Galaxy gardener sailing a ship,
through endless horizons it makes a trip.
She/he looks into the inky canvas blend,
then scatters some seeds in the spacial rend.
What does await this brave lovely soul,
when we see the universe's gears roll.

Ionizing radiation penetrates through,
while watering can always holds true.
Space turf gingerly shovelled over seeds,
her/his forehead adorned with water beads.
Nitrogenous nutrients now nuzzled into,
the serene slumbering seedlings to be.

Galaxy gardener greets growing greens,
lively lushscious leaves forward leans.
Wormhole worn star systems she/he fixes up,
as does she/he proudly prune her/his wondrous crop.
Many a plant has grown under her/his care,
yet she/he never feasts on the fruits they bear.

Archie was smart; at least he reckoned he was, because he had what he considered to be the good things in life: dosh in his wallet, a Cat in the garage, and a detach. in the green belt; all of which he had worked hard to acquire. Worked, is not exactly the word for it. Archie did deals. He reckoned he could always turn a fiver into a tenner an’ a tenner into a pony; a pony into a ton and a ton to a grand. He was one of the cash economy’s natural alchemists.  The folding stuff was the measure of a person, he reckoned. Archie never thought about anything; he reckoned everything, and nothing on God’s good earth was beyond reckoning, he reckoned. An ever-ready reckoner; that was Archie, and he loved himself for it. Only John Wayne did more reckoning than Archie, his old dad, bless him, used to say, thought Archie. In Archie’s world a grand was currency; less than that was just spare change. He reckoned he gave superior meaning to the expression ‘it’s a grand life’. The only blemish on Archie’s horizon as far as he could see was the lack of a class bird, or ‘ream sort’, as he preferred to say; hence this evening’s extravaganza at a posh French restaurant in the company of a beautiful lady. Archie only had two serious weaknesses in his existence: a fondness for the last word in a dispute about anything you care to mention, and his infatuation with his dining companion, the beautiful Carmela.


Carmela shared a common background with Archie. They grew up on the same council estate in the inner city. They were aware of each other’s existence as kids and teenagers, but they didn’t really know each other. Carmela was a quiet child and very singular; even in company she could be by herself. None but she was wise to her sense of solitude. She had three passions in life: knitting, sewing and weaving; the blessed trinity of her existence. Carmela interpreted the world by these three gifts. Here she was, she thought, weaving her way through an evening, in the company of three strangers. One she knew, herself, another she didn’t know at all, despite proximity and semi-shared origins. Then there was the complete stranger to the trinity: the waiter in his new and very polished shiny black shoes, “You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes”, Carmela’s mum used to say, she was thinking about that as the waiter appeared to almost pirouette into vision.


The waiter was a patient soul, it goes with the territory. The waiting game wasn’t something you should rush in to, he often told himself, in one of his more existentialist moments. He appreciated the irony of the comment in a Sartresque kind of fashion. He was from a steel town in the Rhonda Valley of South Wales. Iron was in his veins if not his appearance. A creature of paradoxes, that’s what he told himself he was. He liked that assessment of himself. It complimented his passion for all things French: French food, French wine, French philosophy, literature and art. He was learning the language at night school. Alas, his accent was as lyrically refined as the landscape that bred him He shovelled the words onto a conveyor belt of sound and meaning as best he could in the general direction of the person he was talking to, more in hope than in faith that they understood what was being said .The other passion in his life was tap dancing, and as luck would have it he could wear the same outfit for work and leisure, hence the very shiny shoes which allowed him to dance around the tables of the restaurant, practising his language skills on the clientele, His life work and leisure dovetailed with his ambition and he was pleased to wake up in the morning and set about the mortal trespass with a skip in his step. The waiter imagined himself to be a cosmopolitan and enlightened soul, in a very Fred Astaire kind of way, and life was a flight of stairs which he could ascend and descend in a Morse code type of style, just like Mr Bojangles.


