20,000 Streets Under The Sky, and Counting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

All over the world there are gay boys and girls coming to terms with their sexuality, and the fact that not everyone has either the maturity or understanding to recognize the moral courage it takes to ‘come out’ nor the inhumanity if not immorality of a holier-than-thou attitude towards  anyone who is ‘different’. 

As I have said many times, our differences do not make us different, only human.

This poem has not appeared on the blog since 2010 and reader ‘Bryan’ has requested its reappearance. Bryan says, ‘I have been happy living with the same partner for some years now, but will never forget my first rejection by a boy in the 6^th form at school. It haunted me well into my thirties, and it wasn’t until I met my partner that I found the courage of my sexuality...’

I love that phrase ‘the courage of my sexuality’ don’t you?

Here’s sending a BIG HUG to Bryan and his partner.

  

20,000 STREETS UNDER THE SKY, AND COUNTING

Wandering a maze of streets where we’d played,

innocents in childhood’s special places,

I recalled dreams we’d had and plans we’d made,

chocolate and ice cream on our faces

Later, during teenage years, I’d dared confide

a sensation of being in freefall,

swept along by feelings compelled to hide

yet bound to answer nature’s frantic call

Wary of streets where once you’d walked with me,

tossed aside by our childhood’s secret haunts

on feisty waves of brave maturity,

I turned a deaf ear to your jeers and taunts

These streets, alone, stood by and embraced me,

kept faith with a youth’s sexuality

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

A Gay Dad's Story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Over the years, I have met a number of men, with female partners and children, who are essentially gay, but choose not to go there; not publicly anyway. Many haunt late-night/early morning cruising areas while their partners think they are working late at the office, or they may have a secret gay lover who is willing to settle for always being second-best just as a straight man’s mistress has dome for centuries. They give me lots of reasons, these gay dads; some cannot envisage a life without children while others (still) fear being stigmatised for their natural sexuality. Some make happy enough marriages, if you can ever be happy living such a BIG lie; others  live out their lives as best they can, carried along by a genuine love for wife and children.

Today’s poem has only ever appeared on my general blog (in 2007)  prompted two wives getting in touch with me  to ask how any man can be so selfish as to marry for  convenience only to announce at a later date that he has decided to make a new life with a boyfriend?  Do they have no conception of pain and humiliation?

Of course gay married men have a conception of pain and humiliation; many if not most experience it every day at some time or another.

I could not tell these women why their husbands chose to marry them, only that I am sure they were and are loved. I can understand and deeply sympathise their feeling of being ‘used’ ...but it isn’t as simple as that is it?  Acknowledging sexuality is nearly always a formidable first step, not least due to prevailing misguided attitudes in various homes, work places and societies world-wide. Arguably, moreover, a person cannot be accused of living a lie if they have never got around to acknowledging the truth. The next step is moving forward, and can be even more complex; so much so that some gay people either refuse to take it or feel prevented by circumstances from doing so.

Now, I know from personal experience that it is possible to be in love with two people at the same time. In my case, it was two men, but why shouldn’t it be a man and a woman?

Yes, a gay man should be honest with a female partner about his sexuality, but he risks losing her and someone in love is not always up to taking that risk. No, it isn’t fair - on either party - and yes, honesty is the best policy, but some gay men  stay in denial all their lives and genuinely don’t see themselves as living a lie; any casual sex with someone else on the side is seen as ‘a male thing’ to which they are entitled and they see nothing wrong in it.  Is it any wonder that a partner who is left to discover this for herself feels betrayed? The heterosexual majority does not have a monopoly on sexism.

Right and wrong are two sides of the same coin; it is rarely difficult to make a case for either, no matter which way the coin falls. I am focusing on men here, but the same applies to women of course. [Suffice to say, this is a gay man’s blog, but much if not most of what I have to say applies to lesbians as well.]

So all you gay and bisexual dads whose wives/partners may have no idea that you fancy men and/or enjoy sex with them, take heart as there are many, many of you out there. [I am not encouraging this particular element of deceit in a male-female partnership, but simply acknowledging a fact.] However, bear in mind that love deserves honesty; nor is love as fragile as some like to make out, and I know lots of people who have  been amazed at how much love can bear in the longer if not always the shorter term.

I remain on the fence with this one, neither condoning nor condemning, but sympathising with all those people playing happy families out there while never quite as happy as they could be were men and women world-wide given less cause  by the environment/society in which they live to be fearful of the ultimate challenge facing each and every one of us...to be ourselves.

