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I’d brought my woman to live with me
In a cottage by Elmsley Wood,
We lived on pure and simple fare
For my wages weren’t that good,
I bagged a hare and a stoat or two
With my ancient .22,
She skinned and cooked, and cleaned and looked
For something better to do.

‘I’m used to the shops and supermart,
The bars, fast cars and fun,
I didn’t know we’d be isolated,
Let’s go back there, ***!’
I hadn’t a job for two full years
And she knew that to be true,
‘I only remember the city tears
When I couldn’t look after you!’

We’d always been such a loving pair
When we lived outside the yoke,
With plenty of time for making love
In a ratty flat, and broke.
But once I became a gamekeeper
I had a feeling of pride,
‘A man has need of his self-respect,’
I said, so Kathy sighed.

I’d do my rounds at the dawning while
The sun was lying low,
While she would sleep every morning
Spring or Summer, heat or snow.
Then I’d go out in the evenings when
The Moon was riding high,
Hoping to catch the poachers on
My patch, and being sly.

So Kathy began to go for walks
Each sunny afternoon,
She wouldn’t stick round for lunch, or talks
And the cottage was filled with gloom.
I’d take my break in the afternoon
Either read, or take a nap,
And hear the crackle of twigs and leaves
As she came walking back.

I warned her not to go walking through
The depths of Elmsley Wood,
‘There’s a couple of shady characters
In there, up to no good.’
She said she’d taken it all on board
Just walked the nearer trees,
Listening to the songs of birds
And the hum of busy bees.

One afternoon she had gone, and I
Was not too tired that day,
So wandered deep in the wood where I
Might meet the rogue, John Gray.
I saw him out in a clearing, and
He had her in his clutch,
I thought that I must be dreaming for
She wasn’t wearing much.

I turned, and hurried back home without
Them knowing I was there,
I had my heart in my throat, but was
Determined not to care.
The rage was building within me
For the woman who was mine,
I thought, ‘How could she deceive me?’
But that evening was sublime.

She said that the larder was empty
Could I go and bag a hare,
I said, ‘Just give me an hour or so,
I’ll bag some thing out there.’
I came in late, and upon the plate
I tossed her John Gray’s head,
‘I couldn’t find you a hare, I swear,
Just pickle that instead!’

David Lewis Paget
This is the key to it.
This is the key to everything.
Preciously.

I am worse than the gamekeeper's children
picking for dust and bread.
Here I am drumming up perfume.

Let me go down on your carpet,
your straw mattress -- whatever's at hand
because the child in me is dying, dying.

It is not that I am cattle to be eaten.
It is not that I am some sort of street.
But your hands found me like an architect.

Jugful of milk! It was yours years ago
when I lived in the valley of my bones,
bones dumb in the swamp. Little playthings.

A xylophone maybe with skin
stretched over it awkwardly.
Only later did it become something real.

Later I measured my size against movie stars.
I didn't measure up. Something between
my shoulders was there. But never enough.

Sure, there was a meadow,
but no young men singing the truth.
Nothing to tell truth by.

Ignorant of men I lay next to my sisters
and rising out of the ashes I cried
my *** will be transfixed!

Now I am your mother, your daughter, your brand new thing -- a snail, a nest.
I am alive when your fingers are.

I wear silk -- the cover to uncover --
because silk is what I want you to think of.
But I dislike the cloth. It is too stern.

So tell me anything but track me like a climber
for here is the eye, here is the jewel,
here is the excitement the ****** learns.

I am unbalanced -- but I am not mad with snow.
I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering...

I burn the way money burns.
Alicia D Clarke Sep 2012
Ana speaks to the ones who listen
a fallacy of fictional happiness
a gamekeeper of your life
she secretly kills you
keeping you alive with the hopes that one day you might get want you've always wanted
to be thin
you die
Ana lives
tormenting always
Ana never dies
Jake Taylor Nov 2011
With thoughts of old childhood birthday blossoms,
and crisp, clear fragrant summer mornings never to be forgotten
the gift of peace to a commitment untold
and the life and heart of the country unfold

from the birth of fawn to the parting of old bones
the lush of leaf or the solemn of stone
with the gush of stream and the call of bird
this country could entice the soul of any to turn

the sodden wet grass from a night of refresh
with the elegant  bluebells littered like trade stands across Marrakech
the love and flesh of a greater power once said
and the flavour and colour to be feasted once again

by the old man gamekeeper the luckiest man I've met
Yenson Jul 2019
That iridescent image I had known for years
seen it in various guises and learnt its form by heart
know its poetry from the classics under Grecian lights
and when it appeared this time I delve to find its mind