The fare was fine. the wine was rare, but the conversation was spare until the cheese board arrived.” Good grub”, said Archie to the waiter. “We don’t do grub, sir, we only serve the finest Gallic cuisine in this establishment,” replied the waiter, in his usual mangled French, whilst smiling that smile that only waiters can manage when registering disapproval. Archie looked blank. It was Carmela who spoke: “C’était magnifique! Mes compliments au chef.” “Streuth! You speak better French than Marcel Proust here” said Archie.” I studied Fashion and Design in Paris for five years “replied Carmela.” “An’ I joined the Common Market many moons ago. It’s good for business” said Archie. The waiter was impressed: “Food, fashion, wine, Proust and Paris. This must be Nirvana” he said. “Great band, but a very dubious heaven.” replied Carmela, knitting together the threads whilst changing the pattern of the conversation in a very subtle fashion that was more to her liking.” “It’s only rock ’n’ roll” said Archie, an’ if you’ve ever heard French rock ’n’ roll it’s enough to make you believe in Foucault” “Foucault, my hero!” said the waiter, “a philosophical genius”. “According to Foucault, a knitting pattern is the hieroglyphic of a consumerist and decadent capitalist society.” intoned Carmela.” “And ‘A recipe is a critique of a cake’, said the great Structuralist philosopher,” interjected Archie, so if you serve the gateaux we may effect the collapse of western civilisation as we all know and love it”. “Allors, Let them eat cake” said the waiter, and everybody smiled at the irony of the comment.

The waiter bojangled his way into the night, tapping and clicking the pavement as he went.  Carmela and Archie got into a black cab. “That was a night to remember,” said Carmela, “very Proustian”. “A la recherche du temps perdu”, replied Archie, pleased as punch to have the last word. Carmela just smiled as she looked at Archie’s shoes.

Mr. Rory Richards
Lived his life,
Taking garbage
Out at night.
He shovelled drives
He swept walks,
He listened intently
While others talked.
Others talked.

When Rory wasn't
Weeding the garden,
He was outside
Hanging laundry.
Moms were jealous,
Dads were shamed,
But whispering neighbours
Never complained.
Rory's good
At the husband game.
He presented well.
The neighbours continued
To tsk and tsk.

On his way home
From work,
He picked up the kids
From daycare,
He'd find time
To volunteer there.
He'd have treats
At home for them,
And their friends.

He volunteered with
Cubs and Scouts,
Always finding
Extra time
For jamborees
And overnights.

One day the cops
Came on the scene,
Rory wasn't
What he seemed:
His computer
Showed a different man,
A lurking, luring
Child **** fan.
And the neighbours'
Tsks cresendoed.

At his trial
He sat abandoned,
But neighbours there
Gave witness to
A man they thought
They surely knew.
A family man
In his pew.
All his life
He lived beside them,
A man they let
Their kids rely on.

There wasn’t a lot of love to lose
Between Joe Brown and Brent,
Their farms lay either side of a creek
That now lay dry, and spent,
They used to talk in the early days
When they had no axe to grind,
But Brent came back with a bride one day
Who had been on Joe Brown’s mind.

But Joe was slow in the love-me stakes
While Brent was a bit more flash,
He’d cut on in at the Farmer’s Ball
To the girl with the bright blue sash,
While Joe walked off to sit on his own
And wait for a second chance,
But Brent hung on and dazzled the girl
Right through to the final dance.

The courtship took a matter of weeks
Then they came new-wed to the farm,
And Joe was down inspecting the creek
As Brent showed Jill round the barn,
There wasn’t a fence between the two
They used the creek as a line,
‘The land to the west is yours,’ said Joe,
‘The land to the east is mine.’

The balance wasn’t so equal now
With a new bride over the way,
Joe would have married the girl himself
But hadn’t been game to say.
He soon withdrew to his farmhouse, sat
And wallowed in his despair,
He’d been so set on marrying Jill
There was nobody else out there.