A GAY DAD’S STORY

Married, with kids, and not unhappy,
lives all but running true;
trying to be a good husband, dad,
seems the right thing to do;
of daily life, real love no less a part
for phantoms tugging at the heart
like children longing to come out to play
but made to stay indoors, lest angels
with dirty faces lower the tone, heaven
but looking on

Married, with kids, and not unhappy,
lives all but running true;
trying to be a good husband, dad,
seems the right thing to do;
few greater joys of Mother Earth than love,
togetherness and birth,
nor do these fade as others burst through
like spring flowers,
a long, hard winter done, heaven
but looking on

Parted, kids grown, and not as happy
as we ought to be,
but a sense of integrity, worthy
of our sexuality;
time enough for friends and family
to understand, lessons learned;
love, once freely given and shared,
never quite overturned;
same sun rising and setting, heaven
cheering, weeping

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2012

[Note: This poem has been slightly but significantly revised from an earlier version that appears in   First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]

Bus Fare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Yesterday, I posted a poem inspired by a song sung by Doris Day. A reader has been in touch to ask, ‘It is bad enough that someone who claims to be a serious poet writes gay rubbish, which I find offensive, but to write about Doris Day is really the last straw!’

Well, for a start I have never claimed to be a serious poet only someone who takes poetry seriously; well, most of the time. I am certainly no poetry snob, and readers will know that I write on all manner of themes. Nor am I a music snob. I love Doris Day just as I love Ella Fitzgerald and Johnny Cash.  I love some classical music, but I also love some pop and adore rock ‘n’ roll. I love some opera but cannot claim to be an opera buff. With me, it’s pick’n’mix. So what’s wrong with that? If it is good of its kind, I will usually enjoy it. Why shouldn’t I enjoy Elvis Presley every bit as much as Placido Domingo or adore Shirley Bassey just as I do Diana Ross and Leona Lewis. And let's not forget the late, great Dusty Springfield or, for that matter, Mario Lanza or Frank Sinatra. I could go on all day...

If people choose to limit their appreciation to one kind of music, one genre of literature or one period of art, that’s up to them. But there are lots of people like me who love to dabble in this ‘n’ that, and where’s the harm?

So I offer no apology for offending that particular reader. What planet is he (or she) from, I wonder?

Meanwhile...

Several readers (from all walks of life) have been in touch over a period of a year or so to say they could relate to this poem and have asked me to repeat it so, as it hasn’t appeared on the blog since May 2010, here it is again.

Who says public transport is boring?

BUS FARE

He was a very ordinary guy,

with an ordinary face,

wearing ordinary clothes;

I couldn’t place why

he stood out from the crowd,

he just did

Fair, wavy hair that never

saw a dye; a twinkle

in the eye, probably a lie

and never meant

to be read, leastwise,

not how I did

When the seat next to him

became free, I sat down,

and would have engaged

in light conversation;

instead, we both stared

straight ahead

He brushed against me

as he left the bus;

for a while, he was just

a Thought for the Day

till I got off, turned back,

ran all the way

Caught up with his smile,

no ordinary guy at all


Copyright R N Taber 2001

[Note: First published in This Moment in Time, Poetry Now, 2001 and subsequently in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002]

Bonding With Nature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

I bonded with nature even as a child, but as I grew older the bonding became more intense and intimate. In part, it was a form of escapism, enabling me to be myself in a way the world of human beings rarely let me; in part, too, it was the kind of spiritual bonding I had sought but never come close to establishing with religion even long before I realised I am gay. [Why does religion have such a problem with sexuality anyway?]

Most important of all perhaps was realising how insignificant I was amongst all this vast expanse of natural beauty and how little it really mattered who I was or what I achieved in this life any more than who I wasn’t or what I didn’t achieve. So what had I to lose by simply being myself, a gay man with aspirations that may or may not ever be realised, but where was the harm in trying? I am over simplifying, of course, but that is the gist of what my growing affinity with nature taught me.

In 1973 when I wrote the original draft of the poem, I had just completed Finals and was sitting on a hill overlooking Canterbury, its splendid cathedral barely visible in an ethereal heat mist but no less splendid for that.

I’d been watching a butterfly gliding leaves of grass for some time before I was overwhelmed and all but swept away by a huge wave of relief; after three years of establishing an immensely enjoyable but somewhat artificial bond with literature, I could still feel more inspired by a common butterfly than a single stanza from a great poem, one of Shakespeare’s finest monologues or even the likes of Tennessee Williams’ brilliant take on a metaphorical streetcar named Desire.

