old corruption it
Was called, ‘The Devil’s Game!’

David Lewis Paget

The god from the past came stalking,
Came clambering over the hill,
He’d woken first thing in the morning
With a hangover, fit to chill,
Those Roman debauches with grapes and wine,
The reds and the whites of the Tuscan kind,
The fruit of an overburdened vine,
Were sapping his energy still.

He’d rubbed at his eyes in the dawning,
And wondered where everyone went,
For nothing remained of the Roman baths
Not even a soldier’s tent,
And where was the maiden he’d last embraced
The sweet  Lucina, so fair of face,
Whose long held virtue was laid to waste
When the force of his love was spent.

Invidia’s green and brooding eyes
Had watched as he laid her down,
Had mixed her potions to match his lies
As they struggled, there on the ground.
She thought, ‘No god should be so remiss
As to offer a rival a tainted kiss,
From now, I’ll act as his Nemesis,
He’ll sleep while the world turns round.

She poured him a draught of her potion then
The last of his thirst to slake,
Though Empires rose and fell again
She vowed that he’d never wake.
The buildings crumbled and turned to dust
As the god dreamt long of his love, and lust,
While Nemesis thought her scheme was just
And the field turned into a lake.

The ages tired and the gods retired
To their mansions, high on the mount,
But he continued to sleep and dream
More years than he could count,
The god slept through in a dream sublime
While generations were buried in lime,
Two thousand years was a blink in time
For the gods in their banishment.

He woke on a chilly Autumn day
And found himself in a lake,
Shivered once, and then strode away
For his heart had begun to ache,
He walked down into a valley plain
Green and fresh in the Autumn rain,
When out of a tunnel streamed a train
With a scream, and the squeal of brakes.

‘By Juvenal!’ cried the god in shock
As the carriages streamed on by,
Then up above, like a giant gnat
A vehicle flew in the sky.
‘The world has changed since I fell asleep
The gods have fled to the mountain keep,
And men have conjured a giant leap,
The world has passed us by!’

He ran headlong through the tunnel
Hoping to find Lucina again,
And that was the great explosion that
Nobody could explain.
The diesel engine was rendered flat
With carriages piled on top of that,
While Nemesis on the mountain sat
Her tears flowing like rain!

David Lewis Paget

He trudged on up from the great seaport
After a year at sea,
And in his mind was a single thought,
That thought was Emily.
He’d got her note when he disembarked
In the pouring, driving rain,
And read it under a single spark:
‘You may never come here again!’

‘Never come here again,’ it said,
What was that meant to mean?
The blood had rushed to his sailor’s head,
He conjured a nightmare scene,
He thought of the tidy garden path,
Of seeing a man at the door,
And Emily hiding behind his hat,
A man he’d not seen before.

Perhaps the year was too long to wait,
She hated it on her own,
He’d often suffered a lack of faith
That she could remain alone.
He’d conjured visions in distant ports
At the curious lack of mail,
While he had written his deepest thoughts
To post them before he sailed.

He’d thought of her at the village dance,
He’d thought of her down the street,
And meeting a friendly guy, perchance
Who would sweep her off her feet.
While he had suffered temptations too
At the taverns along the way,
The sparkling eyes of the barmaids there
When the ship put in for a stay.

But now he trudged in the driving rain
At that terrible time of night,
When shadows loomed to increase the gloom
That he felt, with never a light.
He’d struck a match when he’d read the note
But it fizzled in record time,
He’d only read when the match went out
The first, not the second line.

He felt his way up the garden path
And he paused, then knocked at the door,
His heart was there in his mouth at last
To the tread of a man, for sure.
The door swung open, a man stood there
A quizzical look in his eyes,
‘We didn’t expect you here so late,
But still, what a nice suprise.’

The sailor stood, was taken aback,
He hadn’t the words to say,
‘What have you done with Emily,’
His breath was taken away.
‘Your Emily’s moved, she went next door,
I see she’s burning a light,
You’d better get home, you’re living there,
She’s waiting for you tonight.’

David Lewis Paget

Whenever the sun sinks down in the west
And the stars come out at night,
The birds return to their cosy nests
And a stray dog barks in fright,
I hear the click of the front door lock
And I let the blinds unfold,
Then hear the whisper behind the clock,
That says, ‘New souls for old!’

And down at the end of the darkened street
Is a man with a horse and dray,
He wears thick felt on his padded boots
And his voice seems far away,
The sacks piled up on the cart are new
And they jump about in the cold,
But his voice gets louder on his approach,
He says, ‘New souls for old!’

So nobody opens their door at night
‘Til the man and his dray have passed,
But peer in fright, and put out the light
Then hold their breath to the last,
They hide their children under the stairs
But the voice wafts in from the cold,
It seems to come from under the chairs
And it says, ‘New souls for old!’

The mirror under the hallway clock
Is hard in the dark to see,
But when I head for the door to lock
Reflects a vision of me,
The eyes are evil, the mouth is grim
And the chin is jutting and bold,
The brow is furrowed and creased with sin
As I hear, ‘New souls for old!’

One night as the gas lamps sputtered out
At the farther end of the street,
I heard the clop of his horse’s hooves
As I strode on out to meet,
The man peered out from under his hood
And told me the price, fourfold,
I’d have to be willing to take his place
To get a new soul for old!

So now I wander the streets at night
Wrapped up in a cloak and hood,
I feel the evil leaching away
As I work for the greater good,
The sacks piled up on the cart are new
And they jump about in the cold,
I’m waiting for someone to take my place
As I say, ‘New souls for old!’