The Autumn rains came on with a flood
And the creek had begun to flow,
Brent stayed at home with his new found love
Not even a thought of Joe,
While Joe lay plotting to get him back
He’d teach him to be so flash,
And walked on up to the top of the creek
With a shovel and old pick-axe.

He felled a tree, and shovelled some stone
To block off the old creek line,
Watched the water form in a lake
Then rested, taking his time.
He chopped a hole in the old creek bank
The water washed it away,
And formed a new creek bed to the west,
And wondered what Brent would say.

When Jill got up at two in the morn
The tide was flooding on through,
In through the back door of their house
And cutting the house in two,
Brent went roaring up to the hill
Astride of his old half-track,
‘Have you gone crazy, Joe,’ he cried,
‘You’d better be putting it back!’

‘Too late, too late,’ said his surly mate
‘The creek is forming a bed,
And anything to the east of it
Is mine, the agreement said!
So move your things to the west of the place
For the east of the house is mine,
The creek that’s flowing right through the house
Will be the dividing line.’

Brent went muttering back to the house
And divided the house in two,
He shored up all the rooms to the west
As the water came tumbling through,
While Joe sealed off the east of the hall
Made sure that his rooms were dry,
While Jill looked over the barricade
At Joe, and started to cry.

‘Why have you done this thing to us,
What did we even do?’
‘He cut me off at the Farmers Ball
In the course of a dance with you.
You never gave me another chance,
I was waiting to propose.’
‘But I would never have married you,
Brent was the man I chose!’

Brent went over and burnt the house
On the other side of the creek,
There wasn’t water to fight the flames
So it smouldered there for a week,
The farms are empty and vacant now
Two creek beds, dry as a bone,
With Brent and Jill now living in Nhill
And Joe in the scrub, alone!

David Lewis Paget

I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget

My knight in shining armour upon his gallant steed,
Or rather, truth be told, my gallant knight in his shining steed,
Rescued me in my hour of need
When I decided to adventure off piste
To view an ancient church,
For a couple of minutes, or so I thought,
With not a care for any danger or dragons.
But my wheels sunk deep into the cemented mud,
So I had to ring and surreptitiously confess my deed.
He came racing back
To the midsts of nowhere,
Thank goodness for what three words.
We pushed, we pulled, we added straw and sheets of wood,
But the vehicle was stuck fast.
With the light dimming,
We shovelled the earth,
The van decided to play ball,
And with a flurry of mud
Came free at last,
Thanks to my honourable knight
For rescuing me in my misdemeanour.

Oh me and my easily distracted brain!

The news spread over the countryside
As a clatter from iron rails,
The ominous sound of clacketty-clack
From their intersecting trails,
The plodding Goods of the 0-4-0
To the proud Express from Cheam,
It muttered as it was going past,
‘They’re going to get rid of Steam!’

The sudden shock brought an answering hoot
From the stack of the proud Express,
That whispered by on its 4-6-2
But shuddered to draw its breath.
‘And what will they pull their Pullmans with?’
As it passed through an April shower,
A 4-6-0 on another track:
‘They’re moving to diesel power!’

The steam from the Earl of Erin laid
A trail through the valley floor,
Its coals glowed red from the firebox grid
As the fireman shovelled more,
A Day Excursion that quietly sat
To wait for the train to pass,
Had whispered, ‘Sorry to see you go,
You’re King of the Master Class.’

The smoke that billowed from out the stack
Had turned from white to black,
The footplate shuddered, the furnace roared
As it raced along the track,
‘They say they’re moving to diesel power
And they’re getting rid of steam,’
The Earl of Erin had hurtled by
As a Tank Engine had screamed!

The driver, checking the frantic pace
Was trying to slow it down,
But nothing worked, not even the brakes,
‘We’re headed for Hampton Town!
We shouldn’t be doing sixty-five
We’re twenty over the top,
He slammed the door of the firebox shut
And the fireman’s shovel dropped.

