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

The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned)
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning peeks in where the tension hangs tight
while the lanterns, alarmed, appear fulgent with fright.

Having lost both his hands, and now dancing for dimes,
Captain Hook haunts the alleyway's rivers of rhymes,
sometimes singing or prancing to mimic the mimes
with white faces contorted to pillars of pain,
as the ringmaster murmurs “we're all the insane”
and the inmates dunk donuts in droplets of rain.

With their hammers in hand, in their plum pinafores,
Satan's soldiers of fortune wield powers of Thor's
leaving blood on bent bodies, the tombstones of wars
lining highways and byways  with manna and gold
for the mastermind movers, survivors consoled
with some pie in Valhalla (or so they've been told).

Above boulevards, battered with batches of bricks,
flys the Duchess of Dawdle on waxed candlesticks;
while she watches, debauches, her ****** tricks
as he talks (on their walks in the summer-day parks
where a parrot kneels praying, a parakeet barks)
’bout the buffed brazen beaks of the latter-day larks.

Hoary goblins glow gruesome, they leap from the loft
to the hard-hearted rues, shedding tears that they've quaffed
through the night of the dead as the clarinets coughed
and the keepers kept watch so that no one escaped
dingy dungeons where priests and their puppets hide caped
behind walls lined with tulips and justice hung draped.

In the Garden of Eaten, where apples once grew,
lie the bones, somewhat blanched, from the last barbecue
and the snakes strut like storks down a lost avenue
along tracks  like the cracks on the mask of the moon
all alight with the shadows that seep down a dune
as the firefly crawls from a crimson cocoon.

Phantom trains travel tunnels (dispatched in all haste),
voiding tickets to nowhere, it seems such a waste
to see roadblocks with red lights at dead ends misplaced
at the base of the bowels of the bottomless pit
where reflections of life seem so ****** counterfeit
from the back of the eyes of the blind hypocrite.

Lady cockroaches, camped in the Countesses' beds,
are commanding crusaders to fit arrowheads
to the ends of burnt bridges suspended by threads
from frayed thongs of diminutive bald balladeers
taunting Cerby, the three-headed dog, serving beers
to the pagan disciples of bold puppeteers.

The oceans lay barren, the garbage dumps filling
with fracking and cracking and lead water spilling,
for milling and drilling are thrilling but killing
the birds and the beasts and the tea leaves, soon falling,
yet gurus roast chestnuts but can't heed their calling
while mauling and crawling on knees while they're brawling.

Unshorn sheep in the meadow are led to the bay
to be brainwashed and fleeced, trusting donkeys that bray
of the virtues of demons that haunt yesterday,
while the vultures deflower the turtle dove lanes
where the blood trickles up and the cruel crimson stains
Easter eggshells and feathers – that’s all that remains.

One eyed bees pilot lines through electrical storms
and blind hornets hum hymns when they're swirling in swarms
while the rest are repressed as the blue marble warms
(regent Queens losing sight that the end has begun)
and for eyes of the ewes, veils of wool have been spun  
and the wasps fly their flags from the **** of a gun.

Seven trumpets (attempting to echo the horns
of the Siamese goats and the three Unicorns
giving birth to the mirth in the temple of thorns)
sound the bugles of sorrow inside of the sea
of crazed lies of the wormwood afloat like a pea
in a pod of dark dolphins that can't disagree.

Often bellowed by barkers, to crowds with no faces,
are words (in their aftermath, leaving no traces)
of picnics and parties in limbo-like places
on paths to perdition where pundits are preaching
and sirens belch bullets while pirates prowl, breaching
the shadow's barbed branches, with whistles blown, screeching.

They're dissecting dissenters that dare to annoy
and then trample with jackboots sent in to destroy,
until taming the toes of the last Gypsy boy
who gets caught in the craw of their cold catacomb
with no rescue by running nor staying at home,
and no freedom to breathe, only rough roads to roam.

