Never should children have to know
How much to their parents they owe.
Although when they reach adulthood
Know, without being told, they should.
How parents give to us so much,
How grateful we should be for such.
Whether passed on or living yet,
Ne'er should we our parents forget.

A lamb, soft and tender,
Wanders, around an unknown bend,

Misguided, pretender,
It knows not, when its life shall end,

Dwarfed by natures forces,
All around fly evils sources,

A small light, flickers, wanes,
Precious lamb, caught in death's dark chains,

All WE can do is love,
For WE are like little lost Lambs.

Write one line at a time.
Don't stress.
You'll come back with better ideas.
Or maybe sometimes,
it is best to leave

The garden at home, from what I recall
Was massive and overgrown,
More like a huge untended park
That was mine to explore and roam.
There were trees and shrubs and flowerbeds
That were all burnt up and dried,
I never saw anyone water it
So most of the garden died.

And my grandfather would wander about
And he’d grumble under his beard,
Mumble about his offspring, as he
Wondered what he’d reared.
‘They all take after their mother’s side,’
He would say, ‘They have no spine,
I’ve searched and searched for an Astrogoth
But I don’t think that they’re mine.’

I doubted they really wanted me,
They’d throw me over the fence,
And say, ‘Go play with your grandfather,
He’s more like you, and dense.’
Then off they’d go to the garden’s end
To sit by the smoking pit,
Whenever I’d ask if I could go
My mother would throw a fit.

‘Don’t go to the end of the garden or
We might just leave you there,
Your cousin fell in the pit of hell
And was burnt beyond compare.’
I watched the smoke pour out of the ground
To see if my parents lied,
But sure as hell, there were flames as well
Right there, where my cousin died.

One day I watched as it opened up
To reveal the son of sin,
My parents ventured a little close
And then they had tumbled in,
He yelled and roared, called on the Lord
That he spared him in his den,
‘Just take your half-wits back,’ he cried,
‘My hell is not for them!’

I haven’t been to the garden now
For years, since my Gramps took off,
So I’m the only descendant now
With the name of Astrogoth,
That smoking pit with a door to it
I have tried for years to sell,
But nobody seems to want to buy
A personal door to hell.

David Lewis Paget

I woke in the early hours to find
My head between her thighs,
She hadn’t been there before, I swear
And I’m not a man who lies.
I’d seen her out in the Public Bar
Of the ‘Jacaranda Tree’,
Halfway along the Outback Track
On the way to Wendouree.

I’d seen her dance on the table tops
I’d seen her prance on the bar,
I’d said to Lance as I saw him glance
‘I don’t know where we are!’
He shrugged, to say that he didn’t care
As long as she danced that way,
Her stockings, down at her ankles and
Her skirt in disarray.

‘Now there is a ***** to turn your head,’
Said Lance, with a burst of pride,
He’d been out on the verandah, then
He’d turned to go back inside,
She’d joined him there for a moment,
Just brushed by for a quick connect,
But he hadn’t noticed her eyebrow raised
In a sign that said, ‘Reject!’

We both had our eighteen wheelers parked
Outside in the hotel grounds,
I was headed away up north
And he to the lights of town,
He offered to give her the sleeper cab
While he drove the star-filled night,
I looked away and I thought it sad,
But the trucks both looked alike.

I heard him leave at the midnight hour
And thought she was gone for good,
It wasn’t often I hauled this way
Or stayed in this neighbourhood.
But then I clambered into my bunk
Above, at the cabin’s rear,
And fell asleep like a hopeless drunk
Till the morning sun drew near.

I made an offer to buy that pub,
The ‘Jacaranda Tree’,
But only when she agreed to stay
And dance on the bar for me,
I asked if she’d meant to go with Lance
And she looked at me with scorn,
I sleep the sleep of a new romance
And the pillows keep me warm.

David Lewis Paget

The place was a crumbling ruin,
It sat on the top of a hill,
If we hadn’t been travelling tired that day
We may have been travelling still,
But you said we ought to seek shelter there
From a sudden deluge of rain,
So I parked outside its terraces
And entered the palace of pain.

