I’d always thought that books were the same,
There wasn’t a lot to choose,
They each seep slowly into your brain
With knowledge you can’t refuse,
But then a book I found on a shelf
All ***** and dark and dank,
I’d read so far, then turning the page
I’d find every page was blank.

The print will stay till I drop my eyes
And the book slips from my grasp,
Then every page that’s ahead is blank
As the book escapes my clasp.
The villain smirks as I lose the plot
And he changes what’s to be,
He struggles up from the printed page
In an effort to be free.

I read the book on a cliff top verge
Looking down along the coast,
The day was calm like a soothing balm
And I felt as warm as toast,
My eyelids, heavy as lead dropped down
Preparatory to sleep,
When someone scaling the cliff ahead
Called out, began to weep.

‘God help me, sir, or I’ll fall below,
On that pile of jagged rocks,
Reach out for me and don’t let me go,
You don’t look the type that mocks.’
I noticed then that I’d dropped the book
In a pool of mud, and rank,
It fell agape with a broken back
The following pages blank.

‘I have to ask how your tale will end,
It’s unfinished in the book,
Your villainous deeds go on, and then
Disappear each time I look.’
‘It ends any way you want it to,
It’s the tale without an end,
For you are the villain in the book
You can do what you intend.’

I stood up straight and I kicked on out
At the figure on the cliff,
And he fell back with a scream, a shout
To the rocks along the reef,
I turned to pick up the broken book
Wiped the pages free from mud,
There wasn’t a single page left blank
Each page was stained with blood.

David Lewis Paget