But it was for Papa that the birth of reason grew
in a missive unspoken and a call enveloped later unfurled
a whisper rose that urged, look after for me, I will soon be gone
a king had spoken perchance to a chosen knight now obliged to obey

the ode of times and fleeting sighing sights of the light-footed
in rays of play the child of our times skips boundarys and forts
maidens sing stories and the gallant forays in skirmishes abound
a ringing promise hangs as a willow in wisp claims legacy unknown

tempest swirls and sound in fury rules in chagrin and ardour
a gamekeeper sees a ***** traipsing the trails of Tigers and lions
the tipsy gypsy hears neither the troubadour nor the rites of Templars
a mind envisaged was the shrunken bulb of shrubs and alien foliage

Be it not a dirge or condemnations of seducing Westering gales
banquets laid for differing tastes and jesters jest for mirth and frolics
a wizened once reached out in wordless touch, a promise sailed forth
In deep blue sea a mindful dolphin far from home turns and swims away......
Eugene Morrow Jan 2018
We are quarry.
Looked after by the sickest gamekeeper.
Yenson Jul 2022
Dense illumination glows beneath contempt
underserving to even be dignified
by cancellation

shinning base ignorance affecting enlightenment
is the gamekeeper turned poacher
but its more

the little man with the long fronted Cadillac
its all a front in compensation
for the micro appendage

the charlatan sage in narcissistic fix fervour
the recognised contemptible ablaze
the lion sheep of sheep
baa baaing in Latin
“The patience of Job” applied as an idiom that means to have great patience or endurance in the face of suffering. It's used to describe someone who perseveres through many problems or hardships.

(or be an uncommon Joe)...
to bide their - meaning her/his time
(while listening to muzak) before talking
with Verizon Fios representative,
who usually profusely thanks
the long time customer for diligently holding out
to discuss any pressing issue(s) at hand.

All that fretting and fussing takes a toll
and disallows one from attaining zen
a state of blessed blissfulness when
considerably unlike figurative
swirling chaos cue Tiananmen
Square when 1989 protests
wrought strong arm of the law to quicken
suppression courtesy the Chinese military
decimated, interrogated, oppressed and vetted
obliterated nascent twittering,
and flickering freedom of expression
student-led demonstrations linkedin
with other brethren and sistren
courtesy qua relationship each as netizen,
with the others until government
stepped in asserted authoritarianism
Über alles might means right.

Any resemblance between the above citation
and living persons purely coincidental,
cuz yours truly (me) cannot remain silent,
but must (be as innocuous as a scare) crow
(as if he got forced
to chomp on the figurative bit),
and admit without further delay
said above iterated Biblical apothegm
more challenging than threading
a needle thru the eye of a camel.

As a little boy buzzfeeding his curiosity
sitting hours sprawled on the grass,
and other instances in later years,
when just a skinny lad,
he honed the ability to wait
for however long the waiting took,
the exception being when my mother
predictably late picking me up
after school if I missed getting on the school bus.

The wait well worth finally speaking
with a Verizon Fios
(Fiber Optic Service) representative,
(who terminated television service
with yours truly to lower his monthly bill),
and while on a protracted waiting stance,
I busied myself in the interim,
whiling away the time
playing online Solitaire:
(I won another virtual trophy
without cheating of course),
and answered Facebook friend requests,
while also checking for responses,
and subsequently texting totally tubular
men and women who sent me a message
ofttimes in reaction to a poem I posted,
and although no tangible
(read tactile) interaction occurs,
a more profound mental arousal
begets enticing hypothalamus, thalamus,
amygdala, and frontal lobes
ushering ******* intellectual glorification
analogous with peak crisis as described below
regarding a breakout novel by D.H. Lawrence
in Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Nowadays aforementioned then
ground breaking scandalous publication
tells the story of a wealthy,
upper-class woman,
Lady Constance Chatterley,
who felt trapped in a loveless marriage
with a paralyzed husband
and finds passionate love
with the working-class gamekeeper
on her estate, Oliver Mellors,
highlighting the themes of class differences
and the importance of physical intimacy
and emotional fulfillment in a relationship;
the book is considered controversial
due to explicit depiction of ***
and the social taboo of the affair.

"Lady Chatterley's Lover"
caused a major stir
due to its explicit descriptions of ***,
particularly female ****** pleasure,
combined with the controversial portrayal
of a passionate affair
between an upper-class woman
and a working-class man, which
considered shocking and taboo for the time,
leading to widespread censorship
and bans across many countries
when it first published.

— The End —