Capturing that moment was more important than writing the poem. Years on, recapturing that elation, almost like lovemaking but even more intimate and lasting, and sharing it with you, is far more meaningful than a mediocre poem I drafted very roughly on the back of an exam paper because it was all I had.

The closest I had to a mentor during schooldays, an English teacher known affectionately to generations of school kids as ‘Jock’ Rankin, once told me that experiencing a poem, or any creative piece for that matter, is as important as the piece itself because it takes us where more often than not we hadn’t even realised we wanted to go. I’d been studying literature at degree level and only just discovered what he meant afterwards

I was so accustomed to jumping in and out of the closet like a jack-in-the-box whenever it suited me that I’d almost persuaded myself it was the way things had to be.

Oh, I’d enjoyed my flirtation with academia, and it wasn’t quite over yet, but it was a world away from creativity, not to mention real life. I was glad to return to my roots, no matter what the consequences of that might or might not prove to be. Regular readers may recall that one immediate consequence was a brief fling with a fellow student. I had adored him from a distance for what felt like an eternity, but had been too scared to go there, convinced he was a raging heterosexual since he always had a pretty girl on his arm...

Oh, but how appearances can be so deceptive, and epiphanies so liberating...!

BONDING WITH NATURE

Trees, rustling

their leaves;

birds, singing

their songs;

clouds, smiling

at us,

gay lovers finding

each other

Trees, nodding

their heads;

birds, heaving

their breasts;

clouds, passing

us by,

gay lovers kissing

each other

Trees, cheering

us;

birds, singing

us;

clouds, blessing

us,

gay lovers, coming

to life

Trees, shaking

their heads;

birds, flying

off;

clouds, frowning

at bigots

charging gay lovers

with sin

Trees, welcoming

us back;

birds, singing

for us;

clouds, smiling

at us,

gay lovers, returning

to life

Copyright R. N. Taber 1973; 2012

A National Trust Outing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem last appeared on the blog in February 2010 and is not only a firm favourite of mine but, judging by feedback, has proven popular with many readers, straight as well as gay. It has always gone down well at poetry readings and I love reading it, especially to mixed gay/straight audiences.

New readers may be interested to know that I included it in a very informal poetry reading I gave on the 4^th plinth in Trafalgar Square back in July 2009 as my contribution to sculptor Antony Gormley’s One and Other ‘live sculpture’ project to view the performance, click on the link, but be warned, the whole thing lasts an hour:

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/oneandother.co.uk/participants/Roger_T [  [For now, at least, this link needs the latest Adobe Flash Player  and works best in Firefox; the archives website cannot run Flash but changes scheduled for later this year may well mean the link will open without it. Ignore any error message and give it a minute or so to start up. The video lasts an hour. ] RT March 2018

Update (April 2016): I also read the poem on the very first video I recorded for my You Tube channel.You can catch the recording below, too, as some readers tell me they cannot always access You Tube for one reason or another; it is the second of two poems I read there. [Later, Graham (best friend and cameraman) and I discovered how to insert a voice file into the video while editing. In later videos, viewers are spared the sight of yours truly fluffing about and the poems relate more closely to the video. The channel was very experimental and we did not expect much interest in a poetry channel, but feedback suggests otherwise and we plan to add new video/poems as and when the opportunity arises.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1z_NiNpRQw

If neither link works, go to my channel and search under 'On Hampstead Heath'.

http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtab

A NATIONAL TRUST OUTING

On my way downstairs, I paused

to look at a portrait on the wall

and it winked at me, opened

its mouth and said (laughingly),

“Yes, I too was gay in my day

although the word not invented

nor times quite ready to receive

the unseemly likes of a common

painter and his patron lover - so we

had to lie, indulge in subterfuge.

No one had the faintest idea,

certainly not the family (wife and

children included) or that ogre

Establishment whose inner circle

I was free enough to tread, so long

as I dared not bring it into disrepute

by word or deed. Oh, I loved them

well enough, indeed. But it’s not for

love of those I pose - radiating,

I suspect, an inner happiness?

Ah, yes, you understand. It is my

lover’s brush, exploring mind

and soul, touching what makes life

real (no trappings and trimmings

comprising Society’s notion - of

propriety or political expediency,

nor even an image of home fires

burning) – but Love, in all its

rampant glory, telling my story

here and now, for whomsoever might

care to consider, critically, a glow

in the cheek, lift of the eyebrow,

crook of the knee, hands pointedly

showing off slender fingers, touches

invariably missed in critique, put down

to art’s mystique, few appreciating

the intimacy between lover and lover,

bouncing off each other, long after

the oils runs dry, spoils of eternity.”

