Blind Man's Buff
I remember as a child we used to
Play out in the square,
In the sleepy little village
Someone christened Uno Ware,
There was never any traffic so
Until we'd had enough,
With the cruelty of children
We'd keep playing Blind Man's Buff.
It was cruel, I admit it and
Regret the very day,
The first time we invited young
Immanuel to play,
He was Russian, and had come to live
From halfway round the earth,
He was always labelled ‘It' because
He'd been stone blind from birth.
His father, Andropovski was
An evil looking man,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Thy Will Be Done!
I always thought that Jean La Mare was strange,
Gave me the creeps,
With lank, uncared for russet hair
And eyes with depths and deeps,
She hung her head when walking by
Wore dresses to her shins,
She had no friends at school, at lunch
Sat by the rubbish bins.
Her father was the picture of a
Martinet of old,
Bolt upright, at attention he
Would rant at her, and scold.
An Army Colonel, long retired
His wife dead in the ground,
His thoughts for bringing daughters up
Were ancient, and profound.
She dared not answer back, nor baulk
At anything he said,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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After the Comet
Ad-ma was a techno, and he worked for Magno Rep.,
Logging vagaries of asteroids, their orbits, speed and depth,
On the eastern shore of Atalan, his villa on the shore
He would plot triangulations, mapping comets by the score,
But his brow was creased with worry,
And his eyes were ringed with black,
For he hadn't slept these many nights
Since Agnar Kor's attack,
It had suddenly appeared from outer
Space that gave it birth,
And the dark and dread conclusion was
It would collide with earth.
It was known as an erratic, potent wanderer through space,
But its orbit wasn't constant, it had been quite hard to trace,
For a week or more it could be seen, quite naked to the eye,
With its tail like whirling serpents lighting up the evening sky,
While at Ba-ha-ma the experts
Had been working on the core,
Of the huge magnetic pulser that
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Three Ships...
Sebastian Cabot returned from Spain,
To delight in England's shores,
He needed a route to old Cathay
To trade his wool for furs,
The Straits were held by the Spanish Dons
The Cape by the Portuguese,
Between them, strangling English trade,
He championed English needs.
So he formed the Merchant Adventurers,
To seek out a north-east route,
Each man hand-picked for his diligence
And conformity, to suit;
They had to be 'knit in unitie,
Obedience in everie degree',
So that no dissent would afflict them when
At mercy of tides and sea.
He chose three sturdy sailing ships
To seek the fabled course,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Close to the Edge
My father was a sailor
He was always off the shore,
And I’d watch his sailboat ‘Ransom’
As it gaff-rigged past our door,
And he told me – ‘When you’re old enough
I’ll show you where they dwell,
The mermaids, with their necklaces,
Made out of cockleshells!
Then out on the verandah
He would stare straight out to sea,
Where the sun meets the horizon
Then he’d sit me on his knee,
And he’d tell me tales of Morgan,
Tales of Captain Kidd and Co.,
When they roamed the Caribbean
In the days of long ago.
He would sail out in the summer,
He would sail out in the fall,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Grave that I Dug for You!
It was three o'clock in the morning
On the final day of spring,
I was stuck in a hole in the graveyard
Of Saint Matthews, Nether Ling,
I like to dig them at nightfall when
The folk are home, in bed,
Not wandering round the churchyard
Making a racket, waking the dead!
It's creepy enough as it is, whenever
The Moon sails over the church,
And shines its beams on the headstones
Of Jack Dervish, or Bill Burch,
Of mad old Widow Maloney, who,
The stories do abound,
Was carried kicking and screaming
In her coffin, and put in the ground.
My job is a labour of love, I've lived
In this village, all my life,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Pilot Who Never Came Back
The mist was rolling in clouds, opaque
As I hurried along the line,
Looking for A3-22
The Mirage of Lieutenant Devine,
There wasn't much hope of flying time
If the weather didn't improve,
But I still had an Instrument Pre-Flight
‘Just in case, ' said the Duty Crew.
‘You never know with Devine, ' they said,
‘He'd fly in a howling gale,
At the first swift burst of sunlight, he'll
Be sitting right here on your tail,
Trying to give you the hurry-ups
As you strap him into the seat,
A bit of a caution is Jack Devine…'
‘A pain in the arse, ' said Skeet.
Skeet was the Armament Fitter that
I found under 22,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Metzengerstein
I think that I was only nine
When first I met Metzengerstein,
Too young to know his foul intent,
Too young, too pure, too innocent.
He lived in some old ruined church
With gothic columns, vaulted arch,
That sheltered him from thundered skies,
And hid, in gloom, his enterprise.
For from that church were mutterings
On windy nights, such utterings
As screams, while weird unholy moans
Disturbed the graveyard's scattered bones.
He wore a cape that wrapped him in
A hat, broad-brimmed, and black as sin,
His gaiters to the knee were brown
The boots he wore, they made no sound.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Ghost Train
We were off to visit the Carnival,
Me, George and Julie Anne,
George was our mother's boyfriend,
(Though in fact, he was a man!)
I was seven and Julie six
And our Mum waved us goodbye,
She said she had some shopping to do
Told Julie not to cry!
George looked up to the heavens with
His fake, long-suffering grin,
For Julie cried a helluva lot,
She couldn't keep it in,
He took us down on the bus that night
There wasn't room to park,
The evening stars were coming out
It was getting kinda dark.
We saw the lights of the Carnival
And Julie's face lit up,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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You've Got Magic!
'America - You've Got Magic! '
Ran the sign on the Glitzy Floor,
For this was the latest Reality Show
To consume consumers with awe;
Some Boffin, deep in a Think-Tank
Had been racking his brain for weeks,
And this was the format he gave them;
Home Magicians! - with tricks and treats!
The Show was into the knockout stage,
The Advertisers were rapt,
None of your Song and Dancing here,
Nobody shedding Fat,
No-one stuck in a boring House
With brains the size of a pea,
But plenty of age-old magic tricks
For the rest of the world to see.
The Judges sat in their glory
Each equipped with a magic wand,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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