When void became there was nothing to perceive
It reached out and found nothing
Perception with nothing to perceive
So void began to dream
It's fantasy ran wild
Much like that of a child
In dreams void has seen
All the places we have been
Void began to dream of a thing
The thing could see
All the things that void would be
Before void could stop it
The thing was on top of it
Now void watches
As the thing debauches

Let me forget, my dear... Let my little tears fall.
Sun-kissed days, a radiant smile on your lips
Enamored with your beauty, suffocating through intoxicating breaths.
With my hands, hold these secrets tight to your chest
Chasing down old days of glory, alongside you.
My head burns achingly, from yearning alone
All these fits and the darkest of dreams,
The question of its purpose eludes my very judgment.

Oh, how much I loved you so
Melodies echo in my head,
Laying a cacophony of emotions in my throat,
Keeping the bitterness from spilling out
Revealing my true envious nature
Acquiesce this presence, at your heart's behest
Steadily creeping through the grounds
Tangled up in your web of lies
But, like a daydream, you stayed
Similar to the night sky, you never, ever change
In the mirage of symphonies, you loved me.

Sink down under, my sickly companion
The shambles of my mind don't align,
With those unspeakable intentions of mine
Pleading for my attention, your hunger never abates
Queasy from holding your hand, and running through the sunlight,
Always too warm for something, anything else
I've fallen in love with a deadly blossom.
Beg and scream, yet I crave is solace in my misery
Please go away, flee in the night
But when the morning comes around, I find myself waiting for you, once more
Around you, nothing is as it seems.

Fly up high, let's play a game of pretend
Look at the sights that await you
It's not unusually difficult to be alive
Cut off all the strings that hold you back,
Prune out the veins between your skin
Before long, you've surrounded my thoughts
Carry a heavy burden, on your shoulders it starts to live.
I'm dreaming for riches simply beyond a name,
With sickening human eyes full of deceit and lies
Temptation the devil, debauches friendships of innocent souls
Everything you love, in the end, inevitably dies.

Abandon all your innermost thoughts and feelings,
Forget all those things makes you sad
Because in the end, all that you really need
Is a dishonorable friend like me.
Sinking in the rubble, this oblivious nature of yours
A saccharine future awaits your weary soul
You must be happy and move on
Start sailing the merry seas and beyond
In the place of where you once were,
Remember clear blue skies, the crystal waters left in your wake
Don't look back and think of regrets
One will only drown in the thoughts of what could be.

Send me to hell, a sacrificial lamb to slaughter
Agony crept from the corners
Fabricated happiness, an delusion to keep me from being free
Spitting out the aged vitriol in short-lived sentiments  
You and I, we were not destined to be
Promising you would descend down to save me
Do you enjoy sending the guilty to their dreams?

At the young ripe age of twenty-five,
You must move on, my only reason,
Listen to the forgotten memories
Instead of losing into the recesses of life.  
Fix what's broken with false pretenses,
But if you were to depart, nothing can be mended
What's worth thinking and dying for,
Especially in the battle of love and war?
Follow through your promises, even to the end
Chalice of gold, heal all my wounds
End my tragedy, once and for all.

Abandon all your innermost thoughts and feelings,
Forget all those things makes you sad
Because in the end, all that you really need
Is a dishonorable friend like me.
Sinking in the rubble, this oblivious nature of yours
A saccharine future awaits your weary soul
You must be happy and move on
Start sailing the merry seas and beyond
In the place of where you once were,
Remember clear blue skies, the crystal waters left in your wake
Don't look back and think of regrets
One will only drown in the thoughts of what could be.

Send me to hell, a sacrificial lamb to slaughter
Agony crept from the corners
Fabricated happiness, an delusion to keep me from being free
Spitting out the aged vitriol in short-lived sentiments  
You and I, we were not destined to be
Promising you would descend down to save me
Do you enjoy sending the guilty to their dreams?

At the young ripe age of twenty-five,
You must move on, my only reason,
Listen to the forgotten memories
Instead of losing into the recesses of life.  
Fix what's broken with false pretenses,
But if you were to depart, nothing can be mended
What's worth thinking and dying for,
Especially in the battle of love and war?
Follow through your promises, even to the end
Chalice of gold, heal all my wounds
End my tragedy, once and for all.