The tender’s couplings opened up
And the Pullmans fell away,
The Earl of Erin had surged ahead
With a new found power that day,
It passed a struggling 0-4-0
As it headed toward the sea,
Gave one long blast on its whistle then
To say, ‘I’m finally free!’

The fireman jumped at the water tower,
The glass was going down,
The driver jumped when it hurtled through
The Halt at Hampton Town,
The Earl of Erin went racing on
When the sea came into view,
But locked the brakes at the water’s edge
Just as the boiler blew.

The Earl of Erin’s a rusted wreck
That still sits there on the line,
And children crawl on its footplate there
And dream of another time,
A time of dragons, a time of trains
A time they can only dream,
The age of romance, gone at last,
It died with the age of steam!

David Lewis Paget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lewis Paget

The smell of old spice
and expensive merlot
follows you
everywhere you’ve been
every place you go.

Can’t connect to the time or place
when you became a mystery to me.
You were always busy
a plane and a train away.

I knit together things to ask you
begging you to be familiar again.
The paper full of questions
crumpled in my hand
on your return.
Now is never a good time...

When alone,
I crawled through your life.
All stuffed in boxes,
Polaroid’s and negatives.
My eyes like hummingbirds
anxious and darting.
Found photos of you
of your past, unknown to me.

Someone I did not recognise living
inside those snapshots.
Long sandy blonde hair, wild eyes
riding motorcycles
boiling with life.

So serious now
a difficult man, who has witnessed hard things.
Who sips rare scotch, with two ice cubes
and talks of politics
and good hosts.

Mystery man,
Who shares my my hazel green eyes
And the color of my hair
Yours now short and grey.

With tears of dew in my eyelashes
I wait for you at our home,
Alone.
To speak of your travels
and trivial matters.
My unanswered questions
painfully shovelled from my mind.

The Cormorant was the darkest ship,
As dark as a ship could be,
Not only the paint was pitted black
From the funnels to the sea,
But deep inside in its rusted gloom
In the echoes from its shell,
It was like a monster roamed abroad
Released from the depths of hell.

It roared and echoed by day and night
As the boilers turned the *****,
Lurching across every wave that might
Try to break its hull in two,
It was laden down with a thousand tons
Of a cargo that made it groan,
While breakers slapped its quivering sides
As it made its way back home.

The Captain stood on the shuddering bridge,
A man with a heart of steel,
He tried to control this raging beast
As he lashed himself to the wheel,
He gave no quarter to any man
Who would shirk, avoid his task,
But called the crew to witness his due
As the man was soundly lashed.

Down in the depths of the engine room
The firemen shovelled coal,
Each shovel sprayed like a black dismay
In the light of that glowing hole,
And steam built up on the pressure gauge
Of each boiler, one and two,
As men would fret, while running in sweat,
To do what they had to do.

The seas built up and the rain came down
As the Cormorant rolled and swayed,
Then lightning flashed and it ran to ground
Like an imp in a masquerade,
It left three dead on the afterdeck,
They hurried to help them there,
But the captain roared, ‘Throw them overboard,
We’ve more than enough to spare.’

A mutter grew up among the crew
As dark as the bosun’s hat,
I never knew what the crew would do
So I wasn’t in on that.
But the Captain disappeared from the bridge
And the wheel was swinging free,
With the Cormorant broadside to the waves
At mercy of wind and sea.

They said it must be a miracle
When we finally entered port,
The bilge half full of water, they said,
And the Captain fell overboard.
But the ship was done, had made its last run
As the fires went out in the hull,
Then raking through the mountain of ash
I found the late Captain’s skull.

David Lewis Paget

I walked into her breakdown and all broken up she said,
"You've got to help me stamp out all the demons in my head"
I couldn't help myself and so I knew my use to her, was similar to a drowning man grasping at thin air.
She screamed and then went silent as I opened up my eyes.
I waded through her temperament and shovelled up her sighs.
I watched as she exploded in to frothy foaming seas and then I knew that I could do just exactly as I pleased.
The night fell out from its sunken lie
The seas ran red with ruby wine and then they all ran dry
I swear I saw Emmanuel break dancing in the sky..
But all I heard was the howling wind and her pleading plaintive cry.

