http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
'You must be the change you wish to see in the world.' - Mahatma Gandhi
Being a gay schoolboy in the late 1950’s, on into the so-called ‘liberal’ 60’s and beyond meant learning to live a double life; one life for myself, another for everyone else. Even during my young manhood, I was in and out of the proverbial closet for years until finally coming out to stay in my 30’s. My only excuse for not standing up to be counted sooner was having been browbeaten by years of having to listen to gay people being maligned by just about everyone around me. I was a psychological mess, and physically exhausted by it all. It took my mother’s premature death at 59 and a nervous breakdown three years later to bring home to me the obvious but sometimes elusive truth that life is too short to be lived at second hand.
There was no epiphany. I had known I am gay since I was 14 years-old. Yet, a sense of evolution excited and encouraged as much as it scared me. From potential human being, I became the real thing; from living figment of a fertile imagination, I metamorphosed into active participant in that process of positive thinking demonstrated since the beginning of time by the common art of Carpe Diem. Oh, yes, and along the way, I also discovered poetry...
I know many gay people who are not out to all and sundry for various reasons; the important thing is that they are out to themselves. How we choose to live our lives is our own business, no one else's ...if only in so far as no one else is directly affected, for better or worse, by what we say or do.. At the same time we need to be honest with ourselves, honesty in the sense of self-awareness being the greater force for change (for the best or better, real or potential) however long it may take us to find the most appropriate way/s (for anyone, given any socio-cultural-religious differences) to express itself.
In short, we all deserve to live as people, not shadows; where that means making a few compromises along the way, so be it, just so long as it is the individual - no one or anything else - that remains in control. Once we start kidding ourselves, we might as well be shadows.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES, A POSITIVE FORCE FOR CHANGE
My world, it was a shadowy place,
closet with the door barely ajar,
a galaxy where neither sun, moon
nor stars were encouraged to come out
and shine
I ate, drank and breathed shadows,
body and mind all but crushed
by temporal divisions, pulling me
this way and that, yet underestimating
the spirit
All but dead, it stirred, a rebel voice
now toeing at the closet door,
now kicking it wide open, the better
to enjoy all the womb-like nourishment
of aspiration
My world, it was filled with the light
of an imagination nurturing hope,
addressing vibrant stirrings of new life
metamorphosing self-pity into barefaced
willpower
Sun, moon, and stars now shine on me
as on anyone once bound to Earth
by its umbilical cord, cut according
to its nature by a stoicism championing
humanity
Now, my only darkness, that of sleep,
no fear that my sexuality requires
I (ever) make apology for its being gay
as I wake to your steady breathing, sweeter
than birdsong
Copyright R. N. Taber, 2016
'You must be the change you wish to see in the world.' - Mahatma Gandhi
Being a gay schoolboy in the late 1950’s, on into the so-called ‘liberal’ 60’s and beyond meant learning to live a double life; one life for myself, another for everyone else. Even during my young manhood, I was in and out of the proverbial closet for years until finally coming out to stay in my 30’s. My only excuse for not standing up to be counted sooner was having been browbeaten by years of having to listen to gay people being maligned by just about everyone around me. I was a psychological mess, and physically exhausted by it all. It took my mother’s premature death at 59 and a nervous breakdown three years later to bring home to me the obvious but sometimes elusive truth that life is too short to be lived at second hand.
There was no epiphany. I had known I am gay since I was 14 years-old. Yet, a sense of evolution excited and encouraged as much as it scared me. From potential human being, I became the real thing; from living figment of a fertile imagination, I metamorphosed into active participant in that process of positive thinking demonstrated since the beginning of time by the common art of Carpe Diem. Oh, yes, and along the way, I also discovered poetry...
I know many gay people who are not out to all and sundry for various reasons; the important thing is that they are out to themselves. How we choose to live our lives is our own business, no one else's ...if only in so far as no one else is directly affected, for better or worse, by what we say or do.. At the same time we need to be honest with ourselves, honesty in the sense of self-awareness being the greater force for change (for the best or better, real or potential) however long it may take us to find the most appropriate way/s (for anyone, given any socio-cultural-religious differences) to express itself.
In short, we all deserve to live as people, not shadows; where that means making a few compromises along the way, so be it, just so long as it is the individual - no one or anything else - that remains in control. Once we start kidding ourselves, we might as well be shadows.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES, A POSITIVE FORCE FOR CHANGE
My world, it was a shadowy place,
closet with the door barely ajar,
a galaxy where neither sun, moon
nor stars were encouraged to come out
and shine
I ate, drank and breathed shadows,
body and mind all but crushed
by temporal divisions, pulling me
this way and that, yet underestimating
the spirit
All but dead, it stirred, a rebel voice
now toeing at the closet door,
now kicking it wide open, the better
to enjoy all the womb-like nourishment
of aspiration
My world, it was filled with the light
of an imagination nurturing hope,
addressing vibrant stirrings of new life
metamorphosing self-pity into barefaced
willpower
Sun, moon, and stars now shine on me
as on anyone once bound to Earth
by its umbilical cord, cut according
to its nature by a stoicism championing
humanity
Now, my only darkness, that of sleep,
no fear that my sexuality requires
I (ever) make apology for its being gay
as I wake to your steady breathing, sweeter
than birdsong
Copyright R. N. Taber, 2016
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