Hello Jane! Poem by David Lewis Paget

‘It’s ten to twelve and a feral cat
Is up by the chimney pots,
Its feral yowls are like banshees howls
And tying my nerves in knots,
The rats are scurrying over the roof
To try to avoid the cat,
While in the trees there’s an evil breeze
And the squeals of a vampire bat.’

‘There’s more than ferals and bats out there
There’s more than whispering trees,
The ghosts I left in the past out there
Come floating in with the breeze,
The doctors in the asylum said
There’s something wrong with my brain,
But I can see what they never see,
So it’s not me that’s insane.’

‘I know they come at the midnight hour
So I hang on tight to my gun,
I scour the skies for their evil eyes
With a bullet for every one,
Their bodies fall with a wheeze, a sigh
But melt away in the dew,
You’d never know in the daylight that
They’d been here, looking for you.’

‘That’s why you’re chained to the iron bed
It’s the safest place to be,
Since ever that woman turned my head
And they came here, looking for me,
It’s lucky I found your secret out
And kept you here in the shack,
He’s not going to find you staying here,
You can thank, at least, for that! ’

‘It isn’t the same, that woman came
Cooked up that hell-fire brew,
Then made me play that terrible game,
The one that I played with you,
You’ve taken fright and you look so white
But you needn’t be afraid,
I’ll come to you in the morning light
Once all the ghosts are laid! ’

The night was filled with the scurrying sounds
Of the creatures in the glade,
Shadows crept from behind the trees
When the Moon came out, and played,
He fired the rifle a dozen times
When he thought he saw the eye,
Of monsters up in the tops of trees
And shadows, up in the sky.

He fired until there was only one,
One bullet left for him,
Then turned and sighed at the sunrise, said:
‘Look out, I’m coming in! ’
And lying there on the iron bed
Was a woman, locked in chain,
But rats had fed on her face and head
When he said: ‘Oh, Hello Jane! ’

David Lewis Paget