The day tripped up as we all tripped on
The morning came and then was gone
We never knew when or just how long
We'd have to wait for the evensong.

So when we packed the cases and we sped out in the rain
The falling sun crashed down to earth causing us some pain
We had to lay in the sandy bay,prisoners on the Spanish main
But that's the way we did it and we'd do it all again.

The more we are told what to do

The more inclined we are to gather throughts new

To rise up and intentionally ignore

The mindless **** shovelled through the door.

Through the drawn kitchen blind lurks a hand
Resting upon the island mantelpiece
Where a deserted ham resides.
The hand extends from the crippled man’s gaze
And he simply seizes the ham, traversing the kitchen maze.
He takes the ham to the second stair.
Here is where he retires - the second stair
Is where the deserted ham and crippled man shall expire.
Where man becomes ham but retains his crippling attire, and
Ham becomes man staying lost and yet still desired.

Heaven would be naive to willingly believe that this,
This strange analogy, is indeed about a ham and a mere man.
Rather, a man is nothing but a mere ham.
His life begins as someone else, perhaps a pink perfumed piglet.
Born into mud and stuffed to the brim with dirt laced love.
A ham, like man, comes from a humble and simple dawn but is
Swiftly thrown into a larger lie or a shortcrust pie.
A lie of paradise and quiet, a pie of mustard and thyme.
We, like the ham, are ripped from our genesis
And forced to be something sublime.
Something needed,
And something that never gets the time to bleed.

Man is to be consumed just like the solemn ham.
We are sold as ideas and ideals. And never separated
From those very same stale ideals and ideas.
We are what we conceive and we conceive what others
Wish us to be; never do we truly conceive our own reality.
And often we will wait aimlessly, not at the kitchen side,
But by the side of our lovers and others.
The resting ham sits in its juices, taking in the rosemary
And amber, sticky honey.
Man also sits in an array of flavour; tastes of dark thoughts,
Fleeting romance and persistent boredom.
We soak up our own shortcomings and we leak out all and any
Chances to not be eaten.

Man is devoured not by others but by reason.
The very tool we use to debate, learn and
Understand the ever changing seasons.
But what of the ham? The deserted tasty ham.
Well, it like man, is either shovelled into a waiting gut or
Left out to rot, and befriend dust.
Never to decide when they cease, but both
Are destined for the grave nonetheless.
What has left the man crippled and the ham deserted?
The realisation that man and ham are the same.
Man leaves the ham to rot
On the kitchen counter top, sending it to be removed
From the world. Never to be consumed. Never to be consumed.
Man’s neglect of the ham is a neglect of connection,
Man has crippled himself in hopes to remove association.

And so, the crippled man
Extends his hand in hopes
To regain the deserted ham.

It was the way his last breath escaped both corners of his half-opened mouth 
as if to suggest a lapse in memory or an opinion that demanded to be expressed.
It was the way the light leaked in through the slivered blinds of the half open window, causing my brother to squint in his sleep, dreams of staring at the sun without ever going blind before awake, forgetting to blink.
It was the way my mother gave me a one armed hug, mumbling a vague “I love you too” while staring off into the distance, handing me a half smile before driving off into the sunset of my vulnerability.
It was the way the music entered the home of my ventricles without ringing the doorbell, hitting the head of my heart until it was all black and blue, succumbing to the beat of its abuser.
It was the way I opened the flesh, the tiny red petals colouring the bath water red, planting little seeds as if to say: “Here. I am here. I exist.”
It was the way my skin grew over itself weeks after every wound, a thin layer of white snow covering it like an unwanted winter, begging to be shovelled, poked, prodded, or stepped on again.
It was like death on his doorstep, a couple of violins failing to comfort each other beneath a tired symphony.
It was the best way a band aid is to be removed. A little at first, then all at once. One clean swift sting.
It was a lot like 
leaving.

