The Living Dead

I pass my time with the living dead

As I sit in my home, alone,

As spectres range through my fevered head,

I don’t have a telephone,

I tend to avoid the world out there

And the folk who pass in the street,

So only go out in the night to roam

And hope that we’ll never meet.

 

The world, to me, is an empty place

By the light of the gas-lamp glow,

I only roam historical streets

Of a hundred years or so,

My people walked in the streets and lanes

Where I drink my fill of the past,

The lives they lived, though over and done

Are the only ones that last.

 

I bury my head in ancient books

That tell of their living deeds,

The interactions and social factions

That answered most of their needs,

They come alive on the page to me

As I share their highs and lows,

Like Oscar Wilde with his sense of style

And the Edgar Allan Poes.

 

So many lives that were lived, then lost

That wouldn’t have left a trace,

If someone hadn’t written of them,

Had tried to capture each face,

Their words are part of our culture now

As some writer set them down,

And these, the writers are dead themselves

But their books are their renown.

 

A life is only ever complete

With the last and final breath,

We cease to be the man in the street,

The end of the book is death.

But life is there on the printed page

To entrance with what they said,

And I’m content to enrich my life,

To walk with the living dead.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Avinash]

A writer leaves his soul on to a book in his words. That is why it continues to live long after the writer himself is gone.

[Becky C Strukamp]

David, David, David, what an outstanding poem. I enjoyed the way you gave life to words in books and how true this is. The way you composed/structured it was point on! Loved it

[Claire in VA]

I find myself on this walk many times.
Very good write, David.

[A Soap Mess Stories]

I prefer to read a book instead of on a computer screen...short articles and poems are fine on a computer screen but long novels are better with a book...great storytelling...

[Marie]

I know what you're sying. The printed page comes alive for me, and I like books; the feel of them in my hands, not on a screen. I like old books by authors not even known today. But I embrace the new technology too and walk with the living living.