Today’s poem has appeared twice on the blog before; the last time in May 2010. I am publishing it again today for all those gay people who continue to feel guilt about their sexuality if only because the less enlightened among the heterosexual majority do their best to make us feel guilty.
We have nothing to feel guilty about.
I agree, I should not need to say this, and we should all take it as read. Sadly, many gay boys and girls, men and women around the world feel their sexual identity being undermined at every turn by blinkered societies and the short-sighted bigots who have the greater say in how they are run.
Even those people who claim to be gay-friendly, especially in Society’s upper echelons, could do far more to influence attitudes for the better; failing to speak out against us hardly constitutes support.
Here in the UK it is great news that we have a lesbian Poet Laureate, but I don’t think it is an unfair generalisation to say that attitudes towards gay men remain tangibly if not visibly hostile among the greater heterosexual majority, especially in a multicultural society, even if ‘political correctness’ prevents them from airing their views in public.
Yes, yes, I know gay people can engage with society more freely in the UK than when I was a young man, but ‘more’ freely is not good enough. Freedom does not brook compromise, and that goes for freedom of sexual identity too. May the world as a whole, one day reach the same conclusion...
REGENERATION
My lips crushed against yours
as rose petals between angry fingers;
body seeking to assuage a rage
in your doing battle with darker waves
even than in a storm,
I will the language of love to come
into its own, show you
how, together, we can defeat demons
trampling on your dreams,
intruding on mine, expose them
for who and what they are,
beat them, hands down, at history’s
own vengeful game
For it is revenge that stirs them
to forage in your mind for feelings
of a darker kind than love
would choose to have on its side were it
freed from its cage;
A cage, indeed, woven by demons
to keep you from me;
though I rattle its bars with my desires,
let you feed and drink from them,
feel your pulse and confirm you live,
I cannot reach within,
only trust that, in a mutual adrenalin rush,
you’ll make a dash for freedom
I can feel your heart beating faster,
pulse growing stronger each time we kiss
and all but drown in love’s blood,
sweat and tears, making its confession
as only body language can
though words struggling to compensate
where the spirit stronger than ever
but flesh weakened by years of captivity
imposed by demon shadows,
ready to pounce at the first opportunity
once their existence threatened,
prisoners taken at past close encounters
actively considering alternatives
I can taste your guilt on my tongue,
slowly sliding down my throat like bile
as your sex begs me
to burst open your cage, free you
once and for all
from whatever spell written on whatever
page or pages of your history,
making you stall even as you bid for a life
that’s full, no holds barred
to making the most of love’s true passion
if you’ll but dare fire its enemies
into a faceless oblivion
Explosion! The landscape of love laid bare
for regeneration
[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Book, 2010]
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