They’d shovelled her husband into the ground
Before she got to the grave,
She wasn’t able to keep good time
And her husband used to rave:
‘I spend my life, waiting for you,
You’ll be late for your funeral,’
That wasn’t due, but it may come true,
She was late for his, do tell!

He wasn’t a very pleasant man
He was known for his violent moods,
She’d married the guy, then wondered why,
He was often downright rude.
She knew what he was capable of
For he’d often flipped his lid,
And left a trail of destruction then
For that was the thing he did.

If only she had got to the grave
In time for a swift goodbye,
And with a spray, sent him away,
She may have just heard him sigh.
But he must have known she was still at home
When the hearse, with him inside,
Arrived at the local cemetery
On time, but without his bride.

She lay awake in the bed that night
And thought she could hear him breathe,
Just across from her pillowcase
And her breast began to heave.
The wind sough-soughed at the windowsill
And she heard a step on the stair,
She wished for once she had been on time
To know she had left him there.

But she hadn’t seen the coffin drop
And the hole was almost full,
She’d asked that they uncover it
But she didn’t have the pull.
She only hoped he was six feet down
Unable to get back out,
When there was a rattle, out on the porch
And she heard a dead man shout.

‘Late, you’re late, you’re always late,’
It moaned, in an eerie tone,
‘You couldn’t get to the grave on time
So you left me all alone.
You’d not come even to say goodbye
And for that, you’ll pay the price,
For I’ll reach out of the grave tonight
And I promise, it won’t be nice!’

The shutters began to rattle and bang
And the door flew out, ajar,
The wind howled in like a taste of sin
‘I know just where you are!’
She shrieked, and pulled the covers up
And placed them over her head,
‘You just can’t stay, please go away,
You can’t be here, you’re dead!’

The covers were torn from her huddled form
And from what the coroner said,
‘Her face was white, she died of fright,’
Curled up in her lonely bed.
There was just one thing in the autopsy
That was missed, and he made a note,
The thing was botched, for her husbands watch
He found, was lodged in her throat.

David Lewis Paget

I am the reckless voice of a thousand nights spent driving down
highways too close for comfort when hometown familiarity
was everything I was trying to escape
                                             only to end up face to face w/ cold
                                             concrete Bank Street(s) where reality was shovelled
                                             in my lungs, where fatality was imprinted on my veins
                                             & where circumstance became a real reason for
those overpasses where I constantly searched for a friend..

you see, the strangers I’ve met have melted into my memory
& given me such capillary strength that the whole world seems like
it’s right in my own backyard too often, & it’s never too late to
                                                extend an energy to save another’s skin..

warmth now pours from their eyes & I realize that it only takes a second
to change a life, a striving moment can be stretched out to last a lifeTIME!

so we survive in these streets of small towns or big cities
& we strive not to repeat what’s been taught to us by silver & living room screens:

I am the reckless voice of a thousand days spent walking on & along sidewalks
                                                                                            on dirt roads
                                                                                            on early morning wet grass
                                                                                            on those highways heading home

In the deepening **** there's always some acerbic wit to hand you a *****,hand made by the powers that be just for you ,to dig yourself out or deeper into the pooh.
Life as we know it,deep in the dark pit, stinks,
I ink out these words amongst the flotsam of turds and wonder what's going on,
where has the scent of the roses all gone?
No doubt stolen away by those who can pay for the luxury of stuffing their noses with perfumery,
I see a time when all this can be yours,but for now it is mine,
so ready yourselves, shovels in hand and we'll all shovel away in our, 'green and pleasant land'
and one day when we've shovelled the **** all away
we can start to live.