In my own time I descended, feeling 
befriended

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2006

[From: The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; a printing error in the first print run was subsequently corrected and the above version also included as an Appendix to A Feeling for the Quickness of Time, Assembly Books, 2005.]

Awakenings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Several readers have asked me to repeat this poem, but I try to keep repeats about two years apart; this one last appeared on the blog in May 2010. I hope new readers will like it and regular readers will enjoy being reacquainted with it.

Now, I suspect that I am not alone in saying that some of my happiest memories are also among the cheekiest...

AWAKENINGS 

Lying in your bed

in the middle of the night,

I nibble an ear,
excite such passions
that make sweet dreams
come true

Riding a storm,

I ease your shorts down,

tongue in cheek

pleading penetration
even while I'm wrestling

with a condom

As our bodies

relish a so-sensuous heat,

demanding of us 

no retreat, we press on,

well up for another victory
over our critics

Wave after wave

we swim to a safer shore 

than any this world

has to offer, drenching 

the sheets with intimate

laughter...

Becalmed at last,

we Creatures of the Deep

go back to sleep
and make love again,
conceding only to Apollo 

the last word

Copyright R. N. Taber 1996; 2010

[Note; This poem is a revised version of the original as it appears in my early selection, August And Genet, Aramby Publications, 1996, and subsequently in my first major collection Love And Human Remains, Assembly Books, 2001.]

G-A-Y, Baptism of Fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem has appeared twice on the blog before; the last time in September 2010. I am posting it today by way of my reply to the reader who contacted me to ask how I could ever expect to square spiritual with sexual identity. How can I talk about having a strong sense of spirituality, he demands, when I am committing a sin against God simply by being gay? Well, as I have said before, and almost certainly will again, religion does not have a monopoly on spirituality.

Sex can be a very spiritual experience. Gay or straight, I have always believed that those for whom it is only ever a purely physical act and prefer to skip the deeper intimacy of foreplay and romance are missing out.  

There are gay men and women, boys and girls from all walks of life. Various religions and cultures need to e keep that in mind when they preach their bigoted views. I am not a religious person, but remain convinced that no humanitarian God would be a homophobe. I was raised a Christian but
had disassociated myself from (any) religion by the time I was 10 years-old, long before I realised I am gay. It continues to appal me that so many Christians revert to the Old Testament when railing against gay people, when Jesus came along to change all that. Jesus was a historical figure; whatever one believes about him, he was a GOOD man.

Fortunately there are many religious people who take their cue from principles of peace and love rather than those of bigotry and hate; the latter are, of course, careful to maintain a politically correct public profile while fooling no one. Sadly, in my experience, the former appear to be a in relative minority.

 Now, no one ever forgets their first lovemaking, but for gay people, especially gay men, it marks a dash for freedom from the damn closet, that prison of conscience which various offensive stereotypes have imposed on us for years.

Oh, the stereotypes won’t suddenly disappear, but after that first baptism of fire, we can fight them (if only inwardly where going public can mean persecution or worse) with confidence and reassurance, no longer either scared or ashamed of our sexual identity.  

G-A-Y, BAPTISM OF FIRE

Eyes closed, wishing my fear away,

warmth of your skin, taste 

of your mouth, touch of your hands, 

oh, so eagerly exploring my sex, 

making me wonder if it is me 

you really see, desire, or could it be 

just anyone lying here, available 

to quench the flames of a passion burning 

us at its stake as we embrace...

Could it be our desperation is but a lie, 

mere cover for the need to satisfy 

an anxious physicality? It is you I want

crave, long to enter me, join me

to you as with a ring I would thee wed 

but cannot so, instead, needs must

welcome this expression of a passion

unblessed for society’s wanton obsession 

with religious dogma, tradition ...

Suddenly, we are done yet still together

drawing on each other’s breath, smell,

an intimacy as of children in the womb

listening to parents laughing, crying, 

just for being together, their love-making

answer to a prayer that we’re wanted

and loved, for who we are, nor am I afraid

any more for knowing for sure you care for me

as I for you, though love take its time

Let the world take or leave us as it will,

our love will see as through good times and bad,

thus whispers your tongue at the lobe 

of my ear, filling mind-body-spirit, heart

and soul far, far more than sexuality’s 

response to even as glorious a a physicality 

as this, acknowledging the spirituality 

of love, a truism, this wetness of your tongue,

promising the moon, a baptism of fire

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005]

LGBT, Carve our Names with Pride

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem last appeared on the blog in March 2010, and several readers have asked me to repeat it. Not everyone has a computer at home or if they do they don’t always feel free to call up a gay blog on it. Such a reader is ‘Henri’ who says his family would be ‘very angry and sad’ if they found him reading the blog at home. [Readers often tell me this. It is a poor reflection, indeed, on the times in which we live, vastly improved though a gay person’s lot may be (for some of us) compared to when I was a teenager and young man.]

