The Castle of Lost in Time
The Castle that stood in the farmer's field
Was a grey and battered shrine,
As kids we'd clamber the battlements
And imagine a former time,
When Norman soldiers stood at the heights,
Looked down on the Saxon serfs,
Who paid their tax to the Baron there
When the Normans ruled the earth!
And I'd be Baron Fitzwulf up there,
While Craig would be Robin Hood,
Our histories would be twisted there,
We'd mix and match what we could.
A hundred years was a slip of time
To pray for my own soul's sake,
When I was Thomas A'Becket, and
He was Sir Francis Drake.
The walls were battered and falling down
Had been since the Cromwell siege,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Cliff House
When the sun has set in the wintertime
And I'm all alone in this grey old house,
I bolt the shutters and pull the blinds
And set a spark to the candlewax;
The wind runs howling about the eaves,
The shutters chatter, the wind-cock spins,
The breakers clatter and clash below
As my world returns to me, widdershins.
It's then that I hear my mother's voice
So faint at first in the storm outside,
She sighs and moans, and I hear her plead
The length and breadth of the countryside.
Her voice soughs out from the aspens near,
Quivers in ferns and rocks, as if
No year that followed has spent her need
For still she sobs at the edge of the cliff.
Her voice comes whispering under the door
I plug my ears and I cry out loud:
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Bones!
I well remember Sir Gordon Fitch
As much for his wealth as his plain language,
A spade was a 'bloody shovel' to him,
In truth, he was an arrogant man.
The Seventh Earl in a Stately Home,
But ruined then, half falling down
Though what remained was a grand old pile
It sat in the woods by Barkly Stile.
Three living rooms and a massive hall,
And fifteen rooms if I do recall,
The house had seventeen chimneys there
Soot-caked and brooding, beyond repair.
Three of the fires were boarded in,
The rooms so cold with the house snowed in,
We shivered and sat with our coats still on,
Scarves and gloves in the morning room.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Up In The Attic
I took a room in a boarding house
In a seedy part of town,
I hadn't worked for a month or so
And was feeling rather down,
My girl had left with another guy
Who promised her thrills and rings,
While I could offer her take-away
Among other boring things.
I really felt I was down and out,
The insurance wasn't through,
I'd caught my arm in a roller, and
You know what that can do.
With plaster up to my elbow, I
Could get no sort of work,
So had to exist on the government,
And I felt like a prime jerk.
I'd always been independent
So my pride had taken a hit,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Stoker
His eyes could pierce my very soul
His scowl could match my frown,
His hatred seemed to lurk beneath
The coal dust on his brow,
The stoker of the 'Antic Queen'
Was sallow, hollow-cheeked,
A voice that echoed, like the clang
Of echoes, from the deep.
He worked the vessel's engine room
Built up a head of steam,
He sprayed each layer of coal across
Like someone in a dream,
It glowed white-hot, he'd slam the door
And cast his shovel clear,
'A pox upon you, Derek Sloane, '
He'd call, when I was near.
I'd make believe I didn't hear,
Go through the bulkhead door
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Mismatch
I'd known them as young love's delight
Back thirty years ago,
When Sam and Esmerelda wed
They'd put on a travelling show,
With clowns and jugglers, acrobats
And a fortune teller's tent,
Perhaps they should have considered the date,
Not staged the show in Lent.
She came from money, but he was poor,
They didn't seem to care,
‘What's mine is yours, ' she'd always say
As she braided up her hair.
They settled down in a country house
Held parties, meets and wakes,
And lived most ostentatiously,
Just one of their many mistakes!
But how they loved! They'd always sigh
To many who came to stay,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Rednecks
It was down in Jackson County
Back in 1959,
I was sitting in a parking lot
And necking Peggy Jean,
We'd been breathing hot and heavy,
'Til we misted up the windshield,
Then footsteps started walking round
My Daddy's Oldsmobile.
Peggy buttoned up her top, while I
Sat bolt upright, and listened,
Then the door, it sprang wide open
And a hand came reaching in,
Then it grabbed me by the collar,
Dragged me out, although I hollered,
And this guy began to kick me
Like he wants to do me in!
It was dark, but there was moonlight, and
I saw he wore a jersey with
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Inn of Jasper Shrine
The coast was rugged and storm-swept as
I battled it in the rain,
The cliffs reared up, then fell away
To a flat, deserted plain,
The sea beat up in a thunder on
The rocks that lined the shore,
When I saw the wreck of a wayside inn
And its open, swinging door.
It hadn't appeared on the map, I knew
As I'd studied the bleak terrain,
The thing that I'd come here looking for
Was a wreck from the Spanish Main,
It lay in fifteen fathoms there
With a load of gold moidores,
Chased inshore by a privateer
And sunk, so my uncle swore.
He'd come on some ancient manuscripts
And the log of the Brig ‘Despair',
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Earwigs!
Her Gramps had dealt in consols,
Whatever 'consols' were,
Her father was a partner in
A place - 'Chemin de Fer',
Her mother owned cosmetics and
Was worth - Well, who could tell?
So for her seventh birthday
She'd received an Oil Well.
Her uncle had invented some
New way of killing rats,
And other sundry vermin that
Infested women's hats,
He'd got himself a knighthood and
A Villa at St. Clare,
But then he'd died of scurvy
And he'd left it all to her.
She'd never tasted water,
She had only sipped on wine,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Betrayed!
Giselle and I had been toughing it out,
With arguments every day,
She loved to spend, and I was the bank
To the point that I said, ‘No way! '
Then she pouted, much as she'd always done
And she dragged me into her bed,
That was the weapon she always used
When trying to turn my head.
She spent it faster than I could earn
Though I'd had a win on the gee's,
A seeming broken-down six year old
A gelding with rickety knees,
I knew the horse was a stayer, though
In a field of sprinting mares,
And after the twenty-five hundred mark
Went rocketing past them there.
I'd dropped a grand, two hundred to one,
The bookies had thought me mad,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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