Horse manure shovelled around a delicate rose
Now what is that all about and why?
I think possibly the plant holds its breath
and starts to moan and then cry.
That is a nice pleasant smell!
Do you think the rose thinks that?
We all know its the goodness it'll absorb
and not just like a smelly doormat.
But later when the blooms are large
Who is the one getting the credit then?
Back the horse up with a smile on its face
Lift up the tail and shout "when".
Out plops the steaming stuff on target
just right where the plant grows.
The gardener with hope in his heart
Strength in his arms and a peg on his nose!

Street plows
Push snow waves
To douse
My shovelled drive.

She kept the jar on the mantelpiece,
Our Grandma, Eleanor Flood,
A plain ceramic with just one flaw
A cross that was scrawled in blood.
We didn’t know what she kept in there,
We’d ask, but she’d never tell,
She merely said if we opened it
Our souls would go straight to hell.

It sat forever above the hearth
And stared at us as we ate,
My sister said it was filled with earth
Scraped up from somebody’s grate.
I thought it might hold a pile of coins
Of Spanish Dollars and gold,
I’d read so much about gold doubloons
In pirate stories of old.

But Grandma Eleanor pursed her lips
Each time that we asked her why,
We couldn’t look and we couldn’t touch,
She’d sit, and stare at the sky.
‘You vex me, child,’ she would often say,
‘You’d tempt the devil to tire,
Your parents left me to care for you,
The day they died in the fire.’

She used that story to shut us up,
She knew to pile on the guilt,
She made us pay for each bite and sup
By shaming us to the hilt.
She made it seem like a deadly chore
To have to cater for us,
‘My life,’ she said, ‘should have been much more,
Not that I like to fuss.’

We’d often ask about Grandpa Joe,
Ask what had happened to him?
Her eyes would turn to a fiery glow,
‘He died in a state of sin.’
She wouldn’t tell us what he had done,
What got her into a state,
We looked for signs that she’d loved him once,
But all that we saw was hate.

The house was heated from down below
A furnace under the floor,
I’d have to feed it with coal and coke
I’d bring from the coal house store.
She’d make me empty the pale grey ash
And scatter it on the stones,
Out in the garden, by the trash,
And next to a heap of bones.

She said that Grandpa had kept a dog,
And fed it on butchers bones,
Then threw them out by the fallen log
And next to the pathway stones.
My sister said they were burned and black
And like they’d been in a fire,
We wouldn’t have dared to answer back
Or call our Grandma a liar.

One day, while dusting the mantelpiece
The jar had crashed, and it burst,
The sound of shattering porcelain
Drowned out our Grandmother’s curse.
For spilling out of the broken jar
Was a pile of ash in the light,
And sitting there was a skull as well,
Along with the ash, bleached white.

Then Grandma let out a weird wail
And fell, to kneel on the floor,
She stared, and the skull was staring back
To tear at her cold heart’s core.
‘Why have you come to haunt and stare,’
She cried, then toppled and fell,
Down on her face as her heart gave out,
Sending her soul to hell.

Two jars now sit on the mantelpiece
Of Joe and Eleanor Flood,
A matching pair, and each with a cross
I carefully smeared with blood.
I shovelled her through the furnace door
And later, raked out the ash,
While now there’s a growing pile of bones
In the garden, next to the trash.

David Lewis Paget

Ebenezer's got his knees under the table
watching movies on your cable TV,
Scrooge gets it all for free or didn't you know?

And we came down from the trees for this?

Fight for what we get and when we get
we get little or nothing and nothing's about the measure of it,
we're being treated like **** to be shovelled away
while the fat cats play us for fools.

Nothing schools you more than what you want and can't ignore,
I'm thinking the tide is about to be turned
time that we burned down the old order
and
bring in a much fairer system.

I see management wannabe's trying so hard to be pleasing, but they can't have it both ways
pick your sides and make sure that you're sure,
no cure for losers or baldness.

We wish you a merry Christmas get ******, make sure you miss us, we wish you a merry Christmas and see you next year.