It sounds like Henri is still in the closet. I can but hope he will break out of it in time as I did years ago. Even so, let's not forget that while Coming Out is a very liberating experience, it can also be a very scary, even traumatic one, especially for anyone who has not grown up in a gay-friendly environment. Acknowledging to ourselves that we are gay can be hard enough, letting family and friends in on our discovery is rarely plain sailing although we may well be pleasantly reassured by their reaction..

In a repressive regime, it is all but impossible to be openly gay, but even here in the West, the consequences are not always as we would wish them to be. One gay reader contacted me a few weeks ago  to say his parents are evangelical Christians and another has told me his family are Mormons; neither dares talk about their sexuality because they are still at college and unable to make a life for themselves away from home in the event that, as both young men seem convinced, their families will not be remotely understanding or tolerant towards their being gay. Well, we often make wrong assumptions about people, and there is only one way to find out. Mind you, I once heard from an American relative who is a Mormon. He assured me that he did not think any less of me for being gay. On the contrary, he would be happy to advise me about being 'cured' !!

There are always consequences for our actions; we need to think through and prepare ourselves for all  possible scenarios associated with them before we go ahead; it always helps to have a close ally, and this applies as much to Coming Out as anything else.  

Let's be clear. There is nothing wrong with a gay person staying in the damn closet until they are good and ready to break out. If some people never feel ready, it is their decision and we have to respect it. That said, I have no respect for those people who feel they cannot be openly gay and try to 'divert suspicion' by making homophobic remarks or siding with homophobic parties; it is sheer hypocrisy at its ugliest. Nor, in my opinion,  should we accept being in the public eye as an excuse.

Across the word, gay people are still being attacked, even killed for their sexuality, a tragedy for which the 21st Century should hang its head in shame.

Tomorrow's poem will continue the same theme, not least because (if feedback is anything to go by) the blog appears to have acquired more younger readers recently and not everyone has either the time or opportunity to browse the archives. 

LGBT, CARVE OUR NAMES WITH PRIDE

As you touched my hand

it felt like a brand

burning into me, and I ran off

to hang my head in shame

because now I wore

a name for anyone to read,

and I was scared

I asked a passing dove

what I should do,

but the dove flew on

so I asked a friendly canine

that wagged its tail,

but left me feeling less

than sanguine

I went home and changed

for a night on the town

and my hand, it kept shaking

as I buttoned up my shirt,

listened to the pounding

of a heart wondering - how

to make a start?

I called you, arranged to meet

on the corner of our street,

promised I wouldn’t run away 

this time or hang my head

in shame for wearing

a name anyone can read - and

I was scared ...

But glad

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2019

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'G-A-Y' in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; title rev. 8/19]

Finders, Keepers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem last appeared on the blog in February 2010 and is repeated today for new readers and because it’s a favourite of mine and more than slightly autobiographical...

FINDERS, KEEPERS

It was a bleak wintry day,

heart hanging low from snow clouds above

with nothing to say

but how there’s really no counting on love;

I just couldn’t get warm,

longed for your arms to hug and embrace me

but all I had was a dream

and yesterday’s carrot-nose snowman

grinning inanely

Even a robin was grieving

as if, suddenly, it was all too much to bear,

and where, oh, where was spring?

No one here to ask, not even Earth Mother

as branches of an oak tree

groaned under the weight of fresh snow,

empathising with me,

if but a crumb of comfort where my love 

dare not go

The lake, it was frozen over,

ducks and moorhens waddling across pearly ice;

I ran then, for solace and shelter,

only to find myself outside your house;

‘Knock on the door,’ the robin sang

flying low overhead as if sounding out my youth,

its song no longer weak but strong,

as our love had been before challenged 

by some deeper truth

I glanced back at the oak tree,

but it was the snowman, resolved to catch my eye,

and still grinning away at me,

that challenged me to give gay love a try;

I never did knock on the door;

suddenly, you were there for me, arms flung wide,

and I knew we’d be as once before

when the oak saw us find what no snow 

could ever hide

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012.]