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

           *     *     *     *     *

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

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

David Lewis Paget

I said that there only were ninety steps
To the drop at the edge of the cliff,
As long as she didn’t take ninety one,
She wouldn’t end up as a stiff.
She’d only been blind since the accident
When the car got away from me,
Went rolling, gambolling on down the hill
And ending up flat by a tree.

And Cindy went straight through the windscreen
She shattered the glass she went through,
She screamed out to me that she couldn’t see,
She cried, ‘I’m just looking for you!’
But I was sat pinned by the steering wheel
I couldn’t get out if I tried,
I said, ‘Don’t distress, they’ll fix you up yet,’
One look at her eyes said I lied.

We came up to move in to ‘Ocean View’,
The house overlooking the sea,
I thought that the air would be good for us,
And the view would be okay for me.
I paced out the steps to the edge of the cliff
And reported to Cindy as such,
As long as she kept to her boundary
She wouldn’t fall over - (Not much!)

It isn’t much fun when your partner is blind
When everything has to be done,
She took it for granted that I wouldn’t mind
So sat on the porch in the sun.
I washed and I cooked and I tidied the house,
While she took her lessons in braille,
My life wasn’t funny, but she had the money,
I felt I was living in jail.

I walked with her right to the edge of the cliff
But always stopped seven steps short,
I said, ‘When you venture away from the house,
Remember the cliff is due North.’
I tried to impress it was safer to stay
Within ninety steps from the edge,
What I hadn’t told, as my blood had run cold
It was Eighty Eight steps to the ledge.

They’d say it was ******, I’d say it was fate
If she finally fell from the cliff,
I would say, ‘what the odds, it was up to the gods,’
And ‘life, it was full of ‘what if?’
My plans came to nothing, she drowned in the bath
But I still felt as guilty as sin,
I knew I’d had ****** there deep in my heart
And that evil is doing me in!

David Lewis Paget

The waves came crashing in from the sea
We were caught on a spit of land,
With no way back, not one I could see,
I reached and I held her hand.
‘I’ve never seen the breakers so high,’
She cried, in a fit of fear,
‘You must have known, it’s hard to deny,
So why did you bring me here?’

‘I brought you for a moment of truth,
A moment for you and I,
There’s only you, and me and the sea,
This spit of land and the sky.
We never manage to be alone,
There’s always somebody near,
And every time I open my mouth
There’s somebody else to hear.’

The spray was drenching her beautiful hair,
And running into her eyes,
Her make-up running most everywhere,
It gave her a look of surprise.
‘You might have picked a quieter spot,
We still could have been alone,
You never said what you wanted, or not.’
‘I needed you on your own.’

‘I needed to tell you that I’m in love,
Have been since the day we met,
But you’ve hung out with Derek, the drone,
I hoped that you’d leave him yet.’
‘He’s just a friend, I told you before,
He’s easy to be around,
You do go on! He isn’t my love,
You cover the same old ground.’

I took the ring from my sodden shirt
And held it for her to see,
‘I’d like you to take this diamond ring,
And say you belong to me.’
‘I only belong to myself,’ she said,
‘I’m nobody’s girl in the end,
But if I put on your diamond ring,
I may just give you a lend.’

The breakers crashed, like a waterspout,
And washed us both off the spit,
We laughed so much as we flailed about,
Trying to swim through it.
We headed in to the distant beach
Together, and that was the thing,
For when we got to the sandy breach
I saw she was wearing the ring.

David Lewis Paget

‘I’m coming to get you now,’ he said,
‘I’m coming to get you tonight!’
Derek sat with his headset on,
His face was white with fright.
‘I think you have the wrong guy,’ he said,
‘It couldn’t be me you mean!’
‘Oh yes, I’m coming to get you now,
I know you, Derek McLean.’

He sat there silent as eerie chills
Spread up and along his spine,
A face came on his computer screen
That rang some bell in his mind.
‘This better not be a joke,’ he said,
‘You’d better not mess with me!’
The voice in the headset chuckled low
In some evil deviltry.

‘It’s taken a while to track you down,
But track you down I did,
You should have stayed off the Internet,
Covered your head, and hid.’
‘I’ve nothing to hide from,’ Derek said,
But his voice broke high in alarm,
‘You’ll never be able to block it out,
That day on Emerson’s Farm.’

At the very mention of Emerson’s Farm
The listener held his breath,
For years he’d struggled to block it out,
The site of that childhood death.
They’d played together in sodden fields
And had ventured into the marsh,
Thinking to pick the bluebells there
But the end of that was harsh.

‘I’d like to know who you are,’ he said,
But his words came out in a whine,
‘You know full well, do I have to tell,
I’m here for the second time.
You left me there and you ran on home
As I sank in there to my neck,
You had no care for my tiny life
But tonight, I’ll teach you respect.’

Derek shuddered and hit the switch
To turn the computer off,
But nothing flickered, the screen stayed on
And Derek began to cough.
‘Have you any idea what it’s like to drown
In a sludge of grass and mud?
It isn’t pleasant, I’ll tell you that
You should try it once, you should!’

Derek coughed and began to choke
In a fit of remorse, and fear,
He’d tried to forget the little bloke
Who had haunted him, year by year.
The doctor, when he examined him
Said, ‘Heart attack, and he choked.
His eyes are staring, as if in fear
But there’s mud in the back of his throat!’

David Lewis Paget