You were the first to say ‘It’s strange,
The feeling within these halls,’
While all I could hear were the scraping sounds
That came from the whispering walls.
It must have been long deserted, it
Was just like a pile of bones,
That someone left when its throat was cleft
And lay fading into its moans.

The night came down with a vengeance once
We’d made our camp on the floor,
And rain poured in at the windows that
Were probably there before,
You said we’d leave when the morning came
Once the sun was up, and bright,
We didn’t know that an age of shame
Wrapped that place in an endless night.

I tried to sleep but you’d wake me up
Each time that I dropped my head,
‘Didn’t you hear that dreadful scream?’
I seem to remember you said.
But all I heard were the awful groans
That echoed around the halls,
I couldn’t explain the sense of dread
That came from the whispering walls.

I thought that the rain poured down on us
I thought that we lay in mud,
I lit a match in the early hours
To see you covered in blood.
I said, ‘We’d better go back to sleep
Till the nightmare hour is past,
But then you noticed the blood on me
And you screamed, and lay aghast.

I wish that we’d never gone near the place
I wish we’d stayed in the car,
Then you’d still be who you used to be
And I would know where you are!
But you ran screaming into the night
When they came with their hoods and gowns,
With their bloodied hands and their burning brands
To burn the place to the ground.

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

There is something that feeds on the evil
It finds in the well of its mind,
To bolster the work of the devil
And other bad cess it might find,
It joys in the hurt it is causing
It revels in pain it may bring
To all who once loved and adored it,
For it never loved anything.

Revenge is the one thing that drives it,
A payback to feed discontent,
But it does it in dark and in hiding,
It’s sly and it doesn’t repent,
It tries to unwrap any secrets
That may have been hidden from view,
In diaries, letters and journals,
Or letters, specific to you.

It doesn’t know shame in its spying,
That others feel only disgust,
A soul that is black and repulsive
That’s headed for Hell, as it must,
It thinks its success is so clever
And laughs when revealing its scar,
But others laugh at you, not with you,
And evil, you know who you are!

David Lewis Paget

Just twelve, I swear, I must have been
The day they took the Witch of Steen
And put a halter round her neck
To teach her magic some respect.

The women in the village square
Tore off her clothes, and pulled her hair
Then called their menfolk out to view
Who crossed them there, what they would do.

They tied her hands behind her back
The rope around her neck was slack,
But tied to Jethro’s stubborn mule
They led her naked, like some fool.

And all her secrets lay out there
Uncovered, in the open air,
She looked quite beautiful to me
Her naked form, such artistry.

The mule dragged her, painful and slow
Along the lanes where they would go
As gusts of breeze blew out her hair,
Revealed what she was hiding there.

And I, I followed, just a lad
Whose eyes were full of her, by god,
Whose ******* were pert and firm back then
Whose thighs held secrets, hid from men.

I saw that tiny tuft of hair
That hid her womanhood in there,
That plagued me since, for every night
I’d think of it in dread delight.

But still they led her, lane and field
No place that she was not revealed,
They took her to the ducking pond
Where life or death would lie beyond.

And when they laid the ducking stool
With her aboard, across the pool,
Her voice rang out, this buxom maid
With words the villagers dismayed.

‘For all that you come judging me,
Look to yourselves, your pedigree,
What sons and daughters sprang at night
From phantom fathers, bred in spite.’

‘When husbands were out tending fields
And wives would wait, temptation yields.
What shadows stood by window ledge
Gained entry to some marriage bed?’

The women quaked before her spell
And screamed, then ducked the witch to hell
And would have left her there to drown
Had not the menfolk brought her round.

In mercy then, they set her free
And she had screamed, ‘A curse on thee!
‘Your cattle will roam free and late
Your catch won’t hold the cattle gate.’

‘Your crops will flatten in the fields
When hail and sleet destroy their yields,
And mud will fill your village hall,
Your church collapse, your roofs will fall.’

She left there with a final shout
The things she cursed, they came about,
But I was left a lifetime dream,
That naked witch, the Witch of Steen